The Death Row Complex (The Katrina Stone Novels Book 2)

by Kristen Elise Ph. D.

  While the attendant was debating whether or not to bend the rule, a man in a navy blue suit approached. Unlike the young woman in front of him, this man was clearly old enough to have business here. More importantly, he bore the required badge.

  “Did you leave your pass inside again, Doctor?” the man asked the girl.

  She looked up at him and smiled. “Yes, and I don’t know what to do,” she said. Then she leaned in and lowered her voice to say, “and to be honest with you, I really have to use the restroom!”

  The man looked toward the attendant and said, “Sir, surely you can let my colleague use the restroom and retrieve her badge. She really is a well-known scientist at this event. I will promise to take responsibility for her.”

  The conference attendant shook his head and took one more glance at the man’s badge before waving them through.

  8:59 A.M. PST

  Oscar Morales stepped into a room and sat down behind a metal barrier. His privilege to use the open visiting room had now been revoked, ever since he attacked a young woman inside it and had to be forcibly subdued.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he asked. It was becoming a familiar greeting for Oscar, who, as of late had been visited by a number of strangers, each with his or her own questions. This time, it was a squat, balding man in a wrinkled pair of slacks. The man’s button-down shirt was unbuttoned at the top, his tie loosely hanging from his neck. He looked exhausted and cross.

  “Federal Agent Roger Gilman,” Oscar’s visitor replied and flashed an FBI badge.

  Oscar stood to leave the room. “I’m not talking to you pigs,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Don’t you want to know how your brother is doing?” Gilman shouted after him.

  Oscar turned back around. He sat down and glared at the FBI agent through the barrier. “You’re keeping tabs on my brother?”

  “Yes sir,” Gilman responded. “And on the woman who burned your brother’s face off. And, as a matter of fact, on you. A fledgling biologist turned imprisoned bioterrorist? Yes sir, Mr. Morales, you are someone we now have a great deal of interest in.”

  “I’m still not talking to you. Show me that Chuck is OK.”

  “He’s fine. Feeling pretty good, actually. Morphine can do wonders for one’s mood. But I’m sure you know that, given your long and lustrous career as a drug dealer.” Gilman shook his head dramatically. “You know, Morales, I’d love to say you should have stuck to biology. But as it turns out, you might still have ended up here. Looks like some of your former colleagues in the field certainly will.”

  “What do you want with me?” Oscar asked.

  “Like I said, your brother is feeling pretty nice these days. He’s awake, and of course he’s stoned on morphine pretty constantly. It’s made him remarkably talkative. Chuck says you carried out the biological terror attack that took place in this prison back in October. He says you orchestrated the whole thing from inside here.

  “Your brother also says you’re now responsible for a second attack that’s in progress in San Diego even as we speak. To be frank, Mr. Morales, your brother’s gab is about to land you on death row. So I’m just here to get your side of the story.”

  Oscar listened intently to the smug agent in front of him. Second attack? “My brother wouldn’t rat on me,” he said calmly. “And as for a second attack, I don’t know anything about it. Obviously, I didn’t do it. I’m in here.”

  “Sound logic,” Gilman said, “except that we have two vials of the anthrax you gave your brother.” He paused and grinned, as if for effect. “Guess what I learned today, Oscar? I just learned today that identical twins don’t have identical fingerprints, even though they have identical DNA. It was your prints on the vials, my friend. Not Chuck’s. Yours.”

  Oscar slammed his fists against the metal barrier. “Chuck was the one you caught with the anthrax!” he roared. “Fuckin’ baby never could take care of himself!”

  He paused to think before saying, now calmly, “If my prints are on those vials, there was probably something else in them when I had my hands on them. I don’t know what the fuck my brother did. I’m only in here in the first place because of Chuck. I took the fall for him years ago, and now he’s expecting me to do it again. Well, not this time. Fuck him. I’ll give him up. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. But I want my sentence reduced in return.”

  “Can I get that in writing?” Gilman asked with a smile.

  “Hell, yeah.”

  But instead of producing a pen and paper, Gilman shouted back over his shoulder. “Did you catch all that, Chuck?”

  9:00 A.M. PST

  “It’s so obvious,” Katrina said.

  McMullan braked to slow his sedan as the eastbound 94 freeway came to a dead end in downtown San Diego. “What’s so obvious?” For the last five minutes, neither he nor Katrina had spoken. She had been reading and re-reading the second greeting card.

  “The language he keeps referring to,” she said, “the language that none of you speak.”

  “We thought at first it was Arabic. Remember, the first card was written in Arabic. We were looking at ISIL and some of the other Arabic terrorist organizations. Nothing panned out.”

  “It’s not Arabic,” Katrina said. “It’s science. This man is a scientist. He’s frustrated that you aren’t fluent in science.”

  “What makes you say that?” McMullan asked.

  “The fact that he put a crystal structure on all three of these cards. He handed you the fact that anthrax was the weapon of choice. He knew from the beginning that the image on the front was the only definitive link between the greeting card and the attack at San Quentin.

  “He was making a point that you missed the significance of the image and wasted time because you don’t ‘speak’ science. To drive it home, the second cards say, ‘it’s unfortunate that you don’t speak my language.’ And, I gotta hand it to the Doctor. He’s right. If you’re still looking at Arabic, your heads are up your asses. The language is science.”

  Katrina took a breath and continued. “He chastises you again for not understanding him. Again, heads up your asses. No offense.”

  “None taken,” McMullan said, but he could feel himself flushing slightly. “But why would he carry out the attack on a prison?”

  “He wanted to see if his weapon would work. And, truth being told, that was really the best way, from a scientific point of view. There is only so much we can decipher from animal studies. The only way to really measure the effects of a drug—or a biological weapon, for that matter—on humans, is to test it in humans. He wanted to test his weapon on humans, and he thought the prison was a good place for the experiment to be conducted. I assume he reasoned that the only loss of life was sixty-eight inmates who had already been condemned to die anyway.”

  “Creepy, but logical,” McMullan said and then hastily, “put that away!”

  Katrina shoved the computer printout into the glove compartment as McMullan’s black sedan rolled into the circus surrounding the convention center.

  “OK then, Doctor, here’s another dumb question,” McMullan said. “Why in the hell, if he’s a scientist, would he come out here and poison a bunch of other scientists?”

  Katrina shook her head. “To eliminate the competition for funding?” She half chuckled, expecting McMullan to do the same.

  Instead, he jerked toward her, eyes blazing. “I think you’re right!” he yelled.

  “Sean, that’s insane,” Katrina said. “I was kidding.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t know the whole story! This is the reason for all the questions I was asking you earlier. You didn’t answer the real question, but then again, I didn’t exactly ask it.” He slammed on the emergency brake and turned in his bucket seat to look Katrina directly in the eye. Then he took both of her wrists into his hand to monitor her pulse as he spoke.

  “Katrina, I want to know the truth. Did you, or did you not, plagiarize the grant application of James Johnson? And
before you answer, remember I’m an FBI agent. I know liars. Even good ones.”

  Katrina looked shocked. “No!” she said. “What are you talking about?”

  “James Johnson is an NIH funded anthrax researcher, as you know. He’s also one of the FBI infectious disease specialists on this case. Guofu Wong, the other one, says that Johnson has accused you of plagiarizing his research for your own work. Moreover, Johnson is very old-school. He’s very much against the technology that you are bringing to the forefront. Wong is in favor of it. He wanted to fund your application a year ago, the one that was rejected by the NIH. In fact, it was rejected largely because of Johnson’s influence on the reviewing committee.

  “The message from the Doctor says that our society is ‘short-sighted.’ That we are heading down the wrong path. That these attacks are the only way for us to realize this, and that he—the Doctor himself—will be a martyr for this cause.

  “I think that Johnson is responsible for these attacks. I think he poisoned those prisoners as a test run, and I think he’s poisoning the scientists at the convention today to punish modern biotechnology as an institution and to lead ‘us,’ society, down what he considers the ‘right path’—that path being his way, the old-school way. I think he set you up as a scapegoat to punish you for plagiarizing his work, because you represent the modern. And I think the attacks on you by Chuck Morales were also his doing.

  “And yes, I think you’re innocent. But do me a favor, Katrina, and help me prove it. Because otherwise, to be honest, I’m just as fucked as you are.”

  Katrina listened to McMullan’s hypothesis, taking in each statement in sequence. He was right. It all made sense. Every piece of the puzzle fit with Johnson. She suddenly felt carsick.

  She rolled down the sedan’s passenger window, and the car was flooded with screaming from the chaos in the street. As her eyes scanned the crowd, she remembered Alexis and began scanning for her. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. A short needle. She might never find her here.

  “Where are Johnson and Wong now?” she asked weakly.

  “Actually,” McMullan said, as if realizing it for the first time, “they’re here. Both of them registered months ago to attend the convention.”

  9:01 A.M. PST

  As her new friend led her past the convention attendant and into the main foyer, Alexis nonchalantly asked, “So who are you?”

  “I’m a friend of your mother’s,” he said with a smile. “Glad you could join us today. I’m sure she’ll be happy to have your support.”

  Alexis looked up into his face. He was smiling kindly. He has no idea, she thought.

  “Well, thank you for getting me in,” she said. “I’ll have to get my badge from my mom as soon as I hit the ladies’ room.”

  “This way,” he led, pointing to a sign marking the nearest restroom. “I think I’ll head to the little boys’ room myself.”

  As she reached for the door to the women’s room, and the stranger started into the men’s room, Alexis thanked him again and half-waved. Once inside, she let the door swing shut behind her and approached the nearest stall.

  As she pushed the stall door open and turned around to close it behind her, Alexis barely had time to process the blurred image in the bathroom mirror.

  A staccato scream escaped her throat, and then he was on top of her.

  9:02 A.M. PST

  In a no-contact visiting area of San Quentin State Correctional Facility, an FBI agent whom Oscar Morales had just met opened the door behind him. Oscar suddenly felt weak and sick when a freakish remnant of a human being shuffled into the room.

  Chuck’s face was halfway covered with tattered gauze bandages caked with dried blood. Visions of the areas still exposed would haunt his brother for the rest of his life.

  The skin that had been smooth and brown was now a patchwork of various blacks and reds. It was thick and hard and just beginning to twist into the creased, plastic shell of the severely burned. Chuck’s single exposed eye cavity was empty; the eye had been seared inward, and remnants of vitreous humor were glued within the cavity in a molten mass. It looked like a charred egg white.

  When the FBI agent reached forward and guided Chuck into the room by one elbow, Oscar realized that his brother would require such assistance forever. Chuck was blind.

  In sharp contrast to his disfigured face, Chuck’s body was relatively intact. A noteworthy exception was a walking cast on one leg that extended from the foot upward to Chuck’s knee. With one hand, Chuck carefully maneuvered a cane, repositioning it with each slow step to minimize the weight endured by the leg that had been kicked hard enough by a woman in a lab to fracture the tibia.

  Gently, almost tenderly, the FBI agent helped Chuck to ease into the chair across from Oscar. At close range, Oscar could see that it was a struggle for Chuck to breathe through nostrils that were melted shut and a mouth that was barely recognizable. The sickly, labored rhythm was the only sound in the room until Chuck spoke to his brother.

  With considerable effort, he whispered, “You’re dead.”

  Roger Gilman pulled up a chair next to the now-less-attractive twin and watched the exchange between the brothers with amused interest. Go ahead, string each other up, he thought.

  Chuck turned to Gilman and motioned as if he was writing, and Gilman realized that speaking was too difficult for him. “You want something to write with?” he asked. “Sure, let’s see here… ” He rifled through his briefcase and found a pen and his own notepad, half filled with messages to himself. He found a section of blank pages and tore a few of them out. He placed the paper and pen on the small table in front of Chuck.

  “OSCARS A FUCKIN LIAR,” Chuck wrote in large block lettering, and then picked up the page and slammed it up against the chain link divider for his brother to see.

  “Hermanito,” Oscar said quietly. “I can’t believe what that bitch did to you. She’ll pay for this if it’s the last thing I do.”

  But Chuck did not even answer. Instead, he leaned forward and scribbled frantically while the two other men patiently waited. When he was finished, he groped to his side until he located Roger Gilman, and then shoved the page toward him. When Gilman took the page, Chuck stood, leaning heavily on his cane, and turned to walk back in the direction he had come. He found the wall, felt alongside it for the door, and left the room without another gesture in the direction of his brother.

  Gilman watched him go, and then looked down at the page in his hands. It read: “I wasnt even ever here b4 the attak. Oscar planed it with the bitch. He called me later. He paid me to kill her. Chek the vidios. I wasnt here.”

  Gilman looked up from the note and smiled through the barrier at Oscar.

  “Your brother says San Quentin surveillance will clear this whole thing up,” he said casually.

  9:04 A.M. PST

  In a private room at the San Diego Convention Center, two scientists were engaged in a heated argument. One of them was young Jason Fischer. The other was the red-faced chair of the first session of the biotechnology convention.

  “Just who do you think you are, you narcissistic, arrogant ass!” Jason was saying. “You can’t forbid me to speak! You’re a mediator! You’re not a policeman and you’re not God or even the pope, and you have no more authority here than my mother.”

  “Look, son,” said the chair with aggravation. “I arrived here this morning with a predetermined agenda. On that agenda was an introduction for the keynote speaker. The keynote speaker was Katrina Stone.

  “I have a lovely—highly complimentary, I must say—breakdown of her scientific career committed to memory, waiting patiently for me to relay it to the audience. Nowhere in the woman’s curriculum vitae does it say that she can’t come to the podium because she’s locked up in the slammer. To introduce another scientist on her behalf at this moment is impossible. It would turn this entire event into a bigger freak show than it already is, and I won’t have a mockery made of this convention. N
ot to mention that you, Dr. Fischer, will be crucified. You should thank me for putting my foot down.”

  “Thank you?!” Jason shouted incredulously. “Are you listening to yourself, you self-righteous fuck? You’re not doing me any favors—I have to speak. It’s the only chance I have to defend myself—and Katrina—and to point out the fact that she has not been convicted of anything, since some of you seem to have already lost sight of that.

  “If Katrina simply shrinks away apologetically, she might as well be pleading guilty to the absolutely ludicrous charges against her. Her career will be ruined. My career will be ruined as well, and the careers of several other bright young scientists under her training. You are not only stopping the careers of these young scientists, you are also damaging the future of science itself by taking several of its promising rising stars out of the equation.”

  “Now who is being arrogant?” asked the chair. “Young man, legitimate science has been communicated in this forum among legitimate scientists since before you or your twelve-year-old colleagues were even born. And when today is finally over, this tradition will continue without any of you.

  “No, sir, I think the best course of action is to simply announce Dr. Stone’s cancellation due to personal reasons and leave it at that. My concern here is damage control—not to your career, I’m sorry to say, but to this convention and to the reputations of the scientists in it who are not felons. You can plead your case in front of a court of law like everybody else. That’s the end of it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m already ten minutes late, and the natives are getting restless.”

  The older man turned and stepped out of the room, slamming the door behind him. After he was gone, Jason let out an exasperated sigh. Then he reached up to wipe a fresh outpouring of sweat from his brow.