As in the original series, the organisms were circular in shape. As in the originals, their envelopes were ringed with binding proteins that enabled them to attach to the outer membranes of host cells. But the architecture of their nucleocapsids — the core material within the viral envelopes that held the genomic code for their replication and entry into the cell — showed a subtle variance.
Studying the set of images he’d isolated from Roger Gordian’s bloodstream, Eric could see none of the roundedness typical of the nucleocapsids on the database specimens of
Eric couldn’t go beyond guessing whether this anomaly represented a difference in the genetic makeup of the separate specimens until a polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, probe was conducted on Gordian’s samples, and the actual RNA sequences could be compared against the codes of all other known hantaviruses. But his immunogobulin capture assays — fluorescent dye screening tests developed in the late 1980s that produced results within three or four hours — had shown weak positives for several catalogued strains of the disease, with the brightest green glow on his lab slide appearing for
His eyes hurting, his stomach hollow, he sat there tensely in the lab, frozen behind his computer as dawn crept its slow way into the sky outside. He could say very little absolutely except that Roger Gordian was in serious trouble. But he believed in his bones that if Gordian didn’t have
That a close relative to the disease without a name, one nobody had known about, had just shown up on the doorstep.
The doe strode softly into the thick stand of trees, her tracks like broken hearts in the fallen snow. Food was plentiful here, the low-hanging pine boughs bunched with cones, the needle buds on the saplings still succulent, only beginning to brown in their cold-weather dormancy.
Scanning a moment for predators, she saw nothing disturb the vegetation, heard nothing except the hushed whisper of the breeze. Then she lowered her head and tore at the young trees with her flat, blunt teeth, lacking incisors to bite into them.
The knife slashed up from beneath the dark shelf of a branch, plunged hilt-deep into the softness of her throat, then slashed crosswise once and again. Arterial and venous blood gushed over the animal’s white down and stained the snow under her front hooves mingled shades of red. She collapsed heavily, the brightness of life frozen in eyes already dead.
Kuhl knelt to pull his knife from the wound, traces of vapor steaming from its wet blade.
For the first time in weeks, he felt released.
Gordian awoke, gasping for air.
Feverish and disoriented, unable at first to remember where he was, he felt certain a hand was clapped over his nose and mouth. Then he got his bearings. He was in his hospital room. His bed light off in the dimness of early morning. A thin crack of illumination spilling under his door from the outer corridor.
Air.
He needed air.
Gordian struggled to pull down a breath, his body arched off his mattress from the effort. But his lungs didn’t respond. They felt heavy and clogged. A muffled gurgling noise escaped him. Air. He fumbled under his chin for the oxygen mask. Couldn’t find it. He reached down to his chest and still couldn’t locate it. Groped about on his right side, where he sometimes clipped it to the safety rail. Not there.
The oxygen mask. He needed the mask. Where was it?
His mouth opened wide, he swung his arm up over his head, found the feed hose running from the wall, and with a surge of relief slid his fingers down along its length. Feeling for the mask at the end of it—
His newborn relief suddenly plummeted away into confusion.
The mask…
He was already wearing it.
He cupped his hand over its curved plastic surface, pressed it against his face, drew hard. Air hissed through the tube. He could hear it over the strangled shreds of sound coming out of him. Hear it flowing into his mask… but that was where it seemed to stop. His throat, his chest, were blocked.
Desperate, choking, feeling as if his chest were about to explode, he clawed for the emergency button at his side to summon a nurse, hoping to God one was very nearby.
EIGHTEEN
The condominium subleased by Donald Palardy belonged to a large block of units UpLink International had acquired to house its midlevel employees in one of the newer planned developments in Sunnydale — a suburban community with the conceit of a major city, about fifteen miles south of San Jose.
By the time he got into his car to drive down Wednesday morning, Ricci had started wondering if Megan and Scull could have been right about him making too much of Palardy’s absence. Maybe Palardy had put on a well- rehearsed sick voice when he’d phoned Hernandez to say he wouldn’t be at work the previous Monday. Maybe he’d met a hot number in a bar and spontaneously decided to take her on a cruise to nowhere. Maybe he would be in bed with his phone unplugged, munching on potato chips and watching game shows or reruns of sixties sitcoms on cable television. In hindsight, Ricci’s all-fall-down comment about Palardy and Gordian seemed a bit silly, even to him. And his finger-snapping had made it sound sillier. Of course, everyone had agreed that something wasn’t kosher about Palardy’s continued dereliction after three days, and felt it was at least worth checking out.
His thoughts had gone on in that mode until he finally located Palardy’s condo after several wrong turns leading onto streets named for different native flowers that all sounded alike to him, past rows of two-family stucco buildings that all looked alike.
Then Ricci stopped questioning himself and started noticing things. It was a mental shift to a scrupulous objectivity that grounded every good cop the moment he arrived at the scene of an investigation. And Ricci doubted even the Boston Police Department officials who’d once thrown him into the political winds would have disputed that he’d been among their best.
As he rolled his Jetta into the driveway, his first observation was that Palardy’s van was in his carport. His second was that Palardy hadn’t brought in his newspapers for a few days — there were three lying on his walk in their plastic delivery bags. That could mean he was home and too sick to bother picking them up or that he’d gone off somewhere without his vehicle, although he might own more than a single set of wheels.
He strode to the door, rang the bell, and waited. No one answered. He fingered the buzzer again, keeping it depressed a little longer. Still nobody. Then he knocked without getting a response. After a few minutes, he leaned over to peek through the glass panels on either side of the door, but they were covered with louvered screens. The shade was likewise fully drawn over the front window.
Ricci buzzed again, let another minute pass. He heard a sound from inside, listened, realized it was the racket of a cuckoo clock. Palardy didn’t come to the door.
Ricci tried the doorknob. Locked. He bent to examine it out of old habit. A typical key-in cylinder lock. He could retract the bolt with a credit card in ten seconds flat. In fact, the door had been opened that way before, judging by the scratches on the rim and doorframe. That prompted another observation. The scratches looked as if they might be fresh.
He considered this a moment. The marks might not have the slightest significance. Ricci would have been hard pressed to count how often he had accidentally gotten locked out of his own home and used a charge card to work his way inside. It was easy once you got the knack. Anybody could do it. Every cop he’d known. And Palardy, being a trained countersnoop, it seemed reasonable to assume he wouldn’t need to hire a locksmith if he forgot his house keys somewhere. Not with a Minnie Mouse job like this. On the other hand, Palardy had unexplainedly
