Mortal Crimes 2

by Various Authors

  “When we started Triple E Enterprises, we made a promise to ourselves and to others: once the venture was stable, we’d take the company public. We gave ourselves ten years from inception to our first shares being traded. We spent the first five years in R&D, living off venture capital. Those were lean years that, you’ll agree, produced phenomenal results. In the four years since, we’ve seen year-over-year gains in the triple digits. That’s meant we’ve been able to pay your salaries off the profits but our capital debt remains high. We’re relying on paper stock to buy down that debt and put this company in the black.

  “We’re six months away from seeing our first TEE stock trade on Wall Street. Two years out from repaying debt and adding positive cash flow. We’ve got backlash plans in place, extra security lined up and press releases written.

  “We’re almost there, people. Almost where we’ve been moving this company to over the last decade.

  “But.

  “Since the beginning of the year, we’ve had three deaths in our mature inventory and half-a-dozen among the young. And we have more on their way to dying. We’ve had to scramble to meet our commitments. We found comparable replacements for two of the dead adults. For the third, we had to provide an upgrade from Sector C.”

  There was a collective, audible intake of breath around the table. More than just a reduction in the number of animals available from Sector C, that upgrade meant a substantial revenue loss to the company—a fact lost on none of the meeting attendees, a few of whom were hearing the statistics for the first time.

  “One or two viable animals a year—that’s an expected loss. More than that and we start to feel it—not only in our pocketbooks but our reputation. We’re booking hunts a year out now and requests have nearly doubled. Our clients are satisfied; our hard work is starting to pay off. But we need the inventory to support our increased business.

  “And we’re losing inventory. Why?”

  There was a moment of silence while those around the table waited for Thurman to continue. When he didn’t, they realized it wasn’t a rhetorical question.

  Dr. Grigor Volkov, the head geneticist who had been with the company from the beginning and had a firm relationship with Thurman, spoke up. “Our genetic database is far from perfect. The newer the genome, the less time there has been to study it. Still, we are five to ten years ahead of the rest of the scientific world. We are not cloning mice and sheep and household cats that are well known to us, so there will undoubtedly be setbacks. And with limited parent stock, how can we be assured of healthy, thriving offspring? Our genetic pool increases every month. In the natural course, we will be able to produce stronger specimens.”

  Thurman frowned. “Just how long does ‘the natural course’ take?”

  “Ten years? Twenty?” Dr. Volkov shrugged. “We are in uncharted territory here. It is like asking a navigator how far to the nearest shoal when no one has mapped the coast.”

  Thurman dismissed the geneticist’s comments with a wave. “Not an acceptable answer. The future of this company rests on our being able to predict the size and quality of our inventory over the next ten years. If we can’t do that accurately, we open ourselves up to the competition. The minute we go public, we become a target.

  “So how do we stop the die-off? I want a plan.

  “Meet back here with it in 48 hours.”

  Chapter Nine

  “I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT IS, Dr. Kapur!” The distraught woman clung to Rajesh’s hand as if she could siphon the information directly from it.

  Instead of drawing away as others might have done, Rajesh laid his other hand over hers. She looked at him with wide, frightened eyes. The woman, Marie, had every right to be afraid, Rajesh knew. Her 14-month-old son was dying—and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Watching her grief twisted his heart. Over and over he’d been instructed not to let his own emotions get in the way of his work. But how could any human being set aside his empathy and compassion in the face of such raw devastation? Did this part of it really get easier?

  Most of all, he desperately wanted to be able to answer the woman’s question, but he couldn’t. That fact above all humbled him. In the moment of this woman’s greatest need, she turned to him and he couldn’t help her.

  “We all want to know, Marie. If we knew, perhaps we could cure little Tony. Do not give up hope, though. The labs are still running their tests.” Rajesh, however, wasn’t sure how thorough those tests would be. Marie was poor and without insurance, and the hospital had grown extremely busy as of late.

  Marie let go his hand and, sobbing, leaned over the incubator where Tony lay with assorted tubes and wires, catheters and electrodes warding his small body. She draped one hand inside and placed her finger in his fist, then pressed her cheek to the glass, her tears streaking down the sides.

  Rajesh watched her watching him, shamed that he stood there simply watching. In his mind, he went over the child’s symptoms—a wobble to his head for about a week followed by grand mal seizures. CT scans showed some degeneration in the boy’s brain and into the brainstem. The mother swore the boy had been acting normally up until the head wobbling began. But the technician interpreting the scan was convinced the degeneration had to have taken place over a much longer period of time. Which seemed to point to a possible genetic disorder. The lab was following that lead with DNA testing. But Rajesh’s gut said otherwise. He recognized he was only newly out of his internship; still, he believed the mother’s version. Which would likely mean an environmental trigger. A trigger that could be anything from lead paint to a stupid relative slipping the baby alcohol to keep him quiet.

  Not that it ultimately mattered what was killing the child. Even if they found the cause and were able to keep any more damage from occurring, there was already far too much damage for the child to live any kind of a normal life. He had probably already suffered irreversible paralysis and memory loss—perhaps was even now blind or deaf or unable to process information in a way that would make learning possible. Massive nerve damage could make him insensate to the environment around him—he would never feel the touch of a feather or the icy cold of winter. Nor would he know if the water in a bathtub was too hot until he saw his flesh start to redden. Or he could trip wearing a hiking boot and walk for miles on a broken ankle.

  Rajesh had encouraged Marie to hope because it was something substantial she could cling to. Now, though, he began to second-guess himself. Perhaps it was best for her to start distancing from her son. To accept that her baby—no matter the outcome—was gone. Was it fair to promise her something that simply could not be? Was it fair to either her or Tony to keep trying to find a treatment that ultimately could not bring back the same little boy she had given birth to 14 short months ago?

  “Dr. Kapur?”

  Rajesh welcomed the interruption of the lab tech.

  “May I see you outside?”

  Rajesh took a last look at Marie who was so absorbed in the rise and fall of her little boy’s chest she hadn’t heard the low voice of the soft-spoken tech. He followed her into the hall. “You have the toxin results?”

  The blonde, heavyset lab tech shook her head. “There’s another one.”

  “Another one? What do you mean?”

  “There’s another baby—a 16-month-old—that just came in with the same symptoms.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Head wobble, seizures. The mother said it seemed to have forgotten how to eat a couple of days ago. We’re running the same panel of tests but I just can’t believe it’s coincidence. Can you find out if that baby in there got anything out of the ordinary? Hell, for that matter, get the brand names of everything it’s eaten or drunk or bathed in or slept in. And see if the mother has taken him anywhere or sprayed anything around him. Maybe there’s a connection. I’m going to go talk to the other baby’s case doctor, have her do the same thing so we can compare notes. And I’ll circle around with the Head Administrator and give him a heads up in
case this escalates.”

  “Escalates. Right.” Rajesh watched the tech hurry away. Where there was a second incidence there might be a third or, better, one that hadn’t happened yet and could be prevented. That certainly gave impetus for finding the cause now, whether it would help Tony specifically or not. Rajesh picked up the Pad-L from his desk and prepared to interview Marie.

  *

  Later—after it was too late for Marie or Tony no matter what the outcome—Rajesh, the other case doctor, the lab tech and the hospital administrator met for a debrief.

  “We couldn’t have more diverse patients,” the lab tech reported. “Marie Rodriguez shopped at an ethnic food store in the Dakota Square shopping strip. Keira Ashley did her shopping at Bismarck Town Center. They’re eight miles apart, and while they have some distributors in common, for their baby supplies they carry separate lines—except for a couple of varieties of baby food that we’re checking out. Both mothers bottle fed supplementally, but they used different formulas from different manufacturers. We’re checking to see if any of the ingredients came from the same sources.

  “Other than that, they both bought the store brand whole milk. It looks like the same local plant is used for bottling, and both stores buy from local suppliers. Milk from each herd comes to them mixed but is bottled separately. That means every container of milk may have milk from several cows but they’re always cows from the same herd. The code stamped on the container can track back to the herd, but you have to have the container to make that check as they could bottle milk from two or three herds on the same day.”

  “So, in other words, there’s nothing we can test that will tell us if those two babies drank the same contaminated milk?” the administrator asked.

  “I’m not saying that there is anything out there contaminated, just that the only link we’ve found so far is the milk. We don’t even know what we’d be testing for. But, no, unless we had the exact containers that were contaminated, we don’t have anything to test. Nor can we tell how long ago the babies were affected. At least a week, according to the mothers, but it could have been as much as a month or more, with the babies just not showing any symptoms yet. And if that’s the case, we could be looking at contaminated formula before they switched to cow’s milk or diaper rash ointment or who knows what.”

  “All right then.” The administrator switched off her Pad-L. “I’ll send a report as we know it to the CDC. Maybe something else will turn up there. How’s the Ashley baby doing?”

  Dr. Halliday, the other case doctor, pocketed the phone with her notes and stood up. “She’ll be dead by morning.” Halliday didn’t meet the administrator’s eyes. She simply turned and left the room.

  Chapter Ten

  WHEN THE TRIPLE E BOARD convened again 48 hours later, the atmosphere in the conference room was subdued and strained. Like a sickroom, the walls felt close, the air thick and stifling, the very aura warning unhealthy, unfit, unwell.

  For most companies, the future is predicated on an amalgamation of events—some internally influenced, like vision or the lack thereof; others externally driven, like a dismal economy or new advances in technology—that, together, over time trend toward a leisurely rise to success or a lazy spiral into failure.

  For better or worse, a few companies can point to the exact moment their fortunes turned: a corporate scandal exposed, a must-have technology released.

  Sitting around the conference table, the executive leadership of Triple E Enterprises knew, without doubt, the last 48 hours was their defining moment.

  Two minutes late and with dark, limp bags under his eyes, a visibly older Walt Thurman walked into the room. He clutched a double shot of Espresso, the only thing keeping him awake and functioning after nearly two days without sleep. Before sitting down, he looked around the room, surprising many of the longtime executives by meeting and holding their gazes for a long moment each.

  He slumped into his chair and bowed his head over clasped hands that he thumped quietly and rhythmically against the table. “We have, apparently, made a grave error,” he said without preamble. “Dr. Volkov, will you recap, please.”

  Looking very nearly as tired as Thurman, Dr. Volkov flipped on a projector and the attendees turned their attention to the autoscreen at the end of the table. A video feed from one of the pens in Sector C showed a group of people in hazmat suits gathered around a large body collecting tissue samples.

  “We have had three deaths in Sector C over the past two days,” Dr. Volkov began. “Two adults, one infant. By visual inspection, we can confirm 71 percent of the stock across all sectors are displaying the same basic symptoms: involuntary muscle spasms ranging from minor tremors to acute seizures and cognitive disorders ranging from mild confusion to severe memory loss—some animals have apparently even ‘forgotten’ how to eat.”

  He pressed a button on the projector and the visual on the screen changed to a crude but effective pie chart. “We currently have 441 animals in this compound. Sector A accounts for 188 of them, B for 97 and C for 156. Infection rates, for want of a better term, are tracking at 62 percent in A, 65 percent in B and 86 percent in C.”

  ”What does that mean?”

  Dr. Volkov peered over the top of his glasses at the man who had spoken, Finance Accountant Peter Carne. “That we have a problem, Mr. Carne—and it is getting worse. More animals are showing up with symptoms every day. At first we linked the symptoms to our cloning process because that is where we saw the problem first arise. We saw that many clones that survived beyond birth were weak and inferior specimens. But not every specimen was affected. The variable, we had to then acknowledge, must lie in our parent stock. Unfortunate, since we’ve had little choice in what that stock is.

  “But that theory would only account for the original specimens in Sector C. We use a simple in vitro process for our A and B stock and have enough diverse genetic material on hand to ensure superior, hardy specimens. So that tells us maybe we are looking at a transmissible pathogen. A disease rather than a genetic disorder. One that can jump species at will.”

  “Isn’t there some rule of specialization?”

  “Not a rule, no, but you are right, it does seem to be a best practice for viruses. However, we could be looking for a bacterium or a fungus that only needs a host that can provide the optimum environment to flourish. A bit rare to be sure, but not unheard of. The problem is that we have not been able to isolate any such pathogen yet.”

  Thurman signaled to Dr. Volkov and the geneticist nodded, handing control of the projector to Thurman.

  “Which leads us,” Thurman said, “to the trend our marketing director, Helen, discovered.” Thurman switched the projected view to their file photo of a middle-aged brown man with ink-black hair and dark soulful eyes. In the photo, the man was smiling, eager for his first hunt with a new company. “Many of you will recognize Vikram Shankar, the CTO of Rightshore Outsourcing, and one of our Sector B clients. He died early yesterday morning shortly after midnight.” A murmur of sympathy ran around the conference table, though the news to most was not new.

  Another click and the face of a Japanese businessman with graying hair appeared. “Michio Yamashita, CEO of Cable-In Corp. He died in Japan five months ago, shortly after giving a speech to a group of sales personnel from RouterNet Technologies.”

  Yamashita’s face gave way to a pale-complected man with a pencil-thin moustache and fine blond hair. “The CFO of RouterNet, Paul Acklemore, passed away six weeks ago.”

  The last image was of a couple holding hands in front of a sign that read Happy 50th. “Jerome St. John, a 51-year-old cardiac surgeon, died four months ago after an unusually brief bout with Alzheimer’s. His wife, Doris, died last month after a similar battle.

  “Most of you knew some if not all of these people. They were all clients of Triple E or close associates of clients. They all died of some form of neurologic disorder. Discreet inquiries when we called to express the company’s condolences indicate the
definitive cause of death in all cases remains unknown. Alzheimer-like memory loss, Parkinson’s-like spasms, epilepsy-like seizures. Sound familiar?

  “Pradeep and Sung.” The marketing director’s quiet words could be heard clearly in the still room, the two Triple E employees having been friends and colleagues of many of those gathered. Pradeep, one of the in vitro specialists, had started having cognitive issues almost three years before and had retired on disability three months after his symptoms began. Within six months, his wife had turned him over to the care of a nursing home in Bismarck, close to hospitals and specialists who were trying to understand what had affected him. By then, he was in deep dementia, unable to care for himself and prone to wandering, no longer recognizing or able to interact with those around him. Two months later, Thurman’s administrative assistant was sending flowers for his funeral.

  Sung, a veterinary technician, had been head keeper in the nursery, caring for the surrogate mothers and their young. Not every new mother could be trusted with offspring—theirs or others—and Sung had a knack for being able to tell which animals had the temperament to be a nurturing parent. She also had the patience required to introduce newborns to foster mothers. And when one or more foster siblings grew too large or too aggressive to be with the others, Sung had the experience to know when to separate them before serious injury occurred. Regardless of which sector they wound up in as adults, all the animals started out in the nursery together, and Sung’s expertise from the company’s beginning had ensured each one had the proper start it needed to grow and thrive within the confines of the Triple E compound.