“Thanks.”
Once we get started, I put my head against the window. I’d really like to go back to sleep, but I can’t. I don’t want Jake to leave me in the car while he goes in to visit Dr. Palmer. This is much too important for me to miss.
“You mind if I ask you something?” Jake says.
“What?”
“How does it feel?”
“You mean having a period or the whole thing?”
“The whole thing. Is it really weird?”
“Sometimes.” I turn to Jake and smile a little. “Sometimes I feel almost normal. But then I see myself in the mirror or wake up with blood squirting out between my legs and I remember I’m not really me anymore.”
“I don’t think I could stand it.”
“What other choice do I have? Finish what Lex started?” When I feel a surge of anger, then I feel like my old self again. It’s the first time I’ve really thought about Artie Luther since what happened; I’ve been so busy just trying to survive. More than anything I’d like to make him pay for what he did to me, Dr. Nath, and scores of other people in this city. “Not until he’s finished.”
“We’ll get him. After we see about getting you fixed up.” A few moments go by in silence. Then Jake says, “If they can’t do anything right away, you can stay with us for as long as you need.”
“Thanks, but I don’t want to be a bother.”
“You’re not. I think it does Tess good having you around. With Jenny gone, she doesn’t have anyone to take care of. I’ve tried to get her to go back to work, at least part-time, but she doesn’t want to. She tried once. Lasted about two hours. Her first clients were this family with a kid about Jenny’s age. Soon as she showed them the kid’s bedroom she broke down. I had to go and pick her up.”
“I can’t replace Jenny.”
“I know that,” he snaps, “but it’s been hard on her with Jenny and all that menopause shit. She just needs someone to help her feel normal again.”
“What about you?”
“We’ve kind of been on the outs since Jenny died. I think she blames me for it.”
“You didn’t give Jenny cancer.”
“I know. Try telling her that.” Jake leans against the window to blow out a cloud of smoke. “I guess she thinks if I’d loved Jenny more, she would have beaten it.”
“I’m sure you loved Jenny enough. It’s just one of those things you can’t do anything about.” I catch my reflection in the mirror and hope this isn’t one of those things. I hope it’s not a death sentence for Steve Fischer.
Chapter 17
Lennox Pharmaceuticals must pay pretty well because Dr. Clarita Palmer lives in one of the sleek buildings put up about ten years ago along the northern rim of the harbor. There’s a security guard at the front desk, a fat middle-aged guy who carries only a flashlight in his belt. His job is mostly to keep the bums and petty thieves out of the building. Real scumbags like Artie Luther’s henchmen won’t be intimidated by a flashlight and walkie-talkie.
Jake holds up his badge before the security guard can say anything. “We’re going up to have a chat with Dr. Palmer. Anyone else been in here to visit her today?”
“Not that I know about,” the guard says. “I can check the book.”
“Don’t bother. We’ll ask her ourselves.”
With that Jake starts for the elevators with me behind by a few steps. My stomach is still queasy, now with nerves as well as nausea. My legs have gone from lead to nonexistent, so that I have to force myself ahead with each step, my eyes down on my battered sneakers.
As we wait for an elevator, Jake says, “You still want to do this?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“If you’re still feeling sick—”
“I’ll be fine. I’m not going to bleed all over her carpet or anything.”
“I just mean if you’re not feeling up to it—”
“I’m not scared,” I say, though I’m sure Jake can hear the quiver in my voice.
“All right. Just let me do the talking. And no rough stuff.”
I snort at this; I can’t do more than hurt her feelings at the moment. “I guess the good cop-bad cop is out, then?”
“Let’s hope we won’t need it.”
The elevator doors finally open. We have to wait for a man in a tight biker outfit to get off along with his bike. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m not fully a woman yet or because of my period that I don’t feel anything at the sight of his well-toned rear in those spandex shorts. I sigh with relief at that thought.
According to the Lennox personnel file, Dr. Palmer lives on the seventh floor. Her place is at the end of the hallway. Jake and I walk slow and keep our eyes open for any signs of a body being dragged down the hallway or any evidence of a struggle. There’s nothing to indicate that Lex’s goons have paid the doctor a visit.
I stand back almost to the opposite door as Jake knocks on Dr. Palmer’s door. It takes a minute before the door opens a crack, the chain lock still in place. All I can see is a sliver of bronze skin and a brown eye. “Are you Detective Madigan?” she asks.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where’s your badge?”
Jake reaches into his pocket for his identification. She studies this for a moment. The door closes. Before I can groan with disappointment, I hear the chain lock come off. The door opens to reveal a Hispanic woman in her late thirties. She wears a T-shirt and sweatpants and has her hair pulled back into a sloppy ponytail, which probably means she woke up not long before we arrived.
I didn’t feel anything at the sight of the biker in his tight shorts and I don’t feel anything for Dr. Palmer either. At least not in that way. Instead I cringe with jealousy because even in this rumpled state, Dr. Palmer still looks better put together than me. Her eyes are clear and free of bruises and even though she’s nervous, she still has an air of confidence as she shows Jake inside.
“Who’s this?” she asks when I step towards the door.
“That is Stacey Chance. She’s a civilian observer,” Jake says. He lies so smoothly that even I would believe it. “Making sure we’re in compliance with Federal laws and all that.”
“She looks a little young for that.”
“I just have a young face,” I say. “It’s hell when I go to the liquor store.”
Dr. Palmer stands aside so I can follow Jake into the apartment. The furniture is tasteful and not cheap, what there is of it. There’s only a couch in the living room; Jake has to fetch a chair from the dining room table—which only has room for two—to sit on while us two ladies take the couch.
The doctor brings her purse with her from the kitchen. She rummages inside to retrieve a pack of cigarettes. “You mind if I smoke?” she asks.
“Only if you give me one,” Jake says.
“What about you?” the doctor asks me.
“No thanks. Those things will kill you.”
“So will a lot of other things in this city,” the doctor observes. “And much faster.”
“Like slitting your wrists?” Jake says.
“Having someone slit them for you is more like it,” Dr. Palmer says. She lights two cigarettes and then hands one to Jake. I lean back into the plush white back of the couch to avoid smoke in my face.
“You don’t think it was a suicide?”
“Gita wouldn’t commit suicide. Not when the drug was ready for human trials.”
“That would be the FY-1978 serum?”
“You’ve done your homework.”
“It’s part of the job.” Jake gives me a look before he asks, “So what does that drug do?”
“It’s supposed to be an anti-aging drug. Like the next generation of Botox. But Gita had bigger plans for it. She envisioned it as a cure to degenerative diseases: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, AIDS, and even cancer by letting us turn back the body’s clock to a younger, healthier state. Like the Fountain of Youth in a syringe.”
“Sounds pretty ambitious.”
“Gi
ta always was ambitious.”
“You think that’s why someone killed her?”
“Maybe. If it had worked, FY-1978 would have been a game changer for the health care industry. It would make dozens—maybe even hundreds—of drugs obsolete. And once Lennox got it patented, you’d have a lot of big drug companies hurting real bad.”
I could have fallen off the couch with shock at that point. I knew from the Tall Man that Lex wanted to sell the formula, but I hadn’t imagined it could be that valuable. He could make hundreds of millions, maybe even a billion to a desperate company.
“Sounds like plenty of motivation for someone to kill Dr. Nath,” Jake says. “Any idea who it might be? Did she have any enemies?”
“Not that I know of. She didn’t have any friends either. All she did was work. She had the maintenance guys bring up a cot so she could sleep in there too. That’s how dedicated she was.”
“Did you two get along?”
Dr. Palmer shrugs. “About as well as anyone could get along with her. Like I said, she wasn’t exactly a people person.” The doctor blows out a cloud of smoke. “She wasn’t mean or anything like that. She just didn’t know how to relate to people.”
“So you wouldn’t say she was very well liked by her staff?”
She shrugs again. “Maybe we didn’t like her, but we all respected the hell out of her. She was brilliant. FY-1978 was her baby. She did just about everything on it herself. Me and the others were mostly there to push a few buttons and help hold down the test subjects.”
I jump in to ask, “What’s going to happen to the project now?”
“There is no project now. Our notes are gone and Dr. Nath was the only one who could hope to replicate it. Too bad; we were making real progress with it.”
“What kind of progress?” Jake asks while I put a hand to my stomach; I feel sick again, though not from the period anymore. If Dr. Nath was the only one who knew how to make it and she’s dead, who will find a way to cure me?
“We tried it in mice then rats and then chimps. We had a ninety percent success rate.”
“Success?”
The doctor pauses to take out a fresh cigarette and light it. “In those ninety percent of cases, the animals got younger. In our last case study, an elderly chimp reverted back to almost a pubescent state. The arthritis and dementia she had been suffering from were all gone. She was just as healthy and active as any young chimp.”
I think of the animals in their cages on the fifth floor. Some of those cages had had Dr. Nath’s name on them. Her test subjects? The chimp that Bruiser killed might even have been the one Dr. Nath had experimented on.
“Sounds impressive. But you didn’t get to try it on humans?”
“No. Dr. Nath was working on the sample. I was trying to find a volunteer. That’s why I wasn’t at the lab when it was robbed. I was here, going over records from local nursing homes. They’re on the table if you want to look.”
“So you were here alone?” Jake asks while I get up and go over to the table. There’s a pile of manila folders there just as Dr. Palmer said.
“Yeah, that’s right. Should I get a lawyer?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary. We have information suggesting organized crime was responsible for the break-in and probably Dr. Nath’s death.”
As I go through the folders, I notice a pattern: all of the potential volunteers are women. Women in their sixties or seventies with degenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and arthritis. I clear my throat to get Jake and Dr. Palmer’s attention. “Are these all the files? Didn’t you have any male subjects?”
“Not for this trial. The drug has to be specially tailored for an individual’s physiology.” When Jake and I both give her a blank look, she explains, “The drug utilizes a combination of hormone treatments, gene therapy, and stem cells to reverse the aging process. Some of that is unisex, but some of it—like the hormones—vary according to gender. So our first batch of FY-1978 was designed for female patients.”
Jake asks the obvious question before I can, “What if the drug were used on a male instead?”
Dr. Palmer shrugs again. “Not sure. We never tried that, not even on the animals.”
Jake gets up and comes over to the table where I’m still standing. He puts an arm around my shoulder. “Dr. Palmer, meet your first human subject: Detective Steve Fischer.”
Chapter 18
I wait for Dr. Palmer’s reaction. Will she laugh us out of the apartment? Will she scream for help? Maybe like Jake she’ll have no reaction at all.
Her reaction is to get off the couch and walk over to us. She bends down a little to look me in the eye. I back away when she touches my hair. “You’re saying you were a man?”
“Until the night of the robbery,” I say.
“Huh.” I’m glad when she takes a couple of steps back, though less glad when I notice her eyes going from my face down to between my legs. “Maybe you should give me the whole story.”
Jake and I take the couch this time while Dr. Palmer sits on the dining room chair to study me as I tell her what happened. She smokes a couple more cigarettes while I tell her everything from the night of the robbery to this morning—I leave out my period. I can tell that like Jake she won’t believe it.
“You said the syringe was filled with something pink?” she asks when I finish.
“Yes.”
She nods. “The serum is actually clear. Dr. Nath added the pink coloring so we’d know which batch it belonged to. The male version would have been blue.”
“So you believe me?”
“Not by a long shot.”
“But—”
“If you want to prove it, then we’ll have to run some tests.”
“I have our boys in the lab comparing blood samples,” Jake says. “So far they’re a match. Her prints match Steve’s too.”
“We’ll need more than that. A full work-up on her. Do you mind if I call you that?”
“It’s fine,” I say. “I’m getting used to it.”
“Since it’s only been about thirty-six hours, the drug is probably still in your system. We should be able to find traces of it in the blood work.”
This gives me a queasier feeling than before. I remember what she said before about the chimp they used that drug on that had turned almost pubescent. “Does that mean it’s still working? Could I get even younger?”
“Probably not. There’s no way to be sure without getting a peek inside you. I do some consulting work for St. Vincent’s; they’ll let us use their equipment.”
“When?”
“Just as soon as we can get over there,” she says. “And after I throw on some clothes. You got room in your car for me?”
“Stacey can squeeze into the back,” Jake says.
***
Of everything I’ve experienced so far, perhaps the strangest moment is to be naked in front of a relative stranger. It’s of slight comfort that Dr. Palmer is covered as much as a woman in Saudi Arabia. “Do you think I’m contagious?” I ask and think of Jake’s house with my blood all over the sheets and floor. Tess has probably come into contact with a fair amount of it; could my blood give her a dose of the FY-1978, make her years younger?
“I don’t know what you are,” she says. “Hop up on the table and we’ll find out.”
The table is so cold that I cry out. “Why can’t I wear one of those paper gowns at least?”
“I want to get a look at everything. Saves time this way.”
I never asked Debbie about any of her gynecological appointments; I’m sure they aren’t like this. Dr. Palmer turns on a tape recorder on a tray. Then she starts to look over my entire body; she pays special attention to my most sensitive parts. She actually uses a magnifying glass to study my breasts. “I don’t usually let someone do that until the second date,” I joke.
“These are perfectly formed. No abnormalities that I can see.”
“Thanks.”
Even with most of her face covered, I can still see the annoyance in her eyes. “This is being recorded, so could you pipe down until we’re finished?”
“Sure.”
The doctor rewinds the tape. She presses a button. “Patient’s name is Stacey Chance. Caucasian female, roughly eighteen years old.”
“Twenty-one,” I interrupt.
“Eighteen—and that’s pushing it.”
And just like that I’m three years younger. I can’t drink legally, but at least I can still buy cigarettes, vote, or play the lottery, not that any of those hold much interest for me.
“Patient weighs 49.89 kilos. Height: 1.67 meters. No irregularities or deformities visible except for a bruise around the right eye. Patient says that occurred after the incident at Lennox Pharmaceuticals.
“Patient’s breasts are fully formed. Areola and nipples are consistent with those of a normal female. No scars or other evidence of surgery performed.”
“You think I did this to myself?”
“Shut. Up,” Dr. Palmer hisses. As revenge she goes down to the end of the table to stare at my private parts. “Put your feet in the stirrups, please.”
“Do you have to do that?”
She turns the recorder off again. “Is there something you don’t want me to see?”
“No. It might be a little messy though,” I say. I tell her about what happened this morning, when I woke up to my first period.
She turns the recorder back on. “Special note: patient reports menstruating began this morning. This began with abdominal cramping, followed by heavy bleeding and nausea.” The doctor goes over to the garbage can. With her plastic gloves she fishes through the trash until she finds my stained maxi pad. “Feminine undergarment supports patient’s claims. Will have to have bloodstains analyzed to make sure they match samples taken from the patient.”
Like Jake and I do at crime scenes, she stuffs the maxi pad into a little baggie so she can preserve it for later. So far Dr. Palmer seems thorough enough that I’d want her on any of my crime scenes. Maybe Jake should ask her to take a peek at Dr. Nath’s lab to search for anything we might have missed.
Now we get down to the most awkward part of the exam. After she snaps on a fresh pair of gloves, Dr. Palmer brushes a hand against my pubic hair. I squeal for a moment as she yanks one out. “Patient has fully-developed pubic hair.” She gets out the magnifying glass again to study between my legs. “Labia appear normal.”
Chances Are Omnibus (Gender Swap Fiction) Page 8
