Natural Causes (40 page)

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Dr. Dimitri Athanoulos, the president of BIO-Vir, welcomed Rosa Suarez and Ken Mulholland cordially. His office was on the fourth floor, river side of a somewhat dated building, typical of the glass and brick high-tech showpieces of the early 1980s. He was in his late fifties, Rosa estimated, handsome and urbane. His thick, wavy hair was the color of his lab coat.

“So, you are both with the Centers for Disease Control?”

“Yes,” Rosa said. “I’m a field epidemiologist. Ken is a microbiologist.”

“A virologist, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Some would say so.”

“From Duke.”

“That was twelve years ago,” Mulholland said, quite obviously impressed.

“If I recall correctly, you did some wonderful work on tobacco virus phage infection.”

“Cater to my ego and I am yours,” Mulholland said.

“Well, I am a DNA biochemist, primarily,” Athanoulos said. “But I have always had an interest in viruses … and in bacteriophage. In the three years since I left academia to become director here, my interest in both has become more intense and, how should I say, more proprietary.”

Rosa, seeing how quickly the two men connected, sensed that the BIO-Vir chief, urbane or not, tended to take men more seriously than women. Ken’s decision to stay overnight was turning out to be yet another break in the investigation. She sat patiently through five more minutes of scientific small talk and do-you-knows? then shifted in her seat and cleared her throat. Athanoulos immediately picked up on the cue.

“So now,” he said, “what can BIO-Vir do for our friends in Atlanta?”

“I’ve been in Boston for most of four months now,”
Rosa said, “investigating three unusual obstetrics cases at the Medical Center of Boston.”

“The young resident who gave toxic herbs of some sort to her patients, yes?”

Rosa sighed.

“La potencia de las prensa,”
she said. “The power of the press. Dr. Athanoulos, despite what you and a million or so others have read, it does not appear that those herbs are playing a major role in this drama. Although I should add that the possibility remains. Ken, do you want to review your studies thus far?”

“Dimitri,” Mulholland said, “Rosa here is far too modest to admit it, but she has done a damn thorough job of evaluating these cases. For many years she’s been the best field person at the CDC.”

“Go on.”

“She sent me some serum from one of the victims of this DIC bleeding problem—the one of the three who survived. We’ve gotten viral growth and identified an antibody indicative of a smoldering infection. Yesterday we finished sequencing the DNA of the bug. Its composition matched a virus created in your lab.”

Athanoulos’s thick white brows rose a fraction. Mulholland passed over the printout describing CRV113, and the lab director scanned it.

“Come,” he said, standing abruptly. “Let us take a walk to our primate unit. I know absolutely nothing of CRV113. The date of its patenting precedes my arrival here. And assuming we once were, we are no longer involved with such a virus. Of that I am certain. Since I took over, we have focused on building viruses that make gamma globulin and viruses that make certain hormones. But nothing like this. Cletus Collins has been in charge of the primates we use since BIO-Vir opened in ’80. If anyone would know about this CRV113, it is he.”

They took the elevator to the subbasement. Even before the doors opened, Rosa could smell the animals. The nearly silent corridor outside the elevator was lined
with glass, which was quite obviously thick. For behind the glass wall were three long tiers of cages, virtually every one of them occupied by an active monkey. A stoop-shouldered old man was swabbing the floor in front of the cages. Athanoulos rapped on the glass.

“Where’s Clete?” he said.

The old man, lip-reading, strained to understand the question. Then he smiled. He pointed down the corridor and mouthed what seemed to Rosa to be “the rec room.” Athanoulos opened a door at the end of the corridor, and the three of them stepped into a glass cage, five feet square and perhaps ten feet high. Surrounding the cage was a huge room, rising two stories, and packed with toys, ropes, tree limbs, and climbing bars. At the center of the room, with one good-size chimpanzee riding on him piggyback and another, smaller one clinging to his leg, was Cletus Collins. Rosa noted the man could almost have passed for one of his charges, with his simian features and posture. Ken Mulholland had clearly made the same observation.

“Remarkable,” he murmured.

“Yes, isn’t it,” Athanoulos said.

“I’m surprised you let him commune with the primates like that.”

“You mean because of the viruses the animals carry? I assure you, Kenneth, after all these years, any virus
they
have,
he
has.”

“Clete, can we see you for a moment?” he said into a speaker on one wall.

The primate keeper freed himself from the monkeys, came over, and accepted the introduction to the visitors from Atlanta. Concern darkened his striking face.

“We exercise these animals good, real good,” he said in a midwestern twang that was several times more defined than Mulholland’s. “Every day. I take care of them like they was kin. I promise you that.”

“Mr. Collins, we’re not with any animal rights group,” Rosa said. “We’re trying to learn about some
research that was done here a few years ago on a virus named CRV113. It was related to—”

“Clots. I know the work you mean.”

“Are there any records of it?” Athanoulos asked.

“Who knows? There should be. At least the animal records. Probably in the old metal cabinets in the storage closet next to the boiler room.”

“I did not even know that room or such files existed.”

“Abandoned projects, mostly. No one’s ever been much interested in them.”

“
I
am interested. Would you please take us there, Clete?”

“Sure. You wait in the outer corridor while I get these fellows back in their cages. They’d just as soon bite and scratch your face off as look at you. Everyone except me ‘n’ old Stan the cage man out there, that is.”

The trio of scientists watched from behind the protective glass as he returned the two animals to their cages. Rosa could have sworn that just before one of them let go of Collins’s neck, it kissed him on the cheek.

“I sort of liked Fezler,” Collins said as he led the three to the storage closet. “But I hated what his damn experiments did to my monkeys. You sure you’re not with one of them animal groups? Believe me, I take good care of these guys. Real good care. It’s hard on me when they … you know, when they don’t make it.”

“You have nothing to worry about,” Rosa said. “Who’s Fezler?”

Collins searched out the storage closet key from a belt ring that might have been holding a hundred. He connected on the second try.

“Warren
Fezler. CRV113 was one of his projects. He had about a dozen of ’em, it seemed. Not a damn one worked out right as far as I know. Too bad his job wasn’t to come up with a way to kill monkeys. He’d a been a big success then.”

Collins’s mucusy laugh was cut short by a spasm of coughing. Rosa instinctively backed away from him a
step. She wondered how many job-related diseases he might have contracted over the years. He flipped on the light, revealing a small, concrete room, barren save for half a dozen file cabinets.

“Fezler wasn’t the best record keeper in the world,” he said. “But he was one hell of a worker. Weekends. Two in the morning. Holidays. It didn’t matter none to ol’ Warren.”

“I’m only the director here,” Athanoulos mumbled, clearly dismayed. “Why should I know this room exists? Or that we once employed a monkey-killer named Fezler?”

“What happened to the monkeys?” Rosa asked as Collins used one of his keys to unlock a cabinet.

“Just got sick ’n’ died. Fezler would put them under with anesthesia, then cut them with a scalpel in some weird way and draw some blood. Then he’d measure how quickly and how well their wounds healed.” He flipped through one drawer with no success, and went to the next. “You sure you’re not from one of those wacko animal groups?”

“Positive,” Rosa said.

“Well, I can’t really tell you what happened to the monkeys. They just kinda shriveled up ‘n’ died. It wasn’t on purpose, though. I can tell you that much.” He skimmed through the files in that drawer and went to the next. “Fezler liked the monkeys. They liked him, too. He was the only one besides me and Stan that they ever took to like that. He always wore the protective suits when he was in the rec room with them. But suit or no suit, they never bit him that I recall. Not once. They played with him just like they do with me. They liked bouncing on his belly. And believe you, me, he had a whopper. Maybe it was sort of like one of them Moon-walks for the chimps. You know, like at the carnival.”

Again, his laugh became a choking cough.

“What’s the problem?” Athanoulos asked, still irritated and now a bit impatient as well.

“The files ain’t here. It says right here on the top that they’re supposed to be. In my handwriting, too.”

“Could they be somewhere else?”

“If you think that, you don’t know me. I’ll look—it’ll take some time, but I’ll look.”

“Do that, please,” Athanoulos said. “I’ll check with some of the other scientists and lab techs about this Fezler.”

“And also with personnel,” Rosa said. “Clete, do you know when and why Warren Fezler left BIO-Vir?”

“I’d say it was six years ago at least. Maybe more. I’m not really sure why. Except I think he got sick.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know for sure.” He rubbed at his chin in a way that any one of his charges might have done. “He went from being this roly-poly guy to being not much but skin and bones. I guess that’s why. The chimps stopped bouncing on him because to tell ya the truth, there was nothing much left to bounce on.”

Rosa and Mulholland exchanged quick glances. The previous evening, she had shared with him the contents of Constanza Hidalgo’s diary and the discovery that Hidalgo, Alethea Worthington, and Lisa Grayson had all lost massive amounts of weight.

“I shall learn what I can about this incredible shrinking man and his work,” Athanoulos said as they left the storage room and headed down the hall. “And I shall get back to you as soon as possible.”

“That’s much appreciated,” Rosa said absently.

Behind her wide glasses, Rosa’s brown eyes narrowed as she worked at connecting some thoughts. They had reached the elevator when she stopped short, whirled, and called back to Cletus Collins.

“Clete, tell me something. Do you remember anything else about Warren Fezler? Anything unusual at all?”

“I don’t understand what you.…” The animal keeper suddenly broke into a broad grin. “Oh, yeah,” he
said. “I think I know what you’re getting at. It was the way he talked. He couldn’t get his words out—especially when he was upset or something. He … I can’t think of the word for it, but you know—”

“I
do
know, Clete,” she said intently. “He stuttered, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Cletus Collins said. “He stuttered. He stuttered like goddamn Porky Pig.”

O
KAY NOW,”
S
ARAH SAID, “THIS IS ONE OF THE
two delivery rooms on our unit. For those women who want it, and have no risks or complications, we also have a birthing room that’s quite a bit less formal. I’ll show you that later.”

The three third-year medical students shifted nervously as they stared about at the monitoring equipment, the gleaming anesthesia apparatus, and the delivery table. Before their ten-week clerkship in OB/Gyn was over, each would perform an unassisted delivery from start to finish—possibly a number of them. The MCB rotation offered more responsibility and clinical opportunities than was customary at other hospitals, and therefore was very much in demand. One of Sarah’s duties as the next chief resident was supervision of the med students.

“Are there any questions so far?” she asked.

“Do you do any home births?” one student asked.

“Two of us residents do home births with a staff person along just in case of problems.”

There was no point in adding that she had been asked
by her chief resident not to do any further home deliveries until the charges against her had been resolved.

“I’ve heard of you,” a second said. “I have an interest in alternative therapies. Do you teach acupuncture?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t time for any formal classes. But feel free to join me at the pain clinic. I’ll give you my schedule later. Anything else before we move on to the outpatient department?”

“Yes,” said the third student, motioning down the corridor. “The man who just came out of that room. Isn’t he the Herbal Weight Loss guy from television?”

Sarah whirled. Peter Ettinger had just left Annalee’s room and was stalking toward her. His fists were balled at his side. His face was crimson, and so taut with anger that he actually looked to be snarling. The medical students stepped back a pace. Sarah forced herself to hold her ground.

“Why didn’t you call me?” Ettinger snapped. “Why did I have to search all over the city before I found my daughter?”

“If you’d like to speak with me, I think we should do so in the office,” Sarah said.

“There’s no need to do any speaking. I want my daughter released immediately from this … this poor excuse for a hospital. What in the hell are you putting into her body anyway?”

“Peter, please. Let’s go someplace where we can sit down and talk about this like adults.”

Ettinger glanced over at the students, whose name tags identified them all as M.S. III.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “Are you worried these virginal medical minds will be soiled by learning what you do to patients? Tell them what’s going on. Tell them exactly what it is you’re dripping into my daughter’s body. Go ahead, tell them. I’ll just listen in.”

Sarah bit at her lower lip and tried to think of some way out of the situation. She was no match for Peter’s
intensity, anger, and charisma. With his loathing for western medicine, he had honed his arguments through countless presentations and organized debates. Now he had her in a corner.