by Grant Pies
“So…?”
“So, males with MIDAS die from organ failure.”
“Right?”
“Their organs fail because they are missing a protein in their genes.”
“The – uh – PAX…” Carter searched for the word.
“PAX2 protein,” Olivia said.
“But the females…” He started to realize what Olivia was getting at.
“They have the PAX2 protein. So, they survive, with only some minor deformities.” Olivia pointed down at Rose’s eye. “I don’t think they were testing a cure on her … I think this is the cure, she is the cure. What’s happening to her is just a side effect.”
“Rose? Wait, what?” Carter wrinkled his forehead.
“This, the procedure, the machine you saw pumping her blood, what they did to her—that’s the cure for MIDAS. It’s like a blood transfusion, but with genetic material. It’s a transfusion of the PAX2 protein. They cut the protein from one person and splice it onto another person’s genes.”
“So, all Blair would need is a source to get the protein from?” Carter looked down at Rose, at the bruised needle marks in her arm.
“But a blood transfusion you just need the same blood type. For this, it needs to be—"
“An exact match,” Carter said. “A blood relative.”
“Your own child.” Olivia nodded slowly and held Rose’s hand. “This is what she was made to do,” she said softly. “This was all she ever was to Blair.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Carter shook his head and backed away from Rose and Olivia. “This is nuts. This is the real world, not some sci-fi movie. You’re talking about editing a person’s genes. Their genes! Like it’s just splicing some movie clips together.”
“It’s theoretical, at least to most of us it is. No hospital is doing this. But there are private companies out there, experimenting, testing. Will, it’s the only thing that fits. Think of the bodies you saw at Accenture. They were hooked up to the same machines.”
“Mm-hm.” Carter nodded.
“Test subjects. Probably splicing off different parts of their genes to see what happens. They hook Rose up to that machine, withdraw blood or plasma, separate out the PAX2 protein, and inject whatever is left back into Rose. Her microarray results show almost eighty percent of her genes are abnormal now.” She pointed at the lab work she’d ordered behind Dr. Sheffield’s back. “Abnormal, as in missing pieces.”
“Fuck,” Carter sighed and leaned against the wall.
“You need to find Blair. If this is what’s going on, then he has whatever serum they’ve created with the PAX2 protein. That’s the only way Rose will survive.”
“But we’ve got nothing. No leads.” Carter looked out into the ER and saw Detective Shaker and his partner walking through the glass doors. “Shit…”
Olivia turned to see the two detectives. “You talk to them. Feed them whatever story you’ve cooked up. I’ll check the hospital records to see if we’ve ever had any dealings with Wave Therapeutics.”
“And if nothing comes up?” Carter asked.
Looking at Rose, Olivia sighed, “Then there’s nothing that will help her.”
Felo de se?
Carter watched Detective Shaker and his partner from his hospital bed. They spoke to Brian, jotting notes, nodding, and looking him up and down. From across the ER, Detective Shaker caught Carter’s eye, and whispered something to is partner. The two quickly wrapped up their discussion with Brian and made their way over.
“You again,” Detective Shaker said and flipped to a new page in his notepad.
“You know this guy?” the other detective asked. He was tall and thin, with hunched posture.
“This is the guy who solved the Beth Freidman case a couple years back. Found the dead girl.” Shaker rolled his eyes. “He teamed up with Sam Murphy. PIs chasing down another missing girl.”
“Murphy’s a PI now? Surprised he’s sober enough to solve a crossword, much less a case.”
Detective Shaker didn’t take his eyes off Carter. “Where is Sam? He finally drop you? I knew you’d chase down the wrong lead. Piss the wrong person off.” He nodded down at the bandage wrapped around Carter’s stomach.
“Sam’s busy, and I’d say I chased down the right lead, something you know nothing about.”
“Cool your jets there, Frank Drebin. You got lucky with Orcheck. Same with finding that dead girl years back.”
“Wait, this was the PI that caught Orcheck?”
“Well, him and Murphy.” Detective Shaker leaned towards his partner and held his hand over his mouth, like he was telling a secret, but he spoke at a normal volume. “It was probably Murphy that did all the work.”
“Well, I don’t care who took him down, I’m just glad that sick fuck was exposed for what he was.” The detective reached out and shook Carter’s hand. “Detective Ward. It’s just a shame he took the easy way out. Guy deserved to be beaten every day in prison.”
“Easy way out?” Carter wrinkled his forehead.
“He offed himself.”
“What? No – he – he wanted to live.”
“Tell that to the guard who found the sicko hanging in his cell, a puddle of piss under his feet.” Shaker laughed and elbowed his partner in the side. Detective Ward chuckled awkwardly. “C’mon don’t look so broken up. You don’t wanna look too sympathetic towards a pedophile.” To his partner, Shaker said, “I think this guy thought Orcheck was innocent or something.”
“Psssh,” Detective Ward said. “Innocent? That guy had something in him. Something dark. You should have seen the pictures he had.”
Carter jerked his head up and looked at Detective Ward, cocking his head at an angle. “Pictures? What pictures?”
“The guy had pictures of girls. Close up pictures. You know, creepy shit.” Ward shook his head.
“But it’s still an ongoing case,” Shaker said, shooting a look of disapproval to Ward, “Probably shouldn’t discuss—"
“C’mon, ongoing case? The guy’s dead, and he was guilty as sin.”
“So, you saw this guy get mugged?” Shaker changed the subject, motioning over to Brian.
“You said pictures? Printed out? Developed in his dark room?” Carter asked.
“You mean his creepy shed? No, the asshole had a digital camera in his closet. He had a memory card filled with ‘em,” Ward said.
Carter looked away, his mind racing.
Snapping his finger in Carter’s face, Detective Shaker said, “Hey, the mugging? Can we focus on one thing at a time here?”
“How many digital cameras did you find?” He ignored Shaker.
“One? Right?” Ward looked at Shaker. “You just found the one camera?”
Shaker looked at Ward sternly. “Like I said, it’s an ongoing case. Now you say you saw Mr. Camonelli getting mugged outside the hospital?”
“Camonelli?” Carter repeated.
“Mr. Camonelli.” Shaker pointed at Brian. “Get with it.”
“Mm-hm. Yeah.”
“Did you get a good look at ‘em?” Shaker asked, pen poised to write anything down.
“Not really. Saw two men running and that guy on the ground.”
“Where was this?”
“Close enough that we could hobble here.” Shaker nodded and jotted something down in his notepad. Carter was getting to see how this felt, being the one to answer the questions and watching the investigator just nod and scribble.
Pointing at Carter’s stomach, Detective Ward asked, “What happened there? Same people?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Stupid accident, really. I was hanging a ceiling fan. Ladder fell out from under me, screwdriver went right through the skin. Thing keeps splitting open. Been a couple days now.”
“Ceiling fan, huh?” Shaker glanced at Detective Ward.
“Now tell us about the girl,” Shaker said, cutting to the chase.
“It’s Rose Bishop.”
“How do you know for sure?”
> “Because I’ve been staring at her picture for the last two weeks. It’s her.”
“How’d you find her? Something Orcheck told you during your private session?”
Carter hesitated. He looked over at Rose on one side of the ER, then over to Brian on the other side. He thought back to how badly Orcheck wanted his medicine … wanted to live. The memory card he took from Orcheck’s, the one he forgot to give to the police, was still settled deep in his coat pocket, tucked away from days ago.
“Hey! You losing too much blood or something?” Shaker said, snapping in Carter’s face again. “What did Orcheck tell you that led you to Rose?”
“He uh, well he said she was in an office. Tied up there. Drugged.” Carter pieced together the lie just as it left his mouth. His gut told him to not give away too much information.
“An office? Like downtown?” Ward asked.
“No, uh – it was on the South Side, industrial area.” Carter thought of the place he’d found Olivia. It was the first place that came to mind. A little bit of truth peppered in to make it just believable enough. “Yeah, it was abandoned. Whole area seemed pretty empty.”
“You got an address?” Shaker asked.
Carter nodded, still trying to decide if this was the right thing to do, the right lie to tell, even though at this point there was no going back. He looked at his phone and gave them the coordinates to the industrial office building. Shaker squinted his eyes and copied the address in his notepad.
“So what, Orcheck kept her alive … to what…?” Ward asked.
Shaker interrupted him. “It doesn’t take a genius to know what he kept her alive for!”
“Poor girl.” Ward looked over his shoulder at Rose’s trauma room. “She’s been through hell.”
“Witnesses say you didn’t come in with Mr. Camonelli,” Shaker said. Carter knew this tactic. Blurt out a question to catch a person off guard. “They say he came in with a doctor. Pretty British lady over there.” He pointed across the ER to Olivia.
“Well I got the guy close to the ambulance bay, and this doctor said she’d take him in, you know, so I could get Rose.”
“But just a moment ago, you told us you brought him in?” Shaker said.
“If you want to play semantics, then she brought him through the door. I brought him to the hospital!”
“Changing his story already.” Shaker smirked at Ward, and they both jotted something down in their notes.
“It’s not a change! It’s just a detail.”
“The devil’s in the details, Mr. Carter.” This was the first time Detective Shaker used Carter’s name, and for some reason he didn’t like it. Like he wasn’t in on a joke or something.
“And this girl.” Shaker gestured at Rose vaguely. “The same witnesses that say Dr. Abbott brought in Camonelli say you just kinda appeared outta nowhere with the girl.”
“That a question?”
“Where’d you two enter the ER?”
“The front fucking entrance!” Carter pointed at the triage area of the ER. “Everyone was probably just watching the doc come in with the mugging victim. She went in and was barking orders at everyone. I just took Rose to a bed and stayed quiet until she started seizing.”
“Mm-hm.” Shaker nodded slowly and locked eyes with Carter. “So, if we check the security cameras, we’ll see you coming in right behind Dr. Abbott?”
Carter swallowed and hesitated for only a second. “Yeah, but why bother? You got your guy and you got your girl. What else is there?”
“Like I said, it’s an ongoing investigation.” Shaker smiled. “You sure you didn’t know Orcheck before all this?”
“What?” This time Shaker’s tactic worked. Carter had no idea what this meant or where the question was leading. “What are you saying?”
“Woah, woah, woah. Calm down there.” Shaker held his hands out placatingly but smirked at the fact he’d gotten a rise out of Carter. “It’s just a question. Are you sure you didn’t know Dennis Orcheck before you got involved in this case?”
“No! Absolutely not!”
Carter narrowed his gaze at Shaker. Ward simply stood there, like he had just as much forewarning of these questions as Carter had.
“Okay, okay. Like I said, it’s just a question. Us real detectives have to ask every question. It’s just … you come on the case, somehow trace Rose to Orcheck—”
“Yeah, it’s called detective work,” Carter snapped.
“Then show up at his house with enough time to contaminate a potential crime scene before the cops show up. Then he goes and hangs himself less than an hour after you forced yourself into some meeting with him. Now you show up with Rose, acting like the hero. It’s just questions. That’s all. Questions.” Shaker clicked his pen and stuffed it in his front shirt pocket.
“Go fuck yourself,” Carter muttered.
“I’m gonna need you to stick around while I check on those security tapes,” Shaker said. “You know … follow every lead, as they say. Should have that pretty Brit doc look at that while you’re here.” Shaker pointed at Carter’s stomach. “Hanging ceiling fans is a dangerous thing. Maybe you should leave it to the professionals.”
The detectives left and made their way across the ER. Carter sat with his heart rattling inside his body, staring at Detective Shaker across the ER. Only after a full minute did he realize he was gripping his hands around the edge of the hospital bed so tight that his knuckles were white.
Watching from a distance, Olivia approached. “They buy it?”
“Fucking piece of shit,” Carter said through clenched teeth.
“What?”
“Dirty fucking cop.” Carter never took his eyes off Detective Shaker.
“What happened?” Olivia placed her hand on Carter’s shoulder. “Hey, look at me. What happened?”
“The guy’s in this more than he’s letting on. He planted evidence at Orcheck’s house.” Carter reached into his coat pocket. “Sam and I found these pictures in a camera. They make Orcheck look guilty, or guiltier than he already was.”
“Carter, what are you doing with that!” She looked over her shoulder and cupped her hand over his to hide the memory card. “Why didn’t you turn those over to the cops?”
“I forgot. There was just a lot going on that night. By the time I realized it, it was too late. There was no way to prove it came from Dennis’ camera.”
“Okay? So?”
“So, they still found it! Someone put a different memory card back in the camera with the same photos on it. Planted evidence. And that fat son of a bitch is the one who found the pictures. There was always something odd about the memory card. Dennis told us he never shot on digital. He only used analog.”
“He could have just lied.”
“But he had his own dark room. These pictures aren’t his. They planted them in a camera, shoved it in the back of his closet, and waited until they needed their fall guy. But Shaker showed up, probably realized the card was gone. They got him another, he put it in, and Accenture had their ace in the hole.”
“This teacher mentioned Accenture?”
“Who else do you know of that pays people in organs? The whole thing was a goddamn cover for Accenture. And that piece of shit dirty cop is helping them.” The detective was on the far end of the ER talking to a security guard. “Now he’s threatening me to back off, or he’ll frame me as well.”
“Well there’s a world of difference between you and that teacher,” Olivia said, sitting on the hospital bed next to Carter. “It’d be much harder to frame you. The other guy at least was in a relationship with an underage girl.”
“They’d find a way. And right now, he’s getting access to the security tapes here. He’s going to start poking holes in my story. Now more than ever, you need to act like you don’t know me. You don’t know anything.”
“But Will—"
“No, Olivia, you’ve already been taken once. I barely got you out of there – shit!” Carter’s
eyes grew wide. “Shit, shit, shit!”
“What? What is it?”
“The body! Back where they had you. Jake Dawson.”
“What about him?”
“I told the cops that’s where I found Rose. I gave them the fucking address! I led them right to a dead body.”
The Invisible Hand of William Blair
Carter stepped on the brake. The van’s tires slid on the gravel parking lot outside the empty warehouse. No one was around, as far as he could tell. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves. Another helpful item left behind in the back of the van.
Once inside, the body of Jake Dawson taunted him, a bloody reminder of what he had done and what could have easily happened to him … or what may have already happened to Sam. Blotches of blood soaked through the sheet, like a crimson stained ghost.
Fighting through his urge to run away and forcing back a gag reflex, Carter moved fast, wrapping Jake in more sheets then twisting the ends. He grunted and strained each time he lifted and pulled Jake’s body. The dense lifeless weight somehow heavier than if he were lifting a living person. His hair hung in his face and his breathing was labored.
He left Jake’s body at the door and backed the van up until it was almost touching the front of the warehouse office. Crouching low, he struggled. Rigor hadn’t fully set in, but the limbs were less movable than expected. Sweat dripping in his eyes, he pulled Jake’s head in first, then the rest of him. Sam’s words about killing burrowed through his mind. It usually leaves you with more problems than you had before. This was one moment Carter had to admit Sam was right. He just hoped he got the chance to tell Sam he was right.
“Sorry,” Carter said quietly, like Jake could still hear him. Maybe it was wishful thinking, or maybe it was just denial, his mind not allowing him to fully grasp this reality. The reality where he was a killer.
He climbed into the driver’s seat and drove to another empty warehouse parking lot nearby. He still needed to go back and clean the warehouse, but his priority was to get the body away from the crime scene.