Eddie shook his head.
We needed to get outside, somewhere where communication wasn’t jammed, needed to find out if authorities knew about the tourists. If not, we needed Burke to order an alert. To shotgun a message to state police, health officials, and hospitals. We needed a sketch artist. We needed to search phones, to go house to house and try to ID the pair.
Eddie said, “Someone must have mentioned it.”
“No such thing as ‘must have.’”
Eddie groaned. “Murphy’s Law.”
I envisioned a car on a road and a faceless man and woman inside. Then they were checking into a motel, and touching a pen, or one of those punch-button sign-in machines. I saw them in a restaurant, touching a sugar bowl. I saw them at a gas station, handing a credit card to an attendant. I saw them back home in Los Angeles, shaking hands, kissing children, inviting friends over for a drink, ignoring early signs that they were getting sick.
Shit.
“I’ll do it,” Chris said, and quickly left the bar. The screen door slammed behind her. I heard our Humvee start up outside.
I thanked Gazarra and explained that he needed to pack a bag and get to the hospital. Chris would have him picked up. He started to refuse but Eddie leaned over the bar, snapping out, “You have a wife upstairs? You want to make her sick, too? Or is she sick already?”
Gazarra put his face in his hands. No, she’s not sick. He looked up. I imagined that in the last twenty minutes while we’d talked, the red patch on his cheek had enlarged. Was that my imagination? For the tenth time today I cursed whoever had ordered the drone attack on the Somali clan fighters back in Africa.
There might have been evidence there — a story, a folktale, a piece of information we might have learned.
Right now we needed to go house to house and continue questioning. But at the screen door I turned back. I’d thought of one last thing. “Mr. Gazzara? Why did you call the two tourists weird?”
“Well, we get tourists in town sometimes,” he said, sniffling. “But there’s nothing for them here. Usually they took a wrong turn. They stick around for ten minutes, come in for a beer, or soda if they have kids. And go. But those two stayed. Got here in the morning. I saw ’em drive in. Only thirty people live here, so when someone comes, you notice. The weird thing is, they stuck around.”
“What did they do all day?”
“I said I noticed ’em, not that I followed ’em!”
He calmed down a little. “Sorry.” He scratched at his face, bad idea, and picked at a scab on his lips, another bad idea. But I didn’t mention it. I didn’t want to interrupt Gazarra’s chain of thought.
“Oh yeah! They stayed for dinner. Joined the party right here.”
Eddie said, “They knew the captain, you mean?”
“No, they were just here when the food came out. Antelope Italian sausage. My family’s specialty. Turned out the parmesan cheese was at their table, so they brought it over, and got invited to join in. I shred that cheese myself. No factory cheese here!”
“Do you have security cameras?” I asked.
Gazzara broke out laughing. “Are you kidding? Look at this place? What do I need security cameras for?”
“Someone must have taken photos at the party.”
“Maybe.”
Asked to describe the tourists, Gazarra vaguely recollected that the man was on the tall side with long sideburns, and the woman had cropped red hair like the model on the beer tray, but the model was prettier, he said, and the tourist was chubby and sunburned, the way people from up north get when they came to the desert.
“This is a big help,” Eddie lied.
“Mr. Gazzara, is there anything I didn’t ask about that you think we ought to know? Anything extra?”
“Talk to Mrs. Mitterand. She’s in the last house on the left. She said something about those two. She said they were religious nuts.”
“Why?”
“I don’t remember anymore.”
Denise Mitterand looked about ninety, tiny, wizened, pale, and as cooperative as if the day were normal and we were neighbors she’d invited over for a cold Coke. From the porch of her weathered bungalow, we could see, a half mile off, the concertina wire that sealed Galilee. Chris would be on the phone there hopefully, urging Washington to send out an alert about the tourists.
“Do you want to take blood? Those other doctors did.”
“No, ma’am. Just to ask questions.”
She was not sick, not visibly. And her mental equilibrium seemed fine. She accepted our precautions as necessary. She was white haired, delicate looking. The skin was almost translucent, nose a button, mouth small, forehead narrow, shoulder blades pressing outward, as if her body had been tiny to start with, and time was shrinking it back into thin air.
“The soldiers took away my neighbors, the Lawrences. Are they all right?”
“I’ll check when I get back and let you know.”
Inside, she offered us ice water and brownies but we explained that we had to decline. She understood perfectly well why. Whatever frailty age had brought her did not extend to her mental faculties. “I guess you can’t eat anything in our town just now,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. But thanks.”
She sat knees closed on a stuffed sitting chair, in her air-conditioned living room. At her feet lay an old black Labrador retriever, who required a wheeled walker to raise its hind parts. The house was small, clean, and comfortable; an eclectic mix showing foreign traveclass="underline" kilim throw rugs from Turkey, clay pottery from the Amazon, strung beads from South Africa, souvenirs of not just mileage but attitude and curiosity. She told us she was a retired high school music teacher. Her husband, Al, dead two years, had been a social studies teacher at Indian Springs High. They’d moved west from Saint Louis fifty years earlier, for the desert. Small town and broad-minded, I thought, liking her. Some people adapt to anything. Mrs. Mitterand was old, but she had the ability, that was clear.
I wanted to ask about the tourists but held off at first. Good-hearted people can react defensively if they think you’re attacking someone not present. But a few minutes later the conversation swung naturally to that Friday. Denise Mitterand remembered the tourists quite clearly “because of the singing,” she said.
“Singing?”
She grinned, as if no emergency was going on. “I’ll show you. Sing something,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“Anything. Christmas carol. Popular. Come on!”
Eddie cleared his throat. His voice sounded muffled coming from the suit. He had terrible pitch. He could never carry a tune.
“Jingle bells… jingle…”
The dog rose quickly, tail wagging like crazy, and raised its head. “Ooooooooooo.”
Denise Mitterand was up also, faster than I would have thought possible, and she kneeled by the animal, stroking his head. “Are you my boy? My Sinatra? Are you my one? See?” she said. “He does that every time! That’s why we named him Sinatra. Like he’s the reincarnation. My nephew said we should bring him on late-night TV to do those pet tricks. You try, Dr. Rush.”
I sang, “Dashing through the snow…”
“Oooooooooooooo.” The dog hopped around, spinning in circles, panting from happy effort. We burst out laughing. It was nice to know that something could still make us laugh. Sinatra looked sad when I stopped singing. He licked my glove, blessed with ignorance of contagion.
Denise said, “That morning he started making those sounds. He can’t walk but he hears pretty good. He’ll start up if a car goes by with the radio on. I looked out. Saw the couple walking by. I couldn’t hear them but their mouths were moving. I thought they must be singing.”