“No problem.”
“What time do you get off?”
“Six.”
“Is there any way you can get the samples to me earlier? I need to send them off for testing, but that won’t give me time to pack them and get them to the Fed Ex pickup.”
“I could get sick after I collect them, leave early.”
“That’d be a big help.”
“How long will it take before you know what happened to Chester?”
“Hard to say.”
“I’ve decided to quit the dairy. I’m going out to California. See what life is like where there’s no snow. Ever been there?”
“Only to visit.”
“Maybe I’ll just quit today.”
To have Buddy far away from the dairy after he’d delivered the samples was an appealing prospect. If he wasn’t around, he couldn’t talk. But if anything went wrong with the samples, they might need him again. “How about waiting a few more days? Getting sick is okay, but if you quit in the middle of the afternoon, it’s going to look odd. Better not to draw that much attention to yourself with the samples in your possession.”
“Yeah, okay, that makes sense.”
Buddy put the lunchbox in a compartment on the back of the Harley, waved to Richard, and left, fishtailing and throwing dirt.
28
SATURDAY MORNING, A little after eleven o’clock, the assistant manager called Holly from the apartment house office to tell her a package had arrived for her by Federal Express. She hurried down to claim it and took it back to her apartment where, nestled in shredded paper inside an insulated container kept cool by a reusable cold pack, she found four plastic tubes of blood inside four larger tubes held together with a rubber band. There was also a note:
Enjoyed my brief visit.
Hope when things settle down, we can get together again. Richard.
Holly put the lid back on the insulated container, grabbed her handbag, and headed for the elevator.
Approximately fifteen minutes later, she was standing at the distribution counter of the hospital hematology lab filling out the orders for the lab to make and stain blood smears from the samples Richard had sent. She didn’t need to mention any possible health risks from handling the blood because, as in Weichmann’s lab, these people also assumed all blood was infectious.
“How long do you think it’ll take?” Holly asked.
“About an hour,” the clerk replied.
“Along with the slides, I’d like the remaining blood returned.”
“Can do,” the tech said, noting that on the order.
With an hour to kill, it seemed like a good time for lunch. Since she was in the building, Holly decided to eat in the hospital cafeteria.
She arrived in time to queue up behind a guy whose scalp bristled with EEG electrodes and wires. Off to her left, under a big banner advising the cafeteria’s patrons to EAT HEALTHY, was a help-yourself taco bar containing lots of sour cream, ground beef, and guacamole. She’d once thought the banner meant the food under it was specially prepared from low-fat, healthy recipes, but was now aware that the banner was simply an admonition that had nothing to do with any of the food. To fully follow the advice, you’d have to eat somewhere else.
Ignoring the fried catfish, the fried chicken, and the seafood primavera with its high-fat sauce, she chose a vegetable plate and took it to the observation deck, which was cleverly situated right over the emergency room entrance so that in return for a little sun you had to watch a constant flow of ambulances arriving.
Pleasant as all this was, Holly finished her meal well before it was time to pick up the slides. To occupy herself while waiting, she wandered down to the vending center, bought a USA Today, and read it at one of the tables.
Finally, when it was time, she went up to the lab and got the slides, which they gave to her in a small cardboard holder. She took the slides directly to her office.
Now . . . what kind of blood cells do these animals have? she thought, putting the first slide on the stage of her microscope. She started with the 10X objective, which didn’t allow her to see much, but permitted her to find a good area of the smear to study. She then switched to 40X.
A little adjustment of the fine focus and there they were: a sea of bland erythrocytes with the much more interesting white cells dispersed across the field like little jewels.
But something was wrong.
The white cells were too small.
Or . . .
Switching to an ocular with a micrometer in it, she checked the size of the erythrocytes.
Jesus, this was strange.
She examined all the other slides, then reached for the phone and called Richard’s cell number.
“Hello, this is Richard.”
“It’s Holly. I got the samples you sent, and that blood is weird. When I first looked at it, I thought the white cells were too small, but then I measured the red cells and discovered that they’re too big.”
“I’m not following you.”
“In cud-chewing animals, the erythrocytes are smaller than in humans, so when you’re accustomed to looking at human blood, the white cells of cows seem unusually large. But it’s only because of the smaller red cells. The red cells in these samples are the same size as in humans.”
“All four samples are like that?”
“Every one.”
“So these cows really have been genetically manipulated,” Richard said. “What the devil can be gained by increasing the size of their erythrocytes?”
“Each cell would have more hemoglobin. So they could carry more oxygen.”
“What does that accomplish?”
“We need someone like the health department to examine the dairy’s animal records.”
“I’m tempted to use your erythrocyte observations as proof to the department that the animals are clones.”
“It doesn’t really prove that,” Holly said. “It shouldn’t take Weichmann long to finish his tests. Let’s wait for him.”
“Okay. There probably wouldn’t be anybody at the department today anyway.”
TUESDAY NIGHT IT was Billy Lynch’s turn to make a pickup at the airport. He’d worked with Bobby Fowler a half-dozen times over the years and for the most part, they understood each other. But when Bobby entered the terminal, Billy didn’t like what he saw.
“How they hangin’, man?” Bobby said when he’d made his way to where Billy was waiting. Knowing that Billy didn’t like to be touched, he didn’t offer his hand.
“That mustache has to go,” Billy said, starting for the exit.
“Why?”
“It doesn’t match what you’ll be wearing. And you should have told me you’d gained weight. I hope the clothes I bought for you fit.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for askin’.”
If you had told Father Lucius the day that Billy had scalded Bobby in the orphanage shower, that someday the two of them would be working together as assassins, he would have thought that assassin was a reasonable prediction for Billy, but not Bobby. And working together? God’s ways are mysterious to be sure, but such an alliance would strain even that premise. But there they were.
“Who we doin’?” Bobby asked.
“A doctor named Holly Fisher.”
Bobby stopped walking. “Aw c’mon . . . a woman? Not a woman.”
“To the rest of the world she’s a woman. To us, she’s an assignment, nothing more.”
“I have trouble thinkin’ that. And you know how you get afterwards. It’ll be worse with a woman.”
Billy fixed him with a steely glare. “How I get afterwards? What do you mean?”
Bobby had instantly regretted his comment. He’d known for years that shortly after a hit, feelings of remorse w
ould practically make Billy a zombie. And then a few days later, he wouldn’t remember any of that part. It was like at the orphanage when you choked your chicken and then felt so ashamed you told yourself you’d never do it again. But you did. That was normal. But this deal with Billy wasn’t. What the hell, if he didn’t want to remember how bad he’d feel later, screw it. “Nothin’, man. Forget it.”
“If you can’t handle this, get on a plane and go home,” Billy said. “And don’t expect to ever work with me again.”
“I was just sayin’ . . .”
“Are you in or out?”
“Well, shit . . . I guess I’m in.”
“Don’t guess.”
“All right. I’m in.”
BEFORE OPENING THE manila envelope that had just arrived, Otto got a Snickers bar from the stash in his desk and quelled the rumbling in his stomach by eating all of it. He washed it down with a Diet Coke from his little refrigerator, then picked up the envelope and opened it.
Inside was a group photo of a bunch of kids. Father Lucius had circled one of the boys with a black marker. Even after using his hand magnifier on it, Otto couldn’t make out much about the child. Putting the picture aside, Otto wondered what that priest was thinking—that he had access to the equipment NASA uses to clear up the pictures from that big telescope they got up there? Even if he did, Billy Lynch would certainly look a lot different now.
There was a knock on the door and Claire, his dispatcher and secretary, came in. “Here’s that report you wanted from Missouri motor vehicles.” She looked at the Snickers wrapper still on his desk. “I thought you were on a diet.”
“If I wasn’t, I’d have eaten three of them.”
“What do you expect me to say when Frannie asks me if you’re being good?”
“Tell her I don’t tolerate spies in the office.”
“We’re just trying to do what’s best for you,” she muttered as she left.
Otto looked at the report she’d handed him. Sure enough, there it was.
When his interest was first aroused in Artie Harris, Otto had Claire call up Artie’s Wisconsin driver’s license on her computer. Looking at it, he’d noticed something out of order. Artie had once told him he’d lived in Pennsylvania all his life, yet the first three digits of his social security number were those reserved for residents of Missouri. And here was proof he’d lied: Artie’s Missouri driving record showed a previous St. Louis address. It was time he and Artie had a talk.
AWAY FOR AN out of town Met Life insurance convention. Well, that would explain why he hadn’t seen Artie in a couple of days, Otto thought, coming out of Artie’s one-employee office. But with Artie now a prime suspect in the Pennell and Sorenson murders, Otto wasn’t ready to accept anything about him that couldn’t be verified by at least two sources.
A few minutes later, as Otto entered the police station and passed by his dispatcher, he said, “Claire, will you see if you can find me the number of the main office of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company?” He then continued on to his office.
Using the Internet, Claire had the number in under two minutes.
“Someday you’re gonna have to show me how you do that,” Otto said, taking the slip of paper from her with the number on it.
When a woman at Met Life picked up, Otto said, “I hope you can help me. I need to get a message to one of your agents who’s attending that insurance convention you sent him to. Could you give me the location of that event or maybe a contact phone number?”
There was a long quiet interval while the woman on the other end did some checking. With nothing to occupy his mind, Otto began to think of the remaining Snickers bars in his desk. As he bent to get one, the woman came back on the line. “I’m sorry, but no one here knows of any insurance convention taking place at this time.”
29
“DOCTOR FISHER, WE’VE discovered some interesting things about those samples you sent us,” Weichmann said. “To determine whether animals are clones; we normally compare several segments in the part of the genome involved with the immune system—those regions that make each animal a distinct individual immunologically, because that’s where no two animals are ever alike unless they’re identical twins or clones. Well, all four samples you sent were identical in the regions we checked.”
“Wait a minute,” Holly said. “I don’t understand. Two of those samples were from animals that had the same pigmentation pattern. The other two were from a pair with a different pattern. How can all four be clones if they don’t even look alike?”
“You’re sure about the pigmentation?”
“I didn’t personally witness the drawing of the blood. But the plan was for the samples to be taken as I’ve described. And I have no reason to believe the plan wasn’t followed.”
“If the samples truly are from two sets of animals with different pigmentation patterns, there’s only one explanation for the results we obtained. Someone must have taken cells from each of two different cows and in both, replaced a long stretch of DNA with a sequence from another source. They then produced cloned individuals from the progeny of those altered cells.”
“Why would someone want to make all the animals in a large herd immunologically identical?”
“Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying the four animals that provided the blood are identical at all their immunology-related sites. We only analyzed a few of them. They may be the same at all those sites, they may not. We just don’t know. Either way, I can’t think of a reason for doing such a thing. But I can tell you that this kind of manipulation isn’t simple. So if there’s a large number of animals involved, those responsible must have a compelling purpose. Do you know who that was?”
“Not really.”
“Too bad. If you did, you could just ask them about it.”
“I wish it was that easy. Well, you’ve given me a lot to think about, Doctor Weichmann. I’m in your debt. If I can ever—”
“I haven’t told you the other thing we discovered—quite by accident, as it turns out. But then that’s how penicillin was discovered, isn’t it? Some of my regular work here involves genetic analysis of animals that have had genes inserted from a variety of sources. One of my students mistakenly included samples of the blood you sent in an analysis she was running. Doctor Fisher, those cows of yours have some human DNA sequences in them.”
Shocked at this revelation, Holly’s mind struggled to make sense of it. “Are you saying those immune sequences that match in all the animals are human?”
“Again, that’s taking the data too far,” Weichmann said. “The probes we use to determine whether there are human inserts present can’t answer that question. But I can tell you that the human DNA and the matching sequences are in the same chromosome.”
“HOW SURE ARE we that Buddy followed your instructions when he chose the animals to sample?” Holly said into the phone.
“My sister, Jessie, suggested we have him photograph the cows he picked,” Richard said. “I’ve got the pictures right here. He did it correctly.”
“I never thought of that. Good for Jessie.”
“What’s going on?”
“All four cows have identical sequences in regions of their DNA where no two animals would normally ever be the same—sites involved in immune function.” Holly explained the implications of this for their cloning question, then said, “And get this, in a separate test, Weichmann found evidence that all the animals have stretches of human DNA in the same chromosome as the matching sequences he found. He couldn’t say that the common sequences were human, but it seems pretty likely to me that they are.”
“That’s wild. Cows with human DNA. But these animals aren’t the first. I know that other drug companies are putting human genes into cows, trying to get them to synthesize human proteins in their milk. But there’d be no
reason to make the cow’s immune system more like humans to do that.”
“Could they be planning to use cow organs for human transplantation?”
“There are programs hoping to do that with pig organs, but I’ve never heard of cows being candidates for that kind of thing. Whatever they’re doing, those animals are all genetically similar enough that somebody needs to make sure they’re not all making abnormal prion protein. With the genetic meddling that’s been done on them, the prion gene might have inadvertently been altered, too, so it produces a form of the protein that’s more susceptible to spontaneous conversion. I’ve got to call the health department.”
“WHAT DO YOU mean, this information doesn’t change anything?” Richard said to the director of the state health department.
“As I’ve tried to explain, Doctor Heflin, the management of the dairy has been watching very carefully for neurologic disturbances in their animals and they’ve seen nothing. That one case was simply an isolated incident.”
“Come on. To let the dairy decide the extent of the problem is like . . .” Richard searched his mind for a devastating analogy but couldn’t come up with anything. “Well, it’s just foolish.”
“Doctor Heflin, I didn’t get where I am by being a fool.”
“Then there must be some other explanation for your refusal to listen to me. What is it?”
“I think you’re focusing too much on this.”
“And you’re not focusing at all.”
“I don’t have time for further debate on this matter. Please don’t call me again about it.” Then she hung up.
With several patients waiting, Richard didn’t have time to think about his next move.
Two hours later, just as he finished discussing her options and prognosis with a patient in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, Connie informed him that he had a phone call. Thinking it might be Holly with more news, and wanting to tell her about the health department’s ridiculous stand, he took it eagerly.
The Lethal Helix Page 24
