“I was told Emma was working on a special project for Dr. Laurent.”
Chunk glanced over at me and I could tell he was smiling, a way-to-go-little-sister look.
“I see,” I said. I talked to him gently, like I could really appreciate how hurt he was, like I understood. “But you are a smart fellow, Dr. Myers. Surely you had some idea what she was working on?”
He nodded, a barely perceptible gesture inside his space suit.
“She was gathering specimens for part of the genetic typing study. The influenza virus is RNA based, and so it reproduces very fast and with a high degree of mutation. The longer the virus is in a given environment, the more opportunity it has to mutate. Her working hypothesis was that the specimens in the GZ would show the most mutation, because the GZ is where the virus was first identified. Origin gene populations generally show greater differentiation than cast off populations.”
“And so what advantage would those specimens be to you guys?”
“It might indicate that this outbreak is nearing the end,” he said. “You see, as the virus mutates, so does its virulence. A virus may start out as merely a nuisance, like H2N2 was last year here in San Antonio, and then suddenly mutate into a highly dangerous form. But the process is just as likely to work in reverse. More likely to work in reverse, in fact. That's what ended the 1918 influenza pandemic, and that's what we're hoping will end this outbreak.”
“So what you're saying is that virus mutation is basically a crap shoot.”
I saw a flash of disdain in his eyes. “Yes. You Americans have such lovely ways of phrasing things, but I suppose that describes the process accurately enough.”
“So, if it's just a crap shoot, isn't it possible that one, or even two, additional strains of the virus could form that are just as deadly, if not more so, than the original strain?”
It took him a second to jump through the mental hoops, but once he did, he saw plainly enough that I'd boxed him in to a discussion of Dr. Cole and his theory.
But his answer surprised me.
“I see you've been talking with John the Baptist.”
“Excuse me?”
“John the Baptist? The madman in the wilderness talking about what's to come? That's our nickname for Dr. Cole around here.”
Chunk and I trade another glance. “You know his theory then?”
“Of course I know it. He tells everybody he meets his theory.”
“And you what? You think he's nuts?”
“I didn't say that. Some of his ideas are rather far out there. Did you know he actually wants there to be a law making it a felony not to get a flu shot each year?”
“No, I didn't.”
“He does. He told me about his theory of multiple influenza strains two weeks ago.”
“And what do you think of that theory, doc?”
“I thought it was intriguing enough that I went to Dr. Laurent with it.”
“And what did-” I stopped myself before the words ‘Hippo woman’ came out. “What did Dr. Laurent say?”
His eyes smiled. “She thinks, to borrow one of your colorful American phrases, that he is full of shit.”
I nodded, but didn't answer him. Let him think he wasn't finished explaining it to me.
He looked away and sighed. Then he said, “Dr. Laurent believes that Dr. Cole's theory is unnecessarily inflammatory. There are two objectives, here. The first is to develop a vaccine to mitigate the damage of H2N2. The other is to reduce the level of fear among the populace. Dr. Cole's theory, if not properly refuted with the highest caliber of research and testing, could start a chain reaction of fear that will be unstoppable.”
I thought back to Dr. Bradley's journal, and the final entry: WE ARE ALL GONERS!
“But what if he's right, Dr. Myers?”
Myers scoffed at that. “He isn't.”
“But you will be looking through Dr. Bradley's research, won't you?”
“Of course,” he said. “Sometime later this morning either myself or another member of the staff will transfer the information from the van's computers to the computers in our lab. I assure you, it will be analyzed in exhaustive detail.”
“Will there be some kind of preliminary analysis done of that material?”
“Of course. Right after we download it.”
“Okay,” I said. “Doctor, I wonder if you would do me a favor and call me when that's done? I'd like to know what those results are.”
“Fine,” he said. Then he cocked his head inside his space suit, like a strange thought had just occurred to him. “Are those results important to your investigation?”
“Maybe,” I said, though a strong personal interest would have been a better description of my motives.
He said, “I'll call you this afternoon.”
Chapter 17
We went through decontamination and changed into street clothes. Chunk was in a blue t-shirt and jeans. The t-shirt, skin tight, looked like it was about to split open across his biceps and at the huge wads of muscle packed onto his shoulders. I was in jeans, a ratty old red blouse, and white tennis shoes. By the end of that summer, Homicide detectives had stopped dressing for success.
We waited around for Dr. Laurent. Myers told us she was in a meeting with her counterpart at the Lockhill Station Morgue and wouldn't be back till at least eleven-thirty.
That was still an hour away.
“Okay,” Chunk said while we waited, “what about Cole?”
“Cole, eh?” I thought about him for a second. He had a lot of easy fits in our equation. “Okay,” I said, trying to get myself started, “Cole is upset because the WHO people won't take him seriously.”
“Right.”
“And then he comes across Bradley in the GZ, working on the same thing he's working on.”
“But that by itself wouldn't make him mad enough to kill her,” Chunk pointed out. “Wouldn't he feel vindicated they were looking into his theory?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“And wouldn't Bradley have mentioned him in her journal if she saw him?”
“Yeah.”
Chunk drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, thinking. “Okay, Cole comes across Bradley the morning she's killed, which we know is some time around eight forty-five. From that bit she wrote, we know she felt like she was on to something bad. Maybe she tells Cole about it, and he gets upset because he thinks she's going to steal his big discovery.”
I paused before I answered, adding it up in my head. “Okay.”
“And then he kills her.”
“No,” I said. “That doesn't work. She was shot with Wade's gun, remember? Cole carries that twenty- two.”
“So he kills Wade first, then Bradley.”
“That's the trouble, though. Wade was beat to death. How's a seventy year old man going to beat a thirty year old cop to death? A cop who nearly tore you up. And on top of that, why would Bradley talk to Cole about what she'd found in the first place? From everything Myers told us, it doesn't sound like anybody at WHO thinks very highly of him.”
Chunk's mouth worked under his mask. He looked like he was chewing on a big wad of gum, though I knew he was thinking about that fight with Wade all those years ago. Chunk doesn't let stuff like that go easily.
“I don't know,” Chunk said. “But let's say he does somehow. The rest of it fits, doesn't it?”
Most of it does fit. Though it doesn't make sense.
