12.21

“We all do.”

Davies snickered. “I’ll sleep when I’m like these blokes.”

“Come on.”

“Too soon?”

Once they finished with the driver’s brain, they performed the same operation on Volcy’s distended body. When they had sections from both brains ready, Stanton put his eye to the microscope again, upping the background light. The craters in Volcy’s brain ran deeper and the cortex looked more deformed. He had definitely been infected first.

Stanton had suspected as much, but until now he hadn’t realized what he could do with the information. “Make images of all these sections,” he told Davies. “And I want you to find the MRIs we took of Volcy when he was still alive. Figure out how fast the disease was spreading in his brain, then model everything backward. If we can figure out the rate of progression, then we can estimate when they both got sick.”

Davies nodded. “A timeline.”

If they could determine when Volcy took ill, they might be able to figure out where he’d gotten sick. With luck, they could do the same for the driver. The driver was the key: Someone in this city knew him. Once the driver was identifi ed, there’d be bank statements and credit-card receipts showing where he bought his groceries, where he ate. A paper trail leading straight to the source.

“Cavanagh’s on the line,” Davies said, holding out his cellphone.

Stanton peeled off his second layer of gloves. Into the phone he said one word: “Confirmed.”

Cavanagh took a deep breath. “You’re sure?”

“Same disease, different stages.”

“I’m getting on a plane right now. Tell me what you need to keep this under control.”

“An ID on the driver. We have two patients, and they were both John Does when they came in.” The Explorer was unregistered, and its driver, like Volcy, carried nothing to identify him. The worry was that this somehow wasn’t a coincidence. But what would that mean?

“The police are working on it,” Cavanagh said. “What else?”

“The public needs to know we found a second case. And they need to know it from us. Not from some blogger who makes half of it up.”

“If you’re asking for a press conference, the answer is no. Not yet. Everyone in the city will think they’re sick.”

“Then at least get the grocery stores to put a hold on dairy, and meat too, just to be safe. Get USDA to investigate all possible imports from Guatemala. And tell people they need to throw away the milk and all the rest in their refrigerators.”

“Not until we confirm the source of the disease.”

“If you want confirmation, get all of our agents here checking the pupil size of every patient in every hospital,” he said. “And I’m not just talking about L.A. I’m talking about the valley, Long Beach, Anaheim. I need more than two data points.”

“I’m supervising agents on the ground there already. Let them do their jobs.”

Stanton pictured Cavanagh’s unflappable stare. She’d become the brightest star at CDC in 2007, when an airplane passenger was suspected of carrying drug-resistant TB. She was one of the few at the center to remain levelheaded until the scare passed and had been a favorite in Washington ever since. But now wasn’t the time to be levelheaded.

“How can you be so calm?” Stanton asked Cavanagh.

“Because I have you to not be,” she said. “Now tell me something. How much sleep have you gotten? I’ll be on the ground in six hours, and I’m going to need you sharp and rested. If you haven’t slept, do it now.”

“Emily, I don’t—”

“I wasn’t making a suggestion, Gabe. That was an order.”

* * *

BACK IN VENICE, Stanton was surprised to see that nothing had changed. The evening crowds were in the beer gardens. Homeless drifters sat beneath the retail-shop awnings. Out on the boardwalk, men were still hawking charms to ward off the Maya apocalypse. For a moment, all this life made Stanton feel a bit better.

Just after eleven p.m., he stood in his kitchen, on the phone with the chief medical officer for the Guatemalan Health Service, Dr. Fernando Sandoval.

“Mr. Volcy told us that he came across the border after he was already sick,” Stanton said. “He was clear about that. You need to search clinics, facilities on the Pan-American Highway, and every local doctor’s office that serves indigenous people.”

“We have teams searching the area where he says he got sick,” Sandoval told him. “Despite the fact that it will cost us millions of dollars we don’t have, we’ve got people visiting every farm in the entire Peten and sampling cattle. So far they’ve come up with nothing, of course. Not a single trace of prion of any kind.”

“Not yet. But you understand how urgent this is, don’t you? From what we’re seeing here, you could have an epidemic soon.”

“There’s zero evidence that your second patient was ever here, Dr. Stanton.”

They’d broadcast the second victim’s photograph everywhere on the evening news, but no family or friends of the driver had come forward. “We haven’t ID’d him yet, but—”

“We have no other cases, and it is irresponsible of you to suggest anything of the kind. Neither of your patients got sick here. Though of course we will do everything we can to aid you in your investigation.”

The call ended abruptly, leaving Stanton frustrated. With no reported cases, the Guatemalans weren’t scared enough yet to take real action. Until they had a confirmed case of their own, Stanton knew it would be hard to get much at all from them, and, even then, their public-health capabilities were poor.

Stanton heard a key going into the lock and animal feet scurrying across the floor. He hurried to the living room, where he found Nina in worn jeans, a windbreaker, and still-glistening galoshes. Dogma ran toward him, and Nina followed, looping her arms around Stanton’s neck.

“Guess you found a place to dock, Captain,” he said, kissing her on the cheek.

“Should be fine until sunrise. You look like shit.”

“So everyone keeps telling me.”

Dogma started to whine, and Stanton rubbed the dog’s ears in circles.

Nina peeled off her coat. “When was the last time you ate something?”

“No idea.”

Nina beckoned him into the kitchen. “Don’t make me use force.”

There was a half-eaten container of Chinese delivery in the fridge, and she made Stanton eat it but let him listen to NPR updates while he did. The news program’s host was interviewing a CDC communications specialist Stanton had never heard of. They were talking about VFI in a way that made it obvious neither one of them had any real knowledge of prion science. A tightness grew in Stanton’s chest.

“What’s wrong?” Nina asked.

He fiddled with his fork, pressing liquid from the microwaved cubes of tofu. “This is going to get worse.”

“Good thing they’ve got you, then.”

“Soon people’ll realize we don’t know how to control a disease like this.”

“You’ve been warning them about this day forever.”

“I don’t mean CDC. I mean everyone else who’ll ask why we have no vaccine. Congress will go crazy. They’ll want to know what we’ve been doing since mad cow.”

“You did everything you could. Always have.”

Her voice was comforting. He reached out and took her hand. There was so much he wanted to say.

Nina kissed the back of his hand, led him into the living room, and turned on the TV. She leaned her head on his shoulder. Wolf Blitzer reported from the Situation Room, explaining that the identity of the second patient was still unknown.

“Do you have enough supplies on the boat?” Stanton asked her.

“For what?” she said. “Don’t get glass-half-empty on me. It depresses the dog.”