Page 91 of The Bone Code
“Now,s’il vous plaît.”
Fearing Detective Delightful might take a bite out of Sylvain, the doorman, I buzzed him up.
Claudel’s nose and cheeks were red from the cold. The cant of his brows suggested bad news.
“May I take your coat?” I asked, extending a hand.
“I will not stay long.”
“Would you like to sit down?”
A tight shake of the head, then he launched in with typical Claudel brusqueness. “The driver of the car was not Zeke Hoag.”
“Really.” That surprised me.
“Hoag was in the hospital at the time of the assault.”
“Might he have—”
“Hoag has stage-four colon cancer. He is dying. His intent was not to defraud his mother. He’d arranged for the insurance money to go directly into her account.”
“Why not say so?”
“He wanted the payment to be a surprise.”
“Now what?”
“Detective Charbonneau and I are reconsidering our approach.”
Cop-speak forwe were on the wrong track. I waited.
“We can think of no motive for an attack on Detective Ryan.”
“Former detective.”
“Précisément. Ryan is involved in nothing that might prompt such a violent threat to his person.”
I waited.
Claudel’s eyes drilled into mine.
“We believe the intended target was you.”
21
Wednesday, November 10
To keep my mind off Claudel’s bombshell, I got online and did some digging on capno. I learned the following.
Capnocytophaga canimorsusis a bacterial pathogen found in the saliva of healthy dogs and cats. Though rare, the organism can cause illness in humans. Transmission occurs via bites, scratches, or licks.
A capno infection can lead to severe sepsis and fatal septic shock, gangrene of the digits or extremities, high-grade bacteremia, meningitis, endocarditis, and thoroughly messed-up eyes.
At increased risk of serious illness are persons who have undergone a splenectomy, persons who abuse alcohol, and persons with weakened immune systems, including those with HIV.
Online images of mottled and swollen limbs, inflamed eyes, blackened digits, and pus-oozing abscesses confirmed that the capno organism is a supremely nasty little bugger.
The case-fatality rate of the disease is roughly twenty-six percent.
