Death Spiral (25 page)

I stop in my tracks and look down as angry tears fill my eyes. All this for nothing. Any second the door will open, Starr will be at his side, and Randall Bell, audio services tech, will transform back into Duncan Wallace, Haverford High exchange student. Our plan is shot.

Or not.

When I look up, there's Anj, barreling down the edge of the hall toward Starr. In the split second before Starr can reach Duncan, Anj intersects and throws her arms around Starr as if they're best friends.

“Hey, girl!” she coos, steering Starr away from Duncan. “It's so cool seeing you here!”

“Isn't that Duncan?” Starr asks, straining to look back over Anj's shoulder.

Anj gives Starr an earnest look. “Dunc? No way. He's home working on some art thing,” she says just as the AV room door opens. I hear Duncan, oblivious to the near miss, say, “Hey, man. I have some last minute changes for the first presenter. Are his slides queued up and ready to go?”

I turn from Starr and Anj to see Duncan talking to the burly mohawked dude guarding the entrance to the audiovisual room. My heart, still hammering from the Starr episode, thumps against my ribs, as I wait to see how this drama will unfold.

Mohawk regards Duncan, eyeing his badge and then his face. “I just saw Dr. Glass ten minutes ago. He didn't say anything about changes.”

“Yeah, I know mate.” Duncan smiles and turns the Scottish-charm factor up a notch. “He stopped me in the hall and gave me his flash drive. Said it was critical these changes get made. It'll just take a few minutes.”

Mohawk scowls at Duncan and doesn't budge. I check my watch. Five minutes until Glass is on.

“Randall Bell?” Mohawk says, consulting his Smart phone. “I don't have anyone on my crew with that name. Are you filling in for someone?”

I steal a glance at Jesse, who's on his tiptoes craning to see above the ridge of shoulders and necks. “Nigel Rogers,” he mutters.

“What?”

“The guy at the door with the Mohawk. His name's Nigel Rogers—it says it on his badge.”

Before I can ask another question, Jesse's striding through the crowd toward Duncan and Nigel.

“Nigel!” he shouts, causing Mohawk to look up. “Dude, total emergency. Major glitch in the system. Dr. Petrosky's talk is supposed to be broadcast to University of Lithuania, and the HD feed on the first floor's down.”

“Dr. Petrosky?” Mohawk says, consulting his phone again as if the gadget might inform him who Dr. Petrosky is.

“Come on, dude, head of the whole human genome thing. Like the most prominent scientist in the world,” Jesse says as if you'd have to be an idiot not to know this.

Nigel swipes a hand across his forehead. I see his mountainous shoulders brace beneath his black tee.

“I'm telling you, man,” Jesse goes on, “It's your balls if this thing isn't fixed. I was told specifically to find you.”

Nigel turns to Duncan. “A change, you said?”

Duncan jams his hands in his pocket and nods.

“Make it fast. Glass is on in five minutes. The talk's lined up on system one. Don't mess with audio,” he snarls and then turns and follows Jesse down the hall.

The second they clear the corner, Duncan slips into the AV room to work his magic. I watch the door close and then head to the ballroom to grab a program and find a seat.

Twenty-four

It's not just the word
ballroom
that gives me the feeling that some guy in a tux is going to come around with a tray and offer me a glass of bubbly or a piece of cheese speared on a toothpick. It's the whole vibe of the place—the formal rows of black chairs lined up behind white-clothed tables, the domed ceiling and crystal lights, the stage with the podium set in front of three movie-theater-style screens. Instead of sequins and penguins, though, serious looking people with practical shoes and laptops primed for hardcore note taking occupy the chairs.

I take in the name tags and faces as I walk the aisles, searching out a place for Jesse and me to sit: Harvard, Penn, Cambridge, Beijing Genomics Institute, Universidad de Guadalajara, Institute for Systems Biology. The red carpet of the scientific community. But what about Doc? Is he here? Did he bring a reporter?

I'm starting to go woozy from the Saharan climate in the room and the lack of sleep when I spot him leaning against a side door, deep in conversation. I'd recognize the scowl anywhere. I ignore my churning stomach and march across the room.

“Excuse me, Dr. Schneider,” I say, coming up next to him. “I'm Faith Flores. Jesse's friend.”

Doc's eyebrows knit together over the bony ridge of his nose, and for a second I think he's going to snub me again. “Yes, I remember,” he says, unsmiling, but at least this time he reaches out to shake my hand. “You look different. Where's Jesse?”

I ignore the comment about looking different and point to the door. “Out there somewhere.” I try to remember how to breathe as I ask the next question. “So, Jesse gave you our data. Are you going to help us?”

“I'll tell you what I told Jesse,” he says, his expression unreadable but his tone harsh. “You kids are sixteen. This idea that you can just march into a scientific conference and accuse the keynote speaker of murder is ridiculous.” I'm still on the word ridiculous when he says, “But Jesse showed me the evidence, and I couldn't ignore it.” He nods to the unshaven man with the wire-rimmed glasses and receding hairline standing next to him.

The man steps forward and shows me his press pass. “Tom Bradley,” he says. “Lead investigative reporter for the
Philadelphia
Inquirer
. Ryan showed me your data.” I'm slow on the uptake, and it's just occurring to me that by Ryan he means Doc, when Tom shows me the stack of papers. “If what these indicate is true, we have something significant on our hands. I'd like to get the background on this. How…”

Before Tom can finish his question, a petite woman in tall boots and a knee-length skirt steps onto the podium, and the lights dim. Tom tells me we'll talk later, and he and Doc head to their seats in the front row. I slip into one of the only seats still available, halfway to the back of the room, and wait for the show to begin.

The woman taps the microphone, and the crowd goes quiet. “This year marks the sixtieth anniversary for the annual conference of the American Society of Human Genetics.”

I peer anxiously over my shoulder toward the door for Jesse or Duncan. No sign of either.

“…and I'd like to thank the Philadelphia Convention Center for welcoming us…”

Where are they? They should be here by now. I fidget with a button on Anj's sweater, twisting the thing until the thread breaks and it pops off into my hand. Unless Mohawk figured out Jesse's scam and turned him over to some authority. Or he came back to the projection room and found Duncan tampering with Glass' presentation.

“…our distinguished speakers symposium will focus on the emerging field of genomic medicine…”

What about Anj? Did Starr get all best-friendish with her and ensnare her in some gossipy web of gal pal bonding? My fingers work my hair, tugging loose strands from Anj's masterpiece. What seemed like a great plan in last night's fury seems like foolish ignorance now.

“…exploring novel disease treatments, strategies made possible by the latest genetic technologies…”

Someone taps my shoulder. I whirl around and find Jesse sliding into the seat beside me.

“What happened?” I whisper.

He leans over and cups his hand around my ear. “Let's just say the emergency had been dealt with by the time we got to the first floor. Dr. Petrosky was nowhere to be found, and this AV-tech chick saved my ass when she blew a fuse to the sound system and Nigel was the only one there to deal with it.”

“What about Duncan? Have you seen him?”

“Nope.”

It's total I-might-hurl panic. I have no idea if Duncan downloaded the slides, and if he did, how Glass will react. What will the audience do? Will Tom lead an attack? What if Duncan didn't download them? Just when I think my nervous system will blow, I spot Dr. Monroe in the third row. I'd been so focused on the details of the plan, I managed to push her from my mind. I don't dare guess what will happen when she sees the presentation. I'm about to speak, to try and offload some of my anxiety onto Jesse, when I see something even worse than Dr. Monroe.

“Oh my god, Jesse, look!”

He follows my pointing finger and stares at the Rat Catcher, standing by a side door. Instantly Jesse's on his feet. “We have to get out of here.”

The woman with the bun sitting next to Jesse shoots us a dirty look and puts her finger to her lips.

“No way. We're safer here,” I whisper, ignoring her, and shoving Jesse back down into his chair. “What can he do to us in front of all these people? Just try and stay cool and blend in. We have to hold him off until our slides come on.” That is, if our slides come on.

“Our first speaker is Dr. Steven Glass,” I hear the woman say. I point my phone at the stage and press record so I can video the show for Aunt T as proof of what I've been up to. “A graduate of Johns Hopkins Medical School and board certified in both pulmonology and clinical genetics, Dr. Glass currently works in research and development at PluraGen Biopharmaceutical, where he is directing a clinical trial for a novel opiate addiction treatment.”

Dr. Glass walks onto the stage amidst a round of applause. He's just as I remember, slick as a pool of fresh blood in his charcoal suit and red tie, a smile Botoxed onto his face. He shakes the woman's hand and turns to the audience. The triplicate screens behind him open with the name of his talk:
Antisense RNA 120, A Genetic Hope for Addiction.

“Heroin addiction is a chronic, complex disease with substantial genetic contribution,” he begins. His booming voice fills the room with egotistical confidence as the second slide opens to a bunch of numbers and statistics.

I stare at the scatter points clustered on the graph like a cloud of black flies, then glance again at the Rat Catcher. His back is to the stage. He's not paying attention to the slides or the graph. He has no idea what's going on behind him. As if he's looking for us.

“Heroin addicts who fail with methadone treatment have been found to have more than a four-fold higher frequency of the A1 variant of the DRD2 gene.” Dr. Glass lets this information sink in and then says, “Those abusers with a genetic predisposition toward addiction may be helped by innovative treatments.”

I grab Jesse's hand as the next slide opens, hoping it's one of ours, but the slide isn't one of our creations. It's a bulleted list of current addiction treatments followed by statements of their limitations. Dr. Glass rambles on about the various therapies and drugs. I'm not listening. My attention is on the Rat Catcher. He's moving up the aisle, stopping at each row, forcing his soulless eyes on each audience member.

Three more rows and he'll reach us. Screw videoing. I drop my phone into the roomy front pocket of Anj's skirt and hold up the program of the talks to shield my face. Will he recognize me? Is Anj's makeover a good enough disguise? What about Jesse? I slink even lower into my seat, my heart thumping hard enough to vault right through my rib cage. Glass' words work their way back into my consciousness as I try to make Faith Flores invisible and morph into Faye Fuentes.

“Antisense RNA 120 is a genetically driven treatment offering great promise for opiate addiction.” He clicks to the next slide, and continues to talk, but the collective gasp from the audience stops him. I pop up in my seat and cover my mouth.

It's not another self-congratulatory graph depicting the genetic promise to cure addiction filling the triplicate screens behind him, it's the first slide of our own presentation,
RNA 120—A Front to Kill: How Dr. Glass Got Away with Murder.

Below our title is our table—a monument of murderous data as obvious as a row of A, T, C and G's from a sequencing machine. Beneath the data lie the handwritten instructions for administering PL44 and PL45 with Dr. Steven Glass, the executioner's signature, highlighted for us all to witness.

I can hardly breathe as Glass consults his monitor to see what all the murmuring is about. He's on his game. Quick as a snake in the grass. “Excuse me,” he says, without faltering and clicks onto the next slide.

This time the title reads:
Dr. Glass Murdered These Two Women With His Experiments
. Two images share the screen, one of my mother, the other of Melinda. Their haunted eyes foreshadowing death stare at us like specters from the grave, the words MURDERED BY GLASS' VECTOR: PL44 printed in bold red letters above their scabby, ravaged faces.

People turn to each other. Confused muttering spreads through the room. I steal a glimpse at the Rat Catcher. He hasn't turned yet and seen what's happening on stage. He stops at the end of our row. I slide to the edge of my seat, ready to jump up and haul ass out of here.

Hurry up. Change the slide.

“I'm sorry, there seems to be a technical error,” Glass says, scrambling to maintain his dominance at the top of the food chain. “If you'll bear with me, we'll have this figured out in just a moment.”

He clicks the next slide. This time it's the Rat Catcher's face that fills the screens, the words HIRED TO KILL BY DR. GLASS bolded across his chest. The Rat Catcher smiles as he finally sees me.

Our eyes lock and he steps into our row.

“Look,” I mouth, and point at the screen.

The Rat Catcher turns and glances at the stage. Before people can figure out what's going on, before they can connect the man in front of me with the man on the screen, he slips out of the row and disappears through the east side door.

Glass clicks again: The data table.

Click: Mom and Melinda.

Click: The Rat Catcher.

Click: Data table.

Click: Mom and Melinda.

Click: The Rat Catcher.

The woman who introduced Glass scurries onto the stage. She's flailing around in a futile attempt to correct the technical malfunction when a lone voice rises from the front row.

“Excuse me, but I have some questions if you don't mind.”

I look to where the voice has come from and see Tom, Doc's journalist friend, rise to his feet. “Dr. Glass, can you comment on PL44 and PL45?”

The room has gone dead still, so quiet you can practically hear the beads of sweat dripping off Glass' forehead and spattering down onto the podium.

“I don't believe Dr. Glass will be taking questions at this moment,” the woman anxiously informs Tom.

Glass ignores her. “I've never heard of it.”

“But your signature appears to be on the paper giving directions to administer those things,” Tom insists. Before Glass can respond, or his fashionable bodyguard can whisk him away, Tom fires off another question. “I'm looking at data right now that indicates two women died in your clinical trial. The data also says that both of the women were clean, neither was using heroin at the time of death. Are those the women in the photo?”

“What data?” Dr. Glass snaps, his face hardening. “Where did you get that? You can't just—”

“Again, the data I have here from the clinical trial indicates that RNA 120 got patients off heroin,” Tom interrupts, “but some patients were given a drug referred to here as PL44, and two of them receiving this drug died.” Glass tries to interrupt, accusing Tom of slander, but Tom won't be silenced. “It looks like those patients who received PL44 died or got very sick, but those who received PL44 and another drug called PL45 got better. One might infer that you are giving some people in this clinical trial a drug to make them sick and then withholding the treatment!”

I can't believe I didn't see it before. The first row is swarming with press. Like ants at a picnic. They've come in droves and suddenly they're on their feet, vying for a piece of the action. They all start shouting at once, closing in on Glass with their voracious hunger for headline news.

Glass has sustained too much injury. Any second he'll leave the stage. I nod to Jesse. We slip out of our seats and position ourselves at the back of the room as Glass steps away from the podium and heads straight into the pack of salivating predators. He straggles up the aisle, elbowing past their cameras and questions. They shout. They paw at him. Questions fire from every direction. Big hitting words and insinuations. Murder…profit…greed…billion dollar company…conspiracy.

Finally Glass makes it to the exit and pushes through the door. Mohawk and the motley crew of security cops, who get paid to maintain straight lines and check badges and ensure that everyone plays nice, stand at the door doing their untrained best to hold back the onslaught of journalistic mayhem.

I have to get to Glass. While I still can.

I've just taken my first step when Mohawk looks in our direction. “Hey!” he shouts, bulldozing the less substantially sized beings out of his way and stomping toward us.

“Go,” Jesse says, nudging me forward. “I'll deal with this.”

I turn and race out of the ballroom without waiting to see what happens. The hall is crowded, but I spot Dr. Glass some twenty feet ahead of me, scurrying past the bathrooms.