Quarantined by Joe McKinney

whatsoever. He’s a homeopathic adviser, if you can believe that. He got his job because some city councilman owed him a favor. And now that idiot is overseeing
this
crisis. He put that warning on that notice because he still believes that diseases are caused by miasmatic vapors and not viruses. He’s made the MHD a laughingstock in the medical community. Dr. Laurent and her staff see that kind of corruption and stupidity, and they think it must automatically extend to me as well. They don’t even listen to what I have to say.”
    “But if you have proof?”
    “Yes, I have proof. But they won’t even look at it. And meanwhile, the chickens in the GZ are shitting out little virus bombs all over the place. When the grackles come back to San Antonio in November, they’re going to eat that shit from the ground and absorb one or even both new strains of the H2N2 virus. When that happens, the walls around this city won’t do a bit of good. The grackles will take those new strains into rural northern Mexico, where there are no doctors, no hospitals, no resources to implement a quarantine.
    “There’s nobody but about 10 million poor as dirt Mexicans down there. They won’t even have the resources to report the pandemic until it spreads so far out of control we’ll never be able to deal with it. We’re not going to be talking deaths in the thousands either. Not even in the tens of thousands. When those grackles hit northern Mexico, we’re going to see deaths in the millions.
    “And that vaccine that Dr. Laurent and her staff have worked so hard on? It won’t do a damn bit of good against those new strains. I’m trying to stop a global pandemic, here, and all that disgusting fat woman can do is sit in her trailer and ignore me.”
    One of the first things they teach you about interviewing people is to let them talk. Let the thread spool itself out. The challenge is to keep them on focus. Keep them talking about what you need.
    I was about to redirect our conversation when Dr. Cole did it for me.
    “Detective,” he said, “if you don’t mind me asking, what exactly are you doing out here? You never told me that.”
    “We’re looking for the van Dr. Bradley and her police escort were driving the morning she was killed.”
    “Yeah? Why are you looking out here?”
    I noticed the tone of his voice changing. First confused, then suspicious.
    “We were told that Dr. Bradley had been doing work here in the GZ for the last few days.”
    I couldn’t see Cole’s mouth, but from what I could see of his expression I figured it must have been hanging open in the shape of an O.
    “That surprises you?” I asked.
    “Yes. Very much, actually.”
    “Why?”
    “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Dr. Laurent and her staff are lab technicians. That’s what they do. That’s all they do. I’ve been trying to get them to come out here for weeks, and now you tell me they’ve been coming out here secretly.”
    I heard him let out a hot, frustrated sigh. “That figures. It’s prejudice. Stinking prejudice.”
    I thought about telling him we were talking about somebody’s life, and not his pride, but I didn’t. Instead, I said, “You have no idea where Dr. Bradley was working while she was out here?”
    “None.”
    I looked at Chunk, who had more or less disconnected himself from the conversation, for some sign of what he wanted to do.
    He nodded towards the car.
    “Okay, Dr. Cole, thanks for your time. Would you mind if we called on you again? Familiar as you are with the GZ, you might be a big help.”
    He bowed his head, a strange looking gesture with his gas mask.
    “Listen,” I said, “if you do happen to see that van, could you give us a call? SAPD Homicide in the City directory.”
    “Sure,” he said. And then he turned and walked back to his ambulance without another word.
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Chapter 11
    There is an ugly truth about wearing personal protective equipment, or PPE , as we call it in the business: