Patient Zero

Chapter Seventy-Three

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 7:07 A.M.

JERRY SPENCER WAS pissed.

“Hey,” I said. “Thanks for comin-”

“I thought I told you to leave this shit alone, Joe.”

“No, you told me that you hadn’t heard about the DMS and told me that I hadn’t, either.”

“Same damn thing. A smarter cop would have backed off, and I don’t appreciate being dragged into this. I made that clear to Church and that British broad and I thought I’d made it clear to you.”

“The British broad’s name is Major Courtland,” I snapped. “And too fucking bad if you don’t want to be involved. Look, I know you’re short and you’ve got your whole retirement mapped out, but this is national security. This is a crisis on a par with nine-eleven, and in a lot of ways it’s worse. So stop whining about it, grow a set, and help us bag these rat-bastards.”

He tried to switch gears. “Why’d you have them drag me into this? FBI’s got better crime scene investigators than me.”

“Balls. You may be a world-class pain in the ass, Jerry, but you’re also the best of the best. I got no time for second team. You got the magic and you were available. You want me to beg? Is that it?”

We glared at each other, but then I could see something shift behind his eyes. Something I’d said had hit the mark. He stepped back and flapped an arm at me. “Ah shit!”

“So what does that mean? Are you in?”

We were inside the shower room of the crab plant and he looked down at the floor as he absently rubbed the spot on his chest where bullets had cracked his sternum. “Thirty years, Joe. Thirty years on the job and I never so much as caught a scratch. Not a splinter, and then that asshole damn near punches my ticket. If I hadn’t had the Kevlar I’d be dead.”

“Yeah, man, I know. Upside is that you did have the Kevlar. Universe threw you a bone.”

“Christ, you been reading The Secret or some shit?” He scowled at me and then sighed long and deeply, wincing a little as he did so. Then he gave me a crooked little smile. “You’re a total pain in my ass you know that? You at least save that Cigarette boat for me?”

“Um, well, no,” I said, “. we kind of blew it up.”

“Crap.” He turned and looked around at the ruined shell of the shower room. “All right, dammit, let’s get this dog and pony show on the road.”

I offered him my hand and we shook. “Thanks, Jer. I owe you on this.”

“You owe me a frigging boat.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said, wondering if Church had a friend in that industry.

There was an FBI forensics investigator on hand to assist Jerry and I was amused to see that it was Agent Simchek-my old friend Buckethead, who’d braced me at the beach and dragged me into this mess. He didn’t return my nod and only gave Jerry a hard and unsympathetic stare. The FBI never likes playing second chair to ordinary cops. Simchek carried a full evidence collection kit and an air of disapproval.

I wasn’t fluffing Jerry’s ego when I said he was the best. I’ve worked with him on the task force and on a few other cases that had connections between Washington and Baltimore. I’m good with a crime scene, but Jerry is better than me or anyone I ever heard of. If there was any way I could persuade him to sign on to the DMS as head of forensics I was going to give it a hell of a try. Church said that I could have whatever I wanted.

Jerry looked at the rows of lockers behind which Skip had been hiding. “There was a struggle here.” He squatted down, careful of his chest, and looked at the floor and shone a penlight at different angles to evaluate the shadows cast by dust and debris. He asked Simchek for evidence markers, and received a stack of small plastic A-frames. Jerry put four of the numbered orange markers down on the floor and started to get up, then settled back down on his upturned heels and narrowed his eyes for a moment, then grunted and said, “Clever.”

Simchek and I looked at each other. Jerry frowned for a moment and then added a fifth marker, right between the first and second set of lockers. That’s when I saw it but I can’t pretend that I ever would have seen it if Jerry hadn’t spotted it first. It’s why I asked for him. Simchek, to give him credit, was only a half-step behind me.

“Is that a door?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” Jerry said as he stood. “I understand one of your boys went missing here at the infiltration point. There’s no other way out of this room except the corridor and the doorway that they blasted. Scuff marks pretty clearly show that he was using the first set of lockers as a shooting blind. I figured that unless he’s a damn fool there had to be another access point, otherwise it would have been impossible to sneak up on an armed sentry. Another door made the most sense, so I looked for one and voilà! But we won’t open it until the bomb squad checks it out. But I’ll bet you a shiny nickel that this puppy opens silently.”

I made the call and we moved on but stopped almost immediately as Jerry and Simchek both had their first look at what filled the corridor. The air was thick with blowflies. Corpses were sprawled singly or lay together as if in some grotesque dance; they slumped against the walls or lay in pieces. Beyond the first few bodies was a mountain range of the dead. The air was heavy with the drone of blowflies.

“Holy ” Simchek’s voice failed him and he closed his eyes. Jerry sagged and almost leaned against the wall for support. After a few moments Jerry took a bottle of Vicks VapoRub from his pocket, dabbed some on his upper lip, and handed it without comment to me; I took some and gave it to Simchek. Even with the menthol goo blocking out the smell the scene was almost too intense to handle. We literally had to crawl over the bodies in order to get to the far end of the corridor. That’s an experience I knew was going to stay with me.

When we got to the spur of the hall where the bomb had gone off I saw that a lot of the evidence-the clothes and other items-were gone, blown to atoms along with several members of Alpha Team. All that was left in some places were swatches of cloth and smears of red. Jerry stood for a long time and looked at the clothing that remained, whistling a soundless song.

Simchek leaned close to me and whispered, “He run out of ideas?”

Without turning to us Jerry said, “You want to tell an Italian mother how to make gravy?”

Simchek frowned at me. “What?”

“He means shut the fuck up,” I interpreted, and Simchek lapsed into a wounded silence.

Jerry went back to walking the scene but he didn’t say a word. His mood had downshifted and perhaps the scope of this thing had finally sunk all the way in.

Finally he said, “This is going to take a while, Joe let me work it alone, okay?”

“Sure, Jer,” I said, and left him to it.