typing herself in.
Shepherd stood to the right of the computer screen. He had that now familiar grave look on his face.
But this morning, he looked even more serious.
FOUR
‘Morning everyone,’ he said. ‘Listen up.’
He looked over at Rach and nodded. She hit a key and a photograph came up on the screen.
‘At just after 8 o’clock this morning, a corpse was found alongside the fence at Sheep Meadow in Central Park. Take a look.’
The team examined the photograph. Archer knew Sheep Meadow well and saw from the background that the shot had been taken facing east. Yellow tape had been drawn up around a shape on the ground, the area cordoned off with small orange cones. The victim was mostly covered with snow, but patches of brown trouser and black boot were partially visible through the white. Archer saw that the body was lying near a trash can, a trolley loaded with black bags abandoned beside it.
‘An early-morning jogger stopped for a breath of air and spotted something unusual on the snow by the fence,’ Shepherd continued. ‘She walked forward to take a closer look and saw that it was a body.’
Rach tapped a key and the shot changed. This photograph had been taken immediately above the dead body. What looked like blood was faintly spattered around him, but the guy had been there for some time. His body and the blood were mostly covered by snow which had fallen overnight.
‘Was he shot?’ Josh asked.
‘No,’ Shepherd said. ‘He wasn’t.’
He nodded at Rach who hit a key.
The shot changed to a third photograph, the snow cleared off the man’s face.
His eyes were open but dim, lifeless.
Blood had dried around his mouth and lower part of his face, like a little kid who’d been eating ice cream from a cone.
‘CSU checked his body. They couldn’t find any knife or gunshots wounds, so HAZMAT and National Health Services were called. They set up a perimeter in the Park and screened the body right there on the snow. I’m afraid what they found is concerning.’
He pointed to the photograph.
‘This man was infected with a Type-3 Pneumonic virus. It’s a strain that no one at Health Services has seen before. They think it’s some sort of a bastardised form of tuberculosis.’
The team took this in, as Rach changed the photograph back to the first one.
‘CSU found a small empty pressurised vial hidden in a shoebox placed here,’ Shepherd said, tapping the screen, pointing at a small shape by the trash can. ‘Apparently it was rigged up to a disturbance switch. The victim was a groundsman who emptied the trash in the Meadow area each weeknight. It looks as if he opened the box and it sprayed some kind of gas right in his face.’
The shot changed to a close-up photo from above the box.
A lid was lying above it. Archer saw the empty vial, lying horizontally along the upper portion of the shoebox and what must have been the disturbance switch lining the open lid.
‘But we got lucky. HAZMAT said that despite the strength of whatever was in that vial the shot of gas was insignificant and not prolonged. It was snowing at the time, so the moisture in the air disseminated what gas there was before it could spread. Fortunately, no one else was in the immediate area when it went off last night. But if it hadn’t have been snowing and there’d been a wind blowing, we’d be in a very different situation right now. We’d probably be down at the city morgue tallying the dead.’
‘What about the runner who found him, sir?’ Marquez asked. ‘Is she OK?’
‘She’s fine. Once the host is dead, it’s not contagious. It’s only transmittable via the air.’
‘Has anyone claimed responsibility?’ Archer asked.
‘I’ve been working next door trying to catch a lead,’ Rach said. ‘But so far, nothing. No threats or ransom demands.’
‘Could it be international?’
Shepherd shook his head. ‘We think it’s domestic. Nothing has come up on the radar. You know how good Rach and everyone next door is. We contacted Interpol and MI6 earlier this morning but they haven’t picked anything up either. Nothing from our people in Asia, the Middle East, or South America.’
He tapped the screen, pointing at the boxed shell of the detonated bomb.
‘Whatever this is, it’s coming from inside the country. Appropriate departments around the city have been warned. Health Services are working on the victim’s body trying to isolate the strain that killed him and see if there's an existing antidote but