Deadly Genes td-117

by Warren Murphy

  A BostonBio security guard was scanning a bored eye along the lines of typically vitriolic Blade text when Remo Williams stepped through the gleaming glass doors of the corporation's main office complex. Sunlight streamed in across the floor as Remo approached the desk.

  The guard didn't look up from the paper. "I am not a spokesman for BostonBio. I am under contract not to discuss anything that occurs within the buildings or complex of BostonBio. No one at BostonBio is granting interviews at this time. Please leave me the hell alone."

  His nasal voice was bored as he ran through the speech he had repeated at least three dozen times since his shift started at seven that morning. When he was finished, he crinkled the paper, folding it to the sports section. He didn't get a chance to check on any of Boston's chronically losing teams.

  "I'm not a reporter," Remo explained to him. The guard looked up, surprised the visitor hadn't left. His nose bumped a laminated ID card. "Remo Post. Department of Agriculture," Remo said, holding out the ID. "I'm here about last night's theft."

  The guard snorted, putting his paper aside. "You and everybody else." He took Remo's identification, inspecting it carefully. "You don't look like an agriculture agent," he said eventually, looking up over the card.

  "The corn-husk hat gave me dandruff, and my sorghum pants chafed," Remo said.

  Peering across his foyer desk at Remo's tan chinos and white T-shirt, the guard seemed doubtful. He finally shrugged, sliding the card back to Remo.

  "What the hell. After yesterday, we'll all be out on our ears anyway. Third floor." He picked his paper back up, jamming his nose back inside the sports pages.

  "I'm gonna take a leap and chalk this all up to crummy security," Remo muttered to himself. Leaving the vigilant security guard to read his paper, Remo crossed over to the elevator.

  THREE STORIES ABOVE the BostonBio lobby, Dr. Judith White was throwing a fit. According to the tally kept by her lab staff, it was her seventh that morning.

  "I can't believe this shit!" she screeched. She waved a copy of the morning paper that one of her staff had had the temerity to bring in that morning. "You're all a pack of sniveling Judases! You're buying into this character assassination! I'm the one responsible for this project, not any of you! I could have fired every last one of you, and the Bos camelus-whitus project would have gone on!"

  With angry fists, she balled up the newspaper, flinging it at the man who had pulled it from his desk drawer when he thought Dr. White was busy in her office. It struck him loudly in the forehead. She'd thrown it with such ferocity, he hadn't even had time to duck out of the way.

  "You people all make me sick!" she screamed. Spinning away from the guilty-faced staff, she marched back inside her office. The high lab windows shook with the violence of her slamming door.

  The lab staff didn't seem to know how to react. It had been this way all morning. Dr. White had refused treatment for her injury from the night before. It was probably a mistake, since the blow to the head she had received seemed to have made her even more vile-tempered than usual. Of course, her mood might not be the result of a concussion. Dr. Judith White had been perched on the edge of sanity for a long time. The stress of the BBQ theft might just have been the thing that finally toppled her over.

  In any event, without their lab specimens, there was nothing much for the lab technicians to do. No BBQs meant no work. The lab staff had merely stood around for the past two hours, anxiously awaiting the next outburst from their project director.

  It was into this tense atmosphere that Remo strolled.

  Inside the lab, Remo flashed his bogus Department of Agriculture ID at the first unoccupied white coat he met. The man was a microbiologist with a pronounced overbite, a receding hairline and a name tag that identified him as Orrin Merkel.

  "Post," Remo said, tone bored as he repeated his alias. "Investigating the theft of the cookouts last night."

  "Of the what?" Orrin asked, perplexed.

  "Those animal jobbies in the paper," Remo said, himself confused. For a moment, he thought he was in the wrong lab. "Didn't you build them here?"

  "Oh," Orrin said. "The BBQs. " There was an angry snort from behind a distant closed office door. "That's not their real name," he said, pitching his voice low. "And Dr. White doesn't approve of the nickname."

  "She's the one who was here when they were stolen?" Remo queried, jabbing a thumb at the door. Orrin nodded. "Thanks."

  Remo headed for Dr. White's office.

  "Uh...I don't think you want to see her," Orrin said, hurrying up beside Remo. "Guys? Help?" He glanced around for support, but when Remo's purpose became clear, the rest scattered from the room like frightened cockroaches. Orrin was left alone with the agriculture man.

  Remo was steering a beeline for the door.

  Orrin had to leap across a desk to get in front of him.

  "You really don't want to see her," he insisted.

  Remo stopped. "Why not?"

  Orrin shot a worried look at the door. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "For one thing, she's a drug user," he confided. "Heroin, I think."

  "The director of this lab uses heroin," Remo said skeptically.

  "She shoots up after hours. Some of us have seen her. So far it hasn't affected her work." Orrin considered. "Although I guess it could account for her mood swings. Sometimes she's a real B-I-T-C-H, if you know what I mean."

  "Nope, I don't," Remo said. "But then, spelling's not my strong suit. After ten years with the department, I still spell agriculture with two Ks."

  "There's a whole psychiatric textbook back there," Orrin whispered, nodding to the door. "Aside from the drug use, she exhibits strong antisocial tendencies and, as far as anyone here can tell, she is one hundred percent, completely and totally amoral. Possibly sociopathic, as well."

  "Doesn't sound like the woman who's going to cure world hunger," Remo said.

  Orrin bit his lip. "There's some good in everybody, I guess. Dr. White might be a lot of things, but she's also a genius. Maybe she's just misunderstood."

  "I'll be sure to put that in my report to the undersecretary for husking and threshing," Remo said. He sidestepped Orrin. Despite frantic gestures from the microbiologist, Remo knocked on the closed office door. Orrin was across the lab and out the front door before Dr. White even had a chance to respond.

  "Hurry up and come in already!" a gruff female voice barked in response to Remo's knock.

  After the impression he had gotten from the young scientist, Remo wasn't sure precisely what to expect beyond the door. When he pushed the door open, any preconceived notions he might have had melted in a stunned instant.

  Dr. Judith White was beautiful. Her black hair was long and full around her face, shaped vaguely in the tousled, confident manner of a lion's mane. Her nose was aquiline, her dark red lips full and inviting. The teardrop shape of her green eyes was vaguely Asian.

  As far as her body was concerned, the parts Remo could see as she sat behind her desk would have turned a Playboy model green with envy. When she stood in greeting, he realized that the same model would have gone from green to blue before dropping dead from terminal jealousy. In Dr. Judith White, the female form had achieved a level of physical perfection unheard-of on Earth.

  When she smiled, a row of dazzlingly white teeth gleamed brilliantly, framed between perfect lips. The smile was not one of politeness. It was more a perturbed rictus.

  "What do you want, Mr. Post?" Judith asked. Remo was confused at her use of his cover name.

  "Have we met before, Dr. Boobs?" he asked absently. He was staring at her ample chest.

  "What?" she said, voice icy. Her eyes could have cut diamonds.

  "Hmm?" Remo asked. He pulled his gaze up to her face. It was an effort. They liked it where they were.

  For some reason, Judith seemed annoyed. She scowled as she retook her seat. "I heard you mention your name to Orrin, the Dweeb." She waved a hand toward the lab. "These morons haven't figured
out yet that I can hear everything from this office."

  Remo looked through the open door to the spot where he had spoken to Orrin Merkel. It seemed too far for her to have heard his conversation with the microbiologist. He was frowning when he turned back to her.

  "Washington sent me to investigate the theft of your BBQs," Remo said. He took a seat before her desk.

  Cluttered bookshelves lined the walls behind Dr. White and to her left. To the right, half-raised miniblinds opened on the well-tended grounds of BostonBio.

  She shuddered, closing her eyes with overemphasized patience. "Please don't call them that," she said.

  "Isn't that what everyone's calling them?"

  "Everyone's wrong. They are Bos camelus-whitus. BCW would be more accurate than that other ridiculous appellation."

  "But nowhere near as lunchbox ready," Remo pointed out.

  His smile was not returned.

  "Yuck it up, Post," Dr. White said, flat of voice. "In the moment it takes you to chuckle, hundreds of human beings starve all around the world."

  "If the alternative's getting mauled by one of your Boss cactus-whiteouts, maybe they're better off," Remo suggested.

  Dr. White snorted. "That bookstore owner, right?" she said skeptically. "I'm sick of hearing that one, too. I don't know who killed that guy, but I can guarantee you it wasn't one of my BCWs. They literally would not harm a fly."

  She was passionate about the animals, Remo could see. And that passion was possibly blinding her to the fact that the animals she had created might actually be killers. He chose to drop the subject. "Any idea who might have taken them?"

  "I already told the Boston police who did it," Judith said crisply. "But in case you didn't know, the mayor in this town is about as dumb as a WB sitcom. He's barred the cops from looking where they should. All because of stupid political correctness. The world is going to starve because of PC politics."

  "I'll bite," Remo said. "Where do you think they are?"

  This time Judith White's smile was sincere. "HETA," she announced.

  Remo frowned. "Where have I heard that before?"

  "It's a wacko animal-rights group," she explained, sinking back in her chair. "Humans for the Egalitarian Treatment of Animals. They have an ad campaign on TV I'm sure you've seen. They sponsor all sorts of animal-adoption stuff, fight animal testing in labs, that kind of thing. Celebrity endorsers line up around the block for them."

  "Oh, yeah." Remo nodded. "What makes you think they're the ones who stole your animals?"

  "Someone in this lab has loose lips," Judith said. "Whoever it is must have bragged about my breakthrough. Since the birth of the first Bos camelus-whitus eight months ago, HETA has been stepping up activity against BostonBio."

  "Maybe it's a coincidence," Remo suggested.

  "No way, sugar," Dr. White insisted. "BostonBio has a good record with animal testing. There are much bigger, more well-known targets in the area for them to go after. The timing was just too perfect. No, if you want my advice, brown eyes, you'll go after HETA."

  "They have a local office?"

  Dr. White nodded. "In Cambridge," she said.

  "Can I borrow your phone book?" Remo asked. Dr. White's eyes narrowed.

  "What for?"

  "My ability to channel addresses is on the fritz." Judith closed her eyes and leaned her head back, exposing her long, white neck. She lowered her head back down, slowly opening her eyes as she did so.

  "I'll take you," she said with a heavy sigh. Pushing off her desk for support, she rose to her feet.

  "That isn't necessary," Remo told her.

  "Look, I've got nothing better to do. I'm facing suspension and possible criminal action for assaulting a ditzy reporter yesterday. The only thing that'll keep me here are those animals. I was planning to take a spin over to HETA myself. You can be my muscle."

  Skirting her desk, she stepped from the office, stripping off her white lab coat as she walked. Her chest bounced purposefully.

  "Do I have a choice?" Remo asked the empty room.

  He was surprised to get an answer.

  "No," replied the distant voice of Dr. Judith White.

  Chapter 5

  Sadie Mayer joined HETA because that nice lady from The Olden Girls told her to.

  Not personally, of course. Sadie had never met a celebrity in her life. And if she did, good gosh, whatever would she say to them? No, Sadie had been encouraged to join the organization by a thirty-second commercial spot featuring The Olden Girls actress run by the animal-rights group during Wheel of Fortune.

  Sadie wasn't an activist. She made this clear to anyone who said so. She always associated real activism with those dirty people from the sixties. Also, activism seemed to mean burning something. Either underwear for feminists or draft cards with hippies. Sadie didn't like to burn things.

  No, her brand of activism was simple and flame free. It involved a big yearly check, occasionally stuffing and sorting envelopes and twice a month volunteering to man the phones at the local Cambridge headquarters of Humans for the Egalitarian Treatment of Animals.

  Today was Sadie's Thursday to sit behind the HETA reception desk licking envelopes. Her hands and tongue were deeply involved in her work when she spied a vaguely familiar figure step through the front door of the building. The woman was in the company of a young man.

  The woman seemed very businesslike in her smart blazer and tweed skirt. Very much like Hillary Clinton. He, on the other hand, looked like a typical bum. Sadie considered anyone who didn't dress like Lawrence Welk on Saturday night to be a bum. By her definition, all three of the sons she had raised were bums.

  Sadie held her disdain in check as the pair strode across the small lobby to her plain schoolmarm's desk.

  "Can I help you?" Sadie asked, drawing the flap of a business-size envelope across her dry-as-dust tongue. The sealing gum tasted vile. She put the envelope in a box with the other five dozen she had sealed. Thanks to her inability to produce saliva, they were all already coming unglued.

  "We want to see-" Remo began, Department of Agriculture ID in hand.

  "Where's that weed Tulle?" Judith interrupted. Remo shot Judith a withering look.

  Sadie paused in midlick. "Mr. Tulle?" she asked scornfully. "Is that who you mean?" She drew the envelope the rest of the way across her tongue. It popped open as she placed it in the Out box.

  "If he's the guy in charge," Remo supplied.

  "Oh, he's in charge, brown eyes," Judith snarled to him. "He's the biggest cashew in this can of assorted nuts."

  "Crazy woman make nice-nice now," Remo suggested through tightly clenched teeth.

  Judith wheeled on him. "Well, I don't hear you saying anything," she snapped.

  "That's because you haven't given me a chance," Remo replied sharply.

  "Look, is he here?" Judith demanded, spinning back to Sadie.

  She moved so quickly that it startled the old woman behind the desk. Sadie jumped in the middle of licking an envelope. The paper edge sliced at an angle across her parched and bumpy tongue, opening up a thin bloody crease.

  "Look what you made me do!" Sadie complained.

  Angry, the old woman stuck out her tongue, pressing her dentures at the center. She could feel the pain of the paper cut across the whole width of her tongue. Turning her eyes downward, she tried to see the small wound.

  "Dith ith goin to hur fo daith," Sadie griped. As she sat examining her wound, Sadie was startled by a hand reaching for her. She looked up to see that the woman who had caused her to injure herself was actually reaching out a hand as if to touch Sadie's tongue.

  Sadie jumped back.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Remo asked Judith. He placed a firm hand on her forearm, arresting it in space.

  Judith paused, as if startled. She looked at her own hand, suddenly thinking better of whatever she had intended to do. Quickly, she withdrew her arm.

  "I'm sorry," she said curtly to Sadie. She glanced over her sh
oulder at Remo. "It's all right, you know. I am a doctor, after all."

  That's when it hit Sadie.

  "You're her!" the older woman cried sharply, forgetting her injured tongue. "The one from the TV. The lunatic from BostonBio who assaulted poor Sally Edmunds."

  Judith rolled her eyes. "I give up. His name is Curt Tulle," she said to Remo. "You do better." Stepping back, she crossed her arms over her ample chest.

  "Thank you." Remo nodded.

  Without another word to Sadie, he sidestepped the old woman's desk and walked up the hallway that stretched away behind her seat. Surprised but obviously pleased at his decisiveness, Judith fell in behind him.

  "I'm starting to like you, brown eyes," she said.

  "My name is Remo," he said, peeved.

  "Blame your parents for that," Judith suggested. As they strolled down the hallway, Sadie shouted loud protests, threatening to call the police. Remo and Judith ignored her.

  There were a few doors lining either side of the short corridor. Most were closed.

  "That one." Judith pointed to the second office from the end.

  Remo had sensed the steady heartbeat coming from beyond the closed door. He assumed Judith had been here some time in the past to know Tulle's office.

  Remo didn't bother to knock. He pushed against the chipped, green-painted surface of the old wooden door. It creaked painfully open on the cramped office of the Boston director of Humans for the Egalitarian Treatment of Animals.

  Curt Tulle looked up from his desk. At least Remo assumed that's who it was. He couldn't quite tell if the thing he was looking at was human under all that fur.

  Curt wore a raccoon hat, the kind made popular during the 1950s. A long, draping woman's mink coat was buttoned tightly up to his neck. The neck of the HETA director was wrapped, in turn, by a dark ermine stole. The clasp holding the wrap in place made the head of the hapless creature appear to be biting the animal's tail.