Even the Wind: A Jonas Brant Thriller (34 page)

 
Brant shot her an impatient look. ``I don’t believe that for a second. The connections are too strong. How’d you end up as roommates? I don’t suppose you met each other online or something?’’

 
``The agency,’’ Chua admitted with the semblance of a weak smile. ``She just showed up one day with this guy who said she was moving in with me.’’

 
Brant’s cellphone pinged indicating the arrival of an email. Reflexively, he took out the handset and swiped through to the email program. Kyungwha Park had made good on her promise. The email contained a list of lab items, complete with brand names and an estimated retail value.

 
``What did the guy look like?’’ Brant asked Chua, bringing his attention back to the other woman as he returned the phone to his pocket. ``Big? Small? Black? White?’’

 
``Biggish, I guess. Pretty muscular. Good looking, too. He had these cheeks.’’

 
``Cheeks?’’

 
``Like he was a model or something. And soft eyes. But he also had this look to him, like he was dangerous, like you didn’t want to mess with him.’’

 
He had little doubt she’d just described Pyotr Dimitri. If that was true, the Volodin connection grew stronger. He had little doubt the landlord owning the lease on the apartment would most likely have ties to Sergei Volodin.
 

 
``I want to see Allison’s room.’’

 
``It’s locked.’’

 
``So unlock it.’’

 
Chua fumbled for the keys in a ceramic bowl sitting on a shelf by the front door. After a moment, she emerged with the keys in hand.

 
``I’m starting to feel sick,’’ she said, her voice flat and emotionless.

 
``Sit at the dining room table. I’ll get you some water.’’

 
Chua waved him away with her hand. ``No, that’s not what I mean. The agency. What will I do?’’

 
``Do you still have my business card?’’

 
``Somewhere, yes.’’

 
``Call me in a few days. If you can’t speak to me, talk to someone else at the station. I’ll help you, but you have to help yourself first.’’

Allison Carswell’s room was a disaster viewed through a funhouse mirror, the image grotesquely distorted, elongated and exaggerated. After he’d turned on the lights, he surveyed his surroundings, making a quick inventory.

 
The room had been given the once over. Fingerprint dustings had left smudges of black powder on the bedside table, the computer, the closet door handles. Drawers had been opened, searched and abruptly closed. Clothes had been pulled out of the closet where they’d hung. The bedside lamps had been toppled, bulbs broken, lampshades cracked and damaged.

 
Brant’s heart sank. How was he to find anything new among such a mess? Chua stood by the window, looking out morosely at the playground below and the expressway further beyond.

 
``They weren’t as gentle as you and that other guy,’’ she said in a monotone. ``The skinny, creepy guy.’’

 
``Clatterback?’’

 
``Yes, that’s him.’’

 
``Who were they?’’ Brant asked.

 
``What do you mean? They showed their ID.’’

 
Brant shook his head. The Crime Scene Response Unit wouldn’t have created such chaos. They work to a system — methodical, precise, measured. Whoever was responsible for trashing Allison Carswell’s room had been in a panic.

 
``They wore uniforms?’’

 
Chua nodded.
 

 
``How many?’’

 
Chua thought for a moment. ``Two. Both women. Heavy. One had stringy blonde hair pulled into a ponytail. The other was darker skinned. Round face. Kinda chubby.’’

 
``And they wore uniforms?’’ Brant asked, repeating the question. He knew most of the investigators in CSRU. None matched the litany of features Chua had provided. Alarm bells rang.

 
``I said they did.’’

 
``How long were they here?’’

 
``An hour. Maybe an hour and a half. They tore the place apart.’’

 
``Did you stay and watch?’’

 
Chua shook her head. ``I didn’t see the point.’’

 
Brant ushered Chua from the room and got to work.

 
He hadn’t a clue what to look for and was doubtful he’d know if he found it. Nevertheless, he had to try. Of Sergei Volodin’s role he had little doubt. Despite their bargain, it was Volodin’s people who’d ransacked Carswell’s room. He would have bet his life on it.

 
They’d been thorough. He’d give them that. Any hint, any lead that could have connected Carswell to Genepro — or to Tufts for that matter — had been obliterated or removed. Photos had been taken down from the wall and removed from their frames. CD cases had been turned inside out, their contents removed or discarded. Carswell’s rolodex had been gutted, the contact cards removed. The documents he’d seen in her inbox had been reduced to a pile of shredded paper. An external hard drive had been unplugged and torn apart, its innards left in a pile by the side of the computer. A desk drawer had been pulled out and turned over.

 
And yet the computer had been left untouched, awaiting pickup by forensic services. The screen blinked, taunting him with the secrets it held. A screensaver program displayed a vast starscape, twisting and turning and spinning with all the joy of an amusement ride.
 

 
Brant sat in Carswell’s office chair and ran his hands along the surface of her desk, thinking, pondering, placing himself in her mindset. What would she have used as a password? Would she have used her home computer? If not, where would she have squirreled away whatever Volodin had sought?

 
His cellphone rang. Jolly.

 
``Brant, where are you?’’

 
``What have I done?’’

 
``Sheila Ritchie. The Mayor’s office just tore a piece from me. They want to know where the leak on Luceno came from.’’

 
``Sorry, sir. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’’

 
``Brant, don’t bullshit me.’’

 
``Why come to me, sir?’’

 
Brant shifted his handset from one ear to the other.
 

 
``Did you hear me?’’

 
``Bad connection, sir. I missed the last part.’’

 
``I said I want to see you in my office ASAP. That means as soon as possible.’’

 
``I know what it means.’’

 
``So why are we still talking?’’

 
``I’m following a lead, sir. You wanted the Carswell case resolved as quickly as possible.’’

 
``You’ve had days and you don’t seem to have anything on Carswell. Now get back here or you’re facing a disciplinary hearing.’’

 
``I’m just finishing up.’’

 
``You’re done. Did you hear what I said?’’
 

 
Jolly spluttered, casting the words out between gasps of breath. Brant imagined the man sitting at his desk, his hands balled into fists, his face crimson.

 
``I’ve got to go. I’m getting close on Carswell, sir.’’

 
``Brant, you….’’

 
Brant stared at his handset’s blank screen after he’d hung up.

 
His fingers danced over Carswell’s keyboard as his mind raced. Would she have hidden her passwords at home? Her boyfriend, the sailor, had said she’d worked on a laptop. On his laptop to be more precise. She’d used the cloud. Maybe she’d uploaded whatever she’d been working on to a storage program on the Internet. She’d had to have done something like that, hadn’t she? The CDs they’d taken from her room had turned up mostly blank, the exception of course being the snippet of phone conversation she’d recorded. Her work computer was an impenetrable brick. She’d left no notebooks.

 
Was that it? Had Allison Carswell simply ceased to exist with her murder? How had she gotten mixed up with Volodin and his crew to begin with?
 
Who was this woman, this phantom, he’d been chasing for the past few days? Who was she really? Was he any closer to finding out? By appearances, she’d been devout. Enough so that she’d worn a crucifix in the lab. She’d had a child. Given it up for adoption. She’d had boyfriends, became disenfranchised from her parents. She’d been making progress at work, fooling around with the genetic code. Was that acceptable, consistent with her beliefs? How had she reconciled her belief in God with her job of manipulating the very underpinnings of life? And what of the gun? So uncharacteristic. Had she been scared for her life?

Brant cast his eyes over the room. He stood, paced from desk to window to bed. He became a pantomime, mimicking Carswell’s movements, training his attention on the detail of his surroundings.

 
Then it hit him. The Bible. The passage. There was meaning there, he was sure of it.

 
Brant went to the bedside table and opened the drawer. The Bible was as they’d left it, untouched and unremarkable. He took it from the drawer and placed it on the bedspread. It was a King James and old, black leather with a pebbled surface, the edges cracked and worn.

 
He flipped the Bible open, running his fingers over the yellowed pages. She’d underlined the quote from Matthew. It had to have meaning, hadn’t it?
 

 
Brant licked his finger as he turned the pages. He found the quote eventually and read it aloud, willing himself to understand why she’d placed significance in the words.

 
``
The men were amazed, and said ``What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?’’
 

 
``What the Hell is that supposed to mean?’’

 
He went to Carswell’s computer and typed in a combination of words derived from the quote. Nothing. He tried again. The computer protested.
 

 
``I’d want to make it easy,’’ he said aloud. ``Something I could remember.’’

 
In thought, he pinched the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. Could he will the answer into existence? He could try.

 
Again, he typed, this time replacing the quotes with variations of the source of the words.

 
``KingJamesBible.’’

 
Nothing.

 
``BibleKing.’’

 
Nope.

 
``WindandBible.’’

 
Nada.

 
Then it struck him. Any good password was a combination of words and letters. Maybe even symbols. It was staring him in the face. How could he be so stupid?

 
``Matthew8:27’’

 
He pressed return, his efforts immediately rewarded as the hard drive spun into action. An electric charge ran through his body.

 
The first screen to come up was pay dirt. A spreadsheet with two columns and twenty three rows. No headers on the spreadsheet but he didn’t need that. He opened another window on the computer and typed in the first word in the first column. To his untrained eye, it was an exotic jumble of indecipherable and unpronounceable letters.

 
``Gammaretoviral and lentiviral vectors’’ Brant said, reading from the screen.

 
``What exactly is a gammaretoviral?’’ he said to no one.
 

 
He plugged the term into a new tab on the web browser. The results quickly filled the screen.

 
``A genus of the retroviridae family. Example species are the murine leukemia virus and the feline leukemia virus.’’

 
``What the….’’ Brant shook his head in frustration. He retyped the search request, this time forming a question.

 
``What is a gammaretoviral and where is it used?’’

 
The first result to appear on the screen was from Wikipedia. Not the most authoritative, but good enough for his purposes at the moment.

 
``Murine Leukemia Virus, a simple gammaretrovirus, can be converted and used as an efficient vector for the delivery of genetic therapeutics,’’ he read aloud from a paper published by the National Institutes of Health.

A delivery vector. Well, that was certainly a start. She’d been researching different ways to move genetic material into a cell. He was sure of it now.

Brant tapped the keyboard as he clicked through a set of screens, formatting the spreadsheet for printing. When he was satisfied, he hit print. The printer sprung to life, spewing out a flurry of paper.
 

 
``What secrets are in here, Allison?’’ he asked the screen.

 
The screen stared back, mute and uncooperative.
 

 
More thought. What else would she have left on the computer? What trail of digital detritus was there?

 
He clicked into a folder icon that had been saved to the desktop. The folder opened, displaying its content as a list of file names. None of the identifiers were particularly illuminating. He could spend hours going through the files and find nothing. Or maybe he’d hit pay dirt. Its was a crapshoot.