Red Tide (13 page)

24

T
he first thing he noticed was the red emergency light over the door. Inside its little metal cage, it had begun to blink, silently, on and off in a rapid cadence. Jim Sexton looked over at Pete Carrol, who was filling time picking lint from his baseball cap. Pete didn’t look up, just kept picking away. Then the door banged open and a pathologist in a green scrub suit came through at a dead run, surgical mask hanging down over his chest, mouth gasping for air as he sprinted across the reception area and disappeared down the far hall, gone only long enough for Jim and Pete to exchange glances before the buzzer began to scream, its hoarse electronic bleat bouncing off the walls and ceiling like a fire drill at school.

And then the reception area was full of people. Ten…a dozen…doctors, lab types in white coats, security guys, a pair of secretaries, a guy in a suit…all hurrying across the brown tile floor toward the blinking light and the screaming buzzer.

Pete bounced off the wall and reached for the camera. Jim made eye contact, shook his head, and then, while Pete was still collecting his jaw, he fell in with the shuffling pack of humanity as it squeezed through the
NO ADMITTANCE
door and hastened down the long polished hall. His presence was lost in the gravity of the situation. Before he got to the viewing window, he heard a sob and then the sound of tears. “Oh God…Shauna,” someone said. Someone wept out loud.

One of the suits turned to the nearest security guard. “We’ve got a Phase Four emergency here, Phillip. We need a fire department hazardous materials team here as quickly as possible. We’re going into isolation mode. Nobody goes in. Nobody goes out.” Phillip pulled a handful of keys from his belt and began to jog up the corridor.

“Oh God, God, God,” somebody sobbed.

Assistant Fire Chief Ben Gardener slipped into the Critical Incident Room unnoticed…no easy feat for a man six and a half feet tall bearing disturbing news. As he closed the soundproof door, the intense buzz of conversation piqued the skin on his face in much the same manner as cannon fire flattens the cheeks of those standing close by. The feds had moved everything. Brought in more tables to accommodate the brigade of federal agencies which had been brought to bear on the situation. Wired the place for what must have been a hundred different phone lines, twisting miles of thick braided cables that ran along the baseboards like the roots of some newly discovered tree.

Gardener’s eyes swept the space. The Homeland Security Agency had taken over the entire north wall of the room. Half a dozen agents whispered into plastic mouthpieces, while another trio fed documents into fax machines. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases shared the south wall with an unnamed agency whose role was apparently so sensitive they had declined to identify themselves. Braced as to their bona fides by Frank Thome, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, they were rumored to have produced a document whose mysterious contents had very nearly reduced the coordinator to genuflection.

For obvious reasons, the Centers for Disease Control had set up shop at Harborview Medical Center, while both the FBI and the CIA had commandeered entire floors of luxury hotels for use as command posts. Between the three agencies, more than a hundred federal operatives presently roamed the city, while a hundred more were being held in reserve.

Out in the center of the room, Harry Dobson was making measured conversation with that same smarmy bastard from the State Department who’d thanked them both for their departments’ efforts and then informed them that neither department would henceforth be required.

He raised a hand and ran his fingers through his thick hair. The movement caught Harry Dobson’s eye. Ben Gardener inclined his head no more than an inch and then turned and exited the room in three long strides.

Two minutes passed before the door opened again and Harry Dobson stepped out into the hall. Ben Gardener didn’t say a word. Instead, he turned his back on Dobson and strode quickly down the hall. Dobson followed along in silence. All the way to the elevator. Down fifteen floors to ground level and then out onto Third Avenue, where Gardener walked half a block from the entrance before coming to a halt next to a forest of newspaper dispensers. “EBOLI,” one headline shrieked. “JIHAD VIRUS,” trumpeted the other.

Again Gardener used his head to motion. This time back at the Public Safety Building. “Those guys make me nervous,” he said by way of explanation. Dobson nodded his wholehearted agreement. Ben Gardener checked the street before he went on. “We’ve had another incident,” he said.

Dobson blanched. Held his breath. Gardener went on. “Two dead. A forensic pathologist named Shauna Collins and a coroner’s assistant named George Bell.”

Harry Dobson exhaled with a rush. “Only two?”

“Yes.”

“At the morgue?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about it.”

“One of my teams responded to the call,” Gardener began. “Same thing. Dead people…dead virus.”

“The CDC do the tests?”

“They trained all our people this morning. We did them ourselves. Why?”

“Go on.”

Harry Dobson listened in silence. By the time Gardener was finished speaking, Dobson’s forehead was a washboard of furrows. “What was the vic’s name again?” he asked.

“Shauna Collins—”

“Not them. The corpse they were working on,” Dobson interrupted.

“Martin Magnusen,” Gardener said. “A Canadian citizen.”

“This is the guy with his throat cut?”

“Ear to ear from what I hear.”

Dobson smiled at the rhyme and thought it over.

“A glass vial?”

“Just like the bus tunnel.”

“And your boys think it came out of the vic’s pockets.”

“That’s sure how it looked.”

Again Harry Dobson paused to reflect. “The feds know about this?”

“Not yet.”

“Why don’t we keep it that way?”

Gardener raised an eyebrow. “Any particular reason?”

“They’re sure as hell not telling us anything.”

Gardener shrugged. “They never do.”

“Unless the investigation goes in the Dumpster, in which case they’ll disappear like a cool breeze and we’ll be left holding the bag.”

“That’s how they operate.”

“So what say we keep this little tidbit under our collective hats…”—he waggled a hand—“for the time being at least.”

Gardener made a doubtful face. “Counting people like dispatchers and morgue personnel, probably a dozen people already know about it.”

“See what you can do to keep it quiet.”

“That kind of thing usually doesn’t work out too well for anybody.”

Dobson nodded his agreement. “Give it a try. Anything happens, I’ll take the heat.” This time it was Ben Gardener who took his time answering. From nearly anyone else in state or city government, such a statement would have to be considered pure unadulterated bullshit. From Harry Dobson, however, the promise was another matter.

“You want to give me a hint here, Harry?” Gardener said.

“Things get ugly, might be better you didn’t know.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

Dobson ran both hands over his face. “Okay…so…”—he waved a hand—“I’m not sure exactly what time, but sometime last night the East Precinct gets a nine-one-one call about a possible homicide up on Capitol Hill. What we got is a guy in his mid-thirties with his throat cut. He’s kneeling on some woman’s kitchen floor with his head just about cut off, and she claims she doesn’t know a thing about it. She claims she found him that way when she got home. No idea how he got in the house or who might want to do something like that to him.” He paused. “Other than her, of course.”

“She knows him?”

“Used to. According to her he’s been living out of the country for the past six years or so…dodging an assault beef.” Gardener opened his mouth to speak, but Dobson waved him off with a finger. “An assault beef for tattooing this same woman from head to toe against her will.”

“This the woman who woke up and found herself decorated with all kinda…”

“That’s the one.”

“And she claims she just found him there on her floor? After all these years? He just shows up dead on her floor.”

“That’s what she says.”

“Strange.”

“We haven’t gotten to the strange part yet.”

“Oh?”

“She says his name’s not Magnusen. She claims he’s some guy named Bohannon. Says she spotted him in the street outside her house and then she and some cabdriver spent most of the evening following him around the city, until she finally lost him, at which point she goes home and finds the guy bleeding all over her kitchen.”

“You look into this?”

“We never got the chance. I had a couple of gold shields questioning her about the murder when, all of a sudden, the feds show up and snatch her from us.”

“Over what?”

This time, it was Dobson who checked the street. “Here’s where it gets interesting. The feds want her because she spent the early part of last night with none other than our friend Frank Corso.”

“The guy from the bus tunnel?”

“Seems they used to be an item.”

“You’re kidding.”

“What’s even more interesting is that my detectives felt pretty certain she was telling the truth about just finding him there on the floor…and these are experienced men I’m talking about here. Twenty years plus…both of them.”

“You thinking this Bohannon guy is somehow connected to whoever did the bus tunnel job?”

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

“Which means the girl is probably telling the truth.”

“Yes…it does.”

A smile threatened to break out on Ben Gardener’s lips. “The feds are looking for Arabs,” he said.

“Yes…they are.”

“Maybe this Bohannon guy is like a John Walker character or something.”

“Maybe.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“No.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you want me to try to put a lid on the morgue incident.”

“Do the best you can.”

“And you’re going to do what?”

“I’m going to put some people on it.”

“The feds are gonna hate it.”

Dobson threw an exasperated hand at the Public Safety Building.

“They’re all carving out kingdoms up there, Ben. Spend an hour in the room. You’ll see. Nobody’s cooperating with anybody else. One hand doesn’t have a clue about what the other is doing. They’re scrimmaging for next year’s budget appropriation.”

Gardener rolled his eyes. “Just like us,” the expression said.

25

“I
want to call my attorney.”

“You’re starting to get repetitive, Mr. Corso.”

“Maybe I ought to say it slower.”

“Maybe you ought to wise up,” said the hatchet-faced guy. The one leaning against the wall with his hands thrust deep in his pockets. He hadn’t uttered a word for over an hour. Not since being restrained after nearly losing it on Corso. “I’m going to tell you one more time…”—he held up a stiff finger—“we consider this to be a matter of national security. For the time being you don’t have constitutional rights of any kind. Under the provisions of the Homeland Security Act, there are no limits on how long we can keep you.” He put his face right in Corso’s. His breath mints had worn off. “Do you understand what I’m saying here, Mr. Corso?”

“You’re saying we just turned into Iraq.”

The two feds passed one of those looks that told Corso they didn’t normally work together. Probably weren’t even employed by the same agency. As neither man had bothered to identify himself, Corso had come to assume his primary tormenter was from the FBI. He was all-around slick. A good-looking guy. Maybe forty years old in a nice gray Italian suit and a pair of Vittorio Virgili loafers that must have cost him three bills. Knew what he was doing, too. One of those Quantico-trained interrogators whose questions loop around one another like threads in a tapestry. Didn’t take it personally that Corso wouldn’t so much as admit to his name…just kept at it like a pro.

The other guy was another matter. A much looser cannon. More likely from the CIA. Way more used to getting what he wanted right away. More pissed off when he didn’t. The kind of guy who wasn’t above pumping you full of drugs or hooking your privates up to a field telephone. Whatever it took.

Corso held no heroic illusions. He’d been questioned by experts and tortured by amateurs and knew, beyond all doubt, that, left in the hands of either of them for long enough, he’d eventually confess to whatever they had in mind.

“So…what’s it gonna be, fellas?” Corso asked, looking from one to the other. “You gonna put my head in a black bag and fly me down to Cuba? Put me in Guantánamo with the rest of those poor bastards you’ve got sitting around in the sun?” When they didn’t respond, he went on. “Or maybe you could put me in the cell next to that poor Walker kid. The one doing twenty years for being a truth seeker.”

CIA flushed slightly. “John Walker was a traitor to his—”

Corso cut him off. “John Walker was a dope. A scapegoat. A young, stupid kid fighting in the Afghani civil war whose biggest mistake was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, right when Uncle Bush just happened to need a symbol.”

FBI gave Corso a wink. “Then you must be aware of the kinds of miscarriges of justice that can happen in times of great national distress,” he said pleasantly.

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s a possible scenario.”

“We have met the enemy and he is us,” Corso said.

CIA waved that finger again. “I’d be careful with that kind of talk, Mr. Corso. I think you’ll find that precious few of your fellow citizens agree with you.”

“Are we talking about the same people who don’t seem to mind that there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq? That their President went on national TV and lied to them? Those fellow citizens?”

“It must be hard always holding the moral high ground,” FBI commented.

Corso nodded gravely. “It’s quite a cross to bear.”

Corso watched in silence as FBI moseyed around the table and sat down next to him. “We gonna hold hands now?” Corso asked.

“You know, Mr. Corso…if you could maybe manage to stop being such a hard-ass…”—he held his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart—“for just the littlest bit, we might be able to resolve this matter and let you back on with your life.”

Corso brought a hand to his throat. “Gee…I feel all warm and fuzzy now.”

A moment of strained silence passed before FBI pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “It doesn’t matter, Mr. Corso. Your girlfriend is singing like a bird. Anything we really need to know about you we can get from Ms. Dougherty.”

Corso broke into a smile. “Yeah…sure she is.”

CIA wasn’t ready to let it go. “Why don’t you tell us what you know about Melissa-D?”

Again Corso laughed and made a disgusted face. “Not that tired old shit again.”

“Our information…reliable information…says that you’re a major player in a terrorist organization which has hacked into nearly every computer system worldwide. Your Interpol file says you’re one of their major customers. Why don’t you just—”

Corso cut him off. “Melissa-D is an urban legend. It’s something reporters talk about when they’ve had too much to drink…which is mostly. There’s no such thing.”

“Is it true that—”

“I want to call my attorney.”

“I don’t think he’s been listening,” CIA said.

“I want to call my attorney,” Corso repeated.

FBI went for reasonable. “You’re already on the hook for the bus tunnel massacre. Correct me if I’m wrong here, Mr. Corso, but it seems to me you don’t have a heck of a lot to lose here. One way or the other, you’re going down here. You might as well—”

“You think I killed those folks in the tunnel?”

“Perhaps not you personally,” he said. “But certainly someone known to you.” He read the surprise in Corso’s expression. “I’ve seen the tape, Mr. Corso. And you see…”—he spread his hands—“until you manage to explain to me how you knew it was safe to take off your breathing device in that tunnel, I’m going to have to assume that you had prior knowledge.”

“I want to call my attorney.”

CIA pushed a big breath of air out through his pursed lips, then stepped out into the hall for a second before returning with a couple more field agents. Older guys. A little more shopworn. No longer fit for the field. Relegated to guard duty.

“Get him the hell out of here,” CIA said. He looked over at Corso. “We’re gonna bury you so deep not even your lawyer’s gonna find your ass, Mr. Corso. About the time people start to forget your name, we’ll see if you’re still such a first-class smart-ass.” He gestured violently with his arm. “Get him the hell out of here.”