Infected

Murray shook his head.

"Ate a bullet. Used an old.45 — wasn’t much left of his face."

Murray’s head sank, and a long sigh hissed from his body. "My G.o.d, I hadn’t heard."

"Imagine that," Dew said. "He’s only been in rehab a half dozen times in the last four years. He crashed hard, Murray. He crashed hard and he needed his friends."

"Why didn’t you call me?"

"Would you have come?"

Murray’s silence answered the question. He looked up from the floor to return Dew’s stone-eyed stare. "So we’re the last ones, then."

"Yep," Dew said. "Just the two of us. Golly gee, it’s a good thing we stayed so close all these years. Now we’ve got each other to rely on. Let’s get to the f.u.c.king point, L.T. What do you want?"

Murray pulled out a manila folder and pa.s.sed it to Dew. It was labeled PROJECT TANGRAM. "We’ve got what could be a major problem."

"Murray, if this is just some bulls.h.i.+t where I get shot at so your career can advance, I’m not doing it."

"I told you it’s not like that this time, Dew. This is serious."

"Yeah? Batting cleanup again, Murray? Who gave you their dirty laundry this time?"

"I can’t tell you."

Dew stared hard at Murray. L.T. didn’t mind dropping names, that was for d.a.m.n sure. It all clicked at once: Murray couldn’t say who, and he’d called the one man who would do whatever it took to get the job done.

"Holy s.h.i.+t," Dew said. "This is from the big man, isn’t it? This is some secret presidential action, am I right?"

Murray cleared his throat. "Dew, I said I can’t tell you."

The cla.s.sic nondenial denial. Murray’s way of confirming Dew’s theory without actually saying the words.

Dew opened the folder and started browsing the contents. There were only four files: three case reports and an overview. Dew read the overview twice before he looked up, his expression ashen and disbelieving. He looked back to the report and started quoting some of the more fantastical phrases.

" ‘Biological behavior manipulation’? ‘Bioengineered organism’? ‘Infectious terrorist

Murray shook his head.

"This is bulls.h.i.+t," Dew said. "You think that some terrorist created a... let’s see here... ‘bioengineered organism’ to make people psychotic?"

"That’s not exactly what it says, Dew. We’ve got three cases so far where normal people have contracted some kind of growth, and shortly afterward they became psychotic. We don’t know for certain that this is a terrorist activity, but I think you appreciate that we have to act like it is. We can’t be caught sitting on our hands."

Dew read. Charlotte Wilson’s report had a picture attached, a Polaroid that showed a bluish triangular mark on her shoulder. The picture attached to Gary Leeland’s file showed a scowling old man. A hateful, suspicious expression marred his wrinkled, stubbly face. The lumpy, bluish triangle on his neck accentuated the unpleasant expression. "So this thing turns people into killers?"

"It made Charlotte Wilson, a seventy-year-old grandmother, kill her own son with a butcher knife. It made Blaine Tanarive kill his wife and two young daughters with a pair of scissors. It made Gary Leeland, a fifty-seven-year-old man, set his own hospital bed on fire, killing himself and three other patients.

"Could this be coincidence? Did we check the background of these people? Any mental conditions?"

"I’ve checked it out, Dew. I wouldn’t have called you in if I hadn’t. In all these cases, the victims had no history of violence, no medical conditions, no psychological problems. All their friends and neighbors said they were good people. The only thing they have in common, in fact, is the sudden onset of acute paranoid behavior and those triangular growths."

"What about foreign occurrences? Anyone else dealing with something similar?"

Murray again shook his head, a solemn look on his face. "Nothing. And we’ve looked, Dew, we’ve looked hard. As far as we know, we’re the only country with cases like this."

Dew nodded slowly, now understanding why Murray chose to see a conspiracy amid the carnage. "But how could terrorists come up with something like this?"

"I don’t think terrorists invented it," Murray said. "But terrorists didn’t invent nuclear warheads, sarin gas or pa.s.senger jets. Someone created this, and that’s all that matters."

Dew reread the report. If it was a terrorist weapon, it was a doozy. It made car bombs and random plane hijackings look worthless by comparison: imagine a country where you never know if your friends or neighbors or coworkers are suddenly going to snap and try to kill everyone in sight. People wouldn’t go to work, wouldn’t leave their houses without a gun. You would suspect that everyone was a possible killer. h.e.l.l, if parents murdered their own children, no one was safe. Such a weapon would cripple America.

Dew reached for another Tootsie Roll. "Murray, this couldn’t be one of our weapons, could it? Something that maybe accidentally-on-purpose got a bit out of control?"

Murray was shaking his head before Dew finished the sentence. "No, no way. I checked everything, and I mean everything. This isn’t ours, Dew, I give you my word."