Had it not been for the great popularity of Dan Everhardt, Tom Palleschi might have been the president’s choice for his running mate five years ago. True, Palleschi was a bit too ethnic in his appeal. A Catholic, he was the father of six children and devoted a lot of his time to Italian-American causes. Not that this was a serious negative, but it did limit his performance in the demographic polls. He was a bit more popular with ethnic minorities than with WASPs. He knew little about terrorism and was not thought of as politically ‘tough.’ He was a peacemaker, appealing but not quite as forceful as the party would have liked.
Palleschi would make a fine choice to replace Dan Everhardt. He projected not only wisdom and experience, but also physical strength – a necessity at this moment when fear of illness was sweeping the nation.
‘I like this choice,’ said Corrigan.
‘So do I,’ the president agreed. ‘I’ve worked with Tom in the past, and he’s steady as a rock.’
These remarks brought general assent. Tom Palleschi was like another Dan Everhardt, but with a slightly different profile. He looked the part of a popular vice president. He also looked the part of president of the United States, if one added a brush stroke or two to his image.
Best of all, there was not a breath of scandal about Palleschi. His business career was spotless, and so was his personal life. He was faithful to his wife and devoted to his family.
For the next twenty minutes Palleschi’s strengths and weaknesses were weighed by those present. But the palpable air of relief in the room left little doubt he would be the president’s choice. A good choice.
‘Let’s float it around town,’ the president concluded. ‘Meanwhile I’ll call Tom and bring him in.’
On this note the meeting ended. The White House strategists were pleased. It was possible to chalk off Dan Everhardt’s illness as a medical emergency and a personal tragedy. But Everhardt’s loss need not cripple the administration. Palleschi made up for Everhardt.
That is, assuming Palleschi accepted the job.
Manchester, New HampshireNovember 28
The health authorities in Adelaide refused to talk to Karen, despite her recommendation from Dr Roper in the outback. They seemed cold and evasive, and distinctly unhappy to have heard from her.
This made her next mission all the more important. She retraced the route of her daylong flight to Australia, with one key difference. Instead of returning to Washington she flew to Boston and took a commuter flight to New Hampshire.
The connection she was pursuing was tenuous. Tenuous enough, she hoped, that the American authorities would not have followed it up yet. It came from an online service she subscribed to that collected police reports on homicides, suicides, and unexplained deaths from all over the United States. The deaths were cross-indexed under various headings, including parts of the body. Karen’s routine search of ‘hands and feet’ had rung a bell in New Hampshire.
She was right. When she arrived at the small city hall office of the chief medical examiner, she found him willing to talk about the body that had been discovered a few days earlier, and even willing to show it to her.
His name was Dr Waterman, and he was surprisingly young and handsome. She saw photographs of an attractive wife and two young daughters on the bookshelf behind his desk. He offered her coffee, but she refused.
‘I’ve been on airplanes most of the last few days,’ she said. ‘I’ve had enough coffee to last me a year.’
‘I was thinking that you looked tired,’ the doctor smiled. ‘I kind of assumed you journalists don’t get a lot of sleep.’
‘That depends on the journalist,’ Karen said. ‘As for myself, I don’t sleep much. You’re right on that score.’
‘I sleep almost eight hours a night,’ he said. ‘No medical examiner is in a great hurry to get to his office in the morning, as you might imagine.’
‘Tell me about the body we talked about on the phone,’ Karen said.
‘It’s strictly a John Doe,’ he said. ‘No trace of identification. The few distinguishing marks, moles and such, were no help. We took impressions of the teeth and sent them off to the computers, but there wasn’t a match.’
‘Who found the body?’
‘A local homeless man named Erroll. A mental patient who was thrown out on the street when they cut back at the state hospital. He found the body in a Dumpster. At first the police weren’t inclined to believe him. He’s severely delusional, very florid. He thinks Martians are sending messages through his skin, stuff like that. But the body was right where he said it was. When the cops saw the deformations, they called me right away.’
He stood up. ‘Want to see it?’
‘Absolutely.’ Karen got up to follow him.
‘You’re not squeamish about bodies, are you?’ he asked.
‘No problem.’
He took her to one of the autopsy rooms. He left her to wait alone while he went to find the body. He returned with an assistant who was pushing a gurney.
The assistant unzipped the body bag. Thankfully, the smell that emerged from the corpse when he pulled down the zipper was essentially formaldehyde, reminding her of her lab days at college.
The face of the body was like that of any cadaver, gray and expressionless, the features slack.
‘Caucasian male, about forty,’ Dr Waterman said.
As he pulled the bag aside, Karen saw the distorted hands.
‘Hardened, fused,’ she said.
‘Correct. More like modified cartilage than skin.’ The doctor picked up one of the hands. ‘I’ve never seen anything remotely like it.’
I have. Karen was thinking that the corpse’s hands were almost identical in appearance to the hands of the victims in Australia. She did not volunteer what she knew.
‘Have you done tissue studies?’ she asked.
‘Informally, on my own, yes. I probably shouldn’t have – the big shots in Atlanta will want complete control – but I couldn’t resist. It’s not normal tissue. I’m not enough of a cell biologist to understand it, but I do know that in all my years of tissue biopsies I’ve never seen changes like this.’
He showed her the feet. Just as in Australia, the digits were distorted and partially fused, and the heel and sole had pulled together in a hooflike shape. Death had done nothing to alter the distinctive, troubling look of the foot.
‘I’ve checked my medical books,’ he said. ‘No luck. I can’t find a disease, no matter how rare, that has this feature.’
Karen felt a suspicious throb of lightheadedness as she studied the corpse. It occurred to her rather remotely that she hadn’t had much to eat in the last three days.
Before she could complete the thought her eyes began to roll up in her head. Her lips and hands tingled. She tried to steady herself against the gurney, but failed.
The doctor caught her before she could fall to the floor.
She came to in his office, lying on a deep leather couch.