SMK
The Silent Killer
Chapter Sixteen
Part 3
The two medical examiners joked as they worked through the autopsy, irrelevance seeming to be their norm.
The telephone ringing interrupted them and Tony strolled over to answer it, swiping off one surgical glove to pick up the receiver.
He listened to the voice on the other end, one of the lab techs assigned to doing the blood and toxicology workups for Meyers.
At almost the same instant in time, both men in the room became aware of the fact that this was no normal autopsy, that this dead Federal agent had met his demise under very disturbing and very chilling circumstances.
"Holy hell," mumbled Tony, as he comprehended what the lab technician was telling him.
"Oh my God," muttered Sonny as he took in the sight of the node that he was just beginning to extricate from the body.
Both men looked at one another, Tony's dark eyes meeting Sonny's green ones as the pieces of the mysterious puzzle snapped sharply into place.
At that very moment in time, each mirrored the other in expression and thought.
Their eyes were filled with disbelief and fear.
The body that they were working on, the Federal agent who had been found dead mysteriously on his bedroom floor had tested gram negative, his blood work revealing a bacterium known to members of the medical community as Yersinia pestis.
To the common person, one simple word was enough to trigger comprehension.
The plague.
Greg Meyers had died from a form of pneumonic plague, an infectious disease that, without early diagnosis and treatment, could lead to death. A disease that could be spread, a disease that could kill, a disease that could instill fear into even the bravest of men.
A disease that was now out there, lurking in the shadows of Washington, and they didn't have a clue as to how he had gotten it. They also had no idea of knowing how many people he may have been in contact with.
It had to be assumed that it was not an isolated case. It had to be assumed that, as of this moment, the nation's capital might very well be on the verge of the biggest epidemic it had ever known and that they were already losing precious time.
Time to isolate it.
Time to stop it.
Because it was now out there, skulking in the dark, already silently killing.