True Evil

He felt a prick of guilt.

'I figured you might come out here,' she went on. 'I've followed Thora when she ran out here.'

'Look, Agent Morse-'

'Would you call me Alex, for God's sake?' Exasperation colored her face, darkening the scars around her right eye.

'Okay. Alex. I've heard everything you've told me, okay? I've seen what you've shown me. I know what you want me to do. I've even thought a bit about the feasibility of inducing cancer in human beings. But I didn't feel like listening to any more about it today. That's why I didn't answer your calls.'

Her expression had changed from exasperation to something like empathy. 'What do you feel like doing?'

'Riding.'

She turned up her palms. 'Fine. Why not?' She nodded at an approaching car. 'But we should get off this road. Where were you going from here?'

He didn't want to mention the Devil's Punchbowl. 'I was going to do some sprints in the cemetery, then sit on Jewish Hill for a while.'

'What's Jewish Hill?'

Chris pointed to a thirty-foot hill topped with marble monuments and a tall flagpole. The American flag was shamefully weathered, even tattered at the ends of the stripes. 'Best place to watch the river go by.'

'I can't ride with you today,' Alex said, nodding at the empty bike rack attached to her rear bumper. 'Could we just take a walk in there? I won't even talk if you don't want me to.'

Chris looked away. Could she walk beside him without bringing up her obsession? He doubted it. And talking to Alex Morse would certainly drive him deeper into depression. Yet, oddly enough, she was the only person who might remotely understand what was eating at him. 'We're liable to run into people who know me in there, believe it or not. A lot of people run in this cemetery.'

Alex shrugged. 'If we do, tell them I'm a doctor from out of town. You and Tom Cage are thinking of bringing in a new associate.'

Chris smiled for the first time in many hours, maybe days. Then he mounted his bike and pedaled slowly toward the nearest cemetery gate, a wrought-iron monster attached to heavy brick pillars. The whole cemetery was filled with beautiful ironwork from another age. Alex drove through the open gate and parked her Corolla on the grass. Chris chained his bike to her rack, then led her down one of the narrow lanes that divided the tall and silent stones.

They walked some distance without speaking, penetrating ever deeper into the cemetery's interior. Like much of old Natchez, the cemetery had a classical Greek feel to it, thanks largely to the Greek Revival architecture favored by Anglophile cotton planters before the Civil War. Confederate dead were buried here, and also many Americans of national reputation, but the graves of the common people had always interested Chris most.

'Look,' he said, pointing toward a dark stone covered with moss.

'Who's buried there?'

'A little girl who was afraid of the dark. She was so afraid that death would be dark that her mother buried her with a glass lid on her coffin. Little steps lead down to the tomb. The mother would go down there every day and read to the dead child from her favorite book.'

'My God. When was this?'

'About a century ago.'

'Can I see her?'

'Not anymore. They finally had to block it up, because of vandals. Assholes come out here all the time and destroy things. I wish I had the time to sit out here for a few nights in a row. I'd kick the shit out of anybody who tried to desecrate this place.'

Alex smiled. 'I believe you.'

She took the lead and started up a lane that sloped toward the high ground over the river. 'You said you've given some thought to my cancer theory.'

'I thought you weren't going to talk about that.'

'You opened the conversation.'

Chris heard himself chuckle. 'I guess I did.' He walked on for several yards, then said, 'I've been doing a little reading in my oncology texts between patients.'

'What have you learned?'

'I was right about the complexity of the blood cancers. We don't know what causes ninety percent of them. We do know that most of them have different causes. They can tell that from the changes in various blood cells, and by other factors like tumor-suppressor genes, cellular growth factors, et cetera. This is bleeding-edge medicine we're talking about.'

'Was I right about radiation?'

'As far as you went, yes. You could definitely cause a whole spectrum of cancers with radiation. But'-Chris held up a forefinger-'not undetectably. You fire gamma rays into somebody without a qualified radiation oncologist directing the beam, you're going to have severe burns, skin rotting off, vomiting around the clock. Even with qualified personnel, you get serious side effects from radiation therapy. And I'm talking about minimum doses given to cure people.'

'But it's possible with enough expertise,' Alex insisted. 'Did you come up with any other options?'

'Chemicals,' said Chris, making steadily for Jewish Hill. 'As I suspected, the toxins known to cause cancer are some of the most persistent on the planet. You put one nanogram of dioxin into somebody, it'll be there on the day they die. Detailed toxicology studies on autopsy would turn up things like that very quickly. As for volatile compounds like benzene, which you mentioned the second time we met, you'd have the same problem you have with radiation. Using enough to reliably kill people would almost certainly cause acute illness. So basically, as a class, chemicals are a less reliable oncogenic murder weapon than radiation, but more likely to get you caught. I suppose-'

'I'm sorry. Oncogenic?'

'Cancer-causing,' Chris clarified.

'Sorry. Go on.'

'I suppose someone could come up with an untraceable oncogenic poison-the CIA or the army, I mean-but in that case you'd have almost no practical hope of discovering it.'

Alex looked thoughtful. 'But it's something to consider. I haven't been profiling intel or military officers as suspects, but maybe that's a realistic option.'

'Not around here. Fort Detrick, Maryland, is where they keep the germs and toxins. You really need to talk to an expert, Alex. And I don't mean a garden-variety hematologist. You need somebody from NIH or Sloan-Kettering or Dana-Farber.' Chris stopped and watched a half dozen butterflies flitting around a bush bursting with purple flowers. One had marks on its wings that looked almost psychedelic, rounded spheres of electric blue. 'M. D. Anderson is probably the closest place.'

'That's Houston?'

'Right. Seven hours by car.'

Alex held out her hand, and one butterfly danced around her extended finger. 'And what do I ask these experts? What would you ask them?'

Chris started walking again. 'If we dispense with radiation and chemicals in our little hypothetical, that leaves only one possibility I know of. And it's a biggie.'

'What is it?'

'Oncogenic viruses.'

She turned toward him. 'A professor I spoke to last week mentioned viruses, but a lot of what he said was over my head.'

'Do you know anything about retroviruses?'