Read Knockout Mouse Online

Authors: James Calder

Knockout Mouse (7 page)

BOOK: Knockout Mouse
13.79Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Rita tsked. “Those are the kind of friends Jenny has.”

“Come on now, you can blame Jenny for a lot of things, but not what happened to Sheila.”

“Well, what’s in Sheila’s diary?”

“I don’t know yet. I opened it last night, but…” It had been bad enough to see Sheila laid out in the morgue; I hadn’t been ready to see her heart laid bare. The journal had gone into my glove compartment this morning. “I’ll read it tonight. See what’s in there about her allergies. LifeScience. Fay.”

Rita’s green eyes held me for several long seconds. They were aloof, like an oracle. “Why are you getting so caught up in this?”

“You know me, Rita. I like to get to the bottom of things.”

She gave me a scolding smile. “The curious cat. Always chasing after things he can’t quite catch. Pretty soon one of those things will jump up and bite you.”

“I bite back, don’t forget.”

“Yes. One of the few men whose bite is worse than his bark.” She smiled.

“Thanks for the upgrade to dog status. But look, I was dragged into this. I’m the one who identified the body. Jenny may get blamed for her death. And Sheila was—I don’t know, something just clicked. You don’t often meet people like her. You would have liked her, Rita.”

“I’m sorry, Bill. I’m sorry she died.”

“The guy at LifeScience was such a prick about it. He’s covering something, I’m sure. It pisses me off, you know? The things people get away with.”

Rita slowly exhaled. “Nothing surprises me anymore. I’ve been doing a lot of work in biotech lately. I see what’s going
on. The money osmosed to it after VCs came to their senses about the Net rush. Sequencing the human genome was supposed to open a new gold mine. But it’s an industry like any other. A young one. Only a handful of these companies show any profit right now. Most of them are hot air, or years from a return on investment. Think of all the money that went into the dot-bombs: the startup costs of a biotech company are even greater.”

“At least biotech makes an actual product.”

“The lead time to results still can be long. And the shenanigans of the Web run-up are going on in biotech, too, with higher stakes in some cases. So, yes, there could be shenanigans at LifeScience, but they’re probably nothing more than the usual.”

“Except Sheila’s dead.”

“She had a medical condition. What, you think someone
tried
to kill her? Bad business strategy.”

“Only if you get caught. And not if she was screwing up someone’s plans while she was alive.”

Rita leaned over and gave me a little punch on my bicep. “It’s Jenny, isn’t it? You’re sweet to be so concerned. You’re taking good care of her. Just don’t let her run your whole life.”

“Jenny is completely upset. She doesn’t scheme nearly as much as you think she does. But this is as much for me as for Jenny.”

Rita sat back. “I’ve seen it a thousand times,” she said, nodding in the wise, wry way she had. “Death does it to people. It brings them together—or it splits them apart. One of the two. Rarely in between.”

She tilted her chin up and added, “You’ve been on the fence about Jenny. Mark my words, you’re going to fall one way or another before this is all over.”

8

After I’d rented the film gear,
I had just enough time to drop in at Dr. Jill Nikano’s office. It was in the Sunset district, near Golden Gate Park and the University of California Medical Center. The nurse at the front desk was just putting on her coat to leave. I asked if Dr. Nikano was in her office. Yes, but she was done seeing patients for the day. I said it was a personal matter. The nurse buzzed her and then pointed me down a hallway.

The doctor waited outside her door with her arms folded. She was a sturdy woman with veins of gray in her short hair. A pair of trapezoidal glasses sat on her nose like a piece of furniture. Telling her I was a friend of Sheila’s got me invited into the doctor’s office.

“I got a call from Dr. Curran at the hospital this morning,” Dr. Nikano said, sitting at a cluttered desk. Behind her was an image of lungs blossoming with bronchioles. “I feel terrible about Sheila. Made me wonder if I’d missed something at her last visit.”

“That’s just it. It’s so rare for this to happen, isn’t it?”

“Yes and no…” She hesitated. “A study was done a few years
ago that found elevated levels of mast cell tryptase in a significant number of unexplained deaths. It may happen more frequently than we think.”

“Well, I want to find out what caused such a severe reaction.”

“The spoiled epinephrine didn’t help. That surprised the jelly out of me. Sheila was as prepared as any patient I’ve known.”

“Could she really have been taken down by a little speck of shellfish?”

“The long answer is that a number of scenarios could have brought on the anaphylactic reaction. People have severe allergies to nuts, milk, eggs, latex, even sperm. There’s a disease called mastocytosis in which your body can induce the reaction on its own. But Sheila didn’t have it, nor any of these allergies. So the short answer is, yes. A little bit of crustacean could be responsible.”

I shook my head. “How can that happen?”

“Don’t underestimate the speck. It triggers the whole arsenal of the immune system, a powerful thing. With allergic rhinitis, the allergen is pollen or dust and the reaction localized to the nasal cavity. In food allergy, it’s usually a protein. The reaction is far more extreme when sensitivity has developed in the intestinal tract. There are several crustacean proteins people are allergic to, some of which allow the animal to survive in cold water. Sheila’s immune system mistook them for a barbarian horde. We don’t know why, exactly. Some doctors theorize our society has become too clean. Our immune system doesn’t have as many germs to fight, so it turns its weapons on innocent allergens—or our own cells, in the case of autoimmune disease. People in developing countries have a lower rate of allergy and asthma, presumably because their histamines and eosinophils are kept busy with other things.”

“How can we be sure it was a crustacean protein? We know she didn’t eat any that night.” I told her about the dinner party. “We’re also certain there was no shellfish residue in the kitchen.”

“Even if there was a bit of residue, it should only have made her sick. Not killed her.”

I waited a moment before going on. “Right. So we’re thinking about other sources. What about where she works—LifeScience?”

Dr. Nikano tilted her head. “You mean a biochemical hazard? I doubt it. They’re super careful in those companies. What Dr. Curran told me points to anaphylactic shock, not some other type of poisoning. The protein hits fast and it hits hard. If she got it at the lab, she wouldn’t have made it to your dinner party.”

“What about after she left the party, then? She only felt a little bit ill at dinner. Maybe someone gave her the allergen afterward.”

“Gave her?”

“It seems unlikely, I know—if someone wanted to kill her, why not just do it the old fashioned way?”

Dr. Nikano looked perplexed, almost hurt by the idea. She folded her hands. Lines runnelled her forehead.

“So this doesn’t make any more sense to you than it does to us,” I said.

“Nope.”

On the wall I saw that she had an MD from UCSF, one of the best research medical schools in the country. “Can you find out what happened? Do some more tests?”

“Oh, I intend to. This one’s got my neck hairs up. I’ll request samples from Dr. Curran. If an autopsy has been done, I’ll get the report.”

I took a leap. “Her parents are on their way, but it may take a day or two. They’ve asked that everything possible be done.”

“I’ll call the hospital right away.”

“Thank you, Dr. Nikano. We really appreciate it.”

“Jill,” she corrected. She gave me a small smile. “Here’s my card. Call me as soon as you find out more.”

I started out the door. Papers shuffled on the desk. Jill’s voice called from behind me. “Sheila was… special. Life should have been kinder to her.”

» » » » »

I drove over Twin Peaks on the way home, just to get the view. The road carved a figure eight between the hills, and the city scrolled before my eyes, water on three sides. The line of the coast to the west was smudged by ocean haze. The towers of downtown sprouted to the northeast. Telegraph Hill and the Marina stood green to their left, the warehouses of South of Market, former home of the Web frenzy, to their right. To the east, beyond the flatlands of the Mission, a bump rose beside the bay. It was Potrero Hill, lit by the last of the day’s sunlight. My flat was on the far side, the top floor of a peeling two-story Edwardian.

It took me fifteen minutes to cross the Mission and get home. As I clomped up the stairs, lugging the rented film gear, Jenny’s voice called from above, “Bill, I’m here.”

She met me on the landing and buried her face in my shoulder. A long sigh left her body. “I called to say I was coming. But your machine kept answering. I just—I didn’t want to be alone.”

“It’s all right.” I kissed her, held her some more, and put aside my reservations. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t be thrilled about Jenny letting herself into my flat without checking with me first. We had different ideas about boundaries—I thought they existed. But this was different. I had to admit it felt good to have her waiting here and pressing into me so hard.
I stroked her hair, kissed her again, and agreed that a beer was just what we needed.

My apartment was a railroad flat, four rooms off of a corridor of wide-planked floors and chipped moldings. I went into a small middle room that served as my office and pressed the play button on my answering machine. Between Jenny’s messages was one from my new friend Gregory. Apparently he felt he hadn’t come on strong enough the first time.

“Bill-boy, we need to talk. Rita’s not returning my calls. There’s something you need to know. I wanted to tell you in person, but—you’re at serious legal risk if you proceed with the Kumar shoot. Call me back immediately. For your own benefit. You’re on my dashboard and the light is blinking.”

Jenny stood with a beer in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. She tugged at my belt loop. “Don’t call him back right now.”

“Don’t worry.”

We went to the living room at the front of the flat. A sofa just fit inside the cove of a bay window. Shelves with too much camera gear and too many books took up two walls.

Jenny and I sat on the sofa. She said Perkins had called to tell her that he expected to reach Sheila’s parents soon. They were travelling in northern Africa. At noon she had met Marion for lunch near the small office Jenny leased in downtown Palo Alto.

“She’d already heard about Sheila,” Jenny said. “She seemed, I don’t know, kind of distracted, until I told her about going into Sheila’s apartment. Suddenly she was all over me. She tried to get me to tell her where the keys were.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t say. I told her about the hard drive, too. That really set her off.”

“I imagine Fay was snooping around because of Simon—but why Marion?”

“I don’t know.” Jenny’s voice was soft and sleepy. Her head rested on my shoulder. Her finger traced a wandering pattern on my shirt. “You have the diary, right?”

“It’s with the film gear. I’ll get it.”

She pulled me back. “Not yet.”

“Did you talk to Fay?” I asked, staying put.

Jenny’s head went back to my shoulder. She answered absently. “She called, asked about Sheila’s parents…” Her hand strayed over my buttons, undid one, then went under the shirt. “Acted like nothing was wrong.”

“I don’t really like the idea, but we ought to read the diary. It might explain some things.”

Her other hand slid under the back of my shirt, then down into my pants. “Let’s forget about it for a minute.”

I didn’t object. Her head rose and she pressed her mouth into mine. Her fingers kept working the buttons. When she got the shirt off, she went for the belt. Pretty soon she was doing things to me that she hadn’t done since we first got together.

She shed her clothes and pulled me on top of her. One long leg draped over the back of the couch and the other rested on the coffee table. With her musky wine breath hot on my face and her slender hips pushing up to meet me, everything else melted away.

As we lay entwined on the sofa, darkness crept over us through the bay window. Jenny stroked the back of my head. Her face glowed gently.

“Bill, I’m so happy to be here.”

“Me, too.” The statement felt true in both big and small ways. I was happy to have my limbs entangled here on the couch with
hers. But I was even more happy to be here in my house, here on this planet. To have the fabric of an old sofa scraping my skin. To wiggle my toes. The keenness of the feeling was a little disturbing, given that I’d been gazing at Sheila’s cold corpse just yesterday. It seemed wrong for us to revel so carnally.

“I feel so alive,” she said.

“Alive,” I agreed, “and a little guilty.”

“We have to carry on, Bill. Celebrate life.” Jenny rolled over on top of me and cupped my cheeks. Her eyes were full, a swirl of pearly blue at each center. “Let’s have a baby.”

A thrill fluttered through my stomach, as if the universe was focused on us at this moment with just that in mind: creating a new life. But an imp of rationality still scratched in the corner of my brain. Jenny and I were reacting to the stress of a death. The impulse to procreate right now was the most natural thing in the world. But we should wait and see what other emotions followed this one.

I just smiled at her and said, “Do you want something to eat?”

Disappointment clouded her face. “You don’t have to feel bad about Sheila all the time. We’re still here.”

I stood, and Jenny started to get up with me.

“Stay,” I said. “I’ll whip up something for dinner.” I wanted to be alone for a minute.

I started some water boiling and some oil heating in the kitchen. After taking Jenny a new glass of wine, I went back to the stove. There were three or four dishes in my repertoire. I had some shrimp in the freezer. I sautéed them with some red peppers and chili flakes, and put them on noodles.

BOOK: Knockout Mouse
13.79Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Misfit Marquess by Teresa DesJardien
The King's Daughter by Barbara Kyle
Happy Days by Hurley, Graham
The Twins by Tessa de Loo
El Combate Perpetuo by Marcos Aguinis
Call Me Ted by Ted Turner, Bill Burke
Street Pharm by van Diepen, Allison