Lethal Dose

by Jeff Buick

  Then she was back. At her car with her keys in hand. She pressed the key fob and the park lights blinked twice as the door locks opened. She slid in behind the wheel and took a couple of deep breaths before starting the car and backing out.

  Jennifer Pearce had spent a substantial part of her life in denial. Denial of her reality. Her childhood had been an unhappy one, left alone to cook and clean while her parents doted on her younger brother. Her only escape had been to enter a fantasy world, where she was someone special, not Cinderella before the ball. Trips to school in the snow were long treks through hostile blizzards in the wilds of Canada, where hungry polar bears and wolverines tracked her, ready to pounce. Washing and drying the dishes after supper each night was using the suds to uncover secret codes on the bottom of the plates. Her imagination had no limit. And even as she matured, she still let herself enter that fantasy world on occasion. It was harmless and sometimes quite entertaining.

  The streets were empty and driving was easy. This was one aspect of working late she really liked. The drive home was enjoyable. It gave her time to think. Tonight, her mind went back over the last three months at Veritas. She had restructured her team after about two months and, with a full month now under her belt, she felt she’d made some good decisions. Three of her staff had risen to the challenge and they were now her key people. And last week, when she finally shared her thoughts on the beta-amyloid chemical sequence, all three had stared at her like she was a nutcase from the local loony bin. Four hours later, after she had filled every chalkboard in the conference room with scribbles and formulas, they were somewhere between speechless and blathering idiots.

  “Do you really think it’s possible?” Dawn Sergeant, a specialist in cellular microbiology, had asked. “It’s a totally new approach to the problem.”

  She referred back to the chalkboard. “The key is here,” Jennifer said. “When this protein, tau, is altered, the neural structural support system is compromised. Once that happens, the amyloid precursor protein is subject to being cut, first by this enzyme, beta-secretase, then by gamma-secretase. The result is fragmentation of the amyloid precursor protein, which forms toxic plaques, causing healthy neurons to die. Then the neurotransmitters, especially acetylcholine, are reduced and the damage to the brain is irreversible. My approach to the problem is here,” she said, poking at the board, “by altering the betaamyloid sequence. It’s never been tried before.”

  “Impressive,” Dawn said.

  “And to answer your question, yes, I think it will work. We just have to iron out the problems. Now, it’s getting late…”

  The group broke up, most of her researchers leaving in groups of twos or threes, discussing the new approach to a disease that affected over four million Americans. Jennifer headed for Kenga Bakcsi’s house to visit her cat. It was Wednesday, and she had promised Kenga she would check on the little fellow at least twice a week while her coworker was on holidays. She hadn’t been over since Sunday.

  She cut off on Broad Street and headed for Shockoe Slip and the Mayo Bridge. She had to check the cat’s litter box and make sure there was still water in his dish. No better time than now, when the traffic was next to nil. She crossed the James River, followed Hull to Sixth, then east to Everett. She pulled onto Everett Street and slowed, trolling for a parking space. She found one a half-block up the street from Kenga’s condo, parallel-parked, and jogged back. She let herself in with the key and switched on a light.

  “Hello, cat,” she said as he poked his head out to see who was home. She couldn’t remember his name, and simply called him “cat.” “Could you really care less if I showed up? I doubt it. Just give you some food and water, and leave. Cats. How the hell did you guys end up so different from dogs?”

  Jennifer picked up the mail that had accumulated on the floor under the slot in the front door and wandered into the house, glancing about and satisfying herself that all was in order. She set the mail on the kitchen table and refilled the cat’s water dish. A quick trip to the litter box to scoop out a few little logs and she was ready to leave. Then it hit her.

  What if she focused on somatostatin and corticotrophin to help as communication vehicles between damaged cells? She needed to access the Veritas mainframe and make a note for herself so she would remember this brain flash.

  Jennifer powered up Kenga’s computer and logged onto Veritas’s database. Since each computer that was authorized to access the mainframe required its own code, Jennifer knew her password wouldn’t work on Kenga’s computer. Not a problem. As the team leader, she had access to all the codes. She signed in to her home computer, pulled the file, and found Kenga’s password. Mischief. She logged off, then entered the Veritas site by typing “mischief” when prompted. She was in.

  An hour later, she closed the research file and leaned back in the chair. Now it was late, but that had been very productive time. Tomorrow, she would follow up on the ideas she had typed into the system. She logged off the Veritas site and moved the cursor across to power down the system, then stopped. A small icon shaped like an ankh caught her eye. It was tucked into one corner, almost obscured by a word processing file. She double-clicked on it and a file opened on the screen. Inside was a complex chemical formula. She scrolled through the remainder of the file, wondering why Kenga Bakcsi had this formula on her home computer. It was filled with links to other sites, all internal to Veritas and all dealing with a drug called Triaxcion. One of the sites answered her question. The formula resisted the modification of testosterone into dihydrotestosterone. The drug was touted as an alternative to hair loss in middle-aged males. Probably a big seller, she thought, still wondering why it was on Kenga’s computer. She was scrolling down to sign out when she saw a text file buried among the numbers. She opened it.

  Inside was a name and an address: Gordon Buchanan, Butte, Montana. There was no phone number. She tucked her hair behind her ears, stared at the name for a minute, shrugged, and closed the file. She powered down the computer, stroked the cat a couple of times, and headed home.

  Her new digs were in the Fan District, an expensive and trendy area just west of Richmond’s city center. She was on Plum Street, on the eastern edge of the Fan and one full block off Cary Street. One block to excellent dining and some of the best shopping in Richmond. Coincidence? Not a chance.

  The town house-style home was almost everything she liked mixed with a few things she hated. But her realtor had insisted you never get ten out of ten with a resale house. To start with, it was old, turn-of-the-century. That she did not like. Jennifer preferred new, with no sod and sticks for trees, and a bathtub that had never seen a naked bottom. But the previous owners had done extensive renovations to the house, including all new drywall, windows, doors, an off-white kitchen, and new fixtures in all three bathrooms. This she did like. Her ebony baby grand sat next to the massive bay window in the living room. She turned on one muted light and sat on the bench. Her fingers glided over the keys, Enya gently filling the room. She played “Watermark” and “Only If…,” then “By Heart,” one of her favorite Jim Brickman pieces. The room, with its soft tan and black striped sofa and love seat, and pewter and glass tables, resonated quietly with the last notes as she drew her fingers back from the keyboard. She used the remote to turn on the stereo and found a Yanni CD on her multidisc system. She filled a diffuser with vanilla scent, lit the tea candle, and lay quietly in the darkness.

  Gordon Buchanan. The name kept drifting back to her. Why would Kenga have his name inside a file she had pilfered from Veritas? And why the Triaxcion file? What was going on? She lay on the couch for three or four songs, then dragged herself vertical and switched off the stereo.

  Six-thirty tomorrow morning was going to come awfully early.

  18

  Ian Goett, Jennifer’s immediate supervisor at Veritas, poked his head in her office. “Got a minute?” he asked. The look on his face was serious.

  “Sure,” Jennifer said, dropping her pen and wavi
ng at one of the chairs facing her desk.

  Goett closed the door, moved the stack of computer printouts from the chair to the floor, and sat.“Kenga Bakcsi is dead,” he said.

  Jennifer froze. Kenga was on vacation. How could this be? What were the chances of someone dying while tanning on a beach in the Caribbean? She took a moment to collect her thoughts. “What happened?”

  Goett cleared his throat. “She was on some sort of rain forest tour on Saint Lucia when the vehicle she was in went over a cliff. That’s all we know right now.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Two days ago, on August twenty-third. The island authorities contacted her family and they passed along our number. I took the call from the investigator assigned to her case.”

  “And that’s all they said, just that she went over a cliff?”

  “Basically, yes. She was staying in the capital city of Castries and arranged for a driver to show her the island. They were deep in the jungle when he lost control and the cab slid off the road into a deep gorge. She was killed instantly.”

  “Driver killed too?” Jennifer asked.

  Goett looked taken aback at the question. “No, he managed to jump out.”

  Jennifer nodded, just a slight motion of her head. Her mind was racing. Kenga had classified information on her home computer; information that dealt with a drug in a totally separate division. She had technical data that would see her fired immediately if the brass at Veritas knew she was poking around in secure computer files. And now she was dead. That thought slammed her mind against a brick wall. She was being paranoid. It was simply her imagination drawing a connection between Kenga’s death and the information on her home computer. Veritas had nothing to do with this tragedy.

  “Thanks for letting me know, Ian,” she said to her supervisor. “I’ll break it to the staff. Any idea when her body will be back in the States?”

  “Not at present. In fact, her entire family still lives in Romania. They may want her body shipped back home for the funeral. I’ll find out and let you know.”

  “Okay.”

  She watched Ian Goett leave, and her mind kicked into gear again. Was it really such a stretch to think Veritas could be involved in the woman’s death? Veritas was a multibillion-dollar company that protected its secrets fiercely, as did every pharmaceutical giant. The chemical formulas, like the one on Kenga’s computer, were public knowledge, but the process by which the company produced the drugs was its bread and butter. And that process was also on the computer’s hard drive. A process that Veritas would protect with a vengeance. Hundreds of millions of dollars went into research, and marketing the formula and the process, and it would be natural for a company to protect so valuable an asset. Then she shook her head and said aloud, so she could hear her own voice, “This is crazy thinking. This is your imagination. Companies don’t murder their staff for having classified information on their home computers. Kenga went on a vacation and died when the car she was in went over a cliff.”

  The words sounded hollow in the confines of her office-forced, even. And she realized that the right side of her brain was not going to let go of this easily. She ran her hands through her hair and glanced at the clock on her desk. Three o’clock. She would wait until four to bring the staff together and break the news to them. They would be free to go anytime after they found out. There was going to be a lot of tears and disbelief. Kenga was a well-liked person in the office, and many of her staff had worked with her for a number of years. This was not going to be easy.

  Jennifer watched the last of her staff leave. One was a junior research assistant who’d been best of friends with Kenga, and he was in no condition to drive. Jennifer ordered him a cab and gave the driver her Visa number to cover the fare. She shook her head in disbelief as she locked her office. Kenga was gone. The woman had been the lifeblood of the office, always smiling and organizing their silly little outings to the local pub or bowling alley. She fostered a real community spirit among her coworkers, and Jennifer knew it would be impossible to replace her. She felt a strange sense of depression wash over her as she left the building and started her car.

  She checked her watch. Almost five o’clock. She couldn’t have picked a worse time to drive over to White Oak. I-64 was a mess. A semi with a full load of live chickens had jackknifed and spilled its load across the westbound lanes. Some of the crates had split open, and the road was littered with dead chickens. Live chickens were running around in no particular direction. The eastbound lanes were clear, but the rubberneckers were in fine form, slowing traffic to a crawl so they could have a good look at the carnage. It was after seven when she passed the Richmond airport and the traffic thinned out. She reached the intersection of I-295 and I-64 and took the off-ramp, watching her speed as she drove the last half-mile to the research park. The cops loved to check their radar guns along this stretch.

  She reached the entrance to the park, identified by a slab of white stone with a large green W etched in it. Underneath, just in case the visitor didn’t know what the W stood for, was “White Oak Technology Park.” Technology Boulevard was still busy, mostly with vehicles exiting the park. A good number of the research staff worked flex hours and preferred to come in late and leave long after rush hour had run its course. Jennifer pulled in at the second set of buildings on her right and parked in the third lot, next to a grove of mature hickory. The building housing Veritas’s office space was a sleek two-story silver structure with neatly trimmed lawns and a bank of windows framing the foyer. She walked through the storm door and swiped her card. The interior door opened automatically and the guard at the front desk smiled as she passed.

  “Good evening, Dr. Pearce,” he said.

  “Hi,” she said, returning the smile. At first, she had wondered how the guards knew everyone’s name, but after a while she noticed that a new line scrolled across their screen every time someone entering the building swiped his or her identity card. Technology in a technology park-go figure.

  Veritas shared the building with the software development division of another corporation. The Veritas offices and labs were to the right of the main entrance, and she used her card to open the steel fire door that automatically closed at six o’clock every weekday. Once she was through the outer security door, there was a short section of hall, perhaps twenty feet, then another set of doors. A security camera registered every person who swiped their access card through the card reader. The doors were steel, with rectangular glass windows, but Jennifer suspected that this particular glass was virtually indestructible. She smiled at the camera, ran her card through the reader, and moved into the secret world of Veritas Pharmaceutical, White Oak Division.

  Most of the Veritas labs were relegated to White Oak, for two reasons. The first was cost. Square footage at White Oak cost the company less than half what they paid for their space at BioTech Five. Second was security. Security in the new complex, built two years earlier, was vastly superior to that in Richmond’s older buildings. There were no back entrances or windows to smash for easy entry or exit. The glass in every exterior window was bulletproof, and every exit was monitored with a closed-circuit camera and an alarm. All the systems reported back to a central location that was constantly monitored. Secrets were easy to keep at White Oak.

  Jennifer walked the length of the off-white sterile hallway and past scores of blue doors to the first of three crossroads. She turned right and walked into a construction zone. Three midsized HEPA filtration units and a pile of other boxes were sitting in the hallway outside the entrance to the brain chip department. The HEPA units were high-end systems designed to keep even the tiniest airborne particles from entering or leaving a sterile lab environment. She suspected that the intricate design of the brain chips required the air to be totally purified. She glanced in the open door as she passed. Rows of sophisticated machines were in the process of being moved. A researcher in a lab coat was involved in a heated discussion with one of the moving men.
He was Chinese, slim with thick black hair and a long oval face. She recalled seeing him in the halls a couple of times, but they had never stopped to talk. His picture was on one of the staff memos, and it occurred to her that he was a department head, but she couldn’t remember which one. She continued down the hall, blue doors flashing by on both sides. At least her department was not in flux, she thought as she reached the doorway that gave access to the Alzheimer’s department. She had enough on her plate right now without her labs undergoing renovations. She swiped her card and entered the lab.

  Veritas’s Alzheimer’s lab at White Oak was state of the art. Seven different and distinct labs were functioning as one, with each division having their own thrust at the problem. She had structured the labs that way, and the results to date were exceptional. Her staff members were in healthy competition with one another, approaching the disease from different directions but ultimately all with the same goal: to develop a drug to cripple the debilitating disease.

  “Dr. Pearce,” a young woman said as she entered. “Thank goodness you’re here. Team Three is getting some really strange results. They want you to have a look.”

  “Sure,” she said, slipping on a lab coat and entering the lab.

  Two hours later she removed the coat, washed her hands, and left the building. The wonky results were a direct result of improper lab procedures. The samples had become contaminated, and it was the contaminants that had reacted to the enzyme. They had identified the guilty party and she had spoken with him-quietly, off to the side. There was no reason to go off the deep end-she just had to make sure it didn’t happen again.

  As she reached her car, her mind went back to the thoughts of Kenga crashing over the cliff in the car, the driver somehow escaping. Things that didn’t add up. And things that were not subsiding into the far reaches of her memory. She couldn’t shake the idea that there was more to Kenga’s death than a simple automobile accident. Maybe she would take a detour on the way home and visit Kenga’s house.