The Death Row Complex (7 page)

“Honey, what happened?” Katrina asked. “Why were you sneaking out?”

Alexis began to cry again. Thick rivers of mucus streamed from her nostrils, and she wiped them with the back of her hand.

“I knew if I asked Dad he wouldn’t let me go,” she sobbed. “This guy’s parents were out of town and he was having a party. Dylan was going, and this shady ass ratchet bitch Melinda was going, too. She’s always, like, totally hitting on Dylan, and she’s such a total
slut
… I
had
to go. He’s
my
boyfriend, not
hers!
I went with Erin and Jennifer, and Jennifer was supposed to be driving, but she got totally trashed. I just thought I should drive.”

“Do you
know
how much trouble you’re in?” Tom yelled. “Getting a DUI without a license is some serious shit, young lady!”

“Lexi,” Katrina said quietly, “I know you think that your dad and I are too strict. You’re right. He would not have let you go to that party, and I wouldn’t have either. But, honey, we’re strict because we love you. It’s for your
own good!
We are just trying to protect you. You have no idea how many psychos are out there.”

Alexis rolled her eyes at the comment and then looked away melodramatically. “Yes, I
do
know, Mother! As if you could protect me from any of them.”

Jason Fischer woke with a splitting headache and a stranger.

The young groupie from the previous evening was sitting up in the bed beside Jason, her bedcovers draped around her hips, her bare breasts exposed. She was looking through his wallet. As Jason blinked to focus his vision, she withdrew a business card. “You have a Ph.D.?” she asked, reading the card.

“Yeah,” he said. Not bothering to veil his annoyance, Jason took his belongings away from her. He stuffed the business card back into the wallet and flipped through the cash. The money from the gig was still there. He sank back onto the pillows of the girl’s bed as a wave of nausea hit him.

She tried to nuzzle his bare chest. Jason shrugged her away.

“I saw your car,” the girl said. “I thought you were broke.”

Jason threw the covers aside and staggered out of bed. “I am,” he said and then ran down the hall to her bathroom.

1:12 P.M.
PDT

That afternoon, Katrina was in her office obsessing over her latest rejected grant application to the National Institutes of Health. The February 1 deadline for resubmission was already less than four months away.

Katrina was thrilled with the first reviewer’s comments. The reviewer had enthusiastically wanted to fund her project. She read over the comments several times to highlight and commit to memory the specific points mentioned as favorable.

But the sentiment conveyed by the second review contrasted starkly. As she examined the reviewer’s comments, Katrina wondered,
Did this jackass even look at my data?

Five years earlier, Katrina’s graduate work had been exceptional. Rumor of her being offered a faculty slot at the university—a scarcely heard of event—began to circulate even before she defended her dissertation.

Later, in accepting the new position, Katrina made some enemies. Some were other junior faculty, but most were fellow graduates in her class.

The unfortunate majority of Ph.D. candidates graduating in her field would have no choice but to endure a postdoctoral stint under a faculty mentor before they were even considered for a faculty post. Postdoc positions paid miserably and subjected researchers to excruciating hours and, often, a total lack of appreciation or respect by their advisors. Tradition dictated that any contributions they made to the field were attributed primarily to their mentors, and so the credit they received for their own work was minimal. To those who had just worked for so many years to acquire a shiny new Ph.D. and the esteem of their colleagues, it was an insult as well as a lesson in mental and physical endurance.

The lucky ones finished their postdocs after only a year or two. The unfortunate were stuck in them for five years or longer. Katrina was among the rare few to bypass the process entirely. The price she would pay later was huge.

Five years after graduation, as Katrina sat fuming over the comments of the second reviewer of her grant, it was clear that her youth and lack of experience had cost her yet another opportunity for funding.

1:21 P.M.
PDT

While Katrina was agonizing over the rejection of her latest grant, two federal agents were wandering uninvited through her laboratory. Casually observing and taking mental notes, Agents Sean McMullan and Roger Gilman made a slow, deliberate circle around the central lab space.

Two large, rectangular work islands stood in the center of the room with workspaces for four people per island. Dozens of clear bottles labeled with colored tape cluttered the benches, along with test tube racks of various sizes. Each bench also held several pieces of equipment, most of which were unidentifiable to the FBI agents. Many of the machines were connected to computers.

Around the outside of the room were several large refrigerators and freezers that produced a loud, constant background hum. A shelving area held chemical stocks divided and color-coded with stickers according to their physical properties and the health hazards that they presented to humans. Next to the shelves were a shower and an eyewash station. On a bench leading out of the main lab and into an adjacent room was a small appliance labeled, “pH Meter,” with several vials and bottles next to it. Two of them, labeled “Concentrated HCl” and “10M NaOH,” were uncapped.

Gilman peered through the window into the adjacent room just as a large mechanical arm stretched suddenly into view. A metal claw opened, grabbed something, and then backed out of view. Gilman took a leaping step backward and exclaimed, “
What the devil is
that?
”

From behind him came a response with a slight Russian accent. “Oh, that’s Octopus.”

McMullan and Gilman turned to look at the girl who had spoken.

She stood in an area overtly labeled “Cytotoxic Compounds.” She was wearing latex gloves and a lab coat, and her medium brown hair was tied back into a ponytail. Her arms were extended into a fume hood and she was transferring miniscule quantities of liquid from a vial into a small tube. A lollipop was clamped between her lips.

“What does it do?” Gilman asked.

The girl closed the vial and tube and pulled her hands out of the hood. She peeled off her gloves and tossed them into a waste container before popping the lollipop out of her mouth. “The robot? It runs biological assays for us. Right now, it is looking for inhibitors of an enzyme. It works much more quickly that we can, so it can screen thousands of molecules at a time. It’s a very efficient way to do the kind of work we do here.”

McMullan chuckled. “Then what do you do?” he asked jokingly.

“Someone has to program Octopus,” the girl replied, smiling. “Besides, there are a lot of things that need to be done around here that require a human being to do them. Robots can work incessantly, but they can’t really think. Not quite yet.

“You’re not from OSHA, are you?” the girl asked.

“No ma’am,” Gilman said, “We are looking for Professor Katrina Stone. Is she here?”

Katrina’s attention was diverted from the grant review when Oxana Kosova poked her head in.

“Some guys are here to see you,” Oxana said.

The two men entered the room and Oxana closed the door behind them on her way out. They fanned out and stood in front of Katrina’s desk.

She visually dissected them both. Both wore full suits, which none of her colleagues ever did unless they were presenting at a scientific conference. Clearly, these were not scientists.

One of the men was slightly shorter than the other and looked quite young in the face but was balding considerably. Katrina could not decide if he was young and his balding made him look older, or if he was older and his baby-face made him look young. He seemed uncomfortable.

The other man was taller, and muscular, with salt-and-pepper waves and kind green eyes. A vertical scar ran partially down his left cheek, and his face was weathered and tanned. He extended his hand, and the tip of an old tattoo peeked out from beneath his cuff.

“Dr. Katrina Stone?” the taller man asked in a slight Southern drawl. Katrina nodded and smiled. As she reached forward to shake his hand, he said, “I’m Agent Sean McMullan and this is Agent Roger Gilman—”

Katrina’s smile disappeared and she pulled her hand away as if a spider had landed on it. “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” she interrupted. “I just talked to Homeland Security two weeks ago, for an hour!”

“What do you expect, lady?” the short one named Gilman blurted out. “You work with anthrax!”

McMullan gave his partner a scowl and lowered his hand to his side following Katrina’s rebuff. “I’m sorry, Dr. Stone,” he said. “We are with the FBI, not Homeland Security. This is not a routine review of your research.”

Katrina flinched. “I’m sorry for my rudeness; please sit down.” She gestured toward the two seats facing her desk. “What can I do for you?”

The agents sat down, and he continued. “Dr. Stone, before we proceed, I need for you to
very fully
understand that we will be discussing matters of strictest confidentiality. Please, do not repeat this information to
anyone
.

“We are here to solicit your help. A new strain of anthrax has been discovered, and this strain contains an unusual element. There is a plasmid incorporated into its DNA that encodes a potent activator of anthrax lethal factor. What does that mean to you?”

Katrina was silent for a long moment. She cast her eyes between one agent and the other, sizing each of them up before speaking. “That sounds like a biological weapon. A plasmid is a mobile DNA element that can be inserted into a cell at the will of the researcher. And lethal factor is the toxin that causes the clinical symptoms of anthrax. A strain of the bug carrying a plasmid-encoded activator of lethal factor would presumably be much more virulent than wild-type—I mean, eh, ordinary anthrax.”