the last few months is the most virulent strain of the flu ever seen. That's the strain Dr. Laurent and her staff are trying to produce a vaccine for. But I have found evidence here, in the chickens wandering these yards, of two newly reassorted strains of H2N2 that make what we've seen so far look like the common cold.”
“You reported your findings?”
“Yes,” he said. “I've reported my findings.”
“And?”
“And the problem is simple prejudice.”
He said it like it explained everything, which of course it didn't.
“I don't understand, Dr. Cole,” I said.
He let out a frustrated sigh. This was an old argument for him, something he'd explained and complained about more times than he cared to remember. He pointed over our shoulders. “You see that orange warning notice on that light pole over there?”
“Yeah,” I said. The MHD warnings were everywhere. You couldn't turn around without seeing one.
“If you read the last warning, it says ‘Stay away from strange and foul smelling areas.’ That was added at the insistence of our fearless leader, Mr. Martin Klauser. The man's not even a doctor, for Christ's sake. He heads up the public health agency of the seventh largest city in America, and the man has no medical knowledge whatsoever. He's a homeopathic adviser, if you can believe that. He got his job because some city councilman owed him a favor. And now that idiot is overseeing this crisis. He put that warning on that notice because he still believes that diseases are caused by miasmatic vapors and not viruses. He's made the MHD a laughingstock in the medical community. Dr. Laurent and her staff see that kind of corruption and stupidity, and they think it must automatically extend to me as well. They don't even listen to what I have to say.”
“But if you have proof?”
“Yes, I have proof. But they won't even look at it. And meanwhile, the chickens in the GZ are shitting out little virus bombs all over the place. When the grackles come back to San Antonio in November, they're going to eat that shit from the ground and absorb one or even both new strains of the H2N2 virus. When that happens, the walls around this city won't do a bit of good. The grackles will take those new strains into rural northern Mexico, where there are no doctors, no hospitals, no resources to implement a quarantine.
“There's nobody but about 10 million poor as dirt Mexicans down there. They won't even have the resources to report the pandemic until it spreads so far out of control we'll never be able to deal with it. We're not going to be talking deaths in the thousands either. Not even in the tens of thousands. When those grackles hit northern Mexico, we're going to see deaths in the millions.
“And that vaccine that Dr. Laurent and her staff have worked so hard on? It won't do a damn bit of good against those new strains. I'm trying to stop a global pandemic, here, and all that disgusting fat woman can do is sit in her trailer and ignore me.”
One of the first things they teach you about interviewing people is to let them talk. Let the thread spool itself out. The challenge is to keep them on focus. Keep them talking about what you need.
I was about to redirect our conversation when Dr. Cole did it for me.
“Detective,” he said, “if you don't mind me asking, what exactly are you doing out here? You never told me that.”
“We're looking for the van Dr. Bradley and her police escort were driving the morning she was killed.”
“Yeah? Why are you looking out here?”
I noticed the tone of his voice changing. First confused, then suspicious.
“We were told that Dr. Bradley had been doing work here in the GZ for the last few days.”
I couldn't see Cole's mouth, but from what I could see of his expression I figured it must have been hanging open in the shape of an O.
“That surprises you?” I asked.
“Yes. Very much, actually.”
“Why?”
“That's what I've been trying to tell you. Dr. Laurent and her staff are lab technicians. That's what they do. That's all they do. I've been trying to get them to come out here for weeks, and now you tell me they've been coming out here secretly.”
I heard him let out a hot, frustrated sigh. “That figures. It's prejudice. Stinking prejudice.”
I thought about telling him we were talking about somebody's life, and not his pride, but I didn't. Instead, I said, “You have no idea where Dr. Bradley was working while she was out here?”
“None.”
I looked at Chunk, who had more or less disconnected himself from the conversation, for some sign of what he wanted to do.
He nodded towards the car.
“Okay, Dr. Cole, thanks for your time. Would you mind if we called on you again? Familiar as you are with the GZ, you might be a big help.”
He bowed his head, a strange looking gesture with his gas mask.
“Listen,” I said, “if you do happen to see that van, could you give us a call? SAPD Homicide in the City directory.”
“Sure,” he said. And then he turned and walked back to his ambulance without another word.
Chapter 11
There is an ugly truth about wearing personal protective equipment, or PPE, as we call it in the business: What is difficult to put on is also difficult to take off. The biohazard space suits we'd been issued were gray, one- piece outfits with built-in booties and a hood. That went on first. Next you had to slip on the gloves, and those had to be sealed to the suit at the seam with duct tape. The last item you had to put on was the gas mask, which had to be properly seated and sealed so that no skin or hair was exposed.
The first rule of wearing PPE is: DO NOT LET ANY SKIN SHOW.
When all three parts-body suit, gloves, and gas mask-were properly worn, the wearer would theoretically be encased in a plastic cocoon that no germ or gas or liquid could penetrate. Inside, you were insulated.
Of course, this also meant anything that happened inside the suit stayed inside the suit.
At the end of the day, after going through decontamination, the whole outfit had to come off. When doing that, the rule was last on, first off, and the process was every bit as involved as getting into the stuff. You very quickly learned that once the entire outfit was on, you didn't take it off until you knew you wouldn't need it again that day.
That was why there was a giant sign above the entrance to the locker rooms at the Scar that read:
PLEASE PEE BEFORE YOU PPE LET'S KEEP THE GEAR CLEAN
Unfortunately, very few people can make it through a 14 hour day without relieving themselves, and, well, sometimes…
I sat in the passenger seat next to Chunk and crossed my legs. Uncrossed them. Shifted around a little. Thought to myself, Master it, master it. You don't have to pee. You don't have to pee.
I had to pee.
Finally I couldn't take it anymore and tried to look casual, like I wasn't really doing what I was really doing.
I thought to myself, I'm glad I obeyed the second rule of PPE: NEVER WEAR NICE CLOTHES UNDER PPE.
Chunk and I were playing a hunch. We figured that anybody going into the GZ was going to focus on the area around Mrs. Villarreal's house for the simple reason that it was such a significant landmark.
We idled through those streets at five miles per hour or so, looking carefully at everything we passed. The streets were lined with oak trees, large and unmanaged, and beautiful in their own way. But the homes behind
