Road Kill; Puppet Master; Cross Wired

by Jan Coffey

  “I’m glad to see you’re not anorexic.”

  Bryan was filling the doorway again, watching everything she did.

  “No chance of that.” She took out a couple of plastic spoons from one of the drawers. “I’ll share it with you.”

  He shook his head. “You’ll need your energy working with me.”

  She liked the sound of that. In her office, she sat behind her desk and turned on the laptop. Bryan grabbed one of the metal folding chairs from the kitchenette and jammed himself right next to her.

  While the computer was booting up, Lexi took her cell phone out of her bag and plugged it in to be charged. She turned back to her computer to find him studying the pictures on her desk again.

  “He looks like he was a happy kid.”

  “He was. He will be again,” she said adamantly.

  “Who is he fishing with in that picture?”

  “That’s my brother Allan,” she told him. She pointed to another picture. “And that’s his wife, Donna, and their two daughters. They’re nineteen and twenty-one.”

  “Is that the only family you have?”

  She shrugged. “As far as siblings, yes.”

  Lexi found his scrutiny of her private life somewhat unnerving. She decided to turn the tables a little. “How old are your children?”

  “Fifteen and seventeen.”

  “Boys?”

  He shook his head. “Both girls.”

  She imagined he’d be a big teddy bear to his girls. “What are their names?”

  “Amy and Andrea. Amy is fifteen, Andrea seventeen.”

  “Where do you all live?”

  “I live in New York City. The girls live with their mother in a small town just north of Philadelphia.”

  Lexi gave him a quick look. “It must be hard to keep two residences. It’s tough on everybody. I have friends that have to do that because of their jobs. At least New York and Philadelphia are close.”

  “I’m divorced.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, turning her attention fully back to the computer. She opened her email account. She had 169 unread messages.

  “I guess I’ll need a little time to sort through all of these,” she told him.

  “Would you mind if I made a pot of coffee and used your office phone to make a couple of calls?”

  “No, make yourself at home.”

  Lexi found she could breathe easier after Bryan left the room. It had been too long since she’d felt this disconcerted around anyone. And knowing he was divorced only made her feel more…awkward.

  Lexi sorted the emails. Twelve of them stood out as first-time correspondents. She browsed each one quickly, hoping that Agent Atwood’s hunch was correct. She heard the water running and knew she’d be smelling the first scent of coffee any minute.

  The seventh email she opened made Lexi sit upright in her chair.

  Dr. Bradley,

  You need this information.

  Case number #269J

  Subject name: Juan Marquez DOB: 12/7/1992

  Laboratory-based pediatric research applying genetic nanotechnology using molecular sensors to view changes in brain chemical levels as well as creating fibrous scaffolding within the brain lobes. Made out of the protein actin. To enhance development of multiple intelligences in subject.

  Lexi reread the lines. Juan’s last name prior to adoption was Marquez. His birth date. There were no attachments to the document. Nothing more. She went back to her list of unread email. There was another one from the same Gmail address. She opened it.

  Whoever that had written the email wanted to meet with her in Reno Thursday night.

  ~~~~

  Chapter 23

  “Bryan, you’re a veteran of government law enforcement. You’ve been with the Secret Service long enough to know how these things work,” Geary said over the phone. “This project has been reclassified. We know now that it’s not a standard high school shooting. A new team of agents will be working on it. You and Agent Gardner will both be commended for your efforts this week, but the nature of beast calls for a different kind of expertise.”

  Bryan had called Hank while he was making coffee. The first words out of his partner’s mouth had been to tell him they’d been dropped from the investigating team. Bryan called Geary to try to get more information out of him. He’d closed the door to the kitchen before making the second call.

  “Hank and I understand that the needs of investigations change,” he told the SAC. “That’s no big deal. Still, considering we were yanked off our own projects and put on this, we deserve more of an explanation. Hank told me that all the teenagers, including the one involved in the incident in Orlando last night, were adopted. Is this something you already knew? Is any information available on the agencies? Are we talking about some kind of weird testing that might have been done on some kids that were being put out for adoption?”

  There was a pause at the other end. “I told you before. We have other agents that are being assigned to this case. I don’t see any need for you to be briefed on the results of the investigation.”

  “I don’t think you understand me very well, Geary,” Bryan said in a low voice. “There have been some serious lapses of communication in the course of this investigation. I want you to tell me what’s going on. If you don’t have the authority to tell me, then I’ll need to take this to the next level.”

  He didn’t like the idea of being cut out of this investigation. He’d felt somewhat out of the loop a number of times over the past couple of days, and he didn’t understand that. Geary was either incompetent as a SAC or something was flat out fishy about the way he and Hank were being treated. He didn’t think the former was true, but the latter certainly stank.

  Bryan and Geary reported to a different hierarchy of management, but if they kept going up the ladder, Bryan knew he could reach a little higher than this guy. The investigation had lacked adequate communication, at the very least, and Geary knew it. An FBI SAC with plans for moving up couldn’t afford to have Bryan bring attention to this. No, the way he and Hank were being treated was bullshit, and he wasn’t about to put up with it.

  “I’m not going to get into a pissing contest with you, Bryan,” Geary said, his tone suddenly conciliatory. “Personally, I have no problem with you and Hank remaining on this team. We all know that you two certainly have the qualifications to be a part of any investigation. The fact is that this case is not a new case. It goes back some fifteen years.”

  “What are you talking about?” Bryan snapped. He was getting pretty damn tired of all the song and dance.

  “What I’m about to convey is confidential.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Let me be clear. None of this can leak to Dr. Bradley.”

  Bryan understood one of the reasons why he was being pushed to the outside. Someone must have been whispering in Geary’s ear about him and Hank being civil to Juan’s mother.

  “Look, Geary. I’m not a rookie. I understand procedure,” he said impatiently. “And I’m getting pretty tired of you dancing around this. Either you tell me what’s going on or I’ll make some calls and get some answers myself.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Geary said shortly. “I said before, I don’t want to get into a pissing contest.”

  Bryan looked at the coffee maker. It was finished brewing. It didn’t feel right pouring himself a cup when he couldn’t offer Lexi any, just yet. She’d been the one who was close to starvation.

  “This sounds like science fiction,” Geary started, “but it’s all real. It’s about nanotechnology.”

  Bryan sat down on one of the chairs. “This is nothing new. It’s in the tech and biomedical magazines all the time. They see these nano-particles as little construction units that will be able to self-replicate from materials in the body. So what about it?”

  “The way it was explained to me, one major hurdle has been the problem of rejection. And if our bodies don’t get rid of them right away, t
hey accumulate in the organs and become toxic. Scientists haven’t been able to figure out how to keep these nano-particles in the body long enough to do their job.”

  Bryan thought about something that Hank and Lexi had seen on the MRI image.

  “So what? How does it tie into these kids and the shootings?”

  “Our theory is that these teenagers had a nano-device implanted in their brains some fourteen or fifteen years ago. As primitive and simple as it must be, it was incredibly advanced for the time. Each of those kids still have the device in their heads. Those of them that are still alive,” Geary told him. “What we want is that technology. We want those scientists.”

  “There’s a step that you’re skipping,” Bryan cut in. “I’ve been involved with enough top secret projects to know that what you’ve told me doesn’t warrant either the priority or the secrecy. It’s a straight criminal case if these scientists never cleared the red tape for such experimentation. What else is there, Geary? Whatever it is, it has to be much bigger.”

  Bryan pushed to his feet. He walked around the table, trying to decide if he should threaten the SAC again, or not.

  “Whatever I told you so far was factual. The rest is speculation.”

  “I’d like to know the speculation, as well.”

  “If you do, then you have to stay with the project.”

  “I didn’t ask to get off of it,” he reminded Geary. “And I plan to stay on.”

  Bryan knew he sounded arrogant, but at this point he didn’t care. His interest was piqued, and perhaps having Lexi relying on him to get her to Juan motivated him, too.

  He considered what Geary had told him. They still hadn’t even discussed the possibility of these shootings continuing.

  “How many kids were involved in the initial research?” Bryan asked.

  “We don’t know.”

  “Don’t you think that’s important? If there are more out there, then we need to know what the actual threat is.”

  “The MRIs of Juan Bradley’s brain were the first hint that this research had even involved humans,” Geary answered.

  “That’s why you’ve hustled him off to Buffalo.”

  “We’ve got the top people in the field there to see what we can learn from him.”

  “Christ.”

  “And here, I was told that you’d be reluctant to work on anything that had to do with teenage violence. I thought you’d be happy to get off this case.”

  “That was Tuesday. Today is Thursday,” Bryan told him. “I’m staying on the investigating team.”

  “And does this include Hank?” Geary asked.

  “He can answer that for himself. My money says that he’ll stay involved.” Bryan explained. “Still, you haven’t told me why this is such a priority.”

  “Intelligence.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Human intelligence,” Geary said. “Now don’t forget, we’re stepping into an area of speculation that couldn’t be confirmed fourteen years ago and can’t be confirmed now.”

  “Go on.”

  “There were rumors back then that a group of independent scientists with business backing had developed a technique, using nanotechnology that was way ahead of anything in the mainstream, to increase learning capacity. Actually improve intelligence. They were supposedly making super brains.”

  “All the seven recent shootings were done by top students.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Geary agreed. “A lot of these shooters were extremely intelligent, but that has been overshadowed by the tragedy of the violent acts they’ve committed. We’ve been putting together a profile, just for the recent shooters. Of the ones we’ve looked at, every one of them tested as highly gifted. Most, at one time or another, were in the position to skip grades and some did. Several had photographic memory. We don’t know much about their infancy since none were adopted until after the age of two, but one hundred percent had full language development at the time of adoption, perfect motor skills. One hundred percent of them were ambidextrous. I can go on and on about music, the arts, about their learning curve for any new topic. Actually, all anyone has to do is look at these teenagers’ school records. It’s amazing how easy everything came to them. We can only imagine what their potential for learning would have been if they’d been kept in a dedicated environment.”

  “And you think this was all because of these nano-molecules that were inserted in their brain?”

  “We’re speculating,” Geary repeated. “We really won’t know any of this until some serious testing is done on Juan.”

  “Has his status changed?”

  “No, he’s still in a coma, but we’re watching him carefully. There’s increased brain activity, and our medical people in Buffalo believe it’s just a matter of time before he pulls through.”

  “I’m taking Dr. Bradley there today. She wants to be with her son,” Bryan told him. “And I’m warning you, don’t make it difficult for her to be there, or see him, or be involved at some level. She’s been cooperating fully. And, ironically enough, she might be our only connection to these people who you’re after.”

  “She’s been getting some crank calls.”

  Bryan knew Geary had to know everything that was going on with Lexi, as he’d been using Homeland Security resources. Still, he assumed the SAC would want to hear it from him firsthand.

  “It’s a lot more than just crank calls.” Bryan explained about her house being broken into last night and her office at home getting trashed. “Someone is trying to communicate with her. I’m having the local police in Nevada check the store where we think a fax might have been sent from. Right now, she’s checking her email to see if there’s a message from this guy. And there are others who are trying to stop this communication. Probably the same ones who made the attempt on Juan’s life at the hospital.”

  “This might be a wild goose chase. Totally unrelated.”

  “If it is, then we’ll eliminate it as a possibility,” Bryan asserted. “At the same time, we have no clue about how many children were involved with this testing. Seeing the bloody record of the last seven shootings, and the sudden frequency of them, I don’t think we can afford to sit back and assume that there are no others out there.”

  He could hear Geary let out a heavy breath. Bryan guessed the SAC had pulled an all-nighter as well. It was 6:30 in the morning, and he’d answered the phone at his office.

  “I don’t like getting a civilian involved.”

  “I don’t either,” Bryan told him. “And I won’t unless that’s the only option.”

  “When you take her to Buffalo, she’s going to notice we’re doing things differently with her son.”

  “She’s a professional. I’m sure she will,” Bryan said. “That’s why I think it’s in our best interest to be up front with her, tell her what’s going on.”

  “You mean, brief her on what we’ve just spoken about?”

  “Yes, I do,” Bryan said. Lexi had more at stake in this than any of them. Her son’s life was on the line. “I believe you can count on her keeping everything confidential.”

  “Our objective must remain classified.”

  Bryan knew exactly what Geary meant about that. The government obviously wanted to find and squeeze the criminals behind this experiment with the intent of gaining control of the technology. That had to remain top secret.

  “Whatever,” he said. “The only thing she’s interested in right now is her son’s recovery.”

  “As you say, right now. But later on, we don’t want any—”

  There was a soft tap on the door.

  “Hold on a second,” Bryan interrupted.

  He opened the kitchen door. Lexi stood in the hallway, two sheets of paper in her hand and a bundle of mail under her arm. “I did have email from him. I think this was what you were looking for.”

  He took the papers, stood back, so she could come in. Bryan read the two messages. He read them aloud a second time to Ge
ary on the phone.

  Lexi poured two cups of coffee. When he was done reading them, she looked up at him.

  “Take me to Juan this morning so I can see him. Then, I’ll go to Reno and meet with this guy…whoever he is.”

  ~~~~

  Chapter 24

  The cup of coffee sat cooling and forgotten next to her hand.

  Sitting at the small table of the kitchenette, Lexi listened to Bryan relate everything he’d just heard from his superior about Juan’s situation.

  Pieces started to fall into place for her.

  There’d been so many signs over the years that she’d ignored or taken for granted. Juan had been able to sight-read music when he’d been only four. He’d learned to speak three languages fluently just by going to summer “cultural enrichment” camps with dozens of other children whose end of the summer accomplishment was saying ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ and hitting a decent backhand. From the time he was a preschooler, Lexi never had to look up a recipe. She had to make something only once with him, and he’d remember the ingredients and their respective quantities forever. He never had to be told anything twice. Multi-step directions were a breeze. His outstanding academic progress was such a small part, too. There were hundreds of other instances when his memory or intelligence had delighted her.

  She had a million questions about how much of Juan’s abilities could be tied to this and what his prognosis after the episode would be. If the shaded areas that they’d seen on the MRI were indeed mechanical, what was to be done about them? Was there any way to remove the nano-particles without doing any long-term damage to his brain? Had irreparable damage already been done?

  Bryan had warned her before even starting that he couldn’t answer any of questions that she would surely have. The next source of information was a physician and scientist named Orrin Dexter. He’d been flown in to Buffalo from Cornell to oversee Juan’s progress. Bryan promised that she’d have a chance to speak with him.

  “When are we leaving? How are we going to get to Buffalo?” Lexi asked, already impatient to get there.