Laurent put both hands on the desk, all ten fat little sausage fingers splayed out like she was steadying herself.
“May I ask who your top suspect is?”
“You may ask,” I said, “but I can’t tell you right now. It wouldn’t be helpful for us to share that information before an arrest is made, and right now that’s my most important consideration.”
Laurent said, “What information do you need?”
“I want to know what you and Dr. Myers here think about the last entry in Dr. Bradley’s journal. Is there anything in the data she recorded to indicate that she found proof of there being multiple strains of H2N2 in the local bird population?”
Laurent didn’t even hesitate. “You’ve been talking with Dr. Cole.”
“True,” I said.
“The man’s theory is fundamentally flawed. His theory is baseless.”
“So,” I said, holding up Bradley’s journal, “there’s nothing in here to support the multiple strain theory?”
“No,” she said. “Nothing of the kind.”
I opened the journal to the last page. “What about this last line, where she says ‘We are all goners?’ What do you think she was referring to there?”
“I’m sure I do not know. It is troubling, certainly. I can only say that she perhaps was frustrated with her lack of progress. Gifted researchers such as Dr. Bradley can often take failure personally.”
“Perhaps,” I said.
“I don’t think that’s very likely, Dr. Laurent,” said Chunk. My man, Chunk, had all the grace of a two-ton bull in a very expensive china shop. “What I think is that you either believe this multiple strain theory, or you are so afraid that it might be true that you sent Dr. Bradley out to confirm it.”
Laurent’s expression gave away nothing.
“You’re mistaken, Detective.”
“No, I don’t think so. I think you’re playing games with us, Dr. Laurent, and I got to ask myself: Why? Why don’t you want to help us find Dr. Bradley’s killer? I think you’re hoping to make the discovery first so that you get all the credit. Now, ordinarily I wouldn’t have a problem with that kind of thing, except that while you guys are arguing over bragging rights, a lot of innocent people are dying.”
Laurent remained motionless, practically a stone stature, but not Myers.
“How dare you accuse her of that?” Myers said. His voice quivered with suppressed rage. “Every member of this organization has voluntarily put themselves in harm’s way to help the people of this city. I for one do not think you are at all—”
Laurent said: “Dr. Myers, please. That will not help the situation. Detectives, I think you have overstayed your welcome here. We have answered your questions and cooperated in every way. Now please, find Dr. Bradley’s killer, and if possible, return our property to us. Good day to you both.”
Chunk and I traded a look. Time to go the GZ.
It was after ten o’clock in the morning when we entered the GZ and started patrolling the streets where we’d found Dr. Cole, and then Dr. Bradley’s van. The morning was cloudless, warm and bright. The rain from two nights earlier had brought out the pink blossoms of the crepe myrtle trees and the overgrown lawns were a deep, emerald green.
Chunk said, “You know, there’s a question we forgot to ask.”
“What’s that?”
“How come every time we’ve been in the GZ, we’ve been attacked by looters, but Dr. Cole and Dr. Bradley haven’t?”
“That’s a good point,” I said. I didn’t have a good answer to it either. Dr. Bradley, of course, had had Kenneth Wade to protect her, but Dr. Cole worked alone. How had he managed to escape them for so long?
“We’ll have to ask him when we find him,” Chunk said.
“Yeah.”
I watched the houses, so many of them without doors, their windows all broken or boarded over, and thought how calm everything was. It wasn’t the same sensation at all as the calm that hung over the Bandera Road food distribution center. That was the eye of the storm, a momentary lull in the dying spasms of a population driven mad by fear and paranoia. But here in the GZ, the calm was different. Here sunlight lanced through the canopies of oak trees, birds flew out of second story windows, and everything seemed soft-edged, dulled by a sunny haze. It was the calm of graveyards, the promise of a long sleep.
I was thinking about that, lost in my own little world, imagining the GZ as some kind of romantic, almost living landscape, when we turned onto Iowa Street and saw Dr. Cole’s converted
EMS
wagon parked under an ancient oak tree.
I pointed it out.
“See it,” Chunk said. He accelerated down to the end of the block and parked along the curb.
We got out of the car, our plastic spacesuits awkward now that we each wore a gun belt around our waists, and looked around.
“What do you think?” Chunk said.
“Try the van first. If we don’t find him there, go door to door.”
Chunk and I both headed toward the
EMS
wagon, then stopped. We heard coughing, violent, painful coughing. The calling card of H2N2. Chunk pulled his gun. I did too.
“Don’t shoot, detectives,” said Cole. He came around the passenger side of the wagon, walked toward us, through the grass, and stopped at the curb. “Don’t shoot,” he said again, and coughed violently. It nearly put him on the ground he coughed so hard. When he was done he said, “I’m not armed.”
I could see that. In fact, he wasn’t even wearing a spacesuit. He was dressed in a collared white shirt tucked into a faded, loose-fitting pair of blue jeans with no belt, and no tie.
He wasn’t wearing a face mask either, and for the first time I saw his face clearly. He was much thinner in street clothes than he had appeared in his spacesuit. His thinness gave his face an angry, impatient set that wasn’t totally erased by the weak smile at the corners of his mouth.
Chunk and I inched forward, weapons still at the ready. As we got closer to Cole I could see little blackish specks all over the front of his shirt. Cole began to cough again, and the skin around his mouth actually began to pale to a sickly blue. Cyanosis, I realized. He was close to the end.
“How did you get sick?” I said.
“Intentionally,” he said, coughing and laughing at the same time.
I glanced at Chunk, then back at Cole. “You did that to yourself?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
He laughed again, and I got the feeling that only part of the conversation was between us. Most of it, the iceberg beneath the tip, was happening in his head.
“Because of you,” he said.
“Us?” I looked at Chunk and he shrugged. “What do you mean, Dr. Cole? Why because of us?”
“There’s not much time,” he said. “I injected myself with Strain Two late last night. I’ll be dead very soon.”
“Doc,” I said, “why don’t you let us take you downtown. We can talk and you can get some help.”
He shook his head violently because he could not talk through the coughing.
“Can’t,” he finally said. “Muscles aching, raspy, unproductive cough. Chills. Nausea. God, even diarrhea. So cold. I can’t believe how fast this strain works through the body. My lungs are burning.”
“Why, Dr. Cole?”
“I knew you’d come back. I knew I didn’t have much time. I need you to contact Dr. Herrera at Arsenal. Tell him to make sure he does an autopsy on my body. Give him my research in the van. Make sure he knows about Strains Two and Three. Make sure…”
The rest trailed off in a string of coughing.
“How did you know we’d come back?” Chunk said.
Cole smiled at him. “Dr. Bradley and her policeman bodyguard. I knew you’d figure that out sooner or later, though I confess I thought it would be sooner than this.”
I holstered my weapon. “Dr. Cole, you know you’re not under arrest. We didn’t come here to arrest you. You don’t have to talk to us if you don’t want to.”
The words came out of me automatically, a force of habit. Tell the suspect they’re free to leave at any time, that you have no intention of arresting them, whatever they might say. It’s the legal way to bypass the Miranda Rights and still get a suspect to confess.
“Please,” he said. “I’m dying here. I don’t care about being arrested.”
Chunk said, “Dr. Cole, did you kill Dr. Bradley?”
“Of course I did.”
“And Kenneth Wade? The policeman?”
“Him, too.”
“And the looters near the garage?” I said.
He smiled, coughed into his hands, then nodded. “You must think me a regular serial killer.”
“I don’t understand why, Dr. Cole,” I said. “Explain that to me.”
He coughed so hard that it rocked him off balance. He swayed drunkenly, teetered at the edge of the curb, and fell back onto his butt.
Chunk and I both ran forward, but he held up a hand to stop us.
“I’m okay,” he said. “It’ll pass.”
“Tell us what happened, Dr. Cole.”
He put his face in his hands, then dragged his fingers through his cap of uncombed white hair.
“I told those fools at
WHO
about Strains Two and Three, and they laughed me out of their office. Then I’m out here, and I find that Bradley woman doing the same tests I’m doing.”
“Did you speak to her about it?”
He nodded. “I wanted to know what she was doing. That policeman told me to beat it.”
“But you didn’t?” I said.
“How could I?” Cole said. “There are millions of lives at stake.”
“So you saw her again? You argued?”
“Yes.”
“She’d found evidence to support your claim of the two additional strains?” I said.
“Yes.”
“So, what happened then?”
“She was an idiot.”
“Who?” I said. “Bradley?”
“Yes, Bradley. She wanted to exterminate every bird in the area. Can you imagine that? She wanted to poison everything, kill all the chickens and the Mexican doves and the blue jays. All of them.”
“That wouldn’t work?” I said.
“Of course not. You might be able to kill a lot of birds, but there’s no way to get them all. And doing that also ignores the real threat. When the grackles come back in November … when that happens, all the poison in the world won’t stop the spread of the disease to the world outside of San Antonio.”
“But why kill her, Dr. Cole? I don’t understand. Why not just report what she was doing?”
Cole didn’t even bother to laugh at that.
“No good,” he said. “
WHO
intended to suppress the evidence in order to keep the public from going mad. And the local organizations are too corrupt or mismanaged by fools to make good on my research.”
“But you think Dr. Herrera will be able to do something with the information?”
“I hope so. He’s the only one I trust. And now he’ll have a human victim to report. That should give him the ammunition he needs.”
Cole suddenly seemed very frightening to me, talking about his own death like it was just a means to a higher end.
“Tell me about killing Dr. Bradley,” Chunk said, putting him back on track.
Cole just shook his head. “A small matter. Not like this,” he said, coughing and pointing at his chest.
“Humor me,” Chunk said.
“We argued,” Cole said. “Bradley and I. It got ugly. I was frustrated, so I went back to my van and got behind the wheel. That’s when that policeman started yelling at me.” Cole nodded his head, in his mind back at that morning, seeing it all over again. “That smug bastard. He was yelling at me to leave. Saying he would arrest me if I didn’t go. I got angry. He was maybe fifteen feet in front of the van. I put it in gear and stepped on the gas. I hit him with the front of the van and knocked him down. I think he hit his head on the curb.”
“What happened then?” I said.
“I was still so angry. I got out, took his hood and gas mask off, and started punching him in the face. I don’t know how many times I hit him, but when I stopped he was dead.”
“Bradley was there?” I said.
He nodded. “I took that policeman’s gun. Bradley was standing a little ways off, watching the whole thing, screaming like some bimbo in a horror movie. I walked over to her and shot her once.”
“Where?” I said, meaning where on her body.
“Here,” he said, and pointed to the correct part of his chest. “She knew I was going to shoot her at that point. She turned away from me, trying to run away.”
“What about the two looters? How do they come into it?”
Cole was still looking inward and back in time. He chuckled.
“I thought of taking Bradley and the policeman to the morgue. From there, I thought there was a good chance they’d get lost in the system. I started with Bradley. I took off her clothes and dragged her back to my van.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You were behind her, your arms under her arms, her feet dragging through the dirt?”
“That’s right,” he said. He looked genuinely surprised that I knew that.
“The bottoms of her feet were dirty,” I said. “She had a gray toe tag—an autopsy tag. They rinse down the bodies after an autopsy.”
“Ah,” he said. He coughed, tried to smile. “That’s good,” he said. “It’s like Jimmy Stewart said in that movie
Rope
. There’s no such thing as a perfect crime.”
“That’s right,” I said. I remembered the picture. Billy and I had watched it years earlier, the two of us on the couch with popcorn and beer, while Jimmy Stewart outsmarted two effeminate literati types. “All crime is by definition flawed.”
He chuckled again. “I put her in the back of my van,” he said. “Then I went back for the policeman. But before I could strip him, those looters showed up. Usually they’re scared of the van, because they have a vague idea of the work I do, but these two gave me trouble. They wanted the cop’s gun. I gave them each a bullet instead.”
“Why didn’t you take them all to the morgue?” I said.
“Too much time,” he said. “And besides, those looters are like fleas. There’s never just one or two.”
“So you put Wade in the passenger seat of the van, hid it in the garage, and stashed the bodies of the looters in the weeds?”
He nodded.
“And you took the hard drives from the computers inside the van?”
“And the traps too. I didn’t want
WHO
to have partial information. I wanted it to all go public at once. The equipment is in my van.”