Lethal Discoveries

by Erica Pensini

  I looked at him, thoughts racing painfully fast through my febrile mind. Then Ronny did something unexpected. He reached for my hand and said, while holding it, “We’ll talk again, and this is not a menace. I will not hurt you”.

  Then he placed a bill under his glass and walked away.

  Chapter 70

  “What are we to do?”, I asked, closing my eyes in exhaustion

  Jack pulled out his walled and placed few bills under the glass, the same way Ronny had done.

  “Let’s go”, he said, touching my arm

  We found a streetcar stop not too far from the nightclub and rode it in silence, letting its monotonous rock appease us. I was about to fall asleep when I felt a jerk and I opened my eyes. The streetcar stopped. I looked up and saw a red traffic light. I turned around and Jack attempted a tired smile.

  “What are we going to do?”, I asked again

  “Go to bed as soon as we get the chance”, he replied, trying to add a touch of cheerful assurance to his words

  “What about Mori? Should we see him tomorrow morning?”

  “Why wouldn’t we?”, Jack said

  “Because of what the guy told us…”

  Jack shrugged

  “Did you believe him?”, I asked

  “No”

  “At moments I did…”

  “Think about it. You contacted Mori first”, Jack argued

  “Yes, but he invited me here…”, I said

  “Sure he did. You asked for his help and he accepted to help. Why would you go trust a guy who popped up from nowhere, after following us for who knows how long and on behalf of whom”, Jack insisted

  “Yeah…I don’t know what I was thinking”

  Jack smiled again and pet my shoulder.

  “We’ll be fine”, he said

  I knew he had doubts about that just as much as I did. I smiled back though, trying to look reassured and reassuring.

  Few minutes later we finally reached our stop, and it was good to be close to the hotel although getting up on my feet and walking again, even for a few more steps, was painful. I collected my strength. One step after the next, we got across the street, and past the hotel entrance and in the elevator, and in the hallway and finally in front of our room.

  But the door was cracked open and a cone of light projected itself out of our room, into the hallway.

  Chapter 71

  Jack and I looked at each other.

  Please not now, not again, I thought

  ”Let’s go call the security”, Jack said.

  I hesitated, and Jack repeated, “Let’s go”.

  “But…”, I began, feeling that if the police got involved we would have to explain way too many things

  Jack waited for a moment, but then he took me by the hand with a sense of urgency. He was about to drag me downstairs when suddenly we saw a man, dressed in hotel staff suit, walking towards us from the end of the hallway. I froze and I felt Jack’s hand become tense and moist with cold sweat. The guy had the appearance of the average Joe who works in a hotel, and I could not explain the rush of fear that was taking us both other than with the fact that our senses were over-sensitized with the avalanche of events swamping us.

  When the man was close he looked at us and said, “Is everything fine?”.

  It was probably a legitimate question, because we must have seemed oddly disturbed, and yet the idea that he had been following us flashed through my mind. We stared at him without answering, and he repeated the question.

  “Our door has been opened”, said Jack at last

  The guy turned towards the door and pondered the fact for a moment.

  “Did you just get here and found it like this?”, he asked, and I nodded

  He seemed hesitant to go in, and after waiting a moment asked us another question.

  “Did you have any important things in there?”

  I thought about the polymer samples. The first thought I had had is that whoever went in there was after us, but now all of a sudden it occurred to me that perhaps he or she was after the samples instead.

  “Just our luggage…”, I replied vaguely

  “We’ll call the security”, interrupted Jack

  The guy looked at us and after pondering a moment he conceded, “Yes. I think we should”, but stood there without moving. There was something very odd about the scene, as if a movie was being played in slow motion.

  “Come on Iris, let’s go”, said Jack, who after a moment of disorientation had reacquired his quick wit.

  I was already starting to head away with Jack when the man stopped us.

  “Maybe we can go in and have a look first”, he said, starting to open the door.

  And there, at the entrance, we saw the cleaning lady who had been following us lying on the floor, a red stain spread on her back. Had it not been for that stain, she could have been alive, lying there with her eyes closed.

  Time froze and my thoughts froze. I felt nothing, as if I was under a massive dose of anesthesia. Then there were sirens comings from a distance, getting closer and closer, and finally they were there, right under our room. We heard conceited voices, and a moment later two police officers were walking towards us.

  “Polizia”, they said, showing us their badges

  One of the two police officers bent on the body and placed his fingers on the woman’s jugular veins. He kept them there for a moment, then stood up, shaking his head. He was a man of about 40, stocky and with large feet, which seemed to ground him down and keep him balanced no matter what. The other policeman was thinner, nervous, and his eyes were mobile and disquiet. The two officers walked around the room, looked around.

  “Is anything missing?”, the thin policeman asked me

  I shook my head and shrugged. “I don’t know”, I said

  “We’ll need to ask few questions”, he said

  “Sure”, replied Jack, who was keeping me close to him, a hand on my shoulder

  “Did you know this woman?”

  I shook my head no, trying to look credible

  “We don’t live here”, said Jack, backing me up

  The policeman nodded distractedly

  We heard another siren. Two Red Cross nurses came, carrying a stretcher. One police officer pulled out a chalk and drew the profile of the body on the carpet. He took pictures from different angles. Then the nurses moved the body on the stretcher and made their way to the elevator.

  “You have to vacate this room for a while”, the stocky officer said

  I looked at him blankly, so he added, “But we’ll have the girl at the front desk give you another one”.

  “Can you check if anything is missing?”, the thin policeman asked

  I opened my luggage and saw it had been fumbled trough. I felt around with my hands and looked under my clothing, unfolding them to make sure nothing passed unnoticed. So I was sure: the polymers were missing. I should have been shaken, but too much had happened and I was beyond the point of exhaustion.

  I got up with effort and said, “Someone went through my stuff but I think they didn’t take anything”

  “Do you have any idea about why someone would try to go through your belongings?”, the thin officer asked, and tired as I was I noticed that the way the guy phrased his sentences in English was more sophisticated than the average guy in Italy would phrase them

  “I don’t know…”

  “And what about your belongings? Anything missing?”, the policeman asked, addressing Jack

  “Not really. They went through my clothing too, but everything is here”, he said.

  We had distributed the polymer vials between our two suitcases, in case one of them got lost. I wondered if for a very strange case the polymer vials in his luggage were still there, or if he was lying the same way I had.

  The thin policeman landscaped the room with his eyes one more time.

  “We will have to ask you few more questions. We will come find you here at the hotel”,
he said after a pause

  “Ok”, I said, wondering what we would do the next day, but too tired to ponder any possibility for too long

  “We’ll have the hotel staff get another room for you. You can gather your belongings now, but do not touch the door handles. Is everything you have in there?”, he asked, pointing at our luggage

  Before we answered he gave a quick look at his stocky colleague, who nodded and walked out the room. My gaze trailed behind his steps, my moves and thoughts slow and blurred.

  “Yes, we just got here today. We didn’t have the time to move things around…”, I replied after a moment

  “Good”, he concluded

  By the time we closed our luggage, the stocky policeman came back with a woman in hotel uniform at his side.

  “I’ll bring you to a new room. This way”, she said, her plump hips raising and falling vigorously at every step.

  “We will need to talk to you in the next days”, the policemen with the nervous temperament reiterated.

  Jack and I nodded yes, then turned away, dragging our suitcases behind.

  Chapter 72

  As soon as we lay on the bed we fell asleep and slept a dreamless sleep. When the alarm rang at 7 I snoozed it off, and closed my eyes with the delusional resolution to get up in no more than five minutes. Of course I feel asleep again.

  “Hey Iris…hey”

  “Ehm…”, I moaned

  “Come on, we have to get up”, Jack insisted

  I sat on the bed, still so tired it was as if the night hadn’t happened at all.

  “So are we going to see Mori?”, I asked

  “Of course”, Jack said

  “But we don’t have the polymer anymore”, I said with an odd sense of incredulity, as if I was trapped on the stage of a surrealist play

  “We do”, Jack said with a smile

  “They didn’t take them from your luggage?!”, I exclaimed

  “I placed the polymer that was in my luggage in the safe box with our passports”, he smiled

  “Really? Ah, you are so awesome, boy!”, I said with transport, pressing my lips hard against his and smiling back, fully awake now.

  But then I thought about the dead body the night before

  “What if the police comes to ask questions?”

  “We are allowed to go outside, they didn’t tell us to wait in the room indefinitely”

  “Do you think Ronny is the killer?”

  “No”, Jack replied without any hesitation

  “Why are you so sure?”

  “Because he was with us and we came straight to the hotel after he left. He couldn’t have killed the cleaning lady or whoever she was, he would have not had the time”

  “Yeah, this makes sense…but then who did it?”

  “I don’t know. But don’t you find that the situation was very odd yesterday?”

  “Yeah, there was a dead body lying on the floor”

  “No, I mean, why was the guy who first met us in the hallway so hesitant to call the security guard? And who called the police anyways?”

  “Maybe the hotel staff was alerted by odd noises and thought that something suspicious was happening in our room…”

  “But when we asked for our room keys they let us go upstairs without warning us to stay away from our room until the situation was cleared. Why so?”

  “Maybe some other guest called the police…”, I suggested

  “Sure, but then don’t you think a guest would have called the hotel staff for assistance or at least to let them know that there was something wrong? Wouldn’t this be the first thing you would do if you felt something was not quite right?”

  “I suppose so, yes”, I admitted

  “And why did the police let us take our suitcases if they had been rummaged through? Don’t you think they should have kept them to try and find traces and clues about the killer?”

  “Yeah, you’re right…but what do you think is happening then? Do you believe the police is involved in this in some way?”

  “Apart from noticing that what is happening is strange, I don’t understand a single bit about it. Anyways, what about heading to meet Mori and having some breakfast on the go?

  I nodded.

  “Thank you for being here, Jack”, I said looking at him

  I would have crashed if he hadn’t been there, that’s certain

  He took the tip of my nose between his fingers and tugged it playfully, shaking his head and smiling.

  “Come on, let’s get ready”, he said.

  Chapter 73

  When we reached the institute we found Mori waiting for us at the entrance, chatting happily with the receptionist.

  “So you’re here, good morning!”, he greeted us as soon he caught sight of us looking around, hesitant about where we should go, still in rough shape from the previous day and having been here only once

  Mori noticed our strained faces and red-rimmed eyes, and studied us with a focused expression, his smile fading.

  “You looked in better shape yesterday than you do today”, he commented after a moment

  I shrugged and raised my palms, attempting a smile

  “The hotel wasn’t that great?”, he asked, starting to walk to the elevator

  “Long story…”, I replied

  “I think you should know”, said Jack to my surprise, because he didn’t reveal facts unless it was necessary or he had complete faith in his interlocutor

  “What should I know?”, asked Mori, stopping

  “It’s best to talk about it in your office”, Jack said

  Mori nodded, and continued walking us to the elevator, his steps a bit faster now. There were other people waiting to go up, and when we stepped in the elevator we were tight. I stood there, my eyes fixed on the digits increasing on the display at each floor, impatient for the ride to end

  I wasn’t sure about how Mori would react, and I was worried that he might pull back, tell us he didn’t want to get involved in a turbid saga with an unpredictable ending. But in the calming environment of his office Mori listened to Jack’s account, his charcoal eyes attentive behind the black-rimmed spectacles, nodding every now and then, and I knew he wouldn’t bail out even before he told us.

  “Well, if so many people are after you it means that you’ve hit one something big. It means we should get started now and understand what the polymer can do to the body”, he said when Jack finished speaking

  Then he got up and walked to the door.

  “Let’s go”, he said, smiling with calm confidence and waiting for us to follow.

  Chapter 74

  The lab gave out a feeling somewhat different from that of our lab, it was equally white, equally aspetically clean, but the ceiling was lower and the sound of the Italian words spoken between the researchers made the whole setting seem somewhat more relaxed.

  Mori nodded to few people, “Buon giorno, come va?”, he said, placing a hand on their shoulder, “Bene, bene…”, they nodded back.

  “So, what we should do is test if the polymer slows down the functioning of essential organs, or interferes with it, or stops it altogether”, Mori said

  “How will we do this?”, I asked

  “Let me show you something”, he said, and walked to a machine that looked somewhat like an autoclave but not quite.

  There were tubes coming out of it and going to what resembled a dialysis machine. And there was another bulky device hooked up to it that, with a screen showing what looked like an electrocardiogram.

  “We have a heart in here, and it’s alive”, he told us, and then paused, observing our reactions

  I wondered how the heart was kept alive, looked at Jack, and he seemed pensive and intrigued too

  “So do you pump blood into it to keep it alive?”, Jack asked, his words echoing my thoughts

  “We do, and continuously purify the blood that flows through it. But circulating blood in it is not enough to keep it alive. We also keep it pulsing by providi
ng electric stimuli”, he said, pulling up a lever and opening the lid of the machine for us to see.

  The heart was contracting, expanding, contracting and the tubes connected to it were pulsing with blood. The scene was fascinating and revolting at the same time. What I was seeing seemed unbelievable, more like a sci-fi movie than reality.

  Mori closed the lid and locked it down tight, then looked at us and grinned with pride for the shortest moment, before recomposing his features in a unassuming, calm expression

  “There’s only another place in the world where they have achieved similar results. We also recreated a part of the intestinal tract, and we are working on developing lungs now”, he explained

  I nodded, stunned by what I was seeing and hearing. Mori had given us an anticipation of this the first time we had met him in the office, but I had not expected anything of the sort

  “This is unbelievable, it makes the biological research I was doing seem a kid’s game”, said Jack

  I looked at him surprised, and realized I he had never told me the details of what he had been studying. It was strange how I knew who Jack was, how I felt the core of him, without knowing any or very few details about his past.

  “But of course this is the fruit of a joint effort”, Mori replied, waving off the compliment

  “Sure, but it’s great”, I insisted

  “So here’s my plan”, said Mori, diverting the topic, “I think we can continuously inject small amounts of the polymer in the blood that goes to the heart for half an hour time period. After that we’ll stop, and the machine will gradually remove the polymer from the blood much the same way kidneys would. Some of the polymer may be retained from the heart’s tissue though, and have an effect on the way it pulsates. We’ll provide the same electric stimuli, and see if the heart’s reaction to them varies after it is “contaminated” with the polymer”, he said

  Jack and I nodded, “Thank you, this is really much beyond what I could have ever done or expected to do”, I said, meaning it

  “And if we rule out effects on the heart we will move on to analyzing if it acts on the intestinal tract. Let’s get started”, Mori said, suddenly pacing fast and gathering what was necessary for the test on a bench close to the machine, while Jack and I stood there waiting.

  I was tired, but the scientific excitement mingled with the anxiousness of what we would see had swept away the worries of being hunted down by people who were able and willing to kill.