"You guys want to watch cartoons?" Rain crawled on all fours to Aleese's television set, turned it on, and pressed the channel button until cartoons appeared. I hadn't watched cartoons in years and didn't recognize the characters.
My head still hurt enough to keep me from sleeping, so I just lay perfectly still, stewing in my little hells, the worst of which was that they had found me here alone. Surely, there was no other way to find me, but at the strangest times I could get an all-too-weird outsider's sense of my so-called life. Cora, you're like the Grinch who stole Christmas: all by yourself at the most inappropriate times.
The thought could have brought on sleep, just to escape it. But it was like an invisible presence kept shaking my shoulder—maybe Oma, maybe Aleese or my father—maybe five thousand dead souls. Maybe the earth rumbled so far down that the surface stayed silent. I just felt like a megatsunami rolling across the Atlantic, still far from shore but about to make impact with places the ocean had never seen.
If that sounds weird, I cannot tell you how weird it felt to see Owen Eberman's head sticking up from Aleese's usual place on the couch, while Rain Steckerman sat in Aleese's white sweat socks and a black dress. We sat and watched some tiny cartoon kid in huge glasses fight a bad guy trying to take over the whole world. I watched Owen and Rain turn almost to silhouette as the sun dropped low outside.
SIXTEEN
SCOTT EBERMAN
MONDAY, MARCH 4, 2002
5:02 P.M.
I SPOTTED DR. O'DELL right off. He was standing just inside our kitchen talking to Mr. Glenn, an attorney buddy of Mom's. But as I made my way through the living room, I was stopped by neighbors, coworkers, my two entrepreneur uncles who had flown down from New York—they all wanted to hug me. It brought me to life.
But with the idle chitchat, I sensed that everyone thought my mom's and Aleese Holman's similar deaths were a freaky coincidence—and I was not about to tell them otherwise. Until I had some idea what had made this handful of people sick, I couldn't see the point in scaring them half to death. While I chatted it up and lied about where Owen was, I didn't see a single raw nose, hear a single cough, or see a single hand rub a single sore gut. Nobody even sneezed, for Christ's sake.
I finally pulled Dr. O'Dell into the kitchen.
"How are you doing?" he asked.
"I'm okay. My brother's not." I watched him raise his eyebrows, and I supposed my tenderhearted brother might give the impression of needing a Valium. I leaned close. "He's got Mom's flu. And the Holman girl had a relapse this afternoon."
He groaned quietly. "Symptoms?"
"Same as Mom's, only they're split up right now. Owen's got the stomach-fever part. Cora Holman has the fever and sinus headache. And Rain Steckerman's had it all, though it's reduced to a stuffed nose right now."
While he searched his head for a response, I asked, "Have you had any more patients in your office complaining of a flu that couldn't make up its mind between sinus or intestines?"
He shook his head. "Believe me. I've got my eyes wide open for something unusual like that. So does Doug Godfrey, so does..." He named four or five family doctors associated with the hospital. "Considering it's flu season, I've seen very little flu, what with the warm weather."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah..." I rubbed the bridge of my nose in frustration.
He gave the predictable response: "Unless one of these kids exhibits a few symptoms we wouldn't assess as common flu, I don't think we have enough to hospitalize them. We'd have to hear something definitive from the CDC first. That'll be a week from today. Who knows? Maybe they'll all be better by then, Scott."
"Or maybe they'll be worse."
He raised and lowered his eyebrows. "Where are they?"
"Down at Cora Holman's house. Whatever it is they have, if it's the least bit airborne, I didn't want to risk having Owen down here breathing on everyone."
"I figured you'd have them cordoned off somewhere." He squeezed my arm with sympathy and a sad grin. "That might be the best place for them, given what germs can be around an emergency room this time of year, and I know I don't have enough to get them quarantined. How about if I ask Doug Godfrey to stop by the Holman place and get some blood samples and anything else he feels is relevant?"
"Why not?" I muttered. Maybe an extra blood test or two thrown in for good measure wouldn't turn up "Fever of Unknown Origin."
"I'll call Doug," he said. "He's stitching up a car accident tonight—torn sinus cavity—or he would be here now. But I'll get him to stop over on his way home. You get what you think your brother might need to stay put ... We'll keep it between us for the time being. God forbid, but if it's some ferocious new germ, I'll shout how you did your part to keep it contained."
"Thanks," I muttered, though heroics were not what I wanted to be known for. I climbed the stairs to our room and found Bob Dobbins and that whole gaggle of Owen's friends stretched out on the floor and the beds, waiting for him.
"Where's the man? How's Cora Holman?" Adrian Moran asked, lying on my bed.
Lest they blab and the town be thrown into a panic, I just said, "He's lagging along with Rain. Cora Holman is ... Cora Holman. What can I say?"
"Did she look like a million dollars, even at her mother's funeral?" Jon Dempsey asked as I stepped over him and Dobbins and yanked off my tie. "I'm telling you, the girl's a statue. She's got no feelings."
"She didn't come apart at the seams, though I don't think she's as frigid as you guys make her out to be."
"She had a lot of friends show up, at least?" Dobbins asked. Bob Dobbins was the one among them who seemed most like Owen—most human in his approach to people—and I detected genuine concern in his voice. Before I could say something, Dempsey cast Dobbins a confused look.
"Who does that girl hang out with, anyway?"
Nobody seemed able to answer. I stuck a pair of Owen's sweatpants into a gym bag.
"You know what? Maybe you guys should catch up with Owen tomorrow. He's kinda ... you know..." I pretended I was tearing my hair out. I didn't feel I should let them wait around for Owen all night.
I was met with a stony silence I pretended not to notice. My brother wasn't loud or the life of the party, but he was more or less the heart of this group, and they'd probably follow him over a cliff. I went into the bathroom and swiped Owen's toothbrush quickly, and Dobbins almost banged into me on the way out.
"What's up?" he asked. "What can we do? Coach even called off wrestling practice today and tomorrow so we could do for Owen like he would do for us. Don't just, ya know, tell us to leave."
I exhaled an apology. Dobbins had replaced me as running back last year on the football team. He wasn't future Harvard material any more than I was, but he had a piercing eye that let you know he was interested in what you had to say, and he wasn't known for spilling over at the mouth. I pulled him along down the stairs and into the laundry room, shutting the door.
"He's not flipping out, is he?" Dobbins asked.
I shook my head, realizing that would be their first suspicion. "He's just come down with something and ... it looks a little like what Mom had, that's all."
"So, where is he?"
"Cora Holman's. She's got it, too."
He let out a groan. "Damn. No rest for the weary. Bet it's not serious, dude. Rain's doing okay?"
"Seems to be."
"And sorry about Dempsey's comment on Cora up there. It just isn't the time, but uh..." Dobbins laughed nervously. "He's always had a case for Cora Holman, so he has to cut up, I guess."
I opened the dryer door, liking how easy it was to pursue this line of talk instead of the more serious ones. I joked, "He likes poised and proper, huh?"
"He likes a challenge. We keep telling him he'll have better luck with a member of the British royal family. As for them having what your moms had..." He gestured awkwardly. "Cora's mom was a drug addict, right? Didn't we used to hear that around school?"
"Yeah."
"And your mom's favorite mo
tto was always 'I sleep fast.' I mean, neither one was probably up for fighting terrible germs, right? So ... maybe you shouldn't worry about Owen so much. It's not going to get him like that, Scott, if he's got what your mom had."
"You're probably right, but—"
"But you got your paramedic's imagination working overtime, eh?"
My head dipped in half a nod. "It's on a mountain of memos from the CDC, all these emerging infectious diseases we're supposed to be looking out for while working."
"Yeah? I guess nothing matches what Owen has?"
"I read through a stack of thirty-six of those memos last night, though most of them are far-reaching. Ya know...'There's this tsetse fly in Marrakech that's been biting Africans in the ass. If it hops a plane to Newark, here's what you might see.'"
"You're gonna make yourself nuts." He laid a hand on my shoulder. "Try to relax, man. You're starting to sound like Mr. Steckerman."
"What's he saying?" I had started to reach in the dryer for a T-shirt, but I froze.
"Nothing—lately. We had that assembly in early January when he went over from the FBI to USIC, and he came to school to talk about terror attacks. It was part of the 9/11 razzmatazz, like, a canned speech that was coming from law enforcement officers all over the country."
"Oh." I must have looked wrung out because he kept patting my shoulder until I bent down to get the stuff out of the dryer.
"He told us that as Americans, we have a responsibility to look after our neighborhoods and make sure there's no suspicious activity going on. But then ... he wasn't very good at telling us what we were supposed to be looking for. In fact, he got us all confused by saying that as Americans we shouldn't profile."
I pulled out Owen's favorite Steelers jersey and dumped it in the gym bag. "I guess he can't exactly say to look for a bunch of 9/11 poster boys assembling suspiciously in public places while carrying Zippo lighters and dollar-store box cutters."
A laugh blew out his nose, but he muttered, "Don't, man. Tannis is around here somewhere."
Tannis Halib, son of a Saudi heart surgeon at Saint Ann's, was another of Owen's football buddies. I groped around the dryer in a frustrating hunt for two matching socks.
"Shit, I wouldn't have Steckerman's job for all the tea in China," I beefed. "At least I can say, 'Here's a picture of a goddamn tsetse fly. It's from goddamn Marrakech, and if you see one, you better squash its sorry ass.' So, what did he end up telling you? Hell, I'm open." I shrugged. "Might as well look for terrorists while I'm looking for tsetse flies and every other goddamn thing."
"I don't even remember. Something very vague and ... American. Look out for people gathering in houses on a regular basis where they didn't used to gather. Something like that."
"Ha! We'd all be under arrest in this house tonight"
I found two Wigwams but one had a hole, so I tossed it over my head and fished for another. "Confusing times, as my boss constantly says," I griped on. "Strange gatherings in your neighborhood, huh? With my luck, I would end up busting some new division of the local garden club and every lady in town would be pissed at me."
"I saw a strange gathering," Dobbins went on cheerily. "I didn't say anything about it after Mr. Steckerman's terrorism assembly, though."
"Yeah, maybe you should report it to him," I said politely, eyeing up another sock, which turned out to be a short Wigwam, and my first find was a long. Owen wouldn't care, but I had this thing that socks ought to match up. I'm a realist: I don't believe in the black hole in the dryer.
"But it sounds like profiling," Dobbins went on. "I probably would have said something, but I figured it would sound dumb."
One new Wam in the dryer meant another new Wam also was in the dryer. I pulled out a bedsheet, hoping that would help. It was the sheet I'd stripped off Mom's bed and washed about ten minutes before she told me she wanted to go to the hospital.
The bed was still stripped. It's part of the whole run-over-by-a-truck feeling I'd had for three days—bumping into items that remind you of how alive the person was a week ago. I was barely listening to Dobbins.
"...saw a strange gathering while I was parked in front of Buzby's Liquors over in Surrey. You know that discount shoe place across the street?...dozen or so men were in there after hours, popping champagne and drinking forties. It's like they were toasting something, celebrating something. I took a walk over that way, because Ronnie got to chatting with Mr. Buzby, and he didn't leave me the keys to play the radio."
Ronnie Dobbins was Bob's older brother, and I just nodded.
"I walked over to the shoe store, because it looked like they had Asian revenge on Prada in the window, and I wanted to see how close the match was, ya know? Well, they saw me through the window and slithered into this back room—all dozen or so of them—like they didn't want any window-shoppers gazing directly at them. It's a pretty quiet street outside of Buzby's, and it was like they had a second thought about what they were doing when I went up to the window. And this one guy came to the door, unlocked it, and said to me that they were closed, which I knew. It looked like he wanted to get rid of me. And truth be told? His English was for shit. You know how my dad rags on about that. People come here, and they ought to start learning the language before they start soaking our money. Anyway, I thought it was weird because it wasn't New Year's Eve for two more days. I was at this liquor store with Ronnie to order a keg for our party, so it was probably only the twenty-eighth of December. They were toasting each other, like, celebrating something..."
I rose slowly to my feet, rubbing the back of my head where I'd just banged it on the dryer opening, upon hearing that date. I'm good with details, but sometimes it takes me a while to know why I'm good with a particular detail. That December 28 date made me jump, and it was only while straightening up that I remembered Mr. Steckerman quoting some e-mail intelligence chatter from the guys they thought were trying to poison water somewhere: They will drink in December and die like mangy dogs in April...
"You saw this in December?" I asked curiously. "A bunch of guys in a storefront, speaking shitty English, and celebrating like they'd just accomplished something?"
"Or won something, or did something, yeah."
I thought about this, half shrugging. It could have been a great sale that netted the owner thousands of bucks. They could have been some religion I didn't know—of which there are a hundred in these parts—that started the new year on a different day than we did. The idea that they were celebrating the finishing up of an act of terror seemed truly out there, though I was a little bit intrigued by the image.
"What do you think they were celebrating?" I asked.
"Hell if I know. I didn't think about it at all ... Until Mr. Steckerman said to watch out for unusual gatherings of people. But then I decided it wasn't worth telling."
"Why?"
"Because. I don't know if 'weird' means 'suspicious.' But here's one more thing. They were at a party with all guys. Who leaves the opposite sex out of champagne, unless it's one of those cultures that treat women like shit in the first place?"
I looked down, and a newish, long Wigwam lay flopped over one sneaker. I reached for it, annoyed and half confused. "So. We've got a party in a store. No women. Bad English. And paranoia when you start looking in the window."
"Is that suspicious?" he asked.
Hell if I knew. "Crazy times, Jeezus."
"Yeah, and it happened around here. Around here. And it was at least two weeks old by that point. Nothing had been blown up, so it doesn't matter."
I got a chill over the memory of Mr. Steckerman's story at the hospital—about certain waterborne agents of bioterror taking months to become symptomatic in humans. I patted Dobbins's bicep, trying to feel sufficient sympathy. He hadn't heard that story.
I slung the gym bag over my shoulder. "The grand overview is that something around here took two lives, and if it's anything dramatic, it's got to be an emerging infectious disease. The only agents of bioterror that co
uld strike in December and kill in March would be in the water. And USIC said the towers are clean."
Dobbins's laugh reminded me to take a reality check. Mystery of the Terrorists at Trinity. Sounded like some goddamn latest edition of the Hardy Boys.
"So ... can I go with you to see Owen?" Dobbins turned the subject. "If I don't tell the other guys? He shouldn't have to suffer the flu pukes with Rain's motormouth driving him nuts and Cora Holman's frigid good manners giving him frostbite."
I couldn't answer because my mind was all over the place. I couldn't help myself. I had visions of Mom refilling her dented, dinged, three-week-old Evian bottle at the tap every time I turned around. I couldn't see how USIC could be wrong about their testing results, but I was uneasy, remembering how things sometimes happened on my shift—people died in the ambulance, even when you thought you had everything under control, or you were doing the best job that you knew how to do.
"Maybe we could just drive past that discount shoe place and get a look at those guys," I suggested. "Not that you can tell a terrorist just by looking at one, yada yada..."
"Well, you can't see them," Dobbins said. "Here's the weirdest thing about that story. The day after New Year's, I went to take the keg back for my brother. And the discount shoe store was deserted—I mean gone deserted, like the windows were soaped up and the place had been shut down, and there was a FOR RENT sign in the window."
Like they'd done something, celebrated it, and then skipped town. I didn't want my imagination to run wild, but I was drawn to this concept like the moon draws water.
"The place was still deserted when we got another keg there after winning that last wrestling match. It's almost like I dreamed it or something."
"But you didn't," I questioned him, "right?"
He shook his head, heaving a sigh. "No, man. I was wide awake and stone- cold sober. You really think I should have bothered Mr. Steckerman about this?" he asked again.
"Who knows? Probably their lease ran out and they were celebrating a year of American prosperity. But I'll tell you. Nothing is helping me more to get through these days than trying to figure out what got Mom. Maybe I could put it on my list of stuff to do to keep from having a nervous breakdown—just to drive past there, maybe look in the windows. You in?"