"We need to talk, Aunt Marge."

"Of course, dear. Of course we do."

Without a word to the painters, she led us out of the room and down the corridor to her office, unlocking the door with a key. She kissed Stephanie on the cheek and gave me a huge smile. Walking around behind her desk, she sat heavily in a large swivel chair and invited us to sit.

36. DONOVAN CATCHES AN AWARD.

"What is it, Steph?" DiMaggio asked. "Is Holly all right? Maybe now's a good time to talk about moving her back to the nursing home."

"It's already arranged. She'll be there tomorrow."

"It's for the best, don't you think?"

"Of course it's for the best. Or I wouldn't have done it. Marge, I've been phoning all morning."

"I got your message a couple of hours ago, along with about ten others. By the time I'd worked my way through half my callbacks I figured you would be in the air. I knew you'd call again tonight when you got home, and I figured we could have a long, leisurely chat then."

"I'm not flying anywhere. It's the syndrome. More people are coming down with it."

"I was aware some people had been ill. Jim told me when I saw him at the hospital, but . . . I'm sorry. I've forgotten your last name."

"Swope."

"Aunt Marge. Jim has it, too."

"Has what?"

"The syndrome."

It took a few moments for DiMaggio to digest the implications of what her niece had said. "I can't believe this. How could he have it?"

"He's got three days left. If we don't find out what's causing this and stop it, he'll be just like Holly."

"How can you be certain?"

"We're as certain as anyone can be," I said.

We might have said a lot of things to shock DiMaggio, but this seemed what she was least prepared for. It was half a minute before speech returned. "I thought what happened to your sister was . . . I thought it was a freak deal. I thought . . ."

"We think Holly caught it the night she had the accident near North Bend. Holly and four firefighters. Jim will be the fifth."

"You've tested him? You know he has it?"

"Tested and normal so far. But we found nothing anomalous in Holly's workups, either."

"Jim looks looks fine." fine."

"Yes, he does."

"I'm sorry," DiMaggio said, turning her dark-brown eyes on me. "If you have this, I really am so sorry."

"Aunt Marge? Three years ago your company was involved in an investigation in Chattanooga. Several firefighters came down with a syndrome similar to this after a fire in a shipping facility."

"Yes, I vaguely remember that. But I never knew the particulars. We had a small shipment in the building where they had the fire. So did dozens of other companies. Our involvement came about when we sent people down to help in the investigation. But these were firefighters who got sick after a fire. Holly was found in her kitchen. Holly wasn't exposed to any smoke."

"What about her symptoms?"

"Honey, I don't recall anything about the symptoms of those poor people in Tennessee."

"Aunt Marge, if you know something that might help, tell us."

DiMaggio leaned forward, touched a b.u.t.ton on her intercom, and said, "Cathy, would you send Donovan in here?"

"Right away, Ms. DiMaggio."

She turned back to us. "All I know is that the episode in Chattanooga was precipitated by a fire. I never was conversant with the catalog of symptoms. If I'd had any idea what happened to Holly could even be remotely connected to Tennessee . . . Had the thought even occurred to me, I would have told you. You know that."

"I know, Aunt Marge."

Rapping on the half-open door, a large man came in quickly, glanced at me, and then gifted Stephanie with a much longer look. He was almost as tall as I was but thicker, more powerfully built, shoulders like a gladiator, neck like a professional football player. His hair was cropped short and he had bright blue eyes. A deep tan. A man who would attract his share of female attention.

"Scott Donovan, this is my niece, Stephanie Riggs. Her friend, Jim Swope." His handshake was as light as tissue, his voice soft and whispery. When I swung around after the handshake, I accidentally knocked a small statue off DiMaggio's desk, a gold obelisk that looked like an award.

Donovan caught it midway between the desktop and the floor, then put it back, smiling at me. The guy could move fast for someone his size, for someone anyone's size.

"Stephanie is Mr. Swope's doctor. She tells me Mr. Swope has three days before he lapses into a coma. They've come for information about the incident in Chattanooga three years ago."

"There were two of us working on it. Me and Hardy."

"Ah, yes. Hardy. He's gone now, isn't he?"

"Been gone awhile."

"Would you like to fill my niece in?"

Donovan began to talk hesitantly. "There was a fire. Three firefighters got sick. The fire had been in a busy shipping facility, so all together there were hundreds of products that had been exposed during the incident. Plastics, artists' paints, you name it. I could go dig up the paperwork and my notes, but we came out of it pretty much empty-handed."

Stephanie said, "We want to know everything you found. What we've got here is too close not to be related."

"Okay. Sure. But we were down there for weeks. I'm not sure I even know where all my notes are."

"Tell you what," DiMaggio said, swiveling back and forth in her chair. "I'm going to bring Carpenter in on this."

"Carpenter?"

"That all right with you, Mr. Donovan?"

"Oh, sure. I think Carpenter's a good chemist. In fact, I like working with her."

"Good. Because I'm going to a.s.sign you and Carpenter to do the same thing with these people that you did in Tennessee with Hardy."

Donovan's voice grew squeaky. "But the Fudderman project."

"I'm going to loan the two of you to Dr. Riggs. Give her any information she requests and put all of our resources at her disposal."

"Fudderman needs to be completed by Monday morning, Tuesday at the latest."

"This will take precedence."

"Sure. Okay. You know me. I'm just wondering who's going to pay. This isn't going to be part of our deal with Tananger, is it?"

"We'll pay for it. The company will."

"I just hope the board doesn't see anything wrong with that."

"Me, too," DiMaggio said, humoring him.

"It's just that Canyon View has certain commitments right now, and after dedicating myself to those commitments for the past six months, it kind of throws me off course when all of a sudden the energy is going somewhere else. I'll get Carpenter." He turned to DiMaggio. "Is that what you want?"

"That's what I said. Bring your notes from Tennessee and give Carpenter an update on the way in here."

"I can do that."

"Thank you, Donovan."

"My pleasure."

Donovan was one of those men whose faces flushed when they were nonplussed. Even under the tan it had flushed several times during our conversation, usually at the same time his voice got squeaky. It was hard to square up the impressive physique with everything else about him.

After he left the room, DiMaggio said, "He's a bit of a nervous type, but trust me, he's probably pound for pound the best chemist on the West Coast. He has an astonishing background. He was in the Army Rangers. He's a black belt in karate. There's a picture in his office of him breaking a whole stack of boards with his head. Unbelievable. And Carpenter is nothing less than a genius. Entered college when she was fourteen, got a degree in chemistry by the time she was seventeen, then a master's in molecular biology. She was halfway through med school when we outbid four other companies for her services. MIT would have held on to her if they could. She doesn't have much experience, but I think this combination of the savvy in Donovan and intellectual in Carpenter will be just what you need.

"I want you to pull through this, Jim. And I want you, Steph, to find anything you can that will help your sister. Call me. Day or night. I mean that. I'd put the whole company on it if it weren't for this merger."

"Thank you, Aunt Marge."

The room grew quiet. I said, "What is it your company does exactly? Holly told me once, but I've forgotten."

"We're researching a new type of liquid metal." She went on but soon was talking about complex helical molecules and negatively charged DNA crystals, and it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. She was so enthusiastic about her work and the prospects for new discoveries, I quickly discarded the idea that she was trying to hide behind a facade of doublespeak. In her building, this was the lingo.

A noise in the corridor cut her talk short. She stood, smoothed her skirt, and walked around her desk. "You can use my office." When I stood, she grasped both my hands in hers and said, "Jim. You run into any roadblocks, call me. I can make phone calls, use my connections in the industry, whatever." Tears puddling her eyes, she tightened her grip. "I'm so sorry about this. n.o.body deserves this. Especially not somebody with the heart you have. I really am sorry."

Not knowing what else to do, I nodded dumbly. She left the room in a swelter of emotion, then stuck her head back in and said, "I thought it was them, but it was the painters. I'll go see what's holding up the show."

I had no idea where she got that business about my heart, whether it was something Holly told her or a trait she thought she'd detected on her own. People were dying, you said all kinds of silly c.r.a.p hoping they would buy into it. Much as I hated to admit it, I didn't have any kind of heart. The petty details of my life had swallowed every waking moment of my days. I'd been consumed with details since I was born. Except for my daughters, I'd never had time for others. Stephanie-working her a.s.s off for a man she barely knew and didn't like-now that was heart.

After we were alone, Stephanie said, "At least we won't be overwhelmed by technicalese if this all turns out to be chemical in origin. I've had plenty of chemistry, but not like them."

"And we can ask them about those people from San Jose."

She reached over and patted my hand.

37. ACHARA.

Twenty minutes later Donovan came back carrying a fat manila folder. The young woman accompanying him carried a yellow legal pad and a pen.

With a name like Carpenter you'd expect Anglo-Saxon roots, perhaps a tall Nordic blonde, but she was Asian. Later, we learned her father was an American serviceman who'd married a Thai woman. Achara Carpenter was five-five and slim, in a hip-hugging purple skirt and red silk blouse, a daring color combination that was stunningly beautiful on her. Her black hair was cut short and was incredibly thick. She didn't look the way I thought a genius should look, but then, what did I know?

Smiling graciously, Achara Carpenter stared at me half a beat too long, a sign that she'd been told I was dying. After a few moments of shuffling papers, Donovan said, "Oh, shoot. This won't take long. Don't start until I get back."

His reticence from the earlier meeting seemed to have evaporated.

"If you don't mind," Carpenter said, picking up a purple pen that looked huge in her delicate brown fingers, "I wonder if you could go over the symptoms. I understand they're not flulike?"

"Not at all," Stephanie said.

"One would expect headaches, nausea, dizziness, shortness of breath, possibly chest pains in the short term. In the long term, cancer, brain damage, miscarriages, heart problems. Maybe death."

"Why would you expect that?" I asked.

"Environmental diseases are wide-ranging, but their effects always center around just a few ailments."

Giving a detailed account of her sister's current condition, Stephanie salted her sentences with medical phrases, some of which I understood and some of which I did not. n.o.body stopped to explain them to me. The more high-tech this got, the more left out I was going to be. "I'm a.s.suming the other patients are in a similar state to my sister," Stephanie said, "although I've only seen one at this point."

"How many other patients are there?" Achara asked.

"Not counting Jim, three here and two in Tennessee."

"I'd like to visit all of the patients . . . eventually," Carpenter said, darting her dark eyes in my direction. We both knew by the time she got to Tennessee and back I'd be in a warehouse for the dim-witted. "Scott filled me in on the thing in Tennessee on the way over. You said you've seen one patient already?"

"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.