by Robin Cook
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Dr. Mason demanded.
“We followed Sean and a young nurse out of the Forbes parking area around four,” Sterling said.
“The nurse would be Janet Reardon,” Ms. Richmond interjected. “The two are friends from Boston.”
Sterling nodded. He motioned for Wayne to write the name down. “We’ll need to investigate her as well. It’s important to eliminate the possibility of them working as a team.”
Sterling described following Sean to Miami General and his instructions to Wayne to follow the unknown man in brown if he came out first.
Dr. Mason was surprised to learn that Sean and his nurse friend had headed to the morgue. “What on earth were they doing there?”
“That was something else I was hoping you could tell us,” Sterling said.
“I can’t imagine,” Dr. Mason said, shaking his head. He again looked at Ms. Richmond. She shook her head as well.
“When the mysterious man entered the morgue behind Sean Murphy and Miss Reardon,” Sterling continued, “I only got a quick glimpse. But it was my impression he was holding a gun. That later proved to be correct. At any rate I was concerned for Mr. Murphy’s safety, so I rushed to the morgue door only to find it locked.”
“How dreadful,” Ms. Richmond said.
“There was only one thing I could do,” Sterling said. “I turned off the lights.”
“That’s a nice touch,” Dr. Mason said. “Good thinking.”
“I’d hoped the people within wouldn’t hurt each other until I could conceive of a way to get the door open,” Sterling said. “But there was no need. The man in brown apparently has a strong phobia of the dark. Within a short time he burst from the room significantly distraught. It was then that I saw the gun clearly. I gave chase, but unfortunately I was attired in leather-soled shoes, which put me at a distinct disadvantage to his running shoes. Besides, he seemed entirely familiar with the terrain. When it was clear that I’d lost him, I returned to the morgue. By then Sean and Miss Reardon had already departed as well.”
“And Wayne followed the man in brown?” Dr. Mason asked.
“He tried,” Sterling said.
“I lost him,” Wayne admitted. “It was rush hour, and I was unlucky.”
“So now we have no idea where Mr. Murphy is,” Dr. Mason moaned. “And we have a new worry about an unknown assailant.”
“We have a colleague of Mr. Edwards watching the Forbes residence for Sean’s return,” Sterling said. “It is important we find him.”
The phone on Dr. Mason’s desk rang. Dr. Mason answered it.
“Dr. Mason, this is Juan Suarez in security,” the voice at the other end told him. “You asked me to call if Mr. Sean Murphy appeared. Well, he and a nurse just came in and went up to the fifth floor.”
“Thank you, Juan,” Dr. Mason said with relief. He hung up the phone. “Sean Murphy is safe,” he reported. “He just came into the building, probably to inject more mice. What dedication! I tell you, I think the kid is a winner and worth all this trouble.”
IT WAS after ten o’clock at night when Robert Harris left Ralph Seaver’s apartment. The man had not been particularly cooperative. He’d resented Harris’s bringing up his rape conviction in Indiana which he’d dubbed “ancient history.” Harris didn’t think much of Seaver’s self-serving assessment, but he mentally took the man off his list of suspects the minute he laid eyes on him. The attacker had been described as being of medium height and medium build. Seaver was at least six-eight and probably weighed two hundred and fifty pounds.
Climbing into his dark blue Ford sedan, Harris picked up the last file in his priority category. Tom Widdicomb lived in Hialeah, not too far from where Harris was. Despite the hour, Harris decided to drive by the man’s home. If the lights were on, he’d ring the bell. Otherwise he’d let it go until morning.
Harris had already made several background calls regarding Tom Widdicomb. He’d found out that the man had taken an EMT course and had passed the exam for his license. A call to an ambulance firm where Tom had worked didn’t yield much information. The owner of the company refused to comment, explaining that the last time he talked about a former employee the tires of two of his ambulances were slashed.
A call to Miami General had been a bit more helpful but not by much. A personnel officer said that Mr. Widdicomb and the hospital had parted ways by mutual agreement. The officer admitted he’d not met Mr. Widdicomb; he was merely reading from the employment file.
Harris had also checked with Glen, the housekeeping supervisor at the Forbes Hospital. Glen said that Tom was dependable from his point of view, but that he frequently clashed with his colleagues. He said that Tom worked better on his own.
The last call Harris had made was to a veterinarian by the name of Maurice Springborn. That number, however, was no longer in service and information did not have another number. So all in all, Harris hadn’t turned up anything incriminating concerning Tom Widdicomb. As he drove into Hialeah and searched for 18 Palmetto Lane, he was not optimistic.
“Well, at least the lights are on,” Harris said as he pulled over to the curb in front of an ill-kept ranch-style house. In sharp contrast to the other modest homes in the neighborhood, Tom Widdicomb’s was lit up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Every light inside and outside the house was blazing brightly.
Getting out of the car, Harris stared at the house. It was amazing how much light emanated from it. Shrubbery three houses away cast sharp shadows. As he walked up the driveway, he noticed the name on the mailbox was Alice Widdicomb. He wondered how she and Tom were related.
Mounting the front steps, Harris rang the bell. As he waited he eyed the house. It was decorated in a plain style with faded pastel colors. The trim was badly in need of paint.
When no one responded to the bell, Harris rang again and put his ear to the door to make sure the bell was functioning. He heard it clearly. It was hard to believe no one was home with all the lights on.
After a third ring, Harris gave up and returned to his car. Rather than leave immediately, he sat staring at the house, wondering what could motivate people to illuminate their house so brightly. He was just about to start his engine when he thought he saw some movement by the living room window. Then he saw it again. Someone in the house had definitely moved a drape. Whoever it was seemed to be trying to catch a peek at Harris.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Harris climbed out of his car and went back to the stoop. He leaned on the doorbell, giving it one long blast. But still no one came.
Disgustedly, Harris returned to his car. He used his car phone to call Glen to see if Tom Widdicomb was scheduled to work the next day.
“No, sir,” Glen said with his southern accent. “He’s not scheduled to work until Monday. Good thing, too. He was under the weather today. He looked terrible. I sent him home early.”
Harris thanked Glen before hanging up. If Widdicomb wasn’t feeling well and was home in bed, why all the lights? Was he feeling so bad he couldn’t even come to the door? And where was Alice, whoever she was?
As Harris drove away from Hialeah he pondered what he should do. There was something weird going on at the Widdicombs’. He could always go back and stake out the house, but that seemed extreme. He could wait until Monday when Tom showed up for work, but what about in the meantime? Instead, he decided he’d go back the following morning to see if he could catch a glimpse of Tom Widdicomb. Glen had said he was of medium height and medium build with brown hair.
Harris sighed. Sitting in front of Tom Widdicomb’s house was not his idea of a great Saturday, but he was desperate. He felt he’d better make some headway on the breast cancer deaths if he was interested in remaining employed at Forbes.
SEAN WAS whistling softly while he worked, the picture of contented concentration. Janet watched from a high stool similar to Sean’s that she’d dragged over to the lab bench. In front of him was an array of glassware.
It
was at quiet times like this that Janet found Sean so appealingly attractive. His dark hair had fallen forward to frame his downturned face with soft ringlets, which had an almost feminine look in stark contrast to his hard, masculine features. His nose was narrow at the top where it joined the confluence of his heavy eyebrows. It was a straight nose except for the very tip where it slanted inward before joining the curve of his lips. His dark blue eyes were fixated unblinkingly on a clear plastic tray in his strong but nimble fingers.
He glanced up to look directly at Janet. His eyes were bright and shining. She could tell he was excited. At that moment she felt inordinately in love, and even the recent episode at the funeral home receded into her mind for the moment. She wanted him to take her in his arms and tell her that he loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
“These initial silver stain electrophoresis gels are fascinating,” Sean said, shattering Janet’s fantasy. “Come and look!”
Janet pushed off her stool. At the moment she wasn’t interested in electrophoresis gels, but she felt she had little choice. She didn’t dare risk lessening his enthusiasm. Still, she was disappointed he didn’t sense her affectionate feelings.
“This is the sample from the larger vial,” Sean explained. “It’s a non-reducing gel so you can tell by the control that it has only one component, and its molecular weight is about 150,000 daltons.”
Janet nodded.
Sean picked up the other gel and showed it to her. “Now, the medicine in the small vial is different. Here there are three separate bands, meaning there are three separate components. All three have much smaller molecular weights. My guess is that the large vial contains an immunoglobulin antibody while the small vial most likely contains cytokines.”
“What’s a cytokine?” Janet asked.
“It’s a generic term,” Sean said. He got off his own stool. “Follow me,” he said. “I’ve got to get some reagents.”
They used the stairs. As they walked, Sean continued to explain. “Cytokines are protein molecules produced by cells of the immune system. They’re involved in cell-to-cell communication, signaling cues like when to grow, when to start doing their thing, when to get ready for an invasion of virus, bacteria, or even tumor cells. The NIH has been busy growing the lymphocytes of cancer patients in vitro with a cytokine called interleukin-2, then injecting the cells back into the patient. In some cases they’ve had some good results.”
“But not as good as the Forbes with their medulloblastoma cases,” Janet said.
“Definitely not as good,” Sean said.
Sean loaded himself and Janet with reagents from the storeroom; then they started back to his lab.
“This is an exciting time in biological science,” Sean said. “The nineteenth century was the century for chemistry; the twentieth century was the century for physics. But the twenty-first century will belong to molecular biology; it’s when all three—chemistry, physics, and biology—are going to merge. The results will be astounding, like science fiction come true. In fact, we’re already seeing it happen.”
By the time they got back in the lab Janet found herself becoming genuinely interested despite the day’s emotional traumas and her fatigue. Sean’s enthusiasm was infectious.
“What’s the next step with these medicines?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” Sean admitted. “I suppose we should see what kind of reaction we get between the unknown antibody in the large vial and Helen Cabot’s tumor.”
Sean asked Janet to get out some scissors and a scalpel from a drawer near where she was standing. Sean took the cooler over to the sink, and after putting on a pair of latex rubber gloves, he lifted out the brain and rinsed it off. From beneath the sink he pulled out a cutting board. He put the brain on the board.
“I hope I don’t have trouble finding the tumor,” he said. “I’ve never tried to do anything like this before. Judging by the MRI we did in Boston, her largest tumor is in the left temporal lobe. That was the one they biopsied up there. I suppose that’s the one I should go after.” Sean oriented the brain so that he could determine the front from the back. Then he made several slices into the temporal lobe.
“I have an almost irresistible urge to joke about what I’m doing here,” he said.
“Please don’t,” Janet said. It was hard for her to deal with the fact that this was the brain of a person with whom she’d so recently related.
“Now this looks promising,” Sean said. He spread the edges of his most recent incision. At the base was a comparatively dense and more yellow-appearing tissue bearing tiny but visible cavities. “I think those spots might be areas where the tumor outgrew its own blood supply.”
Sean asked Janet to give him a hand, so she pulled on a pair of the rubber gloves and held the cut edges of the brain apart while Sean took a sample of the tumor with the scissors.
“Now we have to separate the cells,” he said, putting the sample in tissue culture medium, then adding enzymes. He put the flask in the incubator to give the enzymes a chance to work.
“Next we have to characterize this immunoglobulin,” he said, holding up the larger of the two vials of unknowns. “And to do this we have a test called ELISA where we use commercially made antibodies to identify specific types of immunoglobulins.” He placed the large vial on the countertop and picked up a plastic plate that had ninety-six tiny circular wells. In each of the wells he put a different capture antibody and allowed it to bind. Then he blocked any remaining binding sites in the wells with bovine serum albumin. Next he put a small aliquot of the unknown in each of the wells.
“Now I have to figure out which antibody has reacted to the unknown,” he said, washing each of the wells to rid them of any of the unknown immunoglobulin that hadn’t reacted. “We do this by adding to each well the same antibody that was originally in the well, only this time tagged with a compound that’s enzymatically capable of yielding a colored reaction.” This last substance had the characteristic of turning a pale lavender.
The whole time Sean was doing this test, he kept up a running explanation for Janet. She’d heard of the test but had never seen it performed.
“Bingo!” Sean said when one of the many wells turned the appropriate color to match controls he’d set up in sixteen of the end wells. “The unknown is no longer an unknown. It’s a human immunoglobulin called IgGI.”
“How did Forbes make it?” Janet asked.
“That’s a good question,” Sean said. “I’d guess by monoclonal antibody technique. Although it is not out of the question to make it by recombinant DNA technology. The problem there is that it’s a big molecule.”
Janet had a vague idea of what Sean was talking about and had definitely become interested in the process of figuring out what these unknown medicines were, but suddenly her physical exhaustion could no longer be ignored. Glancing at her watch she could understand why. It was almost midnight.
Feeling ambivalent about interrupting Sean’s enthusiasm which she’d been trying hard to bolster, she reached out and grasped his arm. He was holding a Pasteur pipette. He’d started ELISA plates for the second unknown.
“Do you have any idea of the time?” she asked.
Sean glanced at his watch. “My word, time does fly when you’re having a good time.”
“I’ve got to work tomorrow,” she said. “I’ve got to get some sleep. I suppose I could go back to the apartment by myself.”
“Not at this hour,” Sean said. “Just let me finish what I’m doing here, then I want to run a quick immuno-fluorescence test to see the level of reaction between the IgGI and Helen’s tumor cells. I’ll use an automatic diluter. It will only take a few minutes.”
Janet reluctantly agreed. But she couldn’t sit on a stool any longer. Instead she dragged out an armchair from the glass-enclosed office. Less than half an hour later, Sean’s enthusiasm went up another notch. The ELISA test on the second unknown had identified three cytokines: interleukin-2, which
as he explained to Janet was a T lymphocyte growth factor; tissue necrosis factor alpha, which was a stimulant for certain cells to kill foreign cells like cancer cells; and interferon gamma, which was a substance that seemed to help activate the entire immune system.
“Aren’t the T cells the ones that disappear in AIDS?” Janet asked. She was having progressive difficulty staying awake.
“Right on,” Sean said. He was now holding a number of slides on which he’d run fluorescence antibody tests at different dilutions of the unknown immunoglobulin. Slipping one of the very high dilution slides under the objective of the fluorescein scope, Sean put his eyes to the eyepiece.
“Wow!” he exclaimed. “The intensity of this reaction is unbelievable. Even at a one to ten thousand dilution this IgGI antibody reacts with the tumor four plus. Janet, come and take a look at this!”
When Janet didn’t respond, Sean looked up from the eye-pieces of the binocular scope. Janet was slouched in the chair. She’d fallen fast asleep.
Seeing Janet sleeping. Sean immediately felt guilty. He hadn’t considered how exhausted she must be. Standing up and stretching his tired arms, he stepped over to Janet and looked down at her. She seemed particularly angelic in her repose. Her face was framed by her fine blond hair. Sean felt an urge to kiss her. Instead, he gently shook her shoulder.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Let’s get you to bed.”
Janet was already buckled in Sean’s car when her sleepy mind reminded her she’d brought her own car that morning. She mentioned it to Sean.
“Are you in any condition to drive?” Sean asked.
She nodded. “I want my car,” she said, leaving no room for discussion.
Sean pulled around to the hospital and let her out. Once she had her car started, he let her lead the way. And as they pulled out into the street, Sean was too intent on Janet to notice the dark green Mercedes which slowly began to follow them both without the benefit of its headlights.