The Arms of Death Read online

  “The major problem for the medical community is the sheer number and variety of viruses. There are human issues, too, like isolating infected individuals to contain epidemics and the use of humans in experimental drug trials. In the field of research there are ongoing ethical concerns. For instance, the avian flu, which they were studying so they could develop a vaccine, now comes in an easy-to-catch version created by a scientist in a laboratory, making it a first-class target for a bioterrorist.”

  Ginny set her computer down and sighed. “One thing seems clear.” She looked over at Jim and gave him a half-smile. “Viruses are going to inherit the Earth.”

  He chuckled. “You may be right.”

  Ginny stretched her back and shoulders. “I’ve had enough. Are you ready to leave?”

  He nodded. “I just want to stop by the desk and check out a couple of things.”

  They gathered up their possessions, put the books and journals on the return cart, swung past the checkout desk, then headed home.

  “Are you getting hungry?” Jim asked. “I know of a good steak place.”

  Ginny smiled. “I have dinner plans, but thank you for a lovely afternoon.”

  “It was my pleasure.” He pulled up in front of his grandfather’s house, got out, and opened the door for her.

  “Please say ‘hello’ to your grandfather for me,” she said.

  He smiled at her as she climbed into her Volkswagen, and waved as she started to pull away, then broke into a run to catch her up.

  “Wait!” He leaned on her driver’s side window. “I don’t have your number. How can I reach you?”

  Ginny hesitated for a split second, then remembered the look in Hal’s eyes the night before. Hal’s eyes, dark and smoldering, so different from the laughing gray ones mere inches from her face at the moment. She smiled up at Jim. “You can always find me at the dancing,” she said. “Bye.”

  * * *

  Chapter 10

  Saturday Evening

  Ginny put her computer on the desk, thinking about Jim. She always dismissed at least half of what any man told her about himself. In her experience, a little truth bending was a standard part of dating. It took time to find out what a person was really like.

  Take Hal, for instance. In spite of all the time she’d spent around him — working on genealogy projects, showing the house, volunteering at history events — there were still times when he surprised her. Ginny wondered if life was like that. Did people get married, expecting to understand their partners, only to find they had married strangers? And was that a good thing, keeping the excitement alive in the relationship, or not?

  She tabled the question and hurried off to meet Caroline, wondering what it was she wanted to discuss and hoping it had nothing to do with imminent death or gray eyes.

  * * *

  Ginny waved from her seat in the corner booth.

  “Over here.”

  Caroline threaded her way across the floor, dodging waiters and small children.

  “Hi.” She slid into the seat and tucked her purse and sweater into the corner. The sweater had nothing to do with the weather outside and everything to do with the very efficient air conditioning found in every public establishment in Texas.

  “What’s up?” Ginny asked.

  “Let’s order first.”

  They spent the next ten minutes selecting dinner items, and the time waiting for the meal to arrive discussing the comparative virtues of margaritas as prepared in Mexican restaurants, American cuisine restaurants, steak and BBQ specialty restaurants, and at home. Each girl had her favorite recipe and was willing to argue for it at the drop of a hat. This was Texas, after all. The only topic that commanded more passion was chili.

  They ate in cheerful companionship, sharing meal items and bits of general news. When their hunger had been satisfied, thirst slaked, and the margaritas had produced a warm contentment, Ginny settled in to find out what this meeting was all about.

  “So, tell me. What did you want to talk to me about?”

  Caroline licked the salt off the rim of her glass before taking a sip, then set it down in the exact center of her napkin. She smacked her lips. “I do like salt. I hope I never have to give it up.”

  “If that’s what you want, I suggest you go easy on the bacon cheeseburgers. Now, quit stalling. What’s up?”

  Ginny watched as Caroline played with her glass, a small frown on her face. She looked up at last.

  “I feel like an absolute fool, but I’m torn right down the middle. You remember last spring when I was invited to be Maid of Honor at my college roommate’s wedding?”

  “I remember.” Caroline had attended Wellesley College and been paired with a socialite from the west coast. Ginny had heard many stories of their time together, both good and bad. They, Caroline and Jodie, though from very different backgrounds, had emerged fast friends.

  “You’ll remember she decided to get married in Hawaii.”

  “Yes.” Ginny did not approve of destination weddings. Whatever had happened to marrying in the local church, with family, friends, and neighbors in attendance? The whole idea was to let everyone know a young couple was taking on the difficult task of building a life together with community support and help. What did the bridal industry think? That the concierge at the hotel was going to be there for the bride and groom when the first crisis hit?

  “And the expense was more than I could manage.” Caroline’s eyes were back on her drink.

  Ginny nodded in sympathy. The expenses would have come to almost $15,000, much more than her friend could afford, even with a good job at Texas Instruments. “She’s rolling, Caroline. You knew that.”

  “Yes.”

  After much heartburning, Caroline had written to her roommate and confessed she could not afford to participate and wished her joy. It had been an unhappy outcome for everyone concerned.

  Caroline took another deep breath. “I got a call from her on Wednesday. She’s offering to pick up the bill, the whole thing, all the parties, the room, the airfare, everything.”

  “When is this wedding supposed to take place?”

  “A week from today.”

  Ginny pressed her lips together. Short notice. “Do you want to go?”

  Caroline shrugged eloquently. “Yes and no. I had reconciled myself to missing it.”

  “Can you get off work?”

  Caroline nodded. “I have some paid time off saved up.”

  “Do you have something to wear?”

  “My gown is still hanging in my closet.”

  “You can’t wear that. You’ll need a regular cocktail dress.”

  Caroline squirmed. “Well, actually, I can. The woman she chose as Maid of Honor had to back out. A medical problem of some sort.”

  Ginny could feel her cheeks getting hot. “Jodi’s expecting you to drop everything and substitute for this woman at the last minute?”

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Caroline argued. “I was her first choice. She wanted — wants — me there.”

  Ginny picked up her glass and hid her face in the wide rim. The Scots considered inherited wealth, if not necessarily evil, at least a bad idea. This woman’s behavior just confirmed Ginny’s opinion of spoiled rich kids.

  “There’s something else,” Caroline said, her eyes on the table, a pair of bright pink spots in the center of her cheeks.

  “What?”

  “Jodie has someone she wants me to meet, one of the groomsmen.” Caroline looked up, a shy hope showing on her face. “She says we’d be perfect for each other.”

  Ginny studied the other girl’s face and sighed. Poor Caroline. They’d been friends since elementary school. For some reason opaque to Ginny, Caroline had always considered herself an ugly duckling. No amount of calm explanation about the desirability of a turned-up nose, blue eyes, and softly rounded curves had been able to dissuade her from this position. What she needed was male admiration. Maybe the trip wasn’t such a bad idea.

/>   “So what’s your decision?” Ginny asked.

  “Well, I think I’d like to go, if you don’t think it’s a mistake.”

  “You want my opinion?”

  “Yes.”

  Ginny paused for a moment, then leaned across the table and tapped the back of her friend’s hand. “Worst case scenario. You go to Hawaii and have a horrible time. Which will get it out of your system.” She smiled at Caroline. “Best case, you might have some fun.”

  Caroline’s face cleared. “Good! Thank you, Ginny.”

  “Don’t thank me. You already had your mind made up.”

  Caroline’s smile became a grin. “Yes, but you’ve got such a clear way of looking at things.”

  Ginny lifted her glass. “Here’s to luck.”

  “And love.”

  Ginny nodded. “And love.”

  * * *

  When Ginny got home, she went looking for her mother. She found her in the den.

  Sinia Forbes had weathered the storms of youth to emerge in middle age with a serenity that always gave Ginny a slight case of the envies. She had the same strawberry blonde hair as Alex, just beginning to be touched by time, two inches on Ginny’s five foot four, long fingers, a straight nose, and soft blue eyes that seemed to warm anyone they fell upon.

  “How was your dinner with Caroline?”

  Ginny settled down in the empty wing chair and filled her mother in on the gist of the conversation.

  “So she’s going and I hope it does her some good.”

  Her mother nodded. “It might. Caroline’s no fool.”

  Ginny sighed. “No, I don’t suppose she is.”

  “Hal called.” Her mother looked up. “Several times.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He didn’t tell me. I promised you’d call him tonight.”

  Ginny sighed. “I guess I’d better do it, then.” She kissed her mother on the cheek. “And, since I am going up anyway, I will see you tomorrow. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight, dear.”

  Ginny curled up on her bed and reached for her cell phone. This was one of the things she and Hal disagreed on. He expected her to be at his disposal all day, every day. She believed turning her phone off when with another human being, like when she was at dinner with a friend, was simple courtesy.

  Hal picked up on the first ring.

  “Where were you all day? I’ve being trying to get hold of you for hours.” He sounded peevish.

  “I was down at the medical school library doing some research. What did you want?”

  “The CDC pretty much closed down the conference. They spent the whole day interrogating people and going over the attendance records. They kept telling everyone not to panic, but it just made things worse. I could have used your help.”

  Ginny felt a stab of guilt. She was, after all, on the organizing committee.

  “Oh, Hal! It never occurred to me the conference wouldn’t go on as scheduled, other than losing Professor Craig, I mean. I’m sorry.”

  “They’ve made trouble at the library as well. Several people were complaining.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Pulling all the patron records and calling people in for interviews.”

  Ginny nodded. “They’re trying to put together a list of everyone who might have come in contact with Professor Craig over the last couple of weeks. I don’t envy them the task. Even without the conference, it would be difficult to trace every step he made.”

  “Well, they’re certainly going to try. And,” Hal continued, “as if that weren’t enough, they’ve sealed the genealogy section.”

  “Sealed?”

  “Research has ground to a halt. Here we are with all these visitors who came in for the conference and want to use our library and they can’t. They are not happy.”

  Ginny sighed. “Well, we couldn’t predict a scare like this, could we?”

  “No, but it’s a nuisance. I know just how they feel. Some papers of mine are in Craig’s office and now I can’t get to them.”

  “What kind of papers?”

  “It’s that application for the York Herald.”

  “Professor Craig was working on your Confirmation, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope this isn’t going to interfere.”

  “It shouldn’t. The paperwork was essentially complete and I can finish the application myself, but the deadline is next Friday and this is cutting it close. Professor Craig was going to bring the papers with him to the party.”

  “Maybe Elaine can sneak them out to you.”

  “It’s a thought.” He sighed, a long, masculine sound that vibrated over the airwaves.

  “Ginny? Are you all right?”

  Ginny smiled to herself. “I’m fine.”

  “No symptoms?”

  “None.” She heard his voice relax.

  “I’ve been worried.”

  “So have I, but so far, so good. Keep your fingers crossed.”

  She could hear his smile. “Are we still on for tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  “What’s the dress code?”

  “Coat and tie.”

  “Okay. See you then. Goodnight.”

  She hung up the phone, still smiling. It was nice to be worried about.

  Three days since exposure. No symptoms yet. Maybe she was safe. Maybe they all were.

  * * *

  Chapter 11

  Sunday

  Sunday Morning always saw Ginny in church, unless she was working. On this particular Sunday, the phone was ringing as she and her mother returned home. Ginny grabbed the receiver.

  “Ginny? It’s Alex. I was just about to give up on you.”

  “Hello, Sandy. Did you forget the time zone again?”

  “Drat it. Yes! Well, never mind. I’ve got that information you wanted.”

  “About the virus? That was fast!”

  “We don’t waste any time when a potential epidemic is threatened. To start with, there’s no reason to think anyone else is going to get sick. We’ve been in contact with people your victim encountered over the last three weeks and everyone’s fine so far. That eliminates a fast incubation period or a high level of infectiousness. It might still be a slow virus, in which case there’s no hope of tracing the source, but I don’t think it is.”

  “Why not?”

  “Have you seen the autopsy report?”

  “No.”

  “One of the things that has everyone so upset is the speed with which this bug acted. In less than twenty-four hours almost every nerve cell in this man’s body has been destroyed.”

  Ginny caught her breath. “Every one?”

  “Just about. None of the other types of tissue were touched. So it must be neuron specific in some way and very fast.”

  “Well, that fits with the symptoms. What else have you got?”

  “It’s probably been engineered. Nothing in nature fits this profile. I spent some time over at the archives. There are two similar deaths listed in Morbidity and Mortality. In both cases the agent was a virus, and in both cases almost every neural cell in the body had been disrupted.”

  “That sounds familiar.”

  “Yes, and in each of those cases, no one else got sick, even though there was a lot of unprotected exposure. I sent that report on to Chip.”

  “Can you tell for sure if the virus that caused the other two deaths is the same as the one that killed Professor Craig?”

  “Not yet. We need to get our hands on the archived tissue samples from the earlier two victims. It’ll take some time”

  Ginny was silent for a minute, chewing her lip. “Can you get me copies of the three files, Professor Craig’s and the other two?”

  “Yes, but you’d have to keep them in strictest confidence.”

  “Of course.”

  “I mean it, Ginny. You can’t show them to anyone or I’ll lose my job.”


  “I won’t do that to you, Alex. You just get me those copies and if I suspect anything we’ll make sure it’s ‘discovered’ properly.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest, but there are some very frightened people here and the sooner we can put this to rest the better.”

  “Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ginny hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment. If Alex was right, then she wasn’t going to come down with some horrible mystery disease and die ignominiously (always a possibility in her line of work, as in his). But if the thing was so hard to catch, how did Professor Craig get it? She jumped as the phone rang again.

  “Hello?”

  “Ginny? It’s Elaine. I just wanted to make sure you were still planning to come down to the library this afternoon.” Every couple of months Ginny took her turn manning the volunteer desk for an afternoon.

  “I thought the genealogy section was sealed off?”

  “They’ve removed the barriers and told us we can go back to work. We’re expecting an overflow crowd because of the delay. Can you come?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Great. See you this afternoon.”

  The next call was from Hal.

  “Ginny! Glad I caught you. Can I ask a favor? I just found out they’re letting people back into the library today. Can you pick up my Confirmation papers for me? I know it’s a nuisance, but it will save me a trip and I’d really appreciate it.”

  “Will they let me?”

  “Elaine said yes. She’ll know where to look.”

  “All right. I’ll bring them tonight,” she said.

  “That would be great.”

  “Will you be going to the Professor’s funeral?” Ginny asked.

  “When is it?”

  “Tomorrow. Ten a.m. At the Auld Cemetery.”

  “Probably not. I’ll ask at work, but since it’s not family I doubt if they’ll let me off. You’ll represent the Society for us?”

  Ginny nodded. “Of course.”

  “You’re an angel.”

  “See you tonight.”

  * * *

  Ginny smiled at the visitor struggling with pen and bifocals as she tried to put her name on the proper line of the sign-in sheet. The old woman finished her task, patted Ginny’s hand, picked up her briefcase, and shuffled off to find an empty seat at one of the worktables.