Pandemic

21

WEDNESDAY, 12:15 P.M.

Pulling off the rural road and onto the shoulder ten minutes later, Jack put the Escalade into park. He needed a moment to pull himself together. Although he’d managed to extricate himself from Wei Zhao’s house without causing a scene, he knew that it had been precipitous, and that Wei had certainly noticed he was agitated. Still, the departure had been pleasant enough, with Wei presenting him with a business card and the encouragement to give him a call if Jack had any more questions about the Stewart case or if he had a change of heart about exploring employment opportunities.

The stretch of the two-lane road he was on was completely deserted and lined with dense oaks and maples past their prime in terms of color. There was no traffic in either direction, and the sun was peeking out through the clouds. Jack lowered the driver’s-side window to allow some fresh air to waft into the cab. Along with it came the sound of birds. It was a perfect environment to catch his breath.

Jack knew that he had been a bit out of control over the past week or two and was fully aware he’d been using the Carol Stewart case as a diversion from everything going on at home. What he hadn’t been aware of was his own fragility and instability. His excessive response to Wei’s inappropriate lack of boundaries and violation of personal space scared him. For a brief moment his reptilian brain had almost taken over, and he had had to fight to keep himself from lashing out physically, which would have been a disaster on so many levels. Jack knew that he had a raging physicality that was the real reason he needed the almost nightly, exhaustive run on the b-ball court.

“You’re pathetic,” Jack yelled out the open window. Yet by even saying it, he felt it wasn’t really true except for a fleeting moment in Wei’s dining room. He was confident he was back in control and could now benefit from the incident by being prepared and not letting it happen again. After all, there was nothing that Wei had said that was any kind of secret that couldn’t be found out by anyone who was truly interested. The question was: Why was Wei Zhao interested? The only explanation Jack could imagine was that it had to do with the wish to control him and stop his inquiries, which was why Jack thought he’d been offered a job, all of which made Jack more certain that something out of the ordinary was going on with GeneRx and Dover Valley Hospital.

With a sudden renewed sense of purpose, Jack struggled to get his mobile phone out of his pocket. He turned it on. He saw he had a few voice messages, but he ignored them. Instead, he quickly found Aretha’s number and placed the call. With the phone against his ear, he thought of one of the key questions he’d not had a chance to ask Wei and lamented that he hadn’t — namely, how and why Wei ended up as the executor of Carol Stewart’s estate.

“I hope you are not calling to ask if I have had any luck with the MPS machine,” Aretha said without even saying hello.

“If I thought it would help, I might,” Jack admitted. “No, but I am calling about the same case. Did you by any chance look at the lung secretions with an electron microscope?” It felt good for Jack to talk to a normal, sane person. Ever since he’d walked into the Dover Valley Hospital and had been fawned over, he’d not had that sense.

“I’ve never met someone so single-minded about their work,” Aretha said, and laughed. “No, I did not. We don’t have an electron microscope here at the Public Health Laboratory. It would be nice, though. Perhaps you could put in a good word for us with the City Council.”

“I’ll do that next time I meet with them,” Jack joked. “The reason I ask is that I was told someone else did out here in New Jersey. What they found was no viruses present. None. Does that surprise you?”

“Certainly it surprises me, especially with what I’m seeing with the human kidney cell tissue culture. There’s virus in there, that I’m sure of.”

“Could it be a contaminant?” Jack asked.

“I suppose it’s possible,” Aretha said. “But I have pretty good technique, or at least my professors thought so.”

“What if we inoculate several more cultures,” Jack asked. “Just to be certain.”

“No problem,” Aretha said. “Unless you or your mortuary techs were the source of the contamination when you did the collection.”

“I hear you,” Jack told her. “But if it were a contaminant, it would be some garden-variety virus.”

“True, which we will be able to easily detect. I’ll try to do that this afternoon.”

“Thanks, Aretha.”

“Are you going to run tonight again?” Aretha asked.

“I might have to,” Jack said without elaborating.

After disconnecting, Jack checked his voicemail. There were two messages. One from Laurie and one from Hank Monroe, head of Identification. He was relieved there hadn’t been one from Bart Arnold, as it meant that there had not been another subway death for forty-eight hours, certainly a good sign in respect to the pandemic threat. He then listened to Laurie’s message. It was short and sweet, with a tone of mild irritation: “Give me a call!” It had come in two hours earlier. He shrugged. That couldn’t be good news, as she was probably wondering where the hell he was. Thinking it might be best to put off responding until he got back to the OCME, he went to the second voicemail from Hank. It was more promising: “I have an address you might find useful. Give me a call!” Jack did just that.

“I’ve managed to get an address for Carol Stewart,” Hank said, when he heard it was Jack calling.

“We already have an address,” Jack said. “The person who came in last evening to identify her gave us her Brooklyn address.”

“It’s an old address of hers,” Hank said. “I got it from her New Jersey driver’s license. It’s Fourteen Mercer Way in Denville, New Jersey. Since it’s an old license, my thought was that she grew up there, meaning it’s where her parents live. I checked it out. There is a Stewart family living there presently, Robert and Marge Stewart.”

“Thanks,” Jack said. “You’re right. That may be useful information.”

“I thought so. It makes one ask why they didn’t come in to make the ID instead of Agnes Mitchel.”

“You are absolutely right,” Jack repeated. He again thanked Hank and disconnected. For another minute he sat there listening to the birds in the forest. Before heading back to the city, he had planned on going back to the local medical examiner’s office to find out what the medical examiner had found on Carol’s second autopsy and what he knew about the motorcycle victim, but with this new information, he changed his mind. Google Maps told him 14 Mercer Way was a short dash down Interstate 80, and he could be there in eleven minutes. Despite there being no guarantee that he would find anyone home in the middle of a weekday, he impulsively raised the driver’s-side window, put the Escalade in gear, and set out for Denville.

By the time Jack found the correct house and parked, it was almost twenty minutes later. But on the plus side, he found both Stewarts at home. It was Marge Stewart who answered the door chime. She was a tall, severe-looking woman with her hair parted down the center of her head and pulled tight in a bun. She looked vaguely familiar to Jack in her white-collared dark-brown housedress, but he couldn’t place her until she was joined by Robert Stewart. Jack then realized the two of them bore a striking and uncanny resemblance to the couple in Grant Wood’s painting American Gothic, minus the pitchfork.

“Sorry to bother you folks,” Jack said. As he gave his name, he flashed his NYC medical examiner badge without saying he was a medical examiner and from a different state. His hope was to speed up and encourage cooperation with the idea they might think of him as a law enforcement agent. He wanted it to be a short visit. “Are you the parents of Carol Weston Stewart?”

“We are,” Robert said. He was as stern-looking as his wife and wearing a clerical collar. He had a tight, almost lipless mouth. “But that is all we are.”

“Excuse me?” Jack questioned. He’d heard but didn’t quite know how to interpret the comment.

“We have had nothing to do with her for years,” Robert said. “So if you’re here because she has caused trouble, it’s not our responsibility.”

“I see,” Jack said. He was talking through a screen door, but it didn’t seem as if the Stewarts were about to open it. “I can assure you that I’m only here for some information. Did you know your daughter had some serious health issues?”

“We had heard something to that effect,” Robert said. “It was God’s will. We know she had problems with her heart.”

“Did you know she had had a heart transplant?”

“No, we did not.”

“May I ask if the source of your estrangement was her sexual preference?” Jack asked, trying again to be as diplomatic as possible, even if it wasn’t his nature. Even so, he knew he was pushing the limits of what he could ask these total strangers, even with the help of his medical examiner badge.

“Of course it was,” Robert said bitterly. “Her behavior from age thirteen on was an affront to God. Homosexuality is an abomination and a violation of the Seventh Commandment. We could not have that in our house.”

“I see,” Jack said. He was going to ask if they were aware of her death, but he couldn’t see any point. He thought it would only harden their self-righteous, narrow-minded indignation about her sexual orientation. “Thank you for your time.”

As Jack climbed back into the SUV he felt a renewed sadness for Carol Stewart. Having to deal with her bigoted parents must have caused her significant pain as a teenager. Jack had a knee-jerk negative reaction to hyper-religious people, no matter what the religion. In his former life he’d been brought up in a Catholic family, but one that was less than perfect as far as following the dogma. By the time he’d gotten through college he’d become more of an agnostic, wanting to believe there was an organizing, moral force but unsure of what it was. Then, after the catastrophe with his first family, he’d become an avowed atheist, fully convinced a loving God wouldn’t kill children or give them neuroblastoma or autism.

Meeting the Stewarts had only confirmed his feelings about religion. But the quick visit had not been a total waste of effort. He had gained more information about Carol. What he didn’t know was what role it would play in the disaster that was about to unfold.