“Right now,” Martin said, “I’m all you’ve got.”

I got a thick envelope out of my purse, and he began to go through the photographs. For a moment, he stared as if transfixed, at color prints of the torso and those of Lila Pruitt.

“Good God,” he said. “I think we should look at transpiration routes right away. Everybody who might have had contact. And I mean, fast.”

“We can do that on Tangier,” I said. “Maybe.”

“Definitely not chicken pox or measles. No way, Jose,” he said. “Definitely pox-related.”

He went through photographs of the severed hands and feet, his eyes wide.

“Wow.” He stared without blinking, light reflecting on his glasses. “What the hell is this?”

“He calls himself deadoc,” I said. “He sent me graphic files through AOL. Anonymously, of course. The FBI’s trying to track him.”

“And this victim here, he dismembered?”

I nodded.

“She also has manifestations similar to the victim on Tangier.” He was looking at vesicles on the torso.

“So far, yes.”

“You know, monkeypox has been worrying me for years,” he said. “We survey the hell out of West Africa, from Zaire to Sierra Leone, where cases have occurred, along with whitepox. But so far, no variola virus has turned up. My fear, though, is that one of these days, some poxvirus in the animal kingdom is going to figure out a way to infect people.”

Again, I thought about my telephone conversation with Rose, about murder and animal hairs.

“All that’s got to happen is the microorganism gets in the air, let’s say, and finds a susceptible host.”

He went back to Lila Pruitt, to her disfigured, tormented body on her foul bed.

“Now she was obviously exposed to enough virus to cause devastating disease,” he said, and he was so engrossed, he seemed to be talking to himself.

“Dr. Martin,” I said. “Do monkeys get monkeypox or are they just the carrier?”

“They get it and they give it where there is animal contact, such as in the rain forests of Africa. There are nine known virulent poxviruses on this planet, and transmission to humans happens only in two. The variola virus, or smallpox, which, thank God, we don’t see anymore, and molluscum contagiosum.”

“Trace evidence clinging to the torso has been identified as monkey hair.”

He turned to look at me and frowned. “What?”

“And rabbit hair, too. I’m just wondering if someone out there is conducting their own laboratory experiments.”

He got up from the table.

“We’ll start on this now. Where can you be reached?”

“Back in Richmond.” I handed him my card as we walked out of the conference room. “Could someone maybe call for a taxi?”

“Sure. One of the guards at the desk. Afraid none of the clerical staff is in.”

Carrying the box, he pushed the elevator button with his elbow. “It’s a nightmare. We got salmonella in Orlando from unpasteurized orange juice, another potential cruise ship outbreak of E. coli O-one-five-seven-H-seven, probably undercooked ground beef again. Botulism in Rhode Island, and some respiratory disease in an old folks’ home. And Congress doesn’t want to fund us.”