Fatal Care

by Leonard Goldberg

  Brennerman rubbed his chin pensively. “I guess that’s nature’s way of making sure that each new cell remains a heart cell and doesn’t become something else. So, anyway, we then take the isolated transforming factor and mix it with human stem cells. This, of course, instructs the stem cell to become a brand-new heart cell. We then take the newly instructed stem cell and remove its DNA which contains the gene that induces the formation of new heart cells.”

  Joanna nodded slowly, now understanding. “And the stem cell DNA is then attached to a modified virus and injected into patients.”

  “Exactly,” Brennerman said, nodding back. “You’re very bright, Joanna. I knew it was just a matter of time before you figured it all out.”

  “And it was easy for you to make certain that the genes hooked onto the virus were delivered to the diseased organs of patients,” Joanna continued, struck by the scientific brilliance of the experiment. “When someone with a diseased heart underwent coronary arterial cleansing, you simply mixed the genes in with the lipolytic enzyme. The mixture went directly to the heart and the modified virus carried the genes into the cardiac cells. And old heart cells were suddenly instructed to become new heart cells.”

  “We did the same to selected patients who underwent the arterial cleansing procedure on their diseased brains and kidneys,” Brennerman said proudly. “It brought about a miracle.”

  “It also brought about cancer,” Joanna snapped.

  “I know,” Brennerman sighed, showing a hint of regret. “All great science has a price.”

  “Which you don’t mind someone else paying.”

  Brennerman’s face hardened. “You make it sound like these were all young people with long lives in front of them. They weren’t. They were all sick and would have died in a year or two.”

  “Just the lipolytic enzyme would have kept them going,” Joanna argued.

  “Bullshit!” Brennerman bellowed. “Those arteries started to reclog within a matter of months. And do you know why? Because the basic disease process is still in place and because patients go back to their old habits of smoking and eating the wrong foods and not exercising. And before you know it, those arteries are filled with cholesterol plaques again.”

  He paused and took a deep breath to calm himself. “And as far as the cancer matter is concerned, I believe there are ways around that. Obviously some factor in the genetic material induced the cells to undergo malignant transformation. It wasn’t the virus. It had to be the genes themselves.” Brennerman shrugged indifferently. “We’ll sort it out as we go along.”

  Joanna’s brow went up. “Do you think they’re going to let you continue this project?”

  “Who’s going to stop me?”

  “Memorial will,” Joanna said. “As more and more patients come down with cancer, they—”

  “There won’t be any more cancers,” Brennerman interrupted. “You see, we gave the stem cell genes to only three patients in the group. And those were the ones who developed cancer. That’s why you found the viral particles in their tumors.”

  “Jesus,” Joanna hissed, disgusted with Brennerman and what he’d done.

  “If you have any more questions, now is the time to ask them,” Brennerman went on. “You won’t get another chance.”

  Joanna suddenly realized her mistake. She had been talking with Brennerman as if he were just a scientist. But he was really a killer who had cold-bloodedly ordered the executions of Rabb and Tuch and Mirren. It had to be him. Everybody else associated with Bio-Med was dead except for Brennerman and Lucy Rabb, and Lucy wasn’t smart enough to pull everything off. Joanna tried to keep her voice even, but it still quavered. “Wh-what are you going to do with us?”

  “First, I want to find out how much you know,” Brennerman told her.

  “Not very much,” Joanna said weakly.

  “Oh, I think you know a lot,” Brennerman pressed on. “You’re a smart girl, and you’ve already put some of the pieces together, haven’t you? You knew the diagrams hidden in Mirren’s desk were really maps showing where the fetuses were buried. And you probably figured out that Mirren had hired the Russian to bury the babies so he could blackmail Bio-Med. You see, Alex wasn’t satisfied with stock options. He wanted a percentage of the corporation.”

  Joanna swallowed hard. She and Jake had it wrong. It wasn’t Mirren who had the Russian killed. It was Brennerman.

  Brennerman studied Joanna’s expression and then nodded. “So you did figure it out. Now I need to know what else you figured out. I need to know exactly what you and your colleagues have uncovered.”

  “We don’t know any—”

  “Don’t waste my time!” Brennerman cut her off. “I need exact information on how far along your investigation has gotten. I need specifics. That way I’ll know whether to shut down the project for a while until things cool off, or shut it down permanently and remove any evidence that it ever existed.”

  He turned abruptly to Nancy Tanaka. “And you’re going to tell me everything you learned from Alex Mirren while you two were under the sheets together. And you’re also going to tell me where he hid the other copies of his experimental data books.”

  Nancy was frozen with fear. She clenched her hands into fists to keep them from shaking. “And if I tell you, what then?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Brennerman turned to the guards. “I want to question each woman separately. Nancy in the small surgical suite and Blalock in the room next to it.”

  Joanna and Nancy were marched out of the office and toward the rear of the laboratory. The guards were so close Joanna could smell their cheap aftershave lotion. She glanced around the huge laboratory, searching for windows or doors or any other way of possible escape. There weren’t any. She slowed and looked at the ceiling to see if there was a ladder of steps leading up to the roof. The guard behind her gave her a hard shove and said, “Move it!”

  They came to the door that led into the hot zone laboratory. Brennerman punched the numbers into the panel on the wall. Joanna watched in her peripheral vision. The numbers were 60-50-42. The door clicked open automatically.

  Joanna hesitated, not wanting to go into the hot zone lab unprotected.

  “This setup is just a sham,” Brennerman said, grinning. “We used it to keep everybody out except for Mirren and me and the technician who was unwittingly working on the fetal project.”

  Exactly as Mack Brown had predicted, Joanna thought, now wishing she had paid more attention to his comments. It was the big clue that something important was being hidden in the hot zone laboratory.

  Brennerman stepped on a floor pedal in the lab and a side door slid open. They entered a small room that was flooded with blue ultraviolet light. There was a door on the right, another on the left.

  “Put Blalock in there,” Brennerman said, pointing to the left.

  Joanna was pushed into a dark room. The door closed and everything went black. She paused and tried to get her bearings. Behind her she felt the door. There was no knob or lock or hinges. And there was no pedal on the floor. Probably another automatic door, she guessed. But she couldn’t find the wall panel.

  Cautiously she moved along the wall, feeling the way with her hand. Joanna came to a window of some sort. It seemed to be made of Plexiglas. But there was no sill or lock. A built-in Plexiglas window, she decided, wondering what was on the other side. She moved on and reached another wall, but this one was bare. No shelves, no windows, no switches. Her hand touched a corner and next to it was another door. It too had no knob or locks, but there was a wall panel close by. Joanna fingered the buttons in the darkness.

  The room suddenly lighted up.

  Joanna quickly moved away from the wall panel and looked over at the source of the light. It was coming through the Plexiglas window from the adjoining room. An overhead speaker came on.

  “You’d better answer every question carefully,” Brennerman was saying, “if you want to stay alive.”

  Joanna
went over to the window and peered in.

  Nancy Tanaka was strapped onto a surgical table, her hands and ankles and body firmly secured. Her face showed absolute terror.

  “What did Mirren tell you about his work?” Brennerman asked.

  “He never talked to me about his fetus business,” Nancy squealed. “I swear it.”

  “Never?”

  “Never,” she repeated weakly, starting to cry.

  Brennerman shook his head as if he knew she was lying. “But you made the modified adenovirus for him. You knew it was going to be used as a vector to transport genetic information. Didn’t you?”

  Nancy nodded rapidly. “But he told me it was only going to be used in animal experiments.”

  “But you knew better than that,” Brennerman prompted her. “You were making up big batches of this modified virus. A smart technician like you had to realize that something else was going on.”

  “I was suspicious,” Nancy admitted. “But I never really knew for sure.”

  “Sure you did,” Brennerman pressed on. “And you told Joanna Blalock about it. Didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t! I swear it!”

  “Oh, I think you did,” Brennerman said easily. “And once Blalock heard about it, she put that together with the viral particles in the tumors. And suddenly she knew she was on the right trail. She figured out that somehow the patients were being injected with your goddamn virus.”

  “No! No!” Nancy pleaded desperately. “I never told her. I swear to God!”

  “Well, we’re not getting very far here,” Brennerman said, losing patience. “So we’ll do it another way. Let’s see if you do better when you have to face imminent death.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nancy asked breathlessly.

  Brennerman signaled to a guard, who brought over two small plastic cages. The guard held the cages up so Nancy could see the rattlesnakes inside.

  Nancy’s eyes almost bulged out of her head.

  “You’ll receive bites from two rattlesnakes,” Brennerman said, his tone clinical. “The total amount of venom injected into you will be approximately two hundred milligrams. That’s over twice the lethal dose.”

  Nancy strained with all her might against the straps holding her on the surgical table. The table began to bounce off the floor. The other guard came over to steady it.

  “Within the first hour,” Brennerman went on, “the places where you were bitten will become red and edematous and painful. Then you’ll develop thirst and fever and parts of your body will start to go numb. That’s the bad sign. Once the numbness occurs, you’ve reached the point of no return.”

  Joanna stared through the window motionless, transfixed by the horror show she was about to see.

  “If you decide to tell the truth,” Brennerman continued, “I’ll give you the antivenin and you’ll live. If you keep on lying, I’ll let you die.”

  He signaled to the guard again and stepped back.

  The guard placed a plastic cage next to Nancy Tanaka’s bare upper arm. He pulled a latch up and a small door opened. He pressed the cage against Nancy’s skin. The snake struck and Nancy screamed at the top of her lungs.

  The other guard hurried over and clamped a towel over Nancy’s mouth, dampening her screams.

  Joanna pounded on the Plexiglas window with her fists, trying to stop the guards. She yelled at them as loud as she could, but her voice stayed in the soundproof room.

  The guard placed the second cage up against Nancy’s other arm and opened its small door. A second rattlesnake lunged forward and dug its fangs into Nancy’s deltoid muscle. She screamed again and again, but her screams were muffled by the thick towel over her mouth. She started shaking, her entire body convulsing.

  Joanna couldn’t watch anymore. She turned away and covered her face.

  “We’ll be back in a half-hour,” Brennerman was saying, his voice coming in clearly over the speaker. “I suggest you tell us the truth then.”

  The sound system clicked off.

  Joanna looked back into the room. The guards and Brennerman were gone. Nancy was crying uncontrollably, tears streaking down her face. She seemed to be screaming, “Help me! Help me!” But Joanna couldn’t hear her screams in the soundproof room.

  Oh, God! She’s going to die!

  Joanna took off her boot and swung it with all of her might against the Plexiglas window. She struck it again and again, but the rubber heel didn’t even scratch the Plexiglas. Then she pounded on the window with her fists and pushed against it with her shoulder, but it didn’t budge. Nancy seemed to be convulsing again. A frothy liquid was coming out of her mouth.

  Joanna backed away from the gruesome scene, scared out of her wits and not knowing what to do next. Her back hit the wall behind her hard and she slid down to the floor, still seeing a terrified Nancy Tanaka in her mind’s eye.

  She’s going to die, and I can’t do anything about it. And I’m next! They’ll kill me with rattlesnakes the same way they’re killing her.

  Joanna took deep breaths, trying to calm herself and get her brain working. Think! Think! There’s got to be a way out. She tried desperately to come up with an avenue of escape, but her mind stayed on Nancy and the horrifying death she faced. Two bites from two big rattlesnakes were more than enough to kill a human. And unless Nancy received the antivenin, she’d be dead within hours.

  Joanna shook her head at herself. Stupid! They’re not going to let Nancy live, regardless of what she tells them. She’s now the real danger to Brennerman because what she knows could send him to jail forever. No. They’ll kill her. Then they’ll kill me.

  Joanna pushed herself up from the floor and went back to the window. Nancy was still crying, but less violently. The frothy material had been cleared from her mouth. Joanna knocked on the window and tried to get Nancy’s attention, but the sound didn’t seem to carry into the adjoining room.

  She gazed past Nancy and around the small surgical suite. It was like the room she was in. No windows to the outside, two doors. Abruptly Joanna spun around and looked at the door behind her and at the wall panel next to it. She stared at the door, wondering if it led to the outside of the building where she and Jake had seen the delivery truck. If so, it was a way out.

  She hurried over to the wall panel, trying to remember the code she’d seen Brennerman punch in. The numbers flashed into her mind. 60-50-42. Quickly she punched the numbers into the wall panel. Nothing happened. There was no click. The door didn’t open. Joanna tried it again, but the result was the same. Nothing.

  Shit! The door had another code, she thought despondently. How many codes can they have in this damn place? Nobody could remember all those—

  She suddenly flashed back to the sleeve of Mirren’s white lab coat and the numbers written on it. Two sets of numbers, she recalled instantly. One set was 60-50-42, the same numbers Brennerman had used to enter the hot zone laboratory. What was the second set?

  Joanna closed her eyes and envisioned the numbers written on the sleeve. The first code was 60-50-42. Yes. But there was another code, very similar to the first. She concentrated, thinking back.

  Gradually the numbers came into focus. The initial number was 60 and the second was 50. But what was the third number? She concentrated even harder, but the last number remained a blur. It was a double-digit number, but that was all she could remember. It could be 10 or 99 or any number in between.

  She’d have to try them all until she hit the right combination. And then hope that the second set of numbers on Mirren’s sleeve was the code to the back door.

  Joanna glanced at her watch. It was 9:50 P.M. Brennerman and his goons would be back in twenty minutes.

  Not enough time! Not enough time to go through all the numbers! Oh, Christ! Help me!

  Quickly Joanna began punching numbers into the wall panel, starting with 60-50-10.

  37

  The butler led Jake and Farelli into the elegant living room of Lucy Rabb’s Bel Air mansio
n. She was standing near a white marble fireplace, dressed in a pale blue silk hostess gown. Her dresslike garment was form-fitted to show off her curves.

  “Will that be all, madam?” the butler asked.

  Lucy flicked her wrist in a wave of dismissal.

  Jake said to the butler, “You stick around the kitchen. I might have some questions for you.”

  “Very good, sir,” the butler said, backing out.

  Jake glanced over at the white marble fireplace and the unlighted logs inside it, thinking they were every bit as cold as Lucy Rabb. A Renoir hung on the wall behind her. He wondered if she would inherit that, too.

  “You’d better have a good reason for barging in here at ten o’clock at night,” Lucy snarled.

  “How does murder grab you?” Jake sat on a French antique sofa without being asked to. “You’d better sit down, Mrs. Rabb. We’re going to be here for a while.”

  “I’m going to call my lawyer,” Lucy threatened.

  “Your lawyer is dead. Remember?”

  Lucy reached for the cell phone on the coffee table. “I’m sure there’s another lawyer in that firm who will be happy to represent me.”

  “Give him a call,” Jake said agreeably. “Tell him to meet us downtown.”

  Her hand moved away from the phone. “Why are we going there?”

  “Because that’s where we take people who are charged with first-degree murder.”

  “What!”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jake said easily. “It took us a while to put everything together, but I think we got it set up pretty good now.” He looked over at Farelli. “Don’t you think so, Lou?”

  Farelli nodded. “Rock solid, if you ask me.”

  “This is insane!” Lucy screeched.

  “A judge and jury won’t think so,” Jake went on. “Not when they hear what we’ve got.”

  “And exactly what do you have?” Lucy challenged, not backing down.

  “Oh, a whole lot.” Jake stared at her, waiting for her to start squirming. She didn’t. “Let’s start with the cell phone calls made from the Argonaut. Two calls were made to a bar called Club West. It’s a known front for a New York-based gang that specializes in professional hits.”