The Gamma Sequence

by Dan Alatorre

  His client was another matter.

  The locker contained a laptop and a few other essentials. While they flew, she typed furiously—and constantly checked over her shoulder and up and down the aisle to ensure no one was watching her.

  He toyed with his complimentary miniature bag of pretzels. Lanaya needed to calm down a few notches. “You warned me about being tracked digitally,” he said. “Do you think it’s safe to use your computer on an airplane?”

  “They don’t collect Wi-Fi data from devices on airplanes. It’s too expensive to record all the searches and tie them back to the end user.”

  “What are you checking?”

  She didn’t look up from the screen. “Googling former co-worker names.”

  “To see which ones are still alive?”

  “Basically.”

  “Okay.” He reached over and gently closed her laptop. “I don’t know exactly what kind of trouble we’re in, but that’s not helping you.”

  “I—”

  “You need a break. Check it later. Right now, let me buy you a drink.” He pressed the overhead “call attendant” button. In the front of the plane, an electronic bell dinged.

  Settling back into his chair, he smiled at the flight attendant when she appeared a moment later. “My lady friend and I would like a drink. Do you have any Mexican beer?”

  The young lady scribbled on her pad. “Yes, sir.”

  “Perfect. I’ll have one. And my friend will have . . .”

  “Tequila,” Lanaya blurted out. “A shot of Tequila.”

  DeShear raised his eyebrows. As the flight attendant went down the aisle, he faced Lanaya. “Tequila? I figured you for a chardonnay gal.”

  “Normally, yes. But I realized my life may be ending soon, and there’s a lot of things I haven’t tried.”

  DeShear opened his mouth to speak, but stopped. He opened the bag of pretzels instead, and popped one in his mouth.

  Lanaya slipped the laptop into the seat pocket in front of her. “I’ve arranged for two business class suites at our hotel.”

  “Okay. Good.” DeShear lowered his voice. “You know, I’ve been wondering how you book airline tickets and hotel rooms.” He held the tiny foil bag to his lips and tapped a few more pretzels into his mouth. “After a while a fake ID can be tracked just like a real one. You must have several.”

  “I have a friend’s prepaid debit card.” Lanaya whispered, rearranging the copy of In Flight magazine and the safety card that rested in the seat pocket with her laptop. “I gave her ten thousand dollars and she got me the card. We are close enough in appearance that I’m able to travel using her driver’s license.”

  “That works?”

  “Most women change their hair style over time, Mr. DeShear. Longer, shorter, highlights—or they gain or lose weight. They take their glasses off for the photo but wear them in person. If a license is more than a few years old, the image will have faded. At my age, as long as the resemblance is close and no one’s calling the credit card services, it’s not a big deal.”

  The flight attendant returned with their drinks. DeShear picked up his plastic cup of beer. “Cheers.”

  Lanaya lifted her cup and raised it to her lips. It hung there, suspended in midair.

  “Is there a problem?” DeShear asked.

  “I’ve never had tequila before.” Lanaya stared at the clear liquid in the cup. “It smells awful.”

  DeShear chuckled. “It tastes even worse.”

  She sniffed the cup. “Why do people drink it?”

  “Most? To get drunk.”

  “Oh. Of course.” She inched the tiny glass closer and stopped again.

  DeShear sighed. “How about we share drinks? Take half your shot, and chase it with a big sip of my beer.”

  “That—thank you. That sounds like a good idea.” She closed her eyes and put the cup to her mouth, allowing the tiniest of swallows to cross her lips. “Oh!” She stomped the floor, shaking her head. “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

  DeShear flinched.

  “Ew! Oh my!” Lanaya screwed up her face, waving her hands. “Oh, that is awful. Quick, give me the beer.”

  DeShear handed over his drink. Lanaya gulped hard—and kept gulping. The cup went horizontal, then three-quarters vertical, then straight up. She slammed it on the folding table, shaking her head again. The last bit of beer had been completely drained from it. “Bleh.”

  She took a few deep breaths as DeShear held out a miniature pretzel. “So—ready for another?”

  * * * * *

  During her second Mexican beer, Lanaya finally seemed relaxed. DeShear was a few drinks in, too, so he probed a little more about her strange associates.

  She wasn’t having any of it.

  “At the hotel, and definitely not while drinking.”

  DeShear knew when he was beat. He sipped his beer and made small talk, keeping her mind off their troubles—to the extent that was possible.

  “I misjudged you, Mr. DeShear.” Lanaya slurred her words a little. “You’re brave and smart, and you have the commendations to prove it.”

  “I did have them. They went up in flames with that picture of me and the mayor.”

  “Yes.” She took another sip of beer. “I’m very sorry about that. Your pictures were the only personal thing you really mentioned at the fire. They must have been very special. Family?”

  DeShear sat forward. “Why are we on a plane to Atlanta?”

  She shrugged. “Because walking would take too long.” She burst into laughter at her joke. Alcohol consumed at high altitudes was allegedly more potent than at sea level. DeShear hadn’t factored that in when he ordered the second round. Or the third.

  “No.” DeShear smirked. “I mean, why Atlanta? Do you have something hidden at the gate for when we land?”

  “Killers tend to be less effective in places that use metal detectors to find guns.” She giggled, waving her cup at him. “That’s a plus for us.”

  He watched her, not smiling and not frowning, just waiting.

  “Because,” she sighed. “It’s a major hub for nearly everywhere else in the United States, and we need quick access to California, Montana, Ohio, Minnesota . . . Now, that’s all I’m telling you until—”

  “—until we are checked safely into our hotel,” he said. “Okay. You win.”

  “Mr. DeShear—Hank DeShear—why do you go by ‘Hank’? Hamilton is a perfectly good name. Hamilton DeShear. It’s practically regal-sounding.”

  “It’s a little long.”

  “What’s your rush? Hamilton DeShear is far more memorable.”

  “I guess I hadn’t thought about being memorable.”

  “You were certainly memorable to those girls you saved. And to those library workers.” She took another sip of beer. “Tell me more about Hamilton DeShear, the man I’m entrusting my life to.”

  DeShear reached over and took her cup, placing it on the empty tray table on the other side of him. “What would you like to know?”

  “Tell me a fishing story about you and your father.”

  “He was my foster father. My real parents died in a car wreck when I was a baby.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Now, Curt DeShear, he was a good guy. I loved him a lot. Good dad. I went to a couple of foster homes and stuff before he and his wife adopted me. I only remember a little about her.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Cancer took her when I was about ten. She gave it a good fight. Lasted a couple of years, but she was constantly in the hospital, and back then they didn’t really have the things they have now. She suffered a lot.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Lanaya said. “I shouldn’t have pried.”

  “It’s okay, you didn’t know.” DeShear drained the last of the beer from the cup. “I made the best of the family I got.”

  “Hmm.” Lanaya settled into the seat, pressing her cheek to the cushion and drawing her knees up. “Was there ever a Mrs. Hamilton DeShear? Or
children?”

  “I told you, my story was a sad one so far. Are you sure you wanna hear it?”

  “Perhaps we can change it going forward. Besides, you can’t give a reply like that and then not tell the story. Give.”

  “We met in graduate school, got married right after. I started teaching and she landed her dream job at a big accounting firm, so we waited to have kids. But after a couple of years, we stopped waiting—and then it was the babies who wanted to wait. We just couldn’t get pregnant, and then we had miscarriage after miscarriage. I just . . . a guy can only watch his wife’s heart break so many times. To be so excited and then have it all crash, then the crying—for weeks. I couldn’t keep putting her through it. But then we found out we were pregnant again, so I didn’t say anything. And this time we had a baby. A beautiful baby girl, who erased all our sadness just by showing up. When she was born, she was the biggest ray of sunshine in our lives. The sky was bluer, the grass was greener. Then . . . when she was three . . . she got sick. She just, faded. They said it was similar to Leukemia. No cure. We spent a year watching her go. Most marriages can’t last through that. Ours didn’t. Each time we saw each other, we saw our daughter not there, and we just couldn’t do it.”

  They sat there in silence, the low hum of the engines filling the plane. When the flight attendant dimmed the lights, the last of the passenger conversations dimmed as well.

  Lanaya snuggled into her cushion. “You’ve had a lot taken from you in your life.”

  “I told you, I’m down but I’m not out. Not by a long shot.” He took off his tie and rolled it up, stuffing it into his pants pocket. “And after we check into our hotel, you’re telling me your story. The one that put us on a last-minute flight to Atlanta.”

  “Okay,” she said, her eyes half closed. “I promise.”

  Chapter 7

  The Peachtree Plaza was a downtown skyscraper of a hotel, one much nicer than DeShear expected his client to provide. Low key seemed to be Lanaya’s M. O., but he wasn’t arguing. Room service and a hot bath sounded good.

  They passed through the crowded lobby to the front desk, where she checked them in. Holly had been strung across the countertop, and a big Christmas tree adorned the area near the elevators.

  Lanaya had procured adjacent rooms. “So we can go back and forth to talk without stepping into the hallway where we might be spotted.”

  Shaking his head, DeShear slid his plastic key through the slot on the hotel room door. “I think you can calm down a little here. We should be fine in a busy hotel.”

  Lanaya opened the door to the room next to his. “You’re the one who’s been bouncing your feet all day.”

  Once inside, she knocked on the interior door. DeShear flipped the deadbolt and opened the door. Two inches away, Lanaya had cracked hers open. “When we’re asleep, you keep yours open. I’ll keep mine locked. Otherwise,” she stepped back and pushed her door open the rest of the way. “We can work in here and strategize.”

  “Sounds good. Let me wash my face to wake up, and I’ll be right over.”

  He returned a few minutes later with a towel around his neck and a Coke in his hand. She waved for him to join her at the little desk by the window, opening her laptop. She glanced at his soda. “Would you mind grabbing one of those for me?”

  “Not at all.” He tossed the towel onto the bed and opened the panel on the console under the TV, accessing the mini fridge. “Coke? Or something else?”

  “Coke’s fine.”

  “Not tequila?”

  “Never again.” She shuddered.

  He smiled and handed her the little bottle. Aside from being her semi-body guard, he still wasn’t really sure why he was here. But as she said, the money was good, so he could afford to be patient. She’d tell him when she was ready.

  “I think our killer or killers will head to Minneapolis next.” She pointed to a map on the laptop screen. “The researchers in the group I worked in were recruited from all over the country. I think that was on purpose. They’d have less in common, but upon release they’d return home—and be far less likely to connect with former co-workers. Two from my group work together in Minneapolis.”

  “I think you’re about two jumps ahead of me,” DeShear said, glancing at the lights of the Atlanta skyline out the window. A few blocks away, a tall, thin crane dangled a wreath above a construction site. “Let’s back up a bit. You said the murder victims worked together. When?”

  She closed the map window and a black screen appeared with lines of code. She typed on the keyboard and closed the program. “The better question is where.”

  “Okay.” He lowered himself onto the bed, reclining on one elbow. “Where and when?”

  She spun in the chair to face him. He said nothing, just cradled the Coke in his hands.

  Lanaya sighed and cracked open her soda bottle, staring at it. “People don’t set out to do bad things. I don’t think they do, anyway.” She raised her eyes to meet his. “I was a good scientist, Hamilton. I won the Tewksbury award my final year in my doctorate program. My parents were so proud. I got recruited to Centaur Genomics, and life was good. My work was highly praised in numerous publications. Then I got a call from Angelus Genetics. They weren’t as established, but they were very cutting edge. Marcus Hauser didn’t talk about changing the world—he was doing it. And they had it all, at Angelus. A big raise, free day care, student loan forgiveness. They offered below market rate loans to employees for cars and houses because they wanted the very best people on their team. I was young and ambitious. I jumped at the chance.”

  He let her talk. He’d learned confessions take time.

  She leaned back in the chair, holding the Coke in her lap, slowly turning the bottle. “Fast forward a few years and you realize they own you. You’re not going to make that kind of money anywhere else, and if you leave, you’d have to drastically change lifestyles. No more private schools or semiannual vacations to Hawaii and Aspen.” She shrugged, watching the little bubbles work their way up the side of the plastic bottle. “Then one day they announced they were downsizing. Some of us were offered positions at their subsidiary in Arizona—Onyx Research. This facility was very different. Specialized. Very compartmentalized, and extremely secretive. You barely knew the name of the person in the next cubicle, much less what they were working on. I was assigned to a project that was the cream of the crop. The one that was going to make Angelus Genetics famous. These people weren’t just curing cancer, they were removing the possibility of anybody getting it to begin with. And not only cancer. Diabetes, MS, Heart disease—all the biggies.

  “Some of the younger employees created an online black screen site, to do at home what we couldn’t do at work—talk—but using symbols instead of names. One girl, Double Omega, said her project’s success rates were inflated. A week later, she was gone. Rumors on the black screen site said it was suicide. I didn’t know her, but it seemed possible. Positions at the Onyx facility were extremely high-pressure, and the lack of interaction was depressing for a lot of people.”

  She sighed, getting up and facing the window. Her reflection showed her lost in thought, reliving things she wanted to forget. “I got reassigned to a new project. That happened a lot. Segmentation. One person started a project, another finished it, and who knows how many worked on it in between? But that way, Onyx guaranteed employees couldn’t take secrets to a competitor. I soon realized I’d taken over Double Omega’s project. She had it backwards. They were not inflating the success rates, they were hiding the failures. If the classification group succeeded at all, the viables were segregated out and given a new group name. This would show something like 80 or 90% success in the new classification group, but they were only taking 10% of the entire pool. So the project actually had a 90% failure rate or worse. That’s much closer to industry norms.”

  She shook her head, turning to him. Her eyes were red and brimming with tears. “I was a very good scientist, Hamilton. And now . . .”
Her voice broke. “I’m probably going to be publicly discredited and murdered in a way that looks like an accident.”

  DeShear sat up on the bed. “So these killings, our case . . . somebody’s committing murder over a bunch of faked reports?”

  “It’s big money, Hamilton. World-wide patents that might eradicate life-threatening afflictions are worth billions of dollars, possibly trillions. People shoot each other in a neighborhood poker game. They can certainly be killed over billions of dollars. But no, our murders didn’t take place because of Onyx’s DNA sequencing successes. They’re happening because—”

  There was a knock at the door. “Room service.”

  DeShear slid off the bed. “I’ll get it.”

  “Don’t!” Lanaya hissed. He stopped and looked at her, opening his mouth. Her eyes were wide. “I didn’t order any room service.”

  The knock on the door came again. “Room service.”

  DeShear put a finger to his lips and rushed to the door. Through the peep hole, he could make out the top half of a large man in a white culinary service jacket. He went back to Lanaya, whispering in her ear. “Get up. Tell him to leave it outside, then go into the bathroom.”

  She rose, her hand to her mouth. DeShear quietly placed his drink in the trash can by the desk, then put his hands on Lanaya’s shoulders and leaned in close. “Thank him first. I’ve got this.”

  “Thank you,” she said, inching across the room. “Please leave it outside.”

  “Good job,” DeShear whispered. “You’re doing fine.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I need you to sign for the bill.”

  DeShear moved in front of her, holding a hand out and moving the other one back and forth under it.

  She nodded. “Can you slide it under?”

  Giving her a thumbs up, DeShear looked around the room for a makeshift weapon.

  The man in the hallway thumped the door bottom a few times. “No, I’m sorry, it doesn’t fit. This new carpet’s too thick.”

  “One minute.” She faced DeShear, mouthing, “What do we do?”

  He guided her into the bathroom and pulled the door halfway closed. “Stay here. Don’t say or do anything.”