No Immunity Read online

  No Immunity

  A Kiernan O’Shaughnessy Mystery

  Susan Dunlap

  For three inspiring women of Pioche:

  Martha Lauritzen

  Betty Gemmill

  Jean Orr

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Acknowledgements

  A Biography of Susan Dunlap

  CHAPTER 1

  HE NEVER SHOULD HAVE trusted them to Louisa. You don’t leave two defenseless Panamanians who speak no English, no Spanish, no nothing with a woman who just dumped you.

  Whom you dumped.

  But Louisa was the only one here in Las Vegas who had shown any interest in Juan and Carlos. And she was a doctor.

  What other choice was there, Grady Hummacher asked himself again. He could hardly baby-sit two teenaged boys while fifty million dollars oozed through his fingers, could he? The charter to Panama would have taken off without him. Anyone would have told him “Go!”—even the boys, if they could have.

  But the sudden flight to Panama and back in two days had wiped him out. He hadn’t slept down there, and all the way back he’d worried about the boys.

  The steering wheel slipped as Grady cut left, away from Las Vegas’s McCarran Airport. Pickups roll. He’d rolled three of them in his thirty-seven years. If he’d had any sense, he would have sworn off trucks after the first one. But he loved the lurch when he screeched around a corner on two wheels, that split second between flipping and straightening out, between life and death. He’d thought the boys might be frightened, but they loved it too. Sunday on the way to the picnic he’d had the truck up over a hundred. They were grinning, the two of them. They hadn’t grinned like that since the first time he brought them out of the Panamanian rain forest and into the hotel in Yaviza.

  The hotel was a no-star place, but to two deaf teenagers from a rain forest tribe, walking into the lobby bar with the neon lights had been like catapulting into the future. They’d shrunk back against the wall, sure, but Juan hadn’t stayed there long. His eyes had widened in awe, then zeroed in on the glowing colored tubes. Transfixed by the magical lights, he had reached for Carlos’s hand, and the two of them had inched forward to touch the neon tube.

  Juan was so curious, so resourceful. Maybe the part of his brain that had never processed sound sharpened his views of each hanging branch, the minute variations of the underbrush, the varied consistency of the mud in every scintilla of his tribal rain forest. He was a topographical map locked in a silent drawer. Hummacher had spotted his potential the first time in the rain forest. He was so quick. Without hearing or language, Juan was the best guide in the tribe. And it had been so easy to get him and Carlos visaed in on the exploration company. Here in Las Vegas, they could have doctors, teachers, whatever they needed. And there wasn’t the danger of another geologist in Yaviza discovering their skill—and his find.

  No way could he have guessed they’d get so sick here. Was it flu? Germs to which they had no immunity? One of those viruses you see on the six o’clock news? Or was it some microbe they brought into the country?

  Hummacher squealed left. A horn shrieked in his ear. Cut too close. But he’d almost missed the damned parking lot. He slammed on the brakes, leaped out, and ran across the empty lot to Louisa’s clinic door.

  His feet felt funny, like they weren’t making it all the way to the ground. Two endless air flights in two days, charter or not, was enough to give you rubber legs.

  Door was locked. What the hell type of clinic was Louisa running here? Hummacher shivered more fiercely and glared at the dark, empty parking lot. Well, okay, it was late. But if she had the hombres here, she ought to be with them. What kind of doctor would leave them alone? He loped around the side of the stucco block building.

  Light in the back. That’s where they would be, then. Couldn’t see in; window too high and those damn cacti Louisa had been so proud of planting in front of her windows. Nature’s barbed wire, she’d called them. He leaped, smacked the window grate before he fell back, catching his sleeve on a cactus spine.

  No response.

  Of course they didn’t hear it. They were deaf. If Juan could speak, the first question he’d ask would be, “Are you the village idiot?”

  Hummacher ran back to his truck, flashed the lights on and off, on, off. Waited. Nothing changed. Were they too sick to notice?

  The back door was weak. Dangerous, he’d told Louisa. Easy to jimmy. Easier to bang through. He started the engine, shifted into first, and hit the gas.

  He was onto the macadam in one bounce, inside the clinic in two. The alarm shrieked. The place was lit up like a casino. A white-on-white casino. He ran down the hall, flinging open doors.

  “Hombres! Carlos! Juan!” No answer. Of course no answer, idiot!

  They were in a tiny examination room, lying on the floor like rags. Neither looked up. Not normal. Somehow—maybe they felt the air move—they’d always known when he’d come in, even if their eyes were closed. Christ, they should feel the alarm; half of Vegas could hear it.

  He grabbed Juan’s shoulders. The boy’s eyes opened and faded closed. He was burning up. “Damn!” What the hell was Louisa doing letting them burn up?

  The alarm seared his ears. Carlos rolled limply onto his back. Hummacher gasped. The boy’s face was masked in blood.

  He scooped the boy up and ran for the truck. Dammit, why didn’t he have a shell on the back? He couldn’t put the hombres in the open bed. The cab seat was too small, but it would have to do. He dropped Carlos in, and raced back into the clinic. The braying alarm rasped his skin. He almost missed the rise of the police siren.

  Juan’s skin looked as if it had been inflated, his wide face ballooned, his neck swollen out to his ears. Grady gasped. The boy was bleeding from the eyes. The alarm screamed. Grady picked Juan up and ran, tripping over the doorstep, grabbing the banister, landing hard on the asphalt.

  The siren died, then rose, loud as the alarm.

  Hummacher jammed the gearshift into reverse. “Hombres. Have to get them out … get them safe. To a real hospital.”

  They lay like rag dolls, half off the seat. He hit the brake, shifted to first, and floored the pedal. Their heads banged against the door panel.

  He made the first right, flinging their heads into his lap. He braced them with his arm and took a left. He’d lost track of where he was. Vegas wasn’t his
city. Off the main streets he was useless. Didn’t matter. Only mattered to slow down, look innocent.

  He pulled the boys closer. They felt like hot coals against his jacket. They didn’t even groan. God, he would have felt better if they’d groaned. He should never have brought them here, exposed them, made them sick. The windows were shut tight and the air was thick. He was so tired. He grasped the steering wheel harder and squinted into the dark, looking for a hospital sign.

  They had been fine at the picnic just two days ago. Louisa had said they’d love the spot. An acre of lush green, a veritable rain forest, three hours north of Vegas. Who would think any amount of cash could create that? When the hombres saw it Monday, they’d rubbed their faces against the thick, meaty tropical leaves, they’d rolled in the soft ground, their eyes had the same sparkle of that first sight of neon.

  They’d been so happy. Why wouldn’t he expect things to work out for them here?

  His head throbbed, his thoughts were tumbling over each other. He had to concentrate. In a few minutes he’d have the boys at a hospital and everything would be all right.

  Hospital. He couldn’t go there, and he couldn’t leave them there to be turned in to the INS. If Juan and Carlos were contagious, the INS would round up everyone with a sniffle in the barrio and fling them over the border before they could pull out a hanky. For sick immigrants, particularly ones with questionable papers, a hospital was the last place to be.

  Then where? It was so hard to think. His apartment? No, definitely not there. He couldn’t swear he’d be safe there himself. And he had to get back to Yaviza to finish negotiations. “Fifty million dollars,” he said aloud, as if the vibrations made the words more real than the two searing, sweaty heads and the blood soaking into his jacket. His share would buy them every doctor in the state. He just needed a couple days more, then he could nurse them around the clock.

  He jerked to a stop at a red light. The street lamp shone down on their swollen, bloody faces. “Oh, God,” he muttered. For an instant the panic dissipated. His mind was clear and he knew he’d been feeding himself a line. What the boys had was no flu. He had never seen anything like it. He had heard of plagues in South America that swept through villages leaving everyone there swollen, bloody, and dead. They would still be spreading if the villages weren’t isolated and the governments hadn’t closed the only roads to lead in or out.

  The boys, he had to focus on the boys! If he took them to his apartment, they’d die. But if this was some strange virus from the rain forest, the Las Vegas doctors could do nothing but shake their heads while the hombres died. And they’d keep him quarantined to see if he died too. The panic squeezed him tighter. “Oh God, there is no answer.” Maybe back in Panama … rain forest … someone would know … something. Roots … bark … tribal healers, they’d know.

  He shook his head clear again. Of course he couldn’t take the hombres back to Panama. He could never slip them onto a flight, sick as they were. He had to get them someplace safe here in Nevada. Whom could he trust?

  He did know a place. Not the exact location, just the number. In Nevada there were plenty of people who needed to disappear. Girls outrunning pimps, guys too far into the mob, gamblers who’d ratted out one friend too many. Plenty of trade for a safe house. Two sick kids would be peanuts.

  He headed north. He knew not to call till he got there.

  CHAPTER 2

  “I NEED YOU ON this autopsy, Kiernan.” “No ‘Hello, how are you? How’ve you been for the last five years?’” Kiernan O’Shaughnessy fingered her short dark hair and leaned forward on her desk. When she’d last seen Jeff Tremaine on the plane out of the epidemic site in Africa he had been tall, blond, and despite months in the equatorial sun, pale and burning with anger. Anger at her. She had been at the makeshift Lassa fever hospital only a month, but pictures of the patients staggering down the slippery slope of fever, terror, convulsions, and death still invaded her dreams. Even now, when she’d bolt awake, it would take her a full minute to realize she was safe at home in her La Jolla duplex and the hot film that coated her body was not blood, merely sweat. But those terrified faces never left her. She wasn’t a woman to indulge in what-ifs, but when she thought of Africa it was always, If only we’d had enough ribavirin to stop the virus reproducing. If only we’d gotten it sooner. If only …For Jeff Tremaine the problem had been simple; he merely blamed her.

  Jeff Tremaine might need a forensic pathologist, but she’d have sworn she would be the last one he would call. “I’m a private investigator now. I haven’t done an autopsy in five years. And I’ve never been licensed in Nevada. Find yourself a local forensic pathologist.”

  “There isn’t one in the county.”

  “Get one up from Las Vegas, then. A pathologist from there will have seen everything.”

  The buzz on the phone line seemed to grow louder. After a moment he said, “I can’t chance word leaking about this death.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here.”

  “Aren’t you being a mite paranoid?”

  “Not inappropriately so.”

  “That’s what they all say, Jeff.” Kiernan stifled a laugh. Her med-school class had had no dearth of candidates for Class Paranoid, but Jeff Tremaine had not been one of them. Against the liberal backdrop of San Francisco, Tremaine had seemed a throwback to the days of gingham curtains and Dwight D. Eisenhower. His goal had been to return home to eastern Nevada, settle into his father’s office on Main Street, and minister to every mining casualty and sick baby within a hundred-mile radius. As far as she knew, he had never marched against the military or protested a parking ticket. He was a play-by-the-rules guy; he kept the rule book in his pocket and he had been affronted every time someone—student, patient, hospital administrator, or faculty member—had ignored it. In his four years in San Francisco Jeffrey Tremaine had been affronted a lot. He was the last man she would have expected to volunteer for anything as dangerous and quixotic as a contagious-hemorrhagic-fever project on the far side of the world. “Look, Jeff, surely you can tell me what you found in this body—”

  “I can’t. That’s just it. I don’t know.”

  She sighed, and tried another tack. “Why me?”

  “Because you were in Africa, and”—the buzz on the line was stronger, but his gasp for breath was still audible—“because you know how fast things can spread.”

  Her breath caught. She felt the hot sweat on her back “Call the health department, Jeff. Right now!”

  “I can’t be sure.”

  “They’ll make that decision.”

  “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “If you’re talking about anything like Lassa fever, you don’t have a choice. You call them, or I’ll do it myself.”

  There was a hoarse, scratchy sound on the line; it took her a moment to recall it as his odd, nervous laugh. “And you’ll tell them what, Kiernan? That a crazy colleague of yours somewhere in Nevada is worried about an autopsy? Come, see for yourself. If it weren’t vital, you know I wouldn’t have called … you.”

  That much she did know was true.

  “You can fly into Las Vegas. I’ll meet you at the airport.”

  “No,” she said with a sigh, giving up as much to curiosity as to urgency. She didn’t trust Jeff Tremaine enough to let herself end up three hours into the desert without a car of her own. “I’ll get a rental.”

  “Bring double gloves and a full head mask,” he said before hanging up.

  CHAPTER 3

  “AND YOU’RE GOING? TO Nevada? Without taking a fee?” Brad Tchernak smacked the serving platter so hard on the table that the skewered, fig-stuffed Canadian quail almost flew to the floor. Ezra lifted his shaggy wolfhound head and tensed his muscles in readiness.

  At barely five feet and not quite a hundred pounds, Kiernan was nowhere near Tchernak’s size. But, as she’d taught herself early on, authority was not physical but mental. She let a moment pass be
fore saying, “Yes, I’m going. This is a courtesy to a, uh, colleague, not an agency case.”

  “What about your time? Does this guy, this doctor, think that just because you’re not part of the exclusive medical fraternity anymore, your time’s worth zip? Clients could call while you’re gone. Ongoing cases could go sour. Investigation waits for no woman. This could mean big bucks lost while you fly off to play around with an uh—colleague.”

  “Boundaries, Tchernak! You’d think a former offensive lineman would have a clearer concept of the meaning of out-of-bounds.”

  “When I was playing football, the quarterback stayed in the pocket,” he reminded her.

  “I am not in your pocket. I’m your employer.” Before Tchernak could get to the real focus of his pique, she added, “You were in the process of serving dinner.”

  He pursed his face in what she assumed was the fierce look he’d aimed at defensive tackles across the line of scrimmage. Tchernak had been invalided out of the pros before the era of trash talking, so his threatening glare must have been his entire preamble to each play. That scowl, under a helmet and above shoulder pads the size of a 747, doubtless was once a fearsome thing. But now, with a wreath of wiry brown hair capping brown eyes as big as Ezra’s, an oft-broken nose that pulled to one side when he laughed, and a ripped T-shirt on a hundred pounds less of sleek muscle, the effect was no longer terrifying. It was endearing.

  But this was an inopportune moment to mention that. She watched Tchernak stride into his half of the duplex. If the way the man had played football was anything like the way he worked for her, he must have blocked the defensive tackles down the field and into the bleachers. There was a time when she would have said Brad Tchernak had been the second best addition to her life, the first being Ezra, her wolfhound, whose loyalty was severely strained by the meaty smell on the table. She had advertised for a housekeeper and ended up with a gourmet cook who adored her dog. Adored her work. And her. For ninety percent of America’s women, and men, that would have been heaven. Sometimes she wished she were in that majority. But then she had seen the truth.