the Devil's Workshop (1999) (5 page)

"You sure you know what you're doing?"

"If I knew what I was doing I would have talked Max out of coming to this godforsaken base." Then she turned away and walked to the staircase.

The door leading downstairs was open, so they walked into the basement. The smell that greeted their noses was one Stacy was very familiar with, but Joanne wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Yuck."

The smell was a common toxic lab smell caused by the occasional broken bottle of chemicals and preserving fluids. Over it all was the stringent reek of formaldehyde. A man in a Naval Captain's uniform was approaching. He hesitated as they passed.

"Excuse me," he said.

Stacy and Joanne turned.

"You don't have a pass. You can't be down here without a pass."

"I'm from Colonel Chittick's office. I'm looking for the on
-
duty pathologist."

"You'd better go back and get your pass, first," he said.

Now Joanne looked at him and put her hand to her mouth, "I'm feeling sort of green," she said, batting long lashes. "These smells down here ..."

"She's our new computer programmer. I was just showing her around. Would you mind taking her out? I'll only be a second. Wait for me outside, hon."

Concerned, the Naval Captain looked at Stacy.

"Please," Stacy added, smiling helplessly. "I haven't got time to go all the way back to the fourth floor of Building 810 and get that damn pass off my overcoat. The Colonel is on a tear this morning."

Her mention of the right floor and building seemed to ease the Captain's concerns. He took Joanne's arm and led her to a door in the center of the hall and then out.

As soon as they left, Stacy was off, down the hall. She approached a desk with a nurse in a civilian smock.

"Who's got the duty down here this morning?"

"Dr. Due," the nurse said.

"I'm sorry, who?"

"Dr. Martin Due. And he's heard all the jokes. He's Vietnamese, good guy."

"Which way?"

"Down that corridor, to the right. Through the second set of swinging doors."

"Thanks."

She was gone again, moving fast, bustling now like all the other people at Fort Detrick. Her leather-soled shoes beat a rhythm on the basement linoleum. She passed a medical closet, put on the brakes, backed up, and opened the closet door.

Inside were mops, pails, and cleaning solvents. Then she saw what she had been hoping for: Folded neatly on a shelf were green medical smocks. She put one on, pulled the tie around her slender waist, and grabbed a hair cap off the shelf, pulling it over her head. Then she saw a clipboard for ordering detergents and cleaning fluids. She took it. Why does a clipboard instantly make you a person in authority? she wondered.

She reentered the corridor and went down the hall, found the double swinging doors, and went into the lab area. She passed a woman rolling a medical tray full of instruments.

"Looking for Doc Due," she said breezily.

"Lab B. He's doing a chimp post-mortem."

"Thanks." She pushed into Lab B and saw a tall Asian man in scrubs working over a metal drainage table with a chain-mail autopsy glove on his left hand and a rubber surgical glove on hi
s r
ight. He had a small, dead female chimpanzee opened, with a Y-cut from her sternum to her crotch. He was weighing organs as Stacy came into the lab.

"Who are you?" he said, glancing up.

"Dr. Courtney Smith," she lied. "I'm doing the integrated pathology report on Max Richardson for Colonel Chittick's office, and we didn't get our final copy of the organ recital."

"It was inter-officed over there yesterday."

"Well, it didn't get there," she said, "and our Chief Medical Officer is throwing one of his passive-aggressive fits. I'm taking the heat. If you could get a copy of it for me quick, it would really help."

"I've got to get this post-mortem done. And I'll need to see your authorization."

She moved over to him, ignoring the last remark, and looked down at the dead female chimp. The insides of the baby primate were tumorous and devastating. She decided to throw some medicine at him for bonding. "What are those?" she asked, pointing. "They look like clusters of hemangioma tumors."

"Pretty good," he smiled. "Most people think they're just fatty growths."

"She looks too young to have that many," Stacy said. "Is this second-generation infestation?"

"Yep," he said. "We're testing pyridostigmine bromide with some of the Gulf War insect repellent we used. I think, by mistake, there was a bad chemical cocktail over there. The father of this baby chimp is a carrier and seems fine, but his little girl here really got hammered. It resembles a condition we're studying in children of Gulf War vets." He turned off the lamp and peeled off his gloves. "I guess I can get that report for you before I do the brain. I gotta get the rubber apron anyway. The cerebral cut is gonna be a mess." He moved to a file cabinet and pulled it open.

"Richardson ... Richardson ..." He rifled through folders.

"Here we go ... You're in luck. Autopsy is still down here and I have an extra in the folder, so I won't need to make you wait for a copy." He handed it over.

"Thanks a heap," she said, and took the ten-page report. She was out the door before Dr. Due turned the light back on over the table.

They were in Unit Six of the Lakeview Motel, which was a quarter of a mile from Lake Frederick with no view of water. While Joanne watched the end of the five o'clock news, Stacy went through Max's autopsy.

His blood work was normal, no trace of drugs, stimulants, or depressants. She paged slowly through, reading everything.

The shotgun had obliterated the palatoglossal arch at the back of Max's throat. The pattern of buckshot had traveled up, taking with it his entire brain stem, blowing a hole out the back of his head the size of an open hand.

She choked back tears as she read.

The big surprise came on page six.

"I don't believe it," Stacy said softly as she finished reading. "The sons-of-bitches actually murdered him."

Chapter
4

Stacy had been unable to sleep. Her mind was crowded with thoughts about the autopsy report and memories of Max. At six A
. M
. she finally gave up pounding her pillow and snuck quietly into the bathroom, so as not to awaken Joanne in the other bed. She showered, blow-dried her hair, and did a repair job on her sleep-deprived face. She was back in the bedroom sitting in the small, uncomfortable wooden chair next to the desk trying to plan her next move when the phone rang, partially waking her sister-in-law. Stacy got the call on the second ring.

"It's Wendell," her old friend said.

She told him just a minute and pulled the phone as far across the room as she could, then took the receiver the rest of the way into the bathroom and closed the door so as not to disturb Joanne.

"Some guy at Fort Detrick has been calling. They left a message at Max's University office and Ruth at the Chancellor's office picked it up."

"Colonel Chittick?"

"Bingo," Wendell said.

"That's the asshole who tried to tell me Max killed himself because he was using drugs. And, can you believe this? They cremated the body without my permission." She had decided not to tell Wendell what she'd found in the autopsy report. She wasn't sure yet what she wanted to do about it, and she didn't want Wendell, sweet as he was, to start laying down conditions.

"They want to see you," he went on. "According to Ruth, the Colonel was very apologetic about your meeting yesterday, said he thought you might have left angry."

"How perceptive."

"You want his number?" he asked.

Stacy was hurt that Wendell hadn't commented on the bullshit drug abuse accusation or the illegal burning of Max's body.

"Okay, lemme get a pencil." Stacy laid down the receiver, scooted out into the bedroom, picked up the motel pad and pen, then moved back, closing the bathroom door.

After Wendell gave her the number, he asked, "Are you guys okay? I'm worried about you."

"We're as okay as we can be." Then she told him she loved him and rang off. She dialed and sat on the bathroom floor as Colonel Chittick's office answered.

"Army Medical Battalion, Colonel Chittick's office," the voice said.

Stacy pictured the red-haired Army Captain from yesterday. "This is Mrs. Richardson. I understand Colonel Chittick is trying to get in touch with me...."

"Oh, thank God you called, ma'am," the fresh-faced Captain said. "The Colonel was wondering if he could arrange an appointment with you at your earliest convenience to better define his remarks of yesterday."

"It's okay. I understood him perfectly."

"I think it would really be worth your while to see him as soon as possible," the Captain persisted.

"How's an hour from now," she suggested, anger suddenly flaring, drawing her closer to this inevitable conflict.

"We can send a car if you like."

"That's okay. I can get there," Stacy said, and hung up without saying good-bye.

She shook Joanne awake, and her sister-in-law propped herself up on her elbow and looked at Stacy through tangled hair.

"We really shook 'em up, kid. They want to talk to me again, try and put a better face on it."

"Geeze, you aren't going back there?"

"You bet your ass," Stacy said. "If they have caller I
. D
. they could probably trace the call I just made and find this motel. Remember that Holiday Inn, right out of Frederick? We passed it coming in."

"I'll find it."

"Check in there, and if I don't call you or show up in four hours, call Wendell. Drop the whole package on him."

"You sure you should do this?"

"Yeah. I'm going to leave you the autopsy report. Hide it somewhere."

"Won't you need it?"

"Believe me, they know what it says."

Stacy took another cab to the Fort. When she got to the main gate on Military Road, the M
. P
. was already expecting her. "Mrs. Richardson?" he said, after she identified herself. "The Admiral was wondering if you would meet him over in Area B, Building
1425."

"Who?" she asked.

"The Base Commander, Rear Admiral James G. Zoll." His awe for the man was unmistakable. "Building 1425 is the Company A, First SATCOM Battalion Headquarters," he continued.

"Communications?" she asked, surprising him with that; her father had been career military and she had a good grasp of the lingo.

"Yes ma'am. He's working there this morning. It's not on the regular part of the base. You go through the gate, take a right on Potter Road." He had a map and was showing the cab driver. "Go along Frontage Road for about two miles. You'll see the satellite uplinks out by the duck pond. It's the big windowless building right next to B-14, the Antenna Farm." Then he politely touched the brim of his white helmet.

"Okay, let's go," she said to the driver.

He drove past the main gate, made the right, and headed along Frontage Road. They left the base area and low buildings behind and drove along a narrowing, rutted road, across hilly green farmland. There were miles of perimeter fencing where the road skirted the edge of the base. The fence was ten feet high with ugly razor wire on top. She noticed a few places where the rusty razor loops had been knocked down and were being replaced with shiny new wire. After going for about two miles, they could see the satellite uplinks by a pond, and beyond that, half a dozen hundred-foot-tall radio antennas beside a huge, windowless building, as described. They neared the building, and she could see two officers standing in front, smoking cigarettes, waiting for her. As the cab pulled up they flipped the butts away and opened the door. Both were Naval Captains.

"Mrs. Richardson, I'm Captain Wilcox," the older one said. "This is Captain Carpenter."

They both gave her touch-of-the-visor greetings as she climbed out of the cab.

"Why don't you wait for me," she said to the cab driver, beginning to feel slightly cut off. But Captain Carpenter had already pulled a wad of twenties out of his pocket and was paying the driver.

"We'll arrange to get you back," he said, waving the driver off. Before she could protest, the taxi was rolling and Captain Wilcox had his hand on her arm, leading her firmly away from the departing cab.

"Get your hands off me, please," she commanded.

He immediately released his grip and nodded. "Sorry ma'am, right this way."

They led her up a few stone steps and into a lobby that was surprisingly barren. Several wooden desks were pushed against the wall. The flag of First SATCOM Battalion was on a standard next to the American flag. End of decorating theme. Everything else was gray cement and white walls.

"I'd like to use the ladies' room," Stacy said. She had left in such a hurry she had not disposed of the three complimentary cups of motel coffee she'd consumed.