What Lies Behind. J.T. Ellison
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the pathogens into the country with her? And if so, how the hell would she transport them? If she worked in France, she had to go through customs somewhere when she got over here. How in the world could they miss this?”
“Maybe a private flight to a private airport? The last time I traveled overseas, security sent the bags through the scanner as usual, with no special scrutiny on my personal stuff, even though I had a bottle of vitamins in there. It wouldn’t be hard to package these as some sort of medicine and slip them through. You can take anything on a flight if you have a prescription for it, or it looks like it belongs. We’re sort of on an honor system.”
“Her bags would still have to be checked at the private airports, but you have a point. The question is, where did she come in, and when?”
She grinned at him again, teeth flashing white. “I guess that’s what you’re going to have to figure out, aren’t you? Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
“And you’re not going to help at all, are you?”
“Hey, I’m not Nancy Drew. I’m the mind of reason here. I do the science. The mystery is yours to sort out.”
“And sort it I will. Look who’s here at last.” He waved to Lonnie Hart, who pulled his black Caprice to the curb and waved back. Fletcher was glad to see him. Hart had been his partner for years. They’d been detectives together for almost eight, partners for six. Hart had a keen mind, a laconic attitude and an ongoing love affair with his weight bench. When Fletcher moved up the ladder, he’d brought Hart along with him. Hart’s promotion was Fletcher’s only stipulation to accepting the lieutenant position.
Hart gave them an ironic salute and went to find the head of the HAZMAT team, a buxom woman named Sophie Lewis. They talked together for a moment, then he gave Fletcher a thumbs-up.
Sam knocked into his shoulder. “That looks like good news.”
And it was.
DISASTER AVERTED, PROBABLY, at least for the time being. Field tests were negative for live, dangerous pathogens, but they were asked to stay in isolation for the time being. People would stop by every once in a while to update them. Feeding time at the zoo. Fletcher was going mad just sitting here, watching. He wanted to help. Even with a tentative all clear, he needed to do something to take his mind off the idea of tiny invisible razorlike creatures multiplying in his bloodstream, inching him toward a slow and certain death.
The list of pathogens grew as the morning wore on, bacteria and viruses and diseases that were deadly and transmissible, all mixed together unsecured in the Georgetown apartment. There were names Fletcher was familiar with, or at least could puzzle out: Clostridium botulinum, Salmonella enteritidis, diarrheagenic Escherichia coli, SARS coronavirus, HIV. And a few he couldn’t, specifically something Sam said was a generic hemorrhagic flavivirus—as if there was anything generic about hemorrhagic viruses—plus a mosquito-borne alphavirus called chikungunya, and something in a nasty pink solution with a handwritten label: Gransef. No one had heard of that one before.
Fletcher was livid. How his crime scene techs had missed the refrigerator of doom, as he’d mentally dubbed it, was lost on him. It had taken Sam all of ten minutes to find it. There was going to be a shitstorm back at headquarters. In the meantime, he needed to find out what the hell Thomas Cattafi was doing with all these pathogens in his hidden refrigerator, and why he and Amanda Souleyret had been attacked.
And what vial, if any, was missing from the lot. The vials were in a plastic carrier, and one slot was open. When Sam had pointed it out, his stomach dropped to his knees. That lone emptiness freaked him out more than anything.
The meeting at State had been pushed back to noon. Sam had the day off but asked a crime scene tech to relay a message to her TA, Stephanie, to handle anything that might come up during the afternoon. Though unable to return to work, her insatiable curiosity was keeping her mood buoyed. He could see she was starting to chafe at being left out, like him, as the HAZMAT team began retrieving the pathogens from Cattafi’s apartment, but she watched the proceedings with bright eyes.
She’d never last at Georgetown. He’d been surprised when she accepted the position in the first place, surprised she’d agreed to upend her life and move to D.C. If there was ever a woman who should have a badge, a lifeline into investigations, it was her. Her passion for the job was clear, and while he had no doubt she was passionate about teaching, too, he couldn’t imagine it could be nearly as fun as what they’d stumbled into this morning.
At least Baldwin had talked her into consulting for the FBI. She had a gift, and Fletcher was happy someone was going to be able to use it.
Towering clouds were gathering briskly over the Potomac. With heart-stopping suddenness, the sun disappeared. He could hear gentle rumbles of thunder in the distance. Watching the curtain rise on the show, he understood how the ancients looked at storms as a form of the gods arguing. He could do with a little divine interference himself.
He needed to get cleared so he could go over to George Washington University Hospital and see how Thomas Cattafi was faring. The folks at GW had been warned to treat him as a HAZMAT, though by now, with all the people who’d come into contact with him, if he’d fucked up and mishandled any of the pathogens in his apartment, they were all screwed. The same went for Souleyret’s body—the morgue had been cautioned to treat her autopsy with the utmost of care.
Always something, Fletcher thought.
A tech came with their phones, handed them off. They were still wrapped in plastic. “They’re ringing off the hook. Deal with it.”
Sam immediately grabbed hers and started listening to messages. Fletcher did the same—a call from Armstrong, chewing his ass out for getting exposed to this shit and tying up the investigation, and by the way, I hope you’re okay; Hart, on his way over; Jordan, his I think I can safely call her my girlfriend, wanting to know if he was free for lunch on Friday, when she arrived back in town; and oddly, his ex-wife, Felicia, who rarely reached out, asking if he could take Tad this weekend.
Nothing that helped the case.
When he finished, he saw Sam was on the phone, eyes averted. She glanced his way, then hung up. He leaned over to her. “Who are you talking to? No, let me guess. Xander.”
She gave him a crooked grin. “If you must know, that was Amado. He was going to post the woman in an hour. I asked if I could stop by and watch. He agreed to wait until we finish the meeting at the State Department first. It will take them a while to set up the precautions, anyway. They’ve done some preliminary blood work to see if anything stands out. So far, she’s showing clean.”
Fletcher sighed in relief. “Good. Hopefully she hadn’t gotten into anything. I’ll go with you. I want both our eyes on this.”
“It’s going to be an interesting one, that’s for sure. None of the vials were disturbed, but the refrigerator had been turned off. The C-bot—sorry, botulism—had begun breaking down. It wasn’t perfectly sealed, and that’s what the terrible smell was. The proteins began to decompose, just like flesh.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Is botulism a hazard?”
She shook her head. “It is a disease, not an airborne pathogen, which is the only reason we’re being isolated here instead of locked down in a containment unit. No, I don’t think there’s any real danger from any of these, so long as they’re treated properly. But it’s quite convenient that he had the wine fridge built into the bar. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d never find it.”
“But maybe the killer did find it. There might be a vial missing. Hell, we’re going in circles. We need to find out what Souleyret was doing with Cattafi in the first place.”
“Yes, we do. I have word in to Baldwin. As soon as he lands in Denver, he’ll call. He told me he didn’t think her current assignment had anything