Huang fielded each question magnanimously, playing the old pro by catching the nonscientists up. "We've got that covered three ways." Point number one bent back his thumb: "We've engineered Xedral to insert into a nonfunctioning section of DNA." Index finger: "We've flanked our transgene with starting and stopping codons so it won't disrupt neighboring genes." And the fuck-you finger: "We've employed a temporary model that eliminates long-term complications by requiring a booster every month to keep transgene expression active."
They moved along the corridor, spying in on a room walled with vast, glass-fronted refrigerators filled with Xedral vials. A scientist unpacked jars from an ice-packed Styrofoam shipping cooler, taking no note of the observers.
One of the investor types, a wizened man in a leisure suit, chimed in, "Aren't you worried about using a deadly virus to carry this new gene?"
"Push up your sleeve, sir," Huang said. "No, your left. That's it. Your smallpox vaccination scar. We use an attenuated strain of poxvirus, like the one you had injected there. It can't cause infection."
They passed one end of the test-subject suite, the tour-group participants cooing cloyingly and waving at the monkeys. A woman with jangly earrings proudly claimed, "I have issues with animal cruelty," in a voice not quite loud enough to draw a remark from Huang.
Walker fell even farther back from the crowd, and when the group passed around the corner, he held the digital scanner to an access pad beside a metal door, testing if it had captured the frequency from the card. A low-register hum and the door came uneven from the wall. Walker pulled it open and peered down another hall, this one appearing to house executive offices. The sound of an argument carried to him.
"Of course not, Dolan. You read the preclinical reports-it just wasn't working." A beat. "Why would you even say that? What are you insinuating?"
Another male voice answered, glumly. "Nothing. I just want to see all the raw data, and I'm not waiting until-"
Walker slipped into the hall, shoes silent on the expensive carpet. He followed the raised voices. A door opened behind him, and he froze, but the two young executives headed in the opposite direction, cuffing their sleeves, not seeing him.
"You going tonight?" one asked.
"Bel Air? I'd go just to see the mansion."
That they didn't turn around seemed a good indication that raised voices from the far end of the hall were not an uncommon occurrence. Walker passed a stretch of corkboard, mounted between light sconces. The top pushpinned flyer, importantly titled Interoffice Memo, announced, S-1 Filing Celebration. 7:30 at the Kagan Estate, tonight. Formal. All staff and spouses welcome. No uninvited guests, please. Printed below was a Bel Air address.
Walker continued down the hall, matching the names on the metal plates to recalled Web site bios.
The discussion continued.
"Listen, D, data is-I know, are-the whole problem. You've got a study director who has to cover the stuff you've missed, because you're busy trying to micromanage him. And me."
The comment was met with silence.
"You wanted a company, not just a lab. This is how a company has to work. We're about to have stockholders. Ten thousand or more. Are you gonna be the one accountable to them?"
Walker reached the threshold of the office from which the voices issued. The nameplate read CHASE KAGAN, CEO.
The same voice continued, softer, "I thought not. Now. I want to give you some advice out of this morning's meeting, if you're open to it. You slouch when you sit. It shows you lack confidence."
"I slouch?"
Angled blinds mostly blocked a hall-facing window. Walker rose on his tiptoes to see through the gaps. Spacious corner office. Darkened and soundproofed exterior windows overlooked muted traffic. A broad desk, cherry with gold handles, held neat stacks of papers. Journals and business books lined the shelves, and on a low-lying table rested an illustrated Art of War. One man sat on a leather-and-chrome love seat; the other leaned ass to desk, arms propped behind him, a mauve linen shirt hanging loosely around his muscular frame. Though their coloring and bearing were nearly opposite, Walker pegged them immediately as brothers.
"Tight hamstrings," the man at the desk said, in the voice Walker recognized as the aggressor's. "They make your pelvis tilt, accentuating the arch of your back. It's a common posture pitfall. You really ought to get to the gym, do some stretching. Or if you're tied up here, I'll send Harper-she's a genius."
Dolan was darker, a few years older, and more thinly built-Chase's charitable suggestions aside, Dolan did need to log some gym time.
A woman exited her office across the hall, her office overheads back-lighting Walker against the blinds. He jerked back, but too late-Chase's pale eyes had already pulled to the window.
Chase strode across the office and threw open the door. He called after Walker. "Who are you? Excuse me?" As Walker slipped out into the main corridor, he heard Chase's voice again. "Call security."
Walker pressed through the doors into the lobby. He moved briskly past the receptionist and several well-dressed lobby occupants. Outside, lunchtime foot traffic was flowing past the dark-tinted lobby windows in clogs and streams, massing at the intersections.
As security was converging on the hall outside Chase Kagan's office, Walker floated through the revolving door and disappeared into the midday Los Angeles blaze.
Chapter 27
I need to be clear on this matter: I'm going to have to destroy the evidence." Aaronson's rectangular glasses dangled from a ball-chain clasp, hung up in the collar of his ironed Izod.
The L.A. County Sheriff's CSI lab, divided into cubicles with distinct blacktop benches, smelled pervasively of bleach. Since the Marshals had no in-house forensics, they relied on Sheriff's criminalists. Aaronson, Tim's go-to guy, was a narrow, fussy man with methodical diction and a punctilious eye. He was brilliant, and he made it look hard.
The fresh spread of butcher paper, which covered his bench to collect trace materials, threw Tess's Littlerock Weekly obituary, taken from Walker's cell, into relief. Aaronson had rested the torn strip of newsprint-folded along its original lines-atop a plain business envelope, positioned to show how it might have picked up impressions from a pen writing a return address.
The three men stared at the faint indentations in the clipping's upper left corner, ballooned into close-up through the boom-mounted eight-power lens. In the background, Sports Talk radio bemoaned Kobe Bryant's continuing underperformance.
"I dusted it, sprinkled graphite, but newsprint gives poor resolution," Aaronson said. "I even put it under a fiber-optic, used oblique lighting, the stereo zoom, digital photos-to no avail. There's just no high-tech way of doing this yielding." Bear reached for the paper, and Aaronson put in his trademark line: "Don't touch that, please."
"So you have to…what?" Tim asked.
"I want your approval for the old-fashioned method. We'll only get one shot at it, and if it doesn't work, the specimen's spoiled." Aaronson withdrew a number-two pencil from the overloaded breast pocket of his lab coat and a narrow X-Acto knife from his top drawer. Pressing firmly, the tip of his tongue poking into view at the corner of his mouth, he halved the pencil lengthwise and held up one of the two resulting sticks, showing off the exposed run of graphite at the core. "We swipe it across the obit, hope it brings up the contrast."
Tim and Bear looked at each other for a moment, then shrugged in unison. Bear said, "What the hell."