Cook,Robin - Mortal Fear.txt

by Mortal Fear (lit)

  dangled a worn leather holster. When he saw Jason he seemed perplexed

  until Jason reminded him that they'd met at the morgue and at GHP.

  "Ah, yes," Curran said, with his slight brogue. "Alvin Hayes business."

  He invited Jason into his office, which was starkly utilitarian with a

  metal desk and metal file cabinet. On the wall was a calendar with the

  Celtics' basketball schedule.

  "How about some coffee?" Curran suggested, putting his mug down.

  "No, thank you," Jason said.

  ROBIN COOK

  "You're smart," Curran said. "I know everybody complains about

  institutional coffee, but this stuff is lethal." He pulled a metal chair

  away from the wall and motioned to it for Jason to sit.

  "So what can 1 do for you, doctor?"

  "I'm not sure. This Hayes business disturbs me. Remember I told you that

  Dr. Hayes said he'd made a major discovery? Well, now I think there's a

  good chance he did. After all, the man was a worldfamous researcher, and

  he was working in a field with a lot of potential."

  "Wait a, minute. Didn't you also tell me you thought Hayes was having a

  nervous breakdown?"

  "At the time I thought he was displaying inappropriate behavior," Jason

  said. "I thought he was paranoid and delusional. Now I'm not sure. What

  if he did make a major discovery which he hadn't revealed because he was

  still perfecting it? Suppose someone found out and for some reason

  wanted it suppressed?"

  "And had him killed)" Curran interrupted patronizingly.. Doctor, you're

  forgetting one major fact: Hayes died of natural causes. There was no

  foul play, no gunshot wounds to the head, no knife in the back. And on

  top of that, he was dealing. We found heroin, coke, and cash in his

  Southie pad. No wonder he acted paranoid. The drug scene is a serious

  world."

  "Wasn't that anonymous tip a bit strange?" Jason asked, suddenly

  curious.

  "It happens all the time. Somebody's pissed about something so they call

  us to get even."

  Jason stared at the detective. He thought the drug connection was out of

  character, but didn't know why. Then he remembered that Hayes had been

  living with an exotic dancer. Maybe it wasn't so out of character after

  all.

  As if reading Jason's thoughts, Curran said, "Listen, doctor, I

  appreciate you taking the time to come down, but facts are facts. I

  don't know if this guy made a discovery or not, but let me tell you

  something. If he was dealing drugs, he was taking them too. That's the

  pattern. I had the Vice department run his name through their computers.

  They came up with zip, but that just means he hadn't been caught yet.

  He's lucky he got to die of natur-al causes. In any case, I can't

  justify spending Homicide time on the death."

  "I still think there's more to it."

  Cur-ran shook his head.

  "Dr. Hayes was trying to tell me something," Jason persisted. "I think

  he wanted help."

  "Sure," Curran said. "He probably wanted to pull you into his drug ring.

  Listen, doctor, take my advice. Forget this affair." He stood up,

  indicating the interview was over.

  Descending to the street, Jason removed the parking ticket from his

  windshield wiper. Sliding in behind the wheel, he thought about his

  conversation with Detective Curran. The man had been cordial, but he

  obviously gave little credence to Jason's thoughts and intuition. As

  Jason started his car, he remembered something else Hayes had- said

  about his discovery. He'd said it was "ironic." Now that was a weird way

  to characterize a major scientific breakthrough, especially if someone

  were contriving the story.

  Back at the GHP, Jason returned to his patients, going from room to

  room listening, touching, sympathizing, and advising. That was what he

  loved about medicine. People opened themselves to him, literally and

  figuratively. He felt privileged and needed. Some of his confidence

  ebbed back.

  It was close to four when he approached exam room C and took the chart.

  He remembered the name. It was Paul Klingler, the man whose physical

  exam he had done. Before entering the room, Jason quickly reviewed his

  workup. The man appeared to be healthy, with low normal cholesterol and

  triglycerides and normal EKG. Jason entered the room.

  Klingler was slender, with sandy blond hair and the quiet confidence of

  an old moneyed Yankee. "What was wrong with my tests?" he asked,

  concerned.

  "Nothing, really."

  "But your secretary told me you wanted to repeat some. That I had to

  come today."

  "Sorty about that. There was no need for alarm. When she heard you

  weren't feeling well, she thought we should take a look."

  "I'm just getting over the flu," Paul said. "Kids brought it home from

  school. I'm much better. The only problem is that it has kept me from

  exercise for over a week."

  The flu didn't scare Jason. Healthy people didn't die of it. But he

  still examined Paul Klingler carefully and repeated the various cardiac

  tests.

  Finally he told Klingler that he'd call if the blood work revealed any

  abnormalities.

  Two patients later, Jason confronted Holly Jennings, a

  fifty-four-year-old executive from one of the largest Boston advertising

  firms. She was not happy and certainly not shy about expressing her

  feelings. And although there was a sign specifically forbidding it,

  she'd been smoking in the exam room while she had been waiting.

  "What the hell is going on?" she demanded as Jason entered the room. Her

  physical a month ago had given her a clean bill of health, though Jason

  had warned her to stop smoking and take off the twenty to thirty extra

  pounds she had put on in the last five years.

  "I'd heard you weren't feeling well," Jason said mildly. He noticed she

  looked tired, and saw the dark circles under her eyes.

  "Is that what ' this is all about?" she snapped. "The secretary told me

  you wanted to repeat some tests.

  What was wrong with them?"

  "Nothing. We just wanted to do some follow-up. Tell me about your

  health."

  "Jesus Christ! You drag me down here, scaring the hell out of me, making

  me miss two important presentations, just to have a conversation.

  Couldn't this have been done on the phone?"

  "Well, since you're here, why don't you tell me how you've been

  feeling."

  "Tired."

  "Anything else?"

  "Just generally lousy. I haven't been able to sleep. My appetite's been

  poor. Nothing specific ... well, that's not true. My eyes have been

  bothering me. I've had to wear sunglasses a lot, even in the office."

  "Anything else?" Jason asked, feeling an uncomfortable prickle of fear.

  Holly shrugged. "For some goddamn reason my hair's been thinning."

  As carefully as possible, Jason examined the woman. Her pulse and blood

  pressure were up, although that could have been due to stress. Her skin

  was dry, particularly on her extremities. When he repeated her EKG, he

  thought there might have been some very mild ST changes suggesting


  reduced oxygen to her heart. When he suggested they do another stress

  test, she declined.

  "Can I come back for that?"

  "I'd rather do it now," Jason said. "In fact, would you consider staying

  in the hospital for a couple, of days?"

  "Are you kidding? I don't have time. Besides, I don't feel that bad. Why

  do you even suggest it?"

  "Just to get everything done. I'd like you to see a cardiologist and an

  ophthalmologist as well."

  "Next week. Monday or Tuesday. But I've got some big deadlines."

  Reluctantly, Jason let Holly go after drawing some blood. There was no

  way he could force her to stay, and he had nothing specific enough to

  convince her she was in trouble. it was just a feeling: a bad feeling.

  Following his usual routine after returning home, Jason jogged, stopped

  into De Luca's Market where he got a Perdue chicken, put his meal in the

  oven, showered and retreated to his den with an ice-cold beer. Making

  himself comfortable, he continued his reading on DNA. He began to

  understand how Hayes could isolate specific genes. That was what Helene

  Brerinquivist had probably been doing that morning. Once an appropriate

  bacterial colony was found, it was cultivated to produce trillions of

  bacteria. Then, using enzymes, the bacteria DNA was separated,

  fragmented, and the desired gene was isolated. and purified. Later, it

  could be spliced back into different bacteria into regions of the DNA

  that could be "switched on" by the researcher. In that form, the

  recombinant strain of bacteria acted like miniature factories to produce

  the protein the gene was coded for. It had been this method that Hayes

  had used to produce his human growth hormone. He had started with a

  piece of human DNA, the gene that made growth hormone, cloned it by the

  help of bacteria, then spliced it into bacteria DNA in an area

  controlled by a gene responsible for digesting lactose. By adding

  lactose to the culture, Hayes's recombinant strain of bacteria had been

  "turned on" to produce human growth hormone.

  Jason drained his beer and went into the kitchen and popped another. He

  was overwhelmed by what he'd learned. No wonder scientists like Hayes

  were strange. They knew they had the power to manipulate life. This

  comprehension thrilled Jason and disturbed him at the same time. The DNA

  technology had awesome potential to do good and harm. The direction, he

  thought, was a toss-up. Armed with this information, Jason was even more

  inclined to believe that Hayes, though under general stress, had been

  telling the truth-at least about the scientific breakthrough. Jason was

  not so sure about Hayes's statement that someone wanted him dead. He

  wished he'd spent more time with the man over the last months. He wished

  he knew more about him.

  Opening the oven, Jason checked his chicken. It was browning nicely and

  looked delicious. He put water on to boil for rice, then went back to

  the den. Lifting his legs onto the desktop and tilting back his chair,

  he started the next chapter on the laboratory techniques of genetic

  -engineering. The first part dealt with the methods by which DNA

  molecules were fragmented with enzymes called restriction endonucleases.

  Jason had to read the section several times. It was difficult material.

  The shrill whine of the smoke detector startled Jason. Leaping up from

  the desk where he'd fallen fast asleep, he dashed into the kitchen. The

  water for the rice had boiled away, and the Teflon lining was smoking,

  filling the kitchen with acrid vapors. Jason shoved it under running

  water, where it spattered and hissed. Turning on the exhaust fan and

  opening one of the living room windows slowly emptied the kitchen of

  smoke, and finally the smoke detector fell silent. Jason was glad the

  landlord was out of town as usual.

  When his dinner was finally prepared, without rice, Jason carried it to

  his desk in the den, pushing papers and books aside. As he started

  eating he found himself looking at the front of the Boston Globe with

  the article "Doctor, Drugs and Dancer" staring him in the face. Picking

  the paper up in his left hand, he looked at Carol Donner again. The idea

  that Hayes would have been living with the we an confounded him. Jason

  wondered if Hayes had fallen prey to the age-old male fantasy of

  rescuing the prostitute who, despite her work, had a heart of gold.

  Thinking of Hayes as a colleague with similar background including the

  same medical school, Jason found the idea of him falling for such a

  clichd farfetched. But as Curran had said, facts were facts. Obviously

  Hayes had been living with the girl. Jason tossed the paper aside.

  After reading what he could find about dry skin, which wasn't much,

  Jason carried his soiled dishes to th& kitchen and rinsed them. The

  image of Carol Donner with her hand in front of her face kept popping up

  in his mind. He looked at his watch. It was ten-thirty. "Why not," he

  said aloud. After all, if Hayes had been living with the woman, maybe

  she knew something that could give Jason a clue about Hayes's

  breakthrough. At any rate, he had nothing to lose. Donning a sweater and

  a tweed jacket, Jason left the. apartment.

  From Beacon Hill it was only a fifteen-minute walk to the Combat Zone.

  But fifteen minutes took Jason an enormous social distance. Beacon Hill

  was the epitome of comfortable wealth and propriety, with its

  cobblestone streets and gas lamps. The Combat Zone was the sordid

  opposite. To get there, Jason skirted the edge of the Boston Common '

  reaching Washington Street with its row of bottomless bars by way of

  Boylston Street. There were roaming packs of street people mixing

  uneasily with groups of boisterous students and leather-jacketed

  blue-collar workers from Dorchester. The Club Cabaret was in the middle

  of the block, nestled between an X-rated cinema and an adult bookstore

  with a variety of supposed sexual aids on display in its window.

  The TOPLESS COLLEGE GIRLS sign glowed with fluorescent paint.

  Jason walked up to the door and went inside. He found himself in the

  bar, a long, dark room illuminated in the center to spotlight a wooden

  runway.

  The bar itself was U-shaped and surrounded the runway. Behind there were

  small booths, and rock music thudded into the room from large speakers

  flanking the stairs that led to the runway from the floor above.

  The air was foul with cigarette smoke and that peculiar chemical odor

  which smells like cheap room-deodorant. The place was almost filled with

  men hunched over drinks at the bar. It was difficult to see into the

  booths, but as Jason passed, he glimpsed numerous women in low-cut

  spaghettistrap dresses. He found a stool at the bar. A waitress wearing

  a white shirt and tight black shorts took his order almost instantly.

  As she brought his beer and a glass, a seminude dancer came down the

  stairs and pranced along the runway. Jason gazed up at her, catching her

  eye for a brief instant. She looked bored. Her face was heavily made up,

  and her bleached hair had the consistency of straw. Jason guessed her

>   age to be ovethirty, certainly no coed.

  Glancing around the room, he noticed equivalent expressions of boredom

  on the faces of the men as their eyes reflexively followed the progress

  of the dancer up and down the runway. Jason sipped his beer from the

  bottle. There was no way he'd allow his lips to touch a glass in that

  place.

  When the rock-and-roll piece ended, the dancer a . cted as if she'd been

  momentarily stranded. Self consciously, she shifted her weight from one

  four inch heel to the other, waiting for the next number.

  Jason noticed a tattooed heart on her right thigh.

  Heralded by the heavy beat of drums, the next number began, and the

  blonde immediately recommenced her gyrations. As she did so, she slipped

  off her brief top. Now all she had on was a G-string and her shoes.

  Still, the men at the bar appeared carved in stone. The only movements

  were those necessary to bring their drinks or cigarettes to their lips.

  At least until the dancer began moving along the runway. Then a few

  customers would hold out dollar bills.

  Jason watched for a while, then scanned the room again. About twenty

  feet away was a booth occupied by a man in a dark suit with a cigar,

  studying a ledger through dark glasses. Jason had no idea how the man

  could see anything at all, but decided he was management. Several

  body-builder types with eighteen-inch necks, wearing white T-shirts,

  stood on either side of the booth, their beefy arms crossed and their