Katrina Stone: The Death Row Complex Part 10

"In short, nothing," Teresa said. "I ran the sample against all of the suspects you gave me. There was no familial similarity with any of them, let alone exact matches. You mentioned that two of your potential suspects had not given up their DNA at the time you sent the samples, correct?"

"Correct."

"And have they now?"

"The court order came through and we've gotten DNA from one of them-Jason Fischer. But he's a man, obviously, and he has no family near San Diego. He doesn't seem too close to any of his family at all, so I doubt we'll get anything from his DNA. Even though he's a punk."

"Send me the sample anyway," Teresa said.

"Of course."

"What about the other suspect?"

"We still haven't located her. But I doubt she's our perp anyway."

"She? What color is her hair?"

"Brownish. And point taken. I'll find her." Gilman paused and then added, "I was really hoping for a hit on the lead suspects so I could wrap this up and go home."

"Sorry," Teresa said. "I guess it's not that easy this time." A moment later, she cleared her throat. "Uh, Roger, I have another question for you."

"What's that?"

"I hate to insult your intelligence here, but did you include a DNA sample from the intern that opened the card at the White House?"

Gilman paused. "You're kidding, right?"

Another pause. "Um, no. Are you?"

"You mean you haven't collected that sample?"

Teresa groaned. "Oh, G.o.d Roger! Why would I have collected that sample! You were supposed to be providing me with DNA. I was never under the impression that I was to collect any of it myself. Nor do I have time to!"

"Teresa, do you realize I'm in San Diego? Because I do realize that you are in D.C. I have collected the evidence here, you collect it in D.C. Make time!"

"No, I'm not in D.C. I'm outside of D.C. I don't just pop into the city on a daily basis. And I do not have time to be collecting evidence! Gilman, let me tell you something you don't seem to know. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service has had more than twenty thousand incidents to respond to since the anthrax mailings of 2001. FBI and CIA applicants have increased more than tenfold since then. But applicants to be federal postal inspectors-not so much. They don't call us the 'silent service' for no reason. So to put it mildly, we're grossly understaffed.

"I'll get the intern's hair. But you could have let me know! s.h.i.+t!"

"You can say that again!" Gilman said.

"All right," Teresa said, a bit more calmly. "I'll take care of this. I'll let you know when or if it tells me anything."

Gilman heard the click of Teresa hanging up, and then a dial tone. He sat on the bed a moment longer. The mistake had been both of theirs. Gilman desperately hoped that the intern's DNA would not match the strand of hair on the card. If it did, his efforts to collect samples from every suspect had been nothing but wasted time.

A moment later, Gilman realized that Teresa had never given him the good news.

It took Teresa less than forty minutes to obtain a hair sample from intern Amanda Dougherty. When she called Jack Callahan at the White House, Dougherty was working in the next room.

Amanda was both stunned and thrilled that her own genetic material was actually being examined in a real FBI case. She could not wait.

Jack advised Teresa that because she did not usually conduct business within the White House, it would be easier to bring Amanda to Teresa than to bring Teresa through White House security. Teresa informed Jack that there was no way he was bringing a complete stranger into the National Forensics Laboratory, not even a kid. They decided to meet halfway.

In the time it took Jack and Amanda to get out of the White House, through central Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and across the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge, Teresa was already waiting at the Iwo Jima monument when they arrived. When she saw Jack, she waved him over. "Thanks for meeting me," she said and turned to the girl. "I a.s.sume you are Amanda?"

"Yes, I'm Amanda," the girl said. She was grinning. "So what do you do, just pluck out one of my hairs?"

"Yep, that's it," Teresa said. "Easy, huh? But I need to pull it, not cut it. I need the root."

"I thought so," Amanda said, looking proud.

Teresa pulled a plastic bag out of her pocket and then reached toward Amanda to extract the hair sample.

"Ouch," Amanda said quietly when the hair was yanked out. "So, are you an FBI agent?"

Teresa smiled. "No, I'm a postal inspector."

"Oh," Amanda said with obvious disappointment.

"But I work with the FBI," Teresa said. Amanda looked unimpressed.

Teresa tried again. "We were the first federal law enforcement to use the Tommy Gun, ya know."

Blank stare.

Teresa turned instead to Jack. "This is why I'm understaffed."

DECEMBER 8, 2015.

12:35 P.M. EST.

The next day, Teresa Wood held a phone to her ear while typing furiously. When the call she had placed was answered, she ceased her data entry and gripped the phone with one hand while leaning backward in her chair.

"h.e.l.lo, this is Roger Gilman." As Gilman spoke the words in San Diego, Teresa simultaneously mouthed them in Dulles. His greeting never varied.

"Roger, Teresa Wood here," she said. "I have good news and bad news."

Gilman groaned. "Oh no, not again."

"Yeah, no kidding. The bad news is that it was the intern's hair on the greeting card. So we've wasted time that we could not afford to waste. There is no other possibility for DNA. We've come to a dead end on that front."

"That was our best chance at finding the perp!"

"Don't you think I know that?"

"What else?" Gilman demanded.

"Well, I forgot to mention this in the confusion over the intern's hair-but the ESDA picked up a trace of another writing. It's a good trace. But... I don't know what it means. I don't know if it will tell us anything."

Gilman sighed. "It better tell us something. Christmas is in seventeen days."

DECEMBER 14, 2015.

7:35 A.M. PST.

The ESDA trace told nothing. Eleven days before Christmas, Roger Gilman sat staring at the text in the office he now occupied adjacent to Katrina Stone's new laboratory. Three lines. That was all. And it was gibberish.

WHO1315.

DR1630.

AL1800.

Who? Dr? Dr. Who? What? And who is Al?

Gilman had been staring at the text for the better part of five days. He had read up on Dr. Who and decided that if the popular time-travel science fiction series had any connection at all to Operation Death Row, the nation was sunk. He had given the three numbers from the ESDA trace to top FBI code-breakers who had come back with nothing.

It was over.

Reluctantly, Gilman picked up the receiver of his office phone to call Bob Wachsman and recommend that the government prepare for the worst.

The prisoner was already waiting at the small table when his visitor sat down across from him. Her black headscarf and Muslim robe had been gone for more than a month, along with the Arab alias and bogus accent. Instead, the visitor's dark face was now obscured by long thick waves of black hair. A chunky sweater draped over a skirt that flowed almost to the floor. She's still ugly as f.u.c.k, the prisoner thought offhand.

The visitor scanned the room for watching guards and then reached into a fold of the skirt. "I can't keep this up," she whispered as she leaned in to hand the money to the prisoner. "I'm going broke."

"I don't really give a s.h.i.+t," the prisoner said. "You'll keep paying for as long as I say. But just to make you feel a little better"-he c.o.c.ked his head and a grin spread across his face-"I'm almost done with you."

DECEMBER 19, 2015.

9:00 A.M. PST.

Following a phone call from Roger Gilman to Bob Wachsman, the terror threat level was increased to red-the highest of the Homeland Security Advisory System. Official government briefings warned the public to remain hyper vigilant and to report any suspicious activity immediately. No specifics were provided.

But then, the cla.s.sified report detailing the anthrax outbreak at the prison was leaked to the press. Word of the genetically activated strain spread through the nation like wildfire, and the media developed a feverish interest in the sudden ma.s.sive expansion of an unknown anthrax research laboratory in San Diego.

Katrina Stone and her staff had been amply forewarned that there would be a federal presence in their laboratories for the duration of the project. What they were not prepared for was a full military invasion. Every entrance to the original building and the new facility across the street was now guarded by at least two armed soldiers. Only essential personnel were permitted access to the buildings. Construction workers, scientists, and professors were issued ID access badges and required to wear them visibly at all times. Random searches became the norm.

The building housing Katrina's lab at San Diego State University was still a construction site. Now, it was also a police state.

It was six days before Christmas when Katrina and Jason Fischer stood over the bodies of three dead monkeys. "Why, Jason?!" Katrina was practically crying. "Your compound was completely effective in mice! Why isn't it working in monkeys? What's the difference in the primates?"

Jason shook his head. "I'm not sure," he said. "It could be one of any number of things. Primates aren't mice-we've rediscovered this inconvenient fact a million times. But if the drug doesn't work in monkeys, I bet my life it's not going to work in humans."

"I know that, Jason!"

Jason raised a palm toward Katrina in a gesture for her to calm down. "I have an idea about what might be causing the discrepancy," he said. "But I need another few days to confirm or disprove it."

"Another few days is literally all you have," Katrina said.

DECEMBER 23, 2015.

8:23 A.M. PST.