Katrina Stone: The Death Row Complex Part 22

"Activators are rare. But yeah, in hundreds of thousands of molecules screened, we do find a few. Jason found one a while back that was exceptionally good. He brought the data to me and asked me what to do with it. I told him to just hang on to it."

"Why?" McMullan asked. "Why would you want to keep it, and more importantly, why did you try to hide it from us only to dig it out later?"

"I kept it because activators of an enzyme can be changed to convert them into an inhibitor. And I convinced Jason to help me hide the data because I knew that an activated strain of anthrax had been discovered. And we wanted to avoid this exact scenario-our lab being linked to that strain. And I dug it out to get rid of it when I didn't think we needed it anymore.

"There are monkeys in our BSL-3 facility being inoculated as we speak. Those monkeys will be given the drug that we've redesigned since Christmas. I'm confident that it will work this time-so confident, in fact, that I've already scaled up the production of it. We've got a s.h.i.+tload of this drug. It's the right one. I know it is."

McMullan smiled. Even with her career and life falling apart around her, she was still focused on the cure. But then his smile faded. "I want to believe you," he said. "But we still have a problem, Katrina. The DNA sequence is the same. The Death Row strain of anthrax doesn't just have an activator in it. It has your activator in it."

Part III: Con Science.

FEBRUARY 9, 2016.

7:30 A.M. PST.

Jason Fischer stepped into Katrina Stone's SDSU laboratory on the first day of the biotechnology convention. He had expected the lab to be abandoned, all of its normal occupants already en route to the convention. Instead, he was greeted by Joshua Attle, who was working frantically at a lab bench. "Hey, what are you still doing here?" Jason asked.

"I'm just getting an experiment going, and then I'm getting down to the convention," Josh said. "What are you doing here?"

"I've got to get something off Katrina's computer." Jason walked through the main laboratory s.p.a.ce and into Katrina's office. He jumped when he saw Roger Gilman sitting behind her desk. "Jesus Christ, you scared the s.h.i.+t out of me."

"A little jumpy, Dr. Fischer?" Gilman asked.

Jason ignored him. "Look, dude," he said. "I need to get on that computer. So you mind moving your pudgy a.s.s out of my way for a minute?"

"Actually, I do," said Gilman. "I'm taking this computer. Sorry." He feigned a sad face.

"I can get what I need off the Cloud, douchebag, so why don't you just make it easier and move?"

Gilman scoffed. "Fine." He stood from the desk and moved to a chair across the office. Then he changed the subject. "You and your advisor have a pretty close relations.h.i.+p, don't you, Jason?"

Jason sat down at the computer monitor and began browsing. "Um, yeah," he responded absently. "I guess so... we've been working together for years." He found the file of Katrina's presentation on her computer desktop and opened it, then scrolled quickly through the slides. Satisfied that the presentation was intact, he closed the file again and saved it to a portable memory stick, which he popped out and dropped into his pocket.

As he stood up, Jason was overwhelmed by a dizzy spell. He placed both hands onto the desk and stood quietly for a moment until it pa.s.sed. A fever was coming on. Again. When he was certain he could walk normally, he brushed past Roger Gilman and walked out into the hall.

Gilman followed. "You're looking a little unwell," he said loudly as he walked closely behind Jason out of the office and toward the door to exit the laboratory. "Another impending herpes outbreak? You gotta watch out for those groupies, you know." Gilman clicked his tongue and turned to Josh as he spoke, who had looked up at the goading remarks and was now gaping, slack-jawed, back at Gilman. Gilman grinned at him, and Josh shook his head and returned to his work.

Jason stopped walking and turned. He walked back toward Gilman and stood inches from his face, his chest puffed out, his jaw working, his fists coiled.

Josh slipped quietly out of the laboratory.

Gilman recoiled as if preparing for a blow.

Jason only smiled. "Have you figured out yet that Oscar Morales spent six months as a research a.s.sistant in biology?" he asked.

Gilman paled. "What? Where? When?"

Jason stepped backward. Still smiling, he ignored Gilman's question and turned to glance at his own reflection in the gla.s.s of one of the laboratory's cold cabinets. He reached into the pocket of his pants and found a small band, with which he tied back his shoulder-length hair, smoothing the sides and the top until he was satisfied with it. "How do I look?" he asked, batting his eyelashes dramatically.

The truth was that he looked strikingly handsome and unusually professional. In contrast to his normal attire of ragged blue jeans, black t-s.h.i.+rts with band logos, and combat boots, Jason was currently dressed in a suit and tie. His loafers looked as if they had never before been worn. The fever Jason was battling lent a hint of color to his normally vampire-pale cheeks. The result was a healthy-looking glow on a face that rarely saw daylight. With his jet-black hair clean, combed, and now tied back at the nape of his neck, Jason looked every bit the respectable scientist.

Gilman only stared.

"Huh?" Jason said then. "Oh, yeah, that! Morales. Research a.s.sistant. Biology. Yeah." Another long pause. "He was at UCLA in the lab of Qiang Zhao ten years ago. Even got himself co-auth.o.r.ed on a paper once. He was fourth author, but still-it was him! His job was to make solutions and reagents, clean gla.s.sware, do literature searches for people, maintain cell lines, that sort of thing. He would have learned how to sustain a culture of bacteria, and he would have learned sterile technique. And those are the exact skills one would need to contain and distribute anthrax.

"But then I guess he decided that dealing drugs was a better way to make money. And frankly, he's right. This career pays for s.h.i.+t. Morales must be smarter than I am."

Gilman had lost his s.p.u.n.k. "How do you know all that?" he asked miserably.

"Because one of us is actually a competent investigator. And let me give you another hint, Gilman. It's not you." Jason turned on the heels of his polished loafers and trotted cheerfully out of the lab.

10:42 A.M. EST.

On the other side of the country, Teresa Wood was preparing an ESDA a.n.a.lysis. This time, the experiment would be performed on two greeting cards instead of one.

With gloved hands, she pulled both cards from their respective sealed envelopes and placed them onto the vacuum. She laid a clear, thin film over each card and watched the vacuum suck it down. She held the corona wire over each card independently to deposit the appropriate negative charge to its surface. And in the same order, to maintain her time frame, she filled the indentations with the tiny, toner-covered gla.s.s beads. The hand-written text intensified. And then, the traces became visible.

The procedure was one Teresa had performed a thousand times. She was always pleased to find a hidden indentation of some kind in a piece of mail. Usually, it was just a fragment of something. The circle of a keychain, adjacent to a partial indentation from a key itself. A dent from a piece of jewelry or a b.u.t.ton from an article of clothing. A change in depth or pressure in a line of text, indicating that the doc.u.ment had been altered after its initial generation. When an ESDA trace produced a new writing, the task was even more cryptic, and even more rewarding to solve. Rarely were more than a few words revealed-a fragment of text copied onto another piece of paper over the questioned doc.u.ment.

This time, Teresa could barely process the information that came to light as each tiny bead occupied its own cavity in the two greeting cards. As the trace became increasingly visible, Teresa's breath caught in her throat and she began to s.h.i.+ver. It was unlike anything she had ever seen before in an ESDA.

One card was devoid of trace indentations. The other contained an entirely new text. The writing was in English. It was as clear as the original text on the surface. It had obviously been etched deliberately for the ESDA trace to reveal. And it was addressed to Teresa by name.

7:58 A.M. PST.

The crowd that greeted Jason Fischer in downtown San Diego was wildly larger than he had imagined it would be. And it was hostile. Even though the convention center was still several blocks away, clas.h.i.+ng lines of biotechnology supporters and protesters stretched down 4th Avenue and spilled into the horizon of Horton Plaza to the right of Jason's ancient, struggling car. d.a.m.n, I wish my band could draw like this, Jason thought as he turned left onto 4th Avenue off of F Street.

Jason stopped at a red light and offered a distracted middle finger to a college-aged group dressed as monarch b.u.t.terflies and bearing signs that read "Biotech is Murder" and "Kill the NIH." As he did, one of the protestors leaped onto the hood of his car. It occurred to the young scientist that the gradually unraveling Darwin fish on his b.u.mper would probably not be very popular among some here.

"You people are destroying the earth!" the man on the winds.h.i.+eld screamed, and a fine spray of spittle splattered from his mouth onto the gla.s.s directly in front of Jason. Without breaking the man's rabid gaze, Jason smiled sweetly and turned on his winds.h.i.+eld wipers, smearing dirt and saliva onto his attacker's waiting hand, which was promptly retracted.

Before Jason could decide what to do about the angry tree-hugger beating at his winds.h.i.+eld, a peace officer in full SWAT attire parted the human wall lining the street and jerked the youngster by the s.h.i.+rt collar. The pair pulled free of Jason's car just as the light turned green, and Jason crept into the grid-locked intersection. He watched as the cop gripped the protestor by the nape of the neck and roughly pulled him away from the crowd.

Inching forward, Jason turned right onto Market Street off of 4th Avenue, and the pedestrian traffic thickened. As he turned left onto Front Street and again onto Harbor Drive, it became asphyxiating. Harbor Drive ran parallel to the San Diego Bay. And over the bay hovered the San Diego Convention Center.

As Jason pulled parallel to the complex, his mouth ran dry and he sucked air in abruptly. The reflex launched a short but violent coughing fit, and the fever that Jason had been fighting all morning felt as if it had intensified instantaneously. It had just become clear that the public was, indeed, aware of Katrina Stone's arrest.

No less than a thousand of the protestors lining Harbor Drive were dressed identically, in black-and-white-striped "prisoner" Halloween costumes. Behind them, a long banner stretching down Harbor Drive read "This is the Ethics of Science." Several of the individuals held smaller signs with a simpler message: "Stone Stone."

The protestors were feverishly chanting, and out of morbid curiosity, Jason cracked his window in order to make out the words. "Eye for eye! Bone for bone! Execute Katrina Stone!"

Interspersed among the sea of black and white stripes were representatives from every television network Jason had ever heard of. As he continued his slow progress down the street in unison with the other cars, he could catch fragments of the interviews that were being conducted with bystanders.

"... serves her right! These scientists think they're G.o.d... "

"... nothing short of a self-righteous, over-educated, homegrown terrorist!"

"I say she's a hero!"

Jason slammed on his brakes when he heard the surprising last statement. He rolled his window the rest of the way down and then engaged his parking brake. Then he shoved his head out the window, scanning the crowd to look for the speaker.

"How many times have we all wanted to do the same thing?" the voice continued, and Jason located a tall, good-looking young man speaking into a microphone with a large square announcing "News 10" on its handle. A cameraman faithfully recorded.

"I say it's about time the scientists stopped doing research on helpless, innocent animals, and started letting convicted murderers and rapists finally make a positive contribution to society," the boy continued. "It's the ideal justice. The killers on death row have had their chance at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They chose to give up that chance when they chose to commit whatever hideous crime landed them on death row. There are too many of them, and they're living like kings on our money.

"Did you know that prison inmates are not allowed generic prescriptions? Brand name only. Does your HMO have that rule? I didn't think so. It's high time our death row prisoners earn those prescriptions and help science to develop the drugs that benefit them. Let's stop paying those people to avoid the death sentence that has already been handed down to them. Let's instead use that death sentence to free the innocent animals."

The shocked reporter stammered a bit as he said, "thank-thank you very much for that, uh, interesting, piece of insight, Mr... "

"Stein," the boy said calmly. "Kevin Stein."

Beside him, a pet.i.te girl with auburn hair stood beaming, her arm laced through his. Her deep maroon suit contrasted sharply with the wall of black and white behind her. Jason recognized the suit; it was one Katrina had worn to several conferences in the past. And there was no mistaking the relation between this girl and Jason's postdoctoral advisor.

"And you, miss?" the reporter asked, pressing the microphone toward the girl's small chin.

"Alexis Stone," she said, smiling. "Dr. Katrina Stone is my mother."

The revelation turned other heads in her direction and in a quick commotion, additional microphones were thrust forward to join that of the 10 News reporter. Several questions were blurted out at once at the girl.

"Is your mother guilty?"

"How much do you know about Dr. Stone's illegal activities?"

"What do you think of your mother's decision to disregard the law and conduct scientific research according to her own personal code of ethics?"

"Or lack thereof?"

The cars behind Jason's Honda Accord had begun to honk loudly, but he paid them no attention as he strained to lean forward in antic.i.p.ation. Katrina's smile. Katrina's eyes. Clearly, Katrina's intelligence. All shone through as she glanced patiently from one reporter to the next. She had them in the palm of her hand, and she knew it. They would wait all night to hear what Katrina's daughter had to say.

"I don't know if she did it or not," Alexis finally said, and a collective, frustrated sigh resounded from the other side of the cameras. "But I hope she did."

The sighs changed to gasps.

"All my life," she explained, "I have considered my mother a ma.s.s murderer. Hundreds-thousands-of mice, rats, and even monkeys have been tortured and killed to further her work and the work of other scientists. They have excused this practice by swearing that there was no other way.

"If my mother did what she is currently being charged for, then I couldn't be prouder. Because she found another way, and she had the guts to show it to the rest of the world regardless of what it would do to her own career. If she did this, she martyred herself for the world's most n.o.ble cause. I just hope the scientific and legal communities will follow her lead."

"And what if she didn't do it?" shouted a reporter.

The smile on Lexi's face morphed into a cynical smirk. "Well, then, she's just an animal killer without any justifiable cause."

Alexis looked to her boyfriend, and he nodded his approval. The interviewers continued to shout questions, but Kevin waved them away. He wrapped an arm protectively around Alexis. It was clear that he considered the interview over for the both of them.

Jason rolled up his window and disengaged his emergency brake, and then rolled forward.

11:02 A.M. EST.

For the first time ever, Teresa felt stifled and claustrophobic in her office at the United States Postal Inspection Service national headquarters. And for the first time that the bra.s.sy Navy veteran could recall, she was trembling in terror as she examined the printout in front of her.

An identical visual was on the monitor of Teresa's computer, scanned from the ESDA trace she had just performed in the lab. Just as the message had, in fact, predicted, Teresa was holding a phone to her ear, desperately wis.h.i.+ng for someone to pick up at the other end.

The handwritten text was tiny. It completely covered both inner surfaces of a folded greeting card. Even so, the message barely fit. The Doctor had a great deal to say.

Shame on you, Teresa, for you have failed. The convention has begun, and sadly, I must explain myself. From my vantage point within Operation Death Row, I see clearly that my message might never be deciphered. And your time for deciphering it has expired.

As you read this, thousands at the convention collaborate for a common cause. These efforts will make them thirsty, and they will drink water to quench that thirst. Later, they will realize that they are the chosen prophets. They will writhe and moan and eventually understand. They will see the short-sightedness of their actions. They will beg forgiveness. When this dirty business has run its course, and I have been martyred for a cause you can never appreciate any other way, you will thank me. Because the path of our society, so wrongly paved, will finally be corrected.

I have given you more than sufficient time. As I had predicted, you wasted that time. Fascinating that none of you could understand the Doctor.

Very shortly, McMullan and Gilman will receive frantic phone calls from you, Teresa. They will race to the convention center. Like you, they have already failed. You all share a common fatal flaw. You do not speak my language. Shame on you. The Doctor