Something Deadly

5

Declan called Marshall Wilcox from Markie’s driveway, then climbed on his bike, waved a distracted goodbye to Kato and headed back to the Shippey house. What could have happened? he asked himself. After all, she’d been fine just a couple of hours ago. It didn’t make sense.

He parked his bike across the street and strode over to where Tom Little was interviewing a middle-aged woman and her husband.

“Kathy and Larry Bridges,” Tom said, by way of introduction. “They were bringing her dinner.”

“She’s still inside?”

“Yes.”

Declan nodded. “Okay. They don’t leave. You don’t leave. CDC will be here in a few minutes. We need to lock this scene down. Nobody in or out.”

“What’s happening?” Kathy Bridges asked, fear evident in her eyes.

Declan considered how to answer. He decided on the truth.

“Ma’am, I honestly don’t know. And until I have a better idea, we need to do things right.”

“When can we go home?” Larry asked.

“Soon, I hope. But that’s up to the doctors from Atlanta. They’ll know what to do.”

As if on cue, the CDC van rolled up the street and parked in the Shippeys’ driveway. Declan nodded to Wilcox and summarized what little he knew.

Wilcox turned to the Bridges. “Did you touch her?”

“I…I might have,” Kathy said. “I thought she was asleep at first. I don’t remember.”

“You didn’t,” Larry cut in. “We called to her, remember? She didn’t answer. Then her dog nosed at her hand, and it fell limp beside her chair.”

“That’s right,” Kathy said. “That’s how it was.”

Declan didn’t know if they were telling the truth or simply trying to hide from the reality that they might have touched an infected body. Regardless, Wilcox wasn’t buying it. He reached into the van and pulled out a green squirt bottle.

“Hold out your hands please,” he said.

“What is that?” Larry asked.

“It’s ordinary Lysol. If you don’t have any cuts, and you haven’t put your hands in your mouth or around your eyes, this ought to kill anything on your skin. It’s for your own protection.”

They held out their hands, and he sprayed them liberally, until the liquid foamed as they rubbed their hands together.

“We’d like to admit you overnight,” he said, passing them sterile towels. “For observation.”

And to quarantine them, Declan thought. Lysol would indeed kill any pathogens that were still on their skin. But it wouldn’t do anything for microbes that had already been absorbed. What would? That was the million-dollar question.

While an assistant accompanied the Bridges back to their home and then to the hospital, Declan and Wilcox donned biohazard suits and made their way into the house.

“I was just here,” Declan said as they entered the living room.

“When?” Wilcox asked.

“A couple of hours ago. I stopped by to see how she was doing. She seemed healthy then.”

Wilcox nodded. “We’ll need to quarantine you, too, then. Overnight, at least.”

Declan shook his head. “I already attended Carter Shippey. Without any protection. If I were going to get sick, it would’ve happened already.”

“You might be a vector. Do you want to pass this on to your patients and friends?”

That gave Declan pause. He was willing to take the risk for himself. But what if he were simply immune to whatever bug this was? Still…

“Look,” he said, “Carter had contact with a hundred people, if not more, in the last week of his life. A quarantine, at this point, is an exercise in futility. Anyone who hasn’t been exposed yet will be within a couple of days, regardless. It makes sense to keep an eye on Larry and Kathy Bridges, to see if they go symptomatic. But I have to keep working. The people here expect to see a familiar face when they come in for treatment.”

Wilcox seemed to weigh the point for a moment, then finally nodded. “Okay. But you work for me, at the hospital. No private patients.”

“I can live with that,” Declan said.

“Let’s hope so,” Wilcox replied. “Or we can all die with it.”

Marilyn Shippey was in a dining room chair, already turning flaccid. She seemed to sag lower with every second that they looked at her.

“Damn,” Declan said. “Whatever this is, it works fast.”

“We need to get her out of here and into post,” Wilcox said, using the medical shorthand for postmortem. “And the dog.”

The Shippeys’ dog hadn’t budged from its post beside the woman’s chair, not even when they moved around the body. From time to time, he turned and chewed at his own leg.

“I should get him to the vet,” Declan said.

“No can do,” Wilcox answered. “We can’t lock down the people on this island, but we sure as hell can lock down one dog. There’s no reason to risk putting him in a kennel where he can infect other people’s pets.”

The logic was inescapable but terrifying.

“All right,” Declan said. “Let’s get this done.”

Just before ten the following morning, Declan was summoned to a press conference. The island’s lone TV station had brought a crew to the hospital’s conference room. The station usually broadcast town commission meetings, educational programming for the schools, and a handful of locally hosted arts, crafts and fishing shows. The programs were more often an exercise in vanity for the hosts than a source of information for the viewers. On most days, nobody watched the island station, preferring instead the satellite feed of mainland U.S. programming. Today, everyone would be watching.

Tim Roth hosted a fishing program. No one else from the station had wanted to come near the hospital, so the job had fallen to him. He didn’t look to be relishing his role. Joining him was Steve Chase, president of the territorial senate. Apparently Abel Roth, the governor, didn’t want to flirt with danger, either.

Chase, who held his job by virtue of his membership in one of the island’s elite families, wasn’t looking very healthy this morning. Declan studied the man’s ruddy face and wondered if his blood pressure had broken the bonds of beta blockers to hit the roof somewhere around 180 over 110. He would have to check on that.

And Tim Roth was looking like a man who needed to be in a hospital bed. His face was pale, despite his perpetual tan, and beads of perspiration glistened on his forehead.

He wore a white cotton shirt and shorts, the island’s interpretation of daytime formal, and kept fussing at his neck as if his open-throated shirt collar was too tight.

“Okay,” he said, turning to the camera. “In case anyone on the island hasn’t heard by now, Santz Martina was placed under quarantine yesterday before noon. If anyone doesn’t know what that means, it means that nobody gets on or off this island. If anyone tries to leave, the Coast Guard is going to stop them. So don’t even head for your boats, friends.”

Declan waited, saying nothing, knowing the best strategy was to see how things unfolded before jumping in.

“This decision,” Tim continued, “was made by one of our local doctors, Declan Quinn. As most of you know, Dr. Quinn is also the Territorial Medical Examiner and head of Emergency Preparedness, Medical Section. Apparently, the Centers for Disease Control, represented here by Dr. Joseph Gardner, agree with Dr. Quinn’s decision.”

“Yes,” Joe Gardner said. “At this point in time, we do. We can’t afford to take chances.”

Joe was a young hotshot—thirty, maybe—who’d made a point of letting Declan know he’d graduated from medical school at nineteen and specialized in rare communicable diseases of the Biohazard Level Four variety. The awful, terrible bugs, like hemorrhagic fever. Ebola. Marburg. The stuff of nightmares.

“But,” said Tim, stabbing his finger at Joe, “do you know it’s a disease?”

Joe took a moment to reply. “No,” he said finally, “we don’t. We don’t know what it is. But we have two people dead, and the symptoms don’t fit with any chemical exposure I’ve ever heard of. That leaves disease.”

“Is it contagious?”

Joe seemed to bite back anger at being challenged by a layman. “At this time we have no idea.”

“But if it is contagious, does it make sense to keep us all here so we might get exposed to it?”

Declan intervened, sensing that Joe’s patience was wearing out. “Tim, let me explain, please.”

Tim nodded, making an impatient gesture with his hand. “An explanation would be very much appreciated, I can tell you. You should have at least approached the Senate before you did this.”

“There was no time to waste. I’m sorry, Tim, but I had to act immediately. Now, if I can explain…” He cocked a brow, and Tim nodded.

“Very well. We don’t know what killed Carter or Marilyn Shippey. I can say with absolute confidence, and I’m sure Dr. Gardner will agree, that whatever killed them is something we’ve never seen before. Never.”

Joe Gardner nodded. “That’s a fact.”

“That’s comforting,” Tim said sourly.

“I know it isn’t,” Declan agreed. “Frankly, it terrified the hell out of me, too, when I started the autopsy yesterday. The thing is, we don’t know what it is. But what we do know is, if it’s contagious, a lot of people have already been exposed. Cart volunteered at the high school woodshop. Marilyn taught English there. That’s a couple of hundred kids they’d have had contact with. Plus they were active at church, and Cart was in the Rotary. Add in all the people they came into contact with there, and all their families and friends, and the odds are that if you live on this island, you’ve been exposed already.”

“You’re not making us feel any better, Dec.” This time Tim’s voice was less belligerent. Quieter, as if unhappiness was overtaking anger.

“I know I’m not. I wish I could be reassuring. But the simple fact is, if this is a contagious disease, this is the best place in the world for all of us to be.”

That evidently shocked Tim, and even Joe Gardner looked a little surprised.

“Think about it,” Declan continued. “If we find out it’s a disease, it’s only a short step or two to finding a cure or a treatment.” Gross exaggeration, but he didn’t want to start a riot. “If we’re all here, we can receive treatment quickly. If we’re scattered all over hell and gone, that won’t be true.”

Amazingly, Tim was nodding.

“Moreover,” Declan said, “we have a moral responsibility here. If this is a contagion, we can contain it here. So any way you look at it, the smartest thing we can all do is hunker down on the island and get through this together.”

Tim nodded again. Then he looked at Joe. “You agree, Dr. Gardner?”

“Yes, I do. I’ve treated outbreaks of some of the worst diseases known to man. I can assure you, even with Ebola, if you get treatment in time, you can survive. So it’s important that everyone remain here on the island. We will bring in whatever resources are necessary to solve this problem.”

Tim’s choler was fading a bit. “Why aren’t you wearing one of those fancy protective suits, Dr. Gardner? Aren’t you afraid?”

Joe Gardner smiled. “We’ve found no evidence the disease is airborne. The best analysis we can make right now is that it seems to spread by direct human contact.”

“How can you know that?”

“There’ve been two cases. The victims were married. We have no other patient reports. If it is a disease, it’s apparently hard to spread.”

Tim sank back in his chair. “I think that’s the best news I’ve heard since yesterday morning.”

“I agree,” Gardner said. “But it seems quite clear to me that if this disease were airborne or waterborne, we’d have other cases by now.”

That wasn’t entirely true, and Declan was sure Joe Gardner realized it. So much depended on incubation periods, as well as type and duration of exposure. Gardner was betting, a very dangerous bet indeed.

Outside the conference room, Dec took a minute to warn Steve Chase about his blood pressure and to tell him to come by that afternoon. Then he caught up to Joe Gardner, who was walking back to the lab.

“You’re a fool,” he said.

“Maybe,” Gardner replied. “But Carter Shippey hasn’t been off this island in months, has he?”

“No. He and his wife were planning a vacation, but they’d had to do a lot of work on their boat. It was banged up in a tropical storm last year.”

“And you don’t get a whole lot of strangers here?”

“Just occasional houseguests at the other end of the island. Deliveries at the airport and the harbor, but everyone there checks out clean.”

Joe nodded. “Then whatever it is started here. And it’s my bet that it can’t be highly contagious. No way. Anything highly contagious that had been introduced on this island over the past couple of months would have affected other people besides a retired fisherman.”

Dec nodded thoughtfully. “Do you have any ideas?”

“Not yet. So far we haven’t found a single living or partly living thing in Shippey’s body. Not so much as a prion.”

“What about chemicals?”

“Nothing unusual so far. But we’ll keep testing.” Joe yawned and stretched. None of them had slept since the previous morning. “So tell me again how this island works. If you had an outbreak of say, influenza, what kind of epidemiology would you expect to see?”

That was an easy question. The other doctors at the hospital had often talked about that, since they’d had an influenza outbreak two years before. “We all live pretty closely on this end of the island. I’d expect to see a number of cases reporting simultaneously, and then a rapid spread through the town and schools. It’d hit the other end of the island somewhat later, carried over there by household employees.”

Joe nodded. “How long?”

“Last time it was flu, and it only took a week for full contagion.”

“I would have expected that.” Joe yawned again. “Between you, me and the fence post? This isn’t going to be an easy solve.”

“Do you have to sound so damn happy about it?”

Joe laughed. “Admit you’re intrigued, doctor.”

Declan was. But he wasn’t happy to admit it. Not at all.

Tim Roth wasn’t happy, either. He’d cornered Steve Chase on the way out of the hospital.

“Let’s take a drive,” he’d said, his hand tightening on the man’s forearm.

They’d climbed in his Land Rover and wound their way up into the hills, where he pulled off onto the shoulder. To their right, six hundred feet below, a white beach was empty despite the picture-perfect teal expanse of the Caribbean. To their left, a handful of blackened, chiseled stones fought a losing battle with the underbrush. They were the sole remains of a plantation house that had been burned to the ground two hundred years before.

“Why here?” Steve asked, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “Why here, of all places?”

“You need to calm down,” Tim said. “Quinn had his eyes on you. You’re a public figure.”

“Declan Quinn is my doctor,” Steve said. “If he was concerned, it was strictly medical.”

“Maybe. Probably. But we don’t need the attention.” Tim pointed to the ruins. “It’s rubble, Steve. Dust and ash, just like she is.”

Steve’s chin set. “Carter Shippey said he saw her. Carter wasn’t the type to make up stories.”

Tim hesitated, then met his gaze. “Carter was a fisherman. He’d spent his life at sea. Tall tales are as much a part of a sailor’s life as salt spray.”

“You’re a fisherman.”

“I’m a businessman,” Tim countered. “I send rich people out for day trips with a bottle of champagne, a case of beer and the hope that they’ll catch a marlin to hang on a wall. The sea isn’t a mystery. It’s a cash cow.”

He paused for a moment. “And Annie Black isn’t a ghost. She’s a legend you tell to make people feel like they’re buying a slice of the supernatural with their five-thousand-square-foot Colonial Georgian with verandah and pool. She’s an extra five grand on the asking price. That’s all.”

“And the Shippeys are still dead. Of unknown cause.”

“Exactly.” Tim sighed and repeated the words. “Of unknown cause. Could be a virus. Could be some chemical he got hold of at the high school shop. There’s just no reason to assume they were killed by a two-hundred-years-dead murderer.”

Steve shifted uneasily, eyeing the blackened stones again. “I didn’t say that.”

“No, but it’s crossed your mind ever since Cart opened his damn mouth.”

Steve nodded, and Tim pressed on.

“Look, we’ve lived on this damn island most of our lives. If the ghost of Annie Black were hanging around, don’t you think somebody would have seen something at some time? But nobody ever has. So relax. Besides, ghosts are bullshit, and you know it.”

“My sister saw one in our house in New York.”

Tim sighed. “Yeah. Right. A twelve-year-old hysteric home alone at midnight sees a ghost. That’s one for the headlines.”