CHIMERAS (Track Presius) (4 page)

I sat on the swivel chair and touched the mouse of the computer. The screen flicked to life and asked for username and password. I picked up the folder at the top of the pile on the desk, labeled “Leukemia Study,” and opened it. There were several sets of stapled papers, the first of which looked like a drafted manuscript, with penciled corrections in two different calligraphies. “Incidence of leukemia in children under twelve in LA County, a preliminary study,” the title read. A list of authors followed: Huxley was the first one, and the last one was a J.A. Cox, MD, PhD, listed as corresponding author. I attempted some educational reading while flipping through the pages, but typically got lost after the third word in each sentence. As I closed the folder and placed it back where it belonged, a bright pink sticky note fell out. Handwritten in capital letters, it read, “GN WHITE, AGE 8, CHROMO.”

I puzzled over the note, didn’t understand it, and the fact that I couldn’t understand it made it interesting enough to copy the information on my notepad. Satisfied, I got back on my feet.

The Watson and Crick Laboratory for Genetic Studies was located at the very end of the building’s west wing. This was where Huxley spent most of her days, according to Samantha Green. A pale light seeped through the frosted glass of two high windows and shimmered against rows of glassware of all sizes and shapes. Stacks of boxes filled the shelves between the windows, some pried open and their contents exposed: latex gloves, pipettes and pipette
holders, tweezers, glass tubes, sheets of packed swabs. The air was acidic, thick with reeks of alcohol, antiseptic liquids, gels, biological solutions—all combined in one acrid odor. Pungent in an unpleasant way. A large fridge hummed at the back, a piece of paper taped to its door warning it did not contain food.

Like the stink wasn’t enough of a warning already
.

More signs decorated the cabinets hanging all around the walls, some pleading for their contents to be returned at the end of the day, others boring me with an endless list of vials and lot numbers stored within. Beneath the cabinets, a variety of instruments cluttered the scratched Formica countertops: optical microscopes, centrifuges, precision scales—all familiar but one. A sleek copy machine, I would’ve guessed, although it lacked a lid and had only few subtle buttons on the front.

“Isn’t she a beauty?” a voice behind me said. It came with a whiff of caffeine, a badly digested lunch, and fabric that reeked of chemical reagents—a lab technician.

“Yeah,” I agreed without having a clue to what exactly we were talking about. “What the hell is it?”

“An Illumina Beadstation,” the man replied, his voice betraying disappointment in my question. I bobbed my head and humbly submitted my ignorance to his judgment.

“What does it do?”

“SNP genotyping.”

It must have been my lucky day: I kept running into the most useful people. I slid the badge out of my pocket and flashed it in front of the man’s nose. “I’m looking for Jennifer Huxley,” I said. “I’m told she usually works here.”

Fabian Payanukis had ghostly white complexion, a precociously hunched back, and long eyelashes hidden behind thick lenses. His outdated sweater smelled feminine, too flowery to be the scent of a girlfriend, a mother rather, the kind who calls three times a week and sends friendly reminders in the mail, lovingly tucked in pink, perfumed stationary. We each pulled a stool and sat at the corner of the working bench, in front of a compact centrifuge whose two dials kept eyeing me sternly.

“Jennifer and I work together on the leukemia study,” he told me, grabbing an abandoned pipette bulb and pressing it between his index finger and thumb. His fingernails were polished and struck me as too long for a guy. “It’s kind of strange she hasn’t showed up for three days in a row,” he said in a low voice. “Maybe she had a family emergency?”

“Tell me about this leukemia study you guys work on.”

“The project is funded by an NIH grant. The recipient is Dr. Cox, my boss. The purpose of the study is to find possible genetic predispositions with the disease. We call them genetic markers: mutations along the genome that can predict the onset of leukemia. Genetic markers for breast cancer have already been published. Women who carry these mutations have a higher risk of developing breast cancer.” While he talked, Payanukis blinked often and rarely made eye contact. His voice was as flat as an ironing board—perfect for Sunday morning readings on public radio.

“The Illumina we have in our lab is a million dollar baby,” Payanukis’s voice surfaced over my digressions. “It’s the state of the art for DNA sequencing.”

An Asian guy with spiky hair stepped into the lab, acknowledged our presence with a brisk nod, and then sat by an optical microscope at the other end of the room, the sour smell of the fish-based lunch he’d just consumed trailing behind him.

“What’s Jennifer’s role in all this?”

“She prepares the samples to be genotyped and feeds them into the machine,” Payanukis replied. “Sounds simple, but the whole process is fairly complicated and takes hours of work.”

I had no doubt. “How many hours a day does she spend here at the lab?”

“It depends. Lately she’s been at her desk a lot, writing a manuscript. She’s always out of here by five, though.”

I winced. Not quite the picture Samantha Green had depicted. “Are you sure?”

Payanukis nodded. “We usually leave together. I work on a
second project, at another lab on campus. I walk her to the parking lot every night.” He looked down while proffering the last bit. Beads of perspiration appeared over his brows.
He fancies her
.

“And you’ve never seen her come back here afterwards?”

He paused for a moment and then pointed a bony index finger at me. “You know, come to think of it, once I forgot my notes, so I came back around half past six and found her here.”

I imagined him walking by Jennifer’s side at the end of the day, living off her small smiles and polite nods, while her mind wandered elsewhere, racing ahead to the moment when she’d bid him goodbye, drive around the block, and then sneak back to the lab. Unseen, and away from spying eyes.

“What was she doing?”

“She was sitting at the computer station, the one connected to the Illumina, probably reading some output.”

“Did she look tired, as if sleep deprived?”

Payanukis shrugged. “I would say yes. But then again, we all do when there’s a deadline approaching.”

I got off the stool and adjusted the holster on my waistband. “So, where do I find Dr. Cox?”

CHAPTER 6

___________

Thursday, October 9

Julia Cox shouldered out of the double doors without bothering to hold them open for the man behind her. “Julia! Wait!” the man called. “There’s always Science—”

Cox marched away with her nose stuck up in the air as if she were wading in high, stinky waters. The hems of her white coat billowed, and the stethoscope around her neck tapped against her chest pocket. The man stood by the door, waiting, a shade of weariness clouding his face. The outer corners of his brows came down a notch.

Two women in green scrubs walked by, their heads focused on patient charts and medication trays, yet their eyes covertly staring at Cox’s
prima donna
scene. Sunk in her black swivel chair, a receptionist with a five-inch tall hairdo yawned and flipped through the pages of her magazine. Hanging from the ceiling, a muted TV broadcasted the animated face of a reporter, the numbers of the Dow Jones running in a banner at the bottom of the frame. The blue light of the screen washed down on the reception desk, next to a sign warning patients to have their insurance cards ready.

Julia Cox took a few more steps, then froze in the middle of the lobby, one hand poised in midair as if caught by an afterthought. She spun on her feet and walked back to her colleague.

“Science?” she snarled, arms crossed and head cocked to the side. “Science has a cut-off of two thousand words—it’s hardly enough to present the data, let alone discuss our conclusions. Plus, the resubmission will take another four weeks, which will give Jim’s group plenty of time to publish their results and scoop us.” The pretension of her posture jacked up her height a couple of inches. A woman of intensity, I noted, the kind you
don’t
want to share your bed with. Her colleague opened his mouth as if about to object to something, his frown stuck somewhere in between concern and perplexity.

“No. You listen to me, Dave,” Cox interjected, raising a finger and pressing it against his breastbone. “You know as well as I do who the second reviewer is. He’s been sitting on our manuscript for weeks, giving Jim plenty of time to clean up his data and submit after we did. Of course he was going to reject us, he—”

“Julia, you’re reading too much into this stuff.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Dr. Cox?” She startled at the sound of my voice, as if suddenly realizing she’d been entertaining a work conversation in a public place. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” I lied, flashing my badge.

The man by the door straightened and blurted, “Oh, no interruption at all. We were just about done.”

I grinned, not missing the relief in his voice. Cox frowned, dazzled by the sight of my tin. “Dave!” she called, though the man had already vanished behind the double doors. A disoriented look on her face, she brought a hand to her stethoscope and turned back to me. “What’s this about?” The tone of her voice betrayed a shrill of annoyance.

“I’m told you’re missing a member of your research team,” I replied, sliding the badge wallet back into my pocket.

She looked at me in a daze. “Missing? I thought she—” She bit her lip and didn’t finish the sentence. “Is this about Jennifer?”

I confirmed it was about Jennifer. She ran a hand through her hair and gave one last glance at the closed doors. They held still and shut, her colleague by now probably two buildings away and still running.

“Let’s go talk outside, if you don’t mind,” she murmured. As she strode by the reception desk, she brushed a hand along the mahogany countertop, and, without looking at anybody in particular, said, “Taking five.”

“Yes, Doctor,” the receptionist with the tall hair replied, her voice echoed by the squeaks of her swivel chair. I glanced at the towering hairdo, my hands itching to catch it were it to fall off any instant.

The pneumatic doors hissed open and the afternoon breeze yawned in my face. I slid my jacket off and inhaled. Despite the heat, the warm air lulled my senses, washing away the hospital tangs of medicine and antiseptic. An ambulance idled in front of the loading dock entrance, its lights throbbing for no apparent reason. Two EMTs shared a smoke on the sidewalk and casually discussed the previous night’s soccer game.

“Let’s sit at one of the cafeteria’s tables,” Cox said, pointing to the green bistro tables scattered in front of the building across the street. We sat in the shade of a large willow tree, its scented boughs drawing wavering patterns of light on the ground.

“You seem young to be a detective,” she commented, taking off her lab coat and flopping it at the back of the chair.

“Job didn’t come with an age requirement,” I replied, realizing she’d been assessing me as much as I’d been her. I was thirty-eight and still looked younger than most dicks in my squad. Not an advantage when rank and seniority are often mistaken for the same thing.

She wearily flopped on the chair, raised her hands to her head, and collected her frizzy hair into a small bun. It sat precariously at the side of her neck and nodded along with each movement of her head. An outdoor sports lover, I noticed from the golden hue of her tan and the nice curve of her biceps. Her breath smelled of Arabic coffee, her scrub Tee of old bloodstains resilient to the harshest detergents, and her hands and arms—lightly peppered by freckles—of antibacterial soap. So far she had not spoken a word about Jennifer. Not a hint of surprise at her disappearance, not a trace of worry. If she was concerned, she was good at hiding it.

Once she was done fixing up her hair, she leaned back, crossed her arms and stared at me, a silent “So?” hanging from her cozy lips.

“When was the last time you saw Jennifer?” I asked.

“This past Monday, here at work. Who called the police?” she shot right back at me, her voice defiant.

“Her mother found it worrisome she couldn’t get a hold of her daughter for three days in a row. You don’t seem to share her concern.”

She sighed, as if the whole conversation were a nuisance to her. “It’s not weird, you know,” she replied, her index finger tracing the relief design on the table.

“What isn’t?”

She reached for the stethoscope hanging from her neck, either to check it was still there, or maybe just out of habit. I do the same with my gun holster. “That she would suddenly not show up to work. She looked stressed, these past weeks. Always working late. This field is highly competitive, Detective. Especially for a woman. Some make it, others don’t.”

I raised a brow. “Some just vanish in thin air?”

She rested her brown eyes on me and flashed a bitter smile. “No. It would be a first. But some do burn out.
That
I’ve seen before.”

“Is Jennifer the kind prone to burnout?”

Her eyes slipped away. I sensed a change in her perspiration, her pituitary glands releasing a spike in adrenaline. “I don’t know her that well,” she said. “Personally, I mean. She’s extremely good at her job. I don’t have to spoon-feed her or breathe down her neck to get her to do her job. Whether or not she has personal issues, though, I wouldn’t know.”

“You said she looked stressed lately.”

“She’d call me late at night, sometimes. From the lab.”

“About work?”

She nodded. “I hope nothing bad happened to her. I really need her on this project.”

My mouth twitched to a smile. “Wherever she is, Jennifer must be thinking exactly the same thing.”

Cox received my sardonic comment with a blank stare. I pictured her in the examination room, interviewing patients with the detachment of a sphinx revealing her oracle.

“What did Jennifer talk about the last time she called?”

“It was work related. She mentioned additional data she was about to obtain.” Cox passed a hand through her hair and pursed her lips. I cleared my throat, stared at her, and waited. The woman didn’t yield.

“I’d like to know more, Doctor,” I finally prodded.

She exhaled and swung one foot back and forth underneath the table. Her movement had been so brusque her hair bun came loose and disarrayed curls flopped around her neck. “I have patients to attend to, Detective. What we discussed on the phone pertains to the leukemia study we’ve been working on—I don’t see how these technicalities can help you find her. I bet she just had a breakdown and fled to some hot place with a white beach and a five-star hotel.” Her voice spiked with a sudden harshness, an alertness I didn’t fail to miss. I rapped my fingers on the table, unwilling to hide my exasperation. Cops get snowed by hookers, pimps, lawyers, bankers, and all sort of thugs. At the bottom of every investigation there’s a good dose of joggling different shades of true and false until a fragment of consistency emerges through the chaos. The delusion of a truth, one of many.

“You must be treating your employees really well, Dr. Cox, for them to be able to afford a white beach and a five star hotel.” I ignored her glare and prodded,  “Would you mind elaborating on
the additional data Jennifer wanted to discuss with you?”

Cox sighed. “She just told me she was going to get additional data relevant to our study, but wouldn’t be more specific on the origin of it, so I told her no way.”

“Why?”

“More data means more plates on the Illumina, which cost a lot of money, Detective. Once I get a grant, I’m responsible for how and when the money gets spent. I can’t pocket the funds and then use it at my technician’s whim.”

“Was it the first time she made such request?”

“At some point she requested looking at different regions in the genome for a subset of patients.”

“And I suppose you nixed that idea as well?”

Cox sat upright and addressed me with a murderous glare. “It’s
my
study, Detective. I don’t have to justify what I do and how I do it. You have no idea how hard I have to fight to get money from the NIH. The competition is fierce. Despite all the big talk about equality you hear, the plain truth is that the scientific world is still men’s territory. Women have to work twice as hard to get the same credibility. One has to spend sleepless hours writing grants, preparing talks, and making sure people understand the relevance of what it is you’re trying to prove. My patients die in the most horrible ways and nobody seems to give a shit.”

I held her glare throughout the rant. I believed her. I also believed I had to do my job, which implied finding out what Huxley was up to before vanishing in thin air. And whether by any chance she might have hampered the project her friendly boss had worked so hard to get funded.

“What about
your
data? Do they all come from patients of yours?”

“Mine and my colleagues’ here at the clinic. The families that agree to participate.”

I pulled the notepad out of my pocket and flopped it on the table, pointing to the name and age I’d copied earlier from the sticky note found in Huxley’s papers. “Do you recognize this name as one of the patients in your study?”

Cox glimpsed at the note and then stared back at me. “I wouldn’t know, Detective. All patients’ personal information is protected under the HIPAA privacy act. The data we collect is labeled under a patient ID code, not a name.”

I frowned. “What about the people who collect the data? They must keep record of the actual names.”

“Yes, but they cannot share.”

They
meaning her and her fellow physicians. For some reason, I had a hard time picturing a clinician placing her stethoscope on the patient’s chest, and cheerfully pleading, “Now give me a big breath, LS543,” or whatever ID the child had been given. I sighed and rapped my fingers on the table. The breeze rose and momentarily alleviated the afternoon heat. Not my annoyance, though. “Dr. Cox, this name was on a note on Huxley’s desk, in a folder labeled ‘Leukemia Study.’”

“Huxley is not supposed to know the names of our patients either. If she did, she broke the HIPAA agreement and could lose her job.”

“Can you think of any reason why she could’ve obtained the information?”

“Other than insanity? No.”

A man and a woman dressed in surgical scrubs came out of the coffee shop and sat at a table nearby. The woman dug a finger into the gooey frosting of her muffin and brought it to her mouth. I tried not to think of where those same fingers might have been twenty minutes earlier. A lady briskly zigzagged between the tables, angrily tapping her heels on the cement until she disappeared inside the shop.

I stared at the names I’d scribbled on my notepad. “What about the word ‘chromo,’” I asked. “Does it ring a bell?”

“I can’t think of anything. Maybe she wanted to write chromosome?”

Right. And play hangman while she was at it. “What if I
really
wanted to know if this eight-year-old child was at some point under your care, Dr. Cox?”

For the first time throughout our conversation, her lips stretched into a smile. Her eyes sparkled, as if enjoying the fact that here I was, a law enforcement officer with nothing to enforce on her. “You’d have to get a warrant, Detective.”