Children of The Night

Chapter Sixteen

Kate had been on the ER end of ambulance runs during her residency years ago, but it was as if she had never seen paramedics in action on site before. They arrived ten minutes before the police and seemed to take the blood and glassfilled nursery for granted. One of the men went to check for signs of the intruder in the ravine while the remaining male and female paramedics set Tom's dislocated shoulder, pulled shards of glass from his back, and checked Kate and Joshua over and pronounced them unhurt. Kate and Tom both pulled on some clothes in preparation for the next wave of officialdom.

Three Boulder police cars and the sheriff's 4 x 4 arrived at the same time, blue and red lights flashing across the meadow and shimmering on the windows. The paramedics were trying to get Tom to go to the hospital, but he refused; the detectives interviewed Tom in one room, Kate in the other. She never let go of Joshua.

Powerful flashlights were probing the ravine when Tom and Kate pulled on their jackets, bundled Joshua in a heavy blanket, and stood at the edge of the patio to watch.

“It's at least eighty feet down there,” said the sheriff. “And there's no way down to the stream except down this cliff.”

“It's less than sixty feet,” said Tom, standing at the edge of the granite and sandstone bluff. The shrubs there were broken and tom. Kate could hear the stream trickling at the bottom of the ravine; it was a sound she had grown so used to that she normally ignored it.

“The body could have washed downstream,” said the chief Boulder detective. He was young and bearded and had dressed hurriedly in sweatshirt and chinos under a corduroy jacket.

“The stream's pretty shallow this time of year,” said Tom. “No more than six or eight inches of water in the deeper spots. “

The detective shrugged. The sheriff's men were rigging a Perlon climbing rope around the large ponderosa pine at the edge of the patio.

“You're sure you didn't recognize the man?” asked the detective sergeant for the third time.

“No. I mean, I'm sure,” said Kate. Joshua was sleeping in the folds of blanket, the pacifier still in his mouth.

“And you don't know how he got in?”

Kate looked around. “The sheriff said that the kitchen door had been jimmied. Is that correct, Sheriff?”

The sheriff nodded. “Pane cut out. Both inside locks opened. It looked fairly professional.”

The detective made a note and looked over to where the sheriff's people and the paramedics were arguing about how to rig the ropes. Uniformed police officers walked along the edge of the ravine, shining flashlights down into the darkness.

The chief detective came out of the house holding a plastic baggie. Kate saw the gleam of steel in it. He held it up to the light. “Know what this is?” he asked.

Kate shook her head.

“Fancy little palm knife,” he said, showing her how it was held, the steel knub against his palm, the doubleedged blade protruding between the knuckles of two fingers. The detective turned to Tom. “He had 'this in his hand when he came at you?”

“Yeah. Excuse me a second, Lieutenant.” Tom walked over to the sheriff's deputies and quietly showed them how the Perlon lines had to be rigged. Then he borrowed a web harness from a paramedic and clicked a carabinier in place as if to demonstrate how to prepare for a rappel.

“Hey!” shouted the deputy as Tom leaned back, one arm still in a sling, and gracefully rappelled over the edge of the cliff.

A paramedic tied on to his own line and followed him down the cliff. The uniformed officers swung their lights onto the duo as they bounced down rock and dropped gently into the shrubs and dwarf juniper at the base of the cliff. Tom looked up, waved with his good hand, and unclipped. from the Perlon line. Deputies scurried to hook on and follow.

The sun came up before the search was called off. Kate had carried Joshua into the house and tucked him in her own bed; when she came back out, Tom was pulling himself easily up the rock face with one arm while the deputies and paramedics huffed and puffed to climb with both arms busy.

He stepped onto the patio, unclipped his carabinier, and shook his head.

“No body,” gasped a deputy coming over the edge. “Lots of blood and broken branches, but no body.”

The detective sergeant took out his notebook and stepped close to Kate. He looked tired and the brilliant morning light gleamed on gray stubble. “Ma'am, you're sure you hit this guy with both shotgun loads?”

“Three times,” said Tom, putting his good arm around her. “Twice at ranges of less than four feet.”

The detective shook his head and stepped back to the bluff. “Then it's just time until we find the body,” he said. “Then maybe we'll figure out who he was and why he was trying to kidnap your baby.”

Tom nodded and went into the house with Kate.

On Monday, Ken Mauberly called Kate into his office. She had been expecting the invitation.

Mauberly was the chief administrator for the Rocky Mountain Region CDC, but his office was the only one in the NCAR/CDC complex without windows. He said that the view distracted him. Kate sometimes thought that this choice of an office said much about the character of the man: quiet,dedicated to work, selfeffacing, competent, and fanatical only about his longdistance running.

He waved her to a seat and slouched in his own chair. His jacket was draped over the back of the chair, his tie was loosened, and his sleeves were rolled up. He leaned across the desk and folded his hands. “Kate, I heard about the problem you had Saturday night. It's terrible, just terrible to have your home invaded like that. Are you and the baby all right?”

Kate assured him that they were fine.

“And the police haven't caught the assailant?”

“No. They found some signs that he might have left the stream about half a mile below the house, but there's been nothing definite. They've put out some sort of bulletin based on the description Tom and I gave them.”

“And your exhusband is all right?”

Kate nodded. “His arm was injured slightly, but this morning he was pressing weights with it.” She paused. “Tom is staying with us . . . with Julie and the baby and me . . . until they find the guy or we all get our courage back.”

Mauberly tapped a pencil against his cheek. “Good, good. You know, it's funny, Kate. I've opposed capital punishment all of my adult life, but if I woke as you did to find someone in my child's bedroom . . . well, I wouldn't hesitate a second to end that person's life on the spot.” Embarrassed, he set the pencil on the desk.

“Ken,” said Kate, “I appreciate the sentiments, but you wanted to talk to me about something else, didn't you?”

The administrator leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Yes, Kate, I did. I haven't had a chance to tell you what a fine job you did on the Romanian tour . . . both while you were there and in the report you did afterward. Billington and Chen at the WHO tell me that it was pivotal in helping form policy toward the relief effort. Pivotal.”

Kate smiled. “But what have I done for you recently?”

Mauberly returned the smile. “That's not quite how I'd put it, Kate. But it has been a couple of months since you've gone full time into another project. I'd hoped that you'd head up the Colorado Springs HepatitisB investigation . . . not that Bob Underhill isn't capable, don't misunderstand me, but“

“But I've spent a lot of my time and the Center's resources in trying to cure my son,” Kate said softly.

The administrator rubbed his fingers together. “That's totally understandable, Kate. What I'd hoped to do with you is discuss some alternatives. A friend of mine, Dick Clempton, is at Children's Hospital in Denver, and he's one of the best ADA men in“

Kate unsnapped her briefcase, removed a thick file, and shoved it across the desk to her boss. Mauberly blinked.

“Read it, Ken,” she said.

Without another word he pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket and began reading. After the third page, he took his glasses off and stared at her. “This is hard fact?”

Kate nodded. “You see who signed the imaging and lab reports. Donna McPherson has repeated the tests twice. There's no doubt that the patient's body . . . Joshua's body . . . is somehow cannibalizing the necessary genetic components to reinvigorate its own immune system.”

Mauberly glanced through the rest of the papers, skimming the more technical pages to read the conclusions. “My God,” he said at last. “Have you conferred with anyone outside the Center?”

“I've gotten some ideas without revealing all of what you're looking at,” said Kate. “Yamasta at the Georgetown University International Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Immunology, Bennet at SUNY Buffalo, Paul Sampson at Trudeau . . . all good people.”

“And?”

“And none of them have even a hypothesis how a SLID child can effect a spontaneous remission of such marked hypogammaglobulinemia with just blood transfusions as a catalyst. “

Mauberly rubbed his lower lip with the earpiece of his glasses. “And do you? Have a hypothesis, I mean.”

Kate took a deep breath. She had not suggested such a thing to anyone yet. But now everything depended on sharing her thoughts with her boss: not just the incredible breakthroughs she thought might be possible, not just her job, but Joshua's life.

“Yes,” she said, “I have a theory.” Unable to stay seated, Kate stood and leaned on the back of her chair. “Ken, imagine a group of peoplean extended family, sayliving in a remote region of an isolated Eastern European country. Say that family has suffered from a severe but classic case of SCID . . . a form of the disease that exhibited all four strains: reticular dysgenesis, Swisstype, ADA deficiency, and SCID with B lymphocytes.”

Mauberly nodded. “I'd say that family would die out in a generation. “

“Yes,” said Kate and leaned farther forward, “unless there were a cellular or physiological mutation in that familypassed on only through recessive geneswhich allowed it to cannibalize genetic material from donor blood so that their own immunodeficiency was overcome. Such a group could survive for centuries without being noticed by medical authorities. And given the rarity of the double recessive appearing, few offspring would be born with either SCID or the mutational compensation.”

“All right,” said Mauberly, “assuming there are a few peoplea very few peoplein the world with this accelerated immune response. And the child you adopted is one of them. How does it work?”

Kate went over the broad outlines of the data, never talking down to Mauberly as laymanhe was too brilliant and too conversant in medical realities for thatbut also never getting bogged down in either overly technical details or idle speculation.

“All right,” she summarized, “this indicates thatone, Joshua's body has a way of adapting human blood as a repair mechanism for his own immunodeficiency; two, there is someplacepossibly that bloodrich shadow organ Alan isolatedwhere the blood is broken down; three, the constituent genetic material is disseminated throughout his body to catalyze the immune system.”

“How?” said Mauberly. The administrator's eyes were very bright.

Kate spread her hands in front of her the way she did when guestlecturing at a medical school. “Best guess is that the transmitter component of Joshua's disease is a retrovirus . . . something as persistent as HIV, only with lifegiving rather than fatal consequences. From the data, we know the dissemination is very rapid, much more aggressive than HIV even in its most virulent stages.”

“It would have to be,” interrupted Mauberly, “if it were to have any survival value for the SCIDsymptomized family or families in which the mutation appeared. A slow immunological reconstruction would be useless when the slightest head cold in the interim would be fatal.”

“Exactly,” said Kate, unable to hide her own excitement. “But if the mutated retrovirus can be isolated . . . cloned . . . then“She was unable to go on, despite the importance of doing so.

Mauberly's gaze was elsewhere. His voice was shaky. “It's premature, Kate. You know what we're thinking is premature.”

“Yes, but“

He held up one hand. “But the payoff would be so dramatic . . . so miraculous. “ He closed Joshua's file and slid it back across the desk to her. “What do you need?”

Kate almost collapsed into her chair. “I need time to work on this project. We'll codename it . . . oh, RS91 or R3.”

Mauberly raised an eyebrow.

“RS for retrovirus search and for Romanian Solution,” she said with the slightest smile. “R3 for Romanian Recessive Retrovirus.”

“You'll get the time,” promised Mauberly. “And the budget. If I have to sell one of the Crays. What else?”

Kate had thought it all out. “Continued use of the imaging facilities, Pathology, and at least one ClassVI lab,” she said. “And the best people to go with them.”

“Why the ClassVI biolab?” asked Mauberly. The expensive and supersecure facilities were used only with the most dangerous and experimental toxins, viruses, and recombinant DNA experiments. “Oh,” he said, seeing the answer almost immediately, “you'll be trying to isolate and clone the retrovirus.” The thought sobered him. “All right,” he said at last. “You can have Chandra.”

Kate nodded in surprise and appreciation. Susan McKay Chandra was CDC's superstar, one of the two or three top vital and retroviral experts in the world. She normally worked out of Atlanta but had been a temporary researcher at Boulder CDC before. Well, thought Kate, I did ask for the best.

“We'll have to submit this to the Human BioEthics Review Board,” began Mauberly.

Kate stood up. “No! Please . . . I mean . . . “ She calmed herself. “Ken, think . . . we're not experimenting on a human being.”

Mauberly frowned. “But your son . . .”

“Has undergone a few advanced but very basic medical tests,” said Kate. “And he will have to submit to a few more. Blood and urine tests. Another CT scan, more ultrasound, perhaps MR, and maybe isotopic scintigraphy if we find his bone marrow involved in this . . . although I'd rather avoid that because bone imaging can be uncomfortable . . . but we are not experimenting! Just carrying out standard diagnostic techniques for isolating the kind and severity of immunodeficiency that this patient has. The Review Board will tie us up for months . . . perhaps years.”

“Yes, but“said Mauberly.

“If we isolate the R3 retrovirus and if we can clone it to adapt it to HIV or oncological research, “ pleaded Kate, “then we can approach the Board. We would have to. But then there would be no doubt as to the need for human experimentation. “

Ken Mauberly nodded, rose, and came around the desk to her. Kate rose to meet him.

Amazingly, he kissed her on the cheek. “Go,” he said. “As of ten A.M. today, you are officially detached for the RSProject. Bertha will take care of the paperwork. And, Kate . . . if we can help you or the family with the aftereffects of Saturday's problem, well, just ask . . . we'll do it.”

He walked her to the office door. Outside, Kate shook her headnot only at the magnitude of what had just happened, but at her realization that for a few minutes she had forgotten all about “Saturday's problem.”

Kate hurried to her office to begin planning for her team and the project ahead. She worked feverishly, almost obsessively, although she did not admit, even to herself, that it was because each time she closed her eyes she saw the pale face and dark eyes of the intruder. If she allowed time to think of anything except work, she saw those black eyes fixed on the sleeping form of her son.

Kate and Tom met with the young police detective on what should have been Kate's lunch break on Tuesday. The detective's name was Lieutenant Bryce Peterson and now, in daylight, Kate noticed that not only did he wear a beard and sloppy clothes, but his long hair was pulled back in a ponytailwhat Tom referred to as a “dork knob.”

The meeting was not enlightening. The lieutenant's questions went over areas that both Kate and Tom had answered before and the detective had nothing new to tell them.

“You're sure that you didn't know the suspect?” said Lieutenant Peterson. “Even casually?”

Tom sighed and ran a hand through his thinning hair, a movement that Kate knew usually warned of an imminent loss of temper. “We don't know him, never met him, haven't seen him before, aren't related to him,” said Tom, his blue eyes hard. “But we could pick him out of a lineup if you caught him. Are you any closer to catching him, Lieutenant?”

The detective tugged absently at his mustache. “You couldn't find a match in the computer . . . . “

Kate had been slightly surprised that she and Tom had watched images tick by on a VDT the evening before; she had expected to pore through mug shots just like the old TV shows. “No,” she said. “None of the pictures looked like the man.”

“But you're sure you could identify him if you did see him again?” asked the lieutenant. His voice was vaguely nasal, vaguely irritating.

“We said we could identify him,” snapped Tom. “You tell us what the hell happened to him.”

The lieutenant flipped through some paperwork as if the answer were there. Reading the upsidedown papers, Kate could see that they were about some other case. “Obviously the thief was wounded, but not so severely he could not escape,” said the lieutenant. “We have notices out to all area hospitals and clinics in case he seeks aid there. “

“Wounded?” said Kate. “Lieutenant, this man was shot three times, at close range, by a shotgun. “

“Twelvegauge Remington loaded with numbersix shot,” Tom added dryly.

“By a shotgun,” continued Kate, attempting and succeeding to keep her voice low and reasonable. “The first shot opened up his chest and did serious damage to his throat and jaw. The second shot almost took his left arm off and left ribs exposed. Lieutenant, I saw the damage. God knows what the third blast did to him . . . and the fall. You saw yourself that the cliff is almost vertical there. “

The police detective nodded and stared at her blankly. His eyelids were heavy with that tired, hooded look that some men affected; Kate knew women who found that look sexy . . . she had always thought that it signified stupidity. “So?” said the lieutenant.

“So why are we talking wounded?” said Kate, her voice hard. “Why aren't we asking who carried his body away, and why?”

The lieutenant sighed as if fatigued by the questions of amateurs.

Tom set his hand on Kate's forearm before she said anything else in anger. “Why do you call him a thief?” he asked softly. “Why not kidnapper?”

The young cop looked up, eyes heavy. “There's no evidence that the suspect was attempting a kidnapping.”

“He was in the nursery!” shouted Kate. “He was reaching for the baby!”

Lieutenant Peterson stared at her impassively.

“Look,” said Tom, obviously trying to find some middle ground to keep the discussion from deteriorating further, “we understand that there are no prints because the guy was wearing gloves. His face isn't in your computer. But you have blood samples from the rocks and plants in the ravine . . . bits of clothing that tore on the way down . . . couldn't you use that? Or give it to the FBI?”

The lieutenant blinked slowly. “Why do you think the FBI would be involved in a local matter?”

Kate ground her teeth. “Doesn't the FBI usually get involved in kidnappings or attempted kidnappings?”

The lieutenant did not blink. “But, Doctor Neuman, we have no evidence that this was an attempted kidnapping. You live in a wealthy area. Your home has lots of expensive art, electronic equipment, silverware . . . it's an obvious target for“

“Come on, Kat,” said Tom, rising and taking her hand. “Your lunch hour's up, my patience is used up. Lieutenant, you let us know if there's any news at all, OK?”

Lieutenant Peterson gave them his best Don Johnson look.

In the car, driving her back up the hill to CDC, Tom opened the glove compartment and handed Kate a small wooden box. “Open it,” he said.

She did, and said nothing, only looked at her exhusband.

“Ninemillimeter Browning semiautomatic,” Tom said. “I got it from Ned at the sports shop. We'll go out after work tomorrow and practice with it. From now on, it stays in the nightstand drawer.”

Kate said nothing. She closed her eyes, saw the pale face and black eyes, andfor the hundredth time since early Sunday morningtried not to start shaking.

Susan McKay Chandra arrived in Boulder on Thursday and was not happy. Kate had always thought the virus expert beautiful; Chandra had inherited her Indian father's small stature, mocha skin tones, and jet black hair, but her bright blue eyes and fiery temper were a gift from her Scottish-American mother. That temper was in the ascendant during the thirty-minute ride from Denver's Stapleton Airport to Boulder.

“Neuman, you have no idea how important the HIV work I'm doing in Atlanta is,” she snapped at Kate, who had told the van driver she would pick up the virologist.

“Yes, I do,” Kate said softly. “I monitor everything of yours that comes across the net and read the Bulletin abstracts even before they go to hard copy.”

Chandra crossed her arms, not mollified by praise. “Then you must know that it's sheer idiocy to drag me out here on some halfassed project while every week my team does without me may cost thousands of lives.”

Kate nodded slowly. “Look,” she said. “Give me two hours. No . . . make that ninety minutes. If I can't convince you by noon, I'll buy you lunch at the Flagstaff House, get you a firstclass ticket on the three P.m. Delta flight back to Atlanta, and drive you to the airport myself.”

Chandra's blue eyes were not hostile, merely unrelenting. “Tough talk, Neuman. But I'll take you up on it. I'm afraid that nothing short of the Second Coming is going to convince me to stay away from my team.”

As it turned out, it took a little less than an hour of going over the data in Kate's office. “Jesus H. Christ,” Chandra all but whispered when they had reviewed the last file. “This child may be the biological equivalent of the Rosetta Stone. “

Goosebumps rose along Kate's arms. “You'll stay then? At least until we get an idea how to isolate this retrovirus?”

“Will I stay?” laughed the other woman. “Just try to get rid of me, Neuman. How soon can we get into the ClassVI here?”

Kate glanced at her watch. “Will ten minutes be soon enough?”

Chandra stood a moment at the window, staring at the Flatirons. “Why don't we say ninety minutes. I think I'll buy you dinner at Flagstaff House. It may be a long time before either one of us takes time for a civilized meal again.”

The letter from Lucian arrived four days later. Kate read it after coming home from work at nine-thirty P.m., almost too tired to check in on Joshua in his newly repainted nursery. Then she took a shower, said goodnight to Julie, went into the study where Tom was preparing his checklist for a Canyonlands trek, and sorted the mail. The sight of Lucian's letter made her heart skip in a strange and unexpected way. It had been sent via International Federal Express.

Dearest Kate and Little Joshua:

The summer progresses in Bucharest, the markets are much emptier than when you were here, the terrible heat is here, and so am I. There will be no residency in America; at least not this autumn. My uncle and his family cannot afford to make the loan to me, my father has much fame as a poet but no money (of course! he is a poet!), and no U.S. University has offered to sponsor me despite your eloquent (if true) letter of recommendation praising me as the most exciting discovery since Jonas Salk.

Ah, well, enough of my troubles. I will spend another funfilled winter in beautiful Bucharest and then begin the application process again in the spring.

And how is my favorite hematologist and her new son? I trust this finds you both well. I would be concerned for Joshua's condition if I did not have unlimited faith in your medical abilities, Kate, as well as in the almost miraculous resources, medically speaking, in the U.S. of A.

By the way, did I ever tell you the joke about the time our late, unlamented Supreme Leader and his wife went into a district hospital to have their hemorrhoids tended to by a nonParty physician?

I did? Odd, I don't remember telling that one.

Katesomething strange and a little disturbing happened last week.

You remember that I was earning money this summer as a teaching assistant in Dr. Popescu's advanced anatomy class? Well, it has been boring, but it allowed me to take out some of my frustrations by wielding a scalpel. Anyway, one of my less enjoyable tasks is to go early to the city morgue and sort through the unclaimed bodies there and choose the best cadavers for the new students. (This is where five years of training and my family's fortune has brought me.)

Last Friday I was going through the coldstorage lockers in the morgue, trying to make my selection from the usual assortment of deceased drug addicts and unclaimed accident victims and peasants who died from malnutrition, when I found a bizarre case. The corpse had been brought in a few weeks earlier, was still unclaimed, and had been marked for cremation the day after my visit. The official cause of death was “multiple lacerations due to accident,” but it only took one look to know that this man had not died from any accident.

The corpse had been drained of blood. Not of most of its blood, but all blood. Kate, you know how difficult this would be in an accident. The body was that of a man in his mid or late fifties. There had been more than a dozen premortem incisions made into his torso, legs, wrists, and neck. All cuts were cleanalmost as if administered by scalpelsand all were near major arteries. There was one atypical wound, very messy, running from his left ankle, splintering the lower tibia and fibula, and then repeated on the right leg and ankle. Around the smaller wounds, there were strange secondary lividity patterns. Strange, that is, until I suddenly realized the method of death.

This man had been lifted upside down and impaled on something much like a slaughterhouse hook which had been passed through the major bones of his lower legs. While he was hanging there, still alive from all evidence, one or several people had administered these expert slashes along major arteries. The amount of blood lost in a short time must have been amazing.

But even more amazingand disturbingwas the cause of the indentations and lividity networks around these wounds. They were teethmarks. Not bites, but more like extreme hickeys where more than half a dozen mouths had simultaneously fastened around these wounds and held lips and tongues in place during the ingestion of this man's blood. How much blood did they teach us is in the human body, Kate? About six quarts, I think.

But there is more to this delightful Romanian tale. The man's face was battered and disfigured, but still recognizable. It was our missing Deputy Minister whom the papers had theorized had fled to the West with several thousand dollars in baksheeshed American money. It was your Mr. Stancu, Katethe helpful bureaucrat with the dead novelist's name. The man who expedited your and Baby Joshua's visa in such unprecedented time.

Well, Mr. Stancu will be expediting nothing anymore. I told no one of this grisly bit of business. Mr. Stancu was cremated in the paupers' ovens the next day.

Why am I bothering you about this terrible thing on what I am sure is a beautiful, sunny Colorado day?

I'm not sure. But be careful, Kate. Watch over yourself and our tiny friend. This is a bad place, and sometimes there are things happening here which not even I can joke about.

With love from Bucharest,

And Lucian had drawn a cartoon of a large smiley face under a raincloud.

For several minutes Kate sat holding the letter and staring out the window at the darkness where the porch lights did not teach. Then she rose, walked past where Tom was bent over his gear spread out on the study floor, went down the hall to the bedroom, slid open the nightstand drawer, and took out the loaded Browning. She was still sitting there on the edge of the bed, holding the pistol, when Tom came in half an hour later.