Work in Progress
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Mortal Turpitude - Chapters 16-20
Chapter 16
The computer chirped as another batch of emails was downloaded from the university
server. A reply from Rhiannon! My stomach quivered with anticipation as I clicked on it.
Barry,
How unfortunate for you! And me, too! I was so looking forward to our Risk game this
weekend. I think I’ve unraveled your strategy, and I’m anxious to try it out on you.
When your medical tests are finished, call me right away. You never know about these
things. Your confinement could be over before you expect.
Rhi
I had to read it several times before I was sure that she understood. I had no idea how much
of my original message had been sent on to her, but apparently it was enough.
Returning to the list, I clicked on the first of a series of emails from Lisa.
B,
I’m not sure I can stand being cooped up here for ten days. It’s worse than jail. At least
prisoners get an hour out of their cells every day. All I can think about is the experiments I
could be doing. Instead, these fucking bureaucrats lock us in here and wait for us to die.
Well, they’ll have to wait a long time.
Wouldn’t you know? That asshole Fortino is in this trailer. I thought it was a women’s
trailer, but he said there isn’t space left anywhere else. Maybe I can choke him in his sleep.
See if you can’t make him give my notebooks back, so I can at least work on some papers
during the next nine days.
L.
Fortino was in her trailer? The bastard. He’d put himself there, even knowing there were
two unoccupied rooms in our trailer, a men’s unit. That could only mean one thing. I
wondered if she’d resist, or whether she’d turn her sexual skills on him as she had on me,
three years before. Seduction came naturally to Lisa, like breathing or sleeping.
For the next hours, I wrote emails to individual post-docs and students, encouraging them
to take the time to relax and read, or use up that nervous energy writing up their work. I
soothed their fury at the destruction of their accumulated efforts in the laboratory.
By noon, the room had shrunk to the size of a porta-potty. I was sweating and fidgeting
until I could ignore it no longer. I emailed Fortino,
Major,
I get anxiety attacks, especially in closed places, and right now, they’re interfering with
my ability to get anything done. Look in my medical records, which I’m sure you have.
Diazepam 2 mg as needed. Also, I take 20 mg simvastatin a day for hypercholesterolemia.
Can you get these medications for me? They are in my bedside table, where I’m sure you’ve
been already.
Croft
My email was answered in minutes as Sergeant Hannon came into my room carrying a small
plastic bag.
“My bad,” she smiled under her mask. “We got these from your house already – your
trailer, I mean.” She put the bag on the table, and the pill vials inside rattled.
I was tempted to explain why I lived in a run-down trailer park, but talked myself out of it.
“So you did search my house?” I spat. “What on earth for? Looking for incriminating
information?”
“We had the authority to go in,” she said simply. I noticed that she had lost the ‘sir’ since
yesterday. “Most of your stuff was in boxes, so it made the job easy.”
“My personal computer, too?” Now, panic began to squeeze my chest in earnest. There
were hundreds of emails to and from Lisa, many very explicit. What’s more, I’d sorted them
into a single folder cleverly named ‘Home Renovations’ for the convenience of Homeland
Security. Even now, I imagined, unnamed Government officials somewhere were sitting in a
circle, reading from a monitor and laughing at my sexual quirks like little boys with a girly
mag.
“That, too. We found lots of interesting stuff in your email files, but nothing that will send
you to prison.”
“If you’ve been reading my email, then you’ll know it’s not prison I’m afraid of.”
“What? You mean your thing with that 25-year-old blonde bomber? Your wife might care,
but we don’t. Oh, wait – you’re divorced, aren’t you? So what’s the big deal?”
I looked around to check that we were alone. “Do me a real favor, Sergeant,” I said in a
hoarse whisper. “Don’t tell anyone what you saw. She’s student of mine. In my line of work,
it’s about the worst sin you can commit. If it came out, it’d ruin my career.” I hoped I
looked sufficiently desperate.
She rolled her eyes and left. I took a diazepam with a swallow of water and lay on the bed
to give it a chance to work. Instead I went to sleep until a soldier in mask and gloves
brought supper, a hamburger plate. I hoped they’d thought to ask Chaudhury about his
dietary preferences. As a practicing Hindu, he was a strict vegetarian.
The room no longer stifled me, but it was impossible to work and I flipped through the
stack of DVDs. The selection apparently represented a soldier’s-eye view of what a
university professor would like to watch. I selected an opera, Carmen. Someone had chosen
the Anne Sofie Von Otter version, starring the aging, but steamingly sexy soprano.
Accident? Deliberate? Who knew?
Afterward, I checked my email for the last time before turning in. There was another from
Rhiannon.
Barry,
Good night. I hope to see you soon.
Rhi
There was nothing from Lisa. But following closely on two hours of von Otter’s intensely
erotic portrayal of the seductive gypsy woman, Rhiannon’s simple message set my
imagination astir and kept me awake for hours.
Chapter 17
In spite of having some of my usual resources available, I was utterly unable to do any
creative work cooped up in the trailer. My classes were canceled, of course, though I
managed to administer a quiz to one class by sending the questions to Mrs. Brown, who had
moved temporarily to another building. Sergeant Hannon later brought the completed tests
to me for grading.
I tried holding brainstorming meetings with Buddy and George, but they were as dulled by
the bleak surroundings as I. Technical email discussions among the students had dwindled.
Those emails that still circulated were complaints and carping about the confinement. I
tried my best to help buck up their spirits, but eventually my supply of goodwill ran out
and I ended by writing curtly, ‘Just dig in and sit it out.’ Only Lisa was silent, neither
emailing nor telephoning.
The deteriorating morale reminded me constantly of principles of laboratory research that I’
d internalized over the years, but never articulated: Creative research depended on a
continuing back-and-forth between chalkboard and lab. Biochemists think with their fingers
as well as their brains. Think of an experiment over morning coffee, go directly down the
hall to the laboratory, and have the results in hand while your thoughts are still fresh.
On the morning of Day 4, a knock startled me as I stared listlessly at the computer screen.
I masked up and opened the door. Fortino stood in sweats, backlit by the morning sun.
“What’s up, Major? I thought you were quarantined, too.” He stepped into the room,
followed shortly by a curious Buddy Lester.
He nodded. “I am, but Type X quarantine doesn’t require us to be separated from one
another, just from the population at large.”
Buddy said, “Why didn’t you tell us this earlier? For Christ’s sake, the students are going
nuts from the isolation. So are we.” His face was suddenly blotchy with anger.
“Settle down, Dr. Lester. I have a lot of discretion in these things. Think how people in
their twenties behave. I’m sure I could count on you and Drs. Lester and Chaudhury to be
discreet, but fourteen young people would tend to gather in one place, in pretty close
contact. In my judgment, that would be dangerous. Smaller groups, like the five persons in
a trailer, would stay mostly isolated, and just visit each other from time to time.”
“I think you underestimate our people,” I said. “So it’s all right if we visit our students?”
He nodded. “I’ll leave orders.”
“So why are you here, anyway?”
His face went expressionless. “Who was the last person to open the safe?” he said abruptly.
“The safe? I don’t know. There’s a logbook taped to the top of it. You can read the entries
in there.”
“That’s no help. All of the last six entries were Miss Grissom, and there were no entries for
the three days before you went to Atlanta.”
I shrugged. “So?”
“Last Wednesday morning, her card was swiped to enter the Level 3 laboratory at 3:00 a.m.”
“Why is that important?” I furrowed my forehead. “Later that day we flew to Atlanta. I still
don’t understand.”
“Three a.m.? Dr. Croft – Barry – doesn’t that seem odd to you?”
Now I was worried. He used my first name, which likely meant he was about to bring his
‘Mr. Nice Guy’ act to a close. “Not at all,” I said. “Lisa works long hours and odd hours.
Most of the people here do.”
“No one but Lisa swiped any of the entry doors between midnight and 7:00 am the next
morning. She was likely here alone.”
I leaned toward him, trying to intimidate with my slightly greater height. I suspected it
wouldn’t work. “Major, what are you trying to get at? Just spit it out.”
“Dr. Croft,” he said, pausing dramatically. “Everything in that safe had been destroyed.”
I drew in a quick breath. “I don’t understand.”
He leaned toward me, our masks almost touching. Neither of us would back off. “Someone
added strong alkali to every sample. All the DNA and virus samples were destroyed. Not
only that, the lab boys swiped all over the inside of the safe and the outside of the tubes to
try to recover DNA, but it had all been sprayed with something, bleach perhaps. There’s no
trace of DNA anywhere, not even trace fingerprint DNA on the outsides of the tubes.”
“That’s insane!” I thought quickly, trying to think of an explanation that made sense. “You
know what I think? I think your lab people took the B-1B from the safe and cooked up this
bullshit story. That way, you could claim the B-1B never existed. You could claim that Lisa
and I faked the results. You’ll brand us and wreck our careers, but you get your fucking bio-
weapon, and no one will ever be sure whether B-1B is real or not.”
He paused, breathing hard through his mask. The longer he glared at me, the more certain I
was that I was right. When he spoke, his voice was slower and more controlled. “You don’t
have to believe me, but I’ll say it again – the contents of that safe were totally dead. If
there was ever a B-1B sample in there, there isn’t now. The absence of any DNA at all tells
me the samples existed, but were deliberately destroyed. Why do you think Lisa would
have done that?”
I was still recovering from the shock, and Buddy spoke up. “She wouldn’t. Her whole thesis
depends on it. But it would cost her more than just three years of work. If she were accused
of faking results, it would cost her credibility, too. She’d never be able to get a research job
again, and Barry might lose his funding, too. It’s happened before in other labs.”
“Which brings me to the next part,” said Fortino. “Assuming she was acting rationally, the
only logical thing for her to do is to store a sample of B-1B somewhere else until the
excitement dies down, and then go back to work on it. Right?” His eyes still glared into
mine.
I said, for want of anything else to say, “I guess so. But why are you looking at me like
that. This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Where would she keep something like that?”
I shook my head. “If she took live viruses, she’d have to keep them in a freezer. But if it
was DNA, it could be anywhere at all. I mean, it’s only a short fragment. It would last for
years dried on a piece of paper or a swab of cotton.”
Fortino said, “So what do you suggest we do?”
“Have you tried asking Lisa herself?”
“Not until I’d talked to you. It still doesn’t make sense that she’d do this without talking to
you. Or perhaps she did it on your orders?”
The bottom fell out of my belly. When I spoke, I was short of breath. “Lisa doesn’t ask
anyone’s permission to do anything. The best I can hope for is that she’ll bother to tell me
afterwards.” I tried to switch back to the offensive. “I still think it’s more likely your own
people have the B-1B.”
Fortino sat on my little chair and sighed through his mask. “I was hoping to avoid this,” he
said resignedly. “But have you read the Patriot Act?”
“Have you?” I said, putting as much venom into the two words as would fit.
He ignored me. “It lists five definitions of terrorism. The fifth is the most interesting one.
We’re lucky our Congressmen didn’t read that far. They might have thrown it out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The fifth definition of terrorism is, ‘Acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the
criminal laws of the United States or of any State.’”
I shook my head and sat on the bed, trying to make sense of it. Buddy was thinking faster,
and said, “Shit, Fortino, that makes a drunk driver a terrorist!”
Fortino’s mask hid the sneer I knew lurked behind it. I wanted to hit him. “Technically,
yes, but we’d never use it for anything so silly. But it gives us a lot of scope. For instance,
we have every reason to think your B-1B is dangerous to human life, and it’s certainly
illegal to handle it in a facility that’s not adequate.”
“So what’s next?” My voice broke in spite of my efforts to control it. “You’re going to
waterboard Lisa and I until we confess to something? Isn’t that what you bastards do?” My
stomach was churning by now, and I checked to make sure the way to the sink was clear, in
case I needed to vomit.
He laughed, a metallic, insincere laugh like a movie robot. “Oh, no, we’d never do anything
like that. I’m hoping that she might be convinced to come work for us.”
“Only now, you don’t have to try to entice her with posh lab facilities and trained
assistants, right? You can threaten her with a life behind razor wire. Is that the plan?”
“I think I know Lisa well enough by now. I’m pretty sure threats wouldn’t work, at least not
at first. She’s tough, but she’s also smart. If we put the screws to her, she’d likely agree to
go along with the plan, then sabotage the work at leisure later on. I’m going to try more
positive approaches first. Honey versus vinegar, you know.”
“Then why are you here, talking to us?”
“I may have to call you in on the indoctrination process. Will you help?”
“Do I have a choice? Guantanamo or Fort Detrick? But don’t expect me to throw her to the
wolves for your fucking Patriot Act.”
“Never happen,” he said. “Her talents are valuable, and we need them. America has
enemies everywhere, outside our borders and inside. There are people who’d use any means
possible to kill us all, if they could. Surely, you read the papers?”
I hadn’t read a newspaper in a month, but I said nothing.
“Suppose one of your students talked too much in the wrong place, or Lisa published a
paper on B-1B? Once its existence became public knowledge, and she’s waltzing around the
streets being a carefree grad student, there are people who’d do whatever it took to get hold
of the B-1B complex and the information that’s in her head. I can imagine scenarios where
she’d be in actual physical danger. Of being kidnapped, for example.”
I forced myself to slow down my speech and lower my voice. “Major Fortino, that’s all spy
novel bullshit. Here’s what’s real: B-1B isn’t just a way to kill people. It’s a valuable tool,
too. After more than a hundred years, we have only the crudest knowledge how the human
immune system works. B-1B will let us look at it in a way we couldn’t, until now. Every
year, tens of thousands of people die of autoimmune diseases because we have to treat
them with sledgehammers instead of scalpels.”
Fortino had calmed himself, too, and held his hands palm dawn, smoothing the waters.
“You’re preaching to the choir, Dr. Croft. Remember, I’m an MD first, a scientist second,
and a soldier third. But the prime threat to the nation today is terrorism, not lupus or
diabetes. Diseases only pick us off one at a time. Terrorists strike at what we are as a
nation. They frighten people, and frightened people make desperate and stupid decisions.
Terrorists can make us lose heart and yield to foreign blackmail.”
“Americans don’t scare that easily,” I said.
“You think not? Don’t you remember how quick we were to surrender our liberties to the
Government after 9/11? All that July the Fourth fluff about precious liberties and
treasuring freedom is just a pleasant myth. What we want as a people is complete security.
For that, we’ll give up anything, even our most fundamental rights.
“I ask you, who won on 9/11? Didn’t the terrorists accomplish everything they set out to
do? They hate democracy. They loathe our freedoms. They wanted us to be like them.”
I shifted uncomfortably. I hated what he said, but I had to agree with too much of it.
“And don’t forget, Barry, another major terrorism event like 9/11 is likely to cause an
uprising of frightened citizens against law-abiding Muslim Americans. You know that will
happen even if Muslim extremists aren’t responsible. Remember the Arab guy who was
harassed after the Oklahoma City bombing? Remember the witchhunt for Muslim terrorists
after the anthrax event a month after 9/11? I mean, aren’t two of your students Arabs?”
“They’re Persian,” I said. “Don’t ever call them Arabs to their faces.” I was confused by the
crisscrossing arguments. I was a lab rat who rarely read newspapers or watched the TV
news, and now it seemed that I was a heartbeat away from living out my life in a prison
camp, or seeing a talented student turned into a faceless worker bee in a secret Government
facility. One week ago, I would have tagged Lisa as a future Nobel Prize winner, and now…?
“That’s been a lot of bad news for you,” said Fortino, suddenly disarming. “But I have some
good news. At least I hope it’s good news. There’s a hot-looking Amazon coming to see you
this evening. She’s been badgering us for three days to see you. She claims to be your
lawyer, but I suspect she’s something more than that. I’ve told the guards to mask her up
and let her in.”
Chapter 18
As the door closed behind Fortino, I said, “I guess we’d better visit the students.”
Buddy turned to me. “What’s this about a hot girlfriend?”
“Hot, but not my girlfriend. A lady I met a week ago. She’s my new landlady, and she likes
to play poker. Real poker, I mean, not that kind of poker.”
“Isn’t a certain blonde going to have something to say about that?”
The hair rose on my neck. “What did you say?”
He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “Oh, c’mon, Barry. Do you actually think we don’t
know? You’ve been boinking her for more than a year, haven’t you?”
I staggered back and sat on the bed. “You knew? How?” A cold chill ran up my spine.
“For Christ’s sake, we all work together fourteen hours a day. You’d have to be blind and
deaf not to see the little signals between you, the simultaneous absences, the special
treatment. One day, I see that expensive turquoise necklace on your desk, and the next day
Lisa’s wearing it. Give us some credit. It’s the biggest open secret around.”
“Holy shit!” I whispered. “Who knows?”
“Well, me and George, and a couple of the post-docs that I’m sure of. The entire group, for
all I know. It’s something we don’t talk about. We just keep our mouths shut and hope it
doesn’t get too public to ignore.”
“Amos Burton, too?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. But without the overheads from your grants, I expect he’
d have trouble keeping the department afloat. They’ll fold us in with Molecular Biology and
one of the chairmen would have to step down.”
My emotions were in turmoil. Below the fear and surprise, was a soft cushion of relief. My
group was going to bat for me, even for the ultimate sin. Half of me wanted to go directly to
Lisa, and the other half wanted to hold tight for Rhiannon. Rhiannon was the fascination of
the unknown; Lisa was the sure thing, and understood my sexual needs better than I did. It
was too soon to choose between them.
Even if everyone knew, going straight to Lisa’s room would be a mistake. Clad in disposable
scrubs as well as mask and gloves, I visited students in Trailers One and Two and listened
to their gripes and handed out some insincere encouragement. Some were so lethargic they
seemed scarcely aware of my presence. Finally, I entered Trailer Three and knocked on the
door labeled ‘Lisa Grissom’.
She opened the door without first donning a mask. “Barry!” she exclaimed and smiled down
at me. Hooking her fingers in my collar, she pulled me inside and locked the door. With her
other hand, she pulled my mask down and planted a kiss firmly on my lips.
I managed to speak through the kiss, “Aren’t we breaking quarantine procedure?”
“Asshole,” she said, and nibbled at my neck. Her arms wrapped me tightly against her.
“What took you so long?”
I tried to pull away. “The camera…”
She held on. “I disconnected it as soon as they put me in here. They’d come in and fix it,
and I’d disconnect it again. Then Fortino starts coming over for visits, and they just left it
disconnected.”
“You and Fortino…?”
“Shit, no.” She whispered, reminding me that Fortino’s room was on the other side of the
wall. “Give me some credit. I’m not that easy. I tease him and lead him on, but there’s no
way I’d let him get anywhere with me. He’s not like you. I don’t think he’d give me the kind
of sex I want. Besides, he’s distracted. His wife flew out from Maryland yesterday. She’s
staying in a hotel near here and talks to him on the phone all the time.”
“He thinks you destroyed the B-1B. They didn’t find any in the safe.”
“I destroyed it,” she whispered. “I trashed it all the night before we went to Atlanta. I knew
the fuckers would try to get it off us.”
“You must have set some aside somewhere. You can’t just throw away three years’ work like
that.”
She nibbled my earlobe and said, “I can and I did. It’s better than letting Fortino get his
hands on it, or forcing me to work in his slave galley at Fort Detrick.” She kissed me again
before pushing me to arm’s length. “Now lick me, you bastard. We might not get another
chance for a while.”
“Now? Don’t you have other things on your mind? Aren’t you at least a little distracted?”
“I’ve been sitting in my room with nothing else but sex to think about. Anyway, all this
tension and drama gets me hot. Doesn’t it excite you?” She pushed her jeans and panties to
the floor and sat on her bed, kicking the clothing from her feet.
“I’m not sure I can…”
“You don’t have to. You don’t even need to get hard to go down on me. Take your shirt off
and do what you’re so good at.” She leaned back on her elbows, spreading her thighs.
Through the red-blonde pubic hair, her pussy lips parted wetly. Above, the blue eyes
watched me intently.
Pulling the scrub top and my shirt off, I forced a half-smile and got to my knees. To my
surprise, my cock began to stir. In spite of my dark mood, the vision of her exquisite pussy
was working its magic. There was no point in obsessing about myself. My duty as a man was
to please her, and maybe give us both a little respite from our situation.
I leaned forward to kiss her pale thigh, but she grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled.
“No preliminaries, Barry. Just do it!”
Her sexual aroma reached my nostrils and overcame any remaining hesitation. I ached to
dive right in, but I restrained my eagerness the way she’d want me to. I bent forward,
rubbing my lips in her soft pubic hair and reaching my tongue between the slippery wet
lips. I was rewarded by a gasp of pleasure. I began to lick at the slow, regular rhythm she
liked. Her hips rocked in time, as I sucked at her juices.
For several minutes, I was lost in the magic of her body as her breathing grew hoarse and
her thighs spread ever wider. There was nowhere else in the world I wanted to be. When I
thought she was ready, I turned all my attention to her tiny clitoris.
She breathed, “Yes, Barry, yes... just like that! Oh!” and launched into her orgasm,
thrusting her hips wildly, uttering guttural noises as she threw her head from side to side.
It subsided slowly, with one last grunt and buck of her hips. She let me rest for a minute,
my mouth cushioned by her hair, my tongue-tip resting on her clit.
“You’re good medicine for me,” she said softly.
“Then let me stay right where I am,” I said, my voice muffled by her hair.
“Not a problem. We’ve got an hour before they bring supper...” She stiffened. “Barry?”
“What?”
“I just remembered. You’ve got a voicemail.”
I lifted my head at last. “How do you know that? They took my phone.”
She reached under her pillow. “And I took it back.”
“How did you get that?”
“I found them all together in a drawer in his room. I stole yours and mine. Look at the
voicemail flag.”
I got shakily to my feet, regretfully abandoning the soft red nest that helped me forget my
worries. The battery should have gone flat by now, but I found the phone had been turned
off. I pressed the switch and waited for it to be ready while I pulled on my shirt. The
voicemail indicator was ‘on’. The number was for Eric Hoffer, and the time was this
morning. I punched in my access code and held the phone so both of us could hear it.
Peter Hoffer’s familiar voice was oddly comforting, but his message was not. “Barry, keep
this just between you and me. I don’t know whether you’ve promised anything to Paul
Fortino yet. Before you do, ask him about ‘Qiyamah’. It’s spelled, ‘Q-I-Y-A-M-A-H’. It’s a
code name for something Fortino’s working on. That’s all I know, except that it’s not a
defense project. It’s a weapons project. I never agreed to be involved in anything like that.
If it’s really a bioweapon, CDC doesn’t have to cooperate.” Hoffer’s voice paused for several
seconds. “Anyway, hang onto B-1B until I can find out more. Do not give it to Major
Fortino. Call me back as soon as you can.”
Lisa had listened to the message with me. “Does ‘Qiyamah’ mean anything to you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No idea. The ‘q’ without a following ‘u’ makes me think of Arabic, but
everything these days is about Arabs and Muslim terrorists.”
“Is Naseem in this trailer?”
She nodded. “But Iranians don’t speak Arabic.”
“At least she might be able to tell us whether it’s really Arabic or not.”
“Dr. Croft!” Naseem Lavasani’s eyes smiled warmly at me when she opened her door. She
was a short, delicate woman with black hair and deep, dark Persian eyes. With her head
scarf, the face mask did not seem out of place. Naseem pointedly ignored Lisa.
I asked how she was doing, and passed on some news and gossip from the other students.
Finally, Lisa’s patience broke, and she demanded, “Naseem, do you know what ‘Qiyamah’
means?”
Her smile soured. Most of the staff did not like Lisa at all, and Naseem was no exception.
She directed her answer to me. “Qiyamah? Every Muslim knows what that means. ‘Yawm al-
Qiyamah’ means something like ‘Final Judgment’ or ‘The Last Day’. That’s the day Muslim
souls will rise from the graves and everyone’s good and evil deeds will be judged by God. Isn’
t there something like it in Christianity?”
Chapter 19
Buddy Lester was waiting for me when I returned to my home away from home in Trailer
Five.
“Did she tell you what she did with the B-1B?” he asked.
“She destroyed it all. So she said.”
“Nothing hidden away somewhere?”
I raised my eyebrows. “She says no.”
“And you believe her, right?”
“Not for a minute,” I said.
I lay on my bunk for an hour. My stomach ached and churned, and my brain stalled, even
though there was nothing really substantive about Naseem’s translation. Code names were
intended to conceal, and ‘Qiyamah’ was far too transparent to be meaningful. I suspected it
was just another distinctive and euphonious word, chosen because the US military’s focus
had shifted to the Muslim world, and so many military people were learning Arabic
language and cultures.
If Fortino was working on an offensive bioweapon, B-1B would be the idea starting point.
But only a starting point. A virus that killed everyone wouldn’t be very useful. There would
be no way to stop the infection from spreading into our own troops, into America itself, and
ultimately the whole world. Better such a virus be named Armageddon, not Qiyamah. It
would join the slim ranks of doomsday weapons like Mutually Assured Destruction, the
philosophy that threatened, ‘bomb me, and I’ll make the Earth uninhabitable for everyone.’
There was a soft knock at the door, which startled me from my tortured reverie.
“Dr. Croft?” Sergeant Hannon’s singsong voice came from the other side.
Rhiannon! How could I have forgotten? I reached for the box of surgical masks, and realized
that my face was still coated with Lisa’s secretions.
“Wait a minute. I’ve got to find my masks,” I said and rushed to the sink. The water
tumbled noisily into the tiny sink, but I had to do this. I rubbed antibacterial soap into my
face, up to my eyebrows and down to my throat, and quickly washed and dried.
“Dr. Croft, are you okay?”
“Yes, yes.” I looked about for my bottle of aftershave, knocking it onto the floor. When I
moved to pick it up, I accidentally kicked it. The little bottle skittered under the bed out
of sight. Shaking my head, I tied on a mask and opened the door.
“Dr. Croft, would you confirm that you know this person?” Rhiannon was masked and
gloved as I was, but there was no mistaking the dark eyes that shone over the mask.
“Of course, I know her.” My stomach churned with excitement. “She’s Rhiannon. I mean,
Rhiannon Lane, Esquire.”
Rhiannon said, in a matter-of-fact voice, “I’m his attorney. I’m a friend, too.” The musky
aroma of her perfume reached my nose. She wore a blouse of loose silk, printed in green
and gold. The two top buttons were undone, revealing a modest amount of cleavage. .
“If you’re such good friends, wouldn’t there be more about you in his email? Although I
seem to remember seeing a photo of you in his desk.”
I recovered from my shock and spoke up. “Forget that. Everything I do isn’t in my damn
computer. She’s my friend.”
Hannon looked at me under a raised eyebrow. I knew she was weighing whether to say
something about Lisa. “Whatever,” she shrugged. “It looks like you’re the Croft Eighteen
now.”
I followed as Hannon ushered Rhiannon to the vacant room next to mine and gave her the
same 30 second tutorial she’d given me days before. In the meantime, a soldier came in
with our suppers, meat loaf plates, packed in the Styrofoam boxes from the restaurant, with
coffee and soda.
The three of us took turns staring at one another. Finally, Hannon, her face reddening,
remembered something urgent she had to do, and left.
Rhiannon and I were alone in the room at last. “Give me a hug, boyfriend,” she said,
grinning, and stepped into my arms. Aside from being taller, her shoulders were broad and
her back muscular. I could barely reach around her, so when we’d finally clasped, it felt
more like she was hugging me.
Abruptly, she pushed me away and held my shoulders at arms’ length. “Doctor Croft!
Someone’s been a naughty boy!” She sniffed to confirm what she meant.
I felt the blush spread across my face, but decided to put on a bold front. “It gets a little
too quiet in here after a few days. We look for ways to entertain one another.”
“So you’re one of those men who’ll do that for a woman, are you? Ver-r-ry interesting.” She
raised her eyebrows and smiled broadly.
And how I’d love to do it for you, I thought. But my face was still hot.
She sat on her bunk as if she’d lived there her whole life, and I sat in the little desk chair. I
noticed idly that the bunks were too narrow for two people.
“So...” I said, pointing to the camera on the wall.
She stood and looked boldly into the camera. She primped her hair, as if she were looking
into a mirror, and loosened the third button of her blouse, smoothing back the silky fabric to
reveal a generous portion of cleavage. She cupped and lifted her breasts to make them even
more pronounced for the lens.
Still smirking into the camera, she reached behind it, yanked the cable loose, and turned to
face me. She returned to her place on the bed. “So how did I get here? Simpler than you
might think. It was obviously no asbestos thing. For one thing, the Army doesn’t do asbestos
cleanup. Private contractors are better at it, and cheaper, too. And I know that you work
with seriously nasty viruses. Am I right?”
I nodded.
“It seemed to me there was an accident or something serious, and I was afraid you might be
in danger. I was going to work this on the outside, to make sure you were okay. But since
you had to talk in code, clearly I wasn’t going to find out anything useful if someone was
filtering your emails. The only solution was to get in here.”
“But what if we’d really had a virus? Something really deadly?”
“Then I wouldn’t have gotten past the gate, would I?”
“So how did…?”
“I told them...well, I told them that we’d been, um, intimate, just a few days ago, and that I
was afraid I might have whatever virus you had.”
“That was all it took?”
“Not by itself. The officer I was talking to said no at first, but then I told him I knew this
was something to do with the viruses you work with, and that the Army had a responsibility
to warn the campus and all the thousands of people that use the campus every day. He still
hummed and hawed, so I told him I was your lawyer.
“That did it,” she concluded with a satisfied smile. “He said, ‘I don’t like lawyers’, and told
that female sergeant to put me in quarantine. He told her to put us together. He said, ‘It’ll
serve Croft right, being cooped up with a lawyer for five more days.’”
“Wasn’t that a pretty impulsive thing for you to do?”
“Not really,” she said. “I took time yesterday to make sure my current cases were covered.
Nothing moves fast in corporate law, and my best clients need me more than I need them. A
few days away won’t hurt.”
“So you think this is a holiday?”
“It could be.” She took a deck of cards from her purse. “We could spend some of it refining
our skills in, ah, ‘Risk’.”
I dragged the little desk over to the bed, and sat in the chair. I had almost no money, so we
made little squares of paper to use as chips. I soon discovered she had gone easy on me
that Friday night; her play was much more aggressive today. When she dealt the cards on
the tenth or eleventh hand, I saw that a fourth button had come loose on her blouse,
revealing more of her deep, rich cleavage, the junction of her bra cups, and a little patch of
smooth skin underneath. I couldn’t peel my eyes away.
“You’re cheating,” I said, not moving my eyes from her bosom.
“That’s not cheating. Surely, you should have the will power to keep your eyes to yourself
and concentrate on the cards. You’re not a randy teenager any more, are you?”
“I don’t think any man could concentrate under these circumstances.”
“Ha! I’ll show you how I can really distract the opposition if I want to.” She tugged at her
blouse, reached behind her back, and the brassiere came loose. She pulled the straps out of
her short sleeves and over her hands, and pulled the bra out through the neck of her blouse.
The delicious aroma of warm woman filled my nostrils.
“Now deal,” she said, dropping the bra on the bed and leaning forward on her elbows. The
blouse fell open, revealing enough of her breasts that the aureoles were visible. Even
without the bra, her breasts barely settled under their weight.
I spilled several cards while shuffling, and had to pick them up and start over. Try as I
might, I couldn’t pry my eyes away from the open blouse. I lost that hand and the next
three.
“Are you getting the idea?” she said. “If I can’t win with skill, I have other resources to
draw on. Back to the game.” She giggled and reached for her brassiere. Without thinking, I
reached out and gently held her wrist. Her eyes locked on mine, and on her lips was the
beginning of a sly smile. With my other hand, I reached across the table and touched her
breast. She leaned forward slightly, and I stroked the silky skin with my fingertips. When
she closed her eyes and purred, I touched a nipple with my fingertips.
“I’ll give you two hours to stop that,” she whispered, her eyes still closed.
I let go her wrist and touched the other nipple, rubbing my fingertips on the puckered flesh
and feeling it stiffen. My belly quivered, but I tried not to show it as I gazed at her closed
eyelids, decorated with the remains of her dark makeup. I brushed the blouse to her
shoulders and cupped the large heavy breasts in my hands. Teasing her nipples with my
thumbs, I felt goose bumps rise on the warm skin around her nipples.
We rose together, stepping away from the table, and I kissed her. I still held her breasts,
though her greater height forced my arms to bend at an awkward angle. Finally, I gently let
go of the heavy flesh and pulled the blouse from her shoulders. Holding her at arm’s length,
I gazed at her lovely body, the broad, muscular shoulders, sleek arms, and marvelous
breasts.
“You are so beautiful,” I breathed. “You must work out a lot to look that trim.”
She smiled brightly. “Five times a week for three hours. After all that work, I don’t mind if
someone I like admires it.”
“You’re like a classic Greek statue. You’re any man’s ideal of beauty.” I did not usually talk
like that, but I was overwhelmed by this sudden change in my fortunes. I wondered idly if I
could arrange to extend the quarantine indefinitely.
She touched her tongue to the corner of her mouth as she unbuttoned my shirt, and pulled
it from my belt.
“Kiss me again,” she said. This time, she was the aggressor, pulling me into her strong
arms, so her hot breasts crushed against my bare chest. My head spun with the pressure of
her arms and the sheer ecstasy of touching this magnificent body.
We kissed until I was out of breath. “Do you have a condom?” she breathed.
“No, damn it.”
“I might have one or two in my purse.” She let go of me and began riffling through her
handbag.
In the hall, a pair of boots clumped on the floor. I heard a knock from my room next door.
While I was fumbling with my shirt buttons, the knocking began on Rhiannon’s door.
“What do you want?” called Rhiannon, pulling her blouse forward, forgetting her brassiere.
Hannon’s voice, more high-pitched than ever, said, “If Dr. Croft’s in there, come with me.
There’s an emergency!”
“What?” I shouted.
“Miss Grissom – Lisa. She’s dead.”
Chapter 20
I’d seen scenes in movies where a detective or a cop sees a body and immediately throws
up. It had always seemed a little over the top, a cliché left over from a more genteel era
when they couldn’t show a mangled corpse on-screen, and substituted the exaggerated
reaction of an onlooker.
I was wrong. When I pushed past the two soldiers blocking the door, the first thing I saw
was Fortino’s face, pale gray, eyes wide open, staring back at me. He was kneeling, holding
his bloody hands over a pile of rags on the floor, the jeans and shirt Lisa had worn for our
tryst a few hours before.
Among the rags, the long shank of a wrench protruded from a bloody mass. From the middle
of the gore, a single blue eye peered directly at me, not accusing, not frightened, not
begging, not anything. It simply gazed at me, devoid of emotion. Even as I stared, it
changed, clouding slightly.
That’s when the bile rose into my throat. I turned to run from the trailer, but I only got as
far as the corridor, where my knees gave way and my head struck the paneling. My
stomach lurched and cramped as I vomited vast amounts of meatloaf, peas, chunks of
potato, and yellow bile against the wall. It ran down, forming a stinking puddle on the
linoleum.
After my stomach emptied, I continued retching, even as I felt a warm hand on my shoulder.
“Rhiannion?” I choked.
“It’s Sergeant Hannon. Just stay down and breathe deeply. You shouldn’t have gone in
there.”
“Did Fortino kill her?” I coughed up some food bits from my throat and spit them into the
pool of vomit.
“He was with me when the screaming started. You should go outside in the fresh air.”
I wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my shirt and stood up. The trailer swayed around me,
but Hannon held my arm to steady me. I stumbled toward the door and met Rhiannon, who
was just entering.
“Outside,” said Hannon. “Now.”
Rhiannon stayed with me as the door closed behind us. The air was chilly in the evening
darkness, and it helped a little as we walked back to Trailer Five.
“Barry, what happened?”
The image in Lisa’s room stayed imprinted on my retina. Now I saw bare feet sticking out
from the legs of the jeans, and the swell of hips where her body twisted on the floor. And
the eye. My mind returned obsessively to the single, pale blue eye, peering quietly at me,
seeming to mock the whole scene and those of us who still lived.
“Lisa… she’s not just dead… someone pounded her head to a pulp… a long wrench… blood
everywhere... on Fortino and the walls and all over the bed and floor.” I had to bend over
and grab my knees to avoid fainting.
She led me to the trailer steps and had me sit down. “Barry, I’m about to earn that twenty
dollars you gave me last week. I’m going to be your lawyer, for now at least. Don’t answer
any questions and don’t talk to anyone. Let me talk for you, and don’t be out of my sight
even for a moment. If you’re arrested, don’t argue or resist.”
I nodded and fought back another fit of retching. Sweat cooled on my forehead, and I rested
my head against Rhiannon’s thigh as she stood beside me. Red and blue lights of two police
cars swept silently down the street toward us.
“You’re not a criminal lawyer,” I said.
“I watch them on TV.”
“That’s not funny.”
“That wasn’t very sensitive of me. It’s my stock answer when people ask. Sorry.”
“Lisa was the smartest student I’ve ever had. The smartest I’ve ever heard of. I had visions
of her getting a Nobel some day. But now she’s just...” I began sobbing uncontrollably.
Rhiannon sat beside me on the step and curled an arm around my shoulders.
We were only fifteen feet from the gate, and I became aware of a standoff developing
between Captain Washington and four Tucson policemen who were attempting to come in.
They stood in a semicircle around the officer, holding long flashlights like clubs.
“Sorry, officers. This is an emergency quarantine area. It’s a Federal jurisdiction for now.”
“Quarantine? Where is it posted? If there’s been a homicide at this location, we have to
come in.” The tall cop who spoke moved toward the gate until Washington stepped in front
of him.
“The people in here may have a virus. There’s no cure. If you come in here, you may die.”
“Who’s your superior?”
“Major Fortino, sir, but he’s tending to the situation inside. He’s a physician.”
The back-and-forth continued while another car pulled up and two detectives got out.
Washington relayed radio messages back and forth with Fortino until the detectives agreed
to put on masks, gowns, and gloves, and Trailer Three was cleared of all people other than
Fortino.
Soon, a van from the Pima County Medical Examiner’s office and two more police cars
pulled up while Rhiannon and I sat on the steps and waited. When all had gone quiet
among the knot of soldiers and police at the gate, I turned toward a crunching on the gravel
behind me. We turned to see a stubby figure shuffling out of the shadows.
It was Buddy Lester, seeming dazed. The front of his shirt was soaked with blood, and his
arms and face were streaked with red. His mask hung loosely around his neck.
I jumped to my feet. “Buddy, what happened? Were you attacked, too?”
He finally focused on me, and his face formed a grimace of grief. “Barry, I’m sorry. But she
was the only one who knew where the last of the B1-B is. They would have made her give it
up eventually.”
“You killed Lisa?” I asked dully, as if inquiring about weather. I seemed numb to further
shocks.
Rhiannon cut in, “Don’t answer that! Don’t talk to anyone until we get you a lawyer.”
But I shouted, “Buddy! What for? She would never have given it to them. Never!”
“I thought hard about it, Barry. This was the only way. They would have done whatever it
took to get the B1-B from her.” He wandered toward the gate, toward the guard, who
unsnapped his holster and was poised to draw his pistol. While one of the waiting police
officers kept his hand on his own pistol grip, another threw the pudgy scientist to the
ground, handcuffed him, and checked for weapons. A third read him his rights.
Rhiannon strode over to the knot of men. She was as tall as the tallest of them, and
immediately drew their attention. She had not put her bra back on, and the bright lights
shone through the filmy blouse. From my angle, she seemed nearly naked. I didn’t know
how much the policemen could see.
“I’m an attorney,” she announced, “and Mr. Lester will not be making any statements until
I get him his own lawyer.”
One of the policemen stepped toward her and seemed about to arrest her too, but Rhiannon
turned to him and said, “Lend me your cell phone.” To my surprise, the cop handed her his
phone. She punched in a number and spoke for about two minutes.
When she finished, Rhiannon cautioned Buddy once more to not make any statements, and
returned to where I’d resumed to my seat on the step. An officer put a plastic poncho on
Buddy Lester and sat him on another plastic sheet in the back of a police car.
“A friend of mine is coming over right away. He’s the best criminal lawyer I know. He
should get here before they take him away,” she said.
“Why did you cut me off? He was about to tell me what happened.”
“You’re a witness, Barry. The best way to protect your friend is to not hear anything you
might have to repeat later in court.”
“I’m a witness?” I hadn’t thought about how much more complicated my life was about to
become.
“A witness. And everything about your relationship with Lisa is going to come out in public.
You’d better be prepared for that.”
“What should I do?”
“Basically, you’ll tell the truth, but as little of it as possible. Make sure you understand
each question before you talk, and you give them just the information they want. If you can
answer just yes or no, do that, and don’t volunteer anything.”
She turned and grasped my shoulders. “Right now is the time when every instinct is telling
you to react emotionally, and it’s exactly the time when you have to keep a cool head.
When in doubt, keep your mouth shut. We’ll get you and Buddy through this.”
“He killed Lisa. I’m not sure I care what happens to him.”
“But you have to worry about yourself. Everyone will soon know you’ve been having sex
with your student, and we’ll have to be ready to fight for your job.”
“I’m not sure I want to go back there.”
“You’ll think differently in a couple of weeks.”
By the time two detectives came around to take my statement, it was two o’clock in the
morning. The process took two hours. At the end of it, emptied of emotion as well as
information, I slept almost instantly upon falling into bed.
Go to Ch. 21 - 25
