There had now been a murder in the lab. If the activator data had been a threat before, it was an even bigger threat now. Perhaps it was time to destroy it for good. And this might be her only window, her only chance with no guard at the lab. And besides, she no longer needed it.
Katrina glanced around momentarily, as if she might see someone else in the room. Of course, she did not.
She found the stool used to reach the top of the tank and the blue cryo-gloves required to touch its contents. Then she reached into a closet to retrieve the item she had purchased from the humane society where Alexis worked.
Over the course of the last few months, Katrina’s lab had become the most sophisticated infectious disease laboratory in the world. Within it, the shiny new Pooper Scooper looked ridiculous. But with its stainless steel arms, long reach, and plastic handles, it was the perfect tool for retrieving something from the bottom of a tank held at one hundred ninety-six degrees below zero.
Katrina raised the lid of the tank and stood back to allow the initial cloud of sublimation to puff out. Then she waved away as much of the residual vapor as possible with a blue glove. She removed the four towers that she and Jason had placed atop the cryogenic bag containing the data and set them onto the floor. Then she fished out the bag with the Pooper Scooper and dropped it onto the linoleum.
After replacing the towers and closing the lid, Katrina used a gloved hand to pick up the still frozen bag. And as she did, she heard a door close.
Katrina raced to the nearest laboratory island and opened a top drawer. She dropped the bag containing the data, still smoking with sublimation, inside the drawer and slammed it shut, and then took off the gloves and dropped them onto the table. She crammed the Pooper Scooper back into its closet, just as an exhausted-looking Sean McMullan rounded the corner into the room.
Katrina could feel herself flushing. “Oh, you scared me,” she said. “What are you doing here?” As she spoke, Katrina walked away from the closet and back toward the robot room.
With a quizzical look on his face, McMullan followed. “I was just stopping by on my way out of town. Roger and I have an emergency and we have to go back to D.C. He already left. I wanted to make sure everything was OK here before I followed him.”
“Yeah,” she said too quickly. “Everything’s fine. I did the DNA extraction, and the PCR is running right now. I just need to run the gel in a little bit.”
“Good, I’ll see you soon then.”
He followed her out of the room and back into the main lab. Behind them, a thin ghost of sublimation vapor was still creeping upward from the drawer next to the liquid nitrogen tank.
At the local FBI branch office in San Diego, a special agent was observing a series of video monitors. As Sean McMullan and Katrina Stone were stepping away from the liquid nitrogen tank in Stone’s lab, the guard leaned forward toward his controls to digitally rewind the video that had just captured his interest. He watched again as she pulled an object out of the tank and then hastily shoved it into a drawer upon the arrival of McMullan.
“Gotcha,” the agent said under his breath and picked up the receiver of his telephone.
4:35 P.M. EST
By the time Sean McMullan arrived at his partner’s home outside of Washington, D.C., the majority of FBI, USPIS, and HazMat officials had already cleared out. Roger Gilman was sitting at his kitchen table with Teresa Wood, James Johnson, and Guofu Wong. Teresa, wearing white latex gloves, was delicately touching the sides of the greeting card on the table while reading its text.
McMullan did not need to see his partner’s card. He had an identical copy in his back pocket, pulled out of his own San Diego post office box that morning before boarding his plane. As he approached the other inspectors, he wordlessly removed it and tossed it onto the table next to the other copy.
Guofu Wong was the first to speak. “At least there’s nothing hazardous on them,” he said.
“Of course there isn’t,” Teresa answered.
“Can I get an ‘amen’ for e-beam irradiation,” McMullan added. As he spoke, his cell phone buzzed in his pocket. McMullan looked down and silenced it.
“Perhaps you overreacted in sending our entire task force and HazMat team to respond to this,” Johnson suggested coldly to Gilman.
Gilman’s eyes blazed. “And what would you have done, Dr. Johnson, if it was your wife and seven children in here?”
The eyes of the two men locked and a terse silence followed. Then Johnson broke Gilman’s gaze and looked down. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.
“Mr. Gilman,” Wong said, “Dr. Johnson’s one child died of leukemia forty years ago, and his wife passed away just last year.”
“I’m sorry,” Gilman said. “I didn’t know.”
Johnson ignored the brief revelation of his personal life. “Well, we have a more current issue to address,” he said. “Obviously, this Doctor character knows a lot more about this case than he should.”
“Agreed,” said Wong. “He knows who is on this case, and he knows your home addresses—two pieces of information that were never available outside of the FBI.”
“Which means that he—or she—is either in the FBI, has infiltrated, or has gotten to someone else.” The comment was from Teresa. As she spoke, her eyes darted rapidly from one of the four men at the table to the next. Although she had not said it, her point was understood. All four of them were now suspects as far as the USPIS was concerned. “With that being said,” Teresa continued, “I’m afraid I have to raise a really awkward issue at this point.”
“You can’t be serious!” Gilman interrupted. “And if us, why not you?”
“Well, first of all,” Teresa said. “I’m not in the FBI. I do not have access to the two pieces of information we just discussed. The only way I knew how to get here, in case you don’t remember an hour ago, was by getting directions from you.”
“I’m not in the FBI either,” Guofu Wong pointed out.
“No, you’re not,” Teresa conceded, “but I think you and I should both cooperate as well. I will happily offer my DNA, a handwriting analysis, pap smear, and whatever else you fellows need. And I expect that the FBI will put its forensics people on this analysis to corroborate whatever I find in my investigation. But you can bet that my investigation will be thorough.”
Another cell phone rang. Each of the inspectors checked his or her phone, and Gilman announced, “It’s mine.” He pressed the button to silence the phone.
“We’re done here, anyway,” Teresa said. And then, glaring at Gilman, “… provided I can collect a hair sample from each of you on our way out the door.”
She turned to Johnson, whose head was totally bald. “Dr. Johnson, I can use hair from any body part of your choice, as long as I get to pluck it. Or, I can come by your office this afternoon and take an oral swab.”
Johnson loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt, revealing a chest speckled with white hair. “As much fun as that oral thing sounds… be my guest.”
4:27 P.M. PST
Katrina awoke from a fitful sleep and pulled a robe over her naked body before stepping out of the bedroom. Her hair was still wet from the shower that had failed to wash off her most recent encounter with “Something Morales.”
The house was silent. Katrina knocked on Lexi’s door and then poked her head into her daughter’s room. Alexis was not home. Katrina looked at her watch. It was almost four thirty in the afternoon.
Katrina walked out into the kitchen and brewed a pot of coffee. Then she sat down on the living room couch with a fresh cup and the FBI file. She found the spot where she had left off at the hospital and resumed her reading.
A thick forensic analysis from the United States Postal Inspection Service confronted her. Scanning quickly for relevant information, Katrina read through reports detailing Crimescope analyses, hair fibers, lab coat fragments, and ESDA analyses. The majority of lab tests were similar to assays Katrina herself had used re
ligiously for years, and it was easy reading.
Then she saw an image that made her pause. It was the scanned image of the writing from the greeting card. The text that had been picked up by the ESDA trace analysis.
WHO1315
DR1630
AL1800
Katrina stared at the text for a moment longer. Then she leapt from the couch, spilling coffee onto her robe as she did. “Shit!” she shouted as the liquid seared her leg, but she did not stop moving.
Katrina raced into the bedroom to quickly dress, brush her teeth, and pull her long hair back into a clip at the nape of her neck. Then she darted into the guest room that doubled as a home office and switched on her computer.
Eagerly, Katrina clicked into the start menu of her computer to confirm what she already knew. She clasped a hand over her mouth and sat for a moment, thinking. And then, with trembling hands, Katrina opened her Internet browser, where she pulled up an online road map function.
5:18 P.M. PST
A bell over the door jingled softly as Alexis Stone stepped into the Army surplus store on University Avenue. She flashed a smile at a man dressed in full camouflage behind the counter.
Alexis walked past the shelves of miscellaneous items and through a narrow hallway leading to the restrooms. She passed both restroom doors and knocked softly on a third, unmarked door at the back of the hall.
“Yeah?” came a voice from inside.
“Code word Lincoln,” Lexi said softly, after checking over her shoulder for unwanted company. Lincoln. Freer of slaves. It could not have been more appropriate for the Animal Liberation Front.
The door opened and Alexis stepped in, then locked the door behind her. Scattered around the room were a variety of mismatched, tattered chairs and couches, a refrigerator, a television, and several tables.
On the walls was a collection of posters. In one, an anonymous person held a white rabbit closely, protectively to his or her face, which was covered with a black ski mask. The caption read “If not you, who? If not now, when?”
Several people were seated at a table and sprawled on the couches. They greeted Alexis with nods and hand-waves when she entered the room. Lexi walked over to a teenage boy sitting on a loveseat, leaned down and kissed him with tongue, mindless of the others in the room.
“Hey, babe,” he said casually, and sat up to allow room on the loveseat for her. She sat next to him and draped one leg across his lap. The boy began to rub her calf.
“So what’s the latest?” Alexis asked.
“Finalizing strategy for the biotechnology convention next week,” said an older man. “Sounds like we’re going to have quite a turnout.”
“Good,” Lexi said. “How many?”
“Well over a thousand, according to my estimation,” said the same man. “But we’re counting on you to be at the forefront. Since your mom is the keynote speaker, you can really call attention to us. Grab the press. Make sure they know who you are, and make sure they know you don’t support your mother’s work. The press goes crazy when it comes to conflict within families, so you are in a really strong position to discredit your mother.”
“You bet,” she said. And then with a giggle, “I’m going to be grounded for the rest of my life.”
The room erupted with snickers and a few more boisterous laughs.
“And how many people won’t be at the convention,” Lexi asked with a mischievous grin.
“We have three teams of seven targeting the Salk Institute, Scripps Research, and UCSD. We’ve got contacts to let us in, and we’re taking the animals out in vans. It’s just mice and rats, so they’ll be easy to handle. We’ve narrowed it down to the best three labs for the operation, based on the fact that all of the major players from those labs will be at the convention.”
“Cool,” Alexis said, and popped the gum in her mouth. “Well, sorry, but I can’t stay tonight. Just stopping by on my way home.” She turned to the boy on the loveseat rubbing her leg. “Coming over? I’m sure my mom will be gone half the night as usual.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I just have a few things to catch up on at home. I’ll meet you there in a bit.”
Alexis stood to leave, and the boy slapped her backside as she walked away. She turned and hit him playfully on the arm, but as she left the room, she was smiling.
With the girl gone, the older man turned his attention to the boy on the loveseat.
“Are you sure everything’s OK with her?” he asked.
“Oh yeah, she’s cool. We’ll be down at the convention, remember?”
“Just as long as you’re sure that’s where she’ll be. I don’t want anyone getting in the way. I know you say she’s cool, but it is the girl’s mother we’re talking about here. Girls are surprisingly protective of their mothers even when they pretend to hate them.”
“I know,” the boy said, “but it’s under control. Katrina Stone will be speaking at the convention, and I’ll keep Alexis out of the way. If she wants to leave the convention, I’ll take her back to her house. That’s good for at least an hour, hour and a half.” He was smiling.
“Yeah right, try ten seconds,” said a girl across the room, and laughed.
“Shut up,” the boy said. “Anyway, Lexi isn’t a problem. You guys just get into the BSL-3 facility like we planned. Do you have the floor plan?”
The older man nodded, and the boy continued. “Good. Focus on the monkeys. According to my contact there, the infected monkeys are kept quarantined away from the uninfected ones. It’s too late to save the infected ones, but my contact says that there are currently six monkeys that have not yet been infected. Make sure you know which ones they are. If you get the wrong monkeys, the world has a serious problem.”
9:02 P.M. PST
Sean McMullan and Roger Gilman had deplaned in San Diego and were walking across the Skywalk to the airport parking lot when Gilman remembered to switch his cell phone back on. A message chimed immediately when he did.
Without slowing his pace across the Skywalk, Gilman listened to the message and then closed the phone. He grabbed McMullan’s arm casually and began trotting toward the parking lot. “We have a situation,” he said.
McMullan easily kept up at a slow jog. “I’m parked right over here.”
“Good.” Gilman was already running out of breath. “You drive.”
Once in the passenger seat of Sean McMullan’s sedan, Gilman dialed the San Diego Branch of the FBI while McMullan navigated his way out of the parking lot of San Diego International Airport.
The agent who picked up the phone immediately yelled, “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you guys all day!”
“We’ve been dealing with an emergency,” Gilman said defensively. “On the east coast time, by the way. We just got back. What?”
Gilman listened while his contact relayed his observation from the surveillance video of Katrina Stone’s lab. She was hiding something in a tank all this time, Gilman thought. What was it? “How big was the thing she pulled out?” he asked.
“Not much bigger than a book or something,” the agent said.
McMullan was driving while glancing at his partner every few moments in an effort to deduce information from the one-sided conversation he was hearing. “Roger, where am I going?” he finally asked.
“San Diego FBI headquarters,” Gilman answered.
“Wait,” said the agent on the phone. “I haven’t told you the rest. While she was getting the stuff out of the tank, McMullan showed up and she immediately hid it in a drawer. She looked guilty as hell. If I were you, I’d pick up Stone first. You can look at the video later.”
Gilman hung up the phone and grabbed the steering wheel, jerking McMullan’s car into a rapidly approaching turn lane. Another car entering the same lane almost hit the swerving sedan from the side.
“What the fuck?” McMullan said, shoving his partner away and regaining control.
“Turn!” Gilman said, and McMullan did.
“Change o
f plan,” Gilman said. “Get to Stone’s house. Right now.”
It was unnecessary for the two agents to kick in the front door to Katrina Stone’s house. The door was unlocked. Guns drawn, McMullan and Gilman burst through the door but then stalled.
Sitting at the kitchen table was a young man. Lying across the table was Alexis Stone. Both of them were stark naked, and the boy was holding a can of whipped cream over a small mound of strawberries and raspberries, arranged delicately on the girl’s stomach. When the door opened and the two agents came in, both teenagers looked up.
After her initial start, Alexis scrambled off the table and hastily tried to hide her naked body behind her boyfriend.
McMullan and Gilman exchanged a confused glance and then bolted past the two teenagers and up the stairs. “Get some clothes on,” Gilman mumbled as he passed.
Given the scene in the kitchen, neither agent was surprised to find Stone’s bedroom empty. She should have been in bed, finally sleeping after the eventful last twenty-four hours. Instead, her bedroom was disheveled, clothing thrown haphazardly across the bed, along with a small array of toiletries. A small collection of luggage had been thrown out of the closet and was still strewn across the floor.
“Shit!” McMullan said.
Gilman stepped out to sweep the rest of the house, avoiding the front area where two embarrassed, horny, and sticky teenagers were dressing.
McMullan stepped into the bedroom and rifled through the mess on the bed, and then through the adjacent bathroom, looking for evidence of where she might have gone. Katrina, this can’t really be you. He withdrew his cell phone and speed-dialed San Diego FBI headquarters.
“Now what?” the agent asked.
“She’s leaving the country,” he said. “Alert TSA.”
“Sean!” Gilman’s voice rang through from the next room.
The Death Row Complex (The Katrina Stone Novels Book 2) Page 18