by Kathy Reichs
Ben shrugged. “So they used special Uncle Sam–approved paint. Who cares? They probably stole the stuff.”
Damn. He’s probably right.
Chance’s smile widened. “Perhaps. But I didn’t stop there. Remember the canvas flag?”
“With the fugly wolf-head trio?” Hi shivered. “Yes I do.”
“On a hunch, I had its fibers tested with a microspectrophotometer.”
Shelton’s chin dropped. “Micro-spectro what?”
“You’re just full of magical toys, aren’t you?” Ben quipped, but his smirk vanished when I shushed him.
Chance continued as if he didn’t hear. “A microspectrophotometer can tell if two pieces of fabric were colored by the same batch of dye, or cut from the same thread. Those results are in the folder, too, but I’ll spare you. The canvas is also military-grade material.”
“In what way?” I asked, a dark thought forming.
“It’s designed for outdoor use. On a police boat maybe, or for covering military aircraft. I bet the Trinity found the canvas in the same place where the paint was being stored. Snatched them both.”
“But none of that tells us anything,” Ben repeated stubbornly. “It’s useless.”
“It’s more than you had,” Chance snapped, finally losing his cool. “What did you figure out today?”
“I didn’t waste everyone’s time,” Ben shot back.
The two continued bickering, but I tuned them out.
Dots were connecting in my head.
I didn’t like the picture being formed.
Jason Taylor’s father was a detective with the Charleston PD.
The paint. The canvas. Items to which Jason might have unique access?
No. It can’t be. You’re grasping at straws.
And don’t forget—all this information is coming from Chance.
Another dismal fact aligned with the others. I felt a twinge of panic, but kept it carefully concealed. I needed more information. Had to tread carefully.
“Chance?”
“What?” He carped, clearly annoyed that Ben was ruining his big reveal.
“You said Speckman was on the Bolton lacrosse team?”
“Year before last.” Chance sat back with a huff. “He was good, a starter. Our third leading scorer, behind Jason. And me, of course.”
Ben snorted. “Oh, of course.”
“Did you guys ever hang out together?” I asked casually, then slipped in, “The three of you, I mean.”
Chance shook his head. “I already told you, no. Will and I weren’t close.” Then, offhand, “He and Jason used to go fishing, I think. They both thought sitting motionless in a dinghy for hours, watching the water flow, was somehow entertainment.”
“Better than some company,” Ben muttered.
I tried to hide my alarm.
Jason and Speckman. Were they friends? Good friends?
You have to be somewhat close to share a boat with someone all day, right?
Abruptly, Chance seemed to realize something. His eyes slid to me, then quickly away.
I pretended not to notice. But inside, my temperature rose.
Chance hired Speckman. Speckman fished with Jason. All three played lacrosse together.
Madison connected to both Jason and Chance.
All four were linked.
It all fit, if you squinted hard enough.
Careful. Don’t tip him off.
“It’s not important. I’m just trying to get a picture of Speckman’s social life.”
Chance grunted, dropped the matter. “There’s one other thing.”
He walked to his desk, returning with yet another printout. “A symbol was stamped onto the canvas. It had nearly faded away, but the machines picked it up.”
The image was gray, blurry, and smeared at the edges. But the subject was identifiable—a bird of some sort, framed inside a circle, gripping something cylindrical in it talons. I had no idea what to make of it.
“This has to be something specific,” Hi declared. “Like a logo. Or a trademark.”
I glanced at Shelton. Of all the Virals, he knew the most history.
He folded the page and put it in his pocket. “I’ll see what I can find online.”
I looked over at Chance, suddenly eager to leave. “Anything else? I want to go back to the dorm and squeeze that guy Jordan again. I think he’s holding out.”
I watched Chance for a reaction, but he surprised me by waving a hand. “Not today. We’ve got lots more to talk about. The other results are back as well.”
Hi gave him a puzzled look. “Who shot who in the what now?”
“The DNA tests, Hi.” Chance forced a smile. “Want to know what’s wrong with you?”
ATTENTION: DIRECTOR WALSH [“EYES ONLY”]
FILE STATUS: TOP SECRET [LEVEL 5]
CASE: #34687 (AKA—PHOENIX INQUIRY)
FILE TYPE: INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
DATE: APRIL 15, 2014
SUBJECT(S): IGLEHART, DR. MICHAEL P. (“MI”)
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATING AGENT(S): J. SALTMAN, B. ROGERS
INTERVIEWING AGENT(S): J. SALTMAN (“JS”), B. ROGERS (“BR”)
INTERVIEW LOCATION: 6289 STEFAN STREET, JAMES ISLAND,
CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA [SUBJECT’S HOME]
ADDITIONAL NOTE(S): SUBJECT IGLEHART IS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE LOGGERHEAD ISLAND RESEARCH INSTITUTE (LIRI) [SEE ACTION REPORT #PI32-1]. HIS ULTIMATE SUPERIOR IS DR. CHRISTOPHER “KIT” HOWARD, FATHER AND SOLE LEGAL GUARDIAN OF VICTORIA GRACE BRENNAN.
TIME: 5:47 PM
JS: Mr. Iglehart, please explain—
MI: Doctor Iglehart.
JS: Excuse me, Dr. Iglehart. Please explain the nature of your relationship with Chance Claybourne.
MI: Come again? What on earth are you talking about?
JS: How long have you worked for Mr. Claybourne?
MI: I don’t work for— [PAUSE] Listen, I don’t know who you are, but you’ve gotten some bad information. I’m a veterinary biochemist. I’m employed by the LIRI institute, out on Loggerhead Island. I’m a highly respected scientist, one of the leading—
JS: Dr. Iglehart, we know you’ve been taking money from Chance Claybourne. Do you deny knowing him?
[PAUSE]
MI: No. Of course not. Everyone knows the Claybourne family. Chance is the youngest, I think. He’s one of the richest men in the city. But I don’t see—
JS: We have records. You’ve received wires from a Candela account directly controlled by Chance Claybourne. Significant sums, actually. On at least three separate occasions.
[PAUSE]
JS: Does that jog your memory, Doctor?
MI: Um. Yes. [PAUSE] Could I get a glass of water?
JS: Later, perhaps. At first, we assumed this was run-of-the-mill corporate espionage. You funneling LIRI secrets to Candela. But these transactions smell a little different. They don’t fit the usual pattern.
MI: Whoa whoa whoa! I never sold any LIRI secrets! We don’t even have secrets! I’ve had my problems with Director Howard, sure—the man has no business running a petting zoo, much less a facility of LIRI’s stature—but I . . . I would never! I’m a respected scientist.
JS: Then explain the payments. I hardly think Mr. Claybourne gave you thousands of dollars just to be friends.
MI: Chance . . . Mr. Claybourne . . . he needed . . . [PAUSE] He just wanted, shall we say, a set of eyes and ears on Loggerhead Island. A way to keep tabs on comings and goings. I kept him . . . informed.
JS: What, specifically, did he want information about?
MI: Not a what. A who.
JS: A person? Director Kit Howard?
[PAUSE]
JS: Doctor?
[PAUSE]
MI: Who are you
guys, anyway? I haven’t seen any IDs yet.
JS: If we show you those, know that the tone of this interview will change significantly. Is that what you want?
[PAUSE]
MI: The whole thing is so juvenile! No, I wasn’t spying on Kit. Chance wanted me to watch the director’s daughter. A schoolmate of his.
JS: A girl? Do you mean Tory Brennan?
MI: [CHUCKLING] Can you believe it? Here I am, a world-renowned veterinary expert with a half-dozen degrees, and scores of publications, and this spoiled rich boy wants me to spy on his high school crush.
JS: Yet you did so?
MI: I’m world-renowned, not overpaid.
JS: Did you know the girl was Director Howard’s daughter?
MI: Of course. Kit Howard and I joined LIRI at about the same time. It was a smaller outfit back then, run by Marcus Karsten. I remember the month Kit’s daughter came to live with him.
JS: You have a problem with Director Howard?
[PAUSE]
MI: Look. Kit Howard got lucky. He never should have advanced faster than I did, and he knows it. But the Institute went broke right when he had that fluke financial windfall, and suddenly Kit’s the “Head Man in Charge.” It couldn’t have worked out better had he planned it. The smug little twerp has shunned me ever since. Feeling guilty, no doubt.
JS: What exactly did you report to Chance Claybourne?
MI: I’d tell him when Tory came out to the island. She and the annoying troop of boys that follows her around.
JS: What else would you tell him?
MI: What they did. Where they went. Those brats were always poking around where they shouldn’t, even back when Karsten ran the place. And now, with Kit in charge? Ha! They’re a menace.
JS: Did you ever notice anything strange about them?
MI: Strange? What do you mean? They’re kids. All kids are strange.
JS: Did they ever act in a way that was suspicious?
MI: All the time. I caught them snooping in restricted labs. Messing with equipment in the A/V room. They seem drawn to anything that once belonged to Karsten. Which is just ghoulish.
JS: What things belonging to Marcus Karsten? Be specific.
MI: I don’t know. I never saw anything directly. But it was . . . weird. Those kids are weird.
JS: Explain. This is important, Dr. Iglehart.
[PAUSE]
MI: I think they stole something. From LIRI.
JS: Why do you say that?
MI: I caught Tory in Karsten’s private lab. For some reason the director had set up a hidden one, away from the rest of us, and tightly secured. Months later, after what happened, I caught the Brennan girl in there with one of the boys, using the computer. I’m almost certain they were reading research files. But that makes no sense.
JS: What files? Do you have copies?
MI: I don’t know. And, no. Whatever Karsten was doing up there, he kept it off the logbooks. Probably illegal. He wiped those records before he died. Backups and hard copies, too.
JS: You think Tory Brennan may have those records?
MI: I. Don’t. Know. I told Chance the same. That’s it.
JS: Did you tell Mr. Claybourne anything else?
MI: No! And we haven’t spoken in weeks. I consider our arrangement over.
JS: Did you ever notice these kids . . . moving oddly? Or maybe communicating in a way you couldn’t explain?
MI: What? What are you talking about? [PAUSE] Seriously, who are you guys? Why all these questions about high school kids? [PAUSE] You know what? I think I do want to see some identification. And maybe speak to a lawyer.
JS: That won’t be necessary. Thank you for your time.
[END TRANSCRIPT]
Chance led us into the bowels of the Candela building.
Exiting a private elevator—separate from the main bank, plunging directly to below street level—we entered an empty lobby. The walls were white and unadorned, like something out of a sci-fi movie.
“Why didn’t you mention the DNA result earlier?” I complained.
“Because we’d never have gotten to the other stuff.” Chance approached a pair of hermetically sealed glass doors with SPECIAL PROJECTS stenciled on them in bold, black letters. He swiped an access card, input a ten-digit code, and then applied his thumb to a sensor. A light turned green and the entrance swished open.
We filed into a long, narrow corridor with metal doors lining both sides. I wondered how deep underground the facility burrowed.
Chance walked swiftly, outwardly confident, but his eyes flicked to each security camera we passed. I knew he had permission to access this level—he’d entered enough codes, and did oversee the department—but how would he explain our presence to any inquisitive coworkers? From the rigid set to Chance’s shoulders—which he was manfully trying to hide—I think he was worrying about it, too.
Chance pointed to a room ahead on the left. Stainless steel door. No window. Another key code, another thumb scan, and the portal clicked open. Chance waved us inside.
The lab was the size of a small classroom. White paint. Antiseptic feel. Spotless floor tiles forming a square grid underfoot. Machines lined the chamber—serious, severe-looking pieces of equipment, humming with purpose and adorned by blinking lights. A waist-high metal counter was bolted to the wall sections between them.
Three workstations occupied the central floor space: one clear and empty, the next holding a locked file cabinet, and the last crammed with sleeping computer equipment.
“This is my private lab,” Chance said. “As private as things get in this place, anyway. I ran the Brimstone experiment in here, with Will Speckman assisting.”
“Bang-up job on that one.” Ben, straight-faced.
Chance frowned, but didn’t take the bait. “When I figured out what had happened, I destroyed everything associated with the project. Scrubbed the room. Incinerated the parvovirus samples. Wiped the company hard drives, even the backups. There’s nothing left in the Candela universe to suggest Brimstone ever existed.”
My heart sank. “Then how can we analyze what happened to us? Or examine the virus? You erased the baseline data.”
“Not all of it.”
Chance moved to the computer workstation, unlocked a drawer, removed a flash drive, and inserted it into the USB port. “I saved the most critical files on this drive.”
Shelton stared hard at Chance. “You keep it in there? Locked in a drawer?”
Chance gave him an exasperated look. “On a secure level of a guarded building, behind three keypad access checkpoints. What would you have me do, Shelton? Keep it at my house? You saw how easily the Trinity got in there.”
Shelton waved a hand, conceding the point.
“You said you learned something?” I joined Chance before the monitor. The others formed a loose circle around us as he typed.
“It’s our DNA.” A few more keystrokes, and the familiar human double helix appeared on the monitor. “Specifically, this set of chromosomes.”
He tapped more keys. The image spun, zooming in on two glowing steps within the twisted ladder. “You all understand what DNA is, I assume?”
“Of course.” I waved impatiently. “What did you find?”
“Wait.” Ben’s face reddened. “It’s been a while since I took biology.”
Surprisingly, Chance skipped the opportunity to needle Ben. “Our bodies consist of something like sixty trillion cells. Each one is specialized—to compose an organ, carry oxygen, make an enzyme, and so on. DNA is the instruction manual inside every living cell that tells it what to do.”
“I know that much,” Ben said. “Skip ahead a little.”
I jumped in before Chance could reply. “DNA is a complex polymer organized into long strands called chromosomes. I tapped the monitor with a fingernail
. “Humans have exactly forty-six chromosomes, arranged in twenty-three pairs and housed within the nucleus of every cell.”
Chance pulled up a second image. “Chromosomes are divided into smaller parts called genes, which are the basic units of heredity. Genes determine ultraspecific things like how tall you are, your hair color, or whether you throw left-handed. Genes are also paired.”
Hi nodded impatiently. “Kiddie stuff. How many chromosomes does a wolf have?”
“A gray wolf—known scientifically as Canis lupus—has seventy-eight chromosomes.” I’d looked that up months ago, when we’d first suspected our infection. “Thirty-nine pairs—nearly double what a human possesses.”
“Wait a sec.” Shelton held up a bony finger. “Coop’s a wolfdog, not a pureblooded gray wolf. His dad, Polo, is a German shepherd. Does that matter?”
I knew that as well. “Domesticated dogs—Canis lupus familiaris—and wolves share the same genetic blueprint—still exactly seventy-eight chromosomes for both. Though obviously, the individual genes are different.”
Yet Shelton’s point intrigued me—I’d never considered Coop’s wolfdog status in the supervirus context. “Does that matter?” I asked Chance.
Chance grunted, noncommittal. “Impossible to say. Who knows? Maybe Coop’s hyperspecific genetic blend—gray wolf and domesticated German shepherd—was the key to the cross-species transference. Karsten’s preliminary testing had indicated that mixing parvovirus strains simply couldn’t result in a variant that was infectious to humans.”
“Well, that was wrong,” Hi quipped. “I should know.”
“Very wrong,” I agreed. “Karsten combined canine parvo DNA with something called Parvovirus B19, an innocuous strain that was contagious to people. Somewhere in that cocktail, his dangerous hybrid learned to hop the fence.”
How exactly, we might never know.
Although it sounded like Chance had been trying to find out.
Typing rapidly, Chance opened a new program. “DNA molecules are made up of smaller units strung together like a train, called monomers, which themselves consist of a sugar, a phosphate, and a base. All DNA is composed of only four bases: guanine, cytosine, thymine, and adenine. G, C, T, and A for short. They pair as well—C only bonds with G, and A only with T—forming the rungs of the double helix. These four base pairs are the basis for all life on earth.”
