Clearly impressed, Dixon said, ‘‘Not so far-fetched.’’
‘‘Close physical contact,’’ Boldt repeated. ‘‘You said yourself it was highly contagious. What if it spread? What if a couple guys are real sick? What if the evening news happened to report that a flu shot and an antibiotic had just come available? That both were specific to what authorities were calling the ‘container flu’?’’
‘‘The antibiotic wouldn’t be specific to the flu,’’ Dixon advised.
‘‘So they issue a retraction? The point being that we could use it as bait. We’ve seen guards on the videos. People have been around these women. Close contact. Someone has buried them. Handled them.’’
The doctor’s gloved hands made sucking noises inside the cadaver. He said, ‘‘This is no Ebola, or something-it’s a very bad flu. It’s treatable.’’
‘‘But if the news plays it up, if there’s a treatment available at a clinic, if our people are at that clinic, and if it requires them to fill out a form that includes an exposure date-’’
‘‘That’s completely unnecessary!’’
‘‘But they don’t know that! The average guy doesn’t know that! I wouldn’t know that. Jill Doe was in the ground weeks ahead of Jane Doe. Jane Doe was dead before the container. The point being that if we can trick someone into naming a date ahead of the container’s arrival, then that person will have to explain his exposure.’’
‘‘No one would ever run such a story. It’s medically unsound. They fact check, you know? Your only hope is with the tabloids, believe me.’’
‘‘My hope is that this office will issue a press release,’’ Boldt stated bluntly.
Dixon’s hands stopped, submerged in the corpse. ‘‘Well then, you just lost all hope.’’ He said firmly, ‘‘I understand what you’re going for, Lou. In a warped kind of way, it even makes sense. It’s a pretty good idea. But I cannot put this department in the position you’re asking me to. If we lose integrity and trust, if the public believes we’re willing to manipulate the truth for the good of SPD. . It just doesn’t work. We’re a team of medical professionals. Believe me, we have image problems enough without this kind of thing: ‘second-rate doctors’; ‘surgeons whose only patients are dead.’ Can’t do it, Lou.’’
‘‘But it might work,’’ Boldt suggested, looking for encouragement.
‘‘I’d give it a qualified yes-a highly qualified yes.’’ He repeated, ‘‘But it doesn’t matter. You’ll never get anyone to run the story.’’
Boldt said, ‘‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that.’’
CHAPTER 54
Between the chauffeur-driven Town Cars and her own 325i, Stevie realized she had not ridden a Seattle city bus until then, surprised by the diversity of its riders and the unexpected neighborliness of its passengers. She had thought the bus system a place for poor people, the homeless and indigent, ‘‘The Unseen Minority’’ as they had been called in a feature piece on N4@5. Instead, on that Tuesday afternoon she found teenagers, college kids, moms and children, even a businessman or two. They read books, newspapers, knitted, listened to Walkmans, shared a conversation, or stared out the windows, which was what Stevie did, ever alert for landmarks that might signal the location where Melissa’s subject had disembarked. In her right hand, Stevie carried a printout from the digital video for comparison.
The bus stops came and went. People switched seats. The doors hissed shut. The bell line buzzed the driver.
She marked a tourist map as she went, indicating the running time of the trip. With the video time-stamped, it seemed one possible way to identify the bus stop this man had taken.
The bus route dragged on, her broadcast nearing. After ten more minutes, as they approached the Fremont Bridge, she realized the bus trip would have to wait. She had a meeting scheduled with Boldt to determine if they should air the clips of Mama Lu. Frustrated with the idea of giving up she nonetheless disembarked, crossed the street and rode another bus back into town. As it turned out, Boldt was waiting for her.
CHAPTER 55
Brian Coughlie felt obsessed with her. Aware that following the botched attack in her apartment, the police or the other security were more than likely to keep her under protection, Coughlie nonetheless assigned two of his own INS agents to also watch her from a distance, to report not only her every movement but who else was keeping tabs. When his people reported her boarding a city bus Coughlie became perplexed. Try as he did, he couldn’t make sense of her riding public transportation out to Fremont Bridge and then back into the city again. Was it something she had gleaned from one of the videos? A tip from an informer from the hotline? What? Worse: How did he stop her?
He had gone without sleep, compensating for this additional fatigue through a liberal dose of amphetamines and as much espresso as he could force down. He lived broadcast to broadcast, terrified at what she might come up with next, debating his options and not liking any of them. To watch her broadcasts felt to him like professional leprosy: watching the slow rotting of his own career as bits and chunks sloughed off.
Two days more. His focus remained this last shipment of illegals yet to arrive, although he felt plagued by the police’s recent discovery of three more buried bodies in Hilltop Cemetery and what those cadavers might reveal to the experts. Rodriguez was a liability-his solutions only created additional problems.
More terrifying to him personally was that his request for police to share this Hilltop information had gone without any acknowledgment or reciprocity. LaMoia hadn’t even returned the call. What was that about?
He couldn’t pick up and run even if he’d wanted to; it wasn’t the police he was worried about, but the Chinese ‘‘businessmen’’ who owned him. A person didn’t run from such people, not ever. You stood and faced the music. You implicated others in the failure; you framed people if necessary.
The more he thought about it all, the sharper the pain behind his eyes, the drier his tongue. He had work to do. If he got this next shipment in without incidence, he felt reasonably confident he could wrestle control back from SPD and contain the damage.
The success of the next shipment was everything.
CHAPTER 56
Stevie McNeal sat up straight in her anchor chair facing the three robotic cameras, a barrage of lights pouring color and heat down onto her.
At Boldt’s request, she prepared herself to lie, to use her anchor chair for her own good, to willfully manipulate her trusting public in an effort to rescue her Little Sister. It was professional suicide if it ever came out, but she felt bound to pursue anything that increased Melissa’s chances. Anything.
She would break from the prepared text of the news hour and read from her own cards. There would be hell to pay, especially if the station managers ever found out she had known in advance that the information was inaccurate, a construct of a police department desperate for a break. In the next few seconds she was going to put her entire career on the line. She wouldn’t find work in a fourth-tier city if this ever came out.
Her director’s voice came through the earpiece she wore. ‘‘You okay, Stevie?’’
She raised her hand to signal him, though she did not open her eyes, her full concentration on Melissa and putting her needs first.
Surprisingly, she thought of her father, alone and unloved in some veteran’s hospital, courtesy of the federal government. Melissa had mentioned his poor health. Stevie blamed her father for her years in New York, for feeding her to a skirt-chasing producer whose idea of educating the fresh recruits was getting their clothes off. She hadn’t spoken to her father since her departure from New York-her ending the affair had also ended her network career. But faced with compromising her career, she suddenly thought of him and how she would be letting him down, would be damaging the McNeal name, and she realized he still held power over her, even off wherever he was, battling whatever it was. She could break the communication but not the connection.