Dust Up: A Thriller

by Jon McGoran

  I followed her into a small lobby or foyer. It was dark and airless, with torn carpet and a vague but insistent mixture of odors—urine, sweat, pot smoke, and fast food.

  As if the air weren’t full enough, hip-hop blared from a smartphone and dock system behind the desk. The kid bobbing his head in front of the speakers looked up as we walked in. His eyes seemed to recognize Miriam despite her disguise, or maybe because of it. Then they attached to me. It wasn’t a hard stare, but his eyes followed us up the steps to the second floor.

  The music drowned out whatever noises might have been coming from the other rooms as we walked down the hallway. Miriam took out an old-fashioned room key and opened a door at the end, standing there waiting while I caught up with her.

  I slipped inside, and she pulled the door closed behind us, swinging the security latch in place. The hip-hop faded just a bit. So did the reefer smell. The urine odor got stronger, and the rest of it stayed about the same.

  The room was almost entirely taken up by a queen-sized bed and a wooden table and chair. She had a bunch of plastic shopping bags piled up on the table. As Miriam slid the room key into her handbag, I glimpsed the edge of a U.S. passport and a cash withdrawal envelope from a bank.

  “You going somewhere?” I asked, realizing as I said it how insanely stupid it was.

  Before I could apologize, she whipped off her shades and stared more intently at my face, as if maybe I wasn’t who she thought I was, maybe this was a big mistake. “No,” she said caustically, “I’m settling down here for a while. Seems like a nice place to start a new life, right?”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She plopped onto the wooden chair and pulled off her wig, draping it across the plastic bags on the table. She ran her fingers through her fine black hair, trying to straighten it out.

  I moved to sit on the bed, but she said, “I wouldn’t. Bedbugs.”

  I didn’t.

  She had a pretty face with delicate features, but the stress was etched deep. She looked ten years older than the woman in the picture, and I wondered if she’d ever recover, or if what she had gone through—was going through—was the kind of thing that just aged you prematurely. Maybe someday she’d catch up with it and once again look her age.

  “Yes, I’m out of here,” she said wearily. “If they don’t catch me first.”

  She looked at me again, that long, appraising look. Before she could decide whether or not I measured up, I asked, “Why was your husband at my front door? And why were you there, too?”

  She looked at her feet. At the mention of her husband, she seemed to lose some of the toughness she’d been trying to exude. She closed her eyes, trying to keep it together.

  I felt for her, whatever was going on. It was obvious she was hurting, grieving, and stuck in a situation where she couldn’t mourn.

  “Did you shoot your husband?” I asked quietly.

  She glared at me, bitterness and sarcasm burning through the tears gathering in her eyes. “No, I didn’t fucking shoot my husband.” She looked away dismissively, as if she couldn’t believe I was as stupid and gullible as the rest of them.

  “I didn’t think so, but I had to ask. Did you see who did?”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t supposed to be there. I followed him to make sure he was okay, to see what would happen. I was parked down the block, and this other car drives past, a black SUV, and it parks down the street from your house. It didn’t register at first. But as Ron went up the steps, it drives up, and as he’s knocking, they … they shot him.” She looked down for a moment, then she cleared her throat and looked up at me. “I didn’t see them.”

  I paused a second, letting her compose herself.

  “I panicked and drove away, terrified, but I came back a few minutes later, drove past … Ron was still lying on the steps, surrounded by cops. I knew he was dead for sure.”

  I gave her a few moments to collect herself.

  “They found the murder weapon,” I told her. “It has your prints on it.”

  “What?”

  “They found the gun. Ballistics matched it. Your fingerprints were on it.”

  “That’s bullshit.” Her tears seemed to evaporate in the heat of her anger. “Your ballistics guy must be in on it.”

  I shook my head. “He’s not. I know him. I trust him.”

  “You can’t trust anyone. Not anymore.”

  “Bourden said he thought Ron might be involved in corporate espionage.”

  “That’s what I’d say if I were him. I mean, I guess if they saw him skulking around, doing searches and running tests and assays not directly related to his core functions, they might get suspicious about that. But I doubt they really thought that’s what was going on.”

  “What did you do after Ron was shot?”

  “When I saw he was dead, I got the hell out of there.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I don’t know. I just drove, for like an hour, terrified they were coming after me. Before I even thought about it, I was headed to Boston, but I realized that just because I don’t have anyone there anymore didn’t mean they wouldn’t look there, anyway.”

  “Did you go back to your apartment?”

  She shook her head. Of course not. And if she had, she wouldn’t have stashed the murder weapon there.

  “Why’d you come back to Philly?”

  She shrugged. “I need to disappear. But first I wanted to tell you what Ron was going to tell you, clear my name with somebody … And maybe help you find out who killed Ron.”

  “You know the only way to clear your name is to stay here and fight the charges.”

  She shook her head. “They killed Ron. They’ll kill me. I’m more worried about my life than my name. Besides, what I’m about to tell you is bigger than one murder.”

  17

  “A couple of weeks ago, Ron and I were in Haiti,” she said. “He was part of a team accompanying an aid shipment of Soyagene, Energene’s new drought-resistant GMO soybean. It’s brand new. The approval doesn’t even take effect until next week. You know what GMOs are, right? Genetically modified organisms?”

  I smiled. “Yes, I’m familiar with them.”

  “Right. Of course you are. Anyway, Haiti’s had this terrible drought, so someone at Energene thought it would be a good idea to send Soyagene as aid, both seeds to grow and soyflour as food aid. Energene has been outpaced by its larger competitors. There’s a lot riding on Soyagene and Early Rise, its new corn variety, to help it catch up. People at Energene are stressed. I’m the office nurse, so I see it, people coming in with stress-related problems, and Ron has been right in the thick of it. Anyway, I thought it would be great to get out of the office. I have a close friend in Haiti from when I was in grad school at Penn, and I wanted to keep an eye on Ron. Make sure he was okay. So I took some vacation time and went with him.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out. “It was intense. Turned out Soyagene and Early Rise were both controversial in Haiti. Energene was pushing the soyflour as a protein supplement, but soy’s not a big part of the local diet in Haiti. And many people—including the president—are opposed to GMOs. There was a lot of political tension and instability, about a number of things, but partly about Energene and the GMO aid shipments, and GMOs in general. Have you been following the political situation there at all?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s a mess. Last year, near the end of his term, President Abelard banned GMOs. Energene and the other biotech companies put up tons of money to get this guy Martine elected, very pro-GMO, free trade, no regulations. People were shocked, because no one really liked him, but like I said, there was a lot of money behind him. As soon as Martine gets in, he rescinds all the regulations on this stuff. But then he has a heart attack and dies. They have a special election, and one of Abelard’s allies is elected, this guy Alain Cardon, and now Cardon is calling for a moratorium on new GMO varieties—including Soyagene and Early Rise. So there�
��s the drought, there’s all this political tension, there were also rumblings about some kind of armed rebel faction, and there were criminal gangs adding to the chaos. They stole some of our Soyagene soyflour before it was even cleared for distribution. We were up north, a place called Cap-Haïtien, and the port was crawling with American private security types working for Energene and Stoma, trying to protect assets and keep a lid on things.”

  “Stoma?”

  She nodded. “Stoma’s even bigger over there than Energene. Everywhere, really. Especially their GMO corn, Stoma-Grow. It’s all over the place. Energene is hoping to make a dent with the new Soyagene soybeans, but they can’t get their corn off the ground because Stoma has the corn market locked up. They’re pretty aggressive about protecting their market share.”

  “I know all about that. What does all this have to do with Ron showing up at my house?”

  “I’m getting to that. So, while Ron was working, I was spending time with my grad school friend, Regi Baudet, who’s a deputy health minister. A few days before we left, there was an outbreak of some kind of respiratory illness in this tiny village called Saint Benezet, out in the countryside. I went with Regi to see if I could help. Some of Energene’s security contractors were there when we arrived, skulking around, giving us dirty looks. We had no idea what it was. Regi was stumped, his assistant was stumped, I was stumped. It was bad, too. Everybody had it, but some people were really struggling, wheezing and gasping, especially the little ones and the old people. Luckily, we were able to get some steroid inhalers, because otherwise, some of them wouldn’t have made it through the night. Anyway, we got them all stabilized, and we took blood samples and left.

  “The next day, everyone was better. But we were curious. Ron studied infectious diseases while getting one of his Ph.D.s, so he and Regi brought some of the samples into a lab there, developed a few theories about it. It gave them a chance to get to know each other, which was nice.” She smiled sadly. “Anyway, two days later, the respiratory thing flared up again. We went back to Saint Benezet—this time Ron came with us—and now it was crawling with Energene security teams. We gave out more inhalers and took more samples. That’s when the word came down—Energene was sending us back to the States. They said the political situation was too unstable. We barely had time to pack our stuff and say a quick good-bye to Regi. We couldn’t take samples with us, so Ron wrote up a list of tests for Regi to conduct in his lab. Then we came home.”

  She paused, fidgeting, looking around nervously. “The day after we got back, Ron got the lab results from Regi. There was clearly some sort of extreme allergic reaction. It was striking that it was such a distinct geographical area, just this one tiny village, and so pervasive within it. Everyone had it.”

  She paused again, lowered her voice again. “This was right after the Soyagene shipment was stolen and not too far from where it happened. We realized it could be a reaction to the Soyagene soyflour. The Energene people had said we weren’t supposed to tell anyone about the theft, that it was a trade secret or whatever, and that it could compromise their investigation. But if the allergic reaction was because of the Soyagene, something was seriously wrong with it.”

  “Did you tell anybody?”

  She shook her head. “Ron tried to talk to his boss, Vinson, about it, but he couldn’t get in to see him. Vinson’s useless, anyway, but Ron got the feeling he was avoiding him. He finally got in to see him, and Vinson’s got Bradley Bourden there, the CEO, and this guy Royce, one of the security guys we’d seen in Haiti. Ron made up a story about some other project they were working on and got out of there.”

  “Was this Royce the guy who handles security at the building on Thirtieth Street?”

  “Might be. He seems to be everywhere all of the sudden.”

  “Red-faced guy? No sense of humor?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.” She almost smiled. “Anyway, after that we decided to go to the authorities, the feds. Like, whistle-blowers. We were terrified. I mean, that’s hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. Maybe billions. But if it was true, thousands of people could get sick from eating the Soyagene soybeans—people could die.”

  “What happened?”

  “We were freaking out, wondering if Vinson and Bourden already knew about it. We were trying to decide who to go to—USDA, FDA, FTC—we couldn’t find anyone who wasn’t totally in bed with Energene already. Ron knew them all, because they all worked for Energene at one point or another. They were all good friends of Bradley Bourden.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Ron was afraid for his professional life, you know. Nobody likes to be the bearer of bad news. But as he kept digging deeper at Energene, he became even more convinced there was a connection between the Soyagene hijacking and the illness at Saint Benezet. He got really scared. He didn’t want me helping him, he didn’t want me having anything to do with any of this. He said we were in danger.” She looked over at me, the fear and vulnerability in her eyes accentuated by a tiny flicker of hope. “Then he decided to come see you.”

  We shared a sad, ironic smile, like, look how that turned out.

  “Why me?”

  She shook her head, as if looking back maybe it hadn’t been the smartest idea. “Ron did some work with Energene’s insect genetics department. He’d been looking into Stoma’s Bee-Plus program when he read about what happened on Martha’s Vineyard. He said the official story was guaranteed bullshit, that he couldn’t be sure what really happened, but bottom line, you stopped some powerful people from doing some bad things.”

  Then her eyes sharpened. “While he was digging, he learned some of what went down in Dunston, too. He said in both cases you took on guys like this, you got the feds involved, and you won. So maybe you had connections there that weren’t in Energene’s pocket. You were local, and he thought he could trust you, so…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess he didn’t know where else to go.”

  “You said Ron decided to come to me because he learned something else that scared him. What was that?”

  As she opened her mouth, the music out in the hallway turned off, accompanied by a loud cracking sound.

  I held up my hand.

  The place was suddenly silent, like all the other occupants were holding their breath and listening too.

  “Is there a back way out?” I whispered.

  Her eyes widened, and she shook her head. Then she pointed to a small sliding window set into the wall. I crossed the room and looked out. It was a ten-foot drop to the concrete alley below. Almost directly beneath us was a black Lincoln Navigator. When I put my face up against the window, I could see a heavyset white guy in a brown suit standing next to it.

  I ducked back as he looked up. When I turned to look at Miriam, her face crumpled.

  I put a finger to my lips, then held it up, telling her to wait for a moment. I crossed the room and stood next to the door, listening. A floorboard squeaked out in the hallway.

  I turned and motioned her into the bathroom.

  The guy out back didn’t look like a cop, but you couldn’t always tell. I left my gun in my holster. Then I quietly swung the security latch away from the door. With my back against the wall, I wrapped my left hand around the doorknob and cocked my right fist.

  After a few seconds, I caught a strong whiff of cheap men’s cologne and felt the knob shifting in my hand. I ripped the door open and whipped my body around, putting everything I had behind my fist, and hoping to God there was some kind of bad guy out there.

  18

  I’ve never been a fan of the sucker punch. Kind of lacks class—not that I’m a specialist in that area. The sting of shame is lessened when the sucker you’re punching is holding a gun with a silencer—and even more when he’s doused with cheap cologne—but there’s still something douchey about punching a guy in the face before he has a chance to raise his eyebrows.

  Fortunately for this guy, he was shorter than I am and crouching down. I had to ad
just my trajectory in midswing, coming down on the side of his head. Fortunately for me, by the time my fist bounced off his temple and he crumpled to the floor, I had gotten over any moral ambivalence. I was hoping pretty hard he wasn’t law enforcement of any kind, but cops don’t use silencers—and they rarely douse themselves with Axe body spray—so even if he was one, it wasn’t my bad.

  Axe-Man was down on his hands and knees, his hand still holding that gun. He was wearing a fancy suit—not necessarily a good one, just a flashy one—and a lot of product in his hair. He was young, which could have been why he went to the trouble of using a silencer and then broadcasted his presence with so much body spray. I stomped hard on his gun hand and slammed my knee into his face. He collapsed to the floor and let go of his gun. I kicked it down the hallway. He was out cold but breathing okay. I cuffed him and went back inside for Miriam. I’d read him his rights later.

  She was hiding in the shower, trembling. She almost collapsed when she saw it was me, her eyes pinned to the gun now in my hand.

  “It’s okay,” I said quietly. “Let’s go.”

  I grabbed her by the elbow and guided her toward the door. She pulled back and said, “Can I get my stuff?”

  I shook my head. “We’ll come back for it.”

  She grabbed her handbag and her wig from off the chair.

  Out in the hallway, she stared in horror at the guy on the floor, trying to get up onto his knees. I thought about grabbing the gun—you never knew when it would come in handy—but I’d sent it pretty far down the hallway, so instead I kicked him in the ribs, twice, then hustled Miriam toward the stairs while he groaned on the floor.

  The kid at the front desk was gone. The sound system was shattered, with a bullet hole just to the left of the smartphone and shards of plastic littering the shelf.

  Miriam’s arm trembled in my grasp as I led her toward the front door. I went out first, gun drawn, but there was no sign of anyone. By the time we were halfway down the path to the street, Miriam was pulling ahead of me, rushing to get to her car. As we reached the sidewalk, we both flinched at a strange popping, cracking noise. Next to us, a six-inch patch of the brown stucco wall exploded into a cloud of white dust.