There’s been no evidence found so far that other cult members are still out there. But maybe that is wrong, and someday one will come for me.
That day, I scraped off the blood on the deck with a sharp spatula, and applied brown deck stain. I probably got all of the blood off, but you never know, probably some bacteria-sized bits remained.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although leprosy has been mostly eliminated as a health hazard around the world, in 2013, there were 215,456 new cases reported globally, according to the World Health Organization. Pockets of the disease still remain, mostly in third world countries. The key to eliminating the disease and cutting down on transmission remains early detection, and rapid treatment with multidrug therapy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank the following people for their help during the writing of Cold Silence.
Huge thanks to fellow authors and good friends: Charles Salzberg, Jim Grady, and Phil Gerard, for giving plot advice and for reading versions of the manuscript.
At Montclair State University, thanks to Dean Robert Prezent for providing an intellectual home during writing and to Dr. Jack Gaynor for the hours he spent educating me on issues regarding DNA and experiments with it.
To forensic psychologist Dr. Xavier Amador and to cult expert Rick Ross, my respect and my gratitude.
A very special thanks to my dad, Jerome Reiss, who is a genius at envisioning what certain characters would do in a tricky situation. Go Dad!
Lizzy Hanson, thanks for the advice!
To Stuart Harris, head of Wilderness Medicine at Harvard, thanks for letting Joe Rush affiliate with your fine program, and thanks for walking me through how Joe would handle a problem in Africa.
Novels often come out of past experience, and this story would not have come about without terrific magazine editors like David Hirshey, formerly of Esquire, who sent me to Northern Kenya and Sudan on assignment, and Walter Anderson, formerly of Parade, who sent me to Somalia.