LITMIR.BIZ

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extensive blood work and tissue tests before I could say anything. That it might be a while before we pinpointed the exact cause of death.”

      A slight movement of Wilcox’s hood seemed to indicate a nod. “Good. Well, from what I’ve seen so far, I’m going to support your quarantine of the island. In the meantime, I don’t see any need for you to hang around here.”

      It was a clear dismissal. Declan felt pinpricks of anger in his face. “He’s my patient.”

      “He’s our patient now,” Wilcox said flatly. “You don’t have the facilities or knowledge to handle this.”

      Declan turned to face him, forcing Wilcox to do the same. “Just what is ‘this’?”

      Wilcox hesitated. “I don’t know. We’ve never seen anything like it.”

      The icy finger crept up Declan’s neck again. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

      “At this point, I’m not sure we even have a contagious disease,” Wilcox continued. “I can’t think of a single disease that dissolves everything in the body except the skin and nervous system.”

      “Me, neither.”

      “But…” Wilcox hesitated. “At this point, given the victim’s social involvement, I’d say that exposure has to have been extensive. So there’s no reason you can’t leave here and go on with life. If you really want to help…”

      “I do.”

      “Then you can help me with demographics. People know you and will talk to you more easily.”

      Declan was only too willing to help however he could. “What do you need?”

      “Start with his wife. Find out if she noticed anything at all unusual in his behavior in the past week or two. Then see if you can build us a list of everyone he routinely comes in contact with, so we can start interviewing them.”

      “That’s going to be a big list.”

      Wilcox nodded again. “As fast as this hit him, that gives me hope.”

      “Hope?”

      “You haven’t had a new case in nineteen hours. That you know of. Unless this has a long, silent incubation period, this may be the last of it. Or it might not be disease at all.”

      “That’s what I’m thinking,” Declan said, for the first time admitting the nagging feeling that had troubled him all day. “The longer I sat here thinking about it, the more I began to think he had a toxic exposure of some kind.”

      “That could well be. We’ll have a better idea after we complete the tests. In the meantime, Doctor, your help with demographics will be appreciated. We’re only five people.”

      Declan left, stepping out into fresh air for the first time since six that morning. The tropical sunset was just beginning, a gorgeous display of reds, golds and pinks that filled the entire western sky. He filled his lungs with the soft sea air, washing away the taste of antiseptics and death that had permeated him…to his very soul, he thought unhappily.

      Then, squaring his shoulders, he climbed on his Harley and rode through town toward the Shippey house. He had no doubt Marilyn was there, surrounded by friends, people who were now scared half to death because the island had been quarantined.

      Marilyn was at home, but she wasn’t surrounded by friends. She was all alone, her face tear-streaked and swollen.

      “Are you sure you want to come in here?” she asked him almost bitterly.

      She was an attractive woman of sixty, with carefully tended, smooth skin and dark hair with a white streak. Right now she looked older than her years.

      “What do you mean?”

      “Oh, only that everyone is treating this house as if it were full of lepers. Nobody wants to even get close. They’ll call me, make vague remarks about helping and dropping by soon, but not a single one has showed up.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      She shrugged. “I thought it was a heart attack.”

      He hesitated. “I don’t think so, Marilyn.”

      Her face twisted; then she stepped back, inviting him in. “Want some coffee? I’ve been living on it.”

      “Sure, that would be great.”

      He noticed that she didn’t lead him to the living room where her husband had died last night. Instead they went into the kitchen and sat at a small dinette with mugs of coffee. Under the table, at their feet, the Shippey’s King Charles spaniel seemed to cower.

      “Sorry,” Marilyn said. “He’s a mess. He misses Carter.”

      Declan reached down, gently scratching the dog’s ears. “I’m sorry,” he said. Sorry for the whole mess, though there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about any of it.

      “So it wasn’t a heart attack. I knew you were going to say that. The minute I heard about the quarantine, I knew it was something else. Am I going to die, too?”

      She looked at him straightly, her expression seeming to say that she hoped so, because right now life was past bearing.

      At this moment, he didn’t have a shred of hope to offer her. She was locked too tightly in grief and shock to respond. Without thinking, he reached out and took her hand.

      Something in her eyes tightened, then relaxed. “You’re not afraid to touch me.”

      “No,” he said. “I’m not.”

      The tears came then, a flood of them. He held her hand, letting her squeeze his fingers until her nails dug in, and wondered what the hell was going to happen to all of them.

      4

      “He wasn’t sick at all,” Marilyn told Declan when her tears abated. “Just before I left for my bridge club, we were talking about taking the catamaran to Jamaica next week. He’d been looking forward to that for ages, and with Christmas vacation starting, we decided to sail around the Caribbean a bit.”

      “So you didn’t notice anything amiss.”

      She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears that this time didn’t fall. “I didn’t notice anything at all, Dec. Not a thing. He hasn’t been sick. He’s been eating normally. He even took a walk before dinner, like he’s always done.”

      Declan nodded, gave her hand a comforting squeeze. Much as he’d been trying to hold his own feelings in abeyance since last night, they were still there, and right now his chest ached painfully for Marilyn and Cart. “Not even a sneeze or a sniffle in the last few weeks?”

      She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Dec. Everything was normal. He was healthy. So unless there was something he didn’t tell me, nothing was wrong.”

      Riding toward his house, Declan noticed for the first time that the streets were empty. At nine at night on these balmy tropical evenings, there were usually plenty of people out for a stroll, or sitting on their porches. Despite the advent of satellite TV, few people regularly spent their evenings in front of the tube. The weather was too nice, the beach too inviting, the shops too attractive. And being such a small community, where everyone knew everyone else by sight, evening was a time to socialize.

      Square dancers met in the park; street entertainers dotted the waterfront; ice cream was hawked from shops that were little more than a counter with an open window. The place had a flavor all its own, carefully nurtured by the wealthy inhabitants to be both exotic and Caribbean in nature. Or at least what they thought of as Caribbean. Sometimes Dec felt he’d been caught up in a Disneyesque version of Key West.

      But tonight even the marimba band wasn’t playing downtown. The restaurant doors were closed, a shock in itself, since the doors of all the businesses were always wide open. Every shop was closed

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