“But this isn’t smallpox. Not exactly,” I said.

“Well, that’s even worse, now isn’t it?” Her lips were trembling with emotion as she recalled those days. “I spliced the DNA of monkeypox into the smallpox genome.”

She was getting more overwrought, her hands trembling as she wiped her nose with a napkin.

“And then at the beginning of the new academic year, I get passed over as a department chairman,” she went on, eyes flaming with furious tears.

“Phyllis, that’s not fair . . .”

“Shut up!” she screamed. “All I’ve given to that bloody school? I’m the senior one who has potty-trained everyone, including you. And they give it to a man because I’m not a doctor. I’m just a Ph.D.,” she spat.

“They gave it to a Harvard-trained pathologist who is completely justified in getting the position,” I flatly stated. “And it doesn’t matter. There’s no excuse for what you’ve done. You saved a virus all these years? To do this?”

The teakettle was whistling shrilly. I got up and turned the burner off.

“It’s not the only exotic disease I’ve had in my research archives. I’ve been collecting,” she said. “I actually thought I might do an important project someday. Study the world’s most feared virus and learn something more about the human immune system that might save us from other scourges like AIDS. I thought I might win a Nobel Prize.” She had gotten oddly quiet, as if pleased with herself. “But no, I wouldn’t say that in Birmingham my intention was to one day create an epidemic.”

“Well, you didn’t,” I replied.

Her eyes narrowed like evil as she looked at me.

“No one’s gotten sick except for those people suspected of using the facial spray,” I said. “I’ve been exposed several times to patients, and I’m okay. The virus you created is a dead end, affecting only the primary person but not replicating. There’s no secondary infection. No epidemic. What you created was a panic, disease and death for a handful of innocent victims. And crippled the fishing industry for an island full of people who probably have never even heard of a Nobel Prize.”

I leaned back in my chair, studying her, but she did not seem to care.

“Why did you send me photographs and messages?” I demanded. “Photographs taken in your dining room, on that table. Who was your guinea pig? Your old and infirm mother? Did you spray her with the virus to see if it worked? And when it did, you shot her in the head. You dismembered her with an autopsy saw so no one ever connected that death with your eventual product tampering?”

“You think you’re so smart,” she, deadoc, said.

“You murdered your own mother and wrapped her in a drop cloth because you could not bear to look at her as you sawed her apart.”

She averted her eyes as my pager vibrated. I pulled it out and read Marino’s number. I got out my phone, my eyes never leaving her.