Murder Theory Read online

  “What the fuck?” I yell into the phone. Veronica flinches at my explosive reaction. “Put Todd on the phone.”

  “Hold on . . .”

  The long pause only makes me seethe more. Pogue is drastically overstepping his boundaries here. Not to mention derailing my case.

  “He says he can’t come to the phone right now, he’s in the middle of some lab work.”

  I take a deep breath to avoid yelling at Sheila again. “Did it look like he was doing important lab work?”

  “I’m not a scientist, but, um, no. It’s Todd being Todd.”

  I mull firing him over the phone but decide I need to go back there in person and handle the situation. “All right, Sheila. I need you to go over to the main lab and announce that they’re back on this project; then ask Todd to call me. If he objects, call me right back and I’ll fire him on the spot.”

  “Can I listen in?” she whispers.

  “Sure,” I reply, then hang up.

  “Tough day at the office?” asks Veronica.

  “I’m growing to hate humanity.”

  “Took you long enough.” She points to the screen. “I may have found something. See these smooth bubbles here? I remember something from some tests I was hired to do for a pharmaceutical company. They look a lot like a time-released polymer used to administer drugs. The one I tested worked off body heat. They could adjust the chemical to respond to a fever, coma, whatever.”

  “Using a heater, they could be timed to release over a steady period of time?”

  “Exactly. Every time it’s turned on you’d get a wave of infectious particles. The problem is, they could be anything. The size really didn’t matter. I hope that’s helpful.”

  Damn.

  “It is. I have to make some urgent calls before I get back to Austin and kill my lab manager.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CONTROLS

  Todd Pogue eyes me with indifference from across the conference room table. He’s got an “I don’t have time for this” look on his face. He clearly doesn’t understand the boss-employee dynamic.

  Granted, I’m a horrible boss, but not in the aggressive, yell-at-you or sexually-harass-you kind of way. I’m an absentee boss. Even when I’m here. I boss the way I want to be led—which is to say not at all.

  My interactions with the eight lab technicians tend to be through email and randomly popping in to see how they’re doing things. I don’t do meetings. I don’t do pep talks.

  If you have a question, ask me. If I have a problem with your work, I’ll tell you. Other than that, I leave everything to Todd in the lab and Sheila in the overall operation of the business. Although calling it a business feels silly. We get checks from the Department of Defense, and a handsomely paid grant writer handles all of the paperwork.

  My eyes are on the door, waiting for Darnell, a UT Austin biology graduate student I put in charge of doing the testing.

  I don’t even know where to begin with Todd. I start with the obvious. “Why did you tell the lab to stop working on the field project?”

  “We’re already running behind on the DoD work,” he replies.

  “Sheila said we were on track.”

  Todd rolls his eyes like a tool. “Did she?” He hesitates for a moment, then replies, “I spoke to General Figueroa on the phone. He wanted to know the status of the T-gene project.”

  “What?” I almost spit my coffee. The last thing I want in the world is Todd talking to him—especially about that bullshit project.

  Todd gives a slight shrug. “He called. You weren’t here. I took the call.”

  This is beyond insubordination. I have to fire him, but I can’t do it right now. “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth, that it wasn’t high priority.” Son of a bitch.

  Todd continues. “He ordered me to make it our priority. I did. He is our employer, after all.”

  Calm, Theo. Stay calm. “No, Todd. He is not your employer. I am. The man may be a general, but there are no stripes on your sleeve. He’s a client.”

  “He seemed to feel differently.”

  Todd is faking this obsequiousness. I know what he’s trying to do. The slimy bastard is trying to set up his own relationship to get his own lab like mine. I should have seen it from the start.

  He’s also baiting me, trying to get a reaction. Todd probably knows the story about how I got my own lab, making an end run around the guy I was working for. Maybe that’s how he thinks it works.

  Maybe it is.

  I have to separate my emotional reaction from my logical one. What do I want? I want to know what’s in that sample. Okay, long-term, what do I want? I want to be left in peace.

  Todd is disrupting that peace. I can’t have someone ready to stab me in the back walking an inch behind me. So, the answer is confirmed: Todd’s gone, but not right now.

  I need to handle this like someone smarter than me. What would Jillian do if she had a bad baker but needed them to finish out the shift?

  She’d probably tell them to take a hike and run the shop herself.

  She’s capable of doing that. I’m not. How would she really handle it?

  “I understand your perspective, Todd. From now on, let me handle all contact with General Figueroa and let the lab pursue projects as I deem necessary.”

  He’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. I say nothing. “Okay?”

  Todd blinks, confused. It’s almost like he wanted me to yell at him. “And the T-gene project? We’re no longer pursuing that?”

  I’m about to say it’s nonsense and we’re not going to proceed. But I notice something odd about Todd. He’s wearing a jacket. Normally he’s in shirtsleeves or a lab coat.

  If I were a suspicious man, I’d think he was trying to get me to say something out loud so he can get it on tape. Is he recording this conversation?

  That’s beyond illegal and unethical—unless his goal was to take it straight to Figueroa.

  Damn, Todd. You’re beyond scum.

  I could order him to turn out his pockets. But then what?

  What if he does have a recorder? It’d be a felony to illegally record a conversation like this. We’re an ITAR-regulated facility. However, that would leave me short a lab manager and a long bureaucratic nightmare, plus whatever lawsuit he decided to file.

  I call his bluff. “T-gene is a priority. I think General Figueroa’s instincts are right on this. I just need to do some more research. The optics on this, particularly for him, could be bad if we don’t proceed cautiously.”

  Todd’s reaction tells me this takes him by surprise. His eyes dart to his left chest pocket, as if he’s subconsciously afraid that the general’s somehow listening right now.

  “So . . . is it okay if I do some preliminary work on the project?” he asks, hesitantly.

  “No. You have a full workload. This isn’t for you.” I let the last sentence hang there: If not for him, then whom?

  I have no idea. While there’s a stack of potential hires collecting dust on my desk, I want him to at least think that I’m considering bringing someone else in—potentially to replace him.

  There’s a knock on the door. “Come in.”

  Darnell pokes his head inside. “Okay to come in?”

  “Have a seat. Todd was just leaving.” My life, hopefully.

  Todd gives Darnell a suspicious glance as the younger man takes his seat. I don’t need Todd trying to undermine him, too.

  “What do you have?” I ask Darnell after Todd leaves.

  “I did the genome assay as you requested.” He spreads some printouts filled with ATGC in various arrangements across the table.

  Darnell is good. Quiet, not very creative, but very, very thorough. If I can just get him to start asking bigger questions, we might have a great scientist on our hands.

  “I did a fungus comparison like you asked for. Even looking for entomopathogens like Ophiocordyceps unilateralis.”

  My zombie-ant fungus. Entomopathog
ens by definition affect insects, but that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be a human analogue.

  “And?”

  “Nothing came up on that.”

  Damn. I mean that’s good, I guess. I’d hate to see a human version of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis that causes a stalk to grow out of the brain of a human as they’re frozen in rigor mortis in some location where they’re likely to spread the fungus’s spores over other people . . . like an attic.

  I have to make a note of that. I wonder how many bodies are found in attics or water supplies with unknown pathogens leaking out?

  I realize Darnell is staring at me. “Sorry. Just had a train of thought. Go on.”

  “No worries. We call it the ‘Theo seizure.’” He smiles, then catches himself. “Um, sorry, no disrespect, Dr. Cray.”

  “None taken. What did you find?”

  “I decided to take a scraping of the material itself.”

  “You were careful, right?”

  He gives me a look like I asked if he washed his hands after using the bathroom. “I used the containment hood. You said to treat this like it was virulent.”

  “Okay, good.” Heaven help me if I got my own lab infected with this pathogen.

  “I found some sequences. There was no way to tell if they were DNA or RNA, of course. But I found several interesting genes. Some unknown, but a few that came up with a proximal match to a variant of a Lyssavirus.”

  Damn again. “And the genes in common were?”

  “The ones we usually only find in neurotropic viruses.”

  His voice is grave. Although Darnell has no idea what I’m looking for, he knows what he found. A neurotropic virus affects the nervous system—including the brain. And Lyssavirus? That’s the genus that rabies belongs to.

  “And there’s another thing,” adds Darnell. “I did a protein analysis and found something odd.”

  “Go on?”

  Darnell shakes his head. “This will sound crazy. I was looking for signs of a viral envelope, the outer protective layer, but I found something unusual. It’s almost like a polymer. A kind of coating. Nothing the virus would produce, I don’t think. But like it was encapsulated in something to make sure it could survive open air, common sterilization, maybe even UV, but break down in the bloodstream. Apparently, there’s something like that used in viral therapy. It’s a way to take a weakened virus and protect it so it can deliver its payload to a subject.”

  It’s also the perfect way to take a virus that wouldn’t survive outside a host and preserve it long enough to infect someone. Mother of god. It’s like a time bomb.

  “Crazy? I know,” says Darnell. “Who would make something like that?”

  “Thank you, Darnell. Make sure everyone stays clear of the sample area. Can you make me a detection chip?”

  “Already on it.”

  I call Agent Nicolson and deliver the bad news: we have confirmation that we’re dealing with not only a virus but also a mad genius who’s intentionally infecting people with it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  HYDE

  Lev Vanstone is precariously balanced on an exercise ball as his arms wave in excitement while discussing over Skype the virus file I sent him. He’s twenty-three, so slender that his Rick & Morty T-shirt fits him like a tent, and has a mop of black hair that makes him look like a Muppet. A mad-genius Muppet.

  I had him as an undergrad at fifteen. He was able to overcome whatever educational damage I did to him and go on to become one of most brilliant virologists I’ve met. Currently he works at the Glassman Research Lab at MIT, using computer modeling and artificial intelligence to study viral behavior.

  “This is insane, Dr. Ted,” says Lev. “Is this something you cooked up in your secret government lab?”

  “God no,” I blurt out. “And for the last time, it’s Theo. Also, it’s not a secret government laboratory.” I can only imagine what people think I’m up to. They’d probably be disappointed to find out the truth.

  Lev taps away on a keyboard and stares at another monitor as he bounces up and down. I’m reminded of how he’d start asking a question in class and then raise his hand. I loved his questions and enjoyed his enthusiasm. The other students, not so much. I found the happy medium was to let Lev sit with me at lunch and barrage me with his inquiries and ideas. Now I’m seeking his advice.

  While I’m pretty sure of what my lab has found out, I need an expert outside opinion. This is because my lab—being my lab—will likely reinforce whatever conclusion I’ve arrived at. Good science requires having your ideas challenged, and that’s often difficult for the people whose paychecks you sign.

  “What’s your assessment of it?” I ask. I told Lev next to nothing about the virus other than it was extremely dangerous.

  “It’s a Frankenstein,” he replies. “I thought maybe you made it. The thing has all sorts of genes stuck on to it. Although not in the elegant way I’d expect from you. Still, it looks functional.”

  “Okay . . . but what can you tell me?”

  “Is this a test, Dr. Ted?”

  I give up on correcting him. “Let’s say it is. How would you identify this?”

  “Classifying it is tricky, because like I said, clearly it’s man-made . . . I think.”

  “You think? That’s odd, hearing you second-guess yourself.”

  “All right. Here’s what I know. Part of the genome says Lyssavirus—but not quite. And there’re at least two other parts clearly pasted on.”

  “Pasted on?”

  “Yeah. There’s coding for the viral envelope twice. Once where you’d expect and then again at the end of the sequence. That’s two separate locations—which can happen. But the placement of the last one and the alterations are like a software patch added after the fact. It looks like something a person inserted.”

  Lev is dead-on with this part of his assessment. “Okay, so we have the envelope coding. What’s the second sequence?” I hadn’t noticed another one.

  “Well . . . I’m not sure what it does.”

  “Then how do you know it’s patched in?”

  “The head and tail of it basically have nonfunctioning headers used as gene markers. It’s a sequence I’ve seen before. Kind of like software-patch coding that says, ‘This is a patch.’”

  “What does the rest of it do?” I ask.

  Lev shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure if it’s functional. The entire sequence is about four hundred pairs. Who knows? I could make a functional copy and try to boot it up . . .” His eyes widen with mischief.

  “Don’t even try it. This thing is evil.”

  “How evil?”

  “Zombie plague–level evil.”

  “Oh. Got it. So, the other part that has me confused is the Lyssavirus part. While part of me wants to put it in that genus, or at least Rhabdoviridae, there are some other sequences from different families entirely.”

  “Engineered?”

  “It’s kinda sloppy. Conventional wisdom says that viruses can’t exchange genes across families . . .”

  “But conventional wisdom is wrong.” The mitochondria in our cells are living proof that wildly different species can exchange genetic material. We even have DNA in us that was left by viruses.

  “Correct. I’ve been reading some interesting papers about all the weird ways viruses can trade genes. There’s evidence that some viruses use tricks to interrupt the replication process of other viruses and start producing ligase protein to glue their own genes inside. It’s speculative. Anyway, like I said, this is a Franken-virus.”

  “So is it man-made or not?” I ask, still processing the implication.

  “Some of it. But I think the weirdness I was talking about is natural. Or at least the product of a seminatural process. Like someone found a freak and then made it even freakier.”

  Damn.

  “What is this thing?” asks Lev, as if I know.

  “I’m not sure, but I think it turns people into murderers. The
virus somehow attacks part of the frontal lobe and makes it hard for people to control their impulses to violence.”

  “Wow. Kinda like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

  I nod. “Except we have a lone-wolf Dr. Jekyll using it to turn unsuspecting citizens into Mr. Hyde.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “In the home of two men who have either committed or attempted murder.”

  Lev stares at the screen, unblinking, considering the implications.

  “So,” I say, “my question for you is where the other part came from.”

  “Which part?”

  “The not-quite-Lyssavirus part. I can’t find anything in the database that’s a match for that. Do you think that part of the sequence could have been engineered?”

  “I guess it could have,” he says. “Maybe it had to be.” He shakes his head. “It’s weird, though. It has the mutation frequency you’d expect from something that occurs naturally. And the brain-eating part was around before. But nobody’s recorded seeing this version before. Why is that?”

  “I don’t think we’ve been looking in the right places. Maybe it’s been there all along.”

  “Causing people to kill each other?” asks Lev.

  “No . . . not quite. Maybe some percentage. But we’re not getting off that easy. But let’s say for a moment that people infected with this are more prone to kill. Then what’s in it for the virus?”

  “I guess that depends on how it’s spread. That’s the goal—go forth and procreate through infection. How does this thing spread?”

  “Well, in the cases I’m looking at, it took a little human intervention to get it to spread. What’s the natural life cycle of a murder virus? How does it go from one person to another? Why?”

  “Maybe you should ask Dr. Jekyll,” says Lev.

  “I need to find him first.”

  Lev nods slowly, his mind attacking the problem as he looks into the webcam. “Dr. Ted?” he says after a moment.

  “Mm-hmm?”

  “Say this virus existed in a similar form for a long time. Then it’s discovered. If your bad guy who’s using it also found it . . . well, that’s really unlikely. What are the odds someone that evil would be the first one to find a virus like this?”