Ejecta (20 page)

***

Devlin heard sirens in the distance, but had no way to know that they were connected to Quinton’s visit, as the ex-diplomat exploded out through the ICM building’s front door. But she wanted to stop him and threw herself in the way. They collided and fell in a tangle of arms and legs. But they were soon separated as Quinton bounced to his feet and took off. Having had the wind knocked out of her, Devlin was in the process of trying to stand, when Palmer arrived to help. “Sara? What the hell happened?”

“He was here,” she shouted. “Come on!”

So Palmer followed as she took off down the street.

Devlin could see Quinton ahead. The two of them made momentary eye contact as the fugitive looked back over his shoulder. Then, having been alerted to the fact that someone was following him, Quinton ran towards a cab. A woman with a tiny white dog was just about to enter it when he jerked her away. She stumbled and fell as the old man slid into the taxi. “Hey, man,” the cabbie said, “what’s up with that? Are you crazy or something?”

“Shut up and drive,” Quinton said hoarsely, as he shoved a couple of twenties through the window.

The cabbie fingered the notes, found them to his liking, and was already pulling into traffic when Devlin and Palmer arrived.

The woman with the dog was back on her feet and complaining bitterly as Palmer hailed a second taxi, and dove inside. Devlin was right behind him, pulling the door closed as Palmer said, “Follow that cab!” and pointed ahead. If the cabbie thought that was strange he gave no sign of it as he pulled out into traffic.

***

Quinton clutched the I-heart-NY bag to his chest as the cab carried him back towards the Hobley Hotel. The trip to the ICM building had gone well. V
ery
well. And he was looking forward to exposing the teenaged female to the meteorite samples now in his possession. Then, assuming a potential mate was present on one of the slices, all he’d have to do was sit back and wait.

Once the cab was within a block of the hotel Quinton pushed more money into the driver’s compartment and ordered the cabbie to pull over. Then, after exiting the vehicle, the old man went straight toward the hotel. He was in a hurry now. Partly because there might be a mate waiting for him inside the bag clutched to his chest, and partly because the girl was chained to the couch. But something was wrong. Not only did he have a headache, but the worst headache he had ever experienced, and the pain was so intense it made him feel dizzy.

Then, through increasingly blurry vision Quinton saw that
two
medic units were sitting out front of the Hobley Hotel, along with some police cars. It was obvious that the girl had gotten loose, or been discovered somehow, which meant the authorities were looking for him.

He turned, hoping he hadn’t been spotted, and was retracing his steps when a cab screeched to a halt and two people got out. It was getting progressively more difficult to see. But the ex-diplomat recognized one of them as his old friend Palmer— and the other as the woman who had attempted to stop him back at the ICM building.

Quinton ran, or tried to, but Devlin had anticipated the move and was there to block the old man as three policemen arrived with weapons drawn. They were shouting orders at Quinton, and appeared ready to fire, so Palmer went to intervene. That made the policemen angry, and Palmer was trying to explain, when he was thrown to cement.

Devlin was left face-to-face with Quinton. “Please!” she said. “I know what’s wrong with you! I can get help! We’ll take the parasite out! We’ll….”

But Quinton never got to hear the rest of what the woman had to say. Because his head exploded, sending chunks of bone and brains out to form a bloody halo around his still vertical body.

Devlin saw the whole thing as if in slow motion, as the body collapsed, and the steadily expanding cloud continued to radiate in every direction. That gave her a fraction of a second in which to take a deep breath and hold it, as thousands of warm airborne droplets painted her face and her clothes.

Though well out of range of the explosion Palmer saw it, shouted “No!” and tried to get up off the sidewalk. A cop, who assumed that the old man had been shot, threw him back down.

Devlin understood the danger she was in and was determined to hold her breath for as long as she could. Because if she could hold it long enough the spore-laden aerosol mist would disperse and leave the air safe to breathe. But finally, unable to hold it any longer, the parasitologist was forced to exhale and take a deep breath.

New York, New York

The room was small, the walls were green, and Devlin had been sitting on the hard wooden chair for the better part of four hours. In spite of considerable pressure to do so she had steadfastly refused to answer the questions put to her by members of the New York city Police Department until she was provided with an attorney or given the opportunity to speak with a representative from the CDC’s Department of Biosecurity. Not because Devlin wanted to obstruct justice. But because she had no way to know whether the gag order applied to the NYPD and didn’t want to get into even more trouble by telling the cops things they weren’t supposed to know.

All of this made the policemen seated on the other side of the table crazy. Because they had a murder to solve, and based on the information obtained from the ICM security guard, Devlin had been outside waiting for the killer to emerge from the building. The question was why? Was she intent on returning Quinton’s cell phone? Or was Devlin an accessory to murder? A lookout perhaps who had been left behind during the murderer’s frenzied escape.

“Look,” Detective Tony Pedrotti said sympathetically. “Why protect this scumbag? He’s a murderer for god’s sake! You wanna see that video again?” In spite of the fact that he had begun to put on some weight Pedrotti was still a good looking man. He liked expensive suits and had a tendency to adjusting his cuffs every couple of minutes.

Devlin had seen Quinton shoot the young woman at least ten times by then and knew the gruesome images were permanently burned onto her neocortex. “No,” she said firmly. “It’s like I told you before. I would like to be of assistance, but I can’t speak until I have legal counsel, or you put me in touch with the appropriate person at the CDC’s Department of Biosecurity.”

“They ain’t returning our calls” Detective Marty Klatt replied flatly. “So either you’re full of shit, or they don’t give a shit, which means it’s time to start talk’in to
me
.” Klatt had a thin, almost gaunt face, and enjoyed playing the role of bad cop. His beady eyes were filled with malevolence.

The door to the interrogation room suddenly swung open and Cooper entered. “Hi, guys,” he said cheerfully. “I’m Agent Cooper with the CDC’s Department of Biosecurity. We’re in charge of the Quinton investigation, and since Dr. Devlin is working with us, I’ll take it from here.”

“That’s bullshit!” Klatt objected angrily, as he came to his size fourteen feet. “Show me some ID.”

“That won’t be necessary,” a female voice said, as a neatly dressed African American woman appeared in the doorway. “
I
checked Agent Cooper’s credentials and he’s correct. His department
does
have the lead on the Quinton investigation. They’ll keep us informed. In the meantime keep your mouths shut about the case. And that’s from the commissioner.”

“Come on, Lieutenant…. Give me a break,” Pedrotti protested. “This woman knows something. I can
smell
it!”

The police lieutenant’s face was so rigid it might have been carved from stone. “You’re excused Detective Pedrotti. And that goes for you too Detective Klatt.”

Devlin heard Pedrotti mutter something under his breath as he followed Klatt out into the hallway. Once the police officers were gone the Lieutenant turned to Cooper. “Just for the record Detective Klatt is correct. This
is
bullshit. Since when did the CDC become qualified to carry out a murder investigation?”

“Since Congress said we could,” Cooper replied smoothly. “Dr. Devlin and I would like to borrow your conference room for a few minutes. We’ll be out of here shortly.”

Judging from the expression on her face the policewoman was anything but pleased. But she stood to one side, and allowed the others to pass, as Devlin followed Cooper down a short hallway. Conference Room B was furnished with four folding tables, all pushed together to form a rectangle, plus some mismatched chairs. A large whiteboard took up most of the wall opposite the only window and a roll around TV stand occupied one corner of the room. “So,” Cooper said neutrally. “Have a seat.”

Devlin circled the table before choosing a plastic chair. It felt cold. “You don’t seem very surprised to see me,” she observed.

“No,” Cooper agreed, as he sat on a corner of the table. “I’m not. You have a talent for being in the right place at the right time.”

“Or the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Yes,” Cooper agreed, as he looked into her green eyes. “You were lucky today. Quinton didn’t shoot you but he certainly could have. And
would
have if he saw you as a serious threat.”

“A threat to
him?
Or to the parasite?”

“I don’t think there’s much difference,” the agent answered grimly. “Not anymore.”

“He took mineral samples, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he did,” Cooper replied. “And we found a teenage girl chained to a radiator in his New York apartment. She’s in a hospital now.”

“He had plans to infect her,” Devlin mused out loud. “
If
one of the stolen samples came up positive.”

“That’s the way it looks,” Cooper agreed.

“So you’re going to check the samples? The ones he took?”

“That seems logical,” Cooper replied unhelpfully, “but what do I know? I’m just an errand boy.”

Devlin eyed him. “Will they perform an autopsy?”

Cooper smiled crookedly. “Do bears shit in the woods? Of course they’ll perform an autopsy. Now, go home, and do whatever it is that parasitologists normally do. But before you leave I suggest that you take a moment to watch some television. All you have to do is press ‘Play.’” And with that the agent got up and left the room.

Devlin watched the door close and stared at the remote. Cooper was playing a game with her, she could feel it, and wondered if she should ignore his invitation. But curiosity got the better of her and she pressed “Play.”

As the monitor came to life Devlin found herself looking down into a room nearly identical to the one she’d been in earlier. The camera was mounted on the ceiling, which made it difficult to see faces, but she recognized Palmer as the person seated across from a rumpled policeman. “So,” the detective said. “At least
some
of your story checks out. You
do
hunt meteorites for a living, and you
were
one of Benjamin Quinton’s business associates, but there’s the rest of your resume to consider.

“Information continues to flow in, but we have positive hits from the State Department, the FBI, and five western states. All of whom have had dealings with you at one time or another. And there’s the prison sentence you served in Columbia. You spent fourteen months in the slammer for trafficking in antiquities before the local consulate managed to break you loose.”

“That was bullshit,” Palmer responded dismissively. “They weren’t antiquities. They were chunks of a meteorite. And I paid good money for them. Besides, what does that have to do with
this
?”

“You’re a scumbag,” the cop responded. “The kind of scumbag who would get liquored up, lose control of his sports car, and run it under a tractor-trailer rig. The report says the accident took your wife’s head clean off! Damn…. I'll bet that was
real
messy.”

Palmer came up out of his chair at that point but the policeman was ready. The big 9mm seemed to appear out of nowhere. “Come on,” the detective growled menacingly. “Show me what you got!”

Devlin watched as Palmer was forced to sit down. She saw the look of anguish on his face as he glanced up before looking down again. So there had been a wife. Plus a fatal car accident. Neither of which had been shared with her.

But why was Cooper going out of his way to make the information available to her? To drive a wedge into her relationship with Palmer? Yes, clearly. And why would the agent do that? Not that it mattered because the truth was the truth either way. A mistake had been made. A
serious
mistake; and one the scientist planned to rectify. Devlin pointed the remote at the screen, thumbed the “Stop” button, and the screen snapped to black.

***

Devlin had arrived in their tiny hotel room, and was already in the process of packing, when Palmer unlocked the door. “There you are,” he said, as the door swung closed behind him. “They told me you had left the police station but I was worried…. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Devlin responded as she closed the suitcase.

Palmer looked at the bag and back to her. “Oh, yeah? Then why are you packing?”

“Because I have a plane to catch,” Devlin replied evenly. “I don’t know what kind of message they delivered to you, but Cooper told me to butt out, and in no uncertain terms. Besides I have bills to pay, an estate to settle, and a cat that the next door neighbor is probably tired of by now.”

“Okay,” Palmer agreed reluctantly. “But why leave tonight? I’ll take you to dinner, we’ll compare notes on what happened, and leave in the morning.”

“Thanks,” Devlin said, as she went to retrieve her coat from the tiny closet. “But no thanks.”

Palmer knew he was in trouble by that point, but didn’t know why, and felt a rising sense of frustration. “You’re upset with me. I can see that. And I’m sorry. But why?”

“I thought you were like one of those rocks you like so much,” Devlin answered, as she pulled the coat on. “Crusty on the outside, but beautiful on the inside, where it really counts. But I was wrong. When were you planning to tell me about the prison sentence? Or the fact that you were married? Or how your wife died? Your camera is on the top shelf of the closet.”