“Wingo, I’m worried about you,” I said with feeling.

“I feel terrible.” He sounded like it. “I guess you can’t do anything for the flu.”

“You’re immunosuppressed. When I talked to Dr. Riley last, your CD4 cell count was not good.” I wanted him to face reality. “Describe your symptoms to me.”

“My head’s killing me, my neck and back are killing me. Last time my temperature was taken it was a hundred and four. I’m so thirsty all the time.”

Everything he said was setting off alarms in my head, for the symptoms also described the early stages of smallpox. But if his exposure was the torso, I was surprised he hadn’t gotten sick before now, especially in light of his compromised condition.

“You haven’t touched one of those sprays we got at the office,” I said.

“What sprays?”

“The Vita facial sprays.”

He was clueless, and then I remembered that he was out of the office much of today. I explained what had happened.

“Oh my God,” he said suddenly, as fear shot through both of us. “One came in the mail. Mom had it on the kitchen counter.”

“When?” I said in alarm.

“I don’t know. A few days ago. When was that? I don’t know. We’d never seen anything so fancy. Imagine, something sweet to cool your face.”

That made twelve canisters deadoc had delivered to my staff, and twelve had been his message to me. It was the number of full-time people in my central office, if I included myself. How could he know such trivia as the size of my staff, and even some of their names and where they lived, if he were far away and anonymous?

I dreaded my next question because I already thought I knew. “Wingo, did you touch it in any way?”

“I tried it. Just to see.” His voice was shaking badly and he was choking from coughing fits. “When it was sitting there. I picked it up one time, just to see. It smelled like roses.”

“Who else in your house has tried it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I want you to make certain no one touches that canister. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” He was sobbing.

“I’m going to send some people to your house to pick it up and take care of you and your family, okay?”

He was crying too hard to answer.

When I got home, it was minutes past midnight, and I was so out of sorts and sick that I did not know what to do first. I called Marino and Wesley, and Fujitsubo. I told everybody what was happening and that Wingo and his family needed a team at their home immediately. My bad news was returned by theirs. The girl on Tangier who had gotten sick had died, and now a fisherman had the disease. Depressed and feeling like hell, I checked my e-mail, and deadoc was there in his small, mean way. I was glad. His message had been sent while Keith Pleasants was in jail.