While I was writing Exposed an outbreak of Ebola occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The World Health Organization had more than four hundred suspected cases in the region, but as of this writing it hadn’t been twenty-one days—the time Ebola takes to incubate—so the total confirmed cases and deaths were not yet known.

Could an outbreak like this occur in North America or Europe? Some experts believe it’s only a matter of time. All it would take would be one infected person to get on an airplane. That speculation brought us closer to reality on May 24, 2007, when a man infected with tuberculosis got on an airplane in Atlanta and flew to Paris. He boarded yet another flight to Prague, then flew to Montreal and drove himself back to the United States to turn himself in to the CDC. Imagine if he’d had Ebola.

As an author I’m constantly asking questions lik e this. My research includes digging up the answers and nagging a lot of people who know such things. Sometimes it’s difficult to recognize where the facts stop and the fiction begins. If the reader can’t tell, then I’ve done my job.

I use real-life details in all my novels, but this time I wanted to let readers know what some of the facts are.

The Tylenol murders in Chicago during September 29 through October 1, 1982, remain unsolved to this day. There were seven known victims. One of them was a twelve-year-old girl named Mary Kellerman from Elk Grove Village, Illinois. However, to my knowledge there were no victims in Terre Haute, Indiana.

A scientist and bioweapons expert named Dr. Steven Hatifill, who worked at USAMRIID for a period, was considered by the U.S. Department of Justice to be a “person of interest” in the investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Charges were never brought forward.

A vaccine for Ebola does exist. As mentioned in the novel, it was developed by research teams from Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg and Fort Detrick’s USAMRIID. The report of the findings first appeared in the Journal Public Library of Science Pathogens, January 2007. It has not been approved by the FDA as of this writing.

The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland, really does have frozen samples of all the Level 4 biological agents I mention in the book. My apologies for taking any liberties in using the facility for my setting. Suggestions and assertions I’ve made are entirely mine and not any of the staff’s or anyone associated with USAMRIID. I have only the utmost respect for the facility as well as for the scientists and doctors who do amazing work there.

The same goes for the University of Virginia. And as far as I know there are no live macaque monkeys in the basement of the Old Medical School Building on UVA’s campus.

Though undocumented, there have been stories about monkey traders using the islands in Lake Victoria as dumping grounds for sick monkeys and then going back to retrieve those same monkeys to make up shortages in future shipments.

There are many other facts sprinkled throughout Exposed including those about criminal cases. The phrases in the note found in the doughnut box are actual phrases used by the Beltway Snipers. The impression “Call Nathan R” was found on a letter from the Unabomber. Ted Bundy was arrested in Pensacola, Florida, on Davis Highway in a stolen VW. For any of you who find this sort of trivia as fascinating as I do, I’m including some of my research resource materials.