by Grant Pies
“Anything else?” Carter asked.
“Not about the kidney, but I read a bit about Blair. The guy is a genius.” She looked down at her notes. “His mum died when he was sixteen. Raised by his father after that. He had his PhD at twenty, the same year he ran his first company.”
“A lot of geniuses go mad,” Carter said.
“His company worked with the Ministry of Agriculture in Edinburgh in the nineties alongside the Roslin Institute to clone the first sheep, Dolly.” Olivia looked up and shook her head in amazement. “This guy was cloning sheep before his bloody twenty-first birthday.”
“You sound like a fan.”
“Well, he doesn’t give many interviews, but in all the snippets I read, he talks about perfecting his research, so he can provide state-of-the-art healthcare to all people, free.”
“Nothing’s free. And what’s his research anyways?”
“Not sure. He left his first company around 2008. Started Accenture around the same time.”
“That’s all good to know, I guess.” But he was hoping for something more.
“There’s something else,” Olivia said. He could tell she didn’t want to bring this up.
“Something else?” Carter said, edging his legs off the bed and leaning forward.
“Yeah, the hospital has a database of free and low-cost clinics. His name and Accenture are all over the board of directors for clinics in the Chicago area. Most of them are in low-income parts of the city and most of them specialize in eye disorders, specifically treating coloboma and other genetic deformities.”
Carter frowned. “Coloboma?”
“It’s a malformation of the eye, typically the iris or pupil. I read a couple of medical journals and at its root, it’s just a deformity. But it can be an indicator that a person is missing the PAX2 protein in their genes. That results in a disease called microphthalmia–dermal aplasia–sclerocornea syndrome.”
“That’s a mouthful.”
“Yeah, the journal I read shortened it to ‘MIDAS syndrome.’ But it’s rare.”
“How rare?”
“Only a thousand reported cases at the time this journal was written six years ago.” Olivia held the printed journal in her hand. It had been hidden under her legal pad of notes.
“That is pretty rare.”
“In females,” Olivia finished. “A thousand females.”
“And males?” Carter asked. “Rarer?”
“You could say that. At the time the medical journal was written, there were zero recorded cases of MIDAS syndrome in males.”
“Zero? Males can’t get it? Then that can’t be what Blair has. Unless he was born a woman or something.”
Olivia shook her head. “There are zero cases in males not because they can’t inherit the disorder, it’s because they can’t survive the disorder. Most die in utero due to lack of organ development. Only a handful of the cases discovered in utero made it beyond birth, but all died within the first year.”
“Organ development?” Carter said, his heart racing. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
“I thought the same thing when I read that.”
He blinked rapidly and looked up at the ceiling. “So, you think that’s what the organs are for?”
“Will, you’ve got to know this is all very theoretical.” Olivia leaned forward and placed her hand on his knee. “I just thought it was curious, you know, after what you saw in that building. The organs and all. But scientifically,” Olivia shook her head, “it’s next to impossible for Blair to survive with MIDAS beyond one year old.”
“But if someone was to survive, it would need to be someone like Blair, someone who came from a rich family, a family that had the means to get him the help.”
“I suppose, but Will, please.”
“What?”
“The job was to find Rose. That’s all.” Olivia said.
“Maybe this is how I do that. It’s a lead.”
“It’s a theory.”
Running his hand up his arm, landing on his IV, Carter said, “Can you take this out? I need to get going.”
Defeated, Olivia stood and said, “At least let me check your wound one last time.” Carter laid back and she lifted his gown up. “Your sutures look good. Can I trust you with pain meds?” She pulled a prescription bottle from her scrubs pocket. The pills rattled inside.
“Yeah. I really don’t like those things anyways. Make me too loopy.”
“Good. Take them only as needed.” She held up a second bottle. “Antibiotics. Finish the bottle as instructed on the label.”
She stuffed the two bottles into a paper bag, and set it next to Carter on the bed, then ran her hand up Carter’s arm to where the IV needle was. “Hold still.” Gently, she pulled the needle out, placed a cotton ball in the crook of his arm, and bent it up. “Hold that there for a minute.”
“So, I’m good enough to leave?”
“Under normal circumstances I’d keep you here another night. But the longer you’re here, the likelihood of someone walking in here goes up.”
“Will I see you again?” Carter asked.
“You’ll need a wound re-check and bandage change in two days.”
“That’s not what I meant. I mean—"
“I know what you meant,” Olivia said. “I think that’s up to you.”
“Well, I’d like to see you again.”
“That’s not what I meant. It’s up to if you’re still around.”
“C’mon. That’s pretty bleak.”
“Well you can’t have it both ways. You can’t think Blair is running some sort of black-market organ trade, and at the same time say it isn’t deadly for you to poke your beak into it.”
“I’ll be okay. Promise.”
“You can rest a little longer if you need to, but my shift is over in an hour, and I can’t hang around the hospital any longer. People would wonder what I’m doing. Plus, I haven’t slept in over two days.”
“Thank you. I owe you my life. Anything you ever need, just ask.” He stepped forward, initially thinking of offering Dr. Abbott a hug, but instead stuck his hand out at her. She smiled and shook his hand.
“I may hold you to that one day. Now, I have to go talk to those two kids in the lounge. I think I’ve put that off long enough.”
“Good luck,” Carter said.
“Good luck to you too.” Olivia walked out of the storage room.
When the Cat’s Out of the Bag, Kill the Cat(s)
Carter dragged himself into the front office of the motel. A bell chimed to announce his presence. A man with a patchy gray beard leaned on the counter and flipped through a hotrod magazine.
“I need to pay up for a few more nights,” Carter said.
Without looking up from his magazine, the man said, “Room number?”
“Nine.” Carter leaned on the counter, trying to find a position that was comfortable.
“I was all set to clear out your shit today. You’ve been gone a couple days.”
“It hasn’t been that long.”
“Thought you skipped out on the bill.”
“What do I owe?” Carter asked.
“Fifty-seven sixty-eight,” the man said, flipping another page of his magazine.
A radio broadcast crackled through the small office, “…Chicago detectives are still searching for a man who broke into the Bridgeport Cryobank one week ago. There currently are no suspects…” Carter breathed a sigh of relief at the lack of suspects.
“Add another two nights on that. I’ll pay for it all now.” He pulled out a handful of wrinkled bills.
Tapping on a simple calculator, the man said, “Hundred dollars, seventeen cents. Pay cash, we’ll call it a hundred even.”
Leland had always said to carry enough cash for breakfast for two in your pocket. Sam always said to carry $500, enough to bail yourself out on a DUI charge. Carter fell somewhere in the middle. He slid two fifty-dollar bills across the counter. “Here.” He tu
rned and walked to the door, then paused. “You didn’t go through any of my shit, did you?”
“C’mon man, what kind of place you think I’m running here?” The man smiled wide, a gold molar shimmered in his mouth.
Carter left the office and scanned the parking lot for any dark blue vans, then stepped into his motel room. The police and sperm donor records were still scattered all over the beds. His laptop was on the small table. He plugged his phone into the charger and set it on the dresser. The screen lit up, but it was only colored lines that flickered across the phone.
“Shit,” he mumbled. Maybe it’ll be better once it’s charged. He eased down into the chair and opened his computer to search William Blair. His name returned several news articles about the man. William “Billy” Blair Among Top Philanthropists of Chicago one of the headlines read. Blair Opens Two More Clinics in Haiti. If he hadn’t seen what he’d seen at Accenture, he might have admired the guy. The headline for a feature article in Popular Science read Scientist or CEO? William Blair Says Why Not Both? Blair sat on the board of several large companies, most of them medical supply and drug companies.
“There’s a push and pull from both sides,” Blair said in the Popular Science interview. “As a CEO I am in charge of sustaining a profitable company for our shareholders. But as a scientist, a doctor, I am charged with the health of not just our shareholders, but of all people.
“Our country has left people behind. Left them sick. Many times, we stop short of curing anything, content with simply maintaining an acceptable level of sickness. In other cases, we outright price people out of any sort of treatment. We’ve set up a system where healthcare workers are given impossible goals, a level of productivity that forces them to ignore patients, miss things, make poor diagnoses. In turn, less and less people trust their doctors.”
This was the public face Blair put on, Carter guessed.
“…One side wants guaranteed healthcare, a safety net. They want to know if their child gets sick, anything from a cold to a rare disease, they will be treated. The other side points to the cost of a system such as this, or they scream it’s a Trojan Horse for socialism. Well, I believe that our advancements in treatments with stem cells and gene therapy can eliminate the debate forever. We could provide healthcare to all, while leaving our freedoms intact.”
Carter scanned the rest of the interview. Of course, Blair never offered up his solution. He only offered insinuations and sometimes outright claims that his company, and more specifically he, was the only one that could bring such a future about. Another politician move. Our savior, lording over a building of illicit organs, experimenting on bodies, growing tumors, evaporating flesh, chasing people with pistols, shooting to kill, he thought.
“Fucking asshole,” Carter mumbled.
He moved to the bed and scanned the donor records with the name “James Miller” circled on them, cross-referencing donor recipient names with the mothers’ names of the missing girls listed in the police reports. There were three other missing teenage girls whose mothers had gone to Bridgeport Cryobank. “James Miller” fathered all of them.
There was a knock at the door, timid and cautious. Carter stood.
“Who is it?”
His heart raced and his fist clenched before he even knew what he was doing.
“Gary,” a voice said on the other side of the door.
“Gary?” Carter said, more to himself, and frowned.
“From the front desk. Gary,” the voice repeated.
Taking a couple steps towards the door, Carter said, “I’m a little busy, Gary.”
“Sorry. I just realized I overcharged you for the room. I owe you some money.”
“How much?”
“Uh … a few bucks.”
“I’ll settle it up later. I’m busy.”
“Um … well … uh, thing is, I’m closing the books for the week, and I need to get them squared away so the owner can make the deposit.”
Carter pulled the door opened just a couple inches until the chain latch stopped it. He looked the man up and down through the small crack in the door. The man had barely looked up at him before, but now he locked eyes with Carter.
“Everything okay?” Carter asked, straining his eyes to the side to see if anyone else was next to Gary. He couldn’t see anyone.
“Everything’s fine,” he said, scratching his razor-burned neck. “Just need you to come down to the front desk, is all.” He nodded his head towards the motel office.
“Well, like I said, I’m busy. You say you overcharged me, I paid in cash, so go get what you owe me and bring it here. But I’m not coming out. Not for you. And not for whoever else is out there.”
“Wha – what’re you talkin’ ‘bout?” Gary said, barely getting the words out before someone pushed him aside and kicked the door in.
The chain ripped off the door and knocked Carter back as a man pushed his way in and grabbed him by the shirt. He drove his fist into Carter’s face, square in the nose. His sinuses burst open and a sharp wave ripped through his face. The warm oozing feeling of blood flowed down his mouth and chin. The man pushed Carter to the ground.
Carter’s face pulsed with pain, and his eyes blurred but he managed to look towards the door. Gary was long gone. For a split second, he hoped Gary had run to call the police. But even if this man was alone, and Gary made it to safety, Carter figured he shouldn’t count on him to come to his rescue.
“Stay down!” the man yelled, towering over Carter. He slammed the laptop shut and tucked it under his arm. “Your phone?” His voice was deep and seethed with anger. He seemed in a panic, rushed.
Carter didn’t answer, not so much out of defiance, more out of confusion. He held his hand to his face, pinching his nose to stop the blood from pouring out. The man looked around the small room until he spotted the cracked phone plugged into the charger. He ripped it out of the socket and held it in the air. “The pictures, the ones you took at Accenture, they on this?”
Pain pulsed through his face, starting at his nose and travelling through his jaw and skull. Carter nodded.
“Are they only on this phone?”
He hadn’t worked out a lie in his head, but needed to buy time, get a read on the man, assess what he was willing to do to get what he wanted. Carter shook his head. “Uploaded,” was all he could get out. His eyes darted around the room for a weapon, a heavy object.
“Open the phone.” He held the phone out, screen facing Carter. “Your thumb! Open the phone.”
Carter didn’t move. He was frozen, like he was watching himself, a movie where he would yell at the screen and tell the person on the ground to just unlock the phone.
The man took one large step towards Carter. “You don’t know who you’re messing with.”
“Blair?” Carter said, blowing blood and snot out his nose onto the already dirt covered motel carpet.
The man didn’t answer. He dropped Carter’s phone on the table and reached in his pocket to get his own. He turned it around to show Carter a picture of a man. His face was swollen and smeared with blood, a rag shoved in his mouth. It was Sam.
“You motherfu—" Carter struggled to stand.
“Ah.” The man reached into his back pocket and flipped a knife open. It was matte black, except for a slim line of silver along the blade where it had been sharpened. “I’m unlocking your phone one way or another.” He slipped his phone back in his pocket and gripped his knife. “Give me your thumb.”
Keeping his eyes on the man, Carter pushed himself back until he reached the wall near the bathroom. The man took two steps in the same direction, keeping the same distance between himself and Carter.
“Hold out your hand,” he demanded. “Give me your thumb.”
Carter pushed back, but was already against the wall. He pushed more anyway, wishing he could merge into the wall, pass through it.
The man stepped closer, until he was right on top of him, the knife glinting a foot from Carter’s
face. When the man grabbed Carter’s wrist, he tried to wrestle free, but the man pressed the knife blade against his thumb. Carter let out a short scream at the sudden pain. The skin broke open and blood seeped down his hand.
Carter gripped the man’s thick wrist and pulled him forward, then sprung from the floor and drove his forehead into the man’s nose. Something gave way on the man’s face.
The man stumbled backwards and tripped, the knife sliding away. Before Carter made it to his feet, the man had fallen backwards. His skull cracked on the dresser. Blood pooled around his head and soaked into the carpet.
“Fuck!” Carter shouted out of pain, anger, and relief all at once. A touch of blood dripped down from his forehead, and he was sure he’d ripped the sutures Olivia had sewn in days ago. He kneeled over the man’s body, looking for the knife, but found nothing. He pressed his fingers against the man’s neck. Barely a pulse.
“Fuck,” he muttered again, softer this time. The pool of blood was spreading around the man’s head. Moving quickly, Carter pulled the pillowcase from the bed and balled it under the man’s head, but it was soaked through in seconds. He glanced at the motel phone, wondering if he should call the police, an ambulance, anything.
He scoured the man for clues, pulling his pockets inside out and patting him down. He pulled a gun from the man’s waistband. Thanks to Leland, Carter knew it was a .45 caliber Smith and Wesson M1911 nicknamed “The Government” because it was used so widely in the military. The gun model combined with the man’s tightly laced black boots confirmed for Carter he was in the service, at least at some point.
He rolled up the man’s sleeves to reveal arms covered in tattoos. His torso was covered as well. Buried in a sea of black and gray ink, Carter saw a scar just above his waistline. Clean and precise, just like the scar on Dennis Orcheck from his liver transplant.