Dead Air (Sammy Greene Thriller) (40 page)

The elevator ascended upward as silently as a spider on a thread. At the same time, Sammy turned to survey the car, her eyes coming to rest on the roof above her. In the center of the tiled ceiling was a small rectangular service hatch. She paused for a second, considering options. Could she do what she’d seen so many heroes and heroines in the movies do? It was worth a try, she decided, taking a deep breath.

Balancing her weight on the metal bar handles on each side of the elevator, she pushed her shoulders firmly against the back wall. Like a mountaineer, she slowly inched her hands up the walls until
she was able to lift open the hatch with the tips of her fingers. After several tries she managed to slide it aside. Light from the elevator shaft filtered upward through the dusty darkness, revealing the thick, supporting steel cable and guide wires overhead.

Determined, she hooked her fingers on either side of the opening and hoisted herself up with all the strength she could muster. She was halfway there when the muscles in her forearms began to cramp and she had to let herself down again.

Unwilling to declare defeat, Sammy shut her eyes, inhaling and exhaling several times. Then, like a gymnast, she pulled herself up and through the opening until she was balancing her weight on her abdomen, her feet still dangling into the car.

Come on, come on, Sammy!

With her last ounce of strength she swung her legs over the edge of the hatch and pushed the metal cover back into place.

So far, so good!

At that same moment, the steel elevator doors slid open.

Ishida stared at the monitor receiving from a tiny camera hidden inside the wall of the private elevator. “The girl is definitely resilient,” he remarked.

“Obviously she wants to reach the fourth floor.”

Ishida’s smile was inscrutable. “Then, Doctor, I think we ought to give her what she wants,” he said, flicking a switch that remotely closed the elevator doors again and stopped the car permanently on “three.”

The next ten minutes were the longest in Sammy’s life as she lay on top of the grease-coated cab roof, gripping its edges with clenched fingers. All light had been extinguished with the closing of the hatch and in the eerie darkness, magnified sound bounced off the concrete walls of the elevator shaft like cannon rounds.

Suppose the car started moving again? If her plan had even the slightest chance of success, she couldn’t rest here. Slowly, she stood, blindly using the steel cable for support. It was impossible to see even
a few inches above her. She had to guess the distance to the next floor. Four feet, five, at most.

She could do it.

She
had
to do it.

She stripped off her white coat, turned it inside out and tied it around her waist. Hopefully, this way she’d avoid looking like a grease monkey when she arrived at her destination. With measured breaths, she hoisted herself onto the cable and strained to pull her body upward, hand over hand, the way she’d learned in high school gym class. After the second advance, she clamped her thighs tightly against the cold steel for support, her arms already trembling with the effort.

“Can’t give up,” she whispered over and over.

Another strong tug upward and she found herself parallel with the fourth floor elevator doors. By now her eyes had accommodated to the dark. With the added ribbon of light filtering through the opposed doors, Sammy could see that there was a distance of about two feet between where she hung on the cable and the doors’ opening.

Almost there, she thought, feeling a certain charge — though it was tempered with the realization that if she lost her grip now, she’d fall back on the car and have to start again.

She forced herself to relax, concentrating on her goal. Clutching the cable as tightly as she could, she swung her legs forward until her toes struck the three-inch ledge at the base of the door.

“Ouch!”

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

The involuntary exclamation of pain echoed against the shaft’s concrete walls. Now she’d surely be caught. Sammy’s heart hammered against her chest as she waited to be discovered, her petite body tautly stretched, her toes on the ledge of the doors, her hands grasping the support cable.

Even after the sound had died away, she counted to one hundred before deciding to continue.

Another few deep inhalations and she groped for the rubber edge of the closed elevator door with her left hand. Clinging to the
bumper as tightly as possible, she let go of the cable and brought her right hand to the right door edge. As she caught hold, she pushed both doors aside with all her strength, propelling her body through the narrowed opening, and sprawling spread-eagled on the floor.

“Welcome to the fourth floor. My name is Carl. You will need a pass.”

“Remarkable! She actually made it.” Ishida shook his head, fascinated by the image of Sammy projected on his monitor.

“Shouldn’t you go get her now?”

“Patience,” Ishida responded. “That’s something you Americans have never understood.” He pointed to the monitor. “This floor is escape proof. We don’t need to get her. She’ll come right to us.”

7:35 A.M.

Bleary-eyed and unshaven, Reed sat hunched over his kitchen table, sipping black coffee, trying to concentrate on an article in the
Journal of Immunology
. He’d awakened at seven a.m. to find Sammy gone. No note. No “I’m sorry.” Not that he was surprised. She seemed to be forever running out on him, always preoccupied with her own concerns — never his.

He was reading and rereading the same sentence when he noticed the papers Sammy had left last night — actually thrown — on the bathroom floor when they’d argued. He’d picked them up, put them on the kitchen table.

Now he looked over Sammy’s list:

Six deaths: Yitashi Nakamura, Barton Conrad,

Sergio Pinez, Katie Miller, Brian McKernan, and Seymour Hollis

Four “suicides”: Nakamura, Conrad, Pinez, and Hollis

One fire and resultant death: Brian

One bombing and resultant death: Katie Miller

One almost hit-and-run and one assault: Intended victim: Sammy Greene

Two missing: Luther Abbott and Lucy Peters

Reed shook his head. The girl possessed quite an imagination. He pulled out a second sheet. It was the autopsy report on Sergio Pinez. Why did that name sound familiar? Of course, he remembered. Sergio was the student who’d committed suicide, the student with —

Wait a second. Something didn’t make sense. The name was right, but the diagnosis was all wrong. This report gave cause of death as massive internal injuries secondary to suicide. No mention that the boy had AIDS. Why? Reed wondered.

And something else. Unless he was mistaken, the time stamp was off. Reed remembered that Palmer had summoned him to the Nitshi Institute during evening rounds — at least two hours
after
this final autopsy report had been filed.

Reed scratched his head. No doubt Sammy was way off base, but something wasn’t kosher. He picked up the Nitshi PR brochure and found Lang’s picture on the back cover. The short, stocky Lang stood next to a smiling Marcus Palmer. Most of the other people in the group shot were unfamiliar.

He studied the photo for a long time before he noticed. Just behind Palmer and Lang and slightly hidden was a dark-haired man sporting a well-manicured beard. Reed’s eyes widened as he recognized the bearded man — someone he would never have expected to be there.

Grabbing his kitchen extension phone, he dialed Sammy’s number.

“Hi, this is Sammy.”

Somehow Reed wasn’t surprised that she was out. Still, he left a message for her to call the minute she got back. “It’s important.”

After that, Reed showered, dressed, and headed for the Nitshi Research Institute.

• • •

Sammy stood up and faced the tiny silver robot that had introduced itself as Carl.

A tray emerged from within the machine. “Place your right hand here,” the robot commanded.

Sammy hesitated, unsure what to do.

“I won’t hurt you,” Carl assured her in an Elmer Fudd voice. “Everyone on the fourth floor needs a pass. For security reasons.”

Sammy unwrapped Reed’s white coat from her waist and slipped it on over her now grease-stained clothes. She pulled off the medical student’s ID badge, flashing it quickly in front of the robot. “I already have a pass. See? Dr. Wyndham.”

“Sorry,” the silver machine squeaked, now Bart Simpson. “That does not compute. According to my memory bank, Reed Wyndham is male, five foot ten, sandy hair, violet eyes. Fourth-year medical student, Ellsford University Medical School, 3304 Menlo Avenue, Apartment number 2B, phone number 617-555-9748. Social security number —”

“Okay, okay,” Sammy conceded, hardly believing she was interacting with this R2D2 clone. She looked down the empty corridor, expecting an armed guard or two to appear, but there seemed to be no humans around. She might as well go along with Carl’s request — obviously the little machine was programmed to act as security. “Here.” She placed her right hand, palm down, in the tray.

Her prints were instantly copied and processed. “Sammy Greene, third-year communications major, Ellsford University, 213 Thayer Street, Apartment number 3A, phone number 617-555-6090. Social security number 555-42-7186.”

“How did you do that?” Sammy marveled as seconds later, a plastic card with her information appeared on the tray.

“Keep it with you at all times.” The robot ignored her question. “Follow me.”

“ID badge please.” The Nitshi guard looked up from his newspaper and smiled. “Oh, hello, Doc.” He’d greeted Reed almost every day for the past week. “Getting a late start?”

Reed shrugged. “Sunday morning. Thought I’d sleep in.”

The guard nodded and turned his attention back to the football scores.

Reed checked his pocket, realizing he’d run out without grabbing the badge from his lab coat. “Listen, I forgot my ID. I’m only gonna be a minute. Gotta check on a few slides.”

Without looking up again, the guard motioned to the sign-in sheet on the counter. “Just leave your
X
. It’ll be okay this time. I know you.”

“Thanks, I owe you one.” Reed scribbled his name on the roster and hurried to the main elevator. He passed a couple of research assistants on the third floor — all Ellsford University grad students, driven to working brutal hours by hopes of moving up in the academic hierarchy. They were too engaged in their own projects to offer Reed more than a head-nodding acknowledgment.

Luckily, the immunogenetics lab was empty when he entered. He’d have to hurry, though. Reed made a beeline for Dr. Palmer’s desk in the far corner and tried to open the middle drawer. It was locked.

About to give up, he spied the professor’s coat slung over the back of the desk chair. Recognizing the slim odds, Reed reached into the pockets and dug around until his fingers found a metal object at the bottom of the left one.

The key fit!

He slid the drawer open and pulled out a cardboard packet marked VACCINE. STUDY PATIENTS. Sitting down at a large workbench with a microscope, he began checking names. The twenty-four glass slides were in chronological, not alphabetical order, so it took several minutes to find the ones he was looking for.

His hands shook as one by one he removed four slides.

Seymour Hollis.

There was a third suicide on campus this month. What’s weird is #12 refers to the twelfth patient in the study, a new drug being tested for AIDS — part of a Nitshi study. Palmer was principal investigator.

Luther Abbott.

Luther Abbott’s disappeared. Nurse Matthews told me he was admitted to Ellsford General, but when I was there yesterday, I heard one of the nurses say he’d been transferred to Nitshi.

Lucy Peters.

I suppose you don’t know about Lucy Peters either? Freshman. She got this rash, it was supposed to be chickenpox, but her roommate says she never went home. Now she’s missing too.

Sergio Pinez.

Massive internal injuries secondary to suicide.

No mention of AIDS.

Reed flipped on the light beneath the microscope, picked up Sergio’s slide and placed it on the stage. It was a cross section of the boy’s brain. Magnified a thousand times, the microglial cells scattered throughout the gray matter and smaller areas of demyelination surrounding veins in the white matter were evidence of subacute encephalitis. Reed had aced pathology. He knew this was consistent with a diagnosis of AIDS.

He checked the other three slides, not surprised to find identical pathology.

Two students “missing.” Two student “suicides.”

Hollis, Pinez, Peters, and Abbott.

All four dead.

All four with AIDS.

All part of a study. Marcus Palmer’s study.

Vaccine Study Patients

Reed’s mind whirled with conflicting doubts and emotions. What did this mean? Palmer never mentioned testing an experimental vaccine in human subjects.

Now he recalled Sammy’s words:
I don’t know what happened to these students, but if there was foul play —

Hearing voices and muffled footsteps coming nearer, Reed quickly replaced the slides and returned the case to the drawer. Then he put Palmer’s key back in the pocket of the lab coat and switched off the lights.

• • •

Sammy followed Carl down several sterile hallways, stopping to sneak a quick peek into a few of the rooms they passed. All seemed to be high-tech laboratories staffed by robots. She still had not encountered one human. And certainly no patients.

The silver security robot was about to turn a corner when Sammy noticed a single sign that read PATHOLOGY in Japanese and English. She pushed a button on the wall, opening an electronically controlled door. Stepping inside, she stood a minute, orienting herself. The fluorescent-lit room lined with counters, shelves, and sinks appeared to be some kind of operating theater. But the sharp smell in the air was formaldehyde, not antiseptic, and the soapstone bench in the center of the tiled floor was no ordinary surgical table.

Sammy froze as she eyed the white sheet covering a humansized mound. Slowly, she edged forward. It was more than the room’s chill that had raised goose bumps on her arms. Hesitating, she pulled up the sheet just enough to see two bare feet. The skin was the color of beeswax. Swallowing hard, she moved to the other end of the body, gently unfolded the white cloth, forcing herself to examine the face.