by Melissa Yi
I couldn't visualize it, but I tried to remember the name of the article so I could look it up later. "That would be easy to set up?"
"If one has access to the equipment and the time and inclination to do so." Dr. Hay blew out her breath in frustration.
Another detail nudged my brain. "How did you know she used apricot pits?"
She sighed. "That was an educated guess. Stephen and I discussed it yesterday. He bought apricots in bulk over the summer and ate them continuously. He's a fruitarian, you know."
"Yes, he mentioned that." The only other fruitarian I'd heard of had been Steve Jobs, who died of pancreatic cancer. Not a recommendation.
She clasped her hands together in front of her, as if she were lecturing in a classroom. "It would be a simple matter to collect his apricot pits and distill the cyanide. People often talk about the cyanide levels in apple seeds, but at least one study found only 3 milligrams of amygdalin—the cyanogenic glycoside—per gram of apple seeds. The average 70 kg male would have to chew up to 200 seeds in one sitting to suffer the effects. Meanwhile, apricots have 14.4 milligrams per gram. It's a matter of efficiency."
She certainly didn't seem intimidated by the process. If anything, I'd say she seemed fascinated by poison, the way people glom on to serial killers, or anacondas.
She knew an awful lot about cyanide. I'd have to look up amygdalin, and how to distill cyanide from it. "How do you think the cyanide got on Lawrence's almond cookie?"
She brushed her hand through the air like she was waving away a fly. "That man was always eating. He knew it was against the lab safety rules, but he kept bringing in his sports drinks and his coffee and eating everything in sight."
"Do you think his food might have been contaminated by accident?" That hadn't occurred to me, even though I'd been watching lab safety videos for the past few days.
Dr. Hay shrugged. "The police will tell us. It's very unfortunate, of course. His widow was devastated, and she gave birth to premature twins."
I studied her to see if she knew of my role in that birth. She looked as blank as Chris. "The police are looking for two persons of interest. Maybe Ducky had nothing to do with his death—"
She touched my shoulder, more gently this time. "It's not up to us. The police will find out, and they'll inform us in due course. All we can do is continue our work." She sounded reasonable, even likeable. Before I could figure out how I felt about Dr. Hay, she held her card up to her lab's reader. The sensor beeped. The light turned green.
I glanced at the camera above our heads, and I knew I couldn't delay anymore. If Chris was still messing around in there, we'd have to improvise.
Chapter 46
"Once you start working here, we'll have to update your card access. Especially in light of recent events, you'll need a badge to enter and exit the lab," said Dr. Hay, holding the door open for me and earning herself another point, even though I hadn't agreed to work for her.
"A research assistant would need easy access," I agreed. "What sort of duties would an R.A. have?"
"You don't have the technical knowledge, so you would have to start with manuscript preparation, assisting me with presentations and posters, and doing the clerical work while I interview the first candidates," she said, gesturing at the computer and inbox trays neatly laid on the table next to her office.
Aha. She wanted a scut monkey. That's what makes the hospital run smoothly, so I knew how to do crap like that, but I'd be better off doing actual research for my designated supervisor than photocopying for Dr. Hay. "I'll be busy at the Zinser lab. I'll see what I can do," I said as she steered me through the office and toward the lab.
"I expect the very best work, and I am never disappointed." I held my breath as she opened the lab door.
I surveyed the empty room, with its banks of black lab tables, glassware, and fume hoods.
No sound. No sign of anyone in the room.
Chris had left, possibly during the short time we'd transitioned from office to lab.
I sent a prayer to whatever deity was looking over us. The netbook battery's was so hot, I could feel it through the shirt under my arm, almost like it was a living organism my dad had sent to protect me.
Dr. Hay clicked her tongue. "I wanted you to talk to Stephen about his superior work on Rift Valley disease. I can't think where he's gone."
Harold, the security guard, had said Dr. Hay and Stephen Weaver were always at the lab. Stephen Weaver seemed to be taking an awful lot of time off lately, and even Dr. Hay didn't seem to be frothing at the mouth to restart her experiments.
"Oh, does he normally work at this bench?" I pointed at the completely empty bench nearest her office door, directly in front of us. That would be Summer's bench, on Tom's side. I was pretty sure I knew who'd run that bench, but I wanted her to answer.
Her lips twitched in a mirthless smile. "That was Ducky's bench."
"This was where you … found her body?"
Her chin dipped in acknowledgement. For a second, she didn't meet my eyes.
"She was on the floor?"
"Yes. I didn't have to approach her to know that she was … deceased. It didn't require any medical skill," she added, out of the corner of her eyes.
Maybe she was casting aspersions on me for trying to resuscitate Lawrence. I ignored that. "She was lying on her back?"
"She was slightly curled up, with her hands next to her face and her knees bent, but yes, she was on her back. I must ask you, Dr. Sze, how you find this relevant to working for me?"
My heart thudded in my chest. I struggled to maintain an impassive face. "I liked her. I feel badly about how she died. I've heard cyanide is painful." It sure didn't sound great if she was found in a fetal position.
Dr. Hay nodded. "'When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.'"
It sounded like a quote, but I didn't quite understand her meaning. I raised my eyebrows.
"Proverbs 21:15, Dr. Sze," she said. I still didn't get it.
"Guilt is all-consuming, Dr. Sze. She was trying to do penance. Poor, misguided girl. I hope she found some peace, in the end."
My brow furrowed. How would a confused, convulsive death in your own bodily fluids be considered a peaceful end? I switched to more concrete questions. "What time was it?"
"Before 7 a.m. She came early."
Or stayed late. "What time did you leave the lab the night before?"
Her eyebrows drew together. "Are you trying to establish an alibi for me? Really, Dr. Sze. I've told you, the police have this case well in hand. There is no need for you to meddle."
"I'm trying to piece the story together."
At last, her cool, blue eyes met mine directly. "I left around 9 p.m.
Ducky had already gone for the day. Are you satisfied?"
Of course not. Ducky could have come back any time, and she obviously did. "Was Dr. Weaver working late as well?"
Now she smiled. "He always does. Now, Dr. Sze, if you're going to work here, you'll have to follow the rules and work hard instead of questioning everything. Is that within your realm of capability?"
The hallway door beeped, saving me from answering. Dr. Stephen Weaver glared at me from the opening.
The saliva dried up in my mouth. I had to try not to bite my lip as I stared right back at him.
"Oh, Stephen." Dr. Hay sounded delighted to see him. "Dr. Sze has offered to work for us for a few days, while we establish a new research assistant and lab technologist. Would you like to show her around?"
Stephen shook his head. "I need to start on my experiment. I've been away too long."
"Well, show her what you're doing and then put her to work. There's no reason why you have to handle all the menial details. That's what Hope is here for."
I opened my mouth to object, but she was already pulling up the sleeve of her lab coat to glance at her watch before she raised her badge to beep herself out. "I've got a meeting. Farewell and Godspeed."
Chapter 47
Stephen glowered at me while Dr. Hay swept out of the lab. He said, "You can't do my experiment. I don't trust you. Go in the office."
The way he ordered me around made me want to punch him in the head. On the other hand, he'd given me free access to his office, under the guise of "helping" him.
"Okay," I said, trying to sound meek, like Ducky, as I grasped the silver door handle.
He cast me a suspicious look, but I was already migrating toward the four desks in the central room outside Dr. Hay's closed-off office. One desk had collected a bunch of odds and sods, including a water bottle, a Christmas card from someone named Helen Ford, and a bulky old computer, so I ignored that.
The three other desks must have belonged to Stephen Weaver, Lawrence Acayo, and Dahiyyah Safar. Which one should I attack first?
The one with the dead cow fetus. I zoomed toward Stephen Weaver's desk on the left side of the room, near the hallway door.
He was hideously neat. Nothing on his smooth, black laminate desk but a stapler and a stack of research papers, but his desktop computer was practically begging me to access it.
I hit the Esc key to wake it up. It asked for a user ID and password.
Well, damn it. I hardly knew the guy. I wasn't going to figure out his password. But I tried his names, separately and together, with upper case and lower case, then riftvalleydisease.
If Ryan were here, he might be able to pull some hacker mojo. Ryan.
I pulled out my phone and texted him. How do I log into a computer without knowing the User ID/password?
My phone rang. I hit the green button and glanced over my shoulder, waiting for the Big Bad to burst out of the lab and rip my face off. "What?" I hissed at Ryan.
"Never text stuff like that. They'll pull it up from your phone history, even if we delete the messages. What are you doing?"
"I'm trying to get into Stephen Weaver's computer!"
"You have to get the password."
"How do I do that?"
"Put a keylogger on it."
"How do I do that?"
"Too complicated to explain. Also, illegal. Don't do it. And did you know the message from Ducky has embedded files?"
"The e-mail? Where?"
"Can you bring it up?"
"Sure." I set my netbook on Stephen Weaver's desk. Part of me enjoyed violating his blank space. I quickly typed in my password and logged into Gmail. "Got it."
"You'd better do this on a Windows computer, not your MacBook."
"Done."
"Okay. Bring up the picture in her sig. Go to the toolbar at the top, the one with File, and click List. It should be right between Edit and Favourites. Then View."
I'd never noticed List in the grey toolbar on top before. I clicked View. "Got it."
"In the drop down menu, read me what you've got."
"Okay. Print, DOS Prompt in Containing Folder, Open with Notetab, Open with Audacity, Open with jEdit, Preview, 7-Zip—"
"That's it." His voice was tense with excitement. "Click on that, and then Extract here."
The list changed. Under riftvalley.jpg, more files materialized: 2_ secret_riftvalley.doc, 3_secret_SW.doc, 4_secret_JH, hidden_video.avi, private_picture.gif …
"My God," I said aloud. Ducky hadn't dispatched a suicide note. She'd been delivering evidence against SW and JH. Stephen Weaver and Judith Hay. "I've got to send these to the cops. They wouldn't have gotten this attachment through the app."
"I already forwarded it to them, but you can do it, too."
"Doing it." Good thing I already had the cops' e-mail addresses handy. I added Tucker's for good measure. While Outlook took its sweet time, I opened Lawrence's files and searched specifically for Rift Valley disease.
1997 outbreak: 90,000 infected, 500 deaths
The fatality rate wasn't too bad, but I remembered what Joan had said about hemorrhagic fever, and kept skimming.
Rift Valley disease mainly affects domestic animals, including cows, goats, sheep, and even camels. Young animals get weak with diarrhea; adult females may not look ill until they spontaneously miscarry their pregnancies. By that, I mean a 100 percent pregnancy loss rate.
It's spread by Aedes mosquitoes, including the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
It's like the poor cousin of Zisa virus.
And I do mean poor cousin, because it only attacks sub-Saharan Africa and Arabia in epidemics after a heavy rainfall. That's economically devastating to the people trying to survive off their livestock, but since researchers are fighting for ever-decreasing dollars, do you honestly think they're going to prioritize poor farmers on the other side of the world?
2000: 120,000 people infected, 900 deaths
2003: 187,000 people infected, 3200 deaths
2006: 225,000 people infected, 9000 deaths
2007: 275,000 people infected, 12,500 deaths
2008-09: 300,000 infected, 13,000 deaths
2010: 250,000 infected, 12,000 deaths
2012: 200,000 infected, 11,500 deaths
2016: 350,000 infected, 17,000 deaths
Vaccine safety questioned.
Holy crap. I didn't want to break out a calculator, but obviously, in 20 years, the disease had become far more prevalent, not to mention lethal by another order of magnitude.
How had we not noticed?
When the U.S. sneezed, Canada caught a cold, and sub-Saharan African and Arabia …
Joan's voice rang in my head. They start bleeding everywhere. Not only do they have bloody vomit and stool, but blood comes out of their gums, their noses, their skin, and their injection sites.
I started running through the papers.
How did they go from an outbreak every four years to some not even a year apart?
Ryan's voice broke into my reverie. "You're still in that guy's office?"
"Yeah. Listen, Ryan, I've got to send you these articles. WHO developed a vaccine this year, but Stephen Weaver is blocking it. There are a bunch of articles about prenatal abnormalities that are—"
The poor bovine fetus leapt into my mind.
A 100 percent pregnancy loss rate.
You can't tame a mosquito.
Stephen Weaver wasn't trying to help the people of Sub-Saharan African and Arabia.
He was creating an epidemic to kill them.
I realized aloud, "He was combining Rift Valley and Zisa."
"Hope. Get out."
"I will." I'd worried about Joan's double infection with Zisa and herpes, but Stephen Weaver had dreamed up a new co-infection, spread by mosquito, geographically targeting the world's most vulnerable people.
I glanced behind me. The door between me and the lab remained closed. I was still alone.
When I turned back to check the e-mail status (still uploading), the light caught on a bit of graffiti scratched into the gleaming desk top's right lower corner.
I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't been sitting at the desk, or if I hadn't spent so many hours as a bored student, penning desk graffiti myself.
I laid my iPhone beside my netbook while I bent forward and tilted my head from side to side, trying to figure out the design.
The crabbed etching coalesced in my brain, forming an inverted triangle inside a triangle for the KKK, outlined by the barely-legible word "miscegenation."
Below it, a crude noose.
And Stephen Weaver's voice cut through the air, dangerously close to me. "What are you doing?"
Chapter 48
"Nothing!" I half-screamed.
Stephen Weaver loomed over me, his bulk poised precisely between myself and the office exit to the hallway.
The e-mail still hadn't sent.
I scooped up the open netbook and my phone.
Diagonally behind me, Dr. Hay's office was surely locked, and a dead end besides.
The windows directly behind me? Not from the third story of a building.
I jerked the phone up to my ear. "He's here! Help—"
Stephen Weaver whac
ked the phone out of my hand. It spiralled out of my grip and smashed on the floor.
"Fuck!" Even as the word escaped my mouth, I realized I had a split-second choice.
I could dive for my phone. Or I could run for it.
Run.
Not toward the hallway exit, because Stephen Weaver instinctively lunged to his left.
I tossed the netbook on his desk.
While his eyes followed the arc of my dad's computer, I darted into the central aisle, away from the closest door.
Past two more desks. Toward the lab.
I thrust open the door and sprinted into the lab, taking the outside aisle, the one closest to the hallway. I was going to make it—
—except my right ankle turned over.
I gasped with pain and managed to stay on my feet. It wasn't broken, still wasn't broken, just another sprain, I could limp, but Stephen Weaver cut through the central aisle, made an L-shaped zig, and blocked that door, too.
I retreated, as fast as I could, toward the no man's land around Ducky's lab bench and the fume hood.
He'd left the office lab door unguarded. I'd exit from the office, only fifteen feet away.
Stephen Weaver's eyes glinted, and I remembered that Dr. Hay required a badge to exit as well as enter her premises.
I could toggle back and forth between the lab and the office, like a rat in a maze, but I needed Stephen's badge to unlock a hallway door to the outside world.
Stephen Weaver was bigger than me. He was faster than me.
He wore the only key card in the room.
Still, I half-ran, half-limped toward the office. Another seven feet, and I'd have a hunk of wood between me and the guy who thought he'd solved the world's overpopulation problem in utero.
Behind me, he said a few words, and I heard some beeps, which I ignored. I could almost reach the door. Another second, and—