"I have a feeling he won't be running for another term." She rubbed her fingers over her eyes. "Check the logs for security droids at the Drake. Wake up McNab. He could run a systems check on them if you can get a warrant for it. Even if the program was wiped, he'd find the lag time. When you've…"
She trailed off, snapping back. "Sorry," she said in a careful voice. "Just thinking out loud."
"You think good, kid. Always have. Keep going."
"I was going to say that in some of the research I've done, I found that Westley Friend's self-termination used the same method as Dr. Wo, and they were both – along with some of our other cast of characters – involved in some classified project at the time of his death. It seems a little too neat. Someone might want to suggest to Morris that he consider that dose was forcibly administered."
"It was her pin found on scene."
"Yeah, and it was the only mistake in this whole business. That's a little too neat, too."
"Smelling goat, are you, Dallas? Scapegoat?"
"Yeah, that's what I'm smelling. Be interesting to find out how much she knew. If I had access to her personal logs…"
"I think I'll just wake up McNab, keep the boy busy awhile. You stand by."
"I'm not going anywhere."
When the transmission ended, she picked up her coffee and got up to prowl. It had to go back to Friend, she decided. Revolutionary new implant that made certain hot areas of organ research obsolete. Meaning end of funding, end of glory for those heavily involved in those areas.
"What if a group of doctors or interested parties continued and restarted research on a covert level?" She turned to Roarke, grimaced when she noted he was manning the keyboard. "Sorry."
"It's all right. I've got his pattern now. It's nearly routine from here." He glanced up, pleased to see her focused, restless, edgy. That, he thought, was his cop. "What's your theory?"
"It's not one rogue doctor," she began. "Look at this little operation. I can't do this out on my own. I've got you, with your questionable skills. Feeney, Peabody, and McNab, sliding under regs and procedure to feed me data. I enlisted a doctor on the side. I've even got Nadine running research. It's too big for one cop – and a cop working outside the system – to handle alone. You need contacts, fillers, assistants, experts. There's a team, Roarke. He's got a team. We know he had the nurse. My best guess is she fed him data on patients, the kind that use the clinic or make use of the medi-van service. Sleepers, LCs, dealers, chemi-heads. Dregs," she concluded. "Vessels."
"She contacted someone with possible donors, let's say." Roarke nodded. "Every business needs a good inside track. And this appears to be a business."
"She passed data straight to the labs. Her contact with the outside centers could have, likely was, for verification of a hit. She'd be what you'd call middle management, I guess."
"Close enough."
"I bet we find she has a nice nest egg stashed. They'd pay well. We know their lab man had to be Young. Every business needs a geek, right?"
"Can't run one otherwise."
"The Drake's enormous, and our geek was pretty much in charge of the organ wing. He'd know just where to stash outside samples. And he had a medical license. He'd be the likely candidate to assist the surgeon, to bag the sample, to transport it back to the lab. That's two."
She crossed to the AutoChef, getting more coffee. "Wo. Politics and administration. A skilled surgeon who enjoyed power. Former president of the AMA. She knew how to play the game. She'd have high connections. But obviously, she was also considered dispensable. Maybe she had a conscience, maybe she was getting nervous, or maybe they just sacrificed her to throw the investigation off the scent. It worked for Friend," she mused. "He wouldn't have been pleased, do you think, if he'd discovered this rogue research conspiracy. It would have cut into his profits, his glory. There go the lecture fees, the big banquets in his honor, the media hype."
"Only if what they're doing, or hope to do, works."
"Yeah. They're willing to kill to make it work, so why not take out the competition? It used to be organ building. Louise sort of explained it in the initial report she did for me. They took tissue from a damaged or defective organ and built a new one in the lab. Grew them in molds so the tissue'd take the right shape. That solved the rejection problem. You used the patient's own tissue so the body'd accept it and tick along. But it takes time. You just don't grow yourself a new, happy heart overnight."
She walked back to the console, eased a hip on the edge, and watched him work as she talked it out. "They do that kind of thing in vitro. You got like nine months to deal there. You can grow the bad part back or repair it.
"Then Friend comes along," she continued. "Building and brokering organs has been the thing. It's tough to grow them for anyone over – I forget – like ninety because of the timing and the age of the tissue. Takes weeks to grow a new bladder and you've got to do molding and layering and stuff. A lot of work, a lot of money to order one up. But Friend comes up with this artificial material that the body accepts. It's cheap, it's durable, and it can be molded to order. Mass-produced. Applause, applause, let's all live forever."
He glanced up at that, had to grin. "Don't you want to?"
"Not with a bunch of interchangeable spare parts. But anyhow, he gets carried through the streets, the crowd roars and throws buckets of money and adulation at him. And the guys doing organ building and reconstruction research are shoved right out into the cold. Who wants to hang around peeing in a diaper while their new bladder's growing in some lab when they can pop into surgery, get a new, improved one, and be peeing like a champ inside a week?"
"Agreed. And that manufacturing arm of Roarke Industries thanks the full bladders everywhere. But since everyone's happy this way, what good will this little group of mad scientists prove by continuing their work?"
"You keep your own," she said simply. "Medically, it's probably some major miracle – regeneration – like the Frankenstein guy. Here's this half-dead, messed-up heart. Not gonna tick much longer. But what if it can be fixed, completely, like new? You got the part you were born with, not some piece of foreign matter. The Conservative party, which includes Senator Waylan, would dance in the street. Plenty of them have artificial tickers, but they like to stomp around every few years and talk about how it's against the rules of God and humankind to prolong life by artificial means."
"Darling, you've been reading the papers. I'm so impressed."
"Kiss my ass." And it felt good to grin. "I'm betting when Nadine gets in touch, she'll tell me Waylan stands against artificial life aids. You know, the 'if God didn't give it to you, it's immoral' line."
"NewLife routinely deals with protests from natural-life groups. I imagine we'll find the senator supports their stand."
"Yeah, and if he can make a few bucks running interference for a group who promises a new medical and natural miracle, so to speak, so much the better. It would have to be a quick procedure. It couldn't be risky to the patient," she went on. "They'd never outdo the implant unless what they do is as convenient and as successful. Business," she said again. "Profit. Glory. Votes."
"Agreed, again. I'd say they've been working with animal organs up until recently. They must have reached a level of success with that."
"Then they moved up the evolutionary scale. Kept low on it from their viewpoint. Scum, as Cagney put it."
"I'm in," he said mildly and had her blinking.
"In what? In? What've you got? Let me see."
Even as she dashed around the console, he ordered data on-screen. When he pulled her neatly onto his lap, she was too distracted for even a token protest.
"Neat as a pin," she murmured. "Names, dates, procedures, results. Jesus Christ, Roarke, they're all there."