Reckless Creed (4 page)

CHICAGO

D
espite the hood's plastic shield, O'Dell immediately could smell something slightly rotten when she crossed the threshold into the room. Beyond the narrow alcove she saw that everything looked curiously neat. Bedcovers were pulled up and tucked in at the end, though on closer inspection she saw the imprint in the top pillow where someone had laid his head.

Still, there was no clutter occupying the nightstands. The desk's surface had a hotel phone and notepad that hadn't been disturbed. A room service cart in the corner had plates with stainless steel lids still in place. That was where the smell was coming from. O'Dell walked over and gently lifted a lid to find overripened strawberries. They were carefully stacked in an untouched pyramid.

Platt watched her from the alcove, arms crossed, eyes intense. She was getting the first look before he began taking samples. If Jacks was correct, the victim was the last one inside this room.

Then she turned and saw the flat-screen TV. Something had been sprayed across the surface, thick droplets that had dried. She
noticed that the wall behind had been splattered, too, with rust-brown flecks that O'Dell suspected might be blood.

She glanced at Platt, inviting his input.

“I'm thinking bloody sputum.”

She looked back at the screen and the wall and said, “Seems like a lot.”

“The autopsy report has photos of his lungs. I'll forward everything to you.”

She went back to examining the room. She'd do an overall view first, then come back and work a grid.

Nothing was missing from the minibar. One glass from the tray held what looked like water. Half full. The other glasses were still upside down on their rims, the coasters on top. The ice bucket was dry. There was nothing out of the ordinary.

“There doesn't appear to be any kind of ritual,” she said while her eyes continued the search.

“Ritual?”

“Sometimes when a person commits suicide there'll be small, sort of ritualistic things they'll do. They might take off their glasses, empty the change out of their pockets.” She gestured toward the bed. “Make the bed.”

“I'm told he had his wallet in his back pocket.”

“How about a cell phone?”

Platt shrugged. “That I don't know. There's a duffel bag on the floor of the closet.”

She thought about checking out the bag but decided she wanted to see the balcony first. She stopped in front of the sliding glass door. It was unlocked.

“Was this closed when you arrived?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She was careful how she touched the handle, using the top and pushing with two fingers instead of grabbing it so she wouldn't destroy any prints. It took some effort to open and when it did slide, it made a grating sound of resistance.

The cement patio was small and the cast-iron railing looked antique. It came as high as her waist. She could hear the traffic below. Through the plastic faceplate the snowflakes glittered. One glance down and she needed to take a step back until the palms of her hands could feel the glass door. The cold wind swirled around her and she swore she could feel the patio sway underneath her feet.

“It doesn't make sense,” Platt said, startling her. She hadn't noticed that he had come to the door. “If you're going to jump, why bother to close the door?”

“Sometimes they're beyond the point of making sense,” she told him as she edged her way back inside. Then she carefully closed the door using the same two-finger method. “The small stuff is still instinctive. You close the door without giving it a thought, especially if you have no plans of going back inside.”

“How does a criminal profiler know so much about suicide?”

She recognized a hint of admiration in his voice. Their mutual respect and admiration were two things that had brought them together as friends.

“I've investigated a number of murder-suicides.” Those were some of the hardest cases, too, trying to climb inside the mind of someone who takes out his entire family or a department store full of strangers before putting the gun to his own head.

“Suicide with an agenda,” she told Platt. “Or a mission. The suicide is simply the last step.”

She started across the room, heading to check out the bathroom, when she noticed a small wastebasket tucked underneath the desk. She pulled it out to see inside. Carefully using only fingertips again, she plucked through the contents without pulling them out: a torn ticket stub from the Museum of Science and Industry, a folded map of downtown Chicago, several brochures for other tourist attractions, a flyer from the Art Institute, and a napkin from a local pizza place.

She looked up at Platt. “When did he check in?”

“I think Detective Jacks said he'd been here for two days before he jumped.”

“You said his lungs looked like the virus was in an advanced stage.”

“Definitely.”

“How long does it take for that to happen?”

“I'm not sure. Humans rarely get the bird flu, so we don't know a lot of statistics. The information we do have is on victims mostly from Asia. Some of those cases haven't been reported in as much detail as we're used to getting. The theory is that bird flu is mutating so quickly that eventually it'll jump to humans. We know Shaw was working on a strain that would be highly contagious.”

“And just how would she accomplish that?”

“By making it airborne. Right now, for humans to get infected they'd need to handle a sick bird or be in direct contact with the bird's blood or droppings. But if Shaw was able to make the virus airborne, all that changes. It could easily spread from birds to
humans, then from human to human. We could have a mess on our hands.”

O'Dell let that sink in, then asked, “If you had to guess, how long would you say it would take for the lungs to be in an advanced stage?”

“A week. Ten days at the most. Why? What are you thinking?”

She gestured him over to take a look. “Seems like a lot of sightseeing for a guy who's already coughing up blood.”

O'Dell watched Platt's face through the face mask as his eyes examined the contents of the wastebasket.

“You don't look surprised.”

“It's what we suspected,” he finally said. “Actually, it's what we feared.”

“Would have been helpful if you had shared those suspicions.”

“They were just that—suspicions.”

Probably classified suspicions, but she didn't say that. This was a touchy subject, one that had caused a major rift in their friendship. Last fall when they worked together during the North Carolina mudslides, Platt had withheld information. There were details he'd argued were classified and he could only share on a need-to-know basis. Not knowing some of that “classified” information had almost gotten her killed. She had hoped things would be different now.

“We have to be careful with this,” he told her when he recognized her irritation. “Unwarranted suspicions trigger alarms. We can't have the media and the public in a panic.”

“I'm not the media, Ben, and I'm not the public. You and Roger Bix are going to have to trust me.”

“Of course we trust you.”

“I'm the one who's supposed to be tracking Shaw. So let me get this straight. You suspect that Dr. Shaw might not have just infected this man, but she sent him out to infect others? Like a suicide bomber, only with a virus instead of shrapnel?”

Platt met her eyes, waited a beat, and said, “Yes.”

NEW YORK CITY

C
hristina Lomax stood in the hotel atrium looking out at the street. The watchers had slipped a handwritten note under her hotel room door. It must have been during the two hours she'd finally slept. She hadn't heard a thing.

They'd told her there would always be someone watching over her to help her complete the experiment. But she never saw them. They were like ghosts. Once yesterday she thought she had seen a reflection behind her in a storefront window, but when she turned no one was there. It was getting more and more difficult to tell what was real and what was fever-induced.

They'd warned her about feeling a bit feverish off and on. And there was a reminder in today's message. But they made it sound like it was no big deal. By now she had done enough of these experiments that she knew the discomfort was temporary. Others had made her light-headed and one even made her nauseated for two days, but every time those minor symptoms didn't last long.
Still, she was glad they'd prepared her that it might be several days of feeling bad.

She remembered thinking at the time, how bad could it be? She'd done enough drugs early in life that she didn't think there was much her mind and body hadn't experienced. And although she never considered herself a fighter, she knew she was a survivor. No matter how low she had sunk in the past, she always found a way to make do . . . to survive.

Last summer after her second divorce Christina had lived in her car for two months. When she ran out of gas money she parked at a busy shopping plaza, moving the vehicle from one corner of the lot to another. A Goodwill drop-off box was close by, as were several fast-food restaurants. She had clean clothes and half-eaten sandwiches. When you were hungry enough, Dumpster diving—or trash can diving—was far from gross, especially if you timed it right. Sometimes the discarded fries were still warm.

The more difficult challenge was finding a way to cool off during the hot humid days. She walked through one of the huge retail stores, pretending to browse and using the bathroom. The women's restrooms at the Home Depot were rarely used during the morning hours, allowing her time to wash her hair and brush her teeth. She'd gotten good at slipping small necessities like deodorant, toothpaste, and shampoo from the department store shelves into her purse. She knew where all the cameras were hidden. She even knew what shifts were lightly manned.

Yes, she had gotten quite good at surviving.

It had almost become a game for her. Until the night she got caught rummaging through a load of donations at the Goodwill
drop-off box. She'd expected to hear police sirens. At the very least, a righteous lecture. She never in her wildest dreams expected a job offer. As it turned out, someone recognized that her skills would come in handy.

Ever since then, the money she made from being a part of a few experiments once or twice a month was enough for her to move out of her car and into a studio apartment. But this time—this experiment was huge. Yes, she'd be sick for three to five days, but she'd make more money for those several days than she'd ever made in a year's time.

Now, as Christina stood in the atrium of the Grand Hyatt, she wished she could stay between the cool sheets of her king-sized bed. The fever made her head swim.

She didn't know New York very well, but they had told her that would make her even more convincing in her role as a tourist. They insisted what she saw as a weakness would end up being her biggest asset. And besides, the notes offered ideas of places for her to go. Yesterday the watchers had even slipped a folded map under the hotel door.

They had, however, warned her to stay clear of law enforcement officials. That she could be arrested for loitering if she stayed in one place too long. It was best to keep moving. Not a problem. Christina didn't trust cops, though she realized it was a leftover reaction from her rebellious drug-using days.

As soon as she stepped outside she immediately noticed several men in military fatigues in front of Grand Central Terminal. She walked by two police cruisers. Two officers were across the street, pacing, looking, watching.

Christina made her way to the corner and drew close enough
to one of the men in fatigues to make unwanted eye contact. His face was young. She guessed he was about her son's age. His eyes were intense. There was an energy and discipline about the way he moved.

She raised her hand to hail a cab. The soldier was still looking her way.

For a second or two her stomach flipped.

He knows. How can he not?

A taxi swerved up to the curb in front of her. She froze. She waited, expecting the young soldier to yell at her. To stop her.

Finally she stepped forward. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him. Was he quickening his pace?

She grabbed the taxi's door handle and pulled the door open. Just when she thought he would start running at her, he turned on his heel and headed in the opposite direction.

Christina slid into the backseat. A wave of relief washed over her. Only when the cabdriver stared at her did she realize she was drenched in sweat on a cool spring day.

She gave him her destination and sat back.

They were right. She was as good as invisible. She could relax. She was just a forty-something-year-old woman. A tourist.

CHICAGO

P
latt started pulling out each brochure, each ticket stub and flyer.

“We'll need to track where he's been.”

O'Dell couldn't imagine the enormity of that task. Thankfully it was up to Platt and the CDC. Her job was to find whatever she could to track down and stop Shaw.

She moved on to check the man's duffel bag on the floor of the closet when Platt stopped her.

“I'll be damned,” he said.

She turned to find him lifting a black-cased cell phone out of the wastebasket.

O'Dell pulled an evidence bag from a pocket in her Tyvek coveralls, but Platt waved a hand at her.

“Sorry, nothing leaves the room until we're sure it's not contaminated.”

“Can I at least turn it on and take a look?”

He thought about it for a few seconds, then handed her the phone.

She tried to power it on. The battery was dead.
Of course it was.

After gently rifling through the duffel bag, she found a power cord and plugged the phone into a nearby outlet. Then she went back to the duffel and kneeled beside it. She kept the bag on the floor of the closet, attempting to move things around as little as possible.

“I need to call Bix,” Platt said. “Are you okay to be in here alone?”

“I'll be fine.”

“Decon is down the hall to your left if you need to leave before I get back. Two techs are waiting to assist us.”

She nodded and listened to him leave as she pulled out the bag's contents item by item. Extra underwear and socks, a couple of T-shirts, a pair of jeans. Nothing out of the ordinary. Same with the zippered pockets, until she got to the last one. Tucked inside was a four-by-six photograph. The corners were frayed from being handled. She gently tugged it out, carefully pinching one of the sturdier corners.

The photograph was of four young men in army fatigues with dusty boots and helmets. Their weapons were slung over their shoulders, their arms wrapped around one another's backs as they posed, smiling and laughing. Behind them was a craggy rock wall.

She flipped the photo around. Written in black marker:

Afghanistan. Me, Jason, Colfax & Benny

She turned the photo around again and studied the faces under the dirt and grime and the rims of the helmets. She thought she recognized one of the men, but she couldn't place him.

O'Dell packed all the items back into the bag, but she kept the
photograph out. She took it with her as she went to check on the cell phone. This time when she pressed the On button, the faceplate came to life. A tiny yellow envelope in the corner indicated there were unread text messages. Another icon showed that several voice messages were waiting as well.

She tapped the text messages first. As soon as she saw the name attached to the most recent one, she knew who the familiar young man in the photograph was. She hadn't recognized Jason Seaver at first, because this photo was taken when he still had both of his arms.