Crime Zero (8 page)

Decker smiled. He suddenly had a compelling urge to ask him about Axelman's claim, to hear him laugh at it. But before he could say anything, the doorbell rang.

Matty's eyes lit up. "That'll be Joey. He's coming around for a violin lesson. Hey, we could all play together, Luke."

"Joey Barzini?" Decker groaned. "Come on, Gramps, you're not still schmoozing with that old hood?" Decker wanted to talk to his grandfather about Axelman, and instead Matty was giving a music lesson to a man reputed to head up one of the most powerful Mafia families on the West Coast. Decker knew about Barzini. His business--real estate and lots of it--was ostensibly legit, and he'd famously donated one million dollars a year to the San Francisco Symphony for the last decade or so. However, it was widely recognized by the great and the good that Barzini was still far from respectable.

But Matty had never cared much for the great and the good, and over the last few years the sixty-year-old Mafia man and the eighty-year-old concert violinist had become unlikely friends. Perhaps that was why Matty felt so relaxed about leaving his door and windows unlocked. Nobody with half a brain cell was going to burgle this place with a pal of Joey Barzini's living there.

"Why do you still see him, Gramps? And why do you invite him here? I don't like your dealing with crooks."

Matty frowned. "Because he's my friend and because he comes to visit. And just because he's from a criminal family, it doesn't mean he's a crook."

Decker couldn't argue with that.

"Matty, how are you?" a rich voice called from the stairs.

"I'm fine, Joey. Come on up."

Decker shook his head. "Have a good lesson, Gramps," he said. "I'm going to find a drink."

"Luke, don't go."

Decker rested a hand on his shoulder. "Gramps, I came to see you, not Joey Barzini. Don't worry. I'll be back later." Turning to leave, Decker wasn't really angry about his grandfather's consorting with Barzini. He wasn't even angry about not being able to talk about Axelman. In fact he was kind of relieved he could leave that particular sleeping dog undisturbed. If he was honest, he was angry with himself for being unable to shrug off Axelman's stupid words.

On the stairs he passed a huge man in a suit. The violin case he held looked like a toy in his hands. He had blue-black hair and the darkest eyes Decker had ever seen. Decker knew Barzini was about sixty, but the man looked little more than forty-five.

They acknowledged each other with a cautious smile, never having met face-to-face before. "Your grandfather's a remarkable man," was all Barzini said.

"That I know," said Decker. "Enjoy your lesson."

Outside, Decker breathed in the evening air and walked to his car. He was even free now to catch up with Kathy Kerr. But he quickly dismissed the thought. He would call Hank Butcher or whoever was around and have a few cold beers. He would feel better after that.

He didn't see the white BMW pull up and park outside Matty's house as he pulled away from the curb and drove downtown. And he certainly didn't see Axelman's lawyer, Tad Rosenblum, climb out and knock on Matty's front door. In his right hand he held an envelope addressed in a spidery handwritten scrawl to Special Agent Luke Decker.

Chapter 6.

Mendoza Drive, Two Miles West of Stanford University. Wednesday, October 29, 9:12 P.M.

"She didn't even seem excited when I told her the news," Dr. Kathy Kerr complained, taking another sip of her Earl Grey tea. "It's been almost nine years of damn hard work, and we've actually gained FDA approval to start Phase Two efficacy trials. We've proved that Vector Nine is safe on animal and now healthy human volunteers. Finally we can go ahead and see if Project Conscience actually works on violent criminals. But is the great Alice Prince excited? Is she, like hell?

"And she was pretty quick to put those vials back in that precious safe of hers when I came in. She may be brilliant, but at times she can be bloody paranoid."

Kathy looked at the face opposite hers and smiled. "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you, Rocky?"

As if to prove her correct, the large chimp cocked his head to one side and proceeded to scratch his chin. Then he turned back to the flickering portable TV on the step outside his pen, its extension power cable trailing back across the yard to the house.

The night air was cool as she sat on the stoop by Rocky's pen in her backyard on Mendoza Drive. Mendoza Drive was a grand name for the rough track. Her house was at the end surrounded by woods and fields. Her nearest neighbor was hundreds of yards away, and that was just as well considering how noisy Rocky could get.

At more than four feet tall Rocky was a massive chimpanzee. If he put his mind to it, he could easily tear a man apart. He had been one of the original primates on Project Conscience. In Kathy's laboratory at the Stanford Medical Research Center as many as eight apes used to be housed in the adjoining primate compound. But since the project had moved on to human volunteers three years ago, the apes had been found homes in local zoos and wildlife sanctuaries.

However, Rocky was too old, and after his contribution to her work she felt obliged to care for him. So under the instructions of a keeper from the Charles Paddock Zoo down in Atascadero she had built this enclosed ape house in the garden of her stucco house on Mendoza Drive. Rocky had been instrumental in testing her discovery of the seventeen genes that coded for aggressive violent behavior.

A normal chimp, he had been unusually violent when younger, almost killing one of the other apes. But ever since he had received one of the earliest somatic gene therapy serums taken from the genes of a smaller, gentler bonobo chimp, Rocky's behavior had changed markedly, prompting many of the developments on Project Conscience. The reformed bruiser was now violent only when he thought Kathy was in danger; otherwise he was as mild as the proverbial lamb.

She put her half-empty mug of tea down on the ground next to her mobile phone and briefcase. After the Tice hearing this morning she had returned to her laboratory on Pasteur Drive at Stanford University. Any thoughts of Luke Decker were quickly pushed from her mind when she received the fax from the Food and Drug Administration giving her approval to test her viral vector on criminal volunteers. Grinning from ear to ear, she had broken the news to her two research assistants, Frank Whittaker and Karen Stein, and the lab technicians. An impromptu party in the labs had followed. So when she had rushed off to ViroVector to share the good news with Alice Prince, she'd felt deflated by her less than enthusiastic reaction. Still, tonight's farewell drinks for her assistants, Frank and Karen, had doubled up as a celebration as well. Kathy had taken them and the lab technicians out for a meal before dropping Frank and Karen off at the San Francisco airport.

She didn't begrudge them their six-week field trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo; after all she had helped arrange the sponsorship from ViroVector. And even though the timing wasn't ideal, Alice Prince had arranged for two fully qualified scientists from ViroVector to stand in while they were away. It was just that Frank and Karen had been with her from the beginning and had become more than colleagues; they were her closest friends in California. Staring up at the clear night sky, Kathy saw an airplane pass overhead. In a few hours theirs would be doing the same.

Reaching into her briefcase, she pulled out the folder she had prepared for tomorrow's meeting with Alice Prince and Director Naylor. Just reading the title, "Project Con-science--Next Steps," gave her a thrill.

Would Project Conscience actually work? Alice Prince could be strange at times, but her work was brilliant, and Kathy had learned a huge amount from her in the last nine years at the cutting edge of gene therapy and viral vector technology. And although her other main sponsor, Madeline Naylor of the FBI, was paranoid about secrecy, at least she gave clear direction on the few occasions they met.

Kathy stood up and patted Rocky's arm through the wire of the pen. She picked up her briefcase, unlocked the door, and walked to the back of the pen, where she bent down to an old school trunk screwed to the wooden floor. After taking a key from her pocket, she unlocked the trunk and lifted the lid. She then reached into her briefcase, took out a computer disc and a copy of the folder she had prepared for her key meeting with Madeline Naylor tomorrow, and placed them in the trunk. She put the disc into a plastic case alongside the thirty or so discs already there and laid the folder on a pile of similar files.

Along with a few personal photos and artifacts that had only sentimental value the trunk contained copies of every major document, journal, and experiment marking the development of Project Conscience. This was her personal record of her life's work, proof of what she had done, regardless of whatever anyone else might claim or say in the future. She regarded it as safe because no burglar would think to look here, and if any did, he would hesitate about disturbing Rocky.

In that trunk were recorded all the disappointments and triumphs that had led to this moment. And in the early days she and the team had experienced their fair share of scares. There had been a marginal risk of her original serum's increasing the risk of testicular cancer in the test primates and their first male born. Although the numbers had been small, they had changed the calibration four times, fine-tuning them in iterative steps, until any hint of the problem was removed. When other concerns, minor but possible, had come to light, they had done the same. Nothing was left to chance, and Kathy had been pleasantly surprised how keen her FBI and ViroVector sponsors had been about her findings' being thorough. "Don't cut any corners," Alice Prince had said with that distant smile of hers. "Spend all the time and money you need. Just make sure that when we go to the FDA, we gain approval." That patience was rare and made up for many of the other constraints.

Now nine versions later the team had developed a viral vector that the FDA had deemed safe on normal human volunteers. Of course Kathy still had years of trials to go before she could prove it actually worked on violent offenders, but given how few real changes she'd had to make from her original primate thesis to get here, she was confident. Plus all the data she'd used from the genomes of violent criminals on the FBI DNA database had allowed her to fine-tune the calibrations.

As Kathy left the pen and locked the door behind her, she noticed a woman on the small TV screen. She stood behind a lectern in a tailored navy blue suit that set off her trim figure. Governor Pamela Weiss was over fifty, but the camera loved her. Her neat, lustrous bob of auburn hair contained few silver streaks, and her exquisite bone structure had fended off time better than any plastic surgeon's scalpel.

With her height and piercing blue eyes she seemed to look right out of the screen directly at Kathy. The woman had true charisma, and Kathy found herself sitting down on the stoop and turning the screen toward her and increasing the volume.

She had no real interest in politics, but since acquiring

U.S. citizenship,she had become more aware of the upcoming election. She also got a kick out of seeing a woman run as the Democratic candidate with a chance of becoming the first ever female President. Not only was Pamela Weiss media-friendly, but she seemed to possess real integrity.

By contrast her opponent, the gray-haired, gray-suited Republican senator George Tilson, had the bland good looks of a soap star. But he was a general who had fought in Desert Storm eighteen years ago, and with the Iraq crisis looming he was leading in the opinion polls by thirteen points. Despite Weiss's appeal, the Republicans were on track to succeed the outgoing Democratic President, Bob Burbank, next Tuesday.

Kathy never watched live political debates because they were invariably boring set pieces of hollow rhetoric. But Weiss interested her. The candidates stood facing each other behind lecterns on an otherwise bare stage. A moderator, the famous news anchorman Doug Strather, stood between them and a large studio audience. The TV debate had obviously been going for some time, but according to the commentator, no particular points had been scored either way.

Doug Strather turned to the Republican candidate. "Senator Tilson, do you think the gender of the President of the United States of America is relevant?"

Tilson smiled at Weiss and then at the camera, as if to apologize for what was clearly in his view a dumb question. "Of course, in principle I have nothing against a woman becoming President of the United States. However, with the immediate threat of Iraq retaking Kuwait, China's ambitions expanding, and North Korea still far from settled, what the world needs now is strong, experienced leadership. I am not saying that my experience in the Gulf War makes me more qualified than Governor Weiss to stand for the highest office in the land, but there is an argument for saying that now is not the time for experiments."

Weiss shook her head. "But surely, Senator Tilson," she said, "now is not the time to let history repeat itself. Particularly not with the weapons of nuclear or biological self-destruction that humanity now has at its disposal. Yes, women may historically have had little experience of waging war, but that's because we rarely start them." She paused as the studio audience laughed. "As a general rule women are better known for promoting consensus than creating conflict. And frankly I still think there is no such thing as a good war or a bad peace. However, when necessary, women can use force to end wars. Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first female prime minister, demonstrated that when she led the British to a successful war in the Falkland Islands, thousands of miles from her country. She also stiffened our own President Bush's resolve when Iraq last invaded Kuwait before Desert Storm. And if you remember, the initially nervous George Bush was both a man and a Republican."