When I’d first checked into Roswell, I’d noted that he was involved in some chest-thumping group. I went through my case notes. Patriots CARE-NOW: Concerned Americans for Re-Armament Now. Their website had the kind of rhetoric that made the hair on my neck itch: Obama was a terrorist Muslim who was selling out America to her enemies. America needed to become strong again, we needed to be feared, we needed to be vigilant against our enemies, we needed to be ready with first-strike capability.

Sergeant Everard came in and poured himself a coffee from the thermos at the counter. When he saw me, he called, “You found any more dead people, Warshawski?”

“I can’t remember my body count the last time I saw you,” I said.

He came over and knelt to scratch Peppy. “Sonia’s still alive.”

“That’s good to know. I took some of her journals from her room at St. Rafe’s on Sunday. Someone broke into my room at the B and B and stole them while I was out yesterday.”

“That a fact? You file a report?”

“You think there’s any point?”

“There’s always a point, Warshawski. It lets the perps know that someone is paying attention. Even if they get away with it this time, at least the police have something on file if it happens again.”

“The next time a Chicago detective comes here and starts poking into old business?”

He grinned. “Could happen, you never know. What was in the journals?”

“Old business,” I said. “What happened at the Kanwaka silo, Matt Chastain dying of the plague—stuff like that.”

That startled him. “He did?”

“All the signs point in that direction. I was just talking to Gertrude Perec, and she sort of confirmed it. At least she was aware that someone in Dr. Kiel’s lab was playing around with plague germs out around the missile silo back in ’83.”

“Plague? Here, in Douglas County?”

“Yes. Here, in Douglas County.”

He got slowly to his feet and perched on the stool next to mine. “And they covered it up, and now you’re poking the wasp’s nest and making someone really unhappy.”

“Yes. In fact, I just heard this morning that the pathologist who performed the autopsy on Dr. Roque found that Roque was infected with pneumonic plague. That’s what Roque’s good friend Dr. Hitchcock is battling up at the Cleveland Clinic. Actually, the pathologist said he was notifying the CDC, as is Dr. Herschel in Chicago. They should be issuing an alert to the local public-health authorities. Two confirmed cases and a suspected third is alarming.”

“Haven’t seen anything about that.” Everard touched an app on his phone. “Nothing’s come through yet. You sure about this?”

“About which?” I said impatiently. “I’m sure there’ve been two confirmed plague cases here in the last week, but I don’t know about the alert.”