Doctored Death

by P. D. Workman

  “No. Just a bit. I’m fine. It was just a bit of a surprise to realize that the man we are looking for is... the man we were trying to identify.”

  “Quite the coincidence.”

  “Yeah. I guess it is. That’s very weird.”

  Kenzie peeled herself away from the wall. “I’m okay. And we don’t have any reason to stay here now.”

  Zachary walked beside her, watching her for any sign she was dizzy or faint. They reached the stairs that led down to the main level and he paused, considering.

  “You’re sure you’re okay. Not going to get dizzy on the stairs?”

  “I’m fine. Quit treating me like I’m made of glass.”

  He nodded and started down the stairs. Kenzie stayed close behind him, watching his feet go down the steps one at a time, keeping pace with him easily. She had a feeling that he was going more slowly than usual to make sure she didn’t have to hurry to catch up. They reached the bottom and headed toward the car.

  “So, we can’t get into the apartment,” Zachary said, reminding Kenzie of why they were there in the first place. “But we can at least have a look around the building, the neighborhood, see if we can find anything that might suggest how Lola got the infection in the first place.”

  Kenzie sat against the hood of the car, nodding. She was a little bit unsteady despite all her protests and didn’t want him to see that her legs were shaking. She looked at the businesses on the main floor of the building again. They were not the kinds of places a person would go to eat or shop. Instead, they were light industrial offices, most of them with names she had never heard of before. Places that took care of things behind the scenes and were not usually in customer-facing positions. She went through the names in her head, parsing them and trying to predict what each of them was. She had gone into some of them the last time she was in the area trying to find Francine. She didn’t much feel like going to each of them now to see if they had known the late Jay Salk.

  Virutek Labs.

  Kenzie blinked at the name and studied the shape of the logo. She’d never heard of Virutek Labs before. As far as she knew, it was not a medical lab that drew blood or did ultrasounds or other work for living patients. And likewise, not one of the labs that she dealt with as a representative of the Medical Examiner’s Office.

  “There’s a lab,” she said quietly to Zachary. Like they might overhear and all run for cover. Like they might slip out of her grip as Jay Salk just had.

  “Do you know them?” Zachary asked.

  “No.”

  “So they probably don’t have anything to do with Salk.”

  “No,” Kenzie agreed, pushing herself away from the car and walking toward it.

  The V in Virutek appeared to be a double-helix strand of DNA separating into two single strands at the vertex. DNA? Or a double strand of RNA? Or were they using single-strand RNA viruses to modify DNA? Did the logo tell a story, or was it just designed by someone who had no idea what the difference was?

  Zachary followed a step or two behind Kenzie, letting her take the lead this time. He was good at finagling his way into a locked building and talking to neighbors. She was good at talking to medical people.

  Kenzie pushed her way through the glass door with frosted lettering. There was a small, sterile-looking reception area, where there really wasn’t anywhere to sit down. A larger brushed-aluminum copy of the logo was the focal point on the wall to their right. To the side were several pictures in a grid and a plaque with a corporate name on it. The counter was polished white resin and the woman sitting at the computer looked at Kenzie as if she must be lost.

  “May I help you?”

  “Can you tell me what this company does, please?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What does Virutek do? It looks from your logo like maybe you’re a medical research lab?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Virutek mean ‘virus technology’?”

  The woman’s penciled eyebrows rose. “It sounds like you already know all of the answers. Who are you, again?”

  “Did Jeremy Salk work here?”

  “Jeremy Salk?” She shook her head. “No, there hasn’t been anyone by that name here.”

  “Jay, I mean. Jay Salk.”

  “Still no.”

  “He lives in this building. In the apartments down that end...” Kenzie motioned.

  “No one from Virutek lives in the building. I’m sorry. You must have been misdirected.”

  “No, I’m just checking. I need to talk to one of your researchers. Is there someone who could spare a few minutes to talk to me?”

  “About what?”

  “About what experiments they are doing. Whether they are doing anything with HHV-4.”

  The woman gave her a puzzled look, frowning and shaking her head. “And who are you? Why are you asking these questions?”

  “I’m with the Medical Examiner’s Office. My name is Dr. Kenzie Kirsch.”

  “The Medical Examiner’s Office.”

  “Yes. We’ve had a number of cases lately that have had lab-engineered HHV-4 infections.”

  The woman blinked. She started to stand, then sat and reached for her phone, but couldn’t seem to complete the action. “We don’t do human studies,” she said flatly.

  “That doesn’t mean you haven’t had a virus escape. If you are doing any work with HHV-4, you’d better get me in to talk to someone ASAP.” Kenzie was already standing against the counter, but she leaned over it toward the woman, deliberately getting into the woman’s personal space.

  The receptionist looked at her for another minute longer, her eyes wide, then seemed to overcome her inertia. She tapped a few buttons into the keypad. It didn’t look like 9-1-1 from where Kenzie stood. But it could still be internal security. She waited for an answer.

  “Dr. Ducros?” she asked, her voice high with anxiety that hopefully, Dr. Ducros could hear clearly. “There is a woman here from the Medical Examiner’s Office demanding to speak to someone about your studies.”

  “Dr. Kenzie Kirsch,” Kenzie repeated. Not some woman. She was a doctor and she was there to get answers.

  A few more words were exchanged between Dr. Ducros and the receptionist, with Ducros apparently doing most of the talking and the woman giving one- or two-word answers, keeping the content of the discussion from Kenzie.

  “Dr. Ducros will be out to get you in a moment,” the woman eventually said as she pressed a button to hang up. Her eyes strayed toward Zachary, wondering who he was and why he was there, but Kenzie didn’t fill him in on any details.

  It was sort of awkward that Zachary was there when she was trying to do her job. But on the other hand, it didn’t hurt to have someone backing her up and acting as a witness to what she discovered. He was staying quiet, not interfering or trying to give her any advice.

  A man entered behind them and looked startled to find someone else in the small reception area. He smiled and raised his eyebrows questioningly. He had a sweet, woodsy-smelling cologne or aftershave on, and it quickly filled the small, warm area.

  “Oh, Mr. Fisk,” the receptionist smiled and nodded at him. “We are expecting you.” She shot a look at Kenzie as if to point out that people didn’t just barge in at Virutek. They made appointments. “I’ll just make sure everything is ready.”

  She turned away from them for privacy and spoke quietly into her headset.

  “Aaron Fisk,” the man introduced himself, holding his hand out to Kenzie.

  “Dr. Kenzie Kirsch.”

  “A pleasure to meet you. Are you here for the...” he indicated the receptionist and trailed off.

  “Oh, no. We have some other business.”

  “Oh...?” he leaned forward, head cocked slightly, waiting for more.

  “What company did you say you are with?” Kenzie asked.

  He smiled pleasantly. The receptionist took off her headset and stood. “I’ll just take you in.” She led him to a door on the left and s
wiped her card to unlock it. Aaron Fisk nodded at Kenzie and Zachary and followed his escort.

  Kenzie had thought that Dr. Ducros might play power games and keep her waiting before coming out. And if he did, she was prepared to take the discussion to the next level. But he entered the reception area from behind a door behind the reception desk that blended in with the rest of the wall. Kenzie wouldn’t have known it was there if she hadn’t seen it open. He was younger than Kenzie would have expected, wearing a long white lab coat. He had round, black-rimmed glasses and smudged shadows under his eyes like he regularly worked too late or worried too much.

  “Uh, Dr. Kirsch, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come with me, if you would.”

  He frowned when Zachary followed, but didn’t try to stop him. Neither did Kenzie. It might not be Zachary’s area of expertise, but as she was swept into the lab behind the door, she was glad she wasn’t there alone.

  62

  Ducros led Kenzie to a small meeting room, and they sat down. The walls of the room were glass with some frosted striping that afforded little privacy. The table was shiny white, as was pretty much everything else she could see. Miles of shining white counters covered with experiments that might take months or years to complete. Or which might quickly discover the cure to some disease they currently had no purchase on. Kenzie recognized much of the equipment, but of course, she couldn’t tell what they were working on.

  “Now, explain to me...” Ducros said slowly. “You are from the Medical Examiner’s Office, and you came here because...”

  “This is where my investigation led me,” Kenzie said honestly. “We have come across a number of deaths that have all had one thing in common. A lab-engineered HHV-4 virus.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. How would that lead you back here?”

  “Is that what you are working on? Some experiment with a modified HHV-4?”

  “That may be one of the things we are working on,” he said carefully. “But I don’t see how that could have anything to do with your deaths or how you would trace it to this lab.”

  “It would appear that your virus has escaped into the wild.”

  “Impossible. No.”

  “It isn’t impossible. Do you know how common escapes are from laboratories that should have had all the best isolation features known to the scientific world? Look at plague just as an example. There have been three escapes from supposedly sealed laboratories.” Kenzie looked around her. “I don’t see a lot of isolation protocols being used here, actually. None of you are in biohazard suits. I see samples in open containers. I don’t know what kind of ventilation system you have, but you realize that if there is even one vent that isn’t properly isolated, you could be venting your virus into this building.”

  “It isn’t possible. No. We are very careful. There have not been any escapes.”

  “You wouldn’t know until we connect up the deaths with this lab. And then... it’s too late to keep arguing.”

  “If you had the proof, we wouldn’t just be sitting here. You would have... a subpoena or a court order. You’d have the CDC behind you. But I don’t see anyone but this...” He looked Zachary over, trying to classify him. “This assistant with you.”

  “Oh, we’ll be calling in the troops. You can bet on that.” Kenzie stopped talking and waited for that to sink in. “Now is the time to talk about what you are doing and to mitigate any damage before any accusations can be made.”

  “It seems like you’re already making them.”

  “I can come back here with the Medical Examiner and the CDC if that’s what you want.”

  He considered that and shook his head, lips pressed tightly together. “Why are you here, then?”

  “I’m investigating.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “First of all, confirmation that you are working with a variant of HHV-4.”

  “We are doing several different studies here. One of them might be HHV-4.”

  “What are you doing with it? How have you changed it?”

  “That’s proprietary.”

  “What are you trying to do with it?”

  “Really, we do have the right to trade secrets. Considering the fact that we are not doing any human studies, I don’t see how you think this could have infected any of your... patients.”

  “A man in this building has died. With lab-engineered HHV-4 in his brain.” Of course, that might be a stretch. Kenzie didn’t have evidence that Jay Salk had HHV-4 in his brain like the four victims from the nursing center. Not yet. And they couldn’t even prove that it was cause of death for those whose brain tissue did test positive. It certainly wasn’t Salk’s cause of death, as she was implying.

  “That...” Ducros shook his head. “That really doesn’t make sense.”

  “Somehow, it got out. Has anyone in the lab been sick? Or died?”

  “No. Of course not. Colds, maybe, certainly nothing that we have been studying here.”

  “You haven’t had anyone who has shown... unusual symptoms?”

  Ducros raised his hands palms-up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “A number of the victims we have seen were showing signs of dementia before they died. Not far in advance, just a few days before death. You haven’t had anyone who is... I don’t know... being forgetful, erratic... incontinent?”

  Salk gave a sharp bark of a laugh. “What?”

  “Have you had anyone who has been behaving strangely lately? Altered personality. Unable to find the right words when describing something. Emotionally labile.”

  Ducros sat back abruptly. He looked at Kenzie, his face a blank mask.

  As if that weren’t a big tell.

  Kenzie watched him, waiting for him to think it through and tell her what he was thinking. Now he was worried. Maybe he was starting to see that Kenzie could be telling the truth. It might not be some fantastic tale.

  “We had one employee who was feeling a lot of stress. He was... advised to take a vacation. He hasn’t shown up at the lab again since.”

  “So he’s missing?”

  “He’s not missing. He was told to take some time off and he did. It certainly would have been better if he had arranged his schedule with us first, but...” Ducros shrugged. “Scientists can be a funny bunch. We don’t always have the best social skills. You tell him to take a break, he takes a break, and then wonders what you’re going on about when you complain that he didn’t make the proper arrangements. No one is missing. No.”

  “Where did he go? Does anyone know?”

  “No.”

  “And you don’t know when he’s coming back.”

  “No. But he will.”

  “What was going on with him? You said he was stressed? How was that manifesting?”

  “He was very anxious. Accusing others of stealing his equipment or changing his results. He had a couple of blow-ups, getting angry over nothing. Everybody kind of had enough of him, so he was asked to... please take some time off.”

  Kenzie nodded. It was a possible fit. But of course, it could just be a scientist getting stressed out and having a bit of a breakdown because he needed a rest. What were the chances that he was at home, dead in his bed? Or in the street? Another John Doe in her morgue?

  “What’s this guy’s name? And description?”

  Ducros frowned, looking at her. “Why?”

  “I think someone should make sure that nothing has happened to him. If you haven’t heard from him, it may just be that he’s taken some time off like he was told to. But it could also be because something happened to him. He could be in the hospital. Or at home, sick, in need of assistance. Or he could be...” Kenzie trailed off and didn’t finish her sentence.

  Ducros didn’t like the question. Kenzie could see his indecision. Did he give a description of his missing employee, hoping that nothing had happened to him? Or hold it back? If something had happened and he withheld information, could h
e be held responsible? It wasn’t like Kenzie was a cop.

  “He’s... late twenties, I think. Medium height, slim. Brown hair. Too long, but not in a ponytail. Pretty average.”

  Kenzie thought through the bodies that she had in the morgue or had seen recently. “What’s his name?”

  Ducros hesitated.

  “Really,” Kenzie said. “I need to know.”

  “Abernathy. Joe.”

  Not the name of anyone who had been through the Medical Examiner’s Office recently. Kenzie would have remembered that name. She let out a breath of relief. Maybe he was just taking some mental health time.

  Unless it was another John Doe. She was a little paranoid about that, seeing as how Jay Salk had ended up being in the morgue as a John Doe. It was pretty much impossible that the same could be true of Abernathy. The only current resident who was unidentified was the DB from the motel. And Abernathy was local. There wouldn’t have been any reason for him to be in a motel.

  “Did Abernathy know Jay Salk, who lives in this building?”

  It was a stretch, of course. How would the two men, who were probably decades apart and with totally different lifestyles, know each other? Just living and working in the same building wouldn’t do it. The apartments were completely separated from the lab. Although they might have shared ventilation.

  “No, Abernathy wasn’t friends with any of those people.”

  “Do you know any of them? Did they ever have reason to come in here to make an inquiry? Maybe you run into each other at a convenience store close by?”

  “Sometimes you run into people you recognize. But that doesn’t make you friends or mean that you’re close enough to each other to pass a virus on to someone.” He shook his head. “A virus that is only transmitted through bodily fluids, not through the air.”

  “Which people from this building have you seen outside or other places?”

  “I don’t know. People come and go. I don’t remember faces very well, couldn’t tell you what someone’s face looked like if my life depended on it.” He paused. “There was that woman with the dog.”

  Kenzie drew in her next breath with difficulty. She tried to continue the conversation without any change in her expression. Not to give away that she was about to fall apart completely. “What woman with a dog?”