Perimeter

by M. A. Rothman

  He’d spent the drive to the hotel looking in the rearview mirror for Carl Weatherby. It had been a while since he’d seen the two nameless guys in suits. He hadn’t spotted anyone following him, but that meant nothing.

  “Shit,” Juan grumbled in the darkness of the room. “If AgriMed is out to get me, I’m screwed anyway.”

  He pushed thoughts of conspiracy out of his head just as his cell phone rang.

  With a groan, he reached over and picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Hi Juan. It’s Kathy O’Reilly. Remember me?”

  Juan bolted to a sitting position, and despite the fatigue and anxiety he’d been feeling, her voice immediately made him smile. “Hey, Kathy, how are you doing? How’s your father?”

  “We’re both great. In fact, I just got off the phone with my dad, and I wanted to thank you again for what you did. He just got a clean bill of health from his doctors. He’s in total remission. You literally saved my father’s life.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that. Sometimes miracles do happen. I take it you’re back at Georgetown?”

  “Yup. And I, uh…” Her voice faltered, then lowered to almost a whisper. “I’d like it if you’d let me take you out sometime to celebrate.”

  An electric thrill raced through Juan. “You got it.” But as soon as the words left his mouth, he realized this was a bad time for it, what with everything he had going on. “Umm, how about this. Definitely yes on going out, but I’m really swamped at work right now. I’m not sure yet when I’ll be coming up for air.”

  “Oh, no worries, I understand,” Kathy said with an airy tone. “Whenever you have time, just call me back at this number. I mean, if you want to. Like I said, no pressure.”

  “I will. I definitely will,” Juan said. “It’ll be a date.” His stomach fluttered like a teenager’s.

  As he got off the phone, he lay back in bed. The soft mattress seemed to swallow him up. And with thoughts of Kathy’s green eyes and brilliant smile, he felt his body finally relax and his mind succumb to unconsciousness.

  ###

  As Frank shifted through the gears of the old Chevy pickup, Megan bounced up and down in the passenger seat like an excited schoolgirl. “I can’t wait to hook it up!”

  “My God, woman, you’d think getting a new TV was a big deal.”

  “It is a big deal! At least it is to someone who doesn’t find entertainment in whittling a perfectly good piece of wood into toothpicks.” Megan scoffed. “Do you even remember the last time we bought a new TV?”

  “I sure do.” Frank remembered the day like it was yesterday. “You were pregnant with Kathy and wanted a color TV that didn’t need tubes replaced.”

  “That’s right, you stubborn mule. Which means it was over twenty-five years ago. I’ve been praying for that Zenith of ours to die for ages.”

  In the back seat, Jasper barked.

  Frank glanced at the bag of groceries between him and Megan and asked, “Do you think we could have dinner sooner than later? I’m starving.”

  As Frank pulled up in front of the house, Megan rubbed his shoulder. “If you set up the new TV, I’ll whip up some dinner. Deal?”

  Frank set the parking brake and smiled. “Deal.”

  Megan gathered the bag of groceries while Frank went to the back of the truck and opened the tailgate.

  He was just about to loosen the straps to the TV when Megan shouted.

  “Frank!”

  Frank looked up to see her backing away from the front door. Jasper was beside her, growling. Ahead of her, the door stood ajar, and the wood just above the jamb was splintered.

  Someone had broken in.

  Frank raced to her side, pulling his Smith and Wesson .45 from its in-waistband holster.

  “Be careful,” she hissed. “Someone might still be in there.”

  Jasper gave a low growl and, without warning, darted ahead of Frank, snaking through the narrow opening to the house.

  With a bullet in the chamber, Frank dropped to a shooter’s stance as he pushed the door open with his foot.

  Scanning the room, Frank didn’t see anything out of order. Jasper was sniffing around the kitchen and came back toward the front of the house wagging his tail. If the dog didn’t sense danger, that was a good sign. Jasper had a feeling for these things.

  Still, Frank maintained his shooter’s stance as he cleared each room. Only once he’d covered the whole house did he holster his weapon and return to the front door.

  “It’s okay, Megan, you can come in. It definitely looks like someone used a pry bar or something to break in, but they’re not here now, and I don’t see anything missing.”

  Megan walked inside, carrying a bag of groceries. “Franklin, it doesn’t matter. Call the sheriff.”

  ###

  While one Lincoln County police officer brushed for prints on the front door, another talked with Frank and Megan. “You’re sure nothing was taken?”

  Frank nodded. “We’ve looked around carefully. Nothing’s missing.”

  “That’s really strange, Mr. O’Reilly.” The officer pointed at the old TV and then at the china cabinet, which displayed some of Megan’s grandmother’s china along with silverware they never used. “You’ve got stuff out, plain as day, that a robber would take in a heartbeat.”

  Frank’s watch beeped, and Megan came up behind him and raked her fingers down the back of his neck. “Honey,” she said, “when are you going to turn off that alarm? Now that the docs have cleared you, you don’t need to take the medicine anymore.”

  Frank groaned. “Kathy programmed this darn thing for me. It’s probably easier to just use my old Timex than figure out how to undo this blasted reminder.”

  Megan looked into the kitchen and the smile on her face melted away. She tapped on Frank’s back and said, “Um, honey, where did that box from the VA go off to? It’s not in its usual spot.”

  Frank turned toward the kitchen and stared at the now-empty counter where the black box from the VA had been. “Son of a gun.” He turned to the officer. “Turns out we do have something missing.”

  ###

  It had been a long day and Frank was exhausted. He’d set up the new TV, taken the old one to the dump, then patched up the front door jamb. By the time he managed to pile into bed, Megan was already asleep.

  As he stared up at the ceiling, he thought about the burglary. Why would someone break in just to take that medical device? Was it valuable? And what would he do if the VA called and said they needed it back?

  Except, none of those VA folks were ever going to call. Frank knew that. It was as though everyone involved in the trial had just vanished, and the rest of the VA knew nothing about it. Up till now, Frank hadn’t worried too much about it—he’d gotten better and wasn’t about to complain—even though the whole thing was certainly suspicious.

  What could be so important about that box that someone would break into a man’s house and steal it?

  Frank recalled how the doctor and the clinical trial he’d gone to had vanished from the VA. The whole thing struck him as suspicious.

  Could someone be trying to hide something?

  Suddenly, Frank was struck with a horrible thought.

  He turned on the light, opened the top drawer of his nightstand, pulled out the business card he’d stashed there, and dialed the number.

  A weary voice answered. “Carrington.” The agent sounded as if he’d been awakened from a dead sleep.

  Frank winced as he glanced at the time. “Agent Carrington, this is Frank O’Reilly over at Ash Springs. I’m sorry, I should have waited to call you tomorrow. I wasn’t thinking.” Megan stirred next to him, but didn’t wake.

  “It’s okay, Mr. O’Reilly. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I figured you should know a couple things. First, someone broke into my house today and stole the medical device I got from the VA to treat my cancer.”

  “The box with
the spout?” Carrington suddenly sounded wide awake.

  “That’s right. And it reminded me of something else I had forgotten about. A while back, one of our pregnant heifers got sick, and I wasn’t sure if she’d have to be put down. So I let her have some of my medicine—it was basically water—figuring what could it hurt? She did get better, though I don’t know if the medicine had anything to do with it. And I don’t know if that had anything to do with what happened later. But I’m thinking… I don’t know. The medicine worked, but there’s something suspicious about that clinical trial and all, and now the VA’s box was stolen, so… I guess I just thought you should know. I’m sorry I didn’t remember any of this earlier.”

  “Mr. O’Reilly, thank you so much for sharing this information. One question: After the break-in today, did the police come and take prints?”

  “Yes, sir. They did.”

  “Okay, I’ll get in touch with them. Thank you again, Mr. O’Reilly. It’s helpful.”

  Frank hung up, turned off the light, and lay his head back on the pillow.

  Megan rolled over and draped her arm across his chest. “Was that Kathy?”

  “No, honey. Go back to sleep.”

  Frank wrapped his arms around his wife and closed his eyes, hoping to forget everything for just a few hours.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “You’re telling me there’s cocaine in that sludge?” Juan said, waving the analyst’s report. “And urea? There’s piss in it?”

  John Hendrickson, the FBI analyst assigned to help him on this, nodded. “I ran both gas chromatography tests as well as an infrared spectroscopy analysis on that stuff you sent me. The test results both agreed on the overall chemical makeup of that stuff. It’s a concoction that would probably give folks nightmares.”

  Sitting on a tall metal stool, Juan leaned his back against the lab bench and skimmed the rest of the report. “So, it looks like you detected the key components of beer and animal urine, both acidic ingredients, yet the overall pH is still neutral?”

  Hendrickson nodded as he flipped through his own copy of the report. “Turn to page twelve. You’ll see there’s a bunch of organic compounds that offset the acidity.”

  Flipping through the forty-page report, Juan paused when he reached the microbiological analysis. “So, this stuff is also teeming with bacteria.”

  “Yep. And if you skip to page thirty-five, there’s also a bunch of rather tiny spores. We’re still processing those, but they look like the same spores we found in the water sample you sent. Not sure what those are, but they’re about four hundred nanometers in diameter and have odd filaments coming off the protein coat.”

  Juan looked at the micrograph pictured in the report. “That’s… that’s a capsid,” he exclaimed. “What the hell is in it? Maybe a virion? If so, coded to do what?”

  With a confused expression, the lab tech asked, “Sorry, Dr. Gutierrez, but virion? Capsid?”

  “Sorry. A capsid is just a protein shell that’s created within the life cycle of a virus, and a virion is basically a complete virus with a protein shell around it. We use these in genetic research, because it’s a convenient way to introduce genetic material. Basically, if we have a virus that we eventually want to have merge with certain targeted cells through a lysogenic process, we take that virus and induce capsid self-assembly such that it’s surrounded by a protective protein shell. It can then be placed in water so that test subjects will drink what in essence are spores, and then the acid in the stomach helps activate the viral agent, which will seek out its target and merge its DNA into the host cell. That’s all there is to it. Pretty simple in concept.”

  The lab tech snorted. “If you say so.”

  Juan tapped on the report. “Can some of your guys process these virions and give me a breakdown of what the DNA payload is?”

  Hendrickson nodded. “Yes, but we’ll probably need a few days to figure out how to process that. It’s not the kind of thing we do on a day-to-day basis, if you know what I mean.”

  “Understood.” Juan’s mind drifted to the biocontainment lab where he kept samples from the water dispenser and the sludge. “Hey, even though the micrographs look identical, please run separate tests on the virions from both the sludge and the water. I want to know if they’re actually the same.”

  The tech gathered up his papers and as he walked toward the exit, Hendrickson said, “Day after tomorrow. I’ll get the results then.”

  The stool made an annoying squeak as Juan turned so that he was facing the biocontainment lab. He hated suiting up and despised the cleanup process on the way back out. With a deep sigh, he stood, walked to where his pressure suit was stored and tried to psyche himself up.

  “The mice are probably not going to go anywhere near that stinking glop. So let’s try out the water and play a little genetic roulette.”

  Juan grabbed his blue suit out of his locker and said, “We’ll see what happens.”

  ###

  As usual, Juan felt claustrophobic as he sat in his pressure suit inside the level-four biocontainment lab. Beside him was Jennifer, one of the few FBI lab techs that was authorized to enter, and together they looked over her report.

  “How can you know the mouse is pregnant?” Juan asked. “I didn’t think there was a reliable non-invasive test.”

  Her voice crackled through the speaker in his pressure suit. “Urine-based pregnancy tests don’t work on mice, as you likely know. It’s actually a rather recent development that fecal testing has proven to give us a pretty reliable indicator.” She tilted the papers so that he could see them through his visor and said, “In this case, the progesterone levels in the fecal matter are clear. Our girl is definitely pregnant.”

  “Do you know how far along?”

  Jennifer pointed at one of the graphs which showed the beginning of the progesterone spike just over two weeks ago.

  “About seventeen days.”

  Juan studied the mouse, which was in a cage in the biosafety cabinet before them. “Well. Let’s see if you’re thirsty.”

  He grabbed the nearby canister of the spore-filled water and swirled it around. With an eyedropper, he extracted five milliliters of the water, and placed the liquid in the mouse’s water dispenser. Using tongs, he slid the dispenser across the lab bench and into the biosafety cabinet where the mice was isolated.

  “Since we’re so close to the end of the twenty-day gestation period, I think we need to start doing twelve-hour shifts. We should separate the two mice into adjacent cages and keep watch. Also—do we have any cages with wire mesh?”

  “I think I can find something, but why?”

  “Just a precaution. I know that newborn mice can’t walk at first, and even if they could, they probably couldn’t squeeze through the bars of this cage. But given what we’re dealing with, we can’t make any assumptions.”

  She nodded. “Understood, Dr. Gutierrez. I’ll go get two new cages right away.” She turned so that they were facing each other and with a worried tone asked, “Do you really think we’re going to have something dramatic happen?”

  Juan shrugged. “I don’t know. The results that Hendrickson gave me on the viriol’s genetic makeup is insane. I’ve got the computers running 24/7 trying to trace what the makers of the viriol have done. Let’s just be prepared for the worst. Constant monitoring through video surveillance. If we stick to the protocols, there should be no reason to worry.”

  “I understand.”

  As Jennifer left for the decontamination shower, Juan turned back toward the biosafety cabinet and watched the mouse drink the infected water.

  “What is that baby of yours going to turn into?”

  ###

  Bleary-eyed, Juan watched as the female mouse fastidiously groomed herself. He glanced at the wall clock and sighed. Five a.m. Still two more hours before Jennifer would come in to relieve him.

  A buzzer sounded, indicating someone out in the lab wanted
his attention. Juan pressed the pickup button on his pressure suit. “Day nineteen, and all is well,” he said drily.

  “Dr. Gutierrez, it’s John Hendrickson. I just came over to leave some reports for you, but I see that one of your workstations is beeping with a message saying ‘Match found.’ I figured you’d want to know.”

  “Oh, hey, John. I’m stuck in here for another two hours before Jennifer relieves me. Can you hit a key and tell me what the screen says?”

  “Uh, sure.” Hendrickson sounded uneasy. “If you’re sure I won’t mess anything up. I know you’ve been running these simulations for a week.”

  Juan looked at the concrete wall separating the men and sighed. “It’s okay. You can’t mess it up. Just hit any key.”

  “Okay…”

  Juan counted his heartbeats as he waited for the tech to say something. One… two… three…

  “Okay,” Hendrickson said. “I’m reading it to you word for word. ‘This annotation has four of nine introns confirmed by evidence of alignment. Ninety percent of the annotated sequence is confirmed by isoform expressed evidence. The total length of this annotation is 1,533 bases—’”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Juan said. “I’m sorry, did you hit page down when you cleared the alert? Never mind, hit page up and go to the summary portion at the top.”

  Another pause. “Okay, the summary says:

  “‘Peak pattern matches achieved across 1,965 annotations.

  “‘Matches began after 18,500 evolutionary cycles and progressed to the peak pattern match count at 201,023 evolutionary cycles.’”

  Hendrickson asked, “Is that what you were looking for?’”

  Juan did the math in his head. “Holy crap. Three million years?”

  “Doc?”

  Juan shook his head. “Never mind, John. Thanks for letting me know about the computer results. I’ll look at the reports as soon as I get out of here.”

  “Okay, doc, I’m headed home. My shift was supposed to be over hours ago. Good night.”

  The speaker went silent.

  Juan immediately dialed Agent Carrington.