'Never heard of that either,' he said, jiggling the spare into place and spinning the lugs back on. 'Maybe I should pay more attention to where I'm living.'
'I suspect you have more important things on your mind. I'd like to pay you for helping me. I'm very-'
'Nonsense. I could use a cup of coffee, though, if you'd like.'
'I'm sorry. I would very much like to learn about your work. But I really must get going. I'm terribly late.'
'Hey, no problem. My name's Darryl. It's been a pleasure.'
'Rosa,' she said. 'Thank you so much.'
The man smiled warmly, shook her hand, and then hobbled back to his car and drove off. Rosa glanced at her watch. Fifteen minutes was all it had taken.
'Dios hace las cosas,' she said as she slid back behind the wheel, and headed into Gloucester. God provides.
Two sets of service station directions and two missed turns later, Rosa found Breen Street. It was tucked among a tangle of narrow waterfront byways that were paved, but were probably still laid out exactly as they were when the Revolutionary War began. Fezler's Marine Railway and Automotive was a huge, decaying, shingled barn, flanked by two equally dilapidated wooden warehouses. The whole area seemed like a tinderbox-a conflagration just waiting to happen. Rosa drove nearly two blocks away before she found a street wide enough for parking.
Both of the large street-side doors, and a smaller entrance just around the corner of the building, were closed. Rosa knocked once, waited, knocked again, waited, and finally entered, shutting the door behind her. It was as if she had taken a step back in time.
The inside of Fezler's Marine Railway was as cluttered and dimly lit as it was spacious. Tools, some fairly modern, many antique, filled the barnside walls. Lines and chains and hauling blocks of various sizes hung everywhere. The atmosphere was heavy with the pungent odor of oil, grease, and gasoline. To one side of the shop was a large rolltop desk, cluttered with invoices, magazines, and catalogs. Above the rolltop was the same calendar Rosa had seen in Elsie Richardson's bedroom. From somewhere on the far side of the shop, classical music was playing. Almost certainly Mozart, Rosa thought.
'Hello?' she called out.
No one responded. There was an enclosed loft on the water side, accessed by an open staircase that climbed up one wall. Rosa glanced upward at the moment someone closed the door at the top of the stairs.
'Hello,' she called again. 'Is anyone here?'
'In the back,' a gravelly voice hollered.
Rosa followed the voice toward the music and the water. The huge doors at the rear of the building were open to the harbor. A set of steel rails rose up from the water, cut through an opening in a narrow platform, and leveled off on the floor of the shop. Two feet above the tracks hung a large marine engine. It was suspended perhaps thirty feet from the ceiling by a complicated series of pulleys and lines. Standing beside the engine, working on it, was a woman. She was not impressively tall, but she was physically imposing in almost every other respect. Big was the only word that came to Rosa's mind. Not fat. Not even heavy-although she most certainly was that. Just big. Her broad shoulders and back splayed the straps of her grease-stained bib overalls. The sleeves of her black T-shirt were stretched to the limit by her arms. Her hair, beneath a Mobil cap, was tied back in a short ponytail.
'Welcome,' she said. She glanced up at Rosa just long enough to size her up and then returned her attention to the engine.
'I'm looking for Martha Fezler,' Rosa said.
'You found her.' She loosened several bolts and dropped them into a coffee can half filled with an acrid- smelling liquid. 'Fezler's famous degreaser,' she explained. 'Gasoline, boric acid, and just the right amount of saliva.' She looked up at Rosa again, smiled mischievously, and winked. 'The boom box is over there by the stairs. Feel free to turn it down if you want me to hear what you have to say.'
Rosa did as the woman requested. When she returned, Martha Fezler had taken hold of a heavy, oil-stained line and was hoisting the massive engine up over her head.
'How heavy is that?' Rosa asked.
'Without the reverse gear? Oh, two-fifty, three hundred maybe.'
'I'm very impressed.'
'No need to be. With the block and fall setup I have here, I could lift two of these at once if I ever really wanted to or had to… At least I think I could.'
She wrapped the greasy line just a single time around a cleat on the wall and tucked a loop under to secure it. Rosa could not believe what she was witnessing.
'Just that one loop will hold it up there?' Rosa asked as the woman reached overhead and loosened the oil pan.
'Will if no one messes with it,' Martha said. 'And since I work alone here, no one does.'
Her moonish face was unlined and open. And although her manner was brusque and her voice like sandpaper, there was an appealing quality to her. Rosa introduced herself.
'Miss Fezler, I need your help,' she said.
'It's Martha. And unless you've got car or boat trouble, I don't see how I can-'
'Martha, I need to find your brother Warren. It's very, very urgent.'
Martha lowered her hands and wiped them with a towel that seemed incapable of absorbing any more grease. For just a moment, Rosa thought she was going to deny having a brother and demand that she leave. Then, just as quickly, the woman's expression changed.
'Maybe we ought to go sit down,' she said. 'Would you like some coffee?'
The small, metal-top table overlooked the placid harbor from a spot just to one side of the rails. Seated across from Martha Fezler, Rosa traced her involvement in the DIC cases from her arrival at the Medical Center of Boston, through her discovery of Constanza Hidalgo's diary, and finally to Ken Mulholland, and their efforts to pin down the source of the virus CRV113.
'I believe that somehow the women I have been investigating became infected with the virus that your brother created,' she concluded. 'It is quite possible that some component of this diet powder they all were taking was contaminated. I don't know. I hope Warren does. Once the virus got into the women, their natural defenses battled back, but never completely eliminated it. It remained in balance with their bodies, until the stress of labor upset that balance.'
'How many women have died from this?'
'Two that we know of. And their babies. A third woman-the one we cultured the virus from-lost her baby and almost died. I fear she is not going to be the last case, Martha. That's why I need to find your brother.'
Martha Fezler stared out at the water and the lengthening afternoon shadows. Finally she handed a pencil and notepad to Rosa.
'Write down your name, where you come from, the name of the virus, and the name of that disease,' she said. She waited until Rosa had complied, then tore off the sheet and slipped it into her overall pocket. 'Wait here,' she said.
She lumbered up the staircase and disappeared through the door to the loft. Rosa doodled absently on the pad as she watched a pair of gulls do strident battle over a mussel. Only when she glanced down did she realize that she was shading in the carefully blocked letters BART.
Five minutes passed. Once Rosa swore she heard Martha Fezler shouting. The gulls resolved their dispute and glided off across the harbor. Finally the loft door opened and Warren Fezler emerged, followed by his sister. He was even slighter than Rosa remembered from the time he dashed past her on the MCB campus. Compared to him, Martha looked positively hulking. He approached Rosa and smiled sheepishly.
'S-sorry I've given you s-such a hard time,' he said. 'I've been v-very frightened.'
He took the seat opposite Rosa. Martha brought over another folding chair and settled onto it, facing the tracks.
'Warren says it's okay if I stay for this,' she said.
'That's fine,' Rosa replied. 'Believe me, Warren, coming forward is the right thing to do.'
'Even if I g-get k-killed?'
'We'll have to see to it that doesn't happen. When my department head finds out what's going on, you'll get all the protection you need. If I'm right, Warren, others have already died from this virus. There's a good chance
