by Jon McGoran
I smiled, and so did he. “So it’s not ‘Moose’ as in antlers.”
“Well, mousse is versatile stuff, and antlers are just one possibility, especially when you use as much as she did. But no, the name was not originally in reference to a large antler-bearing mammal.”
I scrunched up my face, trying not to laugh. “Well, that does clear things up. A guy your size called Moose, I was wondering if you had suffered some horrendous shrink-ray accident.”
“Well, how about Doyle? It’s like you got two last names, like I can’t tell if you’re leaving or leaving.”
I gave him a deadeye stare. “My dead father named me after his dead father.”
Moose looked mortified, but then I smiled and then he did.
“Very funny,” he said. “So where did it come from?”
I shook my head. “Actually, I’ve never put it like that, but that is where it came from.”
“Oh.”
We were quiet for a moment after that. As we sat there, I noticed the crowd was getting larger instead of smaller. The staff kept up an admirable pace, taking people back at a steady rate, but the stream of new patients coming in the front door more than made up for it.
My cell phone lit up, telling me two things: Danny Tennison was calling from his cell phone and my battery was almost dead.
As much as I didn’t want to go outside and risk being spotted, I needed to plug my phone into the truck. I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be the kind of conversation I would want overheard, anyway.
“Back in a second,” I told Moose as I headed out through the ambulance entrance, past the glare from the EMERGENCY sign, and got in Frank’s truck. I started the engine and plugged my phone into the car charger before I answered.
“Hey, Danny,” I said.
“Doyle, what the fuck is going on up there? Have you lost your fucking mind?”
“I’m thinking I might have.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking that, too. You know there’s a warrant out for you, right?”
I sighed. “I was thinking there might be.”
“It’s murder this time, Doyle. Even Suarez isn’t gloating about that. They have a stiff up there, and they’re saying your fingerprints are all over the murder weapon.”
“My fingerprints?” I pictured the pen protruding from Sydney Bricker’s eye, and the pen she gave me to sign those papers she brought over. “Fuck.”
“Did you kill someone up there?”
“I didn’t kill Sydney Bricker. Is that what they’re saying?”
This time he sighed. “That’s what they’re saying. So, did you kill someone else?”
“Danny, there’s something big going on out here. I found out where the heroin was coming from, and it’s apples.”
He was quiet for a second, and I knew I was losing him. “Apples?”
“I swear to God. I think someone may have genetically altered apples to make them produce heroin.”
“Apples. Jesus, listen to yourself, Doyle. You go for a week out in the country, and now you’re seeing bad guys in your fruit.”
“I know it sounds crazy, Danny—”
“No, Doyle. It doesn’t sound crazy; it is crazy. If you didn’t kill this Bricker woman, great. But you need to get yourself a good lawyer and straighten this out. You can even come back to the city to do it, so you’re among friends.”
I knew I wasn’t going to get through to him, and he was right: What I was saying sounded crazy. He’d be crazy to believe me.
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “You’re probably right.”
“Finally,” he said. “Now, here’s what we’re going to do—” But that’s when I ended the call.
* * *
As I came back inside, I saw Janie talking to Moose, but she was gone before I got there.
“What did she say?” I asked.
“They’re admitting Nola. Going to run some tests. They’ll let us know. Could be awhile, though.”
He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. I leaned in next to him and spoke quietly.
“So, you think this apple thing could be for real?” I asked. “With the gene splicing and the heroin?”
He opened his eyes and looked at me for a second, blinking.
“Hell, yeah, I think it’s possible. They’re doing the same basic thing all over—different drugs and different crops, but the same basic thing.”
“So, how do they do it again?”
“The way I understand it, they use different enzymes to cut up the DNA at different places. You take these sections from this plant, mix them with cut-up DNA from something else, and there you go.”
“Sounds simple.”
“No, there’s a lot more to it than that. But I know they’re already doing stuff like that. You should go ask that Rupp guy, he’ll tell you all about it.”
“What, because he’s a geneticist?”
“Well, yeah, but that’s like, his specialty, GMO pharmaceutical crops. He’s written papers about this stuff. I think he did his Ph.D. on it.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I looked him up online after you and Nola went to see him. Interesting guy. He grew some corn that made like, penicillin or something like that. I didn’t understand a lot of it. Apparently people already knew how to create proteins in crops, but he was working on other compounds as well. He developed some antifungal wonder drug, but it hit some snags with the FDA, never got approved. He’s a bit of a hotshot, has all these papers and articles. You Google his name, all sorts of stuff turns up. He got stiffed for some award a couple years ago. I didn’t find much about him after that.”
“No shit.” Rupp had said it couldn’t be done. Didn’t know anything about it.
Moose looked at my face. “What?”
I stood up. “I have to go check something out.”
63
I called directory assistance as I drove, hunched over sideways because my charger cord was too short for Frank’s truck. Jerry Simpkins was listed as living in a small, modern-looking condo a quarter mile from the college. It seemed nice enough, but even in the dark I could tell the construction was starting to sag and crack, even before the trees had fully grown in.
The lights were on in his unit, but they were on low. I gave the door my cop knock, and it opened a few seconds later, Simpkins’s head poking out.
Through the doorway, I could hear a new agey wash of piano and synthesized strings. A mixture of incense and pot smoke wafted out.
Simpkins screwed up his brow as he looked down at me from two steps up. “Carrick?” He rolled his eyes. “Are you serious?”
“Hope I’m not interrupting anything.” I totally hoped I was interrupting something.
“Actually, yes, you are.”
“I have a few questions for you. Do you mind if I come in?”
“Actually, yes, I—”
“Is that marijuana smoke?”
He cocked his head to one side and gave me a look.
I smiled. “Or I could just come in, ask a few questions, and leave.”
He took a deep breath and let it out, then started to step outside. “Okay, ask your questions.”
I shook my head. “In there.”
Simpkins’s shoulders sagged, and he shook his head. “Whatever.”
The reefer smell was a lot stronger inside, but that’s not what I was there for. The girl with her feet tucked under her on the sofa looked barely eighteen, but that wasn’t what I was there for, either. She wore a short denim skirt and one of those T-shirts with the spaghetti straps. The skin around her lips was flushed pink, and her eyes were bloodshot. When she saw me, she stiffened for an instant. Then she relaxed and gave me a smile.
“This is Maria,” Simpkins said. “Maria, this is Detective Carrick. I’m helping him with an investigation.”
She nodded her head, bobbing it up and down like a pigeon. “Cool.”
“This will just take a second,” he told her, looking at me to make sure I unde
rstood that as well.
I nodded.
Simpkins led me through the small living room and the dining area and into the kitchen. He filled a glass with water from the tap. “So what can I do for you?” he asked. Then he drank half the water.
“How do you know Jason Rupp?”
He smiled, maybe relieved at the question. “I met him at a party a few years ago. The head of my department at the time, Dennis Kovitch, it was his farewell party. He knew Jason from somewhere, I don’t know. I had a very interesting talk with Rupp that night. He has quite a mind, you know.”
“How well do you know him?”
“Not well. Between what I told you before and what I’ve told you just now, you probably know as much about him as I do. Kovitch knew him better, I guess. I could get you his number.”
“Call him.”
“I’m not going to call him.” He laughed. “It’s almost midnight on a Saturday night. If you’d like I can—”
“Call him. Right now.”
I put my hands on my hips and gave him one of my crazy nut-job looks.
“I don’t even know where his number is.”
“Call information.”
He sighed, but he took out his phone and dialed 411. “San Diego, California,” he said clearly, then “Dennis Kovitch,” spelling it out. I didn’t point out that it was only nine o’clock in San Diego.
“Dennis, hi, it’s Jerry Simpkins.… No, Simpkins, from Pine Crest. Right … Yes, it’s a surprise for me to be calling you. Look, I’m here with a Detective Carrick, I’m helping him with an investigation.… Yes, it is … Anyway, he has a few questions about Jason Rupp, and since you know him better than I do, I thought perhaps you could talk to him.…”
Simpkins handed me the phone. “He’s delighted.”
“Hello?”
“Who is this?” Kovitch demanded. He did not sound delighted.
“This is Detective Doyle Carrick, with the Philadelphia Police,” I said, hoping my notoriety had not reached San Diego and mumbling my name just in case.
“Oh,” he said, a little softer. I wondered if he hadn’t believed Simpkins. “Well, what can I do for you?”
“I’m working on an investigation, and I have a few questions. Do you know Jason Rupp?”
“Not well, but enough to know I don’t want to know him any better.”
“Why’s that?”
“Jason was a brilliant young scientist with a bright future, but he was lazy and sleazy and, I hate to say it, unethical.”
“Unethical how?”
“Well … a lot of this is rumor, but when there’s enough rumor, you know something is there. I know for a fact that he cut corners with his research; he was sloppy with his controls. He faked some data—that’s what cost him his Gairdner Award. He’s been persona non grata since then. I think he went into the pharmaceutical business.”
“I heard he had been offered a teaching position at the University of Paris.”
“The Sorbonne?” Kovitch laughed at that. “I hadn’t heard that, but I would have a very hard time believing it. I was at a conference last summer with the head of the molecular biology department there. Rupp’s name came up in conversation.”
“Really?”
“He called Rupp a disgrace to the field, a delinquent, and … what was it?” Kovitch paused, remembering, then laughed. “Oh, yes, he called him a ‘guttersnipe.’”
I laughed, too. “So, Simpkins said he met Rupp at your party. How did that happen?”
He grunted. “I had a research assistant, Liz Anne, I think her name was, something like that. Not very bright, or particularly attractive for that matter, but, well, I understand she had other attributes that made her popular. Rupp arrived with her.” He laughed again. “Come to think of it, I don’t think he left with her. Maybe she was brighter than I thought.”
“Well, thanks for your help, Mr. Kovitch.”
“Doctor Kovitch,” he said. “You know it’s a shame about Rupp. Apart from anything else, he was a brilliant young man, and he was doing some very impressive work, especially some of the work he was doing on corn.”
“Corn?”
“Yes. I don’t think he ever published it, because it was right when the business with the faked data blew up. But he was doing some very advanced work manipulating the corn genome to produce some very sophisticated results.”
Son of a bitch. “He must have been an astonishing intellect.”
Kovitch laughed awkwardly. “I guess you could say that.”
I thanked him, and he said he was happy to help, but when he said I could call him if I had any other questions, it was obvious he was hoping I wouldn’t.
I handed the phone back to Simpkins. “Thank you.”
“So, are we done here?” Simpkins said, holding out his arm for me to walk toward the front door. My brain was humming with what Kovitch had just told me. I nodded and preceded him through the dining room and into the living room.
Maria was asleep on the sofa. Her head was back, one of her straps had fallen off her shoulder, and she had slumped down so that her skirt was riding up her thighs, showing a glimpse of pink satin underneath.
I glanced at Simpkins before he had a chance to erase his wolfish leer and look away from her. For a moment we stood there looking at each other. Then I stepped over and briskly patted the girl’s cheek.
“Maria,” I said loudly.
She stirred and looked up at me, her eyes slightly crossed.
“It was nice meeting you,” I said.
She pulled her head back, rolling her eyes slightly, trying to get them aligned. “What?”
“I think you fell asleep,” I said. “Do you want Jerry to give you a ride home?”
I could feel Simpkins’s eyes stabbing me repeatedly in the back.
Maria put her hand on her forehead. “Um, yeah,” she said, still groggy. She sat forward and grabbed her shoes, then stood up unsteadily.
When I turned around, Simpkins’s expression was about what I expected. I gave him a nice big smile. “You leave now, you could be back before the end of Saturday Night Live.”
64
Stan Bowers’s voice mail picked up on the second ring. The bastard was screening me. I immediately hung up and called again, and the voice mail picked up on the first ring. On the fifth call, he picked up.
“Go away, Carrick,” he said. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“Just a quick question—”
“No, Doyle. No. Not yet. Someday, maybe, looking back and laughing, but not now.”
“I just need to know what kind of flour it was.”
“What kind of…? Are you fucking kidding me? It’s past midnight. What are you, making a cake?”
“I just need to know, then I’ll leave you alone.”
“You are un-fucking-believable. How do you know I’m not asleep or banging my wife?” He sighed, then I heard him rustling paper. “Okay, here we go: ‘Eighty micron, dry-milled, de-germinated, high-amylose white corn flour.’ Okay?”
“Thanks.”
He hung up without another word.
* * *
Rupp’s Mustang wasn’t in his driveway. I thought about breaking in and having a look around, but instead, I turned the car around and made a right at the intersection half a block away and parked so I could watch his driveway.
Then I waited. I tried to switch into stakeout-hibernation mode, but with limited success. Over the next several hours, my brain kept kicking on, either thinking about my mom and Frank, or thinking about the crazy, messed up little town of Dunston, with its meth fires and heroin busts and assholes with guns, its strange fields of genetically modified corn and disappearing apple trees. And its strange flu epidemic. Even my paranoid brain couldn’t make them all fit together. It began to ache as it tried, and I felt great relief when Rupp finally arrived. I waited a couple of seconds, then started up the car and went after him, turning up his driveway and parking the Mustang.
Even i
n the dark, I could see that his tires were covered with mud.
He jumped when he saw me, but he recovered quickly, rolling his eyes. “You? Are you kidding me?” he said, without his accent. “Do you know what time it is?” He seemed younger, more vulnerable.
“Mind if I come in?”
He took a deep breath and stood up straighter. “Actually, you know what? Yes, I do.” The accent was back. “I’m actually quite busy, and it’s late. What do you want?”
“I just wanted to tell you, you were wrong about the apples.”
“Really?” He laughed, and it sounded almost real, but not quite. “Wrong how?”
“Turns out someone figured out a way to do it. Apparently they were whatever you said, massive intellectuals or whatever.”
“They must have been.”
I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “Between you and me, a friend of mine in DEA said they tapped a bunch of phone lines. They’re getting very close to putting it all together.” I straightened up, backing off a step. “So, I just wanted to say thanks for your assistance. I’ll make sure you get credit for your help in solving this.”
“It was nothing,” he said softly, gazing into the distance over my shoulder.
“No, you’d be surprised. A lot of people wouldn’t have helped. So thanks.”
I put out my hand for him to shake. When he did, his palm was clammy.
Back in my car, I pulled out of the driveway and made a right at the intersection half a block away. I drove up the block, turned off my headlights, then turned around and coasted back to the corner to wait.
Five minutes later, Rupp’s Mustang backed out of the driveway and screeched off in the opposite direction. I gave him a few seconds to put some distance between us. Then I went after him—not too close, but keeping the Mustang’s distinctive taillights ahead of me.
Luckily, I had a pretty good idea where we were going.
As we were getting close to Bayberry Road, I lost him for a moment. But then I caught sight of his taillights out of the corner of my eye, disappearing down a driveway behind a farmhouse on my left. It was one of the houses Nola and I had driven past the day we went to Hawk Mountain. She had said the family had kept the house but sold the land. I guess they sold the driveway, too.
