Shoving back the chair, I began pacing as a clock ticked loudly from the wall.

'How did you get this? How?' I talked to her out loud.

I went back outside to where Crockett was parked on the street. I didn't get close to his truck.

'We've got a real problem,' I said to him. 'And I'm not a hundred percent sure what I'm going to do about it.'

My immediate difficulty was finding a secure phone, which I finally decided simply was not possible. I couldn't call from any of the local businesses, certainly not from the neighbors' houses or from the chief's trailer. That left my portable cellular phone, which ordinarily I would never have used to make a call like this. But I did not see

that I had a choice. At three-fifteen, a woman answered the phone at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Maryland.

'I need to speak with Colonel Fujitsubo,' I said.

'I'm sorry, he's in a meeting.'

'It's very important.'

'Ma'am, you'll have to call back tomorrow.'

'At least give me his assistant, his secretary…'

'In case you haven't heard, all nonessential federal employees are on furlough…'

'Jesus Christ!' I exclaimed in frustration. 'I'm stranded on an island with an infectious dead body. There may be some sort of outbreak here. Don't tell me I have to wait until your goddamn furlough ends!'

'Excuse me?'

I could hear telephones ringing nonstop in the background.

'I'm on a cellular phone. The battery could die any minute. For God's sake, interrupt his meeting! Patch me through to him! Now!'

Fujitsubo was in the Russell Building on Capitol Hill, where my call was connected. I knew he was in some senator's office but did not care as I quickly explained the situation, trying to control my panic.

'That's impossible,' he said. 'You're sure it's not chicken pox, measles…'

'No. And regardless of what it is, it should be contained, John. I can't send this into my morgue. You've got to handle it.'

USAMRIID was the major medical research laboratory for the U.S. Biological Defense Research Program, its purpose to protect citizens from the possible threat of biological warfare. More to the point, USAMRIID had the largest Bio Level 4 containment laboratory in the country.

'Can't do it unless it's terrorism,' Fujitsubo said to me. 'Outbreaks go to CDC. Sounds like that's who you need to be talking to.'

'And I'm sure I will be, eventually,' I said. 'And I'm sure most of them have been furloughed too, which is why I couldn't get through earlier. But they're in Atlanta, and you're in Maryland, not far from here, and I need to get this body out of here as fast as I can.'

He was silent.

'No one hopes I'm wrong more than I do,' I went on in a cold sweat. 'But if I'm not and we haven't taken the proper precautions…'

'I'm clear, I'm clear,' he quickly said. 'Damn. Right now we're a skeleton crew. Okay, give us a few hours. I'll call CDC. We'll deploy a team. When was the last time you were vaccinated for smallpox?'

'When I was too young to remember it.'

'You're coming in with the body.'

'She's my case.'

But I knew what he meant. They would want to quarantine me.

'Let's just get her off the island, and we'll worry about other things later,' I added.

'Where will you be?'

'Her house is in the center of town near the school.'

'God, that's unfortunate. We got any idea how many people might have been exposed?'

'No idea. Listen. There's a tidal creek nearby. Look for that and the Methodist church. It has a tall steeple. According to the map there's another church, but it doesn't have a

steeple. There's an airstrip, but the closer you can get to the house, the better, so we don't have to carry her past where people might see.'

'Right. We sure as hell don't need a panic.' He paused, his voice softening a little. 'Are you all right?'

'I sure hope so.' I felt tears in my eyes, my hands trembling.

'I want you to calm down, try to relax now and stop worrying. We'll get you taken care of,' he said as my phone went dead.

It had always been a theoretical possibility that after all the murder and madness I had seen in my career, it would be a disease that quietly killed me in the end. I never knew what I was exposing myself to when I opened a body and handled its blood and breathed the air. I was careful about cuts and needle sticks, but there was more to worry about than hepatitis and HIV. New viruses were discovered all the time, and I often wondered if they would one day rule, at last winning a war with us that began with time.

For a while, I sat in the kitchen listening to the clock tick-tock while the light changed beyond the window as the day fled. I was in the throes of a full-blown anxiety attack when Crockett's peculiar voice suddenly hailed me from outside.

'Ma'am? Ma'am?'

When I went to the porch and looked out the door, I saw on the top step a small brown paper bag and a drink with a lid and a straw. I carried them in as Crockett climbed back inside his truck. He had gone off long enough to bring me supper, which wasn't smart, but kind. I waved at him as if he were a guardian angel, and felt a little better. I sat on the glider, rocking back and forth, and sipping sweetened iced tea from the Fisherman's Corner. The sandwich was fried flounder on white bread, with fried scallops on the side. I didn't think I'd ever tasted anything so fresh and fine.

I rocked and sipped tea, watching the street through the rusting screen as the sun slid down the church steeple in a shimmering ball of red, and geese were black V's flying overhead. Crockett turned his headlights on as windows lit up in homes, and two girls on bicycles pedaled quickly past, their faces turned toward me as they flew. I was certain they knew. The whole island did. Word had spread about doctors and the Coast Guard arriving because of what was in the Pruitt bed.

Going back inside, I put on fresh gloves, slipped the mask back over my mouth and nose and returned to the kitchen to see what I might find in the garbage. The plastic can was lined with a paper bag and tucked under the sink. I sat on the floor, sifting through it one item at a time to see if I could get any sense at all of how long Pruitt had been sick. Clearly, she had not emptied her trash for a while. Empty cans and frozen food wrappers were dry and crusty, peelings of raw turnips and carrots wizened and hard like Naugahyde.

I wandered through every room in her house, rooting through every wastepaper basket I could find. But it was the one in her living room that was the saddest. In it were several handwritten recipes on strips of paper, for Easy Flounder, Crab Cakes and Lila's Clam Stew. She had made mistakes, scratched through words on each one, which was why, I supposed, she had pitched them. In the bottom of the can was a small cardboard tube for a manufacturer's sample she had gotten in the mail.

Getting a flashlight out of my bag, I went outside and stood on the steps, waiting until

Crockett got out of his truck.

'There's going to be a lot of commotion here soon,' I said.

He stared at me as if I might be mad, and in lighted windows I could see the faces of people peering out. I went down the steps, to the fence at the edge of the yard, around

to the front of it and began shining the flashlight inside the cubbyholes where Pruitt had sold her recipes. Crockett moved back.

'I'm trying to see if I can get any idea how long she's been sick,' I said to him.

There were plenty of recipes in the slots, and only three quarters in the wooden money box.

'When did the last ferry boat come here with tourists?' I shone the light into another cubbyhole, finding maybe half a dozen recipes for Lila's Easy Soft-Shell Crabs.