But for everything to work out as planned, he needed just the right agent. Bacterial or viral, it didn’t matter to him. Just something contagious, airborne if possible. Silent for a few days; deadly from the start. And Dr. Peterov had delivered the perfect little bug.
Rebekah and Caleb were holding each other now, struggling for breath. Reading the sacred scripts aloud, bowing in rhythm to the words.
It was Dr. Peterov’s idea to use the gram negative bacillus called Francisella tularensis. He’d pioneered ways of weaponizing it in Russia before the end of the Cold War. “It’s versatile, able to be spread either through ingestion or as an aerosol, fatal about 35 percent of the time, and very tough to identify symptomatically,” he’d told Kincaid. By splicing in some genes from Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, he and his team had created something nearly impossible to diagnose. Very exotic. And very deadly.
“What about a cure?” Kincaid had asked him.
“There is no known vaccine for CCHF, and the vaccine for tularemia, the disease caused by Francisella tularensis, isn’t available to nonmilitary personnel. Of course we developed a way to treat it in case we were exposed, but without our research the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will never find a cure in time.”
It’d taken six years to find a way to make the bacteria contagious human to human and to make it virulent enough to raise the death toll up to 85 percent-a satisfactory percentage to Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid. After all, when you know you’ll most likely die, it’s a thousand times more terrifying than if you know for certain that you will-in which case you might find peace; or if you discover the odds are actually in your favor — in which case you can survive relatively well on denial.
No, the most terrible thing of all is to face life without the possibility of either peace or denial.
With no place to run or hide.
Distribution seemed to be the primary problem. At first he’d thought about using inhalers to spread it-after all, his drug company produced some of the most popular asthma medicine currently prescribed, but his goal wasn’t to indiscriminately infect children, so he gave that idea up almost immediately. No, he needed a more focused distribution system. He’d considered replacing fire extinguishers with an aerosol version of the bacterium and then starting a fire in the Stratford Hotel, but that seemed too elaborate. Besides, the place was built out of solid rock.
Finally, he’d landed on a simple plan. Nearly infallible. Completely unstoppable.
Kincaid looked at Rebekah and Caleb.
The effects of the genetically altered CCHF tularemia were quite evident by now: the trembling limbs, skin ulcers, swollen lymph nodes, orifice bleeding. It was actually rather disturbing to watch.
But, the couple didn’t look disturbed or frightened. After all, they’d volunteered for this job. To go ahead of the rest.
A test had been necessary, after all, and this was the easiest way to control it, here at the ranch.
They were holding hands, eyes closed, perhaps in prayer to their Father, Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid. As they mouthed their petitions, Caleb’s eyelids started hemorrhaging, seeping blood.
Kincaid spent all afternoon consumed with thoughts of the jungle, watching them die. The babies. The syringes, and of course, Jessie Rembrandt and the whirlpool and the hunting knife twisting slowly to the bottom of the bloody water.
And then, at last, his thoughts turned to Sebastian Taylor, the governor of North Carolina, the one responsible for it all.
48
The further I moved into this case, the more complex and intriguing it became.
After talking with Terry, I spent about forty-five minutes at the desk in my hotel room, jotting down notes, drawing lines to connect ideas, and crossing out entire pages of my notebook as I eliminated different theories.
I hardly noticed how numb my shoulder had become from the ice. Finally, all I had left was a dripping bag of water that I discarded in the trash.
First, we had a serial killer murdering women and leaving their bodies in geographically significant locations. He wanted them found. He was making a statement to us, carefully tying all his crimes together. Besides being an expert marksman, he could tie sutures, electronically scramble the origins of his emails, and might have grown up along the southern coast. Based on the way the ropes were knotted around the women’s necks, it appeared to me that he was left-handed. He had knowledge of local climbing and caving areas and knew to leave a clean crime scene and blow up a house.
Quite a resume.
I tried to avoid thinking it was Grolin, but everything kept pointing in his direction.
Second, we didn’t know it for sure yet, but the evidence seemed to indicate that somewhere along the line, another killer had started copying him.
But how did the copycat find out about the correct kind of chess pieces, the wound patterns, the yellow ribbons? The two killers could be working together, of course. Either that or:
(A) The copycat knew the Illusionist.
(B) He’d seen the case files.
Since there was no way for me to know whether or not the killers knew each other, I could only look into option B.
But was that even possible? Only our investigation team had access to the case files. Was it actually possible that the killer was a member of the team?
And what about victimology for the copycat? How was he choosing his victims?
So far it appeared that the copycat killer had murdered Bethanie and Alexis, and maybe others we didn’t know about. So the real question was, what did Bethanie and Alexis have in common?
I pulled up their case files on my computer and began comparing notes, timelines, relationships. They were both from the East, but from different cities-Bethanie from Athens, Georgia, and Alexis from Roanoke, Virginia. Both had attended college out West for a few months.
Both were killed within days of returning home.
I don’t believe in coincidences, so I made a note to follow up on the school they attended. Maybe the killer had something to do with the college.
And then there was Governor Taylor. How did he fit into everything?
I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose.
Well, since I wasn’t going to Charlotte tonight, maybe I could look into some of these questions and then spend some time reworking the geo profile based on the theory that there were two killers instead of one.
OK. Good. A plan. But first, before anything else, I needed a shower. After hiking up a mountain, dropping into a cave, running to the trailhead wearing a backpack, and having a house blow up next to me, a shower sounded like a really good idea.
After stepping out of the shower and toweling off, I pulled some clothes out of my suitcase and noticed a sheet of paper flutter to the floor.
I knew what it was. Of course I did.
Christie’s letter.
I’ve carried her note with me ever since Valentine’s Day morning when I found it tucked under my pillow less than two weeks before she died. And now, like an addict, I reached for it. I knew what it would do to me if I read it, but I couldn’t help myself. I still read it nearly every day. Even though it feels like someone is pulling nettles through my chest. Because in some strange way, the pain seems to help.
At least I tell myself it does.
I sat down, unfolded the crinkled paper, and let my eyes drink in the words that I already knew by heart.
February 14, 2008 Dearest Patrick, I can still see the lights of the New York City skyline from my window.
