by Nancy Holder
She shrugged. “My great-aunt’s the healthiest woman I know. She lives here, you know. In the city.”
Mrs. Steinway. He had that name wrong. Steinway was a piano. It didn’t matter. Cat knew her great-aunt’s name.
“Do you see her often?”
It was a clunky question and a more suspicious person might wonder why he asked, but Heidi simply nodded. “Yes. I go there a lot. We—we have tea and cookies, and we talk…” Her voice grew faint. She was editing out the fact that David Mazursky usually went with her. J.T. wasn’t sure how to proceed.
“That must be nice for both of you.” He took a sip of water to collect his thoughts.
“Um, yes.” She touched her silverware nervously. “We’re close.” Then she looked up at him with those gigantic glasses and behind them, her piercing brown eyes. She was very pretty. “One of her tenants was murdered. You know those awful attacks that have been happening? He was one of them.”
“Really?” He kept his eyes wide, his tone shocked. “She owns the building it happened in?”
She nodded. “It’s where she lives, too. A few of the other tenants have moved out. She’s getting worried about paying the bills.”
“That’s tough. You must be worried about her, too.”
She sipped her water. Her hand was shaking. “She was out of town the night it happened. Visiting my other great-aunt. Aunt Alice is in assisted living in Rochester. Aunt Lydia pays for most of it. Her financial situation is already tough. That building is so old and there are always repairs to be made. I’ve been hoping to make things easier for her.”
She took a breath, and J.T. knew she was going to make her pitch. “If I could make a name for myself in biotech, write my own ticket…” She kept her gaze glued to her water glass. “It’s a competitive field and everyone is looking for profitable products…”
He was pretty sure he was hearing David Mazursky’s words coming out of her mouth. He knew he shouldn’t scare her off so he bit his tongue in order to keep himself from asking her straight out what was really going on.
“Why come to me, then?” he said. “I’m not working on anything that’s going to set the world on fire.” He couldn’t resist adding, “Are you?”
“Well, I was thinking about something,” she began. “I’m sure you’ve read about the new nail polish that responds to the presence of Rohypnol. The date rape drug.” He nodded. “I have so many allergies, and I’ve always been careful, but just recently a little boy died at summer camp because he didn’t realize there were peanuts in a cookie a friend gave him. So I was thinking, what if we could assign markers to common ingredients people are allergic to? Maybe like a specific smell?”
“This is research adjacent to pheromones,” he said for emphasis.
“Exactly. And David… Dr. Mazursky,” she amended hastily, “tried to help me but he’s bioluminescence. Then he told me that Aunt Lydia’s tenant, Dr. Tiptree, had published a paper on pheromones a long time ago and we—we talked to him about it at Aunt Lydia’s.” Splotches of purple crawled up her neck and over her face. “He was very excited about my ideas. He even said that once I got my Ph.D. there might be a job waiting for me.”
“Well, that would be great,” he said. “A job with what company?”
She sighed. “I think it was some kind of government contract. He didn’t say. And now, well, there won’t be a job.”
“Maybe not that particular job, but biotech is a growing field. And you probably know that allergens are a real problem. And there’s amazing research being done on immune deficiencies.”
Their food came. Heidi inspected hers very carefully before taking a bite. J.T. picked up the ketchup bottle and gave it a few shakes, but nothing came out. He said, “I hope you don’t think this is rude,” and inserted his silverware knife into the neck of the bottle. Just as victory was about to be his, he dropped the knife on the floor.
“Oh, darn it,” he said, and began to look around for their waiter.
“Here, use mine.” She picked up her knife and held it out to him.
“Thanks.” He got the ketchup flowing and set her knife down beside his plate. “Well, Dr. Mazursky might still have something to contribute. What if you could use some kind of bioluminescence that makes the allergens glow? And the detector could be a device or maybe even some kind of phone app? It would be the same situation as labeling on packages, only updated, and with tech.”
“I thought of that.” Her eyes shone. Her glasses were very thick. It struck J.T. that if her glasses had been off when his car had been hit, she actually could have missed the whole thing. “But he thinks—and I agree with him—that glowing food in any case would weird people out.”
“And peanuts already have a smell,” he countered. “If you could simply boost it, or trigger a hormonal response of dislike…”—leaning over his food, he smiled at her to take the sting out of the word “dislike”—“…which could be done.” His mind began churning the possibilities. It was a bit of a Brave New World scenario, but of course he would never actually participate in it…
“Like an additive that triggers the survival mode at the most atavistic level,” she ventured. “Think what that would mean for parents of toddlers, or whose kids are at summer camp.”
This was cool. A nifty problem to solve. A pretty woman who wanted him to help her solve it. For a little while he could dream the dream…
And then he thought of Tess. And all the murders. And their suspicions. And the fact that it was possible that Heidi was seeing her thesis advisor’s boyfriend behind her back. For all he knew she was some new kind of beast that Vincent couldn’t detect.
But mostly he thought of Tess.
His smile fell and he pulled back. Heidi didn’t seem to notice as she took a tentative taste of her very plain salad and gluten-and-dairy-free pizza. “Maybe we could work on this even if I wasn’t your T.A.”
Despite everything, when she smiled at him hopefully he started melting again. Just a little, and he began to wonder if she was exuding some kind of pheromone.
“I’ll take it under advisement,” he said. “I’m also waiting for my budget for next semester.”
“Oh, I know Sara will make sure there’s money in the budget,” she blurted, and then she flushed again. “I don’t mean to imply that Dr. Holland would pressure you.”
Right, even though she’s the assistant chair of my department and on the tenure committee, he thought archly.
After they parted, he met Catherine and Vincent at the appointed spot—well out of visual range of the dining room and anyone who might have followed Heidi there. From the somber looks of Cat and Vincent, he knew something was up, and he bid a wistful farewell to the half-formed daydreams lunch with Heidi had conjured in his head. No groundbreaking pheromone research. No cute TA.
“Fill me in,” J.T. said.
“She was nervous and sweating from the time she sat down until when you two left. And her heart was going a mile a second,” Vincent told him.
“Could you tell which parts were lies and which parts were the truth?” J.T. asked.
“You know it’s easier for me when people answer yes or no questions. Which I know you couldn’t have done,” Vincent hastened to assure him. “Catherine verified as many facts as she could on her phone. Heidi is related to Lydia Steinmetz and she is a grad student here.”
“I’m waiting on a warrant to go deeper,” Cat said.
J.T. nodded at her, then looked at Vincent. “All that pheromone stuff?”
Vincent shrugged. “I’m going on my intuition here. I think Mazursky put her up to it. Maybe he’s feeding her a bunch of lines but I think she knows it’s window dressing for something else. But she’s going with it to please him.”
“So Mazursky’s the one we want?” he asked hopefully. He didn’t want Heidi to be a bad guy.
“Not sure yet. Let’s go check your office. Let me see if I can figure out who broke in,” Vincent said.
“Here’s the knife.” W
rapped in his napkin, J.T. handed Cat the knife Heidi had picked up when he had “accidentally” dropped his on the floor. He had scooted it into his lap when Heidi wasn’t looking. “And I’ve got a little bit of pizza crust.”
“Thanks. I’ll dust the knife for prints and we can get her DNA off the crust.”
J.T. tiredly rubbed his face with both hands and dropped them to his sides. “We’re going to find out she’s the beast. Or that she’s had plastic surgery or she’s a clone or something.”
“Or maybe she’s just a young, ambitious grad student,” Vincent said. The three looked at each other for a moment, as if such a thing would be stranger than any of the other possibilities. J.T. could tell that each of them was mentally gearing up for another installment of Adventures on Steroids. Or, as he liked to call it, daily life.
Cat’s phone rang. She looked at Vincent and J.T. as she said, “Hi, Tess. Okay, thanks for the heads-up. I’m glad it worked. Yeah, J.T. just had lunch with Heidi. Inconclusive results, but we know that something’s off.” She nodded. “Okay, I’ll tell Vincent and J.T.”
She ended the call. “Tess says she just got the blind copy from the bank’s email. That means the footage is in your inbox. We need to view it and either forward it to Sky as is or alter it.”
“Okay. I need to be at my command central to see the footage. I’ll take you guys to my office so Vincent can do his tracking thing while I go home. We still don’t know who broke into my office.”
They reached the door, which only appeared to be locked. J.T. showed them the doorstop he’d crammed under the jamb to keep it shut until he could install a locking mechanism. Like many of the professors, he had an agreement that the cleaning staff wouldn’t come in his office.
“If I report the break-in, university security will inventory all my information and IT will examine my computer. It’s much easier for us if I just take care of it myself and tell them later that I broke it.”
“Smart,” Cat said, as she went in first. She didn’t have her gun out but J.T. knew she kept it within grabbing-and-shooting distance.
“I haven’t touched anything,” he said, and along with Vincent and Cat, he took in the magnitude of the mess. “I don’t know what they were looking for.”
“Howison wanted to know if I’d been changed,” Vincent said. “Maybe he or his operatives were looking for evidence that I was a Muirfield experiment.”
“We can go on the assumption that they didn’t find what they were looking for. If they had, they wouldn’t have abducted you to ask you about Vincent,” Cat added.
“In that case, I’m going to make up a whole slew of fake files. All kinds of misinformation. How about you’re a Martian, Vincent? Do you want to be in the NSA, Cat? Then when people break into my office they’ll be satisfied and not try to kill me for information.” He bent to pick up half a dozen file folders that had been fanned out like playing cards on a casino table.
“Don’t,” Vincent ordered but the word came out more as a growl. His eyes were glowing, his face altering. He was beasting out so he could do his tracking thing.
J.T. held out his hands to show Vincent he was still leaving everything as is. “Or how about I say in your file that you’re in the CIA?” he asked Cat.
Cat turned to shut the door while J.T. kept his eye on Vincent. Yep, fingernails extending.
“What about the FBI?” a voice said from the hallway.
CHAPTER TWELVE
David Mazursky, Ph.D., briskly entered the room and closed the door. Cat whipped out her gun and took a bead on him while Vincent’s growl deepened.
“Easy, big fella,” J.T. said to Vincent. “That head cold’s really kicking your butt.”
“You’re FBI?” Cat asked Mazursky.
“I am. So put the gun down, Detective,” Mazursky said calmly. “I pose no threat to you.”
“Two things,” Cat said. Her heart was thundering. If Mazursky was FBI, she didn’t dare take her eyes off him for a second, or he would disarm her. But it took every ounce of self-discipline she possessed not to check on Vincent. If he beasted out in front of this guy—
“Yes?” he asked, waiting.
“The FBI has posed many threats to me. And if you were really FBI, you’d know that.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Of course I know about your father, Special Agent Reynolds. What’s the second thing?”
“I’m NYPD, and we don’t take orders from the feds. We are your equals in every way,” she said. “So I will keep this gun up.”
He smiled. “Everything I’ve heard about you is true.”
She tensed and made sure her finger was on the trigger. If he made one wrong move, she would take him down. “And what have you heard?”
“That we’re lucky to have you on our side.”
“I think you guys should take this out into the hall,” J.T. said in his singsong I am warning you that Vincent is transforming voice.
“It’s all right. I know about Dr. Keller,” Mazursky said.
Shocked silence met his declaration. Cat remained locked and loaded, although her arm muscles were beginning to tire.
Then Vincent growled more menacingly than before. Cat said, “It’s okay, Vincent. Please stay calm.” To Mazursky, “We’re going into the hall.”
Mazursky cocked his head. “You’re going to hold a gun on me in the hall?”
“Turn around, put your hands on the wall, and spread your legs,” Cat ordered him. He paused and she pointed her gun at his face. “If you know anything about me, you know that I’ll use this if I have to.”
He complied, putting himself in the deliberately awkward pose. Cat searched him and took his weapon, a Glock 27. She kept patting him down and found his cell phone, keys, and a second gun—a Sig Sauer 9mm. While he was vulnerable, Catherine took off her muffler and draped it over her own weapon, effectively concealing it.
“Okay, let’s go,” she ordered Mazursky.
As they left the room, Vincent growled again. He was being protective, worrying about her, but he had to be quiet or the other people in the building would think there was a wild animal on campus and call security. She wondered if J.T. had the tranq gun in his office.
She strode forward and Mazursky preceded her, his hands half-up. Raised too high, and it would be suspicious to onlookers. But too low, and he could grab something to hit her with and deck her in seconds.
She shut the door behind herself and tried to kick the doorstop into place with her heel. “Talk,” she said.
“I need to speak to Dr. Keller,” he said.
“He’ll hear you just fine.”
He arched a brow, impressed. “All right, simply put: We’ve been on parallel tracks with you three. We believe the first six murders were committed because the victims were working for an outside organization that has successfully created… something new. That this new thing emits a pheromone that elicits a chemical response in its victims, incapacitating them with fear.”
Cat maintained a poker face. “You can say you’re FBI, but truthfully? I have no idea who you are.”
“I can show you my badge.” When she looked at him blankly, he smiled wryly. “Which I could have bought off the rack at FAO Schwarz.” That was the world-famous toy store on Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan.
“The Bureau and I have a complicated history,” Cat said. “FBI badges do nothing to reassure me. You mentioned six murders. What about Indira Patel?”
He grimaced. “We think Patel is the first time this new weapon has been deployed. The first six… we have no indicators that any sort of cross-species activity was present.”
That jibed with their own findings. But that still was no reason to trust him. “So did you take out the first six?”
“Why would we do that?” he replied. “We wanted them alive so we could learn about this new… development.”
New beast. Monster. Weapon.
“If you’ll recall, your father went to extraordinary efforts to shut dow
n the prototype project. We’re committed to continuing his work.”
“His work included murdering innocent people.”
He clenched his jaw as red crept across his cheeks. The mention of her father’s heinous acts clearly angered him. Maybe he was one of the good guys after all.
Still, she did not lower her gun.
“As we both know, innocent people are being experimented on while we’re standing here,” he said. “And not by the Bureau.”
“The soldiers of Delta Company were innocent people,” Cat shot back.
“They volunteered for the experiment. They had already sworn to give their lives in service to their country.”
“Some gave all,” Cat said harshly, thinking of Mr. Riley and the portrait of Lafferty that hung above his mantel.
“You’ve sworn to protect and serve,” he said. “Does your oath come with strings attached?”
“Unknowingly becoming a weaponized beast is not a string, it’s a lie,” she said. “Orchestrating the deaths of some people so that others may live is wrong.”
“There’s collateral damage in any war,” he observed.
“I’m a police officer, not a soldier.”
“The only difference I see is semantics. You are a soldier. A warrior. What our world has become… we can’t afford these fine divisions anymore. People like us—committed and honorable—we must take on this greater evil. Everywhere these people go, everyone they touch—they’re our jurisdiction, our business.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but he went on. “You’ve worked outside the law for three years, Detective Chandler. You’ve used your badge and your gun contrary to the rules and regulations you swore to uphold.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you. And I won’t.”
“So what then? Are you going to kill me?” He raised his chin, betraying his wariness. Then he said, “I’m willing to die, for the same reason that Major Howison gave his life to save Dr. Forbes: to find and stop the people who made this beast, and to destroy that beast.”
She still didn’t give ground. Years—a lifetime—of betrayal had solidified her resolve. “Are you talking about FFNY?”