I closed Bradley's journal with a sigh.
“You okay?”
“Mmm hmm.”
“You sure?”
“I got a lot on my mind,” I said.
“More than Bradley, you mean?”
“Yeah. More than that.”
“Like what?”
“Connie mostly.”
“How's she doing?”
“She's fine,” I said. “It's me, actually. I made her a promise last night and I'm wondering how I'm going to keep it.”
“What kind of promise?”
“The chocolate cake kind.”
He gave me a sideways glance that said, You know what that's gonna take, don't you?
But he didn't have to ask the question out loud. “I know what it means.”
He turned left and drifted down Hamilton. Massive oak trees hung over the street, making it look like a green tunnel. Patches of white sunlight danced over the hood.
“What do you need?” he asked. Just like that. No preamble, no judgment.
“Billy and I have scraped together two hundred dollars. We've also got about sixty ration coupons. Do you think that'll be enough?”
“Don't worry about it,” he said. “You guys keep the money.”
“No, Chunk. I don't want that.”
“It's all right. Besides, I owe you and Billy a debt I can't ever pay back.”
I turned and looked him. It was the first time in weeks we'd talked about his grandmother. “You don't owe us a thing for that, Chunk. You know that.”
“I know you believe that, Lily. That's why it matters to me.” He said, “Now what do you need?”
I pressed my lips together, hard.
“You're a good man, Chunk. A real good man.”
He smiled. “And I feel good about myself naked, too.”
Chapter 16
A large, angry crowd had clustered around the front gate of the Arsenal Station Morgue. Two young patrolmen, neither of them more than 25, watched the crowd apprehensively from inside the gate.
The crowd surrounded our car and banged on the windows and the hood with their fists. The car rocked. A woman with spit clinging to her lips pressed her face against the passenger side window and screamed something at me that I couldn't understand, though the hate-filled expression in her eyes was plain enough.
One of the patrolmen swung the gate open, while the other stood to one side, clutching an AR-15 in his hands and looking green around the gills. As we drove by him, he glanced at me, and I could see the fear in his eyes.
I didn't envy him for his job.
We found Myers on the main floor of the morgue, cutting a tissue specimen from the lungs of a man about my age. We waited off to one side while he worked. When he was done, we followed him to a hallway where we could talk in private.
He'd already heard the news about Ken Wade, and I could tell he was glad Wade was dead, but also a little upset that he was wrong about him.
“You got that inventory I faxed over to you?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said, very stiffly, very British. “I received it this morning.”
“Have you gone over it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice anything unusual about it? Anything that didn't look right?”
“Unusual? You mean the very fact that we are standing here at all isn't unusual enough for you?”
“Doctor,” I said. “Please.”
He smirked at me from behind his goggles. “Not as such, no. One or two of the items did seem to me a bit curious, but nothing I would call suspicious.”
“Like what?”
“I don't have the list in front of me at the moment,” he said. The way he said it made it sound like I was a dumbass for asking.
I handed him an extra copy I'd brought along. He took it, and gave me another look. This one hard to read, but still unpleasant.
He had to hold the list up at eye level to read it in his space suit.
“Here you list one hundred and thirty-seven glass vials, assuming you were able to count them correctly. That is a smaller number than I would expect. Our field vans normally carry about two hundred vials.”
“What would she have stored in those vials, doc?”
“They would have been used and reused several times. Of course, some of the tubes break, and some develop a film on the inside that the sterilizers can't clean. In that case, the vial would be destroyed. That's why I said it was curious. Not unusual.”
“Anything else?”
That look again. He held the paper up and ran his finger down the list.
“You don't have any specimen cages listed here. There should have been at least six on board.”
Chunk and I traded a glance, both of us thinking about Bradley's journal. They should have been in the vehicle.
“What do these cages look like, doc?” Chunk asked.
“They are simple, white plastic boxes with a perforated clear plastic gate on the front that slides up and down as needed.”
There was nothing like that in the inventory.
“What's the standard procedure for storing the cages after they've been used,” I asked.
“They are stacked in a vertical steam sterilizer near the back door of the van.”
Then they definitely weren't in the van. Somebody had to have removed them.
I said, “Dr. Myers, why don't you tell me a little more about what Dr. Bradley was doing out in the GZ.”
The way he looked at me made me think of this homosexual accountant I'd once questioned, about his relationship with the man he'd just shot in the face nine times. I kept asking the man the same question over and over, but in subtly different ways, and he'd finally blurted out, “We were lovers, all right! God damn it, is that what you want to hear?” I told him “No, I already know you're a queer. I want to know why in the world that guy would sleep around behind your back. I mean, look at you, you have a good job, you dress nice, you even smell nice. Why would somebody blow it with a good catch like you?” The man blinked at me, and then out came his confession.
It went the same way with Myers. He said, “Detective, I have already gone over this with you several times. She was doing field work on genetic mutations within the virus.”
“No, no,” I said. “I know that. What I want to know is why she didn't have you with her. I mean, everybody I've talked to says you're sharp as a tack in the laboratory. Why go out there with Wade and not you?”
He blinked at me, same as the queer accountant. Then I heard him sniffle. “I was told to remain here,” he said. “At Arsenal.”
“Told? You mean by Dr. Laurent?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
