Contagious (11 page)

“How about you see this shit firsthand and
then
you talk to me about pressure?” Dew said. “I’ll switch places with you in a heartbeat.”
“Vanessa Colburn would eat you alive,” Murray said. “You wouldn’t last five minutes here, just like I wouldn’t last five minutes there. What the fuck is wrong with you? You get your partner killed and you think you’re excused from finding a way to get the job done?”
Dew took a slow breath. “You’d best be real careful how you choose your words from here on out, L. T.”
“Oh, can the tough-guy drama,” Murray said. “Malcolm is dead, Dew. Deal with it. You want payback, right?”
“You’re goddamn right I do.” That was exactly what he wanted. More than anything else, save for a magic potion that would bring Malcolm back from the dead.
“Well, you’re the one that can make it happen,” Murray said. “You sure as hell aren’t on this job because of your good looks or your physical prowess. You’re old, you’ve got a gut, and you have a bad hip. You have only two things that make you worth a squirt of piss—you shoot when you’re told to shoot, and you figure things out. Get Dawsey to play ball, and get . . .me . . . a . . . live . . .
host
.”
Murray broke the connection.
Maybe he was an asshole, but that didn’t shake a nagging feeling that he was right.
“That’s why they give you the tough jobs, old boy,” Dew said to the empty room. “Because you can figure things out.”
So how the hell was he going to get through to Scary Perry Dawsey?
THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY
Sometimes having a black budget was fun.
Bob’s Breakfast Shack wasn’t a shack at all. It was actually part of the motel—a nice little greasy spoon with twenty tables, four of which were kind of off in their own room. For the small price of five Ben Franklin portraits, Dew’s people had the room to themselves.
Fuck it. It was only taxpayer money.
You could spend just so much time in the MargoMobile’s computer area. Buying out the diner’s back room let them talk openly. Dew sat at a table with Clarence Otto, Amos Braun and Margaret Montoya. Gitsh, Marcus, the black-eyed Milner and the nose-braced Baumgartner sat at another. Marcus was quietly whistling the melody from the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun.”
Dew had sent the other men home last night after they secured the scene. They were local talent, which he used for muscle when he needed it—the tactic gave him just-in-case firepower yet cut down on people who knew the whole story.
Amos had the menu open in front of him. He could barely see over the top. Dew considered making a crack about a child seat, but he assumed Amos had heard that one a million times. They didn’t get to do this often, maybe two or three days a week. Dew not only looked forward to it, he found time to make it happen. The whole situation had grown so dark, so desperate, that they needed a release. Breakfast meetings provided a rare chance to do something
normal,
to laugh and joke, even if it was gallows humor most of the time.
“Okay, Margaret,” Dew said. “Give me the rundown on last night’s autopsies.”
She looked up from her menu. “What, here?”
“Yep, right here,” Dew said. “I’m pretty sure the Russkies haven’t bugged Bob’s Breakfast Shack.”
“Russkies?” Otto said. “Doesn’t that phrase show your age?”
“Actually, my uneducated friend,” Amos said, “
Russkies
is accurate, since we now have a country called
Russia
.
Commies
would be inaccurate, since it’s the USSR that’s no longer around.”
Otto frowned, then smiled. “Say, little white man, don’t you owe me twenty bucks?”
“Aw, crap,” Amos said. “That’s right.” He fished out his wallet and handed over a well-folded twenty.
“What’s that for?” Margaret asked.
Otto pocketed the twenty. “He bet that Dawsey would kill me last night.”
Margaret took in a gasp of astonishment. “Amos! You didn’t!”
“I paid him, didn’t I?”
She shook her head and scowled at both men. “Seriously. That’s not something to joke about.”
“If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry,” Otto said. “Or something like that. I won twenty bucks—what else matters?”
The waitress came to take their orders. They sat in silence until she’d worked the room and left.
“Okay,” Dew said. “Let’s get back on task here. First of all, Margo, congrats on developing that triangle test.”
Otto and Amos both applauded lightly.
Margaret blushed. “Oh, it’s a team effort.”
Amos laughed. “Give it a rest, Miss Modesty. It was all your idea, and it works.”
“What else did you find from the corpses?” Dew asked.
“Nothing completely new,” Margaret said. “Although we refined a lot of our knowledge. Amos and I got great pictures of the parasite’s nerve inter face, the best yet. Same thing for the circulatory tap. I think we’ve pretty much documented how the thing interacts with those systems, although the disturbing part is still the brain interaction. These parasites clearly know more about the inner workings of our brains than we do.”
“What about the vector?” Dew said.
She shook her head. “Still nothing. So much of that comes from interviewing disease victims, finding out what they ate, drank, where they went, who they touched, things like that. The only person who
can
talk about it
won’t
talk about it.”
“Goddamn Dawsey,” Dew said. “What about the number of hosts this time? There were three of them, and we had those three old ladies that Perry torched. Any significance to that number?”
“Probably not,” Amos said. “There’ve been cases with just one host, like Perry, or with two and even three. What’s more significant here is that this was one family, living under one roof, so they probably ate the same food, traveled in the same patterns. The three old ladies all lived at the same retirement home. They took walks together every day. That shows that whatever the vector is, it can hit some or all of the people in a specific area.”
“Could they have given it to each other?” Dew asked. “One gets infected, gives it to the rest?”
Margaret shook her head. “All the McMillians’ triangles were at the same stage of development, which indicates they all contracted the disease at the same time. Add to that three people under the same roof who did
not
have triangles. As far as we can tell, it’s not contagious.”
“Which brings up an interesting point,” Amos said. “The gate was finished, right? Built by hatchlings that had already hatched. So if all the McMillians were at the same stage of development, they must have caught it
after
the other hosts. Why were they behind the times, so to speak?”
“They were obviously infected later,” Margaret said. “Whatever it is, something they touched, something they ate, the infected members of the family were exposed at the same time. That still doesn’t give us clues toward the vector. Amos, did Tad say anything?”
Amos shook his head. “Turns out he’s been grounded for a while. The parents left him alone at the house a few times. They could have picked it up shopping, running errands.”
“The follow-up FBI team will interview him,” Dew said. “And maybe they can get something when they run the background checks on the McMillians.”
Margaret reached across the table and grabbed Dew’s hand. “Dew, that’s all well and good, but we already
have
someone who was infected. If Perry would open up, provide us an overview of his behavior in the days leading up to his infection, that would give us something to work with. Can you talk to him again?”
Dew rolled his eyes. “What the fuck is this, International Pile On Phillips Day? I just had this conversation with Murray, thank you very much.”
“Right,” Margaret said. “And what did fearless leader say?”
“He said I have to find a way to reach Dawsey. Sound familiar?”
Margaret leaned forward, both elbows on the table. She pointed her fork at Dew. “You’ve threatened Perry, and that hasn’t worked. You’ve tried tricking him, following him so you could knock him out before he killed the hosts, and
that
hasn’t worked. Have you tried just being nice to him?”
“Be
nice
to him?” Dew said, his voice rising. He pointed at Milner and Baumgartner. “Look at their faces, Margo, and then tell me we should be nice to Dawsey.”
Margaret tilted her head to the right. “And what were those men going to do when they caught up with Perry, Dew?”
Dew didn’t say anything.
“Well? Come on, out with it.”
Dew ground his teeth. “They had orders to Taser him.”
“Then what?”
Dew looked away. “Then put him in handcuffs and inject him with a knockout drug.”
Margaret just nodded and smiled. This woman was too smart for her own good.
“
You’ve
been nice to him,” Dew said, surprising himself by how petulant he sounded. “Look how far that’s gotten us.”
“Dew, I’m female. Maybe this is a news flash to you, but Perry’s opinion of women in general isn’t all that high. I spent a lot of time with him when he was recovering. I can be nice all day, and he’ll be nice back, but he doesn’t
listen
to me.”
“That’s sexist,” Dew said. “I’m rather appalled.”
Margaret nodded. “And we don’t have several months of sensitivity training to get through to him. If we’re going to reach him now, a man needs to connect with him.”
“So what the fuck do you want from me, Montoya?” Dew said. “You want me to whip up a game of poker? You want me to take a warm shower with him and hold his hand until the wee hours of the morning?”
“No,” she said. “And stop quoting Clint Eastwood movies. How about you start simple—did you ask him to join us for breakfast?”
Dew just blinked. It hadn’t even crossed his mind.
“Huh,” Otto said. “I never thought of that.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Amos said. “I’m not sitting at a table with that guy. He might mistake me for a breakfast burrito.”
“Maybe a half stack of mini-pancakes, you mean,” Otto said.
“I want my menu back,” Amos said. “Maybe I’ll order some
Black
Forest ham and flush it down the crapper.”
“Oh, Amos,” Otto said, smiling as if he’d just had the most helpful idea in the history of man. “Are you upset because you can’t see over the table? Should I ask the waitress for a child’s seat?”
“Like I haven’t heard that one a million times.”
Dew reached out and squeezed Margaret’s elbow, then stood.
“Where you going?” Amos asked.
“To see if Perry wants to join us for breakfast,” Dew said. “Margaret’s got to be wrong about something sooner or later, so let’s find out.”
“He won’t come,” Amos said.
“I bet he will,” Otto said. “Dew here can be very persuasive.”
“Twenty bucks says Dawsey doesn’t even leave the room,” Amos said.
Otto nodded. “You’re on.”
Margaret shook her head. “Is there anything you two won’t bet on?”
“I’m sure there’s something,” Otto said.
“Twenty bucks says there isn’t,” Amos said.
Margaret shook her head some more.
Otto smiled at Dew. “Well, go on and bring him here so I can win another twenty.”
Dew turned and walked out of the restaurant.
WAKEY-WAKEY, HANDS OFF SNAKEY
Bang-bang-bang.
A pounding at the door.
Each bang matching the pounding in his head.
Perry’s eyes fluttered open. Could it hurt to blink? Yes, it could.
Bang-bang-bang.
“Go away,” Perry said. Whispered was more like it.
Bang-bang-bang.
“Go away!” Perry screamed, and instantly regretted it. His hands shot to his head, palms covering his eyes. Why was his face all sticky? The bed reeked of stale beer.
“Get up, Dawsey. Time for breakfast.”
Dew Motherfucking Phillips. At his door at the crack of dawn. Perry sat up and looked at the glowing red clock on the nightstand.
8:45 A.M.
Okay, so it wasn’t the crack of dawn. It was still too damned early to be out of bed.
“Rise and shine, big boy!” Dew yelled. “Let’s go! Everyone is waiting for you, and my food is getting cold.”
God
damn
did his head hurt.
“Dew, go away,” Perry said. “I’m not kidding.”
Dew wanted to parade him around at breakfast so they could all have a good laugh at the freak’s expense? No way. Perry didn’t know what their game was, but he wasn’t playing.
“Come on, kid, I can smell the beer all the way out here. You bathe in the stuff?”
Perry stood and walked to the bathroom. He put the plastic ice bucket in the sink, then turned on the cold water.
“Hold on,” Perry said. “Let me get dressed.”
“That’s the spirit,” Dew said. “And if you smell like the rest of your room, you might want to take a shower. A quick one, though. I don’t have all day.”
Perry turned on the shower’s hot water and let it run. He grabbed the now-full ice bucket out of the sink and walked to the front door.
“Hey, Dew?”
“Yeah?”
“Hey, is it cold outside?”
“It’s the dead of winter in northern Wisconsin,” Dew said. “It’s friggin’ freezing.”
In one smooth motion, Perry opened the door and sloshed the ice-bucket water into Dew’s chest. He had a brief glimpse of Dew flinching before the water soaked him, then the old man’s eyes going wide with cold and surprise. Perry shut the door and locked it.
“I’ll pass on breakfast,” Perry said. “Rain check?”
Bang-bang-bang.
“Open the fucking door, you
fuck
.”
Perry started to lie down again, then remembered that his bed was soaked with beer. He pulled the blankets off and tossed them on the floor.
“You better go change,” Perry said. “Like you said, it’s friggin’ freezing.”
Bang-bang-bang.
“
Kid
,
I am going to beat your ass.”
Perry laughed, but that hurt even more than talking. He pulled off the sheets and tossed them on top of the blankets, leaving a naked mattress. It had a few beer-wet spots, but it would do. He’d passed out in his clothes—they were beer-soaked as well, so he took them off and lay down. The running shower helped drown out Dew’s shouts a little. Perry just closed his eyes and waited. If Dew didn’t go away soon, his clothes would freeze on him, and he’d catch pneumonia and die.
Either way, Perry won.
A wave of nausea hit him. He slid his head over the side of the bed and threw up on the floor. As if his head didn’t hurt enough already—was a hangover vomit not one of the worst pains in the world? And Perry Dawsey
knew
pain. He dragged his face back, using the corner of the mattress to wipe the puke away from his mouth.
The banging stopped, and he quickly fell asleep.
ROOM SERVICE