Katrina Stone: The Death Row Complex Part 24

Instead, he jerked toward her, eyes blazing. "I think you're right!" he yelled.

"Sean, that's insane," Katrina said. "I was kidding."

"Yeah, but you don't know the whole story! This is the reason for all the questions I was asking you earlier. You didn't answer the real question, but then again, I didn't exactly ask it." He slammed on the emergency brake and turned in his bucket seat to look Katrina directly in the eye. Then he took both of her wrists into his hand to monitor her pulse as he spoke.

"Katrina, I want to know the truth. Did you, or did you not, plagiarize the grant application of James Johnson? And before you answer, remember I'm an FBI agent. I know liars. Even good ones."

Katrina looked shocked. "No!" she said. "What are you talking about?"

"James Johnson is an NIH funded anthrax researcher, as you know. He's also one of the FBI infectious disease specialists on this case. Guofu Wong, the other one, says that Johnson has accused you of plagiarizing his research for your own work. Moreover, Johnson is very old-school. He's very much against the technology that you are bringing to the forefront. Wong is in favor of it. He wanted to fund your application a year ago, the one that was rejected by the NIH. In fact, it was rejected largely because of Johnson's influence on the reviewing committee.

"The message from the Doctor says that our society is 'short-sighted.' That we are heading down the wrong path. That these attacks are the only way for us to realize this, and that he-the Doctor himself-will be a martyr for this cause.

"I think that Johnson is responsible for these attacks. I think he poisoned those prisoners as a test run, and I think he's poisoning the scientists at the convention today to punish modern biotechnology as an inst.i.tution and to lead 'us,' society, down what he considers the 'right path'-that path being his way, the old-school way. I think he set you up as a scapegoat to punish you for plagiarizing his work, because you represent the modern. And I think the attacks on you by Chuck Morales were also his doing.

"And yes, I think you're innocent. But do me a favor, Katrina, and help me prove it. Because otherwise, to be honest, I'm just as f.u.c.ked as you are."

Katrina listened to McMullan's hypothesis, taking in each statement in sequence. He was right. It all made sense. Every piece of the puzzle fit with Johnson. She suddenly felt carsick.

She rolled down the sedan's pa.s.senger window, and the car was flooded with screaming from the chaos in the street. As her eyes scanned the crowd, she remembered Alexis and began scanning for her. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. A short needle. She might never find her here.

"Where are Johnson and Wong now?" she asked weakly.

"Actually," McMullan said, as if realizing it for the first time, "they're here. Both of them registered months ago to attend the convention."

9:01 A.M. PST.

As her new friend led her past the convention attendant and into the main foyer, Alexis nonchalantly asked, "So who are you?"

"I'm a friend of your mother's," he said with a smile. "Glad you could join us today. I'm sure she'll be happy to have your support."

Alexis looked up into his face. He was smiling kindly. He has no idea, she thought.

"Well, thank you for getting me in," she said. "I'll have to get my badge from my mom as soon as I hit the ladies' room."

"This way," he led, pointing to a sign marking the nearest restroom. "I think I'll head to the little boys' room myself."

As she reached for the door to the women's room, and the stranger started into the men's room, Alexis thanked him again and half-waved. Once inside, she let the door swing shut behind her and approached the nearest stall.

As she pushed the stall door open and turned around to close it behind her, Alexis barely had time to process the blurred image in the bathroom mirror.

A staccato scream escaped her throat, and then he was on top of her.

9:02 A.M. PST.

In a no-contact visiting area of San Quentin State Correctional Facility, an FBI agent whom Oscar Morales had just met opened the door behind him. Oscar suddenly felt weak and sick when a freakish remnant of a human being shuffled into the room.

Chuck's face was halfway covered with tattered gauze bandages caked with dried blood. Visions of the areas still exposed would haunt his brother for the rest of his life.

The skin that had been smooth and brown was now a patchwork of various blacks and reds. It was thick and hard and just beginning to twist into the creased, plastic sh.e.l.l of the severely burned. Chuck's single exposed eye cavity was empty; the eye had been seared inward, and remnants of vitreous humor were glued within the cavity in a molten ma.s.s. It looked like a charred egg white.

When the FBI agent reached forward and guided Chuck into the room by one elbow, Oscar realized that his brother would require such a.s.sistance forever. Chuck was blind.

In sharp contrast to his disfigured face, Chuck's body was relatively intact. A noteworthy exception was a walking cast on one leg that extended from the foot upward to Chuck's knee. With one hand, Chuck carefully maneuvered a cane, repositioning it with each slow step to minimize the weight endured by the leg that had been kicked hard enough by a woman in a lab to fracture the tibia.

Gently, almost tenderly, the FBI agent helped Chuck to ease into the chair across from Oscar. At close range, Oscar could see that it was a struggle for Chuck to breathe through nostrils that were melted shut and a mouth that was barely recognizable. The sickly, labored rhythm was the only sound in the room until Chuck spoke to his brother.

With considerable effort, he whispered, "You're dead."

Roger Gilman pulled up a chair next to the now-less-attractive twin and watched the exchange between the brothers with amused interest. Go ahead, string each other up, he thought.

Chuck turned to Gilman and motioned as if he was writing, and Gilman realized that speaking was too difficult for him. "You want something to write with?" he asked. "Sure, let's see here... " He rifled through his briefcase and found a pen and his own notepad, half filled with messages to himself. He found a section of blank pages and tore a few of them out. He placed the paper and pen on the small table in front of Chuck.

"OSCARS A f.u.c.kIN LIAR," Chuck wrote in large block lettering, and then picked up the page and slammed it up against the chain link divider for his brother to see.

"Hermanito," Oscar said quietly. "I can't believe what that b.i.t.c.h did to you. She'll pay for this if it's the last thing I do."

But Chuck did not even answer. Instead, he leaned forward and scribbled frantically while the two other men patiently waited. When he was finished, he groped to his side until he located Roger Gilman, and then shoved the page toward him. When Gilman took the page, Chuck stood, leaning heavily on his cane, and turned to walk back in the direction he had come. He found the wall, felt alongside it for the door, and left the room without another gesture in the direction of his brother.

Gilman watched him go, and then looked down at the page in his hands. It read: "I wasnt even ever here b4 the attak. Oscar planed it with the b.i.t.c.h. He called me later. He paid me to kill her. Chek the vidios. I wasnt here."

Gilman looked up from the note and smiled through the barrier at Oscar.

"Your brother says San Quentin surveillance will clear this whole thing up," he said casually.

9:04 A.M. PST.

In a private room at the San Diego Convention Center, two scientists were engaged in a heated argument. One of them was young Jason Fischer. The other was the red-faced chair of the first session of the biotechnology convention.

"Just who do you think you are, you narcissistic, arrogant a.s.s!" Jason was saying. "You can't forbid me to speak! You're a mediator! You're not a policeman and you're not G.o.d or even the pope, and you have no more authority here than my mother."

"Look, son," said the chair with aggravation. "I arrived here this morning with a predetermined agenda. On that agenda was an introduction for the keynote speaker. The keynote speaker was Katrina Stone.

"I have a lovely-highly complimentary, I must say-breakdown of her scientific career committed to memory, waiting patiently for me to relay it to the audience. Nowhere in the woman's curriculum vitae does it say that she can't come to the podium because she's locked up in the slammer. To introduce another scientist on her behalf at this moment is impossible. It would turn this entire event into a bigger freak show than it already is, and I won't have a mockery made of this convention. Not to mention that you, Dr. Fischer, will be crucified. You should thank me for putting my foot down."

"Thank you?!" Jason shouted incredulously. "Are you listening to yourself, you self-righteous f.u.c.k? You're not doing me any favors-I have to speak. It's the only chance I have to defend myself-and Katrina-and to point out the fact that she has not been convicted of anything, since some of you seem to have already lost sight of that.

"If Katrina simply shrinks away apologetically, she might as well be pleading guilty to the absolutely ludicrous charges against her. Her career will be ruined. My career will be ruined as well, and the careers of several other bright young scientists under her training. You are not only stopping the careers of these young scientists, you are also damaging the future of science itself by taking several of its promising rising stars out of the equation."

"Now who is being arrogant?" asked the chair. "Young man, legitimate science has been communicated in this forum among legitimate scientists since before you or your twelve-year-old colleagues were even born. And when today is finally over, this tradition will continue without any of you.

"No, sir, I think the best course of action is to simply announce Dr. Stone's cancellation due to personal reasons and leave it at that. My concern here is damage control-not to your career, I'm sorry to say, but to this convention and to the reputations of the scientists in it who are not felons. You can plead your case in front of a court of law like everybody else. That's the end of it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm already ten minutes late, and the natives are getting restless."

The older man turned and stepped out of the room, slamming the door behind him. After he was gone, Jason let out an exasperated sigh. Then he reached up to wipe a fresh outpouring of sweat from his brow.

Out in the hallway, the session chair stopped for a moment to take a few deep breaths. Afterward, he felt calmer.

He smoothed his suit and stole a glance at his reflection in a large, blue gla.s.s flowerpot decorating the hallway. He straightened his tie. Satisfied with his appearance, he stepped through another door and onto the stage of an auditorium, where tens of thousands of scientists, vendors, investors, and members of the press were rapidly growing impatient.

"I'm sorry for the delay," the chair said when he reached the podium. "We've obviously had a bit of excitement this morning, but I would like to urge us all to continue with the convention as professionals. There is a great deal of equally exciting science to be discussed over the next five days."

The chair paused briefly, and someone in the audience began to applaud. As if following a cue, the auditorium erupted with a lengthy standing ovation.

The chair smiled gratefully. He could feel himself reddening all over again as he waited for the applause to die down, but this time, he didn't mind that he was blus.h.i.+ng. "Thank you," he finally said. "Welcome to the International Biotechnology Convention and Exhibition. I'm James Johnson, and I'm honored to be chairing this morning's first session."

9:08 A.M. PST.

Sean McMullan and Katrina Stone were arguing as McMullan's black sedan crawled through the mobbed streets of downtown San Diego.

"We can't just go in there and raise a big stink," Katrina said. "First of all, these people are too logical-trust me. If I was in there and someone came in and said there was a biological terror attack on the convention, I'd do anything but take his word for it. I'd run through every possibility of how the alleged attacker could or could not have done such a thing, weigh the different scenarios to decide which I thought was the most likely, and then decide for myself. And if Ockham's razor told me it was probably a hoax, then I'd sit back down and listen to the next lecture without giving it another thought.

"And anyway, if they did believe you, they'd kill each other stampeding out of here, you'd never catch who did it, and then they'd all be gone before we can do anything about it. I guarantee you that they've already been drinking the water."

"Well, what do you want to do, then?" McMullan asked. "And what happens when some of these people leave for lunch and then don't come back afterward. Does that ever happen?"

"Actually," she conceded, "you're right. We are all p.r.o.ne to playing hooky during sessions that are less relevant to us. And the weather this week is mighty nice, and a lot of the attendees are from out of town."

"What do you suggest then? That we jog over to Sea World and the zoo and round them all up when this turns out to be for real?"

"First of all, the precedent suggests that it will not be for real. We've already been duped by this guy once. Nothing happened on Christmas. I'd say it's equally likely that nothing will happen today, and when it doesn't, then we've made the FBI and the scientific community look like a bunch of total idiots. So why don't we proceed with caution and decide how likely it is that the Doctor could have done anything. My experience at conferences is that the water comes in sealed plastic bottles, every time.

"So let's check it out and play it by ear, OK? There is so much press around here that we will have no trouble at all getting the word out if there really is cause for panic. And at that time, if it comes to that, we can make an informed announcement over the air along with explicit instructions for what people are to do, so there won't end up being a rumor mill that will get people killed. It's much better that way."

"OK, I'll go along with that. But if I think for a moment that all of these people are in real danger, I'm blowing the whistle. And if any of these Ockham's Razor Blade people don't believe me-well, I guess there's nothing I can do about that. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him believe that it's poisonous."

McMullan's black sedan turned off of Front Street onto Harbor Drive as he approached the San Diego Convention Center. "Get down!" he shouted, and Katrina obliged.

She had seen it as well. The sea of black and white clad protestors.

"Oh my G.o.d!" she exclaimed as she dropped as low in her seat as she could manage. "Well, now what?"

"I don't know. I a.s.sume that everyone inside will know your face?"

"Not everyone, but too many of them. I can't go in there. Once one person recognizes me the jig will be up, and I'll be swarmed. And what we need right now is to blend in. d.a.m.n it!"

"Well, I have to go in," McMullan said. "Someone needs to scope out the situation with the water. I haven't really come up with a plan after that, and to be honest, any vague plan I had so far included your being there to tell me what to do."

"You'll be in the right place to ask your questions," she said sarcastically. Poking her head between the two bucket seats, Katrina scanned the back seat of McMullan's sedan until she saw his gym bag.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Ugh, don't you ever wash this stuff?" she asked as she pulled out a musty sweats.h.i.+rt and baseball cap.

"Well now I will," he said.

Katrina pulled the sweats.h.i.+rt over her head and knotted the excessive length at her waist. Beneath it, the light blue pants of her prison uniform resembled hospital scrubs or, potentially, regular pants to a person not paying attention. She tucked her hair under the baseball cap and pulled it low over her forehead.

"Your cell phone won't work in the convention center," she said, "but keep it on and keep stepping outside to check for messages from me. Call me if you need to ask questions about anthrax-but I don't know what to tell you about crowd control in emergency situations, so you're going to have to play that one out by yourself."

"Where are you going?" he asked as she opened the door and stepped out of the car.

"To find my daughter."

9:10 A.M. PST.

Katrina's daughter was only a hundred feet away. She was being led by the arm by a pleasant-faced man who smiled and nodded at people they pa.s.sed. A man who had a concealed gun pointed at her back. A man who, moments before, had a.s.saulted her in the ladies' room and injected something into Alexis' right arm.

Now, she winced as the man's grip on the same arm tightened and the gun was forced deeper into her back. They stepped through the main entrance of the convention center and onto Harbor Drive. The San Diego sunlight was blinding, and without thinking, Lexi moved her hand to reach for her sungla.s.ses.