Zero-G (20 page)

She set her purse in one of the drawers of her wide desk and sat in a suede leather executive chair. On the desk rested a pile of mail. Most were routine things she had seen a thousand times before, but one caught her attention: a white envelope with the return address for the IRS. The bottom right corner of the envelope read, “Department of Audits.”

“Great. Just what we need.”

Removing a daggerlike letter opener, she sliced into the mailing with more force than required and snatched the letter from its holder. Like the envelope, it was white and the letterhead read Internal Revenue Service. The paper felt odd, almost oily.

The body of the letter told her that MedSys had been selected at random for a corporate audit. She whispered an obscenity. Then she saw it. The signature seemed wrong. She read it again. It was signed by S. W. Eet-dreams. It took a moment for her to decipher the puzzle. “Sweet Dreams? What kind of joke is this?”

Her chest tightened and the next few breaths came with difficulty. She heard herself wheeze. She sat and read the letter again. On the surface, the Internal Revenue Service form looked legit. Even the address looked right, but something struck her as wrong — something she couldn't put her finger on. The signature could be real. The world had its share of bizarre names, but this seemed too odd. It had to be a joke, but who would go to such extremes?

She set the paper on the desk and rubbed her fingers together. Like the paper they felt oily. She sniffed them but caught no unpleasant odor. Diane picked up the letter and raised it to her nose. No smell. As she drew the paper from her face, the light in the room revealed something on the other side. She turned the document over.

I KNOW YOU SENT HIM AFTER ME. YOU
SHOULDN'T HAVE.

“Quain.” She had to force the word past her lips. Her vision blurred. Her head pounded like a bass drum.

“Oh, no.”
Oh no, no, no.
She tried to rise, but her legs refused to obey. “Liz.” She meant it to be a cry for help, a scream heard through the building. Instead, she managed only a croak. Her left eye began to spasm, then her right.

Again she tried to rise but only managed to shift her weight. Thirty seconds later, Diane slipped from her chair to the floor. Two minutes after that the room went dark. . . .

Liz glanced at her watch. Her boss had arrived nearly sixty minutes before and had shut herself in her office. Not unusual. Diane Melville was an intense woman who worked long hours. Liz hated to disturb her, but she needed to get some signatures and other information.

Liz picked up the phone and buzzed her boss. No answer. She buzzed again. Nothing.

She rose, stepped to the door that separated her office from her employer's, and then, after knocking, opened it. Diane wasn't at her desk. She hadn't left so that meant that she must be in the rest —

Liz screamed.

Diane Melville was not at her desk but under it, her arm and head the only thing visible from the doorway. Her eyes had blanched and a small pool of frothy drool formed beneath the corner of her mouth.

Liz screamed again. . . .

Burt Linear had just opened the letter from the IRS and was reading it for the second time when the sound of a woman's screams rolled into his office. He rose, still holding the missive in hand. “What the — ” He stepped from his office. His assistant Cary Woodland met him.

“Did you hear that?”

“The whole world heard that.” He pushed past her and into the corridor. As he crossed the threshold, Liz appeared at the door of Diane's office.

“Help.
Help
.”

He charged forward, brushing past the panicked woman into Diane's office. What he saw froze him in place. It took all of his will to walk forward and place two fingers on the CEO's throat. The skin was still warm. No pulse.

Like Diane, he had trained first as a medical doctor before entering the more lucrative world of pharmaceutical research. His first thought was that she had had a massive heart attack. That assumption melted under the heat of his next discovery: a letter from the IRS resting on the floor near her lifeless hand — a letter identical to the one he held.

“Call 911. Call now.” His speech slurred. Liz didn't move. He raised a tremulous hand and pointed at her. “Do . . . it . . . now.”

Liz disappeared into the outer office. No doubt, she thought the ambulance was for Diane. He knew it was for him.

Burt snatched up the letter before he could change his mind, stood, and staggered to the small fireplace in the office's conversation corner. The gas-operated unit was more for décor and seldom used except at the key executive Christmas party. Burt tossed the two letters in and pushed the start switch. The letters burned quickly and Burt switched off the gas and returned to Diane. He wondered if he would look the same in death.

Liz reentered the office. “Paramedics are on the way.”

Burt nodded but said nothing. Sweat dotted his forehead, and his heart rumbled. The room began to spin.

“Aren't you going to do anything?”

“No. Nothing . . . can be done.”

“CPR. Help me do CPR.” Liz started past Burt but he grabbed her arm.

“Too late. Don't touch her.” He swayed. “Dangerous . . .”

“Dr. Linear? Are you all right?”

“Tell para . . . tell them . . . ccs of epinephrine . . .”

To Burt the floor seemed to rise. His head bounced off the carpeted surface.

“Dr. Linear!”

“Don't touch . . .”

Blackness flooded his eyes, then his mind.

It seemed to Liz that a year had passed from the time she had called 911 until the paramedics arrived. When they did show, they went to work quickly, their gloved hands feeling for a pulse, checking for any sign of life. They fired off questions in machine-gun fashion: “Did either party have a previous medical condition . . . ever pass out before . . . complain of chest pains . . . under a doctor's care . . . on medication . . . ?” Liz answered the best she could. Every VP in the building stood nearby waiting for some determination of their leaders' fate, although one look at the corpses had settled that in everyone's mind.

The phone rang and instinctively Liz moved to her office to answer it.

“If that's the press, you know nothing. Got it?” The order came from Wally Thompson, VP of operations. Liz assumed he was taking charge.

She snapped up the phone. “MedSys, Diane Melville's office . . .” Speaking her dead employer's name brought her to the edge of tears again. “This is . . . this is Liz.”

“This is Garrett Alderman for Dr. Melville, please.”

“Oh . . . um . . .” Liz broke into tears. She had met Alderman on several of his visits to the office.

“Whoa, easy. I'm not that hard to deal with.”

“Oh, Mr. Alderman, it's . . . it's horrible. Dr. Melville died in her office a short time ago.”

“What? In her office?”

“Yes, and Dr. Linear too. How could both die on the same day and in the same place?”

Liz couldn't hear what Alderman said. It sounded as if he had removed the phone from his mouth. A few seconds later, he was on the phone again. “Who is in charge there?”

“Several of the VPs are here.”

“Who . . . wait . . . let me think . . . Thompson . . . Wally Thompson heads operations right? He's medically trained?”

“Yes.”

“Get him on the phone. Don't use my name. Just tell him it's important.”

Liz said, “I'll try.”

She put Alderman on hold and walked to Wally Thompson. She motioned for him to bend toward her so she could whisper in his ear. All she said was, “You had better take this call.”

Liz could see his reluctance, but he followed Liz to her office. She stepped away once the phone was to his ear. A moment later, she heard the VP shout, “What?”

Alderman closed his flip cell phone and set it on the desk of his hotel. Acid burned his stomach. The worst had happened. No, he corrected himself.
Not the worst.
Quain is still out there and he could kill thousands if he
wanted.

With the death of Melville and Linear, he no longer had a client. No one to foot the bills and no one in MedSys who knew what happened. Things could go downhill fast now. He knew nothing of Wally Thompson. He might be of a different mind about keeping things secret. In his heart, Alderman hoped that was true, but it was too late for that kind of honesty to do him any good. The authorities would see Alderman's stealth as obstruction of justice and more. Things could end up with him in prison, Melville and Linear in their graves, and Quain free to hopscotch around the country killing as he pleased.

The number of variables had reached a point beyond calculation. If he returned to MedSys to discuss matters with Thompson, he might find himself nose-to-nose with the FBI. If he returned to his own office, he might find the same thing. Since he couldn't be certain what Quain had used to infect Melville and Linear, he had to assume it might still be present. To save lives, Alderman had given the
Reader's Digest
version of what had happened and hopefully Thompson had listened and had the room cleared. Unfortunately, such largesse would not keep him from a dozen or more years behind bars.

Alderman rubbed weary eyes and sat on the bed. His mother used to describe any conundrum as being stuck “between a rock and a hard place.” The rock had just grown larger and the hard place even harder.

It was time to call his office. Additional contingency plans were needed. . . .