“Can I at least mix you another drink or something?”
“Please don’t give it another thought,” Kevin said, appalled that Banks had smelled the whiskey.
“Say, as long as I’m here, I was wondering if you could tell me again what old Marwan Habibi was working on in that lab.”
“A kind of bacterium that lives in the bovine digestive tract,” Kevin said automatically. He had dropped into Interrogation Mode without even thinking about it.
Banks blinked in surprise again. Kevin reminded himself that, as of four hours ago, he was back in the Midwest, where he was actually allowed to take his time in conversation, where hasty responses might strike some people as suspicious. He wished Banks hadn’t spilled his drink.
“Could they live in a human?” Banks asked.
“I don’t know the specifics. But I’d be surprised if they couldn’t,” Kevin said.
“Could he have died from those bacteria, then?”
“Not unless he died from farting too much, Deputy.”
Banks didn’t seem to find that very funny. But he did change the subject. “Seems that Ashrawi was suspected of having killed someone in Jordan—some kind of family-feud type of deal. Supposedly, while he was sitting in our jail in Nishnabotna, some new evidence happened to turn up over there, and they just had to bring him back so that their courts could have first crack at him. Then we can have him back. What do you think they’ll do to him—cut his head off?”
“I believe you’re thinking of Saudi Arabia,” Kevin said.
“I’m not sure we could have convicted him anyway,” Banks offered.
“Really? I thought you had great evidence.”
“Well, I did, too, until the quarterly death statistics came out at the beginning of July.”
“Quarterly death statistics?”
“For the whole state of Iowa. Health department plots all the deaths on a little map. Color coded. Most of the dots are on nursing homes and they’re green, which means, more or less, that the person died of old age. A few red dots in Des Moines and the university towns—those are AIDS deaths. Yellow dots for traffic accidents.”
Kevin wanted Banks to go home. Banks was supposed to be here on a brief campaign stop, a charade that had now vanished. This mercilessly detailed explanation of the death map had to have a point. Kevin kept waiting for the nightstick to come out and crack him over the head.
“Could I please have a glass of that iced tea?” Banks said.
“Sure,” Kevin said, and got up.
“No whiskey in mine, thanks,” Banks said as Kevin left the room.
There were no clean glasses, only a thermal coffee cup from APCO to which he’d lost the lid. Kevin filled it with the tea, threw a couple of cubes into it, and came back to find Banks leafing through some scientific papers he’d left on the coffee table.
“So you were saying?” Kevin finally said.
“Well, usually each quarterly map looks the same as the last. But during the second quarter of this year, it was different.”
“Different how?”
“Along the Iowa River, between Nishnabotna and where it joins the Mississippi, there were a whole lot of deaths from lung and heart ailments. Way more than usual. Now, the state health department came and checked it out, but you know bureaucrats—their dream is to have a quiet day. So they said that the lung deaths were a consequence of the flu epidemic, and the heart deaths were a statistical anomaly.”
Kevin couldn’t help noticing that Banks pronounced the words “statistical anomaly” easily and perfectly, as if the sheriff’s department forced every deputy to pass a monthly diction test.
What do you think they’ll do to him—cut his head off? Banks was good at playing stupid.
“You have a different theory?” Kevin asked.
“Funny thing is, none of the deaths occurred upstream of Lake Pla-Mor,” Banks said. “And none occurred prior to the night you saw Marwan Habibi carried out of Lab Three-oh-four.”
“Ah,” Kevin said.
“Half of these cases were in Forks County, so our county coroner, Barney Klopf, signed the death certificates. And I know old Barney, so he let me have a peek at the records. And you know what? The lung deaths looked just the same as the heart deaths. There was no difference between ’em.”
“Is that your opinion, or—”
“And you know another thing? All of those people had had contact with fish from the river before they died. Lutefisk makers, fishermen, fellows out shooting carp with bow and arrow.”
“Oh.”
“Well, I got lots of doors to knock on,” Banks said, “so I think I better see myself out. Thanks for the tea. And don’t go eating any fresh carp, all right, Kevin?”
Kevin retrieved his glass from the sink, went to the kitchen, and made himself another drink. As he was doing so, it occurred to him for the first time to wonder whether Banks had just made up that whole story about the death map. It didn’t make much sense, when he thought about it. Kevin couldn’t believe he’d fallen for the ruse.
Chapter Twenty-Three