Terminal (42 page)

“A lot of reagents they don’t have in Miami,” Sean said.

“Like what?” Janet asked.

“Mostly DNA primer pairs and DNA probes for oncogenes,” Sean said. “I also found some primers and probes for virus nucleic acid, particularly those used for St. Louis encephalitis.”

“And you’re not about to tell me what all this is all about?” Janet said.

“It will sound too preposterous,” Sean admitted. “I want some proof first. I’ve got to prove it to myself before I tell anyone, even you.”

“At least give me a general idea of what you use these primers and probes for,” Janet said.

“DNA primers are used to find particular strands of DNA,” Sean said. “They seek out a single strand from millions of others, then react with it. Then, by a process called the Polymerase Chain Reaction, the original DNA strand can be amplified billions of times. That way it can be easily detected by a labeled DNA probe.”

“So using these primers and probes is like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack with a powerful magnet,” Janet said.

“Exactly,” Sean said, impressed with how quickly she grasped the science. “A very, very powerful magnet. I mean, it can find one particular DNA strand out of a solution of millions of others. In that sense it’s almost a magical magnet. I think the guy who developed the process should get the Nobel Prize.”

“Molecular biology is making big strides,” Janet said sleepily.

“It’s unbelievable,” Sean agreed. “Even those in the field have trouble keeping up.”

Janet struggled against ponderously heavy eyelids made
worse by the muffled drone of the engine and the gentle jostling. She wanted to press Sean for more of an explanation of what was going through his mind, and she thought the best way to do that was to get him to talk about molecular biology and what he was planning to do when he got back to the lab at Forbes. But she was too exhausted to go on.

Janet had always found driving calming. Between the little amount of sleep she’d gotten aboard the boat and all the running around they’d been doing, it wasn’t long before she nodded off. She fell into a deep, much needed sleep and rested undisturbed until Sean pulled off Route 1 onto the grounds of the Marathon Airport.

“So far so good,” Sean said when he noticed Janet was stirring. “No roadblocks and no police.”

Janet sat up. For a moment she had no idea where she was, but then reality came back in a numbing flash. Now she felt worse than she had when she’d fallen asleep. Running her Angers through her hair made her think of a bird’s nest. It was hard for her to imagine what she looked like. She decided not to try.

Sean parked the car in the most crowded part of the parking lot. He thought its presence would be less likely to be noticed that way and thereby give them more time. Hefting the cardboard box from the back seat, he carried it into the terminal. He sent Janet to check on commuter flights to Miami while he went to inquire about the availability of rental cars. He was still searching for a rental agent when Janet returned to tell him that a flight to Miami left in twenty minutes.

The airline agent helpfully taped Sean’s box closed after plastering the outside with “fragile” stickers. The agent guaranteed the parcel would be treated with the utmost care. Later, as Sean was boarding the small turbo prop commuter plane, he saw someone casually tossing his box onto a luggage cart. But Sean wasn’t worried. He’d found bubble wrap back at Basic Diagnostics when he packed the reagents. He was reasonably confident his primers and probes would survive the trip.

Once at the Miami airport, he and Janet rented a car. They
used Avis, avoiding Hertz in case the Hertz computer indicated that Janet Reardon was already in possession of a red Pontiac.

With the primers and probes in the back seat, they drove directly to Forbes. Sean parked next to his 4×4 near the entrance to the research building. He got out his Forbes ID card.

“You want to come in or what?” Sean asked. Exhaustion was catching up with him at this point too. “You can take this car back to the apartment if you want.”

“I’ve come this far,” Janet said. “I want you to explain what you’re doing as you do it.”

“Fair enough,” Sean said.

They got out of the car and walked into the building. Sean did not expect any trouble, so he was surprised when the guard stood up. None of the guards had ever done that. This one’s name was Alvarez. Sean had seen him before on several occasions.

“Mr. Murphy?” Alvarez questioned with a definite Spanish accent.

“That’s me,” Sean said. He’d bumped into the turnstile arm which Alvarez had failed to release. Sean had his ID in his hand visible for Alvarez to see. The cardboard box was under his other arm. Janet was behind him.

“You are not permitted in the building,” Alvarez said.

Sean put down his cardboard box.

“I work here,” Sean said. He leaned over to hold his ID closer to Alvarez’s face in case the guard had missed it.

“Orders from Dr. Mason,” Alvarez said. He leaned back from Sean’s ID as if it were somehow repulsive. He picked up one of his telephones with one hand and flipped through a Rolodex with the other.

“Put the phone down,” Sean said, struggling to control his voice. Between everything he’d been through and his general fatigue, he was at the end of his patience.

The guard ignored Sean. He found Dr. Mason’s phone number and started punching in the numbers.

“I asked you nicely,” Sean said. “Put the phone down!” He spoke now with considerably more force.

The guard finished dialing, then calmly eyed Sean as he waited for the connection to go through.

With lightning speed, Sean reached across the Corian desk and grabbed the phone line where it disappeared into the woodwork. A sharp yank tore the cable free. Sean held the end of the cable up to the surprised guard’s face. It was a tangled mass of tiny red, green, and yellow wires.

“Your phone is out of order,” Sean said.

Alvarez’s face turned red. Dropping the receiver, he snatched up a truncheon and started around the desk.

Instead of retreating, which the guard expected, Sean lunged ahead to meet Alvarez as if throwing a body check in a hockey game. Sean came up from below. The base of his forearm connected with the guard’s lower jaw. Alvarez was lifted off his feet and smashed back against the wall before he could try anything with the truncheon. On impact Sean could hear a definite crack like a piece of dried kindling being snapped. Sean also heard the man grunt when he hit the wall as the breath was forced from his lungs. When Sean pulled away, Alvarez fell to the floor, his body limp.

“Oh, God!” Janet cried. “You’ve hurt him.”

“Geez, what a jaw,” Sean said as he rubbed the base of his forearm.

Janet stepped around Sean to get to Alvarez, who was bleeding from his mouth. Janet half feared that he was dead, but she quickly determined he was merely unconscious.

“When is this going to end?” she moaned. “Sean, I think you’ve broken this man’s jaw, and he’s bitten his tongue. You knocked him out.”

“Let’s walk him over to the hospital side,” Sean suggested.

“They don’t have trauma capability here,” Janet said. “We’ll have to take him over to Miami General.”

Sean rolled his eyes and sighed. He eyed his cardboard box of primers and probes. He needed a few hours, maybe even as much as four, up in the lab. He looked at his watch. It was just after one in the afternoon.

“Sean!” Janet commanded. “Now! It’s only three minutes
away. We can come back once we’ve dropped him off. We can’t just leave him this way.”

Reluctantly, Sean pushed his cardboard box behind the guard’s desk, then helped Janet carry Alvarez outside. Between the two of them, they got him out to the rental car and into the back seat.

Sean could see the wisdom in taking Alvarez to the emergency room at Miami General. It wasn’t smart to leave a bleeding, unconscious man unattended. If Alvarez took a turn for the worse, Sean would be in serious trouble, the kind even his clever brother would have a hard time getting him out of. But Sean wasn’t about to get caught now just because he’d agreed to this mission of mercy.

Even though it was midday Sunday, Sean counted on a busy ER. He wasn’t disappointed. “This is a quick dropoff,” he warned Janet. “A speedy in and out. Once we get him in the ER, we’re out of there. The staff there will know what to do.”

Janet wasn’t in complete agreement, but she knew better than to disagree.

Sean left the engine idling, the gear in park, while he and Janet struggled with Alvarez’s still-limp body. “At least he’s breathing,” Sean said.

Just inside the door to the ER, Sean spotted an empty gurney. “Put him on this,” he ordered Janet.

With Alvarez safely laid atop it, Sean gave the gurney a gentle shove. “Possible code,” Sean shouted as the gurney rolled down the hall. Then he grabbed Janet by the arm. “Come on, let’s go,” he said.

As they raced back to the car, Janet said, “He wasn’t a code.”

“I know,” Sean admitted. “But it was all I could think of to get some action. You know how emergency rooms are. Alvarez could have lain around for hours before anyone did something for him.”

Janet only shrugged. Sean did have a point. And before they’d left she’d been relieved to see a male nurse already intercepting the gurney.

On the way back to Forbes, neither Sean nor Janet said
another word. Both were exhausted. On top of that, Janet was unnerved by Sean’s explosive violence; it was yet more behavior she had not anticipated from him.

Meanwhile, Sean was trying to figure out how he could ensure himself four hours of uninterrupted lab time. Between the unfortunate episode with Alvarez and the fact the Miami police were already looking for him, Sean knew he would have to come up with something creative to hold off the hordes. Suddenly he had an idea. It was radical, but it would definitely work. His plan brought a smile to his face despite his exhaustion. There was a kind of poetic justice involved that appealed to him.

Sean felt justified in using extreme measures at this point. The more he thought about his current theory of what was going on at the Forbes Cancer Center, the more convinced he was that he was correct. But he needed proof, and to get proof, he needed lab time. And to get the lab time, he needed something drastic. In fact the more drastic it was, the better it would work.

When they made the final turn into the parking lot at Forbes, Sean broke the silence: “The night you arrived in Florida I’d gone to an affair at Dr. Mason’s,” he said. “A medulloblastoma patient donated money to Forbes, big money. He headed up an airplane manufacturing firm in St. Louis.”

Janet was silent.

“Louis Martin is the CEO of a computer hardware manufacturing firm north of Boston,” Sean said. He glanced at Janet as he parked. She looked puzzled.

“Malcolm Betencourt runs a huge for-profit chain of hospitals,” Sean continued.

“And Helen Cabot was a college student,” Janet said at last.

Sean opened his door, but he didn’t get out. “True, Helen was a college student. But it’s also true that her father is founder and CEO of one of the world’s top software companies.”

“What are you trying to say?” Janet asked.

“I just want you to think about all this,” Sean said as he finally got out of the car. “And when we get upstairs, I want
you to look at the thirty-three charts we copied and think about the economic demographics. Just let me know what they say to you.”

Sean was pleased that no new guard had come on duty. He retrieved his cardboard box from behind the front desk. Then both he and Janet ducked under the turnstile and took the elevator to the fifth floor.

Sean first checked the refrigerator to make certain that Helen’s brain and sample of cerebrospinal fluid had not been disturbed. Next he got the charts out from their hiding place and gave them to Janet. He eyed the mess at his lab bench but didn’t touch it.

“While you’re perusing the charts,” Sean said casually, “I’ll be heading out. But I’ll be back shortly, maybe in an hour.”

“Where are you going?” Janet asked. As usual, Sean was full of surprises. “I thought you needed lab time. That’s why we rushed here.”

“I do,” Sean assured her. “But I’m afraid I’m going to be interrupted because of Alvarez and also because of that group I locked in the closet in Key West. They must be out and fit to be tied by now. I have to make some arrangements to keep the barbarians at bay.”

“What do you mean by arrangements?” Janet asked warily.

“Maybe it’s better if you don’t know,” Sean said. “I came up with a great idea that’s guaranteed to work, but it’s a bit drastic. I don’t think you should be involved.”

“I don’t like the sound of this at all,” Janet said.

“If anybody comes in here while I’m gone and asks for me,” Sean said, ignoring Janet’s concerns, “tell them that you have no idea where I am, which will be the truth.”

“Who might come?” Janet asked.

“I hope no one,” Sean said. “But if someone does come, it will probably be Robert Harris, the guy who saved the day on the beach. If Alvarez calls anyone, he’ll call him.”

“What if he asks what I’m doing here?”

“Tell him the truth,” Sean said. “Tell him you’re going over these charts to try to understand my behavior.”

“Oh, please!” Janet said superciliously. “I’m not going to understand your behavior from these charts. That’s ridiculous.”

“Just read them and keep in mind what I just told you.”

“You mean about the economic demographics?” Janet asked.

“Exactly,” Sean said. “Now I’ve got to get out of here. But I need to borrow something. Can I have that container of Mace you always carry in your purse?”

“I don’t like this at all,” Janet repeated, but she got the container of Mace and handed it to Sean. “This is making me very nervous.”

“Don’t worry,” Sean said. “I need the Mace in case I run into Batman.”

“Give me a break,” Janet said with exasperation.

S
EAN KNEW
his time was limited. Alvarez would be regaining consciousness soon if he hadn’t already. Sean was quite confident the guard would eventually get the message to someone that he was no longer guarding the Forbes research building and that Sean Murphy was back in town.