“Har-de-har. Tell me you’ve isolated the cause.”
“I can tell you this. Preliminary scan shows a healthy forty-two-year-old female. Broke her left tibia at one point, healed beautifully. She’s had some minor face and body work. Excellent job all around. Have to wait on the tox reports to tell you if she considered her body a temple or believed in chemical enhancements.”
“Her body’s not a big concern of mine right now. Tell me about her brain.”
“Massive swelling that would have resulted in death within hours. Irreversible, in my opinion after the initial spread of infection, which is confirmed on the other brains in question by the neurologist I’ve brought in. The brain contains no foreign matter, no tumor, no chemical or organic stimulant. The infection, for lack of a better word, remains unidentified.”
“You’re not making my day here, Morris.”
He gave her a little come-ahead with his finger, rinsed his hands, then brought an image onto a monitor. “Here you’ve got a computerized cross-section of the brain of a normal, healthy fifty-year-old male. Here.” He tapped a key. “You’ve got Cogburn’s.”
“Christ.”
“In a word. You can see the increased mass, the bruising where it was squeezed as the pressure increased. The red areas indicate the infection.”
“It spread through, what, more than fifty percent?”
“Fifty-eight. Notice that some of the red is darker than others. Older infection. This would seem to be the area where it began. This leads us to believe it was an initial optical attack, and here . . . audio.”
“So, it’s caused by something he saw, something he heard.”
“He may not have been able to hear or see it—not with ears and eyes. But a bombardment on these two senses into the lobes of the brain that run them.”
“Subliminal then.”
“Possibly. I can tell you that what we found so far indicates that the infection can and does spread quickly, causing the swelling to increase, sector by sector. Whether it’s self-generated or requires further stimuli, we haven’t determined. I can tell you that the pain and suffering this process would cause is unspeakable.”
“Latest polls say most people don’t think that’s such a bad thing.”
“Most people are, academically at least, barbarians.” Morris smiled when she looked at him. “Easy to say ‘Off with their heads’ when you don’t have to stand in the blood and have that head roll between your feet. A little of it splatters on them, they start calling for a cop.”
“I don’t know, Morris, sometimes it splatters on enough of them, and they get a good taste, they turn into a mob.” She dragged out her communicator when it beeped.
“Dallas.”
“Lieutenant, you’re due at the media center in thirty.”
“Commander, I’m at the morgue with the ME, awaiting further tests on Mary Ellen George’s brain. I need to finish this consult and update my team. I request that—”
“Denied. In thirty, Dallas. Have your aide transmit your incident report and any additional data to my office ASAP. It will need to be reviewed and disseminated for the media.”
When Whitney broke transmission, Morris gave her a little pat on the back. “I know, I know. Sucks sideways.”
“They sicced the deputy mayor and Chang on me.”
“I wouldn’t wonder if Franco and Chang were thinking you’d been sicced on them. Run along now and go assure the viewing public that the city is safe in your hands.”
“If I didn’t need you, I’d be tempted to beat you up for that.”
She suffered through the preconference briefing, read the newly drafted statements, filed away what she was told could be discussed, what she was told could not. But she bared her teeth when Franco suggested she freshen up before the cameras and try a little lip dye.
“The fact that I have breasts doesn’t require me to slap on enhancements.”
Franco sighed and waved her hovering aides out of the room. “Lieutenant. I didn’t mean that as an insult. We’re women, and whatever position of power and authority we hold, we remain women. Some of us are more comfortable with that than others.”
“I’m perfectly comfortable being female. I’ll do what I’m ordered to do, Deputy Mayor. I don’t have to like it. I don’t even have to agree with it. I just have to do it. But I sure as hell don’t have to doll myself up because you’d prefer a different police image on-screen than what I might present.”
“Agreed, agreed, agreed.” Franco threw up her hands. “I apologize for making the insulting suggestion that you might put a little color on your mouth. I don’t think of lip dye as a tool of Satan.”