The Death Row Complex (The Katrina Stone Novels Book 2)

by Kristen Elise Ph. D.

  “Um, yeah. But don’t worry about it. You don’t stink too badly.”

  He opened his mouth in an exaggerated gesture of shock, and then gave her a soft shove. Katrina chuckled and ducked away.

  A few moments later with cocktails in hand, they wandered around the room, peering out the windows at the panoramic view. McMullan sipped lightly at his martini. “Well?” Katrina asked. “How is it?”

  “I think I’d rather have gone for a beer.” He laughed. “Oh, wow, there’s the balcony we were just on.” He motioned through a window to direct Katrina’s gaze downward. Beyond the balcony, the Coronado Bridge sprawled behind the convention center.

  Katrina walked over to an open table with two plush chairs beside it. She set her drink onto the table and sat down, and a waiter approached to ask if they needed anything else. Katrina leaned forward and whispered in the waiter’s ear as McMullan sat down at the table next to her.

  A few moments later, the waiter returned with a pint of beer for McMullan. He laughed when he saw it, but then drank deeply and smiled. “Much better,” he said, “and you nailed my favorite variety. You must have been a good bartender.” He offered a wry smile.

  Katrina looked up at him, at first surprised. Slowly, she realized that the man in front of her knew almost everything about her. The thought was both unnerving and oddly comforting. “And you must be a good FBI agent,” she said.

  “How’s yours?” McMullan asked, motioning to her drink.

  “Actually, I kind of wanted to taste yours,” she said and leaned in to steal a passionate kiss before he could remind her that it was probably a bad idea.

  JANUARY 17, 2016

  7:31 A.M. PST

  The plastic chair of the visiting area creaked as the muscular prisoner sat down. Today, he was expecting a different guest.

  The visitor arrived and sat down across from him, and the mirror image from the neck up was striking. Except for a small scar above the right eye of the prisoner, the dark faces of the two men were indistinguishable.

  The prisoner wore the standard-issue pale blue of the San Quentin minimum-security wing. His visitor wore a black muscle shirt. Underneath, both men bore the same signature, etched in bold arcs across their powerful chests:

  MORALES

  “Thanks for coming, hermanito,” the prisoner said.

  His visitor chuckled. “Four fuckin’ minutes apart and I’ll always be hermanito. What do you need?”

  The prisoner brought a hand up and across the visiting table. “First, give me some skin,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

  The visitor’s hand rose to meet his, and when he lowered it once again, it was closed. “What was that for?” He pocketed the money his brother had just handed him.

  “I need you to take care of something for me. Or maybe I should say, ‘someone.’ ”

  A guard approached and casually stood nearby. After a moment of silence, both brothers looking defiantly at the guard, they began to speak again. But this time, it was in a language that only existed between the two of them. A language they had invented as children. A language of twins.

  “Who?”

  “She’ll be here in a minute.”

  “She?”

  “Yeah, is that a problem?”

  The guard walked away, and the visitor switched back to English. “Course not, bro. As long as you tell me why.”

  The prisoner smiled. “Because she’s the only link between me and the unfortunate incident that happened in the death row wing a while ago. If this bitch is gone, I’m in the clear.”

  The visitor thought for a moment. “So what’s the plan?”

  “Follow her. Find out where she hangs. Then when you can do it, do it. And be careful. Remember that she knows my face—your face. I don’t want my baby brother in the other wing of this fuckin’ hell hole.”

  Carlos “Chuck” Morales had been instructed by his four-minute-older brother Oscar to follow the ugly bitch with the thick black hair. He had no idea he would be following her for more than eight hours and five hundred miles.

  Fortunately, the Bitch’s beat up piece-of-shit car had been bright red in its earlier days. It was easy to keep an eye on. The red Honda left San Quentin and crossed over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, then crawled its way through the Interstate 580 cluster-fuck of San Francisco. Once the 580 turned eastward and headed inland, the traffic lightened up considerably, and by the time they were merging onto Interstate 5 south, Chuck was on autopilot.

  For more than two hundred torturously boring miles between Tracy and Bakersfield, Chuck kept his eyes glued to the rear bumper of the red Honda. When the Bitch finally stopped for gas just north of Grapevine, Chuck pulled into the gas station across the street to fill up as well. He was sure she would notice him. She didn’t appear to.

  The free-for-all traffic of Los Angeles woke him up temporarily. But as he followed the Bitch through Orange County and into San Diego, Chuck was ready to kill his brother. He was more than five hundred miles from home, he was hungry, he had no place to sleep, and he desperately had to take a piss.

  The red Honda headed eastbound on Interstate 8 for ten miles and exited at College Avenue, where it turned right onto the San Diego State University campus.

  And then he ran into the roadblock.

  Chuck was three cars behind the red Honda when he realized that a guard was monitoring the passage of cars up the hill to the buildings overlooking the freeway. The Honda was waved through.

  Before he had time to come up with a reasonable purpose for being there, Chuck was stopped by the guard. After five hundred miles of driving, he had no choice but to watch while the Bitch slipped up the hill, around a bend, and out of his sight.

  The Doctor was waiting in an underground parking lot when the old, red Honda arrived.

  The driver stepped out of the battered car and the long, black skirt draped almost to the concrete floor.

  “Have you kept up the payments to the prisoner?” the Doctor asked.

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  “Morales doesn’t suspect a thing. He still thinks he has me over a rail.”

  After the red Honda drove away from the parking structure, the Doctor stood reflecting for a moment. Oscar Morales would not be killed just yet. Morales was still needed. He still had something important. Morales had several vials of anthrax left, and more importantly, he had the skill to keep them contained until the time of release.

  Aside from that, Oscar Morales did not even know the Doctor existed.

  JANUARY 18, 2016

  9:35 A.M. PST

  The next morning, Chuck was staring at the monitor of a rented computer in the pay-per-use business center of a postal annex. All he knew from Oscar was that the Bitch worked with anthrax. What he had learned for himself was that she was affiliated with San Diego State University. From there, it was easy to find her.

  Every faculty member at San Diego State University had his or her own laboratory website, linked to a professional bio and photograph. Chuck scrolled through the various pages until one caught his eye, and he smiled.

  Katrina Stone, Ph.D. Professor of biology. Research focuses on anthrax biology and pathogenesis of bacterial/host interactions, including high throughput screening for anthrax lethal factor inhibitors.

  Chuck scrolled through the remainder of the faculty listings for the same department. There were no other researchers at SDSU involved in anthrax work. He clicked on the link to Katrina Stone’s web page.

  The page contained detailed contact information, including a building and room number for her lab. Chuck looked around and found the employee who had seated him at the computer. In his most polite voice, he said, “Excuse me, sir?”

  The employee turned around. “How can I help you?”

  “I was wondering if I can print something.”

  “Of course,” the employee said, his eyes falling onto the web page. “Well, you’ll want to use that printer over there.” He motioned
across the room. “May I use your mouse for a moment?” The employee reached over and used the mouse to locate the correct printer. “That is our photo printer. It will make this page come out the clearest.” The employee printed the page, and then walked over and picked it up off the printer. After a final glance at the page to ensure the quality of the print job, he handed it over to Chuck.

  The employee had been right. The color photo of the woman named Katrina Stone, Ph.D. was faithfully reproduced in the printout. Chuck thanked the employee and paid, then exited the building and began walking out to his car. As he walked, he studied the photo intensely.

  The woman in the picture had long, reddish hair. The hair of the woman he had followed from San Quentin had been raven black. Dye job? Wig? Chuck racked his brain to accurately remember the face of the woman he had followed. As he stared at the photo, he could not. But he did remember one detail: The bitch from the prison was uglier than a bucket of armpits. This chick, Katrina Stone, is hot. He briefly wondered how well the average woman could disguise her face with makeup and realized that he had absolutely no idea. Female habits were a total mystery to Chuck, whose transient interest in any woman tended to eject from his body along with his semen.

  No matter. It was the best lead he had. And San Diego State University was only a couple of freeway exits away.

  This time, Chuck left his car behind the checkpoint. He skirted his way up through the landscaping to approach the building from behind. Then he slipped past a pair of guards when they were looking the other direction.

  Chuck took the elevator to the indicated floor of the North Life Sciences building. When he stepped out, he scanned the various hallway doors for the lab with the correct number. It was then that he realized that the lab he needed was the only one being guarded.

  Bitch must be pretty important, he thought. He briefly remembered what Oscar had told him about live anthrax. Not very many people—even scientists—have access to it. Chuck was certain that he had found the right woman.

  He approached the guard at the door.

  “Do you have an ID?” the guard asked. “Nobody is allowed in this lab without an ID.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that. I’m looking for Katrina Stone. I’m an old friend of hers.”

  “Well,” the guard said, “unless you have an appointment, which you don’t or she would have told me, I’m afraid you’re S-O-L. Next time, try the phone.”

  Chuck considered his options for a moment and decided not to slit the guard’s throat in the hallway. Instead, he fixated a long glare upon him and then turned to re-mount the elevator.

  He took the elevator back down and stepped out of the building. As soon as he was outside, he reached into his breast pocket for a cigarette, and then remembered for the thousandth time that he had smoked his last one the day before, halfway between San Quentin and San Diego. The mild nausea, severe headache, and nervousness that had been following him all morning as a consequence were not helping his mood. Not one bit.

  Chuck shook his head and looked around. He remembered the piece-of-shit red Honda that he had tailed from San Francisco. There was no parking lot near the building that he could see. A few utility vehicles occupied a designated area, and even fewer miscellaneous cars sat in spaces marked for temporary parking. No faded red Honda.

  Along the west side of the building was a small food stand. The sign along its top read “The Hotdogger.” Outside of “The Hotdogger” was a small collection of cheap tables with two people sitting at one of them. There was nobody else in sight with the exception of a solitary employee attending the stand. Chuck approached the stand and asked the attendant if they sold cigarettes.

  The employee laughed out loud. “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah, why.” Chuck did not see the humor.

  “You can’t buy cigarettes anywhere on campus, Dude. That’s about like asking for meth.”

  Chuck refrained from informing his new friend that a little meth was also sounding like a good idea, but he’d settle for a smoke. Out of ideas, he turned and sat down at one of the tables.

  And then the woman from the photograph in Chuck’s hand stepped out of the North Life Sciences building.

  Katrina Stone, Ph.D., did not seem to notice Chuck as she walked briskly away from him. Chuck waited for a moment to allow her a lead and then followed.

  She passed through another building and crossed a street before approaching a cliff. Then she disappeared, having seemingly walked right over its edge.

  Chuck rushed forward. Descending from the top of the cliff was a steep staircase leading to a parking lot below. Stone was already halfway down. Chuck remained standing at the top of the stairs from which he had a bird’s eye view of the parking lot. The woman approached a silver sedan, clicked her keychain to unlock the doors, and slipped inside.

  Not the piece-of-shit red Honda after all.

  5:24 P.M. PST

  The sun was gone, the evening breeze cool, when Alexis Stone stepped out of the market. A tuft of her shoulder-length hair—exactly the same auburn color as her mother’s—billowed across her young face. Alexis shifted the grocery bag on her hip to free one hand and brush the hair aside. Then she buttoned her jacket while she walked.

  A man followed her out of the store. “Excuse me,” he said politely.

  Alexis turned and looked at the man. He was cute, and probably in his twenties.

  “I don’t mean to be forward,” he said, “but I make great veal parmesan and I was wondering if you’d be interested sometime.”

  “Thanks,” Alexis said, “but I have a boyfriend, and we don’t eat meat. Besides, I just can’t see myself having dinner with someone who has dead rotting animals inside of him.” She smiled sweetly.

  The man gave her a strange look and shuffled quickly away, muttering something under his breath. Alexis continued walking and grinned, already envisioning Kevin’s reaction to the story. He’d fall over laughing. She couldn’t wait to tell him.

  Lexi’s pace was leisurely as she followed the familiar route home in the dark. Mom wouldn’t be there. Not for quite a while. As she approached a corner a few blocks from her house, the evening silence was broken by a single, friendly bark.

  Lexi looked up with interest. As she rounded the corner, a middle-aged woman was approaching with an Alaskan malamute on a leash. He looked almost exactly like Eskimo, Lexi’s childhood pet.

  “Hello,” the woman said, smiling.

  “He’s gorgeous,” Alexis said breathlessly. “Is he friendly?”

  “Oh yes, go ahead and pet him if you’d like.”

  Alexis again shuffled the grocery bag and reached down to bury a hand in the thick fur behind the dog’s head. For a moment, she closed her eyes, and then she was seven years old again.

  She never really believed what they told her. Not Christopher. Not her little brother. Her “Bubba.” He was too little. She told Mommy in private that maybe it was a joke someone was playing, and that soon Bubba would come back and it would be funny how he had fooled everyone.

  Mommy and Daddy were always fighting. And then Daddy was living somewhere else, and Mommy was sleeping all the time.

  And then Mommy was just too busy. And Daddy had to go away for a long time for his work, all the way to a different country. It was called Eye-Rack. People were afraid that her Daddy might die.

  Then Lexi was nine. Her stomach started hurting all the time, mostly at night when she was trying to sleep. None of the doctors could help. And her parents always seemed sad, or mad, or disappointed, and Lexi couldn’t understand why they didn’t seem to love her anymore.

  But someone loved her. Eskimo. Eskimo knew that things were not good. Mommy and Daddy didn’t pay any attention to him either. He started sleeping next to Lexi’s bed, then at the foot of the bed, and eventually, beside Lexi—her thin arm around his body, her tiny hand buried deep in his thick, comforting fur.

  Alexis taught Eskimo to sit, stay, and lay down, to fetch, to open the door f
or her, to kiss her cheek, to stand on his hind legs and hug her, and to speak. Eskimo was her best friend. One who never cried, never took her toys, never asked for anything, never needed attention from grown-ups, never got mad at her, and was always happy to see her. A best friend who loved her no matter what.

  Eskimo died when Lexi was ten. She was not allowed another pet by either of her parents. Dad was on deployment too often, and Kimberly was allergic to dander. And Mom just didn’t have time to take care of a pet. Of course she didn’t.

  Alexis found other ways to keep animals in her life. Now, at fifteen, she took the bus every Saturday afternoon to volunteer at the local humane society. She was active in PETA. It was at a PETA meeting that she met Kevin. And it was Kevin that brought her into the Animal Liberation Front.

  “We’d better get moving along then,” the Alaskan malamute’s owner said softly, breaking Lexi out of her reflection. The woman turned the dog, who looked so much like Eskimo, and rounded the corner. When they were out of sight Alexis wiped a tear from one eye and sighed. The scent of the dog was still on her hand.

  10:08 P.M. PST

  More than eight years had passed since Katrina Stone—not yet a doctor—was working furiously at a crowded kitchen table in a disheveled house, studying for her qualifying exam and unaware that her life was about to be destroyed. Tonight, the scene at Doctor Katrina Stone’s kitchen table appeared uncannily similar to that night eight years distant. With one exception. Tonight, the woman at the table was Katrina’s daughter, who resembled her mother strongly in appearance but not at all in ideology.