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“Be my guest,” said Johnson. “You should’ve spoken up sooner. I’d’ve been happy to let you go in there and fish it out of the sink for us.”
The speaker fell silent for a few seconds. “Look, I’m glad you guys have secured it. I would have taken it a little slower, called in some more people and equipment—”
“—and generated two or three days of paralysis and panic doing it that way,” said Johnson. “We safed an extremely hot source in about an hour. We have years of experience here dealing with radioisotopes. If something like this had to happen, it’s hard to imagine a better-equipped place for it to happen than UT Medical Center. So: now that we’ve safed it for you, what does TEMA propose to do with a hundred curies of iridium-192?”
“We’ll have a staff meeting in the morning to discuss the options,” said Wilhoit. “Whoever owns the source is the culpable party, and they have a responsibility to collect and dispose of it.”
“And you think the ‘culpable party’ is going to be eager to step forward,” said Johnson, “eager to own up to one man’s death and four people’s exposure in the morgue? Meanwhile — as we wait for this ‘culpable party’ to step forward to say ‘Arrest me, and please sue me for millions of dollars, too’—do you plan on stashing this in your attic?”
The TEMA official fell silent again. “The Department of Energy,” he finally said. “DOE has a Radiological Assistance team based over in Oak Ridge. I’ll ask the governor to ask the feds to take it off our hands.”
“Sounds great,” said Johnson. “But at the risk of sounding like a broken record: Until DOE gets here, would you mind if we lock it up in a hot cell? That seems a little more secure than the frickin’ hallway it’s sitting in right now.”
Two minutes and a little fence-mending later, Johnson trundled the box to the elevator and up to a hot cell — a massive box of lead and leaded glass, equipped with robotic manipulator arms — built to handle powerful radiopharmaceuticals without risk to the hands and bone marrow of technicians and pharmacists.
It was a shame Garcia hadn’t known to conduct Leonard Novak’s autopsy inside a hot cell. Garcia might have looked like a mad scientist, wielding robotic arms to dissect a corpse. But better a mad scientist than a maimed or dying doctor.
CHAPTER 7
The knock on my office door made me jump, and I realized that I must have nodded off. Miranda and I had spent several hours with Carmen Garcia. Around midnight we’d returned to her husband’s hospital room, where we’d stayed until it was time for our 7 A.M. blood sample. Carmen had been terrified to learn that her husband — who had left home that morning as usual, kissing her and their baby goodbye in the kitchen after breakfast — was now a hospital patient, his hands and possibly even his life jeopardized by one of the bodies he had autopsied.
Garcia had served as the medical examiner for less than a year now; he’d been hired from Dallas to take Jess Carter’s place when Jess was killed. At first I’d disliked Garcia — he’d struck me as stuffy and condescending — but I soon realized that what I’d mistaken for stuffiness was actually just a veneer of formality, maybe even shyness. A slight, handsome man, he’d grown up in a well-to-do Mexico City family before being sent to the United States for college and medical school. His wife Carmen was a Colombian beauty; their Latino genes had combined to produce a gorgeous toddler, Tomas, who had a thick shock of curly black hair and enormous brown eyes. Miranda had taken to babysitting for Tomas one evening a week. She claimed it was so the boy’s harried parents could relax over dinner and a movie, but I suspected it was because she was so smitten with the child.
Another knock; another awakening. I had fallen back asleep after the first knock. “Sorry,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Come in.”
“How’s Dr. Garcia?”
“Too soon to know,” I said, fully awake now. “But it doesn’t look good. Are you Special Agent Thornton?”
“Yes sir. Charles Thornton.”
He stepped into my office and gave me a solid handshake. Thornton was tall and lanky — six foot two, maybe, and tipping the scales at around 190; possibly 200, since he seemed to be carrying some lean muscle on his frame. His sandy hair was cut short, but it appeared to contain some styling gel and some color highlights and some attitude. Then there was the tie: he wore one, but he wore it loosely, like it was an afterthought or an ironic commentary; like he might take it the rest of the way off any minute. The tie was printed with an abstract design that was either the work of an artistic genius or a second grader. The guy was almost a cop, but not quite. Too metrosexual, if I understood the term right. I suspected some of his more buttoned-down FBI colleagues regarded his wardrobe with mistrust.
Thornton glanced around my office, taking in the grimy windows, the fretwork of crisscrossing steel girders outside, and the skulls resting on the wide windowsill. “I’m pleased to meet you, sir. I’ve heard a lot about the Body Farm from the Forensic Recovery Teams who’ve trained there. It’s a great opportunity for them.”
“We’re always glad to help,” I said. “And you don’t have to ‘sir’ me. Hell, you’re the high-wattage guy from FBI headquarters.”
He grinned, a lopsided, aw-shucks kind of grin. “Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate — sounds impressive, doesn’t it? I’m actually pretty low on the food chain, though.”
“Well, Captain Sievers practically saluted Hank’s cell phone when you started talking yesterday,” I said. “What’d you say to make such an impression?”
“Not much,” he said. “Usually the more I say, the less impressive I get.” That drew a laugh from me, weary though I was. “The WMD Directorate is part of the National Security Branch. I just told Captain Sievers this incident could involve terrorism and national security, and that we’d appreciate it if he could help us keep it low-profile till we figured out if there was a bigger threat.”
“Were you just blowing smoke to keep Sievers in line? Or might there really be a bigger threat?”
“In the post-9/11 world,” he said, “we consider any suspicious incident involving radiation to be terrorism, and we assume the threat could be big until we find out otherwise.”
Thornton pulled a small, glossy pamphlet out of a jacket pocket and handed it to me. Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), the title panel read. A Pocket Guide. Inside, one panel described various weapons — explosive, chemical, biological, and radiological — while a second panel listed the federal laws terrorists would be breaking if they used weapons of mass destruction. The pamphlet’s innermost spread outlined how the FBI would assess the danger from an actual or threatened WMD attack.
“Yikes,” I said. “Good to know you guys are prepared, but scary that there’s the need to print this sort of thing in mass quantity. Also scary that you have to assume the worst.”
“We’ll be happy to be proven wrong,” he said. “We’ve sent the source to Savannah River National Laboratory, where we have a forensic rad lab. The lab should be able to tell us where it came from, and when.”
“It’s already there? That was quick.”
He shrugged. “We figured that since we were sending a plane to Knoxville anyhow, we might as well get some more mileage out of it. A couple of my cohorts landed in South Carolina with it about thirty minutes ago. That’s not for public consumption, by the way, but I wanted you to know we’ll be bringing a lot of resources to bear on this.”
“That’s good to know,” I said. “Listen, I was just about to go look in on Dr. Garcia. You want to come with me?”
“Thanks, but I guess I should pass,” he said. “I probably should start seeing what we can dig up in Oak Ridge.”
“I understand,” I said. “Good luck.”
Just then I heard Miranda’s voice in the hallway. “Hey, boss, you ready to go back across the river?”
“Can’t wait,” I said as she reached the doorway. “Miranda, this is Special Agent Charles Thornton. Agent Thornton, this is my graduate assistant, Miranda Lovelady.”
/> Thornton held out a hand — more eagerly than he’d extended it to me, I thought — and said, “Chip. Call me Chip.”
“Miranda runs the bone lab and works forensic cases with me,” I said. “She was in the autopsy suite yesterday.”
“I’m sorry to meet you under these circumstances,” he said. “Dr. Brockton invited me to head over to the hospital with you guys to meet Dr. Garcia. We can talk on the way.” Miranda looked a question at me; I answered with a slight shrug of the shoulders. Thornton had apparently decided he could wait a bit to start his spadework in Oak Ridge.
* * *
Despite the tangle of tubes and wires attached to him, Eddie Garcia looked better than he had in the ER fourteen hours before. His nausea and diarrhea had subsided, and ordinary fatigue had replaced panic as the predominant look on his face.
“You look pretty good,” I said. “You sure it wasn’t just something you ate?” Miranda elbowed me by way of a reprimand, then reached out and gave Garcia’s arm a squeeze. I felt a flash of panic when she did that — could that increase her exposure? — then I remembered the scene with the fearful ER nurse, and I felt ashamed. Garcia wasn’t contaminated or dangerous, I reminded myself; just exposed and endangered. Amazing, I thought, how easily fear trumps logic. I introduced Thornton, who shook hands with Garcia and then whipped out copies of the handy pocket guide for him and Miranda.
“Swell,” said Miranda. “Now I feel better.” Thornton glanced at me, but I just smiled. Apparently most people didn’t react to the pamphlet with the same pessimism Miranda and I had shown. She fluttered her fingers in the general direction of Garcia’s attachments. “What are all these things they’ve fastened to you since we were here a few hours ago?”
“The wires are EKG leads so they can monitor my heart,” he said. “One of the drips is saline and electrolytes, to replace what I’ve been losing from both ends. I have a line they can tap for blood without sticking me every time. So far, I’ve managed to fend off the nurse with the urinary catheter.”
“Pick your battles,” I said. “As good as you look, Eddie, I bet you’ll be out of here by this time tomorrow.”
He shook his head. “Appearances are deceiving with radiation sickness,” he said. “And you heard Dr. Sorensen; once the symptoms disappear, it’s just a matter of time before they come back with a vengeance. Sorensen’s seen a lot of cases of radiation sickness; if he’s worried about me, I’m in trouble.” I winced at his unsparing realism, though I admired the courage it took to face his situation squarely.
Miranda wheeled to face Thornton. “Who would have done this, and for God’s sake, why? It makes no sense. Why not just shoot the old guy, or strangle him? Why not just let him die of old age?” Her voice shook with anger and sorrow.
