Phantoms

organism.” She paged through the report. “Now, here. Here, look at this. When they used general and differential stains to search for dead microorganisms, they found plenty of E. coli . But all the specimens were dead. There are no living bacteria in Wechlas’s body.”
    “What’s that supposed to tell us?” Bryce asked. “That the corpse isn’t decomposing as it should be?”
    “It isn’t decomposing at all . Not only that. Something a whole lot stranger. The reason it isn’t decomposing is because it’s apparently been injected with a massive dose of a sterilizing and stabilizing agent. A preservative, Bryce. The corpse seems to have been injected with an extremely effective preservative.”
     
    Lisa brought a tray to the table. There were four mugs of coffee, spoons, napkins. The girl passed coffee to Dr. Yamaguchi, Jenny, and Bryce; she took the fourth mug for herself.
    They were sitting in the dining room at the Hilltop, near the windows. Outside, the street was bathed in the orange-gold sunlight of late afternoon.
    In an hour, Jenny thought, it’ll be dark again. And then we’ll have to wait through another long night.
    She shivered. She sure needed the hot coffee.
    Sara Yamaguchi was now wearing tan corduroy jeans and a yellow blouse. Her long, silky, black hair spilled over her shoulders. “Well,” she was saying, “I guess everyone’s seen enough of those old Walt Disney wildlife documentaries to know that some spiders and mud wasps—and certain other insects—inject a preservative into their victims and put them aside for consumption later or to feed their unhatched young. The preservative distributed through Mr. Wechlas’s tissues is vaguely similar to those substances but far more potent and sophisticated.”
    Jenny thought of the impossibly large moth that had attacked and killed Stewart Wargle. But that wasn’t the creature that had depopulated Snowfield. Definitely not. Even if there were hundreds of those things lurking somewhere in town, they couldn’t have gotten at everyone. No moth that size could have found its way into locked cars, locked houses, and barricaded rooms. Something else was out there.
    “Are you saying it was an insect that killed these people?” Bryce asked Sara Yamaguchi.
    “Actually, the evidence doesn’t point that way. An insect would employ a stinger to kill and to inject the preservative. There would be a puncture wound, however minuscule. But Seth Goldstein went over the Wechlas corpse with a magnifying glass. Literally. Over every square inch of skin. Twice. He even used a depilatory cream to remove all the body hair in order to examine the skin more closely. Yet he couldn’t find a puncture or any other break in the skin through which an injection might have been administered. We were afraid we had atypical or inaccurate data. So a second postmortem was performed.”
    “On Karen Oxley,” Jenny said.
    “Yes.” Sara Yamaguchi leaned toward the windows and peered up the street, looking for General Copperfield and the others. When she turned back to the table, she said, “However, everything tested out the same. No animate bacteria in the corpse. Decomposition unnaturally arrested. Tissues saturated with preservative. It was bizarre data again. But we were satisfied that it wasn’t atypical or inaccurate data.”
    Bryce said, “If the preservative wasn’t injected, how was it administered?”
    “Our best guess is that it’s highly absorbable and enters the body by skin contact, then circulates through the tissues within seconds.”
    Jenny said, “Could it be a nerve gas, after all? Maybe the preservative aspect is only a side effect.”
    “No,” Sara Yamaguchi said. “There aren’t any traces on the victims’ clothes, as there would absolutely have to be if we’re dealing here with gas saturation. And although the substance has a toxic effect, chemical analysis shows it isn’t primarily a toxin, which a nerve gas would be; primarily, it’s a preservative.”
    “But was it the cause of death?” Bryce asked.
    “It contributed. But we can’t pinpoint the cause. It was partly the toxicity of the preservative, but other factors lead us to believe death also resulted from oxygen deprivation. The victims suffered either a prolonged constriction or a complete blockage of the trachea.”
    Bryce leaned forward. “Strangulation? Suffocation?”
    “Yes. But we don’t know precisely which.”
    “But how can it be either one?” Lisa