Shadows Fall (33 page)

He came back into the bedroom and pulled on yesterday’s slacks and polo. Looking down at himself, he noticed that he was covered in wrinkled fabric. “Looks like I’ll have to make a quick pit stop on the way in.”

“Yep, because my clothes sure as hell aren’t going to fit you.” Titus bit his lip, and the covers moved like something was going on underneath them with his concealed hand. He was obviously turned on by Charlie’s size, and that might have caused Charlie to puff out his chest a little.

Sighing, Charlie walked up and kissed Titus’s forehead, running a hand through his hair to the back of his neck. “Wish I didn’t have to leave,” he mumbled.

“Yeah, me too. But I guess the world needs saving, Batman,” Titus said and gave him a little push to get him started.

“I’ve got to go meet with Sonny and Karen and fill them in on what we found. I don’t know what’s going to happen when we put our heads together on this, but I may be working a lot the next few days. Sorry,” he said and meant it.

Titus nodded. “I understand. I’m going to have to work some extra shifts at the shop with Chelsea being miss—I mean with Chelsea being out.” Titus pinned Charlie with a serious look. “You know you can always just show up here. Even if it’s late. Even if it’s just to talk or to sleep. We don’t have to make a date for you to come see me, okay?”

This time, Charlie leaned over to capture his lips for a brief but loaded kiss. He pulled back quickly before he could convince himself that murder could wait another day. “Same goes for you.”

Titus’s smile was slow in building, but no less brilliant than a sunrise. “Thanks. Have a good day. Be careful.”

“Will do. I—Well, I’ll see you when I can.”

“Oh, shit, I almost forgot!”

Charlie paused at the door and looked back expectantly.

Titus stood up, heedless of his nakedness, and walked over to where Charlie stood. “Have you ever heard of SevenTek Industries?”

“No, I haven’t. What is it?”

Titus’s brow furrowed and his eyes slid to the side as if he were trying to remember something. “I’m not sure. It might not be anything. But at the police station, just before I had the seizure, I was getting visions of Brandon Meyers’ life. I wasn’t just a passive observer either. In this particular moment, I
was
Brandon. I don’t know if you know that he was having financial problems, with his medical bills for the HIV and all.

“Anyway, at the table with all of his bills, he had a business card for something called SevenTek Industries. It didn’t say anything other than that it was an independent human genetics laboratory. I’ve never heard of it, and with all the craziness going to the hospital and everything, I completely forgot about it. Sorry.”

Titus looked apologetic, but Charlie wasn’t concerned with
when
Titus had told him. He was focused on
what
Titus had told him. His heart started pounding, and his fingers itched to pull out his phone and call DeRossi to go check it out. But he didn’t.

If he called Sonny, they’d have to go through their whole fight about Titus again, and Sonny said he didn’t want to have anything to do with the so-called evidence Titus came up with. Mind made up, Charlie pressed another quick kiss to Titus’s lips. “Thank you.”

Titus shrugged, but the shy smile that touched his lips said it all. “Might be nothing,” he said.

“Might be everything.”

Chapter Twenty-four

Charlie had decided to go the above-board route first. He knew that if there was anything unlawful going on at SevenTek Industries, he wasn’t going to find out about it just by walking in there. However, he had to at least give the impression that he was willing to try.

The building itself was a drab, industrial-looking monolith of aging brick. Charlie wondered if the idea was to put people off so that they didn’t look too closely. If it was, they weren’t trying too hard, considering he’d found the address on an online ‘white pages’ database. The lab didn’t have its own website, but that wasn’t unheard of for private facilities that weren’t looking to advertise.

Imprinted on the glass door to the facility were the initials S.T.I. Charlie had a little laugh at that as he pulled it open and let himself inside. Just inside was a small vestibule with spotless whitewashed walls. There wasn’t an ounce of color in the whole place; it was so stark, it hurt Charlie’s eyes.

The tiny foyer was empty, not a stick of furniture lined the walls. Apparently, visitors were not encouraged. Charlie got the same feeling from the woman he could see through the window to the adjacent room. The setup was much like a doctor’s office check-in desk, only the receptionist didn’t look happy to see him.
Damn, and the badge hasn’t even come out yet.

“Is there something I can help you with, sir?” she asked.

Charlie stepped up to the sliding glass window, which the woman still hadn’t opened. He tried for a charming smile, but by the way her lips tightened and her eyes narrowed, Charlie could tell he’d missed the mark. “Ah, yes. I was hoping to be able to speak with someone in charge of the facility. I’m interested in what kind of research is being done here.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t help you with that. SevenTek is not open to the public. Any and all information relating to our research is confidential.”

Sighing, Charlie reached beneath the collar of his polo and pulled out his badge chain, hanging the shield in full view on his chest. Her eyes widened, but her guarded expression went unchanged.

“Please call the manager or the CEO, or whoever it is on staff that makes the decisions. I’m not asking.”

The woman frowned, then jerked her head in a small nod. “Someone will be with you shortly.”

Charlie stepped away, turning his back on her. He knew she would warn whoever she called that he was a cop, but it couldn’t be helped. She spoke quietly into the phone for a few seconds before hanging up and swiveling her chair over to some file cabinets.

Fifteen minutes they kept him waiting. He figured they did it just to show him they could fuck with him, even though the law was on his side. Finally a short, slender woman came through one of only two doors in the vestibule. She was pretty in an understated way, with delicate features that matched the rest of her, and long sable-colored hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. She also wore a lab coat over her black wide-leg slacks.

Walking up to Charlie, she stuck out her hand for a shake. “Hi, I’m Dr. Ari Keyes. What can I help you with?”

“Detective Charlie Hale. Thank you for seeing me.” He shook her hand and she gave him an appreciative look. It wasn’t so much a look of sexual attraction, but more like how someone would regard a painting in an art gallery.

“The name SevenTek industries came up in an open investigation, so I came to get a sense of what you do here, and see how it relates to my case.”

Dr. Keyes seemed genuinely concerned—maybe even startled. “What kind of investigation?”

“Homicide.”

Her fine-boned hand flew to her throat and she gave a little gasp. “Oh, my goodness. Well, we’ll certainly do anything we can to help, detective. May I ask in what context our lab came up?”

“One of the victims had a SevenTek business card.” It wasn’t necessarily the truth. Though Titus had seen it in his vision, the card hadn’t turned up when they’d initially searched Brandon’s apartment. It was for that reason that Charlie had chosen to try to get voluntary cooperation from SevenTek—he certainly wouldn’t be able to get a search warrant without finding that card. “There might not be any connection, but we have to follow any lead we have.”

“Of course.”

Dr. Keyes led Charlie down a long empty hallway. It was the same sterile white that the vestibule had been. There were several closed, unmarked doors lining the corridor. “What do all of these lead to?”

“A few administrative offices, records rooms, personal offices of the executives, that kind of thing.”

Charlie found it extremely odd that none of the doors were labeled, but it wasn’t overtly suspicious. He filed it away for future reference. “So what kind of research do you do here? The business card said something about genetics.”

She gave him a benign smile and kept walking briskly down the seemingly endless hallway. “Yes, we have a hand in just about every field of study under the genetics umbrella with a primary focus on genomics and stem-cell research as they relate to medical applications, immunology, and epidemiology.”

Just listening to her talk about it gave Charlie a headache; science had never been his thing. “You’ll have to forgive me, Dr. Keyes. All of this goes pretty far over my head. I recognize a few buzz words in there, but my knowledge of genetic research is very slim.”

He paused when they reached wide double doors bearing nothing but the word LAB. Dr. Keyes opened one of the doors and ushered him through ahead of her. “Isn’t all that stem-cell and genomics stuff pretty, I don’t know, controversial?”

She inclined her head as he passed her. “Of course. People fear the things they don’t understand, especially when coming from a place of emotion rather than science.”

Through the doors was a huge room filled with long counters that were dotted with workspaces, alternating microscope stations and full computer setups. At the end of each counter was a large metal sink and an eye-wash fountain. Various other machines that Charlie couldn’t identify were scattered around the room. He didn’t really know what he was looking at, but it all seemed quite state-of-the-art. And white.
White, white, fucking white everywhere, and not a window in sight.
He’d go insane working here; it was making him panicky just visiting.

Clueless about Charlie’s inner turmoil, Dr. Keyes kept talking. “Most of the controversy surrounding stem-cell research was related to embryonic stem cells, specifically the need to destroy or create them. Politicians and religious leaders were banding together against scientists to stop the research in its tracks. Regardless of my personal feelings on the subject, we don’t deal with embryonic stem cells here.”

Charlie nodded, at a loss as to anything he could say to sound even remotely intelligent. He had a ridiculous flop-sweat going on, and his breathing had turned shallow. He hadn’t had such an attack of claustrophobia in years. There was just something about this place. He’d been so worried about where his next breath was coming from, Charlie had lost track of Dr. Keyes’ monologue.

“…what we’re trying to do here at SevenTek is to recognize and employ ground-breaking technologies for studying the human genome. The potential for growth as a society—and evolution as a species—is astronomical.”

Still disoriented, Charlie latched onto a single word within her diatribe—
evolution
. What were these scientists playing at? Were they trying to engineer humanity into some kind of forced evolution? The questions made his head spin. Maybe it wasn’t so scary to people who understood the science side of it—maybe Charlie was just one of those people Dr. Keyes had mentioned, those who feared what they didn’t understand. If SevenTek was operating within the confines of the law, there wasn’t much he could do about it anyway.

“You’re doing human testing?”

Dr. Keyes stopped beside one of the huge machines. “I’m no Dr. Frankenstein if that’s what you’re thinking. We’re not testing chemicals or cosmetics, here. The majority of what we do with humans is gene-mapping—taking DNA samples from a person or groups of persons, and from those we create a physical map of a gene, assigning DNA fragments to specific chromosomes. This helps us identify genetic markers for particular diseases or malformities within the species, human or otherwise. I’ll spare you the long explanation,” she assured Charlie, though the quirk of her lips said she knew she’d lost him already.

Opening another set of double doors, she ushered Charlie into another lab. This one was similar to Karen’s lab in that it had several metal exam tables set up. He eyed them with concern because, really, what did they need those for?

“We’re not hurting anyone here, detective,” she said as if she’d read his mind. “This room is where we perform post-mortem genetic testing—a genetic autopsy, if you will.”

They didn’t spend much time in that room. Dr. Keyes guided Charlie on to the next as quickly as they’d come. Soon they were in another hallway, but this one had several windows into more labs. They passed a couple of rooms that had wall-to-wall cages with a myriad of different kinds of animals, Charlie assumed for testing.

“Do you get government funding?” he asked.

Dr. Keyes regarded him thoughtfully for a few moments, as if she hadn’t expected him to be capable of an intelligent line of questioning. “No, we don’t. The lab is funded completely by private citizens—investors, but scientists like myself. There are seven of us in total, hence the name SevenTek.”

“Us?”

“Yes, detective. I am one of the investors.”

“Who are the others?”

“That, I can’t tell you. Our other benefactors prefer to remain anonymous to the public, if not silent.”

Charlie let it lie for the time being. Not having to rely on government monies to sponsor their research would give SevenTek a lot more leeway with the legalities of said research. He committed that tidbit of info to memory as well, as it might be worth passing along to Special Investigations once he’d closed his case.