Knockout Mouse (23 page)

“Smidge was getting a high enough dose that it could have gone off by itself. But Sheila wouldn’t have injected a proportionally heavy amount. Something still had to set it off in Sheila.”

“Like the shellfish protein,” I said.

Karen drummed her fingers on the table. “I’d like to know more about what the assays showed about Sheila’s blood, she said”

“I’ve got just the woman for you. Jill Nikano, Sheila’s allergist. She’s been running more tests.”

Karen thrust a cordless phone at me. “Call her.”

I dug Jill’s home phone number out of my billfold. That gave me only a machine, so I tried her office number. She was there. As I began telling her what we’d discovered, Karen made grasping motions at the receiver. “Gimme.”

“Isn’t there another phone?”

She dashed into the kitchen. Once we got the introductions done, Karen launched into her reconstruction of Sheila’s theory. I could hear the excitement rising in Jill’s voice. “What you’re telling me makes sense with everything I’ve seen so far.”

“She must have injected MC124,” Karen said.

“Yes, with those puncture marks in her arm.”

“Any way the drug could have killed her by itself?” I asked.

There was a silence on the other end of the line. “Noooo, I don’t think so. I’ve done immunoelectrophoresis on Sheila’s serum. I got stains for proteins whose molecular size matches shellfish allergens. There’s no doubt in my mind the anaphylactic event was induced by these proteins. MC124 may have primed her immune system, but it didn’t trigger the blow.”

“Could it have induced a new sensitivity?” I said. “Maybe she hadn’t been allergic to salmon before, but was now?”

“I doubt it. There’s virtually always a mild initial reaction to a new allergy before the big blow.”

“Right,” I said. “Thanks very much, Jill. We’ll let you know as soon as we have something new.”

“Glad to help. Say, Karen, can you email me what you’ve got?”

Karen hesitated.

“Not all of it is in digital form,” I said, “but we’ll send what we have.”

As we hung up, I glanced down at my watch. It was four o’clock already, an hour past the time Wes was expecting my all-safe call. I dialed his number. Karen came in breathless from the kitchen, but when she saw I was on the phone again, she made a U-turn.

Wes picked up. “It’s me,” I said. “Sorry I forgot to check in. I’m safe and sound.”

I grunted apologetically as Wes listed the symptoms of anxiety he’d endured for the past hour. He’d been on the verge of phoning the police.

“I really am sorry,” I repeated. “I meant to call you.”

“How’s it going with Marion?” he asked out of nowhere.

“About the same. She’s not a whole lot of help. Why?”

“I don’t know. She called me. Got me thinking about her legs again. I guess I’m forgiven for the Brentwood stunt.”

“It’s your love life, Wes. Just let me be the one to talk to her about what I’m up to. You know nothing.”

“I certainly do, Damen. You’ve told me nothing except that your life is in danger. Then you forget to call. What are you chasing after, anyway?”

“We’re getting close. I’ll let you know when we’re there.”

“You mean Jenny’s actually following you on this goose chase?”

“Are you kidding? No, I’ve got some expert help.”

“I assume she’s smart, yet naive enough to join up with you.”

“Your confidence means a lot to me, Wes. Talk to you later.”

I joined Karen in the kitchen. She clattered the plates into the sink and angrily wrenched the tap open to rinse them. I asked what was bothering her.

“If we don’t know how Sheila got the allergen that induced her reaction, we’re right back at the beginning!”

“That’s not exactly true,” I said. I stacked the food cartons inside one another and tossed them into the garbage. “We know that MC124 primed Sheila’s immune system. Let’s assume for a minute that whoever gave her the antigen knew that, too. If this person was familiar with the antibody, all they had to do was give Sheila the right protein. It could have come in any form.”

Karen put both elbows on the counter. She wedged her chin between her palms. “But what if they didn’t? What if the whole thing was just blind accident, coincidence?”

I contemplated that void for a moment. “It was orchestrated. It had to be.”

Karen wagged a finger at me. “Don’t make assumptions. That’s how bad science happens. Look at McKinnon. He had something to prove about MC124. It turned out he was right, but the drug might also have fatal side effects. We have to get him to open his eyes to these results. He wouldn’t before, even when Sheila pointed right at them. That’s what happens. People see what they want to see. Especially when their career is at stake.”

“Okay, then. What I personally want to see is how Neil Dugan got that protein into Sheila’s system. It only had to be a small amount. Could there have been something in the lab—?”

“Like a lobster tank?” Karen said sarcastically.

“Wait a minute. They don’t have a fish farm, but LifeScience
does have a farm. A big garden out back. They acquired some agri company doing transgenic plants. The corn in that garden was growing mighty high.”

“It’s a possibility. A remote one, but still… The timing of the attack means it has to be something Sheila ate at the dinner party.”

“What about this: What if someone at the party is working with Dugan? Fay or Marion gets the food into Sheila’s mouth that night. Dugan supplies it—the agri company was acquired under his regime, so Dugan knows its products. Fay has a motive to get back at Sheila. And Marion, I don’t know her motive, but she’s up to something.”

Karen lifted her chin at me, a kind of challenge. “Can you get either one to talk?”

“They’re pretty tough. I might have a spy in Marion’s house, except I’m not sure whose side he’s on.”

Karen squinted at my remark, but let it pass. “We need people at LifeScience, people who know more.”

“Like Carl Steiner, the gardener.”

Karen punched my arm. “Right! Sheila’s not-so-secret admirer. She said he was a sweet guy, but—”

I finished the sentence for her. “They’re the ones you have to watch out for.”

I had to twist Marion’s arm
to get her to tell us that Carl Steiner lived in Menlo Park, which was between Redwood City and Palo Alto. She twisted back, making me promise I’d let her in on new information. I agreed to do that this evening, hoping that by then I’d be in a position to force her hand and get her to tell me what she was up to.

Two C. Steiners were listed in the phone book. The first one, Karen and I discovered, was a young woman named Cindy who lived in an apartment complex. No relation. The other lived in a neighborhood of narrow leafy streets. The 1950s-vintage one-story house looked tired, its plaster chipping. We tried the doorbell with no result. I opened a dented aluminum screen door and pounded on the front door. Still no answer.

We went down a walkway to the back. A tall redwood fence blocked our view of the yard. But as soon as I chinned up the fence, I knew we had the right place. “There’s a small farm back there.”

Karen cocked her ear. “I hear digging.”

We knocked on the fence and called Carl’s name. After about the tenth try we finally heard the click of a latch. The gate opened. Carl Steiner stood before us in a gardening cap with a
giant sun bill. Fringes of brown and gray hair curled out from under the cap. He wore an ancient khaki shirt and even older pants. His shoes were covered with dirt.

Recognition flickered in his eyes. After introducing Karen and myself, I reminded him that he and I had met at Sheila’s funeral. Steiner pulled off his gloves and put out a hesitant hand. Karen took it and turned on a charm I hadn’t seen before. Beaming at him, she said, “Sheila told me about you. She said that you were so very nice to her.”

He turned his head and looked down at the ground. When he looked back up at Karen, he said, “She was a really special girl. It’s terrible what happened.”

“That’s just what we wanted to ask you about,” I said. “May we come in?”

“I suppose. Not many do. Sheila never did.” He held the gate open for us. We filed into what seemed a jungle of corn stalks, tomato plants, bean vines, and growth I didn’t recognize. It was a neat jungle, though. Narrow but well-defined paths marked the lines between each crop.

He picked up his hoe and used it as a kind of staff as we walked. Corn stalks, now dry and stripped of their ears, rattled in the breeze. Steiner described the plants to us, their germ lines and characteristics, how they’d produced this summer, how the weather influenced the flavor. “Change coming,” he added, raising the handle of the hoe toward the cirrus clouds. “Our first rain, tomorrow maybe. Hope so. It’ll wash off the dust.”

“I see you’ve made use of every square inch of your backyard, Mr. Steiner,” Karen remarked.

“Just call me Carl. You’d be amazed by my harvests. I could open a grocery store. I prefer to give it away, though.” He smiled ruefully. “Can’t eat it all myself. You like zucchini?”

“An old favorite,” I said. “I’m surprised you grow so much here at home. Isn’t this what you do all day at work—gardening?”

“I’ve got my degree in biology!” he objected.

“You’re a scientist-technician,” Karen said diplomatically.

“Exactly. I work at the bench. I work in the garden, too. Got a feel for everything we’re growing. I know more about it than any of those PhDs. You can’t replace hands-on knowledge. How a leaf smells first thing in the morning, its temper in the afternoon. These plants are my life. Why would I leave them behind when I come home?”

“So you grow some of the company’s plants here?”

“Just the ones we’re not actively working with.”

We’d come to the tomatoes. I bent down to look at them. There looked to be four different varieties, each in its own plot where the south sun hit the back fence. I reached for one.

“Don’t—don’t touch!” Carl barked.

“Is it valuable?”

“No, it’s just—off limits.” We looked at him, waiting for more. A ripple of anxiety slowly curdled across his face. “I didn’t develop it. The line’s from Tomagen—the company LifeScience acquired for our agri division. Best tomato you ever tasted in your life. It can grow anywhere, survive the frosts.” An unexpected bitterness came into his voice. “They call it the
heart
tomato.”

He shook his hoe at the plant, as if it offended him. Some of the fruits were still mottled green and red and some were ripe enough to drop. I recognized the lovely little heart shape, about the size of a tennis ball. The film word “continuity” popped into my mind: the tomato had appeared earlier. I was trying to remember when and where. It was Jenny’s dinner party. This tomato was a perfect stand-in for the ones that Sheila had laid on the counter.

I asked Carl delicately, “Did you know that Sheila brought some tomatoes to dinner the night she—”

Carl exploded. “Of course I knew! Where do you think they came from!”

Veins pulsed on his nose. The knuckles gripping the hoe were white. Karen and I took a step back. Carl stood there shaking. After a moment I realized it was as much from grief and guilt as from anger.

Karen’s voice was even and kind. “You gave them to her?”

“Yes. I mean, no, not directly, I left her a message telling her she could have some and asking when I should drop them off. They’re no big secret. I just don’t usually give them out. Well, anyway, she never called back.” His throat tightened. “If only she did. I could have warned her…”

“About what?”

“It was an experimental line engineered by Tomagen, before we bought them. They set themselves the task of making the best tomato ever—the tastiest, the hardiest, the juiciest. If they hit all the marks, they’d have an incredible product. It was like entering the lottery. Well, they won—except they couldn’t collect. Turned out they’d used a gene from some fish to help the tomato resist cold. See, the same protein that helps a crustacean survive frigid water is the one that causes allergy in humans. Anyway, the protein was still being expressed in the heart tomato. They couldn’t take it to market.”

I opened my mouth, but Carl jumped quickly to the question. He ticked off his points on soil-crusted fingers. “So why did I keep growing it? I told you about the taste. Why did I give it to people? I didn’t give it to many. A few in my department. The chief wanted to try it, too. Didn’t hurt anyone, not so much as a cough. So then Sheila. Why should I keep it from her, if she
wanted to try it? I didn’t know she had an allergy. I would have told her, though, I would have warned her, even though the protein showed up weak in the bioassays.”

“But the company had to pull the tomato, in spite of that?”

“Oh yeah. They didn’t even bother asking the FDA. You can’t go around selling food that looks like an apple but really it’s an oyster. You can’t sell soy that’s really Brazil nut proteins. Company that did that in 1996 had to pull it for the same reason: allergies. There were no solid documented cases of adverse reaction, but you’ve got to be double careful. Triple.”

We stared, stunned, at Carl. “Why would a company use a shellfish protein like that?” I managed to ask.

“Lots of people have used fish genes to help crops stand the cold,” he said. His shoulders were slumped, but with a kind of relief. He’d been carrying this knowledge around all on his own. He was dying to share it.

“Carl,” I said gently, “you said you didn’t give Sheila the tomatoes in person. You also said you didn’t talk to her about them. So how did you know Sheila wanted to try them?”

Carl screwed up his face and clutched at his hat. “Jesus, I don’t know!” His fingers slowly released the hat. “It was Dr. McKinnon. He thought she’d enjoy them.”

Karen and I stared at each other. McKinnon.

Carl knew what the look meant. He shook his head vehemently. “No, Dr. McKinnon’s a good man. He wouldn’t knowingly give Sheila something dangerous. The chief neither. But that Dugan—he’s another basket of onions. Listen up, I’m going to tell you right now he will try to pin this on me. Because they got to find someone to blame. The family’s gonna sue, I heard that. And what I think is maybe
Dugan’s
the one who told the doctor about the tomatoes. Tricked him or something.”