Knockout Mouse Read online

  Jenny’s face lit up. She popped to her feet. The two of them rushed to the kitchen. Pretty soon they were flinging open cabinets, emptying drawers, and inspecting labels.

  I followed them and asked Fay if she had any idea how to find Sheila’s parents. She didn’t, but said that Sheila had a brother named Abe, a doctor who lived in Europe.

  She checked her watch. “I’ll call Simon. He might know. This will really upset him. He always felt some kind of duty to protect Sheila.”

  I went back to the computer. A search for Abe Harros turned up nothing. While I was online, I checked my email. Rita had sent a message, all in capitals. Rita never used capitals. It was considered bad form, unless you meant to shout at someone.

  WHAT IS WITH THIS GREGORY GUY??? HE’S BEEN CALLING ME EVERY HOUR. I HOPE YOU DIDN’T GIVE HIM MY NUMBER.

  No, I hadn’t given him her number, I emailed back. I explained who he was and that he was offering a lot of money for our services. But I’d call him and tell him to lay off. I added that I’d stay another night at Jenny’s, then come up to San Francisco for the prep meeting Rita and I had scheduled tomorrow morning.

  “Bill,” Jenny sang from the kitchen. “Come look!”

  Laid out on the floor were primary-color plates, champagne glasses, diet milkshake powder, four kinds of granola, and what was perhaps Silicon Valley’s largest collection of animal-shaped salt and pepper shakers. The stove and counters and cabinets were spotless.

  “Not a smidgen of shellfish,” Jenny announced. “Just some clam chowder, safely inside the can.”

  Fay held up a small closed tin. “And Cajun seasoning, with authentic fake crawfish flavor.”

  “And these.” Jenny had a pair of crab-claw crunchers hidden behind her back. She snapped them at my nose. I frowned at her. It didn’t seem like the time to play around.

  “Plus, I talked to Simon,” Fay said. “Abe works for Médecins Sans Frontières. He’s based somewhere in Europe or Africa.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll tell Perkins at the hospital.”

  Fay gave a catlike smile. “I’ve got a quicker way to find Abe. Simon told me where Sheila keeps a set of keys to her apartment.”

  » » » » »

  Sheila’s apartment complex resembled a motel. We navigated down an alley of covered parking spaces behind the complex to the number that corresponded to Sheila’s unit. The space was empty, of course, and I put the Scout in. Fay looked under a filament-encrusted flowerpot in the corner. The keys were there.

  We walked around to the complex’s back gate, unlocked it, and entered a long courtyard. A small, plain swimming pool with a concrete deck shimmered to our right on the other side of a low chain-link fence. An older woman was fishing debris out of the pool with a net. She stared at the three of us as we walked by. Jenny smiled at her and waved hello.

  It didn’t work. The woman came to the fence. The manager, I figured. Her hair was falling out of its bun, her cheeks ruddy. She looked ready to use the net on us.

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  “We’re friends of Sheila’s,” Jenny answered.

  “Sheila’s dead,” the woman said bluntly.

  Jenny recoiled. “We know that,” I said quietly. “The hospital asked us to come and look up a phone number for her family.” At least, I imagined Perkins might have, if I’d reached him instead of his voicemail before we had left Jenny’s place.

  “Someone’s already been here.” The manager’s voice was flat.

  “Who? The police?”

  “No. Someone from her job. Guy with short dark hair. He was a high-up, showed me his card.”

  I looked at Jenny and Fay. It seemed odd that LifeScience would come here but send no one to the hospital. I reminded myself that we needed to call Marion.

  “Did you let him into her apartment?” I asked.

  “He said there was some kind of work product they needed right away,” the manager said. “Some presentation. Even though it was a time of grief, et cetera, they had to have this info.”

  “Well, we’re just here to locate her family,” I said. “As you can see, she gave us her keys.”

  The manager nodded reluctantly. “Don’t be long. I had to chase that other fella out. I didn’t think it was right, him poking around for a whole hour.”

  We proceeded down the courtyard, which was lined on either side by a double-deck row of apartments. The center was a strip of trampled lawn with some plastic furniture, charcoal grills, and a palm here and there. Jenny jiggled Sheila’s door open. The apartment consisted of three rooms plus a kitchen, basic boxes with low ceilings, but Sheila had fixed it up nicely. The living room furniture was low to the ground, which made the room seem bigger. There were two upholstered, semicircular chairs, a divan, and a collection of brocade pillows for lounging. She had hung fabric on the walls, intricate patterns in earth tones. A large rug, also intricately patterned, covered the worn carpeting. The biggest things in the room were the two bookcases, which were crammed with books on science as well as novels and biographies. A whole shelf was given to Sufi poetry.

  “What a cozy place,” Jenny said. “I didn’t think she’d be one to put so much effort into decorating.”

  “Feels like an opium den,” Fay whispered.

  None of the lights was very bright. I meandered into the kitchen. There was something uncanny about knowing the occupant would never return, would never again brew tea in the blue-tendrilled pot on the stove, would never wash the cup in the sink, would never eat the dried lentils, beans, rice, bulgur, almonds, and mint rowed neatly in jars.

  The bedroom was simple. A low bed platform faced a sliding door closet. Next to the bed was a little table, on which sat a lamp and a small book bound in black hardcover. A piece of sheer fabric billowed from the ceiling to soften an overhead light. Curtains of the same material covered a back window.

  “This is beautiful,” Jenny gushed. She had picked up a scarf draped over a chair in front of a vanity. A handful of bottles of perfume, lotion, and almond oil sat on its shelf. She shook the scarf into a square to admire the pattern.

  Then, as if it was crawling with bugs, she dropped it. “Let’s get what we came for. I don’t feel right being here.”

  “Besides, we don’t want that manager giving us a hard time,” said Fay, sliding open a closet door. She did a double take. “So this is where Sheila threw all her clutter!”

  We left Fay in the bedroom and went back through the living room to the small den. It was strewn with books, journals, and file folders. A computer desk was piled with documents. I sat down and turned on the computer. Nothing happened. It sat there dead for a minute before I wriggled under the desk to take a look at the CPU. The cover was loose and a hole in the tower gaped at me.

  I called to Jenny, then dragged the tower out a little and turned it to show her. “Someone removed Sheila’s hard drive. The LifeScience guy. Had to be.”

  “He said he needed a presentation. It must have been on her hard drive.”

  “Maybe. But I’d like to have it explained.” I had a growing feeling that Sheila’s place had been raked over. But why?

  “Don’t forget why we’re here, Bill.” Jenny opened a drawer in the desk. Almost immediately she plucked a red address book from the top drawer. She turned to H.

  “Here we go.” She jotted down Sheila’s parents’ numbers. I looked through the rest of the H’s with her. No sign of Abe.

  “I know,” Jenny said. She turned to A. There it was.

  “Of course,” I said. “That was probably why Perkins didn’t find it in her organizer, either.”

  Jenny wrote down Abe’s information. “He’s based in Cairo now.”

  “Look for one more number,” I requested. “The name of Sheila’s doctor. Her allergist, in particular.”

  Jenny sat in the rocker and leafed through the address book. In the meantime, I checked the drawers for disks. Either she didn’t have any or they’d been cleaned out. A zip drive
sat on the desk, so the former seemed unlikely.

  I sifted through the items strewn on the table and floor. A lot of them were professional journals with articles on transgenic animals, immunology, and bioinformatics. There were also a number of reprints about subjects like interleukins, apoptosis, and laboratory mice, with sections highlighted in yellow.

  I got up and looked through the bookshelf. A knock came at the front door.

  “The manager,” I said.

  “I found Sheila’s allergist,” Jenny said. She took down a number, put the address book back in the desk, and went out. I told her I’d be right there.

  I pulled books off the shelves in bunches. Nothing. Then, opening a carved box that sat on the shelf as a bookend, I found what I wanted. Three zip disks. I stuffed them into my pocket.

  Fay and Jenny were standing by the apartment door. The manager was sniffing around to see if we’d done any damage. I nodded at the pile of books on the dining table, which we hadn’t gone through yet. “Shouldn’t we clean those up?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said.

  I started back toward the bedroom. “Time to go!” she growled.

  “Just turning out the lights,” I called.

  I entered the bedroom, turned on the light, took one last glance around the room, and turned off the light.

  The manager was closing the front door behind us when I asked, “Did you notice if the man from Sheila’s work took anything away with him?”

  “He had a briefcase,” she said as she escorted us to the gate. “I wouldn’t know what was in it.”

  We walked down the alley to the Scout. I was glad Jenny insisted on climbing into the backseat so Fay could take the front. Instead of aiming the Scout toward the street, I drove back to the apartment gate. “Fay,” I said, “we should find out the manager’s name. Could you?”

  “I’ll do it,” Jenny said.

  “That’s all right,” Fay said. “I’m in front.”

  Once she’d left, I leaned over and rifled through her handbag.

  “Bill!” Jenny protested.

  I held the black book up for her to see. “Sheila’s journal.”

  I slid it under my seat, then straightened to wait for Fay. In the rearview mirror, I could see Jenny staring at the gate, her face as stunned and blank as a vacant window.

  6

  Jenny kept her eyes glued to the landscape of strip malls, upscale car dealerships, and corporate campuses as we drove east across the valley, toward the bay. Biotech companies tended to grow in bunches, and several were nestled down there. LifeScience was about half a mile south of BioVerge.

  Jenny and I wanted to talk to Marion in person. I waited for Jenny to say something about Fay, or the diary. We’d dropped Fay off at her apartment. Jenny had stared silently at her the whole way over. Fay seemed unaware that the trust had suddenly drained from their partnership.

  “The manager’s name is Jennifer Poloni,” Fay had said when she got back into the jeep. “Looks like you’re not the only Jennifer on the scene.”

  Jenny just wrinkled her nose. I knew the expression was aimed at Fay, not the manager.

  After we crossed under Highway 101, the neighborhood turned industrial. We passed generic business hotels, bulldozed lots, and nameless aluminum sheds on our way to a more landscaped area near the water. LifeScience sat by itself at the end of a sinuous drive. The bay beyond had the thick, greenish look of antifreeze.

  The LifeScience complex consisted of two four-story wings in front, bisected by an atrium, and a new addition in back. At the fulcrum of the three structures was a central tower. All were built of lightweight greenish-silver materials. A thin colonnade encircled the building.

  Jenny paused at the main entrance. Her shoulders sagged. I touched her arm. Her skin, always soft and milky, felt vulnerable under my fingers. “Are you up for this?”

  She gathered herself and we went in. The atrium soared above us. Sunlight streamed in, feeding a cluster of tall bamboo. The walls were flagstone, wood panelling, and glass; the floors were polished stone. None of it was overdone, not the way certain tech firms were. Not a bad place to shoot a film, I thought; at least the set would look good.

  A long granite counter blocked further entry. Behind it was a wall of frosted glass etched with LIFE SCIENCE MOLECULES. The receptionist, a pony-tailed twenty-something, smiled at us.

  “We’re here to see Marion Roos,” I said.

  He punched a button, listened, and said, “I’m sorry. She’s not picking up.”

  “Ah.” I leaned over the counter and noticed his thin fingers and clean white nails. Was he the only security in the place? “We’re here about Sheila Harros.”

  His face remained placid. “Would you like me to try her?”

  “No, we need to go to her desk to give her something.”

  “You can leave it here. I’ll make sure she gets it.”

  His switchboard bleated. He held up a finger for us to wait while he answered. “No, I’m sorry, Dr. McKinnon is in a meeting… Yes, with investors… I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that…”

  He looked up at us. Jenny put on her platinum-melting smile. But the phone interrupted again. The receptionist went through a virtually identical conversation with this caller.

  “Your company is popular,” I commented.

  He blew out some air. “Especially today. I can’t even get up to use the bathroom.”

  Jenny put her smile back on. “About Sheila—it’s just really personal.”

  He returned the smile, but the corners of his mouth stayed firm. Pressing a button under the desk, he said, “Someone will escort you.”

  A man in a blue suit appeared so quickly it startled us. His sober features and by-the-book hair left little doubt about his job. “Why do you want to see Ms. Harros?”

  “It’s kind of private,” Jenny said, wielding her smile.

  It bounced right off. He turned, walked a few feet away, and spoke into a handheld computer. Over his shoulder I glimpsed bamboo on the handheld’s screen. He was getting a video feed of the lobby. I glanced up: the cameras were mounted above the front desk, each with a small shotgun mike pointed down at us. Mr. Security had been watching the whole time.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  “Badge them?” the receptionist asked.

  The security man waved him off. We followed him around the frosted glass, under the bamboo, and across the polished floor. At the far end was a curtain wall. Through it, the bay winked in the afternoon sun.

  I was disappointed when we took a right into a conference room. I’d been hoping to get upstairs into the offices, maybe the labs. A moment after we sat down, three men entered the room.

  “Don’t get up,” said the first and tallest. He bent to shake Jenny’s hand, then mine, which prevented us from standing. He was probably six foot three, around fifty, athletic and tan. His golden brown hair was swept back, revealing a high forehead and a congenial face with a strong triangle of a nose. He wore a tawny wool suit and a sky blue tie that matched his eyes.

  “I’m Dr. Frederick McKinnon,” he said. “This is Doug Englehart.”

  The one behind him came forward. Englehart was all elbows and knees. He was younger than McKinnon, with a mustache, a narrow jaw, and a bulbous skull, across which a few lonesome strands of brown hair crawled. He gave the impression of being choked by his tie.

  The third man did not give his name. His clipped dark brown hair made a crisp square line around his ears and across the back of his neck. He stayed by the door and in turn was joined by Mr. Security.

  McKinnon did not sit but leaned toward us from the head of the table. “Now, about Sheila…” He stared at his hands for a moment. They were large, the fingers elegant, wrinkled at the knuckles, a thick gold wedding band on the fourth. A small quiver came into his voice. “I’m afraid I have some bad news—”

  “Actually, we know about Sheila,” I said. “We came to see Marion.”

  “We
feel just terrible, as you can imagine,” Dr. McKinnon said. “Today of all days. We’re hosting some critical investors. I haven’t had time to process the… losing her.”

  “You had to make presentations, I imagine.”

  Doug Englehart spoke up. “Yes. The hospital called for help identifying Sheila. I was obligated to show the investors around the lab. Otherwise I would have gone.”

  “Jenny and I did it. Were you her supervisor?”

  “I’m the group leader,” he answered with a sidelong look at McKinnon. “I’m executing the program.”

  “I direct the research,” McKinnon said. He shook his head with regret. “It’s been painful to pretend nothing happened. We feel the loss keenly. On behalf of all of us, accept our condolences.”

  Suspicious as I was, I saw no signs McKinnon was faking it. His voice was authoritative and precise. His blue eyes were fierce but had human warmth in them.

  “We’re all in shock,” Jenny said softly.

  The room was silent. Even McKinnon, for all his presence, seemed at a momentary loss. Still, I sensed tension coming from somewhere. It was the dark-haired man. He had that implacable alpha look, as if the entire conversation was taking place only at his pleasure. He stood stock still but brimmed with testosterone, a solid two hundred pounds, but not dumb. His eyes picked up everything.

  “So, about Marion—” I said.

  Alpha Man spoke up in a clear, hard voice. “She has a vendor meeting.”

  McKinnon turned to him in surprise. “Today?”

  “Yes.” The man rocked forward on the balls of his feet, but didn’t elaborate.

  After another silence, McKinnon glanced behind him, in the direction, I supposed, of where his investors were waiting, then at his watch. “Well. I’m terribly sorry, but I have to go.”

  “Do you think—” Jenny began, waiting for his attention. “We’d like to see Sheila’s workspace.”

  Doug Englehart cleared his throat. “It’s, ah, all packed up.”

  “Too painful to see her things there, I imagine,” McKinnon said.

  “Perhaps we should take them for you,” I suggested.