The Black Market DNA Series: Books 1-3

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  She shook her head. Chris could see the disappointment in her eyes. “I’m afraid not. When we moved all the samples and reagents to the new freezer that’s in the lab now, we changed to a different labeling system.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah, shit.”

  For a moment, neither said a word. Chris listened for the sound of footsteps or voices down the hall. No sounds greeted his ears.

  “These numbers seem familiar to me.” She squinted and traced her upper lip with her tongue, her brow creased in lines of thought. “They’re definitely mine.”

  Chris cocked his head and joined her again, peering into the lab notebook. “Are you sure?”

  “I kind of have a thing for threes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tracy shrugged, a reddish hue coloring her cheeks. “Can’t explain it. But I always kept my samples in ‘three,’ ‘six,’ or ‘nine’ canisters in the shelves of the old freezer.”

  “Great,” he said. “But you’re going to have to tell me why that’s interesting.”

  “Because I stored my experiments in these locations. Extra viral vectors, results from synthesis.” She scanned the list with her finger. “Not all of them, but a few of them.”

  “What are all the experiments from?”

  “There’s an old hemophilia one, CFTR gene delivery for cystic fibrosis, bladder cancer—all projects that ended a few years ago.”

  “Those canisters that aren’t yours—do you recognize them?”

  Tracy shook her head. “I bet they’re all Paul’s. He was the only other one in research around the time we worked on those projects.”

  “Strange,” Chris said, looking down at the book. “The date on that page is from just a couple months ago.”

  With a grin, Tracy picked the notebook up. “You know what he was doing, don’t you?” Before Chris could answer, she continued. “He was storing these samples—whatever they are—in all the old lab projects.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Come on, you have to be smarter than that.” She opened the lab door and motioned for him to follow. “We never use those old samples, but we’re supposed to save them in case we get an FDA audit or something.”

  “And if we did get an audit, Randy would be the first to hear about it.”

  “Exactly.”

  Tracy booted up a database on the holodisplay to match the old projects with their new destinations in the freezer. As she searched for each project and wrote the locations on a sheet of paper she’d ripped from Randy’s notebook, Chris stuck a chair in the door of the lab to keep it open. He didn’t want anyone to sneak up on them unheard.

  “Okay, why don’t you start looking for the samples?” Tracy handed Chris the sheet of paper. “I’m going to finish locating everything in here, but at least you can put them together.”

  “Sure thing,” he said. “I’m thinking I should put them in a freezer box for now.”

  “You might be right. We might want to get them out of here, huh?”

  “Just in case our friends down in Regulatory are searching for the same thing we’re looking for.”

  “So now you don’t think they’re on FDA duty now, huh?”

  “Gotta be a little paranoid, don’t I?”

  Tracy smirked and went back to scrolling through the locations. “It’s a pretty big division down there, but if they’re looking for Randy’s stash, they won’t be too much longer. If we’re real lucky, they’ll head over to Production first.”

  Nodding, he picked up a small white plastic box a cubic foot in volume. He checked the battery charge and turned it on. He opened the large gray door to the negative-eighty-degree freezer. An inner wall of stainless steel drawers welcomed him. Each led to separate compartments within the shelves. He shivered at the cold escaping the freezer and located the first compartment on the list. A box lay inside, labeled “CFTR” with a date from almost three years ago. He opened the box and searched through a variety of tiny plastic vials in a rack. Each vial contained just a milliliter of frozen liquid. Suspended in each droplet were aliquots of genetic material packed into delivery vectors.

  Chris brushed away the frost that had built up on each vial to unveil the labels. He squinted to ensure Tracy’s handwriting decorated each label and that it matched the project each sample should have been associated with. Sure enough, the final sample in the small box was unlabeled. He held it up, eyeing it in the dim blue light that emanated from Tracy’s holodisplay.

  Without proper analysis of the contents, he couldn’t be sure of what it contained. He placed the vial in a small metal rack within the freezer box.

  The next set of vials revealed another unlabeled sample, as did the third and fourth locations on the list. Four found projects later, Chris had gathered another four unlabeled samples. Their suspicions must have been correct.

  “All right, I think I have the rest. How are you doing?” Tracy walked over and peeked into the freezer box. “Fingers frozen yet?”

  “A little numb,” he said, “but I’m about halfway through the first list.”

  “Awesome. I can get started on the second list, and we’ll have this done in no time.”

  As she opened another drawer, a shrieking alarm went off.

  Chapter 16

  “What the hell is that?” Tracy reeled back. “Oh, dammit. It’s the freezer. We left it open too long. Dammit, dammit.”

  Chris slammed it shut. The alarm fell silent. As the adrenaline in him surged, his heart thumped against his ribs.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said.

  “No shit.”

  The lock clicked as he shut the lab door. He grabbed the freezer box with the samples they had retrieved, and Tracy picked up the lab notebook that she had left open near the lab’s holodisplay. They raced toward the other end of the lab, where another exit door led to the closest stairwell and elevators. Chris pushed through the door, and they emptied out into the dark hallway.

  Tracy stopped and tugged on his arm. “I forgot the lists with all the other samples.”

  “Too late.” He grabbed her hand and sprinted down the hall, leading her away from the lab. The elevators would be unreliable and would alert whoever else was there to their location, so he opened the door to the stairwell. As Tracy ran past him with the notebook tucked under her arm, he saw a light spill from the lab’s exit door window down the hall. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

  Their footsteps rang against the stairwell’s walls as they ran. His motions felt restricted in his funeral suit. He wished he had left it at home and exchanged it for a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. As Tracy bounded down the stairs, he marveled at her pace in her black heels. At least he didn’t have to deal with those.

  Instead of going into the lobby, they took the back exit from the stairwell that led onto West Fayette Street. Torrents of rain greeted them as they ran along the sidewalk. Chris’s thoughts turned toward the coats they had left in the closet. He made a mental note to retrieve the coat on Monday but couldn’t help wondering if returning to work would even be a viable option.

  While parked cars lined the one-way street, few vehicles hummed along the road. A block away from Respondent, the office buildings gave way to neighborhoods of restored and renovated townhouses. Shops and bars interspersed the townhouses, reminiscent of an early 1900s neighborhood.

  They jogged in the freezing rain. Chris’s shirt clung to his skin, growing transparent as water soaked through. Water beaded up on Tracy’s bare arms, along with a rash of goose bumps. Still, she led the pair onward as Chris lagged. A stitch formed in his side as he fought to keep up with her and a metallic taste manifested on his tongue. He struggled to breathe.

  “We should duck in somewhere,” Tracy said. She pointed at a bar. Above its entrance hung a wooden fox face painted blue with crimson letters bearing a fitting name, the Frozen Fox.

  When they entered the bar, a blast of warm air rushed past them. Chris shi
vered. The hairs on his arms stood up amid goose bumps. Tracy’s teeth chattered as a couple of grizzled men in their late thirties eyed them suspiciously.

  They chose a wooden booth near the back. The smell of deep-fried food permeated the bar from the kitchen door near them. Chris placed the freezer box with the samples next to him. Tracy ordered a coffee spiked with Bailey’s to warm up, while he chose the Beaver Dam Blue. Dark silhouettes moved beyond the clouded glass of the front windows. He wondered if the black Corvette Tracy had seen cast any of those amorphous shadows. Even if it did pass, there was no guarantee that the car contained their pursuers. In fact, maybe their so-called pursuers were only a couple of security guards on their weekend rounds.

  Chris sighed. “Do you think we’re crazy? Are we overreacting?”

  “I’m not sure, but I’m not about to take any chances.”

  Chris placed his hand on the notebook that lay in between them on the sticky table. “Maybe we should take another look.” His other hand had not left the small, white box that sat in the seat next to him.

  “Let’s at least wait until we get out of here,” Tracy said. “You know, just in case.”

  “All right. Take off after we finish these up?” He motioned to their drinks.

  “So soon? Can we at least dry off a bit first? Then I’ll call a cab.”

  Raising his shoulders, he offered a weak smile. “Fine. I guess we could use a drink or two.”

  “Don’t act like it’s such a terrible thing to be having a drink with me.”

  “It’s not so bad, I guess.” Chris rolled his eyes playfully and leaned across the table. “I’m not going to lie, though. I’m dying to find out what else is in Randy’s secret little book.”

  “Can’t forget about our little frozen friends, too.” Her eyes shot to the box at his side. “I have a feeling those fellows are hiding something even more interesting.”

  ***

  By the time they made it back to Tracy’s apartment on West Lexington, the rain clouds had departed. A few bright stars punctuated the otherwise murky sky. Chris gazed up at the moon.

  In prison, he never saw much of the open sky, day or night. Before that, the streetlights and the glow from the thriving mass of buildings that choked downtown Baltimore obscured all but the most brilliant burning balls of gas. Staring out the window of the fifteenth-story apartment, he recalled camping out on the beach with Veronica, just hours away from Baltimore, and observing the starry sky over Assateague National Seashore. Even in Illinois, he had lived far enough outside the city, between fields of corn and soybean, to lie in the grass next to his brother and sister while their father pointed out the constellations. He missed the stars.

  Tracy wrapped her arms around him and kissed his neck. Her lips crept up his jaw to his lips, and she pulled back with a grin. “Call me crazy, but I love the smell of good beer on your breath.”

  Chris chuckled and swung her around in front of him. The cutting aroma of coffee still hung on her breath. Without taking their lips or arms off each other, they made their way to Tracy’s bedroom.

  Her breath, heavy and warm, tickled Chris’s ears. His mind raced to the portable freezer box that sat on the granite bar in her kitchen, but that ephemeral thought evaporated just as quickly as it had arisen. She slipped off her dress, then tore off Chris’s shirt as she dragged him onto the bed. He threw himself into her and lost himself in her, like the stars lost their glimmer in the lights of Baltimore City.

  ***

  Darkness still pervaded Tracy’s apartment, broken by the light glowing above her kitchen table. She scoured Randy’s notebook and made her own notes on a yellow-papered legal pad. “It looks like there are even more samples we missed.” She pointed to another list in the notebook. Her eyes seemed alight with energy, wide and gleaming.

  Chris held his head in his hand. His eyelids drooped and felt heavy as he listened. He sipped his third cup of coffee, waiting for the caffeine to do something, anything to alleviate the fatigue that clouded his mind.

  “Man, I’m glad you found this today. This answers a lot of questions.”

  Making a huffing noise in reply, he cocked his eye to get a better view of her notes. The scribbles appeared illegible to him, but the multiple exclamation points and question marks jumped from the page.

  He should be the one tracking down the businessman. But that late at night, he could not match her unbridled enthusiasm.

  Tracy stopped writing. She held her breath, and the old analog clock above her kitchen table clicked off the seconds of her silence. “There’s a list of names.” She laughed. “Holy shit, there’s a list of names.” Her giddy smile vanished. “Holy shit.” She looked up at him with eyes wide. “Your name is on this list.”

  “What the hell?” Shaking his head, he rubbed his eyes. “There’s no way those names mean anything. Randy couldn’t be that dumb.”

  “I don’t know. He did a pretty shitty job of securing the samples and this.” She shook the notebook at him. “Look, there’s a question mark next to a couple of these.” She slid the notebook across the table, swiveling it around for him to see.

  With a gulp, Chris widened his eyes as he grabbed the notebook, pulling it closer. As he scanned the list, two names drew his immediate interest. His heart sank and his palms grew clammy. He opened his mouth to say something but lost the words before they reached his tongue.

  Tracy leaned across the table. “What is it? Do you know somebody else on this list?”

  Chris’s headed bobbed. “Yes. I think so. A name or two.”

  “Who?” Her voice rang sharp, edgy.

  He pointed to one of the first names. “Jordan Thompson. He was a friend. Kind of helped me with distribution.”

  A sour look spread over Tracy’s face. “So, he’s a dealer?”

  “A little bit higher up than that, I’d say.” Chris pushed aside his coffee. He no longer needed the caffeine boost.

  “You haven’t talked to this guy since—”

  “I haven’t heard from Jordan since well before I went to prison.”

  For a moment, Tracy’s eyes seemed glazed over in thought. Chris waited with his own thoughts as company. Dread built up in him like a boiler set to explode. He didn’t want to end up back in prison and he didn’t want to end up murdered. With no idea of who wanted him dead and hardly a clue what the businessman wanted from him, his thoughts roiled in increasing confusion. And if Jordan was somehow involved or being targeted like him, he wondered where he could turn for escape. The pressure rose as he waited for her response, and he sank into his seat.

  “You don’t want to go to the police, right?” Tracy’s look of disgust had been replaced with one of concern.

  “I can’t. You think the police would care for an outlandish conspiracy story from a crackpot, convicted illegal genie manufacturer? I have no credibility and no evidence. They already think I know something about Randy’s murder. If they’re to believe me at all, I need to figure out what the hell is in those samples and how they’re linked to Randy’s death. For all they know, we could’ve fabricated the whole lab notebook with a handwriting analysis app on our comm cards.”

  He massaged his temples. “And who would believe me about a mysterious, pale man who wears sunglasses all the time? I would need to tell the police I agreed to a verbal contract with the guy that meant I would oblige any request, legal or otherwise.”

  Tracy shook her head, and a brief glimmer of something like relief flashed in her eyes. She pointed at the list in Randy’s notebook. “All right. If you’re so sure about this, why don’t we talk to your friend here and see what he knows?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “That might not be such a bad idea. In fact, maybe we could bring the samples with us.”

  “Why?”

  “Jordan has access to a nice lab.”

  “Do I even want to know?”

  Chris smiled. “Better that you don’t.”

  “I’m not sure if I trust this associa
te—”

  “Former associate.”

  “Whatever,” she said. “I’m not sure if I trust this Jordan with what may be the only hard evidence we have to figure out this whole damned mess.”

  “I understand, but we can’t take these back to Respondent. I don’t want to be caught there with whatever is in these things.”

  “I’m in agreement on that.”

  In the end, Chris proposed leaving the bulk of the samples in the portable freezer box at Tracy’s apartment. They would take just a couple of the vials to Jordan for analysis.

  Through the glass panel doors of the small balcony attached to her kitchen, a hint of rust orange broke over the horizon of the Chesapeake Bay. Chris’s comm card displayed 7:08 a.m. in green, blocky numbers.

  “It’ll be another day, soon enough,” she said.

  “It’s already another day.”

  “Do you want to talk to Jordan? See if we can meet up with him?”

  “Not right now,” Chris said. “Jordan was never known to seize the day at the break of dawn. Most of his business is at night. He’s probably just gone to bed, and we aren’t going to get any favors out of him by getting on his bad side.”

  A disappointed frown replaced Tracy’s hopeful expression. “Fine. I guess we may as well take a quick nap before we bug your friend.”

  After maximizing the opacity of the electronic windows in the bedroom, Tracy slipped out of her robe and into the bed. Chris joined her under the covers, and she wrapped an arm around his chest. A smile spread across her face as she nestled into the space between his neck and shoulder.

  While her skin pressed against his, his thoughts turned toward the second name that he had recognized on Randy’s list. He had been thankful Tracy hadn’t pressed him for further details on the names, distracted by the prospect of invoking Jordan Thompson’s potential help in resolving matters.

  But Chris could not shake his worry. Having no idea of what the list could mean, he feared for the lives of those whose names Randy had haphazardly written. It had been months, bordering on years, since he had seen her face, but everything came rushing back in a blizzard of unforgiving memories. The curve of her cheekbones and her toothy grin. Watching her dance as a guest artist when the Moscow Ballet had hosted their annual touring performance of The Nutcracker in Baltimore. The studio in her apartment full of paintings she claimed he had inspired, all in vibrant colors, shapes alive and practically throbbing on the canvases.