Tina Folsom

by Wild (lit)

  She had gotten it all wrong, and I hadn’t been prepared. What could I have said?

  Sorry, but the research is mine and the way to prove it, is to show you what it did to me? That wasn’t the way to go. I had felt her pain. She was hurt. I had disappointed her. If she couldn’t live with the fact that I had broken into somebody’s house, how would she understand everything else I had done?

  How could she accept what I was? I had been fooling myself into thinking she could accept me if she only got to know me. She wasn’t the one who was naïve, I was.

  I knew she would leave town, but I still felt responsible for her and felt the urge to continue protecting her, even if she hated me now.

  I had followed her. It hadn’t been difficult following the bus she had taken. I ran all the way. She had not looked back. I had seen how she had cried, and I felt a stabbing pain in my chest just watching her. When she had gotten off the bus, I had kept back, but watched her as she entered an apartment building.

  Once I could be sure she had left the entrance hall I had gone to the door to read the names on the mail slots. I didn’t know what I was looking for until I read one name: Carmela Franklin. At least she hadn’t gone back to some other guy. She would be safe with her friend Carmela I hoped.

  I looked up at the window not knowing behind which one she would be. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to stalk her. She deserved better. I had had less than three days with her, just enough to create a craving which would last a lifetime.

  I didn’t deserve any better. I had had enough chances to tell her my secret, but I had been too much of a coward.

  My lies were inexcusable, but at the same time I told myself that even if I had told her the full truth, she would have left me. I consoled myself that at least this way she would just hate me, rather than be disgusted by me, or frightened. Wasn’t that much better for her? Wouldn’t she get over it much faster thinking I was a liar and a cheat?

  After staring at the building for a long time, I walked back to my place. I was in no hurry to get home. Nothing was waiting for me. Nobody smiled at me when I entered.

  The air was still heavy with her scent. In the bathroom I found the sweater she had worn the day before. I buried my face in it, soaking in her smell, remembering how I had kissed her while she was wearing it. I replayed the events of the last few days in my head wondering what I could have done differently. I came up empty. It wasn’t meant to be.

  I had to pull myself out of my dark mood and do something productive.

  I needed to find out what had really happened. How had Entwhistle been able to get a hold of my research papers? A break-in into my tightly secured home was impossible, which only left one other possibility: it had to have happened before I had brought my records here, which meant it had to have happened over thirty years ago.

  I remembered Entwhistle’s face and guessed he was in his late thirties. He had to have been a boy back then.

  This meant I had to find out who had both access to my files back then and knew Entwhistle.

  Over the years so many people went in and out of my lab that it could have been anybody, even the janitorial crew that emptied the garbage bins at night. Just figuring out who had access was not enough. I had to narrow it down to those with both access and motive if I wanted to find the culprit.

  As to motive, I could only come up with two strong motivating factors for anybody to copy my research: revenge or ambition. Ambition would narrow my search to all those PhD candidates who worked with me over the years and weren’t confident or bright enough to master their own research. It would be easy enough to track down what they were doing now and whether they had connections to Entwhistle.

  However, ambition didn’t explain why they themselves hadn’t used the research after my disappearance and claimed it as their own. Why wait thirty years and then have somebody else take credit for it?

  I would pursue this route nevertheless. Most people didn’t act logically and maybe there was a good reason why the notes had been hidden away for so long.

  The second motive, revenge, was also plausible. I had been such an arrogant prick back then, completely self-absorbed and egotistic, that I was sure I had pissed off a fair number of people.

  There was no way I could find all of them, since I wasn’t even aware of how many people I could have alienated enough for them to want to take revenge. I had to concentrate on those who had the closest contact with me and would have felt my daily annoyances most. Certainly my lab personnel, post-docs, interns and admin personnel came to mind.

  My lab had been like a revolving door when it came to personnel. Many had left of their own accord because they couldn’t keep up with my unreasonable demands. My ambition had been unparalleled and I had demanded absolute loyalty and dedication from my staff. Unfortunately the environment at UCSF hadn’t given me the tools to reward my employees accordingly and underpaid employees didn’t show the same dedication to my work as I did.

  There were of course always those who could have never gotten a job in the outside world and would therefore hang on for dear life.

  Those had been the ones I had had to fire, a process which was long and tedious because of the stifling bureaucracy at the University.

  This meant a disgruntled employee knew well in advance when he or she would be fired, and would continue to come to work, have access to all files and could copy them to their heart’s content.

  I couldn’t rule out anybody, however small the possibility was. I started by making a list of all lab staff, post-docs, secretaries and interns, anybody whose name I could vaguely remember. It helped that I could look through my original records and associate events in the lab with it: somebody’s birthday party, an award, a trip to a conference. It all helped jog my memory and remember the names.

  I put them into two different categories, revenge and ambition. Some I had to put into both.

  Once I had my list, I counted them. Over thirty-five people were too many to check up on. I had to narrow them down considerably.

  The easiest were the post-docs. Just by googling their names I was able to find out what they were doing now. Most had published research papers either as the lead PI or in collaboration with others and seemed to be rather successful in their field. I was confident to eliminate those post-docs from my list immediately.

  Many were now successful researchers or physicians in other cities and a few had even become chiefs of medical departments at prestigious hospitals.

  With the elimination of most of the post-docs my list shrunk down to nineteen. It was still too large. I spent hours searching for the names of the remaining people on my list.

  A few had died. I read Mabel’s obituary. She had been my secretary until she had asked for a transfer. She had died of heart disease in the early 80s. I remembered her to be a heavy set woman, but she had barely been in her late forties when she had worked for me.

  I felt bad that I hadn’t treated her better back then. Had I known she had only a few years left, but there was no use dwelling on it. I couldn’t change what I had done back then.

  Several accidents later my list was down to fourteen, most of them on the revenge side of my list. I was struggling to find other criteria by which to eliminate suspects from my list.

  I assumed that whoever had given or sold the papers to Entwhistle was still in the US or had strong ties to this country. Maybe I could eliminate those from my list who left to return to their own country?

  Several of my staff had been foreign nationals. It was possible they had gone back home. I found four who had returned to the Philippines and Europe, respectively, and started up businesses there. They even had their own websites. Their elimination brought my list down to ten.

  I read through the list again and again. Was there anybody else I could eliminate? Had everybody really had access to all the notes?

  I had to go back to look at them again. Which notes did Entwhistle have? Where had I kept them back then? And wh
o was aware I had written them?

  I leafed through the photocopies I had taken from Entwhistle’s house the night before and sorted them chronologically. I started reading them. It took me back to the time when I had thought I was so close to finding the fountain of youth. It took me back to the time when I wasn’t aware of my biggest mistake yet, when I still thought I was on the right track.

  I stared at the dates of some of the notes and realized that only a few short months later my world would collapse.

  The animal trials I had been conducting at the time had been extremely successful. I had been so confident I had applied for human subjects approval in order to conduct clinical trials. I had been crushed when I had received the rejection, and my lab staff had had to deal with my anger for weeks.

  After finding and isolating the aging gene, I had experimented with hundreds of possible switches to turn it off. I had tried synthetic as well as organic compounds, from the conventional to the ridiculous.

  Nothing was dismissed as impossible before I had tried it. Then finally I had made a breakthrough. The lab worms’ cells didn’t age anymore. I had done it! I had switched off the gene which controlled aging.

  I had shown that the worms lived on average almost twice as long as without my switch. I had been so confident I had rushed to animal trials with mice. I had done what nobody before me had done, and what nobody after me had done. I had found the switch. The tests I had performed on the mice’s cells had confirmed it.

  The feeling I had felt for days after my data had shown that the mice weren’t aging anymore, was comparable to a constant drug high. I had been so elated I had looked past the behavioral problems the mice seemed to be exhibiting.

  I had wanted to go to clinical trials immediately, so the rejection by the Human Subjects Committee at the University had stung. I had accused them of wanting to hold me back. I had been furious. Everybody had started avoiding me after that. I had been a pain to be around. But I was stubborn and young and wouldn’t listen to reason.

  That was when I had decided to inject myself. I would show them, I had thought. They would have to concede when I had proven to them that I was right all along.

  It didn’t take long until the serum had done its work. I had been in my flat shouting to an employee over the phone, when the rage had overtaken me and started my transformation.

  I had stared into the mirror and started seeing the beast in me, its eyes, its claws, its teeth. I had noticed how my body had gotten stronger and my muscles grown larger and I had recognized my mistake instantly. I had remembered the aggressive behavior of the lab mice and knew I had started showing the same characteristics. A beast was growing in me, and the more I saw it come out the more I realized it was a wild animal like a big mountain cat of some sort.

  I wasn’t able to reverse it, and I knew controlling it would take all my energy. My life as I knew it was over. I wasn’t sure how it had happened, but the only explanation I had was that the switch had to have been contaminated. I started fresh and created an entirely new batch of the switch. When I tried it out on the mice again, the same thing happened and I had to admit that the switch hadn’t been contaminated. I had to accept the fact that the switch didn’t only turn off the aging gene but also turned off something else in the brain and brought back primal animal instincts.

  I set out to research the phenomenon. The only thing I could find was some old Native American Indian myths which seemed to suggest every human had an animal within him which provided him with power. If I believed any of the myths, it would mean my switch had unlocked the power animal within me and I couldn’t lock it back in anymore. American Indian spiritual beliefs seemed to accept that power animals represented qualities reflective of the inner self that were needed to enhance daily life. Had I needed to take on the qualities of an animal to deal with the issues that I would face once I had switched off my aging gene? Was this by design?

  I was never a particularly spiritual or religious person, and connecting to these beliefs was impossible for me. I was a man of science and there had to be a perfectly valid scientific explanation for it. I devoted my life to finding it.

  My decision to torch my lab and disappear was the only thing which had made sense to me at the time. I had to destroy all data so nobody else would get this far and make the same fatal mistake. I hadn’t published my findings yet, which I was grateful for in retrospect.

  I had gone into hiding immediately after the lab fire but not before I had saved the crucial data I needed to continue working on a cure. Nobody seemed to miss me. I hadn’t made that many friends.

  I had been grateful that my parents never had to find out. Their car had crashed on an icy road in Boston the same year. My father’s insurance money and the sale of their house in Boston had been enough for me to buy the run down warehouse nobody wanted and turn it into my fortress. The remainder provided me with a good income, and my knowledge about medicine helped me invest in pharmaceutical and medical device companies whose shares grew over the years. I didn’t have to worry about anything but finding a cure for my condition.

  Despite my relentless work for thirty years I hadn’t gotten any closer to it than when I had first started. The one thing I had however achieved was to get to know the animal within me. I knew my power animal was a mountain lion with tremendous speed, agility and stealth in darkness, a skill I started using once I had discovered it. But the animal was also solitary. Another thirty years of solitude suddenly seemed unacceptable to me.

  Now, more than ever, I wished I could be normal again and rid myself of the animal inside of me. Having fallen in love with Annette, and I was truly in love with her, made me want to give everything in exchange for her love and acceptance. But it wasn’t mine to offer that exchange.

  My thoughts of Annette distracted me. I stretched out on the couch to rest and collect my thoughts on how to proceed, but her scent which lingered in the fabric didn’t let me.

  I knew enough about her to know I had hurt her by keeping the truth from her. But I also realized she was tough and resilient. She wasn’t afraid of wild cats and I knew a thing or two about wilds cats myself.

  Maybe once she had cooled down I could go and talk to her to see if I could mend things. My problem was though that I was afraid she would leave for Des Moines before I got a chance.

  I counted on Carmela and the curiosity I had detected in her look when she had seen us at the top of Twin Peaks together. Maybe she would keep her long enough to get all the juicy details out of her before she would want her to leave.

  Somehow I guessed Annette wasn’t one to kiss and tell, so I hoped it would take a while.

  I had to get back to my list. I still had ten possible suspects and no idea where to start.

  I tried a different approach. Instead of eliminating anybody else from my list, I had to find out whether anybody had connections with Entwhistle. So I framed a search to find any incidences where the name of the suspect and Entwhistle’s would show up together.

  Three of them had been to the same conference as Entwhistle, but it was too recent, only a month ago, certainly long after Entwhistle had started his research on aging.

  One suspect was a regular donor to the same charity Entwhistle supported as a member of the board. That was certainly a good enough connection. I highlighted his name.

  Another one was a member of the same tennis club as Entwhistle. He was worth being highlighted. However, the connections seemed too casual, too unimportant. I felt like I was missing something.

  San Francisco was a small town. Many people knew each other, especially in the medical community. For somebody to give Entwhistle my notes, whether for money or not, there had to be a closer connection.

  I just couldn’t see it yet, and it bothered me. I had no time to lose. Entwhistle had to be stopped before he could hurt anybody else. I needed to know how much he knew.

  13. Annette’s Skill

  Carmela would be back by lunch time. Her new roomm
ate was gone, so I had been on my own and cried until I had no tears left. I had to get it out of my system. I had to get him out of my system.

  I felt betrayed, but at the same time there had been inconsistencies and warnings I hadn’t taken in. He had said he had wanted me to get to know him better before he went further. Was that just so I would want him even more? What was his little game?

  Had he really tried to warn me that he was a thief and an imposter? He surely would be called an imposter if he tried to take credit for research which wasn’t his.

  “Have you eaten?” Carmela’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts. I hadn’t heard her come back.

  I shook my head and tried to hide my eyes. “I’m not hungry.”

  She sat down next to me on the couch.

  “So, what happened with him? Did he dump you?” Subtlety had never been her strong suit.

  “No. I left him.”

  She was clearly shocked to hear my response.

  “Now I really want to hear what happened! Why would you leave somebody like him? I mean, did you actually look at him? He’s a dish!” She babbled on, until she realized I hadn’t answered her. “Did you sleep with him?”

  I shook my head. “He didn’t want to.” I said even though I didn’t really want to tell her anything.

  “You spent three nights with him and didn’t sleep with him? Is he gay?” She sounded clearly disappointed.

  “No, he’s not gay. There’s no way.” Was there? I thought to myself. “No, definitely not.”

  Carmela didn’t think so either. “I must say, the way he kissed you when Ben and I saw you, didn’t look gay to me. Why would he not sleep with you? I mean, you’re pretty enough.” It didn’t even hurt when she said that. I was used to her direct way.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “What does it matter now? I’m not with him anymore.” I tried to sound as normal and indifferent as possible, but my voice broke and betrayed me.

  “So, what do you want to do now? Are you staying?”