by Bill Myers
“Right.”
“Have her do that immediately.” The urgency was for Beth’s sake, but he knew it wouldn’t help.
“Will do. Thanks, Dr. O’Brien.”
“Yeah.” O’Brien slowly hung up the phone. Then, even more slowly, he turned to face his wife.
Steiner eased his Volvo into the parking lot of St. John’s Hospital. The winter sky was a vivid blue, and the sun hung just low enough to stab into his eyes, heightening his headache and making him wince. He had some serious doubts about this meeting. Gabriel Perez was just an orderly, and he could barely speak English. Still, experience had taught him that occasionally it’s the little guy, the one everybody ignores, who becomes the unseen eyes and the forgotten ears. That’s what Steiner was banking on now. Maybe lightning would strike here, as it had two days before in the cemetery.
Steiner still wasn’t entirely sure why he had visited Coleman’s grave. It was partly to assure himself that it was over, that the ordeal could finally be put to rest. But there was something more. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he was searching for a type of peace. Because, as much as he tried to will it, peace would not come. True, some of his pain had been excised on that early January morning, in that nine-by-nine, cinder-block execution chamber. But the death of pain, the absence of hurt, is a far cry from the presence of peace.
It was different with Theresa, his wife. Somehow she had been able to let go, to let the healing begin. Not Steiner.
Of course he had tried. But there was a problem: The harder he tried to push the anger and resentment out of his mind, the more the images of Missy began to slip away. And that was unacceptable. If the two had become that intertwined, if he couldn’t forget the one without forgetting the other, then so be it. If anger and resentment had become the only way he could remember his daughter, then he would hang on to that anger and resentment regardless of the cost.
Those had been his thoughts as he stood in the county burial section of Holben Cemetery — as he stood gazing down at the ten-inch-by-ten-inch plot that held Coleman’s ashes. In fact, he had been so preoccupied that he had barely noticed the caretaker’s approach.
“Friend o’ yours?” the man had asked.
Steiner had looked up, startled. The old-timer was gray and grizzled and immediately began coughing up a large wad of phlegm. When he spit it out, it was nearly the size of a silver dollar. “Sure caused a stir, didn’t he?” the man said as he wiped his chin.
Steiner watched with mild disgust but said nothing. He turned back toward the tiny plot, hoping that the old fellow would leave. He didn’t. Apparently he was a talker and didn’t get much opportunity to do so out in this older section, especially in the middle of winter.
“Even when we put him down. Never seen such commotion over a pile o’ ashes. Like they thought he was gonna rise from the dead.”
Steiner looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Some big fella from the coroner’s office, he was a-hoverin’ and a-stewin’ over everything.”
“Some people like to be thorough.”
“S’pose. ’Cept once a fella’s dead, he’s s’posed to be dead. The coroner folks, they usually just turn the body over to the mortuary, and they take it from there. But not this time. No, sir, this guy hangs around from start to finish, like he can’t be sure enough we’ll get him in the ground.”
That’s what had started the wheels turning. That and the rushing ambulance Steiner had seen the night of the execution.
The following day he had visited the prison, but found nothing — though he did hear of the prison doctor’s fatal bout with food poisoning, and about the presence of a couple of scientist types who were said to have had a morbid fascination with the execution process. Other than that, nothing unusual.
It was only after Steiner made a call to the coroner’s office that his suspicions really began to take on substance.
“I’m sorry,” the clerk had said, “we’re still a little disorganized after Ms. Lacy’s death.”
Steiner had read of the death in the World-Herald but had given it little thought. “There must be some record,” he had insisted. “Whose signature is on the autopsy report?”
“That’s just it. I mean the report is all filled out and everything, but…”
“But what?”
“Well, none of us recognize the signature.”
Images of that racing ambulance came to mind.
After a handful of calls to Lincoln hospitals, Steiner had information on all the emergency admittances during the early morning hours of January 14. It had been a light night. There had been only three. A gunshot and a passing kidney stone at Lincoln General. And a burn victim here at St. John’s.
Steiner pulled his car into an open stall, stepped out, and crossed the hospital’s parking lot. The sun continued to glare, and his head continued to pound.
Fifteen minutes later he was sitting in the cafeteria of St. John’s, staring hard at the steam rising from his Styrofoam cup. He never drank coffee, he hated it. But it was important for the orderly across the table to feel relaxed, and “Let’s grab some coffee” had sounded as informal as anything Steiner could think of.
“What about special treatment?” Steiner asked. “Do you recall anyone who may have been, say, treated differently from other patients?”
Gabriel Perez, a young Nicaraguan, scrunched his thick eyebrows into a furrow of thought.
“No hurry,” Steiner encouraged. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
At last Perez cleared his throat. “I, uh — there was one, in the burn wing. They treat him like he was very special.”
Steiner looked on, trying to hide his interest.
“No one was allowed in or out. Not even to clean and bring meals.”
Steiner leaned forward. “How long was he here?”
“A week, maybe two. I don’t remember.”
“What about a name? Do you remember a name?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Did you ever see him? Can you describe what he looked like?”
“No, he was a burn victim. His face, it was all bandaged.”
“What about visitors? Do you remember anybody?”
“No.”
Steiner fought back his frustration. There had to be something. “How’d he get home? Who picked him up?”
“I do not …” Perez hesitated, scowling at the table, trying to remember. “Some young man. Expensive suit, dark hair.”
“Ever hear a name?”
“No.”
“What type of car did he drive?”
Another frown. “I am sorry.” He looked back up at Steiner. “That is all I remember.”
“Are you sure?”
He thought another moment and shrugged. “I am sorry.”
Another dead end. Steiner nodded and rose to his feet. “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Perez. And if anything else should come to mind” — he pulled a card from his jacket — “please, give me a call.”
Perez rose, nodded, then turned to leave.
Steiner was disappointed. Of course he would go downstairs and check the hospital records, but he knew he would find nothing there. Either there was nothing to find, or else those obvious tracks would already be covered. He reached for his briefcase. Somewhere, there’d have to be another lead. It couldn’t be over yet, not until —
“Excuse me?”
Steiner looked up. Perez stood three tables away.
“The reason I could not remember his car?”
“Yes?”
“It was because he did not have one.”
“I’m sorry?”
“He and the man in the expensive suit, they took a taxi.”
Steiner’s eyes sparked to life. “A taxi? Are you sure?”
“Yes. I wheeled him out, and they got into a taxi. That is why I could not remember the car. They took a taxi.”
“Which one? Did it have a name — do you remember the name of the company?”
; “No, but we have only two taxi companies in this town.”
“Thank you, Mr. Perez.”
“That is helpful?”
“Yes, more helpful than you can imagine.”
Coleman enjoyed Katherine’s company. And, though she was careful not to show it, he sensed that she was growing more comfortable with his. He was glad that Genodyne had persuaded him to give in and let her drive him the twenty or so miles from south Everett up I-5 to Arlington. He’d been resistant and defensive when they’d first questioned his driving skills. It was true that he hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car for several years, but they were also skeptical of his driving record — a record showing definite signs of irresponsibility and recklessness. “You’re just too expensive an investment to end up as roadkill,” Murkoski had said. By itself, that argument had carried little weight with Coleman, who hated to rely on anyone and would have preferred to drive himself. But once he’d experienced the dizziness and vertigo that accompanied the treatments, and had considered the prospect of driving home in that condition, Coleman had given in to their demands.
So, with Eric in school, and after some lively negotiating on a price, Katherine had agreed to make the weekly run up to Genodyne for Coleman’s checkup and injection to control the viral leash.
Arlington was a picturesque town of five thousand people with a main street seven blocks long and a single stoplight. Nestled at the foot of the Cascades, its east side was surrounded by the mountains, while its west was flanked by dairy farms — creating an interesting population of farmers, lumberjacks, and service industries to support them both. But, like so many small Pacific Northwest towns, the farms were giving way to housing developments, and the loggers were having a harder and harder time finding trees that didn’t house spotted owls.
Amidst the sawmills, dairy cows, and newly constructed homes lay the Arlington Municipal Airport. Surrounding the airport was the usual industrial complex with dozens of manufacturers who had fled big-city hassles and big-city bureaucracies for a calmer, more bucolic life. One of these industries was Genodyne, housed in a two-building, six-story complex.
“Why two buildings?” Katherine asked, after Coleman had finished his first checkup and they were receiving a somewhat grandiose tour of the facilities by Murkoski. “Why not put all of this into one?”
“More FDA red tape,” Murkoski explained. “They insist that our manufacturing plant, which is a quarter mile away, be completely separate from this, our administration and research division. Guess they’re afraid our multimillion-dollar creations from research are going to sneak out and hop into one of our manufacturing vats. Not that you can blame them. When it comes to what the more gifted of us are able to do in biotechnology these days, I suppose just about anything’s possible.”
Coleman had the distinct impression that the kid was trying to impress Katherine. Of course, that only made her less receptive, which made Murkoski try all the harder, and the cycle continued until the bottom line became apparent to all: The great Murkoski was going down in flames.
Coleman smiled quietly. It was true, he liked Katherine a lot. But it was far more than just her beauty or her in-your-face honesty. Underneath the abrasive, tough facade, he saw a tender, sensitive heart. He wasn’t sure what all had happened to her — she was careful to maintain a wall between them — but during his few opportunities to look past the barricade, he was able to see it. There was something rare and precious inside. Something pure. And something terribly, terribly frightened.
This ability to sense a person’s thoughts and innermost feelings had rapidly increased since his first treatment back in December. At times it almost made him feel psychic, as he picked up on things no one else seemed to notice. Then again, maybe there was nothing mystical about it at all. Maybe he was simply so alive that he was able to see the details he had previously overlooked — a quiver in the voice, a nervous shift in the eyes, little mannerisms that he had been either too self-absorbed or too frightened to notice before. He didn’t understand how it was happening. All he knew was that the ache and loneliness he saw inside other people removed any fear he might have had of them. And without that fear, he felt something he had never felt before the experiment began: compassion.
Coleman, Katherine, and Murkoski walked across the first-floor atrium with its palm trees and waterfall. They took the elevator to the third floor. When the doors opened, they stepped into the hallway and Murkoski motioned somewhat grandly. “These are my labs,” he said. “Eight teams of the finest researchers on the West Coast.”
He reached for the nearest door and threw it open with a flourish. A handful of researchers, youngsters barely out of grad school, hovered over their cluttered, black Formica workstations. Above their heads were cupboards with glass doors holding a variety of clean, orange-capped tubes and bottles. Beside them were Lucite electrophoresis boxes and power supplies, racks of Eppendorf pipettes, and centrifuges.
“This is where it all happens,” Murkoski said. “This is where we rearrange the building blocks of life — changing and fixing creation’s blunders.” He crossed toward a common household refrigerator and opened the door. Inside were rows and rows of tiny Eppendorf tubes. He took one from the top shelf and held it up to the light for them.
“See that milky white substance? That’s what it’s all about. That’s DNA.”
“That’s human DNA?” Coleman asked in quiet awe.
Murkoski scoffed. “DNA is DNA. It doesn’t matter whether it comes from humans or monkeys or slugs or bacteria. It’s always the same four building blocks, regardless of the animal. It’s simply a matter of how they are arranged.” He replaced the tube and shut the refrigerator door. “And here, in these labs, is where we cut the DNA apart, splice in different sequences, and put it back together again.”
“What are these other rooms for?” Katherine asked, pointing to a closed doorway nearby.
Murkoski smiled. Finally she was paying some attention. “Let me show you.”
At first Coleman had been surprised at how candid Murkoski had been with Katherine regarding the project. The only secret he had felt necessary to maintain was Coleman’s past identity. He had no qualms about her knowing the rest. “After all,” he had said, “she’s a part of the team now.” And then, with a flirtatious smile, he had added, “And a very attractive member at that.”
They stepped into a smaller room. There were no people, only the quiet hum of the air-conditioning and a few electronic apparatuses at work. Some were the size of dishwashers, others the size of coffins.
“Once we redesign the DNA, we have to grow it,” Murkoski explained. “That’s what these little babies are about.” He rested his hand on what could almost pass as a large copy machine.
“Bacteria divide, splitting into two every twenty minutes. That’s why we use it as our primary workhorse. First we insert the new DNA into the bacteria. Then we put the bacteria into these incubators, where we provide it with the perfect nutrients, temperature, and climate to make it multiply as quickly as possible.” He turned to Coleman. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? Everything you’ve become, you owe to microscopic bacteria inside these machines.”
Before Coleman could respond, Murkoski turned and escorted them into the next room. “Once we’ve grown enough of the DNA, we inject it into various organisms to see how they will react. Sometimes we inject it into cells themselves, which we store in these – 70-degree freezers here, or into mice, or” — he threw what could be a contemptuous smile in Coleman’s direction — “human guinea pigs.”
Instead of growing angry, Coleman felt a strange pity for the kid. Was he really that insecure? Was he really that lonely and afraid and — what else? There was something else going on inside Murkoski that Coleman couldn’t quite put his finger on. In any case, when their eyes connected, Murkoski’s grin faded, and he glanced away.
He turned and escorted them into the next room.
“What are these?” Katherine asked. She poin
ted to a number of shallow trays with clear Plexiglas covers and red-and-black electrical terminals at either end.
“Those are the gel boxes. This is where we perform what we call electrophoresis.” Katherine seemed interested, and Murkoski rushed to offer more. “Each gene is a different size. When a current of electricity is passed through them, they move through a special gel at different rates according to their size — the gel is more resistant to bigger genes, making them move slower, and less resistant to smaller genes, allowing them to move faster. When electrical current is run through them, they move across the gel at different rates, forming very specific and definitive patterns of bands.”
“Those bands, they’re what the police use to identify people?” Katherine asked.
“Precisely. Genes have their own distinct banding patterns. You can never mistake one for another. Never.”
There was something about the way Murkoski emphasized never that caught Coleman’s attention. Again, he didn’t really understand it, but there was something here, something that upset Murkoski, something that made him uneasy.
“Now, if you don’t mind,” he said, herding them into the next room, “let me show you something that I think you, especially, Ms. Lyon, will find interesting. You said you worked with computers?”
“Yeah, I worked computers for the defense department. Back in the NORAD days.”
“Well, take a look at this.” Murkoski motioned to a piece of beige equipment on the counter. It stood three-and-a-half-feet high by two-and-a-half-feet wide. Beside it, a computer screen glowed with row after row of multiple-colored bands. “This is our ABI PRISM 373 DNA Sequencer. In many ways, these are our brains. We have lots of these beauties scattered throughout the complex.”
Katherine stepped in for a closer look. “A DNA sequencer?”
“Yes.”
“What does it do?”
“Remember those gels in the last room?”
“Yes.”
“These automatically read them. They record the bands, label the gene, hold it in memory, then fire it off to our main computer.”
Coleman watched as Katherine examined the computer and equipment. For the first time that he could remember, she appeared totally absorbed, at peace — almost happy. She seemed to lose herself as she poked, prodded, and explored the fascinating new machine. And as he watched her face fill with awe, he began to experience her wonder himself. He knew nothing about the equipment she was examining, but it didn’t matter. Not only was he able to feel people’s pain, he was also able to experience their joy.