O’Dell had the women’s locker room to herself after a couple of female rescue workers left. It felt good to be clean again and in dry clothes. She wished she had thought to bring another pair of hiking boots. She scraped and wiped off the mud as best she could, then pulled them back on over a warm pair of fresh socks.
She was meeting Creed for the 7:30 dinner. The cafeteria staff had asked that the crews separate into two groups so they could accommodate all the workers and volunteers. She had been trying to get ahold of Dr. Gunther. After leaving several more voice messages O’Dell gave up. But as she was stowing her gear and overnight case in a locker, her phone pinged.
At first she didn’t recognize the phone number for the text that had just come through. But the message left no doubt who it was from:
AT RALPH’S. COME IN THE BACK DOOR.
She remembered that Ralph’s was the meat locker they were using to store the body recovered from the government facility. She tapped a reply:
BE THERE IN 10.
She asked one of the volunteers for directions to Ralph’s. The shortcut through the parking lot led her directly to the front door. Which was padlocked and had a sign warning to KEEP OUT. O’Dell made her way to the alley behind the building and found the back door. The heavy wood creaked as she shoved it open and darkness greeted her on the other side.
“Dr. Gunther? It’s Agent O’Dell.”
Suddenly a door down the hallway opened and light seeped out around the doorjamb.
“Are you alone?” the old woman asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“Then come on down here. I don’t have all night.”
The room was set up with stainless steel work stations and multiple sinks. Three refrigerator doors lined one wall. O’Dell found Dr. Gunther in baggy scrubs, teetering on a footstool that she had pushed up to one of the tables. The body on the table was the man with the shaved scalp. O’Dell noticed the hand they’d found on a stainless steel tray on one of the counters.
The old woman jutted her chin in the direction of a desk where there was a box of latex gloves, another with shoe covers, and still another with surgical masks. Over the back of the desk chair were a couple of scrubs tops. O’Dell pulled on the necessities and joined Dr. Gunther.
“Sons of bitches padlocked the place. Don’t know how they expected me to get in. I’ll be registering a complaint with their boss.” Then she snorted through her face mask and added, “Actually, I think they didn’t want anybody inside.”
“So how did you get in?”
“Ralph gave me a key for the back door. You closed it, right?” She shot O’Dell a look.
O’Dell nodded.
“Why would they ask you to help recover the bodies if they didn’t want you to do the autopsies?”
“Maybe because they don’t want anyone to find out what really happened to these men.”
If that were true, it hadn’t stopped her. She’d already cleaned the body. Instruments crowded a tray beside the doctor. A tool that looked like hedge trimmers sat on the counter, and O’Dell knew it would be used to cut the rib cage. No Y incision had been made. No samples had been taken and cataloged. Empty vials waited to be filled and labeled.
Without the mud O’Dell could now clearly see the U.S. Airborne tattoo with an eagle beneath it. What she thought had been burns farther down his arm now looked more like a large red bruise. Not a rash, but a bruise underneath the skin. Small white blisters like tapioca bubbled up around the edges. There were large red patches like this over most of his body. It reminded her of burns because in some places the skin had torn away. But this was different.
“What caused the skin to do this?” O’Dell knew it couldn’t have happened postmortem.
“I’ve only seen something like this once before. Years ago. Back in the late sixties. My husband was stationed at Eglin Air Force Base outside Pensacola, Florida. I was just a medical student at the time and he let me assist him. They were doing some kind of trials, spraying what they called tracer BG. It was supposed to be a harmless compound with fluorescent particles so they could track how the wind might affect an enemy attack with a biological weapon. We must have had two dozen airmen come in coughing up blood or bleeding from the ears. But there were blisters, too, and red patches almost like these.”
“Do you know what they actually sprayed?”
“Oh no, they never would tell us even while we were trying to treat those young men. They insisted the symptoms would go away. That what they used was completely safe. So safe they ended up conducting nine more tests. My husband was furious. It almost cost him his best friend.”