Knockout Mouse Page 19

  Carl exploded. “Of course I knew! Where do you think they came from!”

  Veins pulsed on his nose. The knuckles gripping the hoe were white. Karen and I took a step back. Carl stood there shaking. After a moment I realized it was as much from grief and guilt as from anger.

  Karen’s voice was even and kind. “You gave them to her?”

  “Yes. I mean, no, not directly, I left her a message telling her she could have some and asking when I should drop them off. They’re no big secret. I just don’t usually give them out. Well, anyway, she never called back.” His throat tightened. “If only she did. I could have warned her…”

  “About what?”

  “It was an experimental line engineered by Tomagen, before we bought them. They set themselves the task of making the best tomato ever—the tastiest, the hardiest, the juiciest. If they hit all the marks, they’d have an incredible product. It was like entering the lottery. Well, they won—except they couldn’t collect. Turned out they’d used a gene from some fish to help the tomato resist cold. See, the same protein that helps a crustacean survive frigid water is the one that causes allergy in humans. Anyway, the protein was still being expressed in the heart tomato. They couldn’t take it to market.”

  I opened my mouth, but Carl jumped quickly to the question. He ticked off his points on soil-crusted fingers. “So why did I keep growing it? I told you about the taste. Why did I give it to people? I didn’t give it to many. A few in my department. The chief wanted to try it, too. Didn’t hurt anyone, not so much as a cough. So then Sheila. Why should I keep it from her, if she wanted to try it? I didn’t know she had an allergy. I would have told her, though, I would have warned her, even though the protein showed up weak in the bioassays.”

  “But the company had to pull the tomato, in spite of that?”

  “Oh yeah. They didn’t even bother asking the FDA. You can’t go around selling food that looks like an apple but really it’s an oyster. You can’t sell soy that’s really Brazil nut proteins. Company that did that in 1996 had to pull it for the same reason: allergies. There were no solid documented cases of adverse reaction, but you’ve got to be double careful. Triple.”

  We stared, stunned, at Carl. “Why would a company use a shellfish protein like that?” I managed to ask.

  “Lots of people have used fish genes to help crops stand the cold,” he said. His shoulders were slumped, but with a kind of relief. He’d been carrying this knowledge around all on his own. He was dying to share it.

  “Carl,” I said gently, “you said you didn’t give Sheila the tomatoes in person. You also said you didn’t talk to her about them. So how did you know Sheila wanted to try them?”

  Carl screwed up his face and clutched at his hat. “Jesus, I don’t know!” His fingers slowly released the hat. “It was Dr. McKinnon. He thought she’d enjoy them.”

  Karen and I stared at each other. McKinnon.

  Carl knew what the look meant. He shook his head vehemently. “No, Dr. McKinnon’s a good man. He wouldn’t knowingly give Sheila something dangerous. The chief neither. But that Dugan—he’s another basket of onions. Listen up, I’m going to tell you right now he will try to pin this on me. Because they got to find someone to blame. The family’s gonna sue, I heard that. And what I think is maybe Dugan’s the one who told the doctor about the tomatoes. Tricked him or something.”

  “Dugan likes to spread blame around,” I agreed. “As long as it lands on anyone but himself.”

  “In any case, it’s likely the shellfish protein didn’t do the job alone,” Karen said. “We think there was another factor.”

  Carl’s brows rose in a hopeful wrinkle.

  “How much do you know about MC124?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I know it’s Dr. McKinnon’s big program. But that’s not my field.”

  I curled my fingers round one of the tomatoes. “We’d like to take this and analyze it. Is that all right?”

  “Take the whole damn plant,” Carl said. “Burn it.”

  Karen smiled sympathetically. “I understand how you feel. We’ll let you know what we find out.”

  The three of us shuffled slowly back to the gate, each lost in our thoughts. If Carl had been annoyed at our entrance, his face grew sad at our departure. He looked hollow and exhausted, as if an enormous weight had been briefly lifted from his chest—but now he was about to be left alone with it again.

  “I could offer you some lemonade,” he said. “I grow Meyers.”

  Karen put a hand on his arm. “Another time.”

  I shook his hand and promised to be in touch. Karen leaned forward to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you for speaking to us.”

  We turned to leave. I took a couple of steps, then stopped. “The heart tomatoes—do you still eat them, Carl?”

  A cold, distant look came into his eyes. “Not anymore.”

  28

  “It wasn’t Fay who brought the toxic food to the dinner party,” I said. “It wasn’t Marion. It was Sheila herself.”

  “And someone used Carl Steiner to get her to do it.”

  I was still stunned by the idea. Saying it made it a little more real. We were back at the kitchen table in Karen’s home away from home in Redwood City. Karen had brewed coffee. She set a mug in front of me. “Drink up. Did you know coffee increases your IQ?”

  “That’s the best news I’ve heard all week. But it can’t be true, or I’d be a genius.”

  “Do we assume that Carl’s aboveboard? That he was just a pawn?” Karen asked.

  I stared into the black cup. “His emotions were real. I suppose he could be pulling some kind of ruse, figuring the truth about the tomatoes would come out eventually. It’s possible he wanted to get back at Sheila for not returning his attention—but it’s not like she broke up with him. They were never even together.”

  “What if he’s one of those stalker types who thought he owned her just because he was infatuated with her?” I shook my head. “Do you really think he was capable of murder?”

  “No. Not Carl.” Karen paused, then added, “You know who that puts in the hot seat, don’t you? Frederick McKinnon.”

  I nodded. “Have you met him?”

  “At the last LifeScience Christmas party. Very charismatic, I have to admit. I see why Sheila was inspired by him. He’s smooth, smart, cultured, completely dedicated—everything we always thought a scientist should be. His team is incredibly loyal.”

  I looked up at her through the coffee steam. “Maybe most are. Not Doug Englehart. He’s ready to be king of his own realm.”

  Karen sipped her drink. “I’ve wondered about that. I’ve met him only once, and it was hard for me to get a reading. He’s been with Frederick for so many years. I thought maybe Doug just didn’t have the ambition to strike out on his own.”

  “Oh, he’s got the ambition. It’s more narrow than McKinnon’s, but just as strong. Sheila wrote about it in her diary. Doug was a fountain of ideas, always pushing the frontiers. She said McKinnon acknowledged that in the team meetings. He raved about how brilliant Doug was. She liked that about McKinnon.”

  “Now that I think about it, Sheila told me that when McKinnon announced MC124 at the conference, he gave the whole presentation himself. Sheila said Doug looked stricken. He thought he’d at least get to explain the antibody to the session.”

  “McKinnon’s generosity could also have been a way to keep Doug right where he was,” I said. “Use his brains, stroke his ego, but take the credit. Maybe the conference was the last straw. Gregory Alton told me Doug’s about to get his own program now. McKinnon dropped hints about it, too.”

  “Did he say what it is?”

  “No. But I noticed some articles in Doug’s office on topics I haven’t seen before. Phage display, I think, and a lot of stuff about E. coli”

  Karen barked with laughter. “Aha! A completely different approach to monoclonals. See, MC124 had to be produced by a mouse population. It’s tough to do, and t
ough on the mice. With this other approach, you engineer the antibody into E. coli bacteria. The bacteria act as a carrier to reproduce the antibody-carrying phage inside the subject. If that’s what Doug plans to do, it’ll make McKinnon’s fur stand up.”

  “I wonder how far Doug’s resentment goes. If McKinnon really is our man, maybe Doug will help us nail him.”

  Karen shook her head. “Hard to imagine. It’s one thing to spread your wings and fly. It’s another to stab the man who helped get you there in the back.”

  “It’s still hard for me to believe McKinnon is our man. He might be more capable of murder than Carl Steiner, but he’s not the one who sent private detectives after us. I have to think Carl is right: Dugan’s behind it all.”

  Karen swirled the grounds in the bottom of her cup. “You don’t harass people like Dugan did unless you’ve got something big to hide.”

  I finished the last of my coffee. “Karen, I’ve been meaning to say—I’m really sorry about getting you in trouble at BioVerge.”

  She waved it off. “You did me a favor. My work was going nowhere. I spent most of my time trolling the Web for journal articles and important facts—like the one about coffee. This is much more exciting.” Her smile gradually fell. Her brown eyes turned muddy. “When I heard about Sheila, I couldn’t fathom it. Nothing made sense anymore. Science seemed useless. If we can uncover how Sheila was killed—I don’t know, at least I’ll have accomplished something.”

  A pair of tears tracked down her cheeks, in no hurry to get to the bottom. It was the first time she’d shown her real feelings in front of me. My instinct was to put my arms around her, but I held back. I wasn’t sure how she’d take it.

  “I’m afraid I’ve put you in some danger,” I said. I wanted to make sure she knew I was concerned about her. “Dugan knows you’re a biologist, a friend of Sheila’s who can put all the science together. If you want to get out of town for a little while, to be safe, I’d understand.” It was the same advice I’d given Jenny, though I was hoping for a different answer from Karen.

  Her moist eyes slowly narrowed to sharp black points. “I’m not going anywhere. I want to know who did this to Sheila. I want to look them in the face and ask why.”

  I nodded. A look of understanding flashed between us. Karen took the cups to the sink and washed them as if she was trying to punch through their bases. “What’s next?” she asked.

  “Let’s talk to Marion. She’s in the agri department and knows more than she’s been telling me. I might be able to talk her into a data swap now. She definitely is not on Dugan’s side.”

  Karen handed me the phone. I pulled out my billfold for the piece of paper on which I had all my numbers written. “You know what?” I said. “I need to call Jenny first.”

  “No problem. Is it all right if I look at the diary?”

  I nodded, then dialed Jenny’s mother in Sacramento. Jenny answered the phone herself. She started talking about how she’d been outside gardening and how good it was for her soul. I hated having to tell her the story of the killer tomato.

  She reacted with a stunned silence. “That is so freaky,” Jenny finally said. “Someone deliberately gave her the tomatoes.”

  “Yeah. But the good news is that you’re in the clear.”

  “I don’t think you should stay there, Bill. It’s too dangerous. Take this to the police.”

  “Don’t worry. We’re in a safe place. I’ll go to the police as soon as I figure out—”

  “Who’s this we?”

  “Karen, that scientist friend of Sheila’s. We’re about to visit Marion. I think she can fill in some more pieces for us.”

  “You said you were coming up here.”

  “Well, that was before I knew how Sheila was murdered. I’m not going to walk away from this.”

  “Who said this is for you to solve, Bill? I don’t understand why you’re so fixated on it. Is it about some kind of ego battle with Dugan? Maybe you think you can get a film out of this.”

  It was my turn to be stunned. I didn’t think she really meant what she said. She just felt left out—left out of a party she didn’t really want to attend. I knew there was hurt underneath her anger, but I’d have to try to take care of it later.

  “I’m sorry, Jen. I’ll see you as soon as I can,” I said.

  I put down the phone to find Karen at the kitchen door. “Sorry,” she said, “I thought—”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’ve never met Jenny. Sheila was kind of in awe of her. She thought Jenny had so much life, sparkle—a winning way, I guess.”

  “She does like winning.”

  A bit of mock pity played on Karen’s lips. It cheered me up. “I just had a conversation of my own,” she said. “Harry Salzmann, on my cell phone. I saw his name in the diary and should have thought of calling him sooner. He told me something really bizarre. Smidge was an offshoot of a line in Harry’s lab. Sheila herself developed the line. It was what got McKinnon interested in her in the first place. So, guess whose human DNA was knocked into Smidge’s chromosomes?”

  “Sheila’s,” I said immediately. “Is that ethical?”

  “It’s perfectly common. Researchers have to get human DNA from somewhere, right? I’ve known people who hang around maternity wards asking for spare placentas. All Sheila had to do was scrape a few of her own cells. Sheila must have realized the mouse’s origin when she wrote about Smidge’s fate being her own. If MC124 killed Smidge, she had good reason to worry about what it would do to her.”

  I nodded. “It’s coming together, Karen. We’re getting close.”

  She nodded back. I checked my watch. It was getting late. “Look, we better get going. Marion wanted to see us today. I’ll call to tell her we’re on the way.”

  “Good. I’ll find a place to hide the research,” Karen said.

  “Right. There’s no way we’re taking it to Marion’s.”

  After I’d talked to Marion, my last call was to Abe Harros at the hotel. I came back into the living room when it was done, and Karen and I headed out to the Scout.

  We crawled across the bay on the San Mateo Bridge. I got off 580 at State 13, a cute little grass-lined highway that snaked along the base of the Oakland hills, almost exactly on top of the Hayward fault. A winding hairpin lane took us from 13 into the steep, redwood-shaded hills. Marion’s place was about halfway up. I pulled into the carport, a wood platform built into the hillside, and parked next to a Volvo.

  Marion lived in a classic wood-shingled Berkeley bungalow. The trees whispered in the breeze as we followed a stone walk down to the front door. Marion treated us like old friends. She kissed me on both cheeks. We went into a long, narrow living room. Marion had her own little indoor forest, consisting primarily of ferns. The walls were decorated with magical-looking tribal objects.

  “You’re a world traveller,” I commented.

  “What can I say, I’m Dutch. Sit down. I’ll bring you something—tea, wine?”

  Karen and I both declined. We sat on a wool couch that faced a picture window. The bay, visible through the branches outside, was gunmetal gray and sullenly still under the clouds. Marion plunked down in a rocking chair. She was wearing tights and a long, loose shirt.

  “Nice place,” I said. “Long drive to work, though.”

  “You’d have to clamp me in chains to get me to live in the valley. What I paid for this place would buy me a studio in Palo Alto.” She crossed her legs, shook a slippered foot at us, and grinned. “So, here we are. Come on, out with it. Don’t be shy.”

  “Here’s what we’ll do, Marion. We’ll take turns. I’ll go first and tell you that Sheila gave Karen her notes on MC124. We know what’s wrong with it, and we know how the knockout mouse died.”

  “And that is?”

  As Karen explained, Marion’s mouth puckered into a kind of grudging acknowledgment. “You may be right. Of course, it’s not my field, and I don’t have all the data.”

  �
�Tell us about the agri department,” I said. “Tell us about Carl Steiner.”

  Marion started to ask another question, but I wagged my finger.

  “Carl’s probably the best man at the whole company.” She paused to enjoy our dubious looks before adding, “As long as he’s not in love with you. He’s harmless, really, but I meant it about his talent. He knows plants like no one else. He was just as upset as I was when management decided—but I’m getting ahead of myself. Why don’t you tell me something.”

  “All right. MC124 wasn’t enough to kill Sheila by itself. Something had to trigger it. Maybe something from your department.”

  Marion clucked her tongue. “Could be. It’s scientifically feasible. And those people are capable of it. The division has taken a wrong turn. It’s getting into dangerous territory. Dugan’s regime—they’re not scientists. They’re not even responsible executives. Short term profit, that’s all they’re about.”

  “What do you know about the heart tomato?”

  “It was Tomagen’s, before the acquisition. So packed full of exogenous DNA I half expected it to sit up and start barking.”

  “Are there any tomato plants left in the company garden?”

  “No. Everything we’re growing now is for drug production. That’s the new direction. They’re aiming to steal some of Frederick’s thunder. It’s expensive to produce monoclonals in quantity using mice. But if you engineer a plant, or even a goat, to produce it, you’ve got a cheap source. The drug is produced in fruit or in milk.”

  Marion’s rocking chair was rolling now. She motioned to hear more. It was my turn.

  “Carl’s still growing a few of the tomatoes in his home garden. He likes to share his crops,” I said.

  “Yeah, some of his zucchini is sitting in my fridge. But what about these tomatoes?” Marion said.

  “They had certain shellfish proteins engineered into them, to help them survive cold,” I said. “The same protein humans are allergic to. Sheila brought some to the dinner party, remember? I recognized it right away in Carl’s garden. He said he didn’t know about Sheila’s allergy. But what are the chances that he—”