when does rabies spread through the air?" Clyde demanded.
"Who is talking about rabies?"
Clyde blinked. "Us?"
Mandenauer shook his head and stared at Bozeman with exaggerated disappointment. "Doctor, haven't you told the good sheriff what our dear Officer McQuade already knows?"
The ME spread his hands and shrugged. Everyone looked at me.
"Jessie?" Clyde's voice held a note of warning. "What the hell is he talking about?"
I hadn't had a chance to tell Clyde everything I'd discovered - about rabies and totems and manitous.
I'd left the theories out of my report.
"Rabies has an incubation period of one to three months in humans."
"What?" Clyde shouted.
Bozeman flinched. To be honest, so did I.
"What kind of idiot are you?" Thankfully he was talking to Bozeman and not to me. "Here I am thinking we've got rabies on the loose and it can't be, can it? You're a goddamned doctor. You should know this."
"In my defense, Sheriff, rabies isn't a common occurrence in humans these days. And when it does occur, the virus rarely results in death any longer."
"Tell it to Karen Larson," I muttered.
Bozeman's glare was a replica of the first one. The man had no originality.
"What are we dealing with then?" Clyde asked.
"Kind of hard to tell without the bodies." I batted my eyelashes at Bozeman and his itty-bitty secretary.
She seemed to have nothing to say at last. In fact, she appeared a bit guilty. I guess I would, too, if dead bodies had gone missing on my watch.
Bozeman shrugged. Clyde made a disgusted sound.
Mandenauer cleared his throat. "I have an idea."
"Let's hear it."
"Rabies."
Everyone in the room gaped. I wondered if Manden-auer had all his eggs in the carton, his beans in a bag, his wheels going round and round.
"Sir - " I began.
He held up one pale, slim hand and I shut my mouth.
"It would be better if there were bodies. For proof. But based on what you've told me, I will make an educated guess on what we have here."
"Educated?" Bozeman sneered. "What kind of education do you have?"
"Shut the hell up, Prescott." Clyde rounded on him and the ME stumbled back, knocking into his secretary and sending her skinny ass flying about two feet. While the two of them got untangled, Clyde and I listened to Mandenauer.
"I do not have the education of the good doctor."
"Lucky for us," I said.
This time Mandenauer smiled. I was sure of it. However, Clyde didn't, so I zipped my lip. Again.
"This is not for public knowledge, you understand. There would be a panic."
"Something I'd like to avoid," Clyde mumbled.
"Therefore, what I am about to say must stay in this room until we have the problem under control."
Mandenauer glanced at each of us in turn, and we nodded.
"There is a new strain of rabies that matches what you seem to have here. The incubation period is hours instead of months. The level of aggression is intense, and the spread of the infection is beyond anything we have ever known."
"I've never heard of this," Bozeman interjected.
"Why am I not surprised?" I murmured; then a sud-den chill rode my spine. "Was this genetically engineered?"
Mandenauer turned to me and in his usually distant gaze I saw a spark of interest. "Perhaps."
Clyde cursed. He was spending way too much time with Zee. Weren't we all?
"You're saying that terrorists have infected the wolf population with genetically engineered rabies?"
"Did I say that? I do not think so."
Clyde scrubbed a hand through his short, dark hair. "Then what are you saying?"
"Evil has come to your town."
"How can a virus be evil?" I asked.
Mandenauer glanced at me. "How indeed?"
"Do you always answer a question with a question?"
"Do I?"
Clyde, who must have sensed I was near my boiling point, stepped between the two of us. "What should we do?"
"Exactly what has been done. You have the best hunter there is." Mandenauer slapped his chest with his palms. "I will kill anything that looks at me crosswise. Once ail the infected animals are dead, there will be nothing more to worry about."
"Except the people," I muttered.
Mandenauer let his hands fall slowly back to his sides and gazed at me with a curious expression. "What about the people?"
"If someone gets infected, are you going to shoot them, too?"
"No, they will use the rabies vaccine."
"That'll help?"
"It cannot hurt."
In my experience, whenever someone said that, it hurt.
Chapter 8
After Clyde reamed out Bozeman one more time for the road, he beckoned to me. Leaving Mandenauer with a map of the area that the teeny-tiny secretary had found - I really