Near Death (17 page)

Alex grunted a nonresponse, hung up, and grabbed his coat. It was too stuffy. He had to take a walk, do some thinking in the cold air. His Chinese postdocs smiled at him as he strode through the lab. Frank Sacco furtively looked up then buried his head back in his work. He’d avoided Alex all morning just as he’d done on Saturday night, when he’d slinked off without a word.

Alex did a few circuits of the quad, his hiking boots grinding into the granular ice melt. Before Saturday, he hadn’t given Ginny two thoughts. She was bright enough, he supposed, but boring, a milquetoast. She wasn’t well-read in the fields that interested him and rarely added anything meaningful to the group’s conversations. Her only compelling attribute was that she was a card-carrying member of the near death society. Her NDE was a “good one.” It gave her credibility.

Ginny.
A suicide!

He’d been riveted by her exaggerated reaction to the drug. She was an outlier, and in science one learned from outliers. She’d been out longer than the others, was wilder when she returned, half crazed. She desperately wanted to go back to her twin. She’d begged him.

Now she’s gone and done it
, he thought,
she’s bloody well gone and done it
. He sighed and thought back to the moments he’d spent holding a sharp letter opener, contemplating doing precisely what she had done.

He kept walking until the rims of his ears were numb from wind chill. Back in his cramped office he sat down, his body heavy and wooden. There was so much to do: so many questions, so many experiments. He’d get busy in the
evening when the lab cleared out—away from prying eyes. He’d come to enjoy night work.

His knuckles skimmed the spine of his lab notebook, which he’d carelessly left out in the open. There was an old coffee mug in his credenza filled with rubber bands. He tipped it out and retrieved the little brass key hidden among them. The key opened the lower locking drawer of his desk. When he deposited the notebook he saw it was missing.

The bottle of peptide—gone!

In a frenzy, he searched the drawer, then his desk, then his office. He felt his throat tighten. It
had
to be here! No one else knew about it. No one had a key. That bottle had been there Saturday morning when he’d come in to weigh out individual doses for the salon later that evening. He was absolutely certain he’d returned it and locked the drawer. He’d been more than careful. He’d been paranoid about it, as he had been about everything since he’d drifted to murder. He tried to control his breathing while he searched the office again.

Then it slammed him.
Frank
.

Who else but Frank?

He had access. Since Saturday he knew about the drug. Moreover, he’d been acting strangely all morning. Alex
opened the door and called the young man in, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as his dry voice would allow.

“What’s up, Alex?” Frank asked, looking down at his shoes.

“Something’s missing from my office. Know anything about it?”

“Missing? What?” Frank asked defensively.

“Never mind what. Have you been in my office?”

“No.”

“Have you been in my desk?”

“No!”

“Were you in the lab yesterday?”

“No! What are you accusing me of, Alex?”

“If you’re lying, Frank, so help me God …”

“I’m not lying. Can I go now?”

Alex stared at the man even though he was refusing eye contact. “Let me ask you something, Frank. On Saturday night, everyone spoke except you. What was your experience like?”

“It was good.”

“Good?”

“Yeah, same as everyone else. Pretty much like the others.”

“Ginny Tinley’s dead. She killed herself.”

Frank finally looked at Alex square on. “No shit.”

“Yeah, Frank. No shit.”

“Can I go? It’s lunchtime.”

Alex made two phone calls. The first was to the security desk in the lobby. He asked the guard on duty if she could check the log to see if one of his employees had come in on Sunday. The guard replied that she didn’t have logon access to the weekend data. She’d call her supervisor if Dr. Weller wanted to see if he could help. Alex recoiled at the suggestion. He had no interest in drawing attention. No, he replied, she could drop it. It wasn’t important.

The second call was long distance.

The resonant voice of Miguel Cifuentes was on the line. “Alex Weller! Happy New Year!”

“You too, Miguel, how’s life back home, mate?”

They chatted for a couple of minutes, Alex struggling through the banalities. Finally, he asked how close he was to having his lab set up in Mexico City.

“I’m already up and running. Why?”

“You know the pentapeptide you made me?”

“Sure.”

“I’m going to need more of it. Right away.”

“How much more, my friend?”

Alex pursed his lips then said, “All you can make.”

Twenty-three

The next one was the easiest.

This time Alex had no internal debate about right and wrong, good and evil. He was on a mission. He had the validation he needed to wash away sticky moral qualms. He awoke every morning with a mounting sense that he was at the center of greatness. Standing like Faustus in his magic circle, he felt that another world was being revealed to him, a confluence of science, faith, religion and philosophy. Grand ideas, giant visions dwarfed a small, single life. And besides, there was no doubt, none whatsoever, that his victim would thank him if she knew what lay in store for her a mere four minutes after her heart stopped beating.

The girl was sleepy from drugs and kept nodding off in the car. He asked her how old she was. She said eighteen but she looked younger. He hoped she was. In his garage, when he got back in the car after closing the door, her eyes were closed, her chin on her chest. He didn’t wake her. As soon as he put on his gloves he strangled her. His technique had improved and maybe his hand strength too. She
had the most spindly neck of any of them. Her struggles were light and she went down fast. He laid her down beside the car, got his samples then put her in his polythene-lined trunk and drove off.

When he backed out of the driveway he looked up at their bedroom window. The lights were off. Jessie was there, dreaming. He was tired. He wished he was curled against her. She was a lovely sleeper.

This time he paid more attention to the disposal. He didn’t want to deal with Cyrus O’Malley again. There were more important things to do. This girl would have to stay hidden longer.

He drove south into Rhode Island. His plan drew on his memory of a beach walk he and Jessie had taken two Novembers earlier. Isolated seasonal cottages in Narragansett, dolefully shuttered for the winter. In the dark, he found a cottage cluster, chose one and forced a door. With plastic bags rubber-banded around his feet to avoid footprints, he dragged the girl’s body into a bedroom and shoved it under a stripped bed where it would freeze. No odors till the spring. Spring was a long way off.

When he pushed himself off the cold floorboards some loose change in his pants spilled out. He swore repeatedly and went groping for the coins in the dark. After a minute
of feeling around and under the bed, he was well enough satisfied he’d recovered them all. He shut the door behind him. He had to get back to his lab and process her fluid. Numerous experiments were planned to test for isomers of the Uroboros compound—and if any was left over, he wanted it for himself.

Days later, his purifications and analyses were done. He had his answer.

The sleepy girl’s Uroboros compound was a mixture of no fewer than six isomers! Only one of them was Miguel’s; nature was proving to be complex. The dying brain was producing an array of pentapeptides, similar to one another but subtly different. Perhaps more than one key fit into the lock of his LR-1 receptor—or maybe there were multiple variants of the LR-1 receptor, each unlocked by a specific key. He wearily came to the conclusion that it might take years to fully understand the biology.

Foremost on his mind, though, was to sample this girl’s pure, natural compound. The sleepy girl was the youngest yet. After the experiments were done, enough was left over for a single dose, and one night he eagerly took it under Jessie’s watchful eye.

This time he got to the
last
stepping-stone!

Dickie was only an arm’s length away when Alex was snatched back into the tunnel. He’d been close enough to see the pink flush of his cheeks, the stubble of his beard. He was agonizingly close to physical contact! And despite the heartbreak of the final denial, he felt utter joy when he returned. It was, he told Jessie, the most profound euphoria he’d ever felt. Something powerful and pure was out there, waiting for him.

When he’d talked himself out and was thoroughly spent he happily fell asleep in Jessie’s arms.

The following evening he was at Children’s Hospital, stealing through the semidark corridors of the neuro ward at midnight. He went there directly from his lab, fast-walking the few blocks in the frigid air. He was careful and deliberative. To be safe, he slipped out the rear of his building at the loading dock exit and planned to return the same way. If all went well, he’d be back at his bench processing a precious sample within the hour.

This time there’d be no body to dispose.

He didn’t have to go past the nurse’s station to reach Paulo’s room. The corridor was deserted. He quietly pushed open the door.

Paulo Couto was a four year old with a large inoperable brain tumor. He was Brazilian, born to undocumented parents who waited too long to get the kid attention. At this point, all the doctors could do was to throw on some radiation, high-dose steroids for brain swelling, and antiseizure meds. The neurosurgeons were running the show. Alex was the neurology consult. The epilepsy drugs he prescribed were working as well as could be expected but it was window dressing. The child didn’t have much time.

The latest maneuver was to plant a VP shunt to drain the buildup of fluid from his brain into his abdomen to prevent coma and death. The shunt would buy days, maybe weeks.

Alex gently palpated the rigid plastic tube that lay just under the skin. It ran from his neck along the chest wall. Below the diaphragm it plunged into the peritoneum. When he felt the soft belly, the boy woke up and blinked in confusion.

“Hey, Paulo. How’re you doing?”

The boy smiled and pointed at Alex’s ponytail. Kids liked his long hair and funny accent. Obligingly, he shook his head, making his ponytail sway like a horse’s tail.

“Just checking on you, buddy. Go back to sleep.”

The child fidgeted a little and drifted off again.

The door was closed.

None of the night nurses had seen Alex come onto the floor.

He had a syringe in his pocket.

Three minutes
.

He studied the boy’s steroid-bloated face.

It would be so easy to press his large hand against his mouth, pinching his nose.

At three minutes he would stick a thin needle into the shunt tubing, taking a few cc’s of clear cerebrospinal fluid. It would leave a pinprick mark on the skin, unnoticeable.

The boy wasn’t on a monitor.

He’d be found at the next vital signs check.

There was a Do Not Resuscitate order in his chart.

Phone calls would be made; it would be a peaceful end, a good end. His parents would pray and say he was in a better place.

They’d be right
.

Jessie was at a girlfriend’s house and Alex was alone.
He washed up the dinner plates and tidied the kitchen before opening the fridge and retrieving the plastic tube he’d brought home from the lab.

In the bedroom, he kicked off his shoes and reclined. The tube was cold in his palm.

Everything had gone smoothly. Alex received a courtesy call from the hospital the following morning informing him that Paulo Couto had died during the night. An expected death.

He was done. This would be his last experiment before moving on to the next phase. Tonight he’d answer the last great question.

What would the experience be like with the natural pentapeptide from a child?

He’d taken the Uroboros compound so many times he had no trepidation about being alone, but in case something went wrong he penned a short tender note to Jessie that he left on the dresser.

He emptied the tube into his mouth and waited. He’d have his answer …

… And soon he was standing on the bank of the river of light watching his father, Dickie, waving at him, and noticed too how smoothly confident were his strides across the stepping-stones. With every step the pleasure mounted.

Four stones to go. Three. Two
. He stood squarely on the last stone, an arm’s length from his father. “Come on boy!” Dickie urged. “Only one to go, then you’re here. You can do it!”

His heart exploded with joy when he felt himself pushing off with his right foot.

His left foot touched the opposite bank!

Then both feet!

He was there!

And then his arms were around his father’s neck. It was warm, full of blood. He heard his father say, “Hello, boy.”

There was someone behind Dickie
.

He couldn’t see who it was, but he
felt
a presence, an overwhelming power.

His father was about to encircle him with his arms when—

He was wrenched away, literally snatched from his father’s loving grasp and hurtled back, back into the tunnel, back into his bedroom.

It happened so fast, this passage from one world to the next. The cruelty of the return stung his eyes.

Tears started to spring from the deepest well of his soul. And when Jessie came home an hour later he was still holding onto himself, rocking himself, crying.

Twenty-four

A party was getting under way in a residential loft off Kenmore Square a short distance from Fenway Park. The hosts were an Australian couple, commercial artists celebrating a contract their small company had landed to do ad work for a software company. Throngs of friends and business associates milled around their cavernous space on the fifth floor of what once had been a paint factory.