Murder Theory Read online

  “Pretty astronomical. Unless he went looking for it.”

  There’s a morbid thought. Our Dr. Jekyll isn’t just some sociopath who knows how to use CRISPR to cut and paste genes—he’s someone who knows more about virology than Lev or me.

  “Lev, I need a big favor. Start asking around discreetly for names of anyone who might be capable of making this. Or anyone doing research into this sort of thing. I’m not sure if they’d pop up in a database, but they could be a person who shows up at conferences and asks odd questions.”

  It’s a long shot, but at this point I’ll take any shots I can get.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  INFERENCE

  My flight was an hour late into Atlanta, and I almost take the wheel from my Uber driver out of frustration. As soon as I landed and texted Agent Nicolson to say I’d be late to the conference, he replied, Don’t worry. This for some reason has me worried. As the receptionist guides me to yet another conference room, I resist the urge to ask if her heels are the most practical shoes for getting around the building quickly.

  Take a deep breath, Theo. You can’t barge in there like a raving madman again. You’ve done that too many times already. Just make your case. Break it down and offer your solutions.

  Solutions?

  I stare at the ceiling as the world’s slowest elevator crawls upward. What are my solutions?

  We have an insane genius infecting people with some designer virus that turns them into homicidal maniacs. What’s the solution for that?

  Step one is finding the asshole. Step two is figuring out all the people he infected . . . Oh man, I hadn’t even thought about that.

  I’ve only been thinking about the outlier cases Gallard showed me. How many other murderers has Dr. Jekyll created? The elevator comes to a stop, but my stomach feels like it’s sinking.

  “Dr. Cray?” asks the receptionist. “Are you okay?”

  I’d been worried about the biology of the virus, trying to figure out how we can create a vaccination for it and maybe a way to reverse the damage. I haven’t even considered how many cases of infection we don’t know about might already be out there.

  I glance up at the air vent in the elevator suspiciously.

  In how many places has Jekyll placed his little air filters of death? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?

  Even if contracting the virus requires long-term exposure, that could be achieved in an office or school.

  A school.

  The image of a bunch of berserk high-school children chills me.

  I realize the elevator doors are open and the receptionist is holding them for me.

  I follow her down the hall to a different room than I’ve been in before. When she opens the door, I’m ready to offer my apologies to everyone waiting, but there’s nobody there.

  “Just have a seat. Agent Nicolson will be right with you,” she says.

  “Nicolson? What about Gallard? Is anyone else joining us?”

  She shrugs. “Oh, here he comes.”

  Nicolson steps into the room. “Thanks, Nikita.”

  After she leaves us, Nicolson takes the seat across from me. “Thanks for flying in. You didn’t have to do that.”

  I stare at the empty chairs, dumbfounded. “Is this it?”

  “Dr. Warner will be stopping by. I told him you’re here.”

  “Warner?”

  “He’s on loan from the CDC. I was able to get him to help us out.”

  I guess that’s something. “What about my report on the virus?”

  “I read it. Most of it is over my head. When Warner gets here, you two can discuss that. The good news, or at least sort of good news, is that we think we’ve narrowed down the cause of Marcus’s freak-out.”

  “The virus,” I reply.

  Nicolson is silent for a moment. “You can talk to Warner about that. Actually, we found out that Marcus had an accident in the gym a day prior to the murder, which may have caused more damage than we realized. It’s possible that it was enough trauma to push the previous injury over the edge. Kind of like football players building up brain damage.”

  The door opens, and a short, bald man with a thick black mustache enters the room. “Dr. Cray! So good to meet you.”

  “Dr. Warner,” says Nicolson.

  Warner shakes my hand, then drops down next to Nicolson, spreading over the table like a gargoyle looming over a church square. “This is very exciting. Very exciting. And we owe a big thanks to you.”

  “The virus?” I reply. “What about the virus?”

  “Uh, yes. I had a look at your report. Interesting. Very interesting.”

  “And?” I say impatiently.

  “Your background is computational biology, correct?”

  “It was my primary area of research.”

  “Yes, yes. It’s a wide-ranging field. Very exciting. But virology isn’t your specialty? Is it?”

  I see where this is going. He’s trying to undermine my expertise. “Is it yours?”

  “My research is primarily in vectors for the spread of disease, but I work very closely with the virologists at the CDC.”

  “But you’re not a virologist?”

  All cheerfulness fades from his face. “No. And neither are you.”

  “Correct. But Lev Vanstone is. And he confirmed my findings.”

  “Vanstone? Isn’t he the kid that published the paper suggesting we look in the structure of RNA for messages from extraterrestrials?”

  I hate this guy. “Yes. And he also just released a new field-test kit for Lassa and Ebola that gives a faster and more precise estimate of antibodies and treatment protocol. He’s up for a World Health Organization award for that.”

  This blunts Warner’s attack for a moment, but he quickly recovers. “That’s wonderful. I’m glad he’s been able to grow up and focus some. That said, I did run this by Dr. Ling, and he echoed my observations. While you may have found something new, it’s not entirely surprising. There are untold numbers of viruses out there we haven’t encountered, and new ones are being created by nature all the time. That doesn’t mean they pose a threat.”

  I start to respond, but Warner pushes ahead.

  “As you pointed out, this virus, your ‘Hyde’ virus, doesn’t possess the tools to spread from person to person on its own. It doesn’t sound like a particularly lethal virus.”

  “Tell that to Marcus’s coworkers. Or Mr. Clay.”

  “Clay? Who’s that?” asks Warner.

  “The postal worker I found half-beaten to death by someone infected with Hyde.” I turn to Nicolson. “Seriously. Who is this guy?”

  “Dr. Warner is a friend of the associate deputy director, and he’s worked with us in the past. We brought him in after you suggested there might have been some kind of contamination at the Oyo residence.”

  “I looked over their procedures extensively,” replies Warner. “The micron filters on their masks were more than adequate for blocking the virus you forwarded to us.”

  “Assuming they followed all protocols,” I reply.

  “Which we believe they did.”

  “And that the Hyde virus wasn’t sprayed inside their masks.”

  Warner blinks. “I think that’s a highly unlikely scenario.”

  He clearly hasn’t thought about it. “Unlikely? Like an FBI employee going berserk and killing two coworkers?”

  He waves his hand in the air. “You’re jumping to conclusions here. I expected better of you.”

  I’m about to jump across the table and strangle him. “Are you saying that it’s impossible for that to have happened?”

  “No. Just unlikely. Let’s apply Occam’s razor. Which is more likely? That Marcus was undergoing severe stress and a non-work-related injury exacerbated a preexisting brain trauma, resulting in violent behavior? Or that an evil scientist who is both a brilliant virologist and geneticist we’ve never heard of before created some kind of rage virus and decided to sneak into a well-protected FBI crime scene a
nd infect our employees in the middle of dozens of armed men?”

  There are so many things to take apart in that response. I focus on the most important one. “And yet we have the virus.”

  “No, Dr. Cray. You have the virus. I didn’t want to go down this path, but have you entertained the possibility that maybe this is an example of contamination? Perhaps from something you made in that little secret lab of yours? I’ve spoken to some of my Russian colleagues. They know an awful lot about you over there. Which is kind of curious, don’t you think? Unless you’d been working on some kind of designer kill virus or something like it.”

  He raises a hand to stop me from responding.

  “Now, I’m not saying this was deliberate on your part, but when I look at the facts of the matter, the one consistent piece of data across everything is you. You, Dr. Cray. My theory is that what you sent us is something you had loose in your own lab at worst. At best, and this is me being charitable, possibly you found something that nobody has seen before—but more than likely you have tools and resources we in the civilian world don’t have access to. Not even at the CDC.

  “Thankfully this thing isn’t very contagious. Otherwise I’d be pushing forcefully for you to be shut down and investigated. Instead, it looks like a failed experiment. Perhaps something made to get attention and perhaps gain funding so you could be the one to stop it. Yet again, Dr. Cray intervening to help out the bumbling government bureaucrats.”

  I sigh and turn to Nicolson. “Is this the FBI’s official position?”

  “We don’t have one. The accusations against you aside, Dr. Warner has made a very compelling case to us.”

  “Did the part where he emphasized ‘non-work-related injury’ fail to tip you off? They brought him in because he’s able to exonerate the FBI—which they don’t need, in my opinion, because nobody could have foreseen this.”

  “I understand your point—”

  “I’m not sure you do,” I snap. “And to be honest, you’re trying to make a decision about science you haven’t studied. Your bosses have given you an expert that says my expertise doesn’t count. So now you’ve been given permission to ignore me—even though you don’t understand what’s going on.”

  Dr. Warner interrupts. “Isn’t that the point of expertise? To tell those less informed who to believe? In my case, I’m the government-appointed authority. Shouldn’t my expertise carry a little more weight?”

  “Maybe if your opinion made sense. Are you listening to yourself? Expertise simply means experience. And we don’t tell, we inform. And as scientists, we certainly don’t preach what anyone should believe. We talk about things that are scientifically likely to be true.”

  “Thank you for the lecture. Why don’t you take your own advice to heart?”

  “I have. We retested this in our lab. I then got Lev to weigh in. Now I’m begging the CDC to search for the virus in other locations and look for symptoms in the suspects.”

  “I wish we had the resources to chase down every little theory someone suggests. But sadly, we don’t. Thank you for coming in. And as a bit of personal advice, you really should double-check your laboratory procedures for the possibility of cross-contamination.”

  My fist wants to contaminate his face. “What about Gallard?” I ask Nicolson.

  “He’s no longer helping us on this one. He went back to DC.” Nicolson’s voice is subdued.

  “I see.”

  This is very, very bad.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  DATA POINT

  “You’re kind of an asshole,” Gallard tells me over the phone.

  I’m sitting on a bus bench, watching Atlanta traffic drive by as the sun sets in the west. Long shadows creep toward me, reflecting my mood.

  I called Gallard because I didn’t know whom else to talk to about this. His first words to me weren’t meant to be unkind, just to set the facts straight.

  “I’ve been told that before,” I reply.

  “Yes. And once a person gets to know you, that doesn’t change, but you become one of those tolerable a-holes, like a great film director. When I first heard about you, I loathed you. Here was another dilettante telling us what to do. Then I realized that you were actually brilliant and had a different way of doing things that we can’t do in the justice system.”

  “I’m not a vigilante,” I reply.

  “Let’s agree to disagree on that part. What I mean is that I have to answer to people. Most of us do. Nicolson, Weltz . . . they’re not the disease. They’re the symptoms of the disease. They can only stick their necks out so far before they’re cut off. You don’t have that problem.”

  “I can’t teach because I stuck my neck out,” I reply.

  “You seemed to land all right. For us it’s different.”

  “Why did they send you back to DC?” I ask.

  “Because I stuck my neck out. When Dr. Warner was brought in and started telling them exactly what they wanted to hear, I was told that my time was better spent back in Quantico teaching. Maybe I could have put up a bigger fight, but to be honest, I don’t really know how anymore. Maybe I don’t fully understand what’s at stake.”

  “More death. Not counting the ones we don’t know about. If this guy’s still out there, who knows what he’s doing with the Hyde virus? And there’s the possibility that he’s not done tinkering with it. Dr. Warner’s satisfied that Hyde can’t transmit from person to person. But he doesn’t get it.”

  “I gather that. When I was there, he was talking about how easy it was to make a virus that looked scary. But he said to actually get it to boot up and replicate in a cell was a different matter entirely. He didn’t seem to think much of Hyde.”

  “He thinks I made it,” I say.

  “He did imply that.”

  “Which is insane. Because if he thinks that I actually made some kind of rage virus, then he isn’t acting terribly concerned about it.”

  “I think he’s afraid of you,” says Gallard. “Or is afraid to take you seriously, because that means he has to stick his neck out to implicate you.”

  “What a douche,” I say. “You know I had other people check my work. Smart people. People smarter than me.”

  “I believe you. But that’s like telling me that the Ministry of Magic approved your spells. It’s all magic to me.”

  “Thanks for that, I guess. So, you’re sidelined. Now what?”

  “I’m officially sidelined,” says Gallard. “But unofficially I’ll do whatever I can to assist you.”

  “Assist me? With what?”

  “What do you mean, with what? Aren’t you going to go after this guy? Isn’t that what you do?”

  “No. I stare at lines of code and fill out forms all day. This is a thing I just sort of get pulled into.”

  “And now you’re pulled into this. I know enough about what’s going on inside your head to tell you that you’re not walking away from this. Sure, I’ve seen the petulant side of you storm out of the room when everyone wasn’t complimenting you on how brilliant you were, but I also know that you can’t walk away from a puzzle.”

  This guy cuts close to the bone. “Man, you’re kind of harsh.”

  “Then let’s just jump past the part where you debate with yourself whether or not you should pursue this and I tell you to let the FBI handle it. We both know what we are and what we want to do.”

  “Yeah,” I reply. “We need to find this guy. Any idea as to how?”

  “I was hoping you’d have a suggestion.”

  “I caught two guys that nobody was looking for but who left clues when you knew where to look. This guy . . . he’s bold enough to walk onto a crime scene and infect FBI employees. I don’t think he’s going to make the same mistakes as Oyo or Vik.”

  “Unless he wants to be caught,” says Gallard.

  “Are you serious?”

  “It’s a theory. Maybe this is part of some bigger strategy. He’s done a very clever thing. Maybe he wants to be known for
this? Really brilliant killers sometimes want recognition as much as they want anything. Kaczynski, for example. Even smart spree killers often try to justify their actions after the fact with letters to the newspapers. They’re trying to reconcile their madness with their intellect. If this man . . . or woman, or group, is really intelligent, then they’re going to want to be seen as such.”

  “And has the FBI received any letters from someone like this?”

  “None that’s come to my attention. But let me ask you this: If you did this, how would you tell people?”

  “Why do I feel like this is some form of entrapment?”

  “We didn’t start off on the best footing,” Gallard admits. “But you are a suspicious person.”

  “True. How would a homicidal version of me tell the world how smart I was? I don’t know.”

  “What about putting coded messages in research papers?” asks Gallard.

  “Too much chance they’d be changed or take forever to get published. No offense, but that’s pretty amateurish.”

  “Okay. Then what’s the cleverest way you can think of to hide a message?”

  The word message sets off something in the back of my head. For a biologist, words often have different meanings.

  Message is one of those words.

  Messenger RNA is the little bits of code that DNA sends to the ribosome telling it what to build. DNA is the blueprint; mRNA is the work order going to the factory to tell it what to do next.

  But the message I’m looking for could be more literal.

  Researchers have encoded text and image data into bacteria. They’ve even developed ways to encrypt data and prevent mutations from corrupting it. That’s how I’d hide a message. I’d do it right in the virus itself.

  “Theo, you still there?” asks Gallard.

  “Yeah, Lev Vanstone said there were some extra genes in the virus. That could be our message . . .” I start to send Lev a text message.

  “Seriously? Like in the virus itself? You can do that?”

  “The entire book of life is encoded in DNA, from amoebae to zebras. Why not a message from a maniac? It would be trivial to insert it.”