Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [87]
“Yesterday I visited a woman named Jackie Feldbaum in a North Bend nursing home.”
“Her condition was similar to your sister’s?”
“Identical.”
“And you said all the victims have a skin condition on their hands?”
I showed her my waxy hands and said, “You got the hands, you got the syndrome.” Without touching them, she looked them over carefully.
“What about fainting? Loss of consciousness? Syncope?”
“Not yet,” Stephanie said. “He’s fallen several times, but he hasn’t lost consciousness.”
“Ringing in the ears?” Carpenter asked.
I showed her the three-by-five card Stan Beebe had written and said, “Day five. How did you know?”
Head low, Achara Carpenter printed diligently on her legal pad, the hunch in her back and neck that of a longtime student. “And where are you in this progression?” she asked, her teeth white against her copper skin.
“How did you know about the hearing?”
“While I was waiting for Scott to get his papers together, I logged on to our computer. I found several lists of symptoms for various off-the-wall environmental maladies. Ringing in the ears was one symptom.
“Also, Scott told me there may have been chickens involved, so I found some contacts for a researcher in Hong Kong who studies poultry-human disease transmission. I would have called already, but it’s, uh . . .” She glanced at a gold wristwatch on her delicate wrist. “Two in the morning there. If I’m hitting on your symptoms, I’m doing it by accident. Believe me, I’m shooting in the dark here. Is it possible one of the symptoms is depression? The thought of ending up in a nursing home must be depressing. Do you think maybe this person who went off the roof and the people who had car accidents might have been depressed and deliberately trying to hurt themselves?”
I said, “Jackie I don’t know about. Joel McCain fell off his roof. It took him another four days to lose the rest of it. I don’t think he knew what was coming. Stan Beebe did know and may have killed himself. I don’t want to speculate.”
It was another twenty minutes before Donovan returned.
When he did, we told him about Jane’s California Propulsion and asked if they’d been involved in Tennessee. “Not that I know of,” he said. “But then, I wasn’t working it from that end. I don’t know that anybody was. I was involved with the science of it. Matching the symptoms with known chemical hazards. Matching known chemical hazards with what was found in the building.”
“And what was found in the building?” Stephanie asked.
“Want the whole list?” Donovan pulled out a computer printout that was at least three feet long.
“My God,” I said.
“Yeah. The way I like to work, we eliminate the possibilities one by one. Sooner or later we’ll narrow it down,” Donovan said.
“That could take forever.”
“Not really. You’ll be surprised.”
“I’ve only got three days left.”
“Well, that’s the way I work.”
“Why don’t we start at the other end? JCP, Inc., had a shipment in our truck accident. If they had stuff in Tennessee, the odds have to be pretty good they’re involved. I mean, there wasn’t that much in our truck that this could be linked to. DuPont had a couple of packages. A painting company. JCP.”
“All I know is how I work. I can’t work any other way.”
“I can,” Stephanie said.
It was nice to have somebody on my side.
DAY FIVE
38. BLURRED VISION, RINGING IN EARS, SYNCOPE
Icould feel them trying to wake me up, a mass of femininity, soft hands, warm bodies, voices trying on my name like a sweater that was too tight, Allyson, Britney, and Stephanie, whose low, anxious tone stood in contrast to the fun the other two were having.
My girls were bouncing on the bed, climbing all over me, while Stephanie had morbid thoughts, and even in my semiconscious state I detected the anxiety in her voice. She clearly thought we’d slipped up in our countdown. That I was gone.
I could hear Britney’s voice in my ear, but I couldn’t respond. It was the most incredible feeling of powerlessness, worse even than one of those horrible dreams