Tuesday
Ginny drove home from the library, then retreated to her office, pulled out her thumb drive, and plugged it in. This was not investigating, she told herself. She wasn’t looking for clues. She wasn’t interrogating suspects. This was just clarifying her thoughts.
She opened the Suspects file and added a new column headed Grounds for Elimination. Under Mark Craig she put, In Tennessee when the attack occurred followed by a note, needs to be verified.
Ginny sat back and stared at what she had written. It wasn’t just Mark Craig. Every detail needed to be verified. Jim had set that window of opportunity. Considering what she knew now, she should find someone else who could validate his conclusions.
She frowned hard at the computer, then gritted her teeth and added a new line. Jim Mackenzie. Means. He had access to the virus. He knew how to use a lancet pen. He was the one with the expert knowledge about how viruses worked and what could be expected. Who better to choose a virus as a murder weapon? Motive. Revenge for the death of his friend. Opportunity. Jim was the one telling her when the virus had to be injected to produce the results she had seen in the hospital. If he was the murderer, he would chose some time for which he had an alibi. The man was no fool. All three criteria presumptively met. Damn.
He’d come up to her ICU, he said, and she’d certainly seen someone, and visited Professor Craig, to check up on him. It could NOT have been to inject him with the virus. That had already happened. And there was no reason to think he’d done anything to hasten the death. There had been no evidence of tampering. So did she believe him, believe his explanation, believe anything he’d told her?
Ginny wrapped her arms around herself and tried to look at the thing logically. Means, motive, opportunity. In fiction, that meant you had identified the murderer. But people didn’t behave in real life the way authors portray them in books. There might be suspects she knew nothing about. And there might be an innocent explanation for any of the three criteria.
He was an infectious disease specialist. Of course he had access to viruses and understood them. It meant nothing.
He was a physician. Would someone, could someone sworn to, “First, Do No Harm,” use his expertise to kill? Ginny shifted uneasily in her chair. There had been doctors willing to murder in the past. Nurses, too. His profession didn’t exempt him.
There were things the novels didn’t take into account. Character, for instance, and breeding, and honor. Did he have any of those things? She had just met him. Even Himself didn’t know the man, only the boy he had been.
He had followed her. Why? Was he learning her routines? She had heard that a predator watched first, so he could pounce when the victim was the most vulnerable, or the least likely to be missed for the time needed to commit the crime.
She wanted to exclude him. She wanted to believe no one she knew, no one she had liked, could possibly be a murderer. It dismayed her to think she couldn’t trust her instincts.
She had promised Hal she was giving up the investigation, had meant it when she said it, but the only way to exonerate Jim was to find the real murderer. If she could not do that, doubt would haunt her for the rest of her life.
But it’s not your job. The small voice was back. Leave it to the police.
Leave it. Ignore the implications. Go back to work and try not to wonder whether Jim was a killer.
The police were investigating Professor Craig’s death. They had manpower and databases and official access. Let them do their job. Trust them to find the murderer, to stop him before— Ginny felt the air leave her lungs.
Before another genealogist died.
The whole thing was just too close to home. Her patient. One of the clan. A genealogist, like herself. Was it Jim or Hal who had warned her that she might know the killer? She could not sit idly by. She might not be able to break the case by herself, but she needed to give the police any help she could. She owed it to the patient she had been unable to protect.
She reached over and picked up the phone, dialing Alex.
“Ginny! How’s it going?”
“I need your help.” She explained about the window of opportunity problem. “Is there anyone there at the CDC who can tell me when this virus was most likely introduced? Is that something you can do?”
“Well, we can make an educated guess. We’ve been studying that bug ever since it came to light and we’ve learned a lot more about it.”
“Like what?”
“Ever since CRISPR we haven’t needed a virus to move the DNA fragments. So all the labs working on virus vectors shelved those projects and moved on, but they didn’t destroy the viruses or their records.”
“And?”
“We’ve got Patient Zero identified. His name was Asa Campdon. He was a lab tech who accidentally stuck himself with the virus. It was his death that triggered the investigation your boyfriend ended up on.”
“Wait. What?”
“Hal Williams investigated the death of Patient Zero.”
Ginny’s mouth fell open. She had forgotten Jim’s accusation. What had she been doing? Suppressing a fact she didn’t want to face? She swallowed hard.
“Hal was there, on site?”
“Yes. His company sent him in as consultant to identify the safety breach.”
He hadn’t told her. Hal hadn’t told her. Jim had. She pulled herself together.
“Can you send me that file?”
“Sure.”
Ginny had the oddest sensation of watching herself from the outside, dream-like, calmly gathering data that destroyed all the carefully built up foundation for her belief in Hal. He had been on site and failed to tell her about it. What else had he omitted? Omitted? Maybe misrepresented? It was Hal who had given her all those damning details about Jim.
“Ginny? Are you still there?”
“Yes.” She licked dry lips. “Do you have a comprehensive list of the researchers?”
“People who worked in that lab?”
“Yes, and students and visitors. Anyone who would have had access to that virus.”
“What time frame?”
“From the date of that first death to now.”
“Okay. Last five years. Who are you looking for?”
Ginny went down the list. “Elaine Larson”
Ginny waited while Alex searched the document.
“Nope.”
“Fiona Campbell.”
“No.”
“Samuel Adams.”
“Yes. He’s signed in as a visitor about once every other week.”
Ginny nodded. He owned the place after all. One more name.
“Jim Mackenzie.”
There was no delay this time. “Dr. Mackenzie? He’s not here.”
“How do you know? You didn’t even look.”
Ginny could hear Alex shrug all the way from Atlanta. “Full disclosure. He’s been working with Chip on this investigation. We had to know if he’d been in that lab. He hasn’t.”
“Not ever?”
“Not even once.”
If Ginny hadn’t already been sitting down, she would have done so now. It was Hal who had told her Jim did a two week rotation at GeneTech. Hal had lied.
“Ginny?”
She took a careful breath. “I’m still here.”
“Are you all right?”
A lot of people had been asking her that question recently.
“Yes. How soon can you have that calculation done?”
“Tomorrow, latest. The files I can send now.”
“Yes, please.”
“Ginny, you’re sharing this stuff with the police, right?”
“Do I have the CDC’s permission to do so?”
“I’ll get it in writing, but yes, you do.”
“All right. I’ll make sure Detective Tran has all my latest suspicions.”
“Me, too. Send me your files.”
“Okay. Just let me update them. You’ll have them this afternoon.”
“Ginny?”
“Yes, Squirt?”
“I love you. You know that don’t you?”
Ginny felt her eyes misting and a lump form in her throat. Alex was not the demonstrative sort.
“I love you, too, Squirt.”
“Take care of yourself. Love to Mom.”
“Bye.”
* * *