Bloodletting (35 page)

"Check the outer lobby," Hawthorne said.

Wolfe switched the screens as he had before, viewing two images of the oak doors and frosted glass from the perspective of high above the reception desk. Again, the left side played in reverse. Several people darted backward to the doors, which opened to engulf them, and spit them back out the other side. At just under the hour mark, the screen went blank.

"Damn it," Hawthorne said.

"The cops will be here any second," Carver said. "We have to leave. Now."

The receptionist who had initially greeted them was on the phone when they passed out of the security office and around the desk, her face suddenly pale. They hurried across the atrium, blew through the doors, and hit the front walk at a sprint, reaching the car as the sound of sirens called from somewhere beyond the trees. Wolfe gunned the engine and peeled out of the lot. They rocketed straight past the security shack where the guard had already opened the gate to grant the police and ambulance entry.

Carver briefly thought of questioning the gate guard, but if the killer had been smart enough to circumvent the camera system, then he surely hadn't come waltzing through the front gate. He looked back over his shoulder as they raced north in time to see the lights of the police cruisers veer into the parking lot. There would be questions the three of them would be forced to answer, but there was no time now. Even the drive ahead was far too long and would consume more time than they could spare.

Hawthorne tried Locke's cell one final time before nearly spiking his phone against the dashboard.

"We never should have left them," Carver said.

Hawthorne whirled to face him with a look of rage that could have shattered glass.

"Locke's no pushover. If someone got past him, they're all dead already. You'd better find a way to come to grips with that."

Hawthorne turned around again, his words resonating in Carver's head.

If someone got past him, they're all dead already.

And if they are, he thought, then he would follow whoever had killed them to the ends of the earth if it took the rest of his life. He was a tracker. There had never been a criminal upon whom he had set his sights that had escaped him. Never.

Only this time there would be no collar.

This time there would be blood.

IX

Rocky Mountain Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory

Centennial, Colorado

Marshall was becoming an expert at facial reconstruction. He was already through with the fourth file Manning had sent. In addition to identifying Candace Thompson and the dead-ringer for Tobin Schwartz, a man named Jared Walker, he had already put names to two other faces, though there was little of any real significance regarding either. There had been more information about Walker; a last known address in Lansing, Michigan and a string of former employers for the previous five years. He hadn't lasted more than three months at any of them. Turned out he was a suspect in several violent crimes from battery to sexual assault, though none of the charges had ever stuck long enough to reach trial.

The other two he had identified fit the same general lifestyle mold. Both single and living on their own. No apparent close family or friends. Unlike the other two, however, they did have histories that predated more than five years, but nothing out of the ordinary. Taryn Harrington had been an aspiring actress working dinner theaters throughout the Pacific Northwest, presumably living little better than hand-to-mouth while maintaining a rented trailer on the outskirts of Tacoma. Andrew Benson had been a part-time bartender and student at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Oregon. Both had been in their early twenties at the time of their disappearance. Neither had criminal records. Both had been reported missing by on-again/off-again significant others.

Marshall was still several days from accessing their medical history files to see if they had ever been treated at the same hospital, and he had yet to see any of the RFLP results on the three, but he was confident they would find more animal genes. His theory was beginning to solidify. The bodies they were digging out of the Arizona sand were past experiments that may or may not have been successful, but had led to the eventual formulation of the retrovirus to which the four young girls had been exposed.

He was feeling good about his investigative skills, better than he had in a long time. It was one thing analyzing fiber and hair samples, matching DNA and evaluating bullet trajectories, all important tasks in the grand scheme of things, but this was something different entirely, something--dare he say--fun. He felt guilty at the thought of drawing any amount of pleasure from anyone's potentially brutal death, but it was out there now, so he might as well run with it.

Now that the interns had finally arrived for work, he could turn them loose on the truly important jobs. One had been sent to Peaberry's for the biggest mochaccino they could make him, while another was requisitioning a ham and egg skillet from Denny's. And he didn't feel guilty in the slightest. He had been an intern once himself, after all.

His phone rang and he answered on the first ring. He didn't need to check the caller ID to know who it was.

"'Lo."

"Marshall. I need you to do something for me right now."

The tone in Carver's voice banished whatever thoughts he had about making a sarcastic quip.

"You okay, man?"

"I'm out of time here, Marshall. You can access GPS data, right?"

"Global positioning? Of course. What are you looking for?"

"A cell phone," Carver said. "And I need it now."

"Are you sure the phone's equipped with a GPS chip? Most of those things are made to be disposable."

"Positive," Carver said. "Can you do it or not?"

"If it has the chip, I can find it."

Marshall opened a new window to avoid screwing up the simultaneous database searches. Carver gave him the PRN number and he ran it through the system at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. After a few minutes, a network of four satellites was able to triangulate the location.

"You're still in Washington, right?"

"You found it," Carver said. "Just give me an address."

"No address, but give me a second and I'll bring up the satellite image and merge it with the map."

He toggled the functions and zoomed in on the red dot, from which concentric circles radiated outward like ripples.

"There," he said.

"Tell me it isn't a Holiday Inn in Monroe."

"It isn't a Holiday Inn in Monroe."

"Then where?"

"Smack dab in the middle of the HydroGen Aquaculture complex. Looks like some sort of greenhouse or something."

"Son of a bitch."

"What's going on, man?"

"No time now. I'll explain everything to you when I can," Carver said. "Thanks, Marshall."

There was a click and Carver was gone, leaving Marshall staring at the beacon on the screen. He recognized the name of the fish farm from the background check he had performed on Kajika Dodge for Carver. Dodge had been squeaky clean, but his former company had piqued Marshall's curiosity. Now here he was with a bird's eye view of the property where there was a cell phone belonging to someone of interest. To whom did the phone belong and what was the significance of it being at HydroGen? Was it Dodge's phone?

He assumed the white outbuildings housed large aquatic holding tanks filtered via the series of green pools beside them, creating a closed system. Lord only knew how many fish were swimming around in there, out of sight, how many different species. Perhaps even something as peculiar as a snakehead. He pondered the incongruity of a pharmaceutical corporation purchasing a fish farm, a pharmaceutical corporation they now suspected was involved with the potential distribution of the retrovirus. If they had the virus like they wanted it, then they would have to store it somewhere, and if the retrovirus had been modified to insert specific animal genes at the targeted loci, then surely it could also have been changed so as not to express itself physically in the fish. There could be thousands of snakeheads under those white domes serving as reservoirs, breeding the virus inside of them without any outward signs. If a regulatory body like the FDA looked hard enough, they wouldn't see the visible manifestation of the disease, and even if they checked the blood and found it, they would only see a virus that had never been known to infect a human being, one that would easily be killed upon cooking. And even then they might not have cared so much considering the market for snakeheads was almost entirely Asian. All they had to do was disembowel the fish, save the blood, and ship the remainder. Jesus. That was it. They were propagating the retrovirus at HydroGen in plain sight, but how did they intend to expose the general population? Were they just planning on targeting infants as they had at the after-hours clinic or taking the shotgun approach? Would it even work on mature adults if they needed the onset of puberty to trigger the metamorphosis?

The nebulizer. That just might be the key. If the girls had been exposed through nebulization, then the virus could possibly be transmitted through the air and lungs.

Wait. He remembered something else about Dodge. Where the hell was his file? Marshall opened the profile and scrolled through it. There. There was a brief blurb from the journal of the International Society of Animal Genetics. No more than a single paragraph detailing a patent grant to HydroGen for the CV-IIIp viral envelope.

"A triple icosahedral protein coat," Marshall said. "Damn it."

He should have recognized it from the start. There was now the means of mass-producing the retrovirus, the altered protein coat extending the useful life of exposure outside the body, and the possibility of an airborne route of exposure.

That could mean any number of possible ways to spread the infection, especially if the virus could survive for several days outside of the host.

He called Carver back and explained his conclusion, but Carver hadn't been able to help him take the final step. If what Carver told him about the retrovirus now being in the shipping phase was true, then he was going to have to figure out how they intended to expose their victims before it was too late.

"It might be already," he said, and plunged back into the various jobs with renewed vigor, spurred by the dawn of panic.

X

Monroe, Washington

Carver knew he should never have left Ellie at the hotel. He had sworn to himself that he wouldn't let her out of his sight. His obsession with catching the killer and his confusion regarding everything transpiring around him had blinded him to the obvious danger. He had suspected their adversary had known they had arrived in Washington, and yet he had let them all talk him into it without putting up much of a fight. In all honesty, he had gone along with the plan willingly. Hadn't it been his idea after all? More than anything, he had wanted to see the look on Dreck's face when they cornered him, when he knew he was as good as caught, but at what cost? Dreck was dead, and now he could only imagine the three they had left behind were as well. And he was no closer to the killer than before.

His mind drifted back to Dreck, lying sprawled on the floor in a mess of his own blood, his neck opened wide. They speculated he had been dead for maybe an hour, which meant whoever had killed him couldn't possibly be the same person who had gone after Ellie, Locke, and Kajika. Again they were looking at two distinct individuals. And there was another inconsistency about Dreck's murder. His throat. Carver remembered the officer they had found on the front porch of the small ranch with the smokehouse. A strap of his neck had been torn away, his soft tissue ripped, an act of true violence and passion. Dreck's death appeared almost halfhearted by comparison. The flesh appeared chewed rather than torn as if someone had attempted to recreate the prior killing without the same zeal. If that were the case, then it would have been solely for the benefit of those familiar with the first, so they could inspect it and assume the same monster had done both. But they hadn't been, had they? Whoever had killed Dreck lacked the animal ferocity. Was that the key?

If Marshall's conclusions were accurate, then murdering Dreck made little sense. What would happen to Dreck-Windham now that he was dead? Carver had no doubt that the company would live on, but minus the one man in a position to make uncontested decisions, turning the distribution of the retrovirus into a one-shot opportunity. The likelihood of whoever took over in his stead, assuming it was even one person rather than a figurehead CEO appointed and controlled by a more powerful board of directors, being sympathetic to the cause of human genocide was fairly slim. If they were able to trust Dreck this far, why not indefinitely? Maybe Dreck had developed a conscience, but that seemed unlikely at this stage of the game. Regardless, he was dead, and things were about to further escalate.

There was still the matter of exposure to consider. An airborne retrovirus could be contracted from nearly any source. Nebulizers. Inhalers. The use of both of these was predicated on the subject already being sick in order to be infected. How would they expose healthy people? Could it be seeded in the clouds in the same way they often stimulated rain? No, that would require planes over every major city, and surely the temperature so high up in the atmosphere was cold enough to kill the virus. What was he missing?

The website.

The news page had showcased the newest innovation from Dreck-Windham. The flu vaccine. Tens of millions of people all around the world would inhale the retrovirus. Healthy and sick alike. People across the country were willing to stand in line for hours for their flu shots. The girls in Colorado had been exposed as infants, for whom the mortality rate due to influenza was second only to geriatrics. Parents would eagerly expose their children thinking they were providing them with immunity to the various strains of the flu, but not all of the viruses would be dead. There would still be one active virus hiding within the dead strains, and no one would have any clue until the children reached puberty and became something else entirely.