The Slammer

It was long past breakfast by the time they brought in a tray for Maggie. By now food was the last thing on her mind. She picked at the eggs, ate half the wheat toast, took two sips of orange juice and left the rest. There was a weight on her chest making it uncomfortable to breathe, like something heavy was sitting on top of her, pressing hard against her rib cage. Even swallowing became a conscious effort. She caught herself listening to her own heartbeat. She put two fingers on the pulse point at her throat. Did she expect to feel or hear the virus multiplying inside her? Is that what the extra weight was?

Colonel Platt had asked if there was anyone she wanted to call or perhaps anyone she needed him to call for her. Off the top of her head she couldn’t think of a single person. Maybe Gwen. Certainly not Nick Morrelli. Probably not her stepbrother who she had only just met within the last year. How would that conversation go?

“Hey, bro, guess what? I’ve been quarantined with a highly infectious virus. Might not be able to do that first Thanksgiving get-together after all.”

And she wouldn’t call her mother. Somehow her mother would find a way to make this about her with little or no regard about the impact it had on Maggie.

“But Mom,” Maggie could hear the exchange in her mind, “I’m the one dying from a deadly virus.”

“And how am I supposed to explain that to anyone?” That would be her mother’s response but only after first asking if it was contagious.

No, Maggie had no one. No close family members. No significant other. No one on her first-to-call list. And no one for whom she was a first-to-call. When she divorced Greg the exhaustion of that relationship had left her with more relief than regret. They had gotten married in college. He had been a sort of security blanket for her, an attempt at normalcy, a chance to have a real family. That was until he wanted to tear her away from the one thing, the only thing that had ever given her a true sense of being—her identity, her career at the FBI.

She left that relationship, bruised but relieved. But she also left believing she’d never find anyone who would accept what she did for a living or, more importantly, that it would always be her first priority. Adam Bonzado and Nick Morrelli included. Of course, through no fault of their own. Maggie hadn’t quite let anyone into her life long enough or deep enough to give them a real chance. She knew that she was to blame, not them. Maybe she had taken that lesson from her mentor, from A.D. Cunningham, a bit too far. It wasn’t something she wanted to share with Colonel Platt. So when he offered to call someone, she simply shook her head.

Colonel Platt had gone on to tell her a number of things. Some of them now a blur. He explained that the virus had not shown up in her blood…yet. He added that last word like a lead anchor. He told her about an incubation period. He wasn’t gentle with her. He gave it to her straight just like she’d asked.

Be careful what you ask for, she reminded herself.

She knew a little about these viruses. She knew that even if she didn’t show any signs now, it didn’t mean that it wasn’t already in her system, lying dormant, silently waiting.

When Colonel Platt left, Maggie sat staring at the wall of glass, watching the monitors on the other side, listening to their hums and beeps. It all seemed unreal, something totally out of The Twilight Zone, indeed. She wasn’t sure how long she had sat like that when finally she pulled herself together.

She kept hearing Platt’s explanation. He had afforded her too many details, probably thinking that her medical background provided her some sort of safety net of understanding. Knowledge did not necessarily always equal power or control. Instead, it sometimes had the opposite effect. Especially in this case where the more she understood about the virus, how absolutely powerful and unstoppable it was, the more vulnerable she began to feel.

Platt had left her with just enough details to keep her heart racing. And his questions ran on a loop through her brain:

“Did you touch Ms. Kellerman? Did you come in contact with any of her blood? Her bedsheets? Did you touch Mary Louise? Did she take your hand? Did her vomit get on your face? Your eyes? Your mouth?”

Maggie knew some of the little girl’s vomit had splattered her jacket, but she didn’t think it had gotten on her face. But Cunningham? Maggie remembered him wiping his face. He was holding Mary Louise when she threw up. Cunningham had taken the little girl to the bathroom to help her wash up, ordering Maggie to stay put.

And what about Mary Louise, that beautiful little girl, crawling onto her mother’s bloody bedsheets, living amongst the ruins for how many days?

That’s when Maggie remembered the line from the note: YOUR CHILDREN ARE NOT SAFE ANYWHERE AT ANY TIME.

The words fit his purpose just as Mary Louise and her mother did by sharing the same name and partial address as one of the victims in the Tylenol case. But Maggie knew these particular words were not his. She suspected they had been copied, too. He had pulled that line from somewhere else but where?

She went back to the computer. She sat down but hesitated. She ran her fingers through her hair and realized her hands were shaking. She sat and waited for them to settle, for the sudden nausea to pass, for the pounding in her head to quiet. None of it did. She needed to ignore the swelling panic, push it aside. She had done it before. She could do it again, at least long enough to retreat, to escape, to work.

She went back to Google, and with fingers still a bit unsteady she typed in the phrase, exactly as she remembered it: YOUR CHILDREN ARE NOT SAFE ANYWHERE AT ANY TIME.

Immediately her answer came up in a dozen different sites. She couldn’t believe it. There on her computer screen, staring right back at her were the exact same words. They had also been used as a postscript on another note. Why hadn’t she recognized it earlier?

There were other phrases, other duplicates: “I AM GOD” and “CALL ME GOD.” Instead of “MR. F.B.I. MAN” was a close substitute: “FOR YOU MR. POLICE.”

And just as she suspected, the phrases had all been lifted from notes and messages of another killer, actually a pair of killers. They were phrases used by the Beltway Snipers, John Muhammad and Lee Malvo in October 2002.