Goss cursed and keyed the walkie-talkie again. “Hold the air. Officers Gunther and Howard, report your location and status.”
Then there was sharp hiss of static and a voice spoke intermittently through the squelch.
“We’re at the Hartnup place. Nothing to report. I thought I heard shots. I called Flower but she—”
Goss cut him off. “Did you tell April about her brother?”
“You said not to.”
“Good, because he might not be dead.”
Gunther paused. “Say again?”
“It’s not confirmed, but be aware that Doc Hartnup’s body is missing and there is a strong possibility that he is injured and in shock, maybe delirious, and somewhere in the Grove.”
“How? Chief … I thought Dez and JT said he was—”
Goss cut him off. “Don’t ask me how ’cause I don’t know. Just keep your eyes open. Doc might be trying to head to his sister’s place. I want one of you on the porch and the other inside with the family. Do not let April see her brother if you can avoid it, and definitely not the kids. You see him—or anyone—call it in right away.”
“Yeah, okay, Chief.”
Goss disconnected. If he was relieved by what Gunther had told him, it didn’t show. Fresh beads of sweat glistened on his head. Dez was afraid he was going to stroke out if things didn’t calm down. “The staties will be here soon,” Goss repeated. He looked around, licking his lips with a nervous tongue tip. “We need to secure this crime scene and also where … um … Natalie was…”
One of the other officers said, “I got that.” He tapped another cop from the same town and they set off down the slope, following Dez’s directions.
“I want in on the manhunt,” protested Dez. “We should be out there now so we can get a jump on—”
“On who?” snapped Goss. “Do you know what the hell’s going on? ’Cause I sure as shit don’t. We got a double homicide at the mortuary that turned out not to be a double homicide. One vic attacks you and the other goes for a stroll in the forest. We have an officer-involved shooting of one of those presumed homicide victims. We got an unknown person in bare feet leaving the scene of the crime; and we don’t know how or if he was involved. We also have the theft of the body of a dead serial killer. And now we have three dead officers and one who’s gone completely batshit nuts.”
“Chief, I—”
“So you tell me, Officer Fox … exactly what crime scenario are we trying to get a jump on? If it wasn’t for the fact that all of this is happening right here and right now, I couldn’t build a reasonable argument that they’re all part of the same goddamn case.”
Dez clamped her mouth shut. She had no answers and it was clear that arguing with Goss was likely to end badly. She didn’t like the man, but she didn’t actually want to cause the big vein in his head to explode.
“Okay, Chief, we hear you,” said JT gently. “If you had to make a horseback guess, what would you say is going on?”
Goss eyed him for a blistering moment. “How the fuck should I know?”
“Chief,” said JT, moving closer, his voice ever quieter, “I think we should dial it down a few notches, what do you think?”
The chief took a deep breath that threatened to pop buttons on his shirt, then he exhaled slowly, nodding. “Christ. I don’t need this shit. I really don’t.”
Dez couldn’t argue with that.
“Maybe this isn’t a murder scene,” suggested Sheldon, who had also managed to regain control of his emotions. “Look, you got ordinary people suddenly doing some mighty weird shit. Inexplicable shit. Maybe this isn’t people committing crimes … maybe this is something else. Something that’s affecting people. Y’know, like a toxic spill, or something in the water…”
They all looked at each other and the idea changed the mood as abruptly as switching stations with a TV remote. Even Goss’s posture relaxed as he stared into the middle distance, considering the question.
“I don’t think it’s in the water, Shel,” said Dez slowly. “Andy got here after Doc and the Russian woman were attacked. And I didn’t see him take a drink after he got here. Not tap water or anything.”
“Whatever it was,” JT said, “it must have hit Strauss or Schneider, too. I mean … look at Andy’s throat. He didn’t do that to himself.”
Goss paled. “So, you’re saying that we have another one out there?”
“Stands to reason,” said Dez. “Could even be Doc, if this thing affects people. Or it could be whoever left the bare footprints that went out of the mortuary office.”
“Maybe it’s something you get from a bite,” suggested Sheldon. “Somebody bit the cleaning lady and then she went apeshit on Dez, right? Maybe the same thing happened to Andy. He got bit, got sick, and freaked out.”
“Isn’t that awful fast for an infection to spread?” asked JT. “Doesn’t that sort of thing take days?”
“I’m just saying that we need to look at it,” Sheldon said.
“Could it be something in the air?” asked one of the officers who still knelt to keep Diviny pinned down.
“If so, we’d all have it,” countered Dez.
“A virus,” said JT. “Not everyone reacts the same way to diseases.”
Sheldon nodded. “Allergens, too. Some weird plant the Doc brought in for a funeral. Or a chemical he uses. Maybe certain people are susceptible to it.”
Suddenly everyone was throwing suggestions at him while, on the ground, Andy Diviny still writhed and tried to bite.
Finally Goss held up his hand. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. If you have a theory, then we share it with the state police and the doctors.” He pointed at Diviny. “Right now, though, we need to get him tested. Dez, JT … get him into an ambulance and get his ass over to Wolverton Hospital. Call ahead, tell them that this is a potential biohazard situation.”
“Okay, Chief,” Dez said and then punched JT on the arm. “Come on, Hoss.”
“Hey,” said the chief. “Nobody here talks to the press. Nobody calls home and tells their family and nobody fucking puts this on Twitter. This is a family matter now, so let’s keep it indoors until we know where we all stand.”
They all looked at one another and slowly nodded. Even the younger cops.
Dez exhaled a ball of dead air that she’d been holding in her chest, and then nodded. She and JT grabbed hold of Diviny and half dragged, half carried him down the hill. The moment had become orderly, but the day was still impossible.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
Lorne McMasters, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, looked at the name on his phone’s screen display. He smiled as he picked up the receiver.
“Colleen,” he said brightly, “how are you? How’s Ted and the—”
“Lorne,” interrupted Colleen Sykes, “this is a Livewire Protocol.”
McMasters took a half beat on that, then punched the scramble on his phone. “Confirm. What’s on the window sill?”
“Bluebird,” she said, giving the first part of the day code.
“And in the tree?”
“Yellow kite.”
“What’s the other thing?”
“Foxhounds.”
“Confirmed,” said Lorne. “What’s happening, Colleen?”
Colleen Sykes was deputy director of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology. Only once before in her career had she made a call of this kind. The first situation had been resolved quickly and with minimum fuss, and no trace of it had reached the news radar.
“I just received a report that the ‘devil is out of the bag,’” she said.
McMasters opened a screen on his intranet browser and typed that in. The name Lucifer 113 popped up, followed by bullet points about the science, the dangers, the key players, and the in-place protocols. In the upper right corner of the screen was a coded threat status icon. Not the same color codes that Homeland used. Blue was the lowest level of threat, black was the highest. This file was coded black.
“Christ,” he snarled. “Tell me.”
Sykes told him what Oscar Price had told her.
“Has this entered the population yet?” demanded McMasters.
“We have no direct confirmation, but there is a suspicious incident developing at the mortuary where Gibbon’s body was taken. We’ve gotten conflicting reports of a double homicide, but follow-up reports indicate that the ‘victims’ may not have been dead. One allegedly attacked a responding officer who was apparently compelled to use lethal force to defend herself. The other suspected victim is missing, having apparently left the scene of the crime under his own steam.”
“I’m still a half-step behind you on this, Colleen. What does that mean? Dead people don’t attack cops and they don’t get up and walk away.”
Sykes paused. “Actually, Lorne … if you open report sixty-three in the translations of the ‘Soviet Strategic Implementations’ folder you’ll see that this is in keeping with predicted effects. It is, in point of fact, the primary reason that the entire research line was ultimately scrapped by the Russians.”
McMasters read through the data. He could feel the blood draining from his cheeks. “This is … Good God, Colleen, are you telling me that we let someone continue this project?”
“No we didn’t,” Sykes said firmly. “Dr. Volker was under express orders not to go anywhere near this project, or anything remotely related to it.”
“Then how did he gain access?”
“His handler believes that Volker did not so much gain access as ‘re-create’ the research … and then take it forward an additional few steps. Volker is a brilliant scientist. At his request we set him up as a prison doctor, and unfortunately it looks like he played us. The security buffer we provide, plus the additional security at a secure correctional facility, made it harder for Price—or anyone, for that matter—to keep tabs on everything the doctor was doing. Lucifer 113 is not an expensive project, and many of the components are neither controlled substances or on watch lists. Volker took his time—decades, really—and he fooled everyone.”