He set his backpack down on the vestibule’s slate floor, lifted a corner of the carpet, and pulled. He proceeded down the hallway, pulling up carpet as he went, until he reached the fancy kitchen’s pale gray tile. He turned and continued into the dining room, then the living room. He pulled up brown carpet as he climbed the stairs, ripped and tore brown carpet from the guest room floor. He pulled his way along the upstairs hallway to the doorway of the master bedroom, which alone in the house had its original pine wood flooring exposed.

When he was done, he went back downstairs and started removing the tack strips and carpet padding. He’d asked his real estate agent why there was so much carpeting in an otherwise well-decorated house. “They had a dog,” the agent replied, touching his nose with a silk handkerchief.

Klay doubted they had a dog. The couple who’d owned the house had died of AIDS. He bought the house from the second man’s estate. As he explored their house, he could feel the couple’s terror growing, the world around them alive with invisible enemies, the causes and cures of their illness still largely a mystery. He found unopened boxes of HEPA air purifiers in the attic and dust masks in drawers throughout the house. He spotted expensive filters under the sinks and behind the refrigerator. Blue rubber gloves sprang at him from the bottom drawer of the upstairs vanity. That was life for you: you erect all possible protections against the unknown, and what it looks like afterwards is panic.

He thought about Eady’s offer as he worked. Even if he could see himself working for the CIA, doing so would certainly compromise journalistic ethics. He sat back on his heels with a snort. Who was he kidding? As a criminal investigator, he had never fretted over journalism’s ethical lines before. Besides, lines implied a system. There was no system to the world. No handrails. What system of equality allowed a drunk behind the wheel of an automobile to go on living, while an innocent boy on his bicycle ended up dead? Life’s only guarantee was that it didn’t last forever, period. Lean on anything else for support and you might well fall forever.