3rd Degree

A jolt of rage tensed me. It looked like a flattened .22. Caked with specks of Jill’s blood.

“Something doesn’t fit,” Claire said, puzzled. She looked up at me. “This area ought to be covered in spinal fluid. No swelling of the brain tissue, very little blood.”

Suddenly Claire the professional clicked in. “I’m going to open up the chest cavity,” she spoke into the mike. “Lindsay, look away.”

“What’s wrong, Claire? What’s going on?”

“Something’s not right.” Claire rolled the body over, took out a scalpel. Then she slipped the blade down a straight line from the top of Jill’s chest.

I did avert my eyes. I didn’t want to see Jill like that.

“I’m doing a standard sternotomy,” Claire dictated into the mike. “Opening up the pneumo chest area. Lung membrane is soft, tissue … degraded, soupy … I’m exposing the pericardium now…” I heard Claire take a deep breath. “Shit.”

My heart started racing. I was fixed on the screen now. “Claire, what’s going on? What do you see?”

“Stay there.” She put up a hand. She had seen something horrible. What was it?

“Oh, Lindsay,” she whispered, and finally looked at me. “Jill didn’t die from a gunshot.”

“What!”

“The lack of swelling, blood seepage.” She shook her

head. “The gunshot was delivered after she was dead.” “What are you saying, Claire?” “I’m not sure”—she looked up—“but if I had to

guess … I’d say ricin.”

Chapter 70

There was always something intimidating about meeting Charles Danko in person. Even at a fancy place like the Huntington Hotel in San Francisco. Danko fit in anywhere. He was wearing a tweed jacket, pinstriped shirt, and a rep tie.

There was a girl with him, pretty, with a tangle of bright red hair. He always liked to keep you off guard. Who is she?

Mal had been told to wear a suit jacket and even a tie, if he could dig one up. He had, and he found it kind of fu

Danko stood rather formally and shook Mal’s hand, just another of his odd off-putting gestures. He waved a hand around the dining room. “Could there be a safer place for us to meet? My Gawd, the Huntington!”

He looked at the girl and they both laughed, but he didn’t introduce her.

“Ricin,” Malcolm said, “it’s brilliant. What a great day—we got Bengosian! We can do so much damage here. Hell, we could wipe out this capitalist den in about a minute flat. Go over to the Mark and take out another hundred rich bloodsuckers. Take the trolley and spring death on anybody we passed.”

“Yes, especially because I figured how to make it as a concentrate.”

Malcolm nodded, but he looked nervous. “I thought this was about G-8?”

Danko looked at the girl again. They shared condescending smiles. Who the hell is she? What does she know?

“Your focus is too narrow, Mal. We’ve talked about that before. More than anything else, this is about terrifying people. And we’re going to scare them, believe me. Ricin will do the trick. Makes anthrax look like something only farm animals should fret about.”

He stared hard at Malcolm now. “You have a delivery system for me? For the ricin?”

Malcolm had stopped making eye contact. “Yeah.”

“And more of your explosives?”

“We could blow the Huntington right off the map. The Mark, too.” Malcolm finally allowed himself a sheepish smile. “All right, who is she?”

Danko threw back his head and laughed. “She’s someone brilliant, just like you. She’s a secret weapon. Let’s leave it at that. Just another soldier,” he said, then looked into the girl’s eyes. “There’s always another soldier, Malcolm. That’s what should be scaring the hell out of everybody right now.”

Chapter 71

Michelle heard voices in the other room. Mal was back from his meeting. Julia was whooping it up as if she’d won the lottery. But Michelle felt awful.

She knew they had done terrible things. The latest killing didn’t sit well with her. That pretty, i

But this one. What had she done to be on the list? Because she worked for the state? What had Mal said? This one is just for the thrill of it, just to show we can. Except Michelle didn’t really believe that. There was always a hidden agenda with Mal.

The poor D.A. knew she was going to die from the minute they forced her into the truck. But she never gave in. Not once. She seemed brave to Michelle. The real crime was that she never even knew why she was dying! They wouldn’t even give her that.

The door creaked open and Mal eased into the room. The look of triumph on his face gave Michelle the creeps. He lay down next to her, smelling of tobacco and alcohol. “What happened to my party girl?”

“Not tonight,” Michelle said. A wheeze kicked up in her chest.

“Not tonight?” Mal gri

Michelle sat up. “I just don’t understand. Why her? What did she do to anybody?”

“I mean, what did any of them really do?” Mal stroked her hair. “Wrong employer, honeybun. She represented the big bad state that’s sanctioning the criminal pillaging of the world. That’s what she did, Michelle. She’s tanks in Iraq. She’s Grumman and Dow Chemical and the WTO all rolled into one. Don’t be fooled because she was pretty.”

“They said on the news that she put away murderers. She even prosecuted some of these CEOs in business scandals.”

“And I told you not to pay attention to the news, Michelle. Sometimes people who do good things die. Hold that thought.”

She shot a horrified look at him. The cough in her chest grew tighter. She fumbled around the bed for her new inhaler, but Mal blocked her hand. “What did you think, Michelle? We were in this just to knock off a couple of fat-cat billionaires? Our fight’s with the state. The state is very powerful. It won’t roll over and die.”

Michelle forced a breath. She realized in that moment that she was different from Mal. From them all. He called her a little girl. But he was wrong. A little girl didn’t do the terrible things she had done. She wheezed again. “I need my inhaler, Mal. Please.”

“And I need to know if I can trust you, honeybun.” He picked up the inhaler and twirled it in his fingers like a toy.

Her breathing was starting to get heavy now, ragged. And Mal was making it worse, scaring her like this. She didn’t know what he was capable of. “You can trust me, Mal. You know that,” she whispered.

“I do know that, Michelle, but it’s not me I’m worried about. I mean, we work for someone, don’t we, hon? Charles Danko isn’t forgiving, the way I am. Danko is tough enough to beat them at their own game. He’s a genius.”

She grabbed the puffer out of Mal’s hand and depressed it twice, shooting the soothing spray into her lungs.

“You know the cool thing about ricin?” Mal smiled. “It can get into your bloodstream a hundred ways.” He depressed his index finger twice, as though he was triggering an imaginary inhaler. He smiled. “Chht, chht.”

He had a glint in his eye she hadn’t seen before. “Whoa, now that would really get that chest of yours into a state, wouldn’t it, hon? Chht, chht.”