The Death Row Complex (30 page)

As Katrina walked past the robot room and into the room beyond, her eyes fell upon the liquid nitrogen tank, and something dawned. The activator data was still in there. She and Jason had hidden the data months ago, and she had never had a chance to dig it back out. The lab had always been guarded. Until today.

Katrina shook her head rapidly from side to side for a moment in an attempt to clear the fogginess of sleep deprivation. She needed the capacity to think.

There had now been a murder in the lab. If the activator data had been a threat before, it was an even bigger threat now. Perhaps it was time to destroy it for good. And this might be her only window, her only chance with no guard at the lab. And besides, she no longer needed it.

Katrina glanced around momentarily, as if she might see someone else in the room. Of course, she did not.

She found the stool used to reach the top of the tank and the blue cryo-gloves required to touch its contents. Then she reached into a closet to retrieve the item she had purchased from the humane society where Alexis worked.

Over the course of the last few months, Katrina’s lab had become the most sophisticated infectious disease laboratory in the world. Within it, the shiny new Pooper Scooper looked ridiculous. But with its stainless steel arms, long reach, and plastic handles, it was the perfect tool for retrieving something from the bottom of a tank held at one hundred ninety-six degrees below zero.

Katrina raised the lid of the tank and stood back to allow the initial cloud of sublimation to puff out. Then she waved away as much of the residual vapor as possible with a blue glove. She removed the four towers that she and Jason had placed atop the cryogenic bag containing the data and set them onto the floor. Then she fished out the bag with the Pooper Scooper and dropped it onto the linoleum.

After replacing the towers and closing the lid, Katrina used a gloved hand to pick up the still frozen bag. And as she did, she heard a door close.

Katrina raced to the nearest laboratory island and opened a top drawer. She dropped the bag containing the data, still smoking with sublimation, inside the drawer and slammed it shut, and then took off the gloves and dropped them onto the table. She crammed the Pooper Scooper back into its closet, just as an exhausted-looking Sean McMullan rounded the corner into the room.

Katrina could feel herself flushing. “Oh, you scared me,” she said. “What are you doing here?” As she spoke, Katrina walked away from the closet and back toward the robot room.

With a quizzical look on his face, McMullan followed. “I was just stopping by on my way out of town. Roger and I have an emergency and we have to go back to D.C. He already left. I wanted to make sure everything was OK here before I followed him.”

“Yeah,” she said too quickly. “Everything’s fine. I did the DNA extraction, and the PCR is running right now. I just need to run the gel in a little bit.”

“Good, I’ll see you soon then.”

He followed her out of the room and back into the main lab. Behind them, a thin ghost of sublimation vapor was still creeping upward from the drawer next to the liquid nitrogen tank.

At the local FBI branch office in San Diego, a special agent was observing a series of video monitors. As Sean McMullan and Katrina Stone were stepping away from the liquid nitrogen tank in Stone’s lab, the guard leaned forward toward his controls to digitally rewind the video that had just captured his interest. He watched again as she pulled an object out of the tank and then hastily shoved it into a drawer upon the arrival of McMullan.

“
Gotcha
,” the agent said under his breath and picked up the receiver of his telephone.

4:35 P.M.
EST

By the time Sean McMullan arrived at his partner’s home outside of Washington, D.C., the majority of FBI, USPIS, and HazMat officials had already cleared out. Roger Gilman was sitting at his kitchen table with Teresa Wood, James Johnson, and Guofu Wong. Teresa, wearing white latex gloves, was delicately touching the sides of the greeting card on the table while reading its text.

McMullan did not need to see his partner’s card. He had an identical copy in his back pocket, pulled out of his own San Diego post office box that morning before boarding his plane. As he approached the other inspectors, he wordlessly removed it and tossed it onto the table next to the other copy.

Guofu Wong was the first to speak. “At least there’s nothing hazardous on them,” he said.

“Of course there isn’t,” Teresa answered.

“Can I get an ‘amen’ for e-beam irradiation,” McMullan added. As he spoke, his cell phone buzzed in his pocket. McMullan looked down and silenced it.

“Perhaps you overreacted in sending our entire task force and HazMat team to respond to this,” Johnson suggested coldly to Gilman.

Gilman’s eyes blazed. “And what would you have done, Dr. Johnson, if it was
your
wife and seven children in here?”

The eyes of the two men locked and a terse silence followed. Then Johnson broke Gilman’s gaze and looked down. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.

“Mr. Gilman,” Wong said, “Dr. Johnson’s
one
child died of leukemia forty years ago, and his wife passed away just last year.”

“I’m sorry,” Gilman said. “I didn’t know.”

Johnson ignored the brief revelation of his personal life. “Well, we have a more current issue to address,” he said. “Obviously, this Doctor character knows a lot more about this case than he should.”

“Agreed,” said Wong. “He knows who is on this case, and he knows your home addresses—two pieces of information that were never available outside of the FBI.”

“Which means that he—
or she
—is either
in
the FBI, has infiltrated, or has gotten to someone else.” The comment was from Teresa. As she spoke, her eyes darted rapidly from one of the four men at the table to the next. Although she had not said it, her point was understood. All four of them were now suspects as far as the USPIS was concerned. “With that being said,” Teresa continued, “I’m afraid I have to raise a really awkward issue at this point.”

“You can’t be serious!” Gilman interrupted. “And if us, why not you?”

“Well, first of all,” Teresa said. “I’m not in the FBI. I do not have access to the two pieces of information we just discussed. The only way I knew how to get here, in case you don’t remember an hour ago, was by getting directions from you.”

“I’m not in the FBI either,” Guofu Wong pointed out.

“No, you’re not,” Teresa conceded, “but I think you and I should both cooperate as well. I will happily offer my DNA, a handwriting analysis, pap smear, and whatever else you fellows need. And I expect that the FBI will put its forensics people on this analysis to corroborate whatever I find in my investigation. But you can bet that
my
investigation will be thorough.”

Another cell phone rang. Each of the inspectors checked his or her phone, and Gilman announced, “It’s mine.” He pressed the button to silence the phone.

“We’re done here, anyway,” Teresa said. And then, glaring at Gilman, “… provided I can collect a hair sample from each of you on our way out the door.”

She turned to Johnson, whose head was totally bald. “Dr. Johnson, I can use hair from any body part of your choice, as long as I get to pluck it. Or, I can come by your office this afternoon and take an oral swab.”

Johnson loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt, revealing a chest speckled with white hair. “As much fun as that oral thing sounds… be my guest.”

4:27 P.M.
PST

Katrina awoke from a fitful sleep and pulled a robe over her naked body before stepping out of the bedroom. Her hair was still wet from the shower that had failed to wash off her most recent encounter with “Something Morales.”

The house was silent. Katrina knocked on Lexi’s door and then poked her head into her daughter’s room. Alexis was not home. Katrina looked at her watch. It was almost four thirty in the afternoon.

Katrina walked out into the kitchen and brewed a pot of coffee. Then she sat down on the living room couch with a fresh cup and the FBI file. She found the spot where she had left off at the hospital and resumed her reading.

A thick forensic analysis from the United States Postal Inspection Service confronted her. Scanning quickly for relevant information, Katrina read through reports detailing Crimescope analyses, hair fibers, lab coat fragments, and ESDA analyses. The majority of lab tests were similar to assays Katrina herself had used religiously for years, and it was easy reading.

Then she saw an image that made her pause. It was the scanned image of the writing from the greeting card. The text that had been picked up by the ESDA trace analysis.

WHO1315

DR1630

AL1800

Katrina stared at the text for a moment longer. Then she leapt from the couch, spilling coffee onto her robe as she did. “
Shit!
” she shouted as the liquid seared her leg, but she did not stop moving.

Katrina raced into the bedroom to quickly dress, brush her teeth, and pull her long hair back into a clip at the nape of her neck. Then she darted into the guest room that doubled as a home office and switched on her computer.

Eagerly, Katrina clicked into the start menu of her computer to confirm what she already knew. She clasped a hand over her mouth and sat for a moment, thinking. And then, with trembling hands, Katrina opened her Internet browser, where she pulled up an online road map function.

5:18 P.M.
PST

A bell over the door jingled softly as Alexis Stone stepped into the Army surplus store on University Avenue. She flashed a smile at a man dressed in full camouflage behind the counter.

Alexis walked past the shelves of miscellaneous items and through a narrow hallway leading to the restrooms. She passed both restroom doors and knocked softly on a third, unmarked door at the back of the hall.

“Yeah?” came a voice from inside.

“Code word Lincoln,” Lexi said softly, after checking over her shoulder for unwanted company. Lincoln. Freer of slaves. It could not have been more appropriate for the Animal Liberation Front.

The door opened and Alexis stepped in, then locked the door behind her. Scattered around the room were a variety of mismatched, tattered chairs and couches, a refrigerator, a television, and several tables.

On the walls was a collection of posters. In one, an anonymous person held a white rabbit closely, protectively to his or her face, which was covered with a black ski mask. The caption read “If not you, who? If not now, when?”

Several people were seated at a table and sprawled on the couches. They greeted Alexis with nods and hand-waves when she entered the room. Lexi walked over to a teenage boy sitting on a loveseat, leaned down and kissed him with tongue, mindless of the others in the room.

“Hey, babe,” he said casually, and sat up to allow room on the loveseat for her. She sat next to him and draped one leg across his lap. The boy began to rub her calf.

“So what’s the latest?” Alexis asked.

“Finalizing strategy for the biotechnology convention next week,” said an older man. “Sounds like we’re going to have quite a turnout.”

“Good,” Lexi said. “How many?”

“Well over a thousand, according to my estimation,” said the same man. “But we’re counting on you to be at the forefront. Since your mom is the keynote speaker, you can really call attention to us. Grab the press. Make sure they know who you are, and make sure they know you don’t support your mother’s work. The press goes crazy when it comes to conflict within families, so you are in a really strong position to discredit your mother.”

“You bet,” she said. And then with a giggle, “I’m going to be grounded for the rest of my life.”

The room erupted with snickers and a few more boisterous laughs.