Last Shot (2006) (10 page)

"Was she in touch with her ex?"

"You tell me. She was your sister."

"She stopped talking to me. After I went in the second time."

He saw in Kaitlin's face that Tess hadn't confided that to her, and he also saw that Kaitlin had a good handle on what that would've meant to him. The empathetic lines over her eyebrows lasted only a moment before merging in an angry dip. "Smart girl."

"I'd say so."

"Her ex is in Lompoc, where he's been the past four years. Smalltime embezzling or something. I don't think they've been in touch since Sam was a baby."

"Is my mom dead?"

"What? No, she's at the Valley Glen Retirement Home."

"How 'bout my dad? Where's he?"

"He's the one oughta be dead."

"Ah. A boundary."

Her mouth tensed at the edges, but instead of smiling she said, "You got a place?"

"No."

"Money?"

"No."

"Anything?" She met his uncomfortable gaze, then strode into the kitchen and returned, prying the lid off a coffee tin. She teased out a wad of singles, but he held up his hand. "Come on," she said brusquely. "It's the emergency fund. I think this qualifies."

"Keep it for you and the kid."

"We've survived without your looking out for us this far, thanks. Besides, I get paid in a few hours. What's your plan?" She kept the cash extended toward his unmoving hand until the scene felt childish. "Take it, goddamn it! It's forty bucks. Get a meal and a shower."

Reluctantly, he reached up and took the money.

She studied him with her hard, gray eyes. "What's your deal, Walk? What are you doing here?"

"Unfinished business."

"Whose?"

"Tess's."

"Tess finished her own business."

He looked down, worked the inside of his lip between his teeth.

She seemed to grasp what he wasn't saying. "So you're what? Honoring her memory by breaking out of prison and rolling some heads?"

"Something like that."

"Whose?"

He didn't answer.

"Why don't you honor your sister in a way that would mean something to her?"

A spark of indignation charged his voice. "You don't know Tess. You weren't there. You weren't there in the B--"

"The Buick. Right. The winter you guys lived in a car by Griffith Park. Get over it. She did. She pulled it together. And for what? To give you opportunities?"

"I took them. That worked out well. Fighting Dick Cheney's war for him."

"So you didn't get a fair shake. Guess what? You're not entitled to one. People like us don't get a fair fucking shake. Not you, not Tess, not me, sure as shit not Sammy. And there's nothing you can do about it."

"Oh," Walker said, "there's something."

"As I figured, it's not about Tess aft--" The telephone rang, and Kaitlin broke off her pronouncement and her stare, hurried into the kitchen, and leaned over the caller ID screen. "Damn it. It's Sammy's insurance. They call at ungodly hours so they can leave messages. I need to grab this."

Walker pointed down the dark hall to the closed door opposite the converted den where Kaitlin slept. "That where she died?"

Kaitlin nodded. "Don't go anywhere." Ring. "I haven't decided if I'm gonna shoot you yet." She picked up, her nervously polite tone following him into the hall. He passed a door through which emanated the exaggerated sounds of video-game bloodshed, and paused outside Tess's room. Squares of bare wood marked either side of the jamb where the crime-scene tape had pulled up the paint. He turned the handle and paused, collecting himself.

The smells hit him first and strongest. The curtains remained drawn, and day after day of sunlight had baked the air of the closed room to a choking staleness. Bleach. Cleanser. And barely lingering beneath the chemicals, an express lane back to his childhood, the comforting scent of Jean Nate. There it was on the bureau, the yellow bottle with its curious cursive scrawl. He popped the cap and inhaled. The scent covering the sun-faded smell of the Buick's maroon crushed velour bench seat that had served as his bed for two months when he was eight. Sleeping cuddled into Tess for warmth. Her veil at her all-wrong wedding dinner in the back room of the Olive Garden as he'd leaned to kiss her cheek, struggling and failing to come up with something meaningful to say. What was there to say? After what Tess had risked for him? With their mother furloughed to another dry-out of questionable sincerity and their estranged father in the clink, Tess, at fifteen, had packed the trunk of the Buick with saltines, peanut butter, off-brand canned soup, six-packs of Tab, clothes, and a flashlight and taken Walker on the lam to keep them clear of the social workers. And she'd succeeded, right up until fifty-seven nights later, when they'd passed their mother's house on their weekly drive-by and seen--with relief so great Tess had sobbed for the first and only time he knew of--the light back on in the kitchen. What could he have said to his sister, years later, over bad table red and a warbly nuptial rendition of "That's Amore"? Thank you?

A spiral-bound weekly planner, sized to fit in a woman's wallet, sat beneath the cologne like a coaster. A picture of Tess in a paper Benihana frame was wedged in the mirror nailed above the bureau. He slid the photo and the datebook into his pocket. Covering the rest of the Formica walnut veneer and stuffed into the neighboring bookshelves were stacks of files containing Xeroxed articles from medical journals, printed reports, and pamphlets on what he assumed was Sam's condition. A few videos with professionally printed VECTOR stickers on the spines caught his attention. The same name and logo appeared on various brochures and reports. He figured Vector Biogenics for the gene-therapy outfit Kaitlin had mentioned. One of the Vector tapes was labeled in kid's handwriting: My News Segmint. A laminated visitor's pass to the "Vector Campus" dangled from a lanyard Tess had hung on her closet doorknob.

Bracing himself, Walker turned to face the bed, which he'd half seen upon entering. At the foot a bleached blob stood out from the rust carpet, the loop threads poking up like maggots. The missing comforter had probably been disposed of, leaving a yellow top sheet folded back neatly over a worn blanket. The crime-scene cleaners had scrubbed the wall above the headboard, leaving an uneven patch of discoloration.

Kaitlin's voice carried down the hall: "I know, sir, but I thought the ER copays also applied against the urgent-care deductible."

Walker trudged over and sat where his sister must have in her final moment, his back to the headboard, his feet centered in the white spot of carpet. He tried to reconstruct her position; her head must've been turned. He curled a bit, shoulders rising, stomach jerking--the convulsions of crying, though his eyes stayed dry. His palms sweated. Then he clenched his jaw and straightened back up.

The door shushed across the carpet a few more inches. Sam's terrified gaze moved about the room--he couldn't help himself--and then the wireless joystick fell from his hand and he retreated silently from the doorway.

Walker found him just outside the room, back to the wall, breathing hard.

"She visited Nona," Sam said once he'd caught his breath. "I heard you asking."

"Her mother? Your grandmother?"

"Yup."

"How often?"

"Once a week. I went, too, usually."

Walker continued toward the family room. Kaitlin's voice reached an exasperated pitch as she paced the tiny kitchen. She didn't notice Walker flash past the doorway. He got halfway to the glass slider, stopped, and returned. Sam had closed Tess's door and was standing before it, fingers still clenching the knob.

"Can you keep your mouth shut?"

"Course I can."

"Good. You'll get me killed if you don't. I'm not fucking around. You don't know me. You never saw me. Got it?"

Sam's lips trembled, and then he stormed into his room and shut the door, hard. Kaitlin glared at Walker this time as he passed. He stepped through the rear slider, hooked around the side of the house, and, after scanning the street from the cover of the neighbor's misshapen juniper, made his way to his Accord. He drove a few blocks before he pulled over. The air smelled of tar and fried breakfast meat--something sugary, packaged sausage. He opened Tess's calendar to the date of her death. Blank. The last entry, on June 1 in the 7:00 P.M. slot, read Vector Party, The Ivy--Bev Hills. Exactly one week before her death.

Walker scanned back over the preceding months. Vector was listed in March and April, often several times in a given week. Staring at the company name rendered again and again in Tess's neat hand, he felt his curiosity sharpen.

Chapter
15

Dolan cracked his knuckles for the third time that morning, psyching himself up for the confrontation he'd been rehearsing in his head since he woke up. A glance around the lab and his anxiety gave way momentarily to pride at all his work had given rise to.

He'd stumbled into the field, awed by the progress made by those scientist-pioneers who'd come before him. They'd made a brilliant leap. An imaginative leap. Brilliant and imaginative the way that Darwin's mechanism for evolution had been--simple and sound. Once you got it, it was all but obvious. All the pieces had been there; it was just a matter of assembling them to form the right picture. And unlike natural selection, viral vectors could be tested over weeks, not eons.

Gene therapy arose to correct genetic disorders that were deemed incurable. The bench work, while complex, was straightforward. Take a virus, designed through natural selection to penetrate human tissue, and excise the DNA sequences that make it virulent. Once it's been defanged and declawed, what remains is a biological vehicle with plenty of cargo room--a microscopic Trojan horse. Insert a therapeutic gene and the formerly threatening virus acts as benign transport. Once the viral vector is introduced into a subject, it finds its way to the target DNA sequence on the appropriate chromosome and the transgene insinuates itself, replacing the faulty gene.

Dolan had always been taken not just with the medical ramifications of viral vectors but with the elegance of the mechanics. And over the past few years, under the auspices of his own Vector Biogenics, he'd made not one but two breakthrough contributions to the field. They had come in relation to alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, an obvious disorder to tackle, since all its complications arise from a single set of faulty genes. Other grails were out there, sure, cystic fibrosis, maybe even familial hypercholesterolemia after that, but for now his (and Vector's) hopes hung on perfecting a viral vector that could deliver a gene to correct AAT deficiency. A dire disorder, usually diagnosed in childhood. Instead of producing a protein that helps coat and protect the lungs, the liver of an afflicted patient generates an abnormal enzyme that accumulates inside the liver and eventually shuts it down.

Dolan had chosen lentivirus and smallpox for his development models because they were nice roomy viruses, Mack trucks to the Mini Cooper of the more experimentally plumbed adenovirus. His first landmark vector--and still his pet project--had been born in relatively short order.

Lentidra.

The lentivirus vector (the latest model was code-named L12-AAT) had been his favorite from the gates because it seemed consistently to provide permanent integration of the transgene into the genome--one shot and the subject was cured. Optimistic from all theoretical indications, he'd handed over his creation to the study director who would conduct animal trials. But Lentidra's preclinical studies were abruptly suspended, after initial reports had come back riddled with problems. After this first, failed model, Dolan had to set his sights lower, temporarily relinquishing the dream of long-term gene expression and, at the board's urging, turning his focus to his redheaded stepchild, the smallpox vector (now known as X5-AAT and by its more marketable title, Xedral).

Rather than integrating into the host's genome, Xedral allowed only for short-term gene expression; the DNA floated in the nuclei of the target cells, got expressed briefly, then faded. The treatment was effective--86 percent effective from trial indications--but not a cure, and it required a booster shot once a month for maintenance. Otherwise the subject would slide back into his failing condition. In animal studies, Xedral was looking to be safer than Lentidra and more effective. These trials showed a stability of transgene expression sufficient to bring Vector to the verge of FDA Phase I human studies. A number of volunteers, mostly children, would begin trials within the month.

Dolan still mourned the loss of Lentidra. The idea of cure was tantalizing. Next to prevention, it was the best thing a medical scientist could deliver.

In fact, the notion of long-term transgene expression was what had sparked Dolan's interest in the field. When, while coasting through UCLA as a biochemistry major, he'd first learned of the huge advances scientists were making using viruses to shuttle genes, he'd been possessed intellectually. Casting aside a (lukewarm) aspiration for medical school, he'd dived into research, fretting over mitochondrial-derived activators for a promising but uninspired senior thesis. He'd stayed in the department for a Ph.D., blissfully engaged in his research. He loved playing detective, tugging at analytical knots, plank-walking out to areas of specialization where he alone could generate answers to the questions he was posing. And, better yet, he was gifted at it, his dissertation work knocking the experimental frontier forward a longitude or two.