No Immunity

body was not contagious at all.
    She couldn’t say, “Has your doctor lost his senses? Is your sheriff a megalomaniac?” She’d have to ease into it. Schmooze. Tchernak would have them eating out of his hand in a minute. But schmoozing was definitely not her strong suit.
    She shifted to her right to open the conversation to the two flannels and the elderly couple on her left. They each gave a nod, a hint of a shrug, but asked no questions. Clearly Connie and Milo, the bartender, spoke for them all.
    “Tell me about the Admiralty of the Sands.”
    “The Vanished Armada?” Milo said laughing. “Boy, you don’t let any grass grow under your feet.”
    “Even if the navy does?”
    “Yeah, right.”
    “But what do they do there?”
    He shrugged. “Big secret. They say they use it to store classified records. But I’ll tell you, you come up to the gate, there’s a guard staring in your window before you can roll it down.”
    “So, Milo, what do you think is in there?”
    “My guess, and it’s just a guess, you understand, is radioactive waste.”
    “Makes sense,” the blue flannel agreed. “Only time the feds think of Nevada is when they’re looking for a dump.”
    “Or bitching about the Mafia,” his pal added.
    Connie let out a long sigh, loud enough to stifle halfhearted conversation. “So, Í take it you haven’t been in town before?”
    “No. I haven’t seen Jeff since med school.”
    Kiernan couldn’t read the woman’s face. Disappointment or disbelief?
    “Well, at least not since Africa. We were both there during one of the Lassa fever epidemics.” Quickly she glanced around, hoping for a revealing nod. But no one reacted to Lassa.
    “Africa,” the red-flanneled guy said. “Boy, that’s some place. I had a cousin back east who went on a safari— pictures, not shooting—had her own tent put up by the bearers. Had its own shower right in it. Servant washed her clothes every’ night. Only problem was he was a Muslim and he couldn’t wash women’s underwear—his religion and all—so Susan, my cousin, she’s no fool, you know what she did?” He didn’t wait for guesses. “She got herself some “boxer shorts and wore ‘em.” He guffawed, overpowering the modest laughs of his companions. Connie shrugged and walked off.
    “If her Muslim was just doing her laundry, didn’t he catch on?” the old man asked.
    “Guess not.”
    “Maybe it really is just women’s unmentionables he can’t handle,” the other flannel shirt offered.
    “So where’d he think the boxers came from?”
    “Maybe he figured she had a boyfriend who slipped in at night.”
    “Every night?”
    “And forgot his underwear every time. Boy, Herb, your cousin must be some hot number.”
    “Jeff Tremaine,” Kiernan said slowly, as if she had drifted in thought rather than seen the conversation drifting away. “He was great in Africa. Patients really warmed up to him.” She fingered her glass thoughtfully. “Maybe they’d never had a man listen to their problems like that.” Milo bent down and came up with a can of spicy tomato. Both the flannels occupied themselves with their drinks. The couple, who had never made eye contact with her, just sat. Kiernan sipped her drink. The topic of Jeff Tremaine and women had probably enlivened many a Gattozzi weekend, but no one was going to open up in public.
    Openings could be forced. Warnings could be dribbled out. “I remember when we were in Africa, standing over a dead body like that woman in Jeff’s office. The only difference was then we didn’t question whether she’d died of hemorrhagic fever, we knew she had. But this woman...”
    It was one of the flannels who took the bait. “Hemorrhagic fever? You mean like Ebola, where your organs turn to mush?”
    She shook her head. “Organs don’t turn to mush. Organs get too congested with dead cells to work. Blood cells and platelets fill up the arteries and veins. Fat dropules clog the liver. The heart gets too congested to pump. The cell walls fail, and blood seeps through the skin. So it looks like the organs have all melted into red goo—”
    “Jeez!” The other flannel held out his palm. “Stop!” But the elderly woman wasn’t deterred. “But is it like Ebola? I mean contagious?”
    “There’s no way to tell without cutting into the body, sending specimens to a good lab. It wasn’t anything Jeff or I could do here. You need someone from Public Health and the CDC. But, yes, it could be