The teakettle was whistling shrilly. I got up and turned the burner off.
'It's not the only exotic disease I've had in my research archives. I've been collecting,' she said. 'I actually thought I might do an important project someday. Study the world's most feared virus and learn something more about the human immune system that might save us from other scourges like AIDS. I thought I might win a Nobel Prize.' She had gotten oddly quiet, as if pleased with herself. 'But no, I wouldn't say that in Birmingham my intention was to one day create an epidemic.'
'Well, you didn't,' I replied.
Her eyes narrowed like evil as she looked at me.
'No one's gotten sick except for those people suspected of using the facial spray,' I said. 'I've been exposed several times to patients, and I'm okay. The virus you created is a dead end, affecting only the primary person but not replicating. There's no secondary infection. No epidemic. What you created was a panic, disease and death
for a handful of innocent victims. And crippled the fishing industry for an island full of people who probably have never even heard of a Nobel Prize.'
I leaned back in my chair, studying her, but she did not seem to care.
'Why did you send me photographs and messages?' I demanded. 'Photographs taken in your dining room, on that table. Who was your guinea pig? Your old and infirm mother? Did you spray her with the virus to see if it worked? And when it did, you shot her in the head. You dismembered her with an autopsy saw so no one ever connected that death with your eventual product tampering?'
'You think you're so smart,' she, deadoc, said.
'You murdered your own mother and wrapped her in a drop cloth because you could not bear to look at her as you sawed her apart.'
She averted her eyes as my pager vibrated. I pulled it out and read Marino's number. I
got out my phone, my eyes never leaving her.
'Yes,' I said when he answered.
'We got a hit on the camper,' he said. 'Traced it back to a manufacturer, then to an address in Newport News. Thought you'd want to know. Agents should be there right about now.'
'Wish the Bureau had gotten that hit a little sooner,' I said. 'I'll see the agents at the door.'
'What did you say?' I got off the phone.
'I communicated with you because I knew you would pay attention.' Crowder kept talking at a higher pitch. 'And to make you try and for once finally lose. The famous doctor. The famous chief.'
'You were a colleague and friend,' I said.
'And I resent you!' Her face was flushed, bosom heaving as she raged. 'I always have! The way the system's always treated you better, all the attention you get. The great Dr Scarpetta. The legend. But ha! Look who won. In the end I outsmarted you, didn't I?'
I would not answer her.
'Ran you around, didn't I?' She stared, reaching for a bottle of aspirin and shaking out two. 'Brought you close to death's door and had you waiting in cyberspace. Waiting for me!' she said triumphantly.
Something metal loudly rapped on her front door. I pushed back my chair.
'What are they going to do? Shoot me? Or maybe you should. I bet you've got a gun in one of those bags.' She was getting hysterical. 'I've got one in the other room and I'm going to get it right now.'
She got up as the knocking continued, and a voice demanded, 'Open up, FBL' I grabbed her arm. 'No one's going to shoot you, Phyllis.'
'Let go of me!'
I steered her toward the door.
'Let go of me!'
'Your punishment will be to die the way they did.' I pulled her along.
'NO!' she screamed as the door crashed open, slamming against the wall and jarring framed photographs loose from their hooks.,
Two FBI agents stepped inside with pistols drawn, and one of them was Janet. They cuffed Dr Phyllis Crowder after she collapsed to the floor. An ambulance transported her to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where twenty-one days later she died, shackled in bed, covered with fulminating pustules. She was forty-four.
Epilogue
I could not make the decision right away but put it off until New Year's Eve
when people are supposed to make changes, resolutions, promises they know they'll never keep. Snow was clicking against my slate roof as Wesley and I sat on the floor in front of the fire, sipping champagne.
'Benton,' I said, 'I need to go somewhere.'
He looked confused, as if I meant right now, and said, 'There's not much open, Kay.'
'No. A trip, in February, maybe. To London.'
He paused, knowing what I was thinking. He set his glass on the hearth and took my hand.
'I've been hoping you would,' he said. 'No matter how hard it is, you really should. So you can have closure, peace of mind.'
'I'm not sure it's possible for me to have peace of mind.' I pulled my hand away and pushed back my hair. This was hard for him, too. It had to be.
'You must miss him,' I said. 'You never talk about it, but he was like a brother. I remember all the times we did things together, the three of us. Cooking, watching movies, sitting around talking about cases and the latest lousy thing government had done to us. Like furloughs, taxes, budget cuts.'
He smiled a little, staring into flames. 'And I would think about what a lucky bastard he was to have you. Wonder what it was like. Well, now I know, and I was right. He
was lucky as hell. He's probably the only person I've ever really talked to, besides you. Kind of strange, in a way. Mark was one of the most self-centered people I've ever
met, one of these beautiful creatures, narcissistic as hell. But he was good. He was smart. I don't think you ever stop missing someone like him.'
Wesley was wearing a white wool sweater and cream-colored khakis, and in firelight he was almost radiant.
'You go out tonight and you'll disappear,' I said. He gave me a puzzled frown.
'Dressed like that in the snow. You fall in a ditch, no one will see you until spring. You should wear something dark on a night like this. You know, contrast.'
'Kay. How about I put on some coffee.'
'It's like people who want a four-wheel-drive vehicle for winter. So they buy something white. Tell me how that makes sense when you're sliding on a white road beneath a white sky with white stuff swirling everywhere.'
'What are you talking about?' His eyes were on me.
'I don't know.'
I lifted the bottle of champagne out of its bucket. Water dripped as I refilled our glasses, and I was ahead of him, about two to one. The CD player was stacked with hits from the seventies, and Three Dog Night was vibrating speakers in the walls. It was one of those rare times I might get drunk. I could not stop thinking about it and seeing it in my mind. I did not know until I was in that room with the wires hanging out of the ceiling and saw where gory severed hands and feet had been lined in a row. It was not until then that the truth seared my mind. I could not forgive myself.
'Benton,' I quietly said, 'I should have known it was her. I should have known before I got to her house and walked in there and saw the photographs and that room. I mean, a part of me must have known, and I didn't listen.'
He did not answer, and I took this as a further indictment.
'I should have known it was her,' I muttered again. 'People might not have died.'
'Should is always easy to say after the fact.' His tone was gentle but unwavering.
'People who live next door to the Gacys, the Bundys, the Dahmers of the world are always the last to figure it out, Kay.'
'And they don't know what I do, Benton.' I sipped champagne. 'She killed Wingo.'
'You did the best you could,' he reminded me.