Phantoms

computer transcription of Seth Goldstein's autopsy notes. Goldstein noted indications of possible suffocation, as well as even more evident signs of severe allergic reaction to an unidentified substance, but he could not fix a cause of death.

Then her attention came to rest on one of the first pathology tests. It was a light microscopy examination of unstained bacteria in a long series of hanging-drop preparations that had been contaminated by tissue and fluid samples from Gary Wechlas's body; darkfield illumination had been used to identify even the smallest microorganisms. They had been searching for bacteria that were still thriving in the cadaver. What they found was startling.

HANGING-DROP PREPARATIONS

AUTO SCAN — MEDANACOMP

EYE VERIFICATION — BETTENBY

FREQUENCY OF EYE VERIFICATION — 20&o OF

SAMPLES

PRINT

SAMPLE1

ESCHERICHIA GENUS

    FORMS PRESENT:

        NO FORMS PRESENT NOTE: ABNORMAL DATA.

NOTE: IMPOSSIBLE VARIANT — NO ANIMATE E.

COLI IN BOWEL–CONTAMINATE SAMPLE.

CLOSTRIDIUM GENUS

    FORMS PRESENT:

        NO FORMS PRESENT NOTE: ABNORMAL DATA.

NOTE: ABNORMAL DATA

NOTE: IMPROBABLE VARIANT — NO ANIMATE C.

WELCHII IN BOWEL–CONTAMINATE SAMPLE.

PROTEUS GENUS

    FORMS PRESENT:

        NO FORMS PRESENT

NOTE: ABNORMAL DATA.

NOTE: IMPROBABLE VARIANT- NO ANIMATE P.

VULGARIS IN BOWEL–CONTAMINATE SAMPLE.

The print-out continued to list bacteria for which the computer and Dr. Bettenby had searched, all with the same results.

Jenny remembered what Dr. Yamapchi had said, the statement that she had wondered about and about which she had wanted to inquire: neither benign bacteria nor otherwise. And here was the data, every bit as abnormal as the computer said it was.

“Strange,” Jenny said.

Bryce said, “It doesn't mean a thing to me. Translation?”

“Well, you see, a cadaver is an excellent breeding ground for all sorts of bacteria — at least for the short run. This many hours after death, Gary Wechlas's corpse ought to be teeming with Clostridium welchii, which is associated with gas gangrene.”

“And it isn't?”

“They couldn't find even one lonely, living C. welchii in the water droplet that had been contaminated with bowel material. And that is precisely the sample that ought to be swimming with it. It should be teeming with Proteus vulgaris, too, which is a saprophytic bacterium.”

“Translation?” he asked patiently.

“Sorry. Saprophytic means it flourishes in dead or decaying matter.”

“And Wechlas is unquestionably dead.”

“Unquestionably. Yet there's no P. vulgaris. There should be other bacteria, too. Maybe Micrococcus albus and Bacillus mesentericus. Anyway, there aren't any of the microorganisms that're associated with decomposition, not any of the forms you'd expect to find. Even stranger, there's no living Escherichia coli in the body. Now, damn it, that would've been there, thriving, even before Wechlas was killed. And it should be there now, still thriving. E. coli inhabits the colon. Yours, mine, Gary Wechlas's, everyone's. As long as it's contained within the bowel, it's generally a benign organism.” She paged through the report. “Now, here. Here, look at this. When they used general and differential stains to search for dead microorganisms, they found plenty of E. coli. But all the specimens were dead. There are no living bacteria in Wechlas's body.”

“What's that supposed to tell us?” Bryce asked, “That the corpse isn't decomposing as it should be?”

“It isn't decomposing at all. Not only that. Something a whole lot stranger. The reason it isn't decomposing is because it's apparently been injected with a massive dose of a sterilizing and stabilizing agent. A preservative, Bryce. The corpse seems to have been injected with an extremely effective preservative.”

Lisa brought a tray to the table. There were four mugs of coffee, spoons, napkins. The girl passed coffee to Dr. Yamaguchi, Jenny, and Bryce; she took the fourth mug for herself.

They were sitting in the dining room at the Hilltop, near the windows. Outside, the street was bathed in the orange-gold sunlight of late afternoon.

In an hour, Jenny thought, it'll be dark again. And then we'll have to wait through another long night.

She shivered. She sure needed the hot coffee.

Sara Yamaguchi was now wearing tan corduroy jeans and a yellow blouse. Her long, silky, black hair spilled over her shoulders. “Well,” she was saying, “I guess everyone's seen enough of those old Walt Disney wildlife documentaries to know that some spiders and mud wasps — and certain other insects — inject a preservative into their victims and put them aside for consumption later or to feed their unhatched young. The preservative distributed through Mr. Wechlas's tissues is vaguely similar to those substances but far more potent and sophisticated.”

Jenny thought of the impossibly large moth that had attacked and killed Stewart Wargle. But that wasn't the creature that had depopulated Snowfield. Definitely not. Even if there were hundreds of those things lurking somewhere in town, they couldn't have gotten at everyone. No moth that size could have found its way into locked cars, locked houses, and barricaded rooms. Something else was out there.

“Are you saying it was an insect that killed these people?” Bryce asked Sara Yamaguchi.

“Actually, the evidence doesn't point that way. An insect would employ a stinger to kill and to inject the preservative. There would be a puncture wound, however minuscule. But Seth Goldstein went over the Wechlas corpse with a magnifying glass. Literally. Over every square inch of skin. Twice. He even used a depilatory cream to remove all the body hair in order to examine the skin more closely. Yet he couldn't find a puncture or any other break in the skin through which an injection might have been administered. We were afraid we had atypical or inaccurate data. So a second postmortem was performed.”

“On Karen Oxley,” Jenny said.

“Yes.” Sara Yamaguchi leaned toward the windows and peered up the street, looking for General Copperfield and the others. When she turned back to the table, she said, “However, everything tested out the same. No animate bacteria in the corpse. Decomposition unnaturally arrested. Tissues saturated with preservative. It was bizarre data again. But we were satisfied that it wasn't atypical or inaccurate data.”

Bryce said, “If the preservative wasn't injected, how was it administered?”

“Our best guess is that it's highly absorbable and enters the body by skin contact, then circulates through the tissues within seconds.”