Katrina Stone: The Death Row Complex Part 29

Katrina turned onto Jason's street and approached his apartment. A familiar beat-up car came into view, parked halfway onto the curb next to the apartment building. "That's Jason's car," she said. "He's home."

Wordlessly, the pair climbed the stairs to Jason's apartment. McMullan rapped on the door. They waited in silence for a moment, but there was no answer. McMullan knocked again, even harder than before. "Come on Jason," he said. "Let's not make this harder than it has to be."

Nothing.

"Jason, we just want to talk to you," Katrina shouted. "We know how things look, but I still can't believe you could have done this. So open up!" Still nothing.

Katrina exchanged a glance with McMullan and stepped back reluctantly. In one quick motion, McMullan fired a practiced foot forward to connect with the door. There was a brief cracking sound, and the door swung open.

Jason was not in sight.

McMullan drew his pistol as he stepped forward into the living room, and Katrina followed. Slowly, they stepped through the kitchen and toward the bedroom. At its closed door, Katrina looked toward McMullan, and their eyes locked. He nodded gently, and Katrina reached forward and opened the door. And there, on the bed, was Jason.

The frozen expression of agony on Jason's face was the same one that had brought Sean McMullan into Operation Death Row. The same expression that had been on the faces of sixty-eight condemned inmates at San Quentin. The cause of death was obvious from the characteristic black lesions covering Jason's body, the lesions for which anthrax-from the Greek for coal-had been named.

11:54 A.M. PST.

Back behind the wheel of Josh's car, Katrina wiped a tear-stained cheek and sighed before starting the ancient engine again. But then she paused. She had no idea where to go. The discovery of Jason's poisoned body destroyed what she had thought was the last piece of the puzzle.

From the pa.s.senger seat, McMullan interrupted her thoughts. "Does Jason speak Arabic?"

"Good point," Katrina said. "Not on your life."

"Then someone else was involved with this."

Katrina thought for a moment and then said, "Let me see the CD again." McMullan produced it from his back pocket, and Katrina removed the sleeve from the jewel case. She flipped through until she found the credits, and began scanning through.

Jason had personally thanked several people. The only names Katrina recognized were James Watson and Francis Crick. None of the people he acknowledged had Middle Eastern names.

She bypa.s.sed the acknowledgements from other band members and found another section of the credits. And a line jumped out at her immediately. "Produced by Ziad Qattan at JDR studios, 4859 Prospect Ave., Santee, California." Katrina pointed to the name.

"Let's go," McMullan said.

"It's only two blocks away," Katrina said and engaged the gear s.h.i.+ft of Josh's car.

Three minutes later, Katrina and McMullan knew they had found the right place. The crash of live heavy metal descended upon them even as they were still pulling into the parking lot. Katrina screeched into a parking s.p.a.ce, and they jumped from the car. Following the sound, they climbed a staircase and opened a door.

The music they had heard was a full band, but only one young man was in the room. He was wearing headphones and playing a guitar. A microphone was inches from the speaker of his guitar cabinet. The guitarist stopped playing when Katrina and McMullan entered the room. The guitar dropped out of the mix, but the remaining music continued playing.

The guitarist shot Katrina and McMullan a look of rage. "G.o.d d.a.m.n it!" he shouted. "You totally ruined a f.u.c.king awesome take on one of my solos!"

A moment later, the remaining music stopped as well, and a voice came over a loudspeaker. "What happened, Brian? I thought that was a good take."

"Some f.u.c.k-heads walked in," the guitarist shouted.

A door opened from within the studio, and a thin man entered the room. His tattooed skin was dark, but not black. He might have been Middle Eastern. "What's the problem?" he asked.

"Are you Ziad Qattan?" McMullan asked.

"Yeah, who wants to know?" There was no accent.

"Agent Sean McMullan, FBI," McMullan said and produced his badge. "And I have some questions for you." McMullan turned to the guitarist. "Sorry, but your recording session is over. Scram."

When the guitarist was gone, McMullan pointed to the CD sleeve. "Did you write these lyrics, the ones in Arabic?"

"Oh s.h.i.+t," Qattan said. "I knew something like this was going to happen. I told Jason it was a bad idea. At the time, we were both drunk, and he thought it would be hilarious. I went along with it."

Katrina looked wide-eyed at McMullan. Was this a confession?

"Something like what?" McMullan pried.

"You jacka.s.ses think I'm a terrorist because we wrote a song and I'm an Arab. Racial profiling at its finest. Freedom of speech at its lowest. G.o.d bless America."

"But you wrote these?" Katrina reiterated.

"Yeah, and I found out later that a bunch of the Arabic wasn't even right. Look, I barely even speak Arabic. My parents are Palestinian. But we're not terrorists. We're not even Muslim. We are Catholic-my parents come from Bethlehem-you know, the birthplace of Jesus Christ? I grew up here. I'm American. And I don't even pay attention to politics.

"Jason and his band wrote that song-in English. They thought it was a cool idea to write a song about terrorism from the point of view of the terrorist. In the metal world, that is cool. It's bad a.s.s, actually.

"Then when we were recording it, Jason got the idea to put the lyrics in Arabic on the CD case. All I did was translate them-badly. That's it. You can confirm with Jason and his entire band that I had nothing to do with the writing of that song. And his whole band is American."

There would be no confirming of anything with Jason, but Katrina was inclined to believe Qattan. She and McMullan looked again at the CD case. Like Jason Fischer's, the names of the other band members were clearly of European descent. For a moment, McMullan looked toward her, as if asking her opinion on what to do next. Then he said to Qattan, "Don't leave town," and he turned and walked out of the studio.

Katrina followed McMullan as he walked briskly toward Josh Attle's car for the third time. To her surprise, McMullan approached the driver's seat. "Give me the keys," he said. "I'm driving."

Katrina raised one eyebrow in his direction.

"Look Katrina," McMullan said. "It's not a chauvinistic thing. We're in the middle of B.F.E. and I have training in high-speed driving. We're obviously going on some kind of wild goose chase today. So give me the keys."

Katrina handed them over and slid into the pa.s.senger seat of the car.

12:16 P.M. PST.

McMullan could barely fit behind the driver's seat, which Katrina had pulled all the way forward. He groped beneath the seat until he found the lever to adjust it. He pulled the lever. The seat inched backward, but only slightly. Something was blocking it.

McMullan leaned forward as far as his contorted position would allow and reached under the seat. He felt something beneath it. It was both soft and wiry. He groped around and yanked at the object from various angles. It did not budge. "Anyone who listened to the CD could have written the card and sent it to the White House," he said, "but they would also have to know about anthrax."

"I don't think Jason's band has that many fans," Katrina said, "but you're right. So I guess now we're looking for someone who has reason to frame Jason?"

"Yeah, that narrows it down. Sounds to me like half the world is p.i.s.sed off at him."

"True," Katrina said. "But it has to be someone with connections to science, and it has to be someone who knows of my activators. Aside from that, remember: every indication suggests it was a woman who did all this. It's not me. So if we're still looking at members of my lab, then that leaves Li and Oxana. Maybe we should start with them."

With a final jerk on the seat, the obstruction beneath it pulled away. The seat slid rapidly backward, finally allowing s.p.a.ce for McMullan's legs. He reached beneath one more time and pulled out the object that had been the source of his troubles. And in unison, McMullan and Katrina gasped. In McMullan's hand was a long, thick, black, tangled wig.

12:17 P.M. PST.

Outside the North Life Sciences Building at San Diego State University, Joshua Attle was pacing. The taxi was taking forever. San Diego taxis suck, Josh thought to himself. He should never have agreed to this. But what could he do? The FBI agent could have just taken his car anyway. And then he'd look suspicious.

Josh took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. It would be OK. Katrina and the agent had found the CD. As long as they didn't find the wig in his car, everything would still be OK. They wouldn't find it. It was under the seat. They had no reason to look there.

And Jason would be mum on the subject. Josh had seen to that the previous day with a dash of scarcely visible powder sprinkled onto the gla.s.s of one of Jason's test tubes.

Can't you see what I go through for you? Josh thought. But he did not mind-it was a labor of love.

We have a whole new life in front of us now, both of us. A life that is full of promise. You have suffered enough. You have struggled enough. You won't have to struggle anymore. I've taken care of it. I've taken care of you.

His graduation was eminent. After that, she would no longer be his advisor. He would no longer be her subordinate. There would be no reason for them not to be together.

You want it too, he thought. I can feel it in the way you look at me. The way you smile at me. When he is not around, anyway. When he is around, you look at him instead. He might have more experience, but I have more pa.s.sion. I am learning. And I know you better than he does, Katrina. He'll never understand you the way I do.

Especially now. Josh smiled. Jason was finally out of the way.

The Doctor was terrifying, but he had been a blessing in disguise. It was fate that the Doctor had overheard Jason-that arrogant son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h-bragging about the activators to a table full of students at a meeting in Keystone all those months ago. It was fate that the Doctor had approached Josh. It was fate that Josh's youthful face had been so easy to disguise. And it was fate that Jason's CD had provided such an easy scapegoat. That's karma, Jason.

And the only people to die-except for Jason, of course-would be a handful of killers on death row. Men who deserved to die. Men who were going to die anyway. Men like the b.a.s.t.a.r.d who had murdered Katrina's son, and left the sadness in her eyes forever, along with the sparkling blue Josh loved so dearly.

But that was over now. It was time to move on. "f.u.c.k the taxi," Josh finally said under his breath and decided to take the Trolley instead.

As Josh gathered his belongings and began walking toward the Trolley stop, an authoritative voice behind him shouted. "Freeze!"

A sudden panic consumed Josh as he turned toward the sound. And suddenly, he was staring down the barrel of a pistol. At the other end of it was Roger Gilman. Josh looked into Gilman's eye and turned to run.

12:20 P.M. PST.

The engine of Josh Attle's faded red Honda Civic groaned as it climbed the steep hill leading to the North Life Sciences building at San Diego State University. When it reached the top, McMullan jerked the wheel to screech into one of the temporary parking s.p.a.ces in front of the building. He quickly shut off the engine, and he and Katrina leaped from their seats.

They ran toward the entrance of the building. But then, just shy of the revolving gla.s.s door, Katrina quickly stopped.

There he was. A dozen or so yards away, Josh looked like he was running for his life. As McMullan ceased his dash toward the revolving door, a popping sound rang out and Josh fell to the pavement. Katrina and McMullan both changed direction and ran toward the spot where he had fallen.

Roger Gilman was there as well.

The bullet had strategically hit Josh in the lower leg. He writhed on the ground in pain, a maroon spot darkening his pant leg. Katrina knelt to tend to the leg, putting pressure over the wound. When she looked up, Roger Gilman's gun was aimed at her.

"He's the one!" Katrina shouted quickly. "He did it!"

"I know," Gilman said. "But what about you?"

"She had nothing to do with it," McMullan said rapidly. "We can prove it."

For a moment, Gilman glared intently at McMullan and remained still. Then, he took his aim off of Katrina and directed it at his partner. "Why isn't she in jail, McMullan?"

"Because I needed her help," McMullan said, instinctively raising his hands to cooperate with his crazed partner. "I needed her help to stop a biological terror attack at the biotechnology convention. And if you let us finish this, we might still be able to."

Slowly, Gilman lowered his gun and looked back toward Katrina.

She was still applying pressure to Josh's leg. "You killed Jason!" she accused. "And now hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent victims have been infected... including my daughter!"

Now, the pain on Josh's face was more than physical. "Katrina, I'm sorry!" he tried to explain. "I did it for you! For us! Jason had to die or he would have ruined it! And we needed to be free of him anyway! Can't you see that? But I don't know anything about an attack at the convention! There was never supposed to be a second attack at all!

"The prison was the perfect place, and it was enough! After that, the funding poured in, and we could focus on the research." He looked up at Gilman. "We still can, you know. If you guys can just see that and leave us to our work, we can find more antidotes for more diseases. More cures for more biological weapons. We can stay one step ahead of the terrorists. You know as well as I do that there will be more weapons. There will always be more weapons."

"Are you the one who broke into Jason's apartment as well?" Gilman asked.

"I had to!" Josh insisted. "The Doctor was demanding the activator data or he'd kill me. I looked everywhere. I never found it."

Katrina looked at McMullan, a look of dawning upon her face. "He didn't just want the Death Row anthrax strain," she said. "He wanted the activator data as well. He wanted to know how it was made. He wanted to know the science in detail. He wanted to be able to recapitulate it."

"Do you really think he had terrorist intentions?" McMullan asked.

"No," Katrina said. "That's not consistent with him. I think he had anti-terrorist intentions all along. He propelled my work forward to push the entire field of biological weapons defense to the forefront. To stop scientists like Johnson from blocking the funding.

"There was never going to be an attack on Christmas Day. He just made that threat so the funding would be granted and the work could go forward. He waited until the antidote was complete. Then he ch.o.r.eographed the attack at the convention to show the world that we could stop it. To show the value of the research. That was what he thought we had lost sight of.

"But he needed to know the science behind the weapons in order to continue propagating the antidotes after it was over. He needed that science to be out there. Not for the general public, but for collaboration among other infectious disease researchers. For future weapons. For future antidotes. In short, he needed the activator data for the same reasons that I did."