The Death Row Complex (22 page)

Carlos “Chuck” Morales had been instructed by his four-minute-older brother Oscar to follow the ugly bitch with the thick black hair. He had no idea he would be following her for more than eight hours and five hundred miles.

Fortunately, the Bitch’s beat up piece-of-shit car had been bright red in its earlier days. It was easy to keep an eye on. The red Honda left San Quentin and crossed over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, then crawled its way through the Interstate 580 cluster-fuck of San Francisco. Once the 580 turned eastward and headed inland, the traffic lightened up considerably, and by the time they were merging onto Interstate 5 south, Chuck was on autopilot.

For more than two hundred torturously boring miles between Tracy and Bakersfield, Chuck kept his eyes glued to the rear bumper of the red Honda. When the Bitch finally stopped for gas just north of Grapevine, Chuck pulled into the gas station across the street to fill up as well. He was sure she would notice him. She didn’t appear to.

The free-for-all traffic of Los Angeles woke him up temporarily. But as he followed the Bitch through Orange County and into San Diego, Chuck was ready to kill his brother. He was more than five hundred miles from home, he was hungry, he had no place to sleep, and he desperately had to take a piss.

The red Honda headed eastbound on Interstate 8 for ten miles and exited at College Avenue, where it turned right onto the San Diego State University campus.

And then he ran into the roadblock.

Chuck was three cars behind the red Honda when he realized that a guard was monitoring the passage of cars up the hill to the buildings overlooking the freeway. The Honda was waved through.

Before he had time to come up with a reasonable purpose for being there, Chuck was stopped by the guard. After five hundred miles of driving, he had no choice but to watch while the Bitch slipped up the hill, around a bend, and out of his sight.

The Doctor was waiting in an underground parking lot when the old, red Honda arrived.

The driver stepped out of the battered car and the long, black skirt draped almost to the concrete floor.

“Have you kept up the payments to the prisoner?” the Doctor asked.

“Of course.”

“And?”

“Morales doesn’t suspect a thing. He still thinks he has me over a rail.”

After the red Honda drove away from the parking structure, the Doctor stood reflecting for a moment. Oscar Morales would not be killed just yet. Morales was still needed. He still had something important. Morales had several vials of anthrax left, and more importantly, he had the skill to keep them contained until the time of release.

Aside from that, Oscar Morales did not even know the Doctor existed.

J
ANUARY 18, 2016
9:35 A.M.
PST

The next morning, Chuck was staring at the monitor of a rented computer in the pay-per-use business center of a postal annex. All he knew from Oscar was that the Bitch worked with anthrax. What he had learned for himself was that she was affiliated with San Diego State University. From there, it was easy to find her.

Every faculty member at San Diego State University had his or her own laboratory website, linked to a professional bio and photograph. Chuck scrolled through the various pages until one caught his eye, and he smiled.

Katrina Stone, Ph.D.
Professor of biology. Research focuses on anthrax biology and pathogenesis of bacterial/host interactions, including high throughput screening for anthrax lethal factor inhibitors.

Chuck scrolled through the remainder of the faculty listings for the same department. There were no other researchers at SDSU involved in anthrax work. He clicked on the link to Katrina Stone’s web page.

The page contained detailed contact information, including a building and room number for her lab. Chuck looked around and found the employee who had seated him at the computer. In his most polite voice, he said, “Excuse me, sir?”

The employee turned around. “How can I help you?”

“I was wondering if I can print something.”

“Of course,” the employee said, his eyes falling onto the web page. “Well, you’ll want to use that printer over there.” He motioned across the room. “May I use your mouse for a moment?” The employee reached over and used the mouse to locate the correct printer. “That is our photo printer. It will make this page come out the clearest.” The employee printed the page, and then walked over and picked it up off the printer. After a final glance at the page to ensure the quality of the print job, he handed it over to Chuck.

The employee had been right. The color photo of the woman named Katrina Stone, Ph.D. was faithfully reproduced in the printout. Chuck thanked the employee and paid, then exited the building and began walking out to his car. As he walked, he studied the photo intensely.

The woman in the picture had long, reddish hair. The hair of the woman he had followed from San Quentin had been raven black.
Dye job?
Wig?
Chuck racked his brain to accurately remember the face of the woman he had followed. As he stared at the photo, he could not. But he did remember one detail:
The bitch from the prison was uglier than a bucket of armpits. This chick, Katrina Stone, is hot
. He briefly wondered how well the average woman could disguise her face with makeup and realized that he had absolutely no idea. Female habits were a total mystery to Chuck, whose transient interest in any woman tended to eject from his body along with his semen.

No matter. It was the best lead he had. And San Diego State University was only a couple of freeway exits away.

This time, Chuck left his car behind the checkpoint. He skirted his way up through the landscaping to approach the building from behind. Then he slipped past a pair of guards when they were looking the other direction.

Chuck took the elevator to the indicated floor of the North Life Sciences building. When he stepped out, he scanned the various hallway doors for the lab with the correct number. It was then that he realized that the lab he needed was the only one being guarded.

Bitch must be pretty important
, he thought. He briefly remembered what Oscar had told him about live anthrax. Not very many people—even scientists—have access to it. Chuck was certain that he had found the right woman.

He approached the guard at the door.

“Do you have an ID?” the guard asked. “Nobody is allowed in this lab without an ID.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that. I’m looking for Katrina Stone. I’m an old friend of hers.”

“Well,” the guard said, “unless you have an appointment, which you don’t or she would have told me, I’m afraid you’re S-O-L. Next time, try the phone.”

Chuck considered his options for a moment and decided not to slit the guard’s throat in the hallway. Instead, he fixated a long glare upon him and then turned to re-mount the elevator.

He took the elevator back down and stepped out of the building. As soon as he was outside, he reached into his breast pocket for a cigarette, and then remembered for the thousandth time that he had smoked his last one the day before, halfway between San Quentin and San Diego. The mild nausea, severe headache, and nervousness that had been following him all morning as a consequence were not helping his mood. Not one bit.

Chuck shook his head and looked around. He remembered the piece-of-shit red Honda that he had tailed from San Francisco. There was no parking lot near the building that he could see. A few utility vehicles occupied a designated area, and even fewer miscellaneous cars sat in spaces marked for temporary parking. No faded red Honda.

Along the west side of the building was a small food stand. The sign along its top read “The Hotdogger.” Outside of “The Hotdogger” was a small collection of cheap tables with two people sitting at one of them. There was nobody else in sight with the exception of a solitary employee attending the stand. Chuck approached the stand and asked the attendant if they sold cigarettes.

The employee laughed out loud. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, why.” Chuck did not see the humor.

“You can’t buy cigarettes anywhere on campus, Dude. That’s about like asking for meth.”

Chuck refrained from informing his new friend that a little meth was also sounding like a good idea, but he’d settle for a smoke. Out of ideas, he turned and sat down at one of the tables.

And then the woman from the photograph in Chuck’s hand stepped out of the North Life Sciences building.

Katrina Stone, Ph.D., did not seem to notice Chuck as she walked briskly away from him. Chuck waited for a moment to allow her a lead and then followed.

She passed through another building and crossed a street before approaching a cliff. Then she disappeared, having seemingly walked right over its edge.

Chuck rushed forward. Descending from the top of the cliff was a steep staircase leading to a parking lot below. Stone was already halfway down. Chuck remained standing at the top of the stairs from which he had a bird’s eye view of the parking lot. The woman approached a silver sedan, clicked her keychain to unlock the doors, and slipped inside.

Not the piece-of-shit red Honda after all.

5:24 P.M.
PST

The sun was gone, the evening breeze cool, when Alexis Stone stepped out of the market. A tuft of her shoulder-length hair—exactly the same auburn color as her mother’s—billowed across her young face. Alexis shifted the grocery bag on her hip to free one hand and brush the hair aside. Then she buttoned her jacket while she walked.

A man followed her out of the store. “Excuse me,” he said politely.

Alexis turned and looked at the man. He was cute, and probably in his twenties.

“I don’t mean to be forward,” he said, “but I make great veal parmesan and I was wondering if you’d be interested sometime.”

“Thanks,” Alexis said, “but I have a boyfriend, and we don’t eat meat. Besides, I just can’t see myself having dinner with someone who has dead rotting animals inside of him.” She smiled sweetly.

The man gave her a strange look and shuffled quickly away, muttering something under his breath. Alexis continued walking and grinned, already envisioning Kevin’s reaction to the story. He’d fall over laughing. She couldn’t wait to tell him.