Part 18 (1/2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

Temecula.

Sam pulled the truck from the garage and parked it on the drive. The moon hung cool and aloof between thin sheets of blue cloud, casting come-and-go shadows under the trees that fronted the house. He checked the tires and the oil, then did another inventory of the horse trailer's contents. They were well-packed but there was no margin for error. An accident in this truck would likely prove fatal to anyone within fifty yards.

He moved to the front and opened the trailer's side door to look at the launcher. It stood just over five feet high, including the plate-steel base.

Purity of heart is to will one thing. Kierkegaard.

Everything was set. Except for Tommy. He could not allow Tommy to reach out again. That would be an impurity.

He quietly closed the trailer door and latched it, then put on his own combination lock, a big one.

No sense letting anyone get at the pretty horses.

Sam gripped the vial in his left hand and slowly pushed open the door to Tommy's room. The small nightlight that Tommy always left on cast a dim but rea.s.suring glow. All the J-Los watched Sam with seductive smiles. And in the east corner, surrounded by his celebrity angels, Tommy lay sleeping as he always slept-deeply and innocently, making his little dog noises.

Four or five times, Sam had stood here with this vial in his hand, trying to make up his mind. In his other life, facing someone who had done what Tommy had done and who had the potential to do so much more, Sam would not have hesitated to put a pistol to the man-boy's head and pull the trigger...

Now, the time had come for a gentler, slower farewell.

Sam had been too ambitious. He could live with cutting back on the number of targets. The point would be made.

Tommy's work was done.

He moved silently to the side of the bed, despite the plastic suit, avoiding the obstacles around the bed, the crumpled papers and candy wrappers, the cans that had once held chili, Tommy's favorite food when Sam was away. He could not smell the room now but he remembered the aroma well: like the monkey house at a zoo. Tommy's sheets had not been changed since Sam had done a load of wash five weeks ago.

Sam opened the screw cap on the vial, held the vial a foot above Tommy's head, tipped it, and let the powder drift. It fell in a small dense cloud, billowing almost like steam but fading at the edges, seeming to evaporate in its fineness, its purity. It fell with such a lightness that Tommy could not feel it and would not smell it, though he might notice it on his sheets and pillow in the morning. If Tommy turned and tossed, the powder would be smoothed into the fibers, where it would blend in and get lost, finer than any household dust.

Tommy breathed-snuck, uck. Sam watched as he vacuumed part of a billow into his nose. His cheeks puffed and a little cloud blew out between his lips like yellowish cigarette smoke. It rose up and reversed at a wave of Sam's hand, then drifted across Tommy's eyelids. Every motion made it lift from the smooth pale skin in tendrils that returned with caressing tenacity.

It wants to go home.

Tommy's masterpiece.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

Snohomish County.

Traveling on the s.h.i.+ny, empty highway, walls of silent, dripping trees on either side, William watched Rebecca at the steering wheel and tried to figure out who she was.

'I can drive,' he offered.

'I always drive,' she said.

Her face was thin and strong and attractive, good cheekbones supporting skin that showed no signs of laxity and had even firmed a little under stress-those tight dimples. She did not look as if she smiled often, neither did she have frown lines. Her tawny pupils were surrounded by a startle of whites, and when she looked at William he could not decide whether she might be a harsh mistress or a sympathetic schoolmarm, thank you ma'am, you're sh.o.r.e beautiful.

He cut off that line of thought-unproductive, unprofessional, and he wanted to keep his b.a.l.l.s. 'How long have you worked bioterror?'

'Twenty years, off and on, mostly off the last four years,' Rebecca said.

'What's that about a glove?' he asked.

'Hatch Friskmaster,' Rebecca said. 'Left hand. I borrowed it from Arizona. It's being examined at Quantico.'

'My father sent me a pair when I joined NYPD. Didn't wear them much.'

'You never worked narcotics, did you?'

'No,' William said.

'Frank Chao found skin cells mixed with fragments of silicone in the fingertips,' Rebecca said. 'Clear silicone caulk is one way to hide prints. It works-for a while.'

'Tell me about your anthrax theory. I wish there was a file or something to read.'

'I a.s.sume you're up on Amerithrax.'

'September and October, 2001,' William said. 'Envelopes filled with anthrax spores sent through the U.S. Mail. Five dead. Never found the culprit but they-we-did make life h.e.l.l for some oddb.a.l.l.s with ties to weapons research. Until about six years ago. Then-nothing. Nothing I've heard, anyway.'

Rebecca nodded. 'The experts told us it was impossible to manufacture such high-grade material outside of a major defense lab. The thinking back then was it had to be some group or possibly a brilliant individual from Fort Detrick or Porton Down, maybe Rhodesia or South Africa-scientists with formal top-secret training and access to labs. Microbiologists working for us traced genetic signatures in the bacillus-anthrax is a kind of bacteria found in soil, amazingly similar to gardener's BT-'

'I know,' William said.

'Traced them to the so-called Ames strain. Not actually from the University of Ames, Iowa, as it turned out, but isolated from a cow in Texas in 1981 and sent to a number of labs, including Porton Down, but not to Iraq or Russia. So we weren't dealing with another Sverdlovsk, 1979. That was good-Amerithrax wasn't mailing drug-resistant spores...'

Rebecca fell silent for a moment, then murmured, 'After a while, I just learned to never touch my eyes, my nose. Always wash before going to the bathroom-and after. My hands got all dry, like a doctor's. I carried antibiotic skin cream wherever I went. Even affected my s.e.x life. After a while, guys started to wonder about my little habits.'

'Price to pay,' William said.

'But I haven't had a cold or the flu in ten years.' She smiled. 'What's the cost-benefit ratio? There's an island near Scotland that's been off limits for forty years because of WW-2 research. The Brits spread anthrax over sheep in cages. Within three days, the sheep got sick and died.'

'Gruinard,' William said. 'But that wasn't Ames, either.'

Rebecca nodded appreciatively. 'A scholar.'

'I heard they finally decontaminated it in 1986.'

'I doubt the real estate will ever be worth much. The spores can stay in the soil for centuries. Anthrax is a nasty little bug with a hardened spore and simple habits, all of them painful or deadly. One scientist I talked to called it ”the devil in the dirt.”.'

'Aren't there vaccines?'

Rebecca nodded. 'All sorts, plus antibiotics. Now, if someone's pretty far gone, they can also use something called Gamma Lysin. But n.o.body's ever convinced an entire country to get vaccinated. So we vaccinate first responders-doctors, nurses-and soldiers, off and on, who might be exposed. But the focus is off now. We haven't heard much about anthrax for years.'

'You think It's going to happen again?'