Seattle Noir Read Online Free Page A

what?” I asked.
    McKean tapped his own Coke against mine in a mock toast and took a long pull. “Leave nothing but footprints,” he said, “and take nothing but pictures.” He held his cell phone so I could see the image on its screen. He’d snapped a photo of the man beside the pickup. “We’ll ask Frank to tell us who that is. Oh, and a bonus,” he said. “I got their license plate in the shot.”
    Peyton McKean is, among other things, the inventor of a couple dozen DNA forensic tests, so he is pretty well connected for a man who doesn’t carry a detective’s badge. As I drove, he called an acquaintance who owed him a favor: Vince Nagumo of the Seattle FBI office. Within minutes, Nagumo had identified the owner of the pickup as Craig Show-alter, age thirty, of White Center. McKean asked him to look into the man’s background and Nagumo promised to get on it right away. I had another sip of Coke and then set it down in its cup holder.
    “Do your lips tingle?” I asked McKean.
    “I was hoping it was just the chill air,” replied McKean thoughtfully.
    Adrenaline ran through me like an electric shock and I pulled to the side of the road. “Have we just been poisoned?” I asked. Without comment, McKean opened his door, put a finger down his throat and vomited. I followed suit, splattering the pavement on my side as well.
    “That may be too little prevention, too late,” said McKean. “Depending on the dose. Can you drive, Fin?”
    “To the hospital?”
    “No. Take us to my labs, quickly.”
    I floored the gas and he got on his phone. “Janet, get all the mouse antiserum together. Get it ready for injection into two patients.”
    “There’s not enough blood in a mouse—” I began, but McKean interrupted.
    “You can dilute antisera vastly. A little may go a long way.”
    Panicky minutes followed as my car roared and McKean described the very symptoms I was experiencing. “Depending upon the toxin dose, the sensation of tingling lips progresses to tingling of fingers and toes—” I felt my fingers tingle as I wrenched the steering wheel and skidded onto the ramp of the West Seattle Bridge; my toes tingled as I floored the accelerator and the tires screamed. “Next,” McKean continued as we streaked across the highrise span above the Duwamish River, “you may lose control of your arms and legs—” I struggled to keep in my lane as the Mustang rocketed northbound on the Alaskan Way Viaduct toward downtown. “Some victims experience a sense of floating or vertigo—” My head swam and my vision grew hazy while I fought to keep from driving through the railings and dropping us fifty feet onto the railroad tracks.
    “How about going blind?” I gasped. “I’m having trouble seeing the road. It’s all going red.”
    McKean thought a moment. “Blindness is not a part of this syndrome. But seeing red is common when people feel extreme rage or fear.”
    “I’m feeling both right now.”
    “Is your heart pounding?”
    “Isn’t yours?”
    “Seeing red occurs when blood pumps so rapidly it floods the retina of the eye until one can actually see it. I suggest you keep cool, Fin.”
    “Keep—” I tried to protest but gagged on my pounding heartbeat.
    My vision grew redder, my hearing roared, and McKean’s voice receded as he said, “Finally, the chest muscles become paralyzed and the victim stops breathing.”
    Just two blocks from the lab, my vision went from red to black.
    “Wake up, Fin.”
    An angelic voice brought me back and I looked around groggily. “Wha—? Where?”
    “You’re with me, Fin,” said Kay Erwin, her pretty face coming into focus above me. “You’re at Seattle Public Health Hospital. How do you feel?”
    “Better than yesterday,” I said, noticing Peyton McKean leaning over her shoulder, observing me like I was a lab rat.
    “Better than two days ago,” he corrected. “You’ve been comatose for forty-eight hours. Took one sip more than I did. The antibodies