The Tomorrow File by Lawrence Sanders Read Free Book Online Page A

lower abdominal area. This took more time than is shown, of course. I cut and spliced the Instaroid tape so you wouldn’t get bored. Genitalia normal. There they are. Testicles large but soft. I’m going into them now. Ejaculation two hours before stopping. Penis small. Here, close-up, discoloration on glans. Analysis showed it to be Amour Now, a popular brand of lip rouge. Color: Passion Flower.”
    A sound came out of Paul Bumford next to me. Whether it was a groan, a sigh, or a giggle, I could not tell.
    “Into the legs now,” Mary Bergstrom continued, staring intently at the TV screen. “Nothing unusual. Good musculature. Strong. Good skin tone. But here again, close-up, tortuous and sclerotic femoral arteries. That completes the tape of the PM. Now we go to the tissue slides.”
    Paul straightened in the sling, took his hand from his eyes, looked at the TV glass.
    “Cross sections,” Mary narrated. “Gross slices, gold-palladium coated. For the SEM. Arterial. One: Internal carotid. Two: External carotid. Three: Thoracic aorta. Four: Abdominal. Five: Common iliac. Six: Femoral. Now we go to venous. One: Jugular. Two: Iliac. Three: Subclavian. Four: Vena cava. Finally, sections of those ‘healthy’ organs. One: Heart. Two: Liver. Three: Kidney. That’s it.”
    The tape wound to whiteness. I pushed the Off button. We sat there in semidarkness, in silence. I couldn’t believe what I had seen.
    Paul Bumford spoke first.
    “J-J-Jesus Christ!” he burst out. “Are those cross sections for real?”
    “I have the shavings,” Mary Margaret Bergstrom intoned. “I have the slides. It’s all in my report.”
    After my initial shock, I began to realize what had happened to Frank Lawson Harris. Those arteries and veins looked like obso iron pipes, the inside surfaces so encrusted with rust that flow was slowed and finally choked completely. It would take years, maybe a century, for iron pipes to become that obstructed. I suspected the stopped em’s circulatory system had been plugged in minutes, and the intensive venous involvement suggested a nonphysiologic process.
    I stood and raised the shades. We blinked in the strong south light.
    “Anyone want anything?” I asked.
    “Something stronger than Smack,” Paul said. His voice was shaky.
    I had been saving a bottle of natural apple brandy for a special occasion. This seemed like a “special occasion.” I poured three small glasses—real glass—and served their drinks, then brought mine. I stood before them, leaning on the TV set.
    “Paul?” I said, “you all right?”
    “Fine,” he said defiantly. “I’m fine.”
    “You saw the tissue slides. Diagnosis?”
    “Extensive, widespread infractions involving multiple organ systems.”
    “Mary?”
    “I concur.”
    “Any idea what caused it, Paul?” I asked.
    “Ingestion. Injection.”
    “Not ingestion.” Mary Bergstrom shook her head. “I’d have found traces in the stomach lining or intestinal tract. Not injection. I went over the object carefully with a high-powered magnifier prior to PM. He was clean.”
    “Inhalant?” I suggested.
    They looked at me.
    “Possible,” Paul said.
    “Probable,” Mary said.
    “All right.” I nodded. “Now what did he inhale?” “Something,” Paul said. “Something that caused wild, uncontrolled platelet agglutination and limpid deposition.”
    “Serotonin,” Mary said. I looked at her, surprised and pleased. She had learned a lot, outside her discipline. “It’s got to be the serotonin. Probably a manipulated form of 5-HT. The East uses it as an interrogative technique. By injection. Very painful. Very. But this must have been by inhalation. Stopping him almost instantaneously.”
    “I concur.” I nodded. “The military played with it in the obso days of hypothesized chemwar. But they rejected it. Too lethal.” “Too lethal?” Paul cried. “For a nerve gas?”
    “Use your brain. It killed instantly. So we wipe out all of France. Seventy-five