Mutant (24 page)
He sensed full well what she offered here. To his own surprise, he found he wanted to accept. As little as a few weeks ago he might have backpedaled and said, “Thanks, Kathleen, but I better get home. I’m tired, and for sure I’ll think a lot clearer in the morning.” Instead he took a few seconds to work out in his head what to reply, so as to still leave her room to back down, in case she felt as ambiguous as he did. “Are you sure? It’s past ten-thirty, and it will take me another hour and a half to get back to New York.” No sooner were the words out than his courage failed him, and the prospect of saying yes to the full extent of her invitation so intimidated him that he teetered on the brink of retreat.
As if reading his ambivalence, she added, “I’d like you to come to me, Richard, if you want to.”
Again neither of them said a word. But unlike his silence, growing heavy with unsaid doubts and indecision, her quiet remained electric, quivering, and filled with unspoken offerings. Before he could collect his wits enough to say anything, he heard a soft click of the receiver as she hung up.
God, how could I have been so blatantly obvious, she thought, riding the elevator to the ground floor.
Frankly, when he hadn’t shown by half past twelve, she’d given up on his coming at all and felt embarrassed for having issued the invitation. When he phoned from his car ten minutes ago to say he’d just pulled up in front of her building, she felt her face grow flushed. “I’ll be right down,” she managed to squeak, thinking she could pretend her invite had been for nothing more than what she’d said—a coffee, a chance to throw around ideas about Agrenomics, and a change of clothing. “Yeah, sure,” she muttered, “take off your wets and step into my shower—I always offer men who get caught in the rain a midnight cleanup. Doesn’t mean a thing. How could you possibly get the idea I was suggesting a quickie under the nozzle?”
The minute she saw him through the glass door, she burst out giggling. He was caked with mud from head to toe and appeared completely miserable. My God, he really does need a hosing down, she thought, sliding her access card through the security system and pushing open the door. Reaching to take him by the hand she laughed and said, “Look at you.”
Back in her lab she first made him get under the steaming jets of water with his clothes still on. “Hand them out to me when the big dirt’s off,” she shouted over the sound of the faucet. “There’s a launderette a few floors below that the students use. I’ll go down and toss them in while you finish giving yourself a scrub. There’s towels, a set of lab overalls, and a large white coat on one of the benches for you. Meet you back in my office.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and reached from behind the curtain, giving her a dripping wad of what he’d been wearing.
She went back out in the hallway and walked over to the elevator entrance, only to find the car they’d rode up in had been sent back to the ground floor. Must be somebody else in the building, she thought, taking the stairs instead, the laundry being only three flights away. With ten stories of labs housing the projects of a thousand graduate students, one of them burning the midnight oil hardly seemed unusual.
A few quarters bought her a box of soap; for a few more she got the wash-and-spin cycle that went with it. Making a mental note of the time she should come back to put everything in the dryer, she returned upstairs. He’d already found the coffee and laid out two cups on her desk, both black. He seemed relaxed, lounging on her couch in bare feet. The lab outfit she’d left him didn’t include socks.
“I don’t know how you like to doctor it,” he said, getting up and offering her the mug nearest him.
“Thanks. Neat’s fine,” she said, slipping into her usual chair and clasping the steaming drink between both hands. “You look a lot better.” All at once feeling playful, she eyed him with a grin and added, “Of course it wasn’t hard to improve on the state you were in.”
He smiled back at her, but the corners of his eyes remained pinched-looking and stiff from not being squeezed into laugh lines often enough. Traces of where the skin had once crinkled in merriment seemed to be still there, though, like markings on faded parchment.
She became determined to bring them out. “Maybe the improvement in you is totally thanks to this magnificent wardrobe I provided. The shoeless image especially suits you, Dr. Steele, makes you look casual, more like Robinson Crusoe on a beach instead of the very serious chief of ER you usually go around as.”
His smile widened, and his face slid into pleasant warm contours just as it had on the other occassions when they’d laughed together, except this time it seemed as if it had wanted to be in that shape all along. “Why thank you, ma’am. That’s high praise coming from the world-famous Dr. Kathleen Sullivan.” Still on his feet, he all at once did a little pirouette, making as if to model what he wore. “I agree the naked-foot style sure beats the naked-butt line I demonstrated in ER a few weeks ago.”
She abruptly chortled into her coffee, spraying it across her desk. “Oh please, Richard, don’t get me started again.”
But start they did. She pointed at his rear end, he made a pretense of trying to cover it up, and soon they were doubled over, nearly choking as their sides ached and tears streamed down their faces. She once again felt lifted by their laughter, propelled higher and higher until the howls of glee reached a peak, then released them both, leaving her sated and spent, as though she’d just made love.
He stood bent over her desk supporting himself with his outstretched arms, trying to catch his breath. She leaned forward in her chair, looking up at him. He slowly lowered his head, and they kissed softly. “Thank you, Kathleen,” he murmured.
She reached up and touched his face. “For what?”
“Making me laugh. I used to think I never would.”
They kissed again. It started even softer than the first, then went deeper, and longer. Her breath and heart quickened as she strained forward, sliding her hands around to the back of his neck and entwining her fingers in his hair. He gently pulled her to her feet and kissed her more fiercely, the desk still between them. She side-stepped it and walked into his arms, pressing against him. Through the flimsy material of his lab clothing she felt him hard and ready for her.
She melted inside and ground her pelvis into his, matching his growing frenzy while he continued to kiss her, his lips passing to the line of her jaw and along her neck. She heard herself give deep-throated moans and clung even harder to him. “Do you have something?”
“No,” he answered, opening her buttons and caressing the tops of her breasts. “Do you?”
“Yes,” she whispered, breathless as he slipped her blouse open and found her nipples with his mouth, teasing them with flicks of his tongue and gentle sucks.
She began to undress him, easily disposing of the loosefitting lab wear, dropping it from his hips and sliding it off his shoulders until he stood naked before her.
He had a lean physique that felt muscular to her touch as she delicately trailed her fingertips down along his stomach and circled his loins with them, savoring the shuddering cry her strokes drew from deep within his throat.
“Shall we open the bed,” she suggested, undoing the rest of her blouse, then her skirt, and letting them fall at her feet.
“I’m too old for the floor,” he said, slipping his hands beneath her underpants to carress her buttocks and pull her to him. Arching backward, she guided his mouth once more to her nipples where he continued to suck and nibble them, sending waves of electricity into her groin.
That’s when the fire alarm went off.
The cutting stench of gasoline filled their nostrils and choked their lungs as they raced down the stairs, each carrying a stack of boxes filled with the Rodez specimens to be tested for bird flu. Both were dressed in long lab coats buttoned to the collar, and nothing else. There hadn’t been time.
“I smelled it when I went to the vending machine,” explained the student who’d pulled the alarm and was descending the steps with them. A few other men and women from the floors below were also heading for the exits laden with boxes.
“Where the hell’s it coming from?” puffed Sullivan.
“The elevator shaft,” someone shouted from behind her.
Minutes later they were all on the pavement, everyone milling around and looking up at the darkened windows of the just-vacated building. In the distance were the sounds of approaching sirens, while around her she heard snippets of numerous attempts to explain how gasoline could have gotten into the elevator shaft.
None of them were convincing.
The street seemed otherwise deserted. A few vehicles stood parked at the far curb, most dilapidated enough that the owners probably figured any self-respecting car thief wouldn’t glance twice at them. Beyond them stretched Washington Square, its flower beds, playgrounds, and lawns bathed in the glare of sodium lamps. Its treed pathways were as empty as the sidewalks around its perimeter.
The rough pavement pressing into her bare feet, the cool night air percolating under her lab coat, and the students ’ stares all reminded her that she and Steele weren’t exactly fully clothed. “Do you think it’ll be rainin’ on us some more?” she said, figuring the weather would be as good a diversion as any for a group of acne-faced young men who seemed unable to take their eyes off her.
They quickly averted their gaze to the heavens.
“No, ma’am, don’t think so.”
“Not at all, Dr. Sullivan.”
“Lucky for us.”
She found herself enjoying the effect her near-naked state had on the youthful trio. “Of course, it could start again soon.”
“Absolutely, ma’am.”
“I agree, Dr. Sullivan.”
“Me, too.”
Steele had just slipped her a merry wink, when over his shoulder she spotted a sleek black van parked half a block away. It’s a coincidence, she told herself.
An orange dot glowed in the darkness behind the windshield.
Someone waiting for someone, is all, she insisted. Nothing to do with us.
By this time Steele had turned to see what had caught her attention. At that second the vehicle’s motor started, its lights came on, and it slowly began to advance, coming toward them with the solemnity of a hearse.
“Oh, fuck,” she heard him groan.
“This way,” she cried, sprinting across the street with her load of samples and heading into the park.
He followed on her heels, yelling, “This way? Are you sure?”
“Yes. To the Doughnut.”
“The what?”
“Run!”
The roar of a motor followed by the screech of tires behind them underlined the urgency. Throwing a quick look over her shoulder, she saw the van roll to a halt and six men jump out, all dressed in security guard uniforms.
She kept running.
Steele must have seen them as well. There were no more questions from him, only the sound of his huffing.
The police post stood at the other end of the park, a line in the sand against the night gangs that occupied the basketball courts and roamed the blocks farther west. She figured the officers on duty would already be making their way toward the science building in response to the alarm. She scanned the paths ahead for a sign of them, but saw nothing. “Help, police!” she screamed.
Steele quickly followed her example, braying, “They’re trying to kill us!”
The tread of their pursuers scuffed loudly on the gravel and seemed to be gaining. But instead of frightening her, their drawing closer made her think, Maybe we can capture one of the thugs. Off to her left she finally caught sight of two uniformed officers, their guns drawn, running toward them. She pivoted, heading directly at them and yelling her head off.
A volley of curses and the scraping of shoes skidding on the loose stones exploded at her back.
“Shit!”
“Cops!”
“Let’s get out of here!”
She and Steele put on a final burst, forging ahead like runners crossing a finish line while the patrolmen surged past them going the other way. Back in the street a half dozen fire trucks roared up in front of the science building with their sirens wailing, blocking the black van. Their attackers scattered every which way, but one of the policemen barked a clipped order into his lapel radio, bringing a quartet of blue-and-white patrol cars screaming up to the four sides of the park. Bullhorns appeared, orders to surrender ripped through the night, and soon the police had all six fugitives facedown, cuffed, and subdued.
Sullivan stood bent over, hands on her knees as she caught her breath, Steele doubled up beside her. Between gasps he asked, “Are you all right?”
She managed to nod.
Only after a young officer walked over and started to chuckle at them did they realize that a few strategic buttons had come undone during the chase.
He pushed his cap to the back of his head, grinned, and said, “So what were you two doing? A science experiment?”
Chapter 17
Monday, June 12, 10:45 P.M.
“Get me Racine,” she ordered, still looking into the microscope. “He’s expecting my call.”
She flipped on the overhead screen and gave her staff a peek at what she saw in the Rodez samples. The H5N1 primers had separated out fragments of the attenuated vaccine like notes on a scale.
Voices of congratulation erupted.
“Well done!”
“Bravo!”
“Wow!”
Azrhan stepped over to the phone and started dialing, looking more sullen than at any time since their run-in six days ago. After Friday’s attack, the tension between them had grown unbearable. As much as she tried to think differently, her former suspicions about him kept resurfacing. He sensed this, she knew, the hurt and anger in his eyes worse to look at than before. She ended up despising herself, especially since she hadn’t a shred of proof against the man, but they remained increasingly on edge with each other.
“Beautiful job, Kathleen,” said Steele at her back.
She resisted her urge to lean into him, continuing to feel shy with everyone around. They’d hardly found a moment alone together since the fire alarm had gone off three nights ago. The ongoing police presence in the lab along with the comings and goings of technicians who were working throughout the weekend made short work of their privacy.
Lisa had also moved in, for safety’s sake. Sullivan didn’t want her alone at their apartment in case more men in guards’ uniforms showed up there. “Cool, Mom,” said the teenager, inspecting the image of her mother’s work and giving her a big hug.
“Thanks, sweetie.” Sullivan savored the moment of her daughter’s affection, wondering if she should say anything to her yet about Richard. Not that there was much to tell. Over the last few days there’d barely been the opportunity for a few stolen kisses in out-of-the-way corners.
“You’re not sorry about what you’ve started?” she’d asked him during one of those feverish yet brief encounters.
“I’m only sorry we can’t finish it,” he whispered, trembling as his lips brushed her neck and his hands slipped under her lab clothes to resume their aquaintance with her breasts.
“You will, Richard,” she breathed into his ear, feeling herself grow moist for him now. “You will.”
“Inspector Racine’s on the phone, Dr. Sullivan,” said Azrhan, vanquishing her reverie.
When she finished describing the test results and explained what she needed from him, the French detective exhaled noisily into the line. “Do not worry, Dr. Sullivan. Our mutual project will go swiftly and well. In discovering the secret of Pierre Gaston you have provided a motive for his murder, and the freeze on the records at Agriterre will be thawed as soon as I can awaken a judge. Then we’ll seize them. Any paper links to Biofeed or Agrenomics I’ll forward to the appropriate police departments in your country myself, thereby bypassing the beast of red tape and bureaucracy that is the unfortunate passion of my nation.”
“You’re sure you can do all that quickly enough? When I warned the detective working on the case here and the one who’s in charge in Honolulu that we might have new evidence for them, they both stressed the need to move fast, before documents start to disappear.”
“
Mais, certainement,
Madame. You have my word it will be done within forty-eight hours.”
She imagined him waving her concerns into the air with a
grand geste
of his hand, leaving a trail of smoke from yet another smoldering Gauloise perched between his fingers. But her foreboding that all their efforts could collapse under a morass of jurisdictional wrangling continued to mount.
Tuesday, June 13, 9:00 A.M.
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Sorry, Dr. Sullivan,” said McKnight, looking very sheepish. “But my superiors, bless their pointy little heads, pulled my men and lifted your protection as of this morning. They figure there’s no longer any point for anyone to murder you or come after the samples since you’ve already uncovered their secret.”
“I didn’t know killers were so rational.”
“No, only the accountants who allot the funds for special details. According to them, your chances of violent death are now back down to those of the average New Yorker. That you deal with on your own budget.”
“And what do you think?”
“Frankly? This case has more loose ends than my mother-in-law’s knitting.”
“There’s no connection between those men you arrested and Agrenomics?”
“None. These guys weren’t among the guards who worked there. At least there’s no record of it, and no one admits knowing them.”
“What are the chances of them talking?”
“Not good. There’s usually two reasons people don’t squeal—good hush money and fear. They seem to have plenty of both. They’ve certainly bought top-dollar legal help, but I also can’t remember when I’ve seen punks so scared. It’s as if just getting caught meant a death sentence.”
“They won’t even admit who hired them?”
“Nope. And when I ask what happened to Pizza Face, they blanch, go all sweaty, and claim not to know him.”
“Did they explain why they dumped gasoline into the elevator shaft?”
“They didn’t have to. We found a device to set it on fire—a set of crossed wires they’d fed down there and rigged to a timer scavenged from a coffeemaker. They’d plugged the whole thing into a wall socket and set it to start ‘perking’ at one-thirty A.M. The spark from the short ignites the gas, the oil along the length of the shaft sends it up like a Roman candle, and if the flames don’t spread to the floors, the smoke flushes you out. That’s what they were waiting for in the van.”
He got up to leave. “I reread the reports of your and Steele’s statements from Friday night. I know you both claimed to have no idea who’s responsible, but the timing of the attack sure suggests someone knew what you had planned for Monday. Off the record, is there anyone with access to that information who you’ve entertained suspicions about?”
“No,” she said, taking a half beat too long in answering and thinking of Azrhan despite her best effort not to do either. “A lot of people could know,” she added, “including someone at Julie Carr’s lab.”
He studied her, his level stare making her squirm. “One other thing,” he added. “Agrenomics reported a man broke into their premises, also on Friday night. It came across my desk because the local police knew I have an interest in the place. You wouldn’t be able to tell me anything about it, would you?”
“No, not at all. Why would—?”
“Good, because I wouldn’t want to arrest some very prominent citizens for breaking and entering.”
“But you can’t think that I—”
“The only way we can get into Agrenomics legally is if Racine links it to the vaccine. Is that understood?”
“Of course, yet surely—”
“Because a couple of mavericks going in illegally and giving some hotshot attorney the excuse he needs to declare whatever’s in there as inadmissible evidence is the last thing we need. Got it?”
But they have a secret lab designed to hold God knows what! she very nearly blurted out. She nevertheless held her tongue. Completely unused to making such tactical retreats into silence, her frustration grew, and her face did a smoldering burn.
Over the next few hours her staff members, including Azrhan, quickly got back to their usual routine, their Rodez work officially over.
But she had trouble concentrating. Every time the phone rang, she kept expecting it might be news from France. Neither could she stop thinking that Pierre Gaston had hinted at there being a second secret to be found at Agriterre. After lunch she got out the slides again, studying them into the late afternoon. Driven by the feeling that she’d missed something, she managed to go through only a fraction of the specimens—and in the end found nothing new.
As six o’clock approached, the prospect of resuming a normal home life with Lisa and sleeping regular hours boosted her spirits. The possibility of meeting Richard for some private time together she found even more enticing. “Why not drop over later tonight,” she suggested, calling him before leaving the lab. She’d assumed his eagerness to get together remained as keen as her own. Just thinking about where they had left off made her nipples tingle, leaving her once more warm and wet for him. “I’ll open a bottle of champagne, to celebrate getting out of jail.”
He paused before answering, a matter of seconds, but long enough to warn her that he felt hesitant.
“I’m sorry, Kathleen, but Chet’s playing guitar at a school concert tonight, and I promised him that I’d attend.”
“And you must go,” she said, hoping his reluctance had only to do with that. “I’ll wait up for you, if you’d like.”
“What about Lisa?”
“World War Three wouldn’t wake her. So do I pop the bubbly?”
More silence.
“Or you and I could just check into a hotel for a few hours, and order room service,” she suggested, only half kidding.
His returning laugh sounded strained.
She began to suspect his reticence had to do with more than an unwillingness to bed her while Lisa slept in the next room. “Richard, what’s the matter? You’ll have me thinking I only appeal to you when there’re cops, firemen, and a hundred lab techs running all over the place making it impossible to fool around.”
He again chuckled, but not to the extent she’d hoped. “No, believe me, you’re as desirable as ever. I’d be there in an instant if it simply involved me. But this is Chet’s night. You know I’ve only just started to get close to him again. In a crazy way, I’m afraid the reason he’s starting to trust me is that he believes he and Martha are all I’ve got. There’s no job right now to pull me away from him, and there’s no one else around for me to lose that might send me over the edge again. So he’s beginning to feel secure. I don’t know how he’d take me going off in the middle of the night to meet you if he found out, and I don’t want to begin lying to him.”
She felt stunned. “That sounds like you’ve decided there’s a problem between us extending beyond tonight.”
“I’d be lying to you if I said no.”
The quiet between them opened like a chasm.
“So what do you want, Richard?”
“Time. Enough to let him get more used to the idea that I’m not going to let him down again, no matter what.”
Her desire turned cold and ran out of her like slime. “And how long will it take you to get over your own fears?”
“Pardon?”
“You heard me.”
“But this is about Chet being afraid—”
“No, it’s about you running from me. The only thing it has to do with Chet is that you’re using him as an excuse.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s you who isn’t being fair, Richard. Yes, Chet has to learn to trust you again, but it won’t happen with you trying to wall your life off so there’s nobody else to compete with your affection for him. Who the hell in their right mind would want that feeble kind of caring? I know I wouldn’t. I’d feel the only reason I had a place in your heart at all is because it’s otherwise unoccupied. Chet deserves better than that. You want him to feel secure? Love him enough that he knows he’s your biggest priority even with a world of people clamoring for a piece of you. Assuming, of course, you haven’t already driven everyone away who might be interested.”
He didn’t answer, issuing a long sigh instead. At the sound she envisioned him deflating like a stuck balloon and she knew what she’d said had hit home. Yet all at once she felt too hurt, rejected, and above all angry to care whether he realized what he’d done or not.
“I’m a man dragging a lot of baggage,” he finally acknowledged, his voice steeped in what sounded a little too close to self-pity for her liking. “You don’t need all my crap in your life.”
“Damn you, Richard Steele, I certainly don’t need you feelin’ sorry for yourself. You’re scared, pure and simple. There’s a cure for that these days. It’s called backbone. As to what else I do or don’t require, it’ll be me and me alone that’ll do the decidin’, one way or t’other!” She slammed the phone down.
By Wednesday evening Racine hit pay dirt.
“As you suspected, Dr. Sullivan, the files at Agriterre pointed to both Taiwan and Oahu,” he told her, his voice triumphant even after traveling a horizontal journey of about three thousand miles. “In 1997, Dr. François Dancereau, the CEO, planned to take advantage of a bird flu outbreak in Asia and ordered the production of an oral vaccine against the virus. Pierre Gaston, the late geneticist, obliged. A tidy profit of sixteen million francs resulted, and ultimately the first boat shipment of the altered meal corn headed across the ocean, ordered by the Taiwan branch of Biofeed International, Agriterre’s parent company. Six months later, however, Dancereau starts receiving correspondence from Biofeed executives in Taiwan saying that all the local farmers claim the feed is making the bird flu outbreak worse. Dancereau writes back, admitting it’s possible, and suggests they pawn off the unused feed as regular corn in some area of the world where there is no problem with bird flu. Within two weeks he’d resold the lot to the Biofeed office in Hawaii.”
“Did Dancereau or anyone else ever clue in to the fact that the vaccine could be dangerous to humans? That it had a role in the Taiwanese child getting bird flu?”
“According to their records, no one ever even considered the possibility. The prevailing attitude seemed to be that since they were just dealing with poultry, they didn’t have to be careful.”
The arrogance took her breath away. “Who is François Dancereau, anyway? His name sounds familiar.”
“He’s one of the virologists responsible for the AIDS-TAINTED blood scandal in our country during the mid-eighties—the kind of man you Americans call ‘a real sweetheart.’ He escaped prosecution only by informing on his colleagues. According to some internal memoranda we found, Agriterre put him in charge of its genetic engineering program precisely because they figured his willingness to cut corners would maximize profit.”
The stark photo images of an air lock, decontamination showers, and moon suits that Steele had shown her a few days earlier flashed to mind. They remained rife with their own insinuations about what crazy manipulations someone willing to “cut corners” might be attempting closer to home. After hanging up, she shivered, once more trying to keep her imaginings in check but without much success.
As to thoughts of Steele himself and the rift between them, they persisted tenacious as a toothache and just as intrusive on her concentration. Boy, I sure can pick them, can’t I, she lamented, furious that once more she’d let a man get hold of her peace of mind.
By Friday, a Detective Billy Ho of the Honolulu police department had the upper echelons of Biofeed, Hawaii, diving for cover.
“Racine’s stuff made them the official prime suspect in the Hacket murder and the attempt on you,” he told her over the phone, “so we were into their offices like a bad smell. Everybody there claims they don’t know who okayed the purchase of the mutated corn, and they sure deny they ever participated in a cover-up. But one thing we found of interest is the bill of sale for a brand-new pickup truck in October 1999. The vehicle’s serial number is the same as Hacket’s.”
He assured her that they wouldn’t quit until they got at the truth. But it could take weeks before they finished questioning everybody and even longer to go through all the records.
By Monday the story had made front-page news in both France and the United States.
VACCIN GÉNÉTIQUE MORTEL screamed the Paris papers.
LETHAL GENETIC VACCINE LINKED TO BIRD FLU announced the New York journals.
BIOFEED: NEGLIGENT HOMICIDE? questioned the Honolulu press.
But so far no police in either country had found a single piece of correspondence, trace of e-mail, or record of a telephone call showing a link to Agrenomics.
“I can’t touch them,” McKnight told her, shaking his head sadly.