I got up and paced, looking out the window as light waned. Night came early now, and it had become a habit for me to watch people walk out to their cars. Their breath was frosted, and the lot was almost empty because of the furlough. Two women chatted while one held open the door to a Honda, and they shrugged and gestured with intensity, as if trying to resolve life’s big problems. I stood looking through blinds until they drove away.

I tried to go to sleep early to escape. But I was fitful again, rearranging myself and the covers every few hours. Images floated past the inside of my eyelids, projected like old movies, unedited and illogically arranged. I saw two women talking by a mailbox. One had a mole on her cheek that became eruptions all over her face as she shielded her eyes with a hand. Then palm trees were writhing in fierce winds as a hurricane roared in from the sea, fronds ripped off and flying. A trunk stripped bare, a bloody table lined with severed hands and feet.

I sat up sweating, and waited for my muscles to stop twitching. It was as if there were an electrical disturbance in my entire system, and I might have a heart attack or a stroke. Taking deep, slow breaths, I blanked out my mind. I did not move. When the vision had passed, I rang for the nurse.

When she saw the look on my face, she did not argue about the phone. She brought it right away and I called Marino after she left.

“You still in jail?” he said over the line.

“I think he killed his guinea pig,” I said.

“Whoa. How ’bout starting over again.”

“Deadoc. The woman he shot and dismembered may have been his guinea pig. Someone he knew and had easy access to.”

“I gotta confess, Doc, I got no idea what the hell you’re talking about.” I could tell by his tone he was worried about my state of mind.

“It makes sense that he couldn’t look at her. The M.O. makes a lot of sense.”

“Now you really got me confused.”

“If you wanted to find a way to murder people through a virus,” I explained, “first you would have to figure out a way. The route of transmission, for example. Is it a food, a drink, dust? With smallpox, transmission is airborne, spread by droplets or by fluid from the lesions. The disease can be carried on a person or his clothes.”

“Start with this,” he said. “Where did this person get the virus to begin with? Not exactly something you order through the mail.”

“I don’t know. To my knowledge there are only two places in the world that keep archival smallpox. CDC and a laboratory in Moscow.”

“So maybe this is all a Russian plot,” he said, sardonically.

“Let me give you a scenario,” I said. “The killer has a grudge, maybe even some delusion that he has a religious calling to bring back one of the worst diseases this planet has ever known. He’s got to figure out a way to randomly infect people and be sure that it can work.”