Then her head was buried, and she saw no light at all.
21
It was his turn to wield the shovel.
Carl Wallenberg’s hands were shaking as he gripped the handle and scooped up the first bladeful of earth. He paused at the edge of the pit, staring down into its darkness, thinking about the woman, still alive. Heart still beating, blood still pumping. A million neurons firing off in the panicked throes of death. Beneath that blanket of soil, she was dying.
He threw his load of dirt into the pit and scooped up another. He heard Monica’s murmur of approval, and silently he cursed her for forcing him into this appalling act. This was the last evidence to be disposed of, the last two corpses to be covered up from an experiment gone horrifyingly wrong.
We should have been more careful with the donors. We should have screened the fetal material for more than just bacteria and viruses. We never considered the possibility of prions.
But Yarborough had been in a rush to implant the cells. The tissue had to be fresh, he’d insisted. The cell suspensions had to be implanted within seven days of harvest or they would not survive in the brains of the new hosts. They would not colonize. And then there’d been that long waiting list of eager recipients, three dozen men and women who’d paid their deposits, who were clamoring for their second chance at youth. Risk free, they’d been assured. And it was, in truth, a benign procedure: a local anesthetic, the X-ray guided injection of fetal pituitary cells into the brain, and weeks later, the slow rejuvenation of the master gland. He and Gideon had done it dozens of times, without complications, right up until Rosslyn had shut down the project on moral grounds. If not for the necessity of using aborted human fetuses, the procedure would have been hailed as a medical breakthrough. A fountain of youth, distilled from the brains of the unborn and unwanted.
A breakthrough, yes. But one that would be forever shunned because of the politics.
He paused, breathing hard, his sweat already chilling his skin. The hole was nearly filled. By now the woman’s lungs would be choking with dust, her brain cells starved of oxygen. The heart pumping its last desperate beats. He disliked Toby Harper, he agreed she needed to be silenced, but he wished her a merciful death, one that would not haunt him in the years to come.
He had never intended to kill anyone.
A few fetuses had been sacrificed, true, but only at the beginning. Now they were using cloned tissue, scarcely human at all, implanted and nurtured in wombs. He did not feel guilty about the tissue’s source. Neither did his patients feel any qualms; they simply wanted it, and they were willing to pay for it. As long as Brant Hill knew nothing about it, his work would go on, and the private flow of money would continue.
But then Mackie had died, followed by the others. Now it wasn’t just the money he could lose; it was his position, his reputation. His future.
Is it worth committing murder for?
Even as he continued to shovel dirt into the rapidly filling hole, he was painfully aware that the woman below was dying. But then, we are all dying. Some of us more horribly than others.
He set the shovel down. He was going to be sick.
“More dirt. Make it level,” said Monica. “It has to blend in. We can’t have the construction crew noticing.”
“You do it.” He thrust the shovel toward her. “I’ve done enough.”
She took the shovel and studied him for a moment. “Yes, I suppose you have,” she finally said. “And now you’re in just as deep as Richard and me.” She paused, her shoe on the shovel, and prepared to scoop up another bladeful of soil.
“There’s Yarborough,” said Richard.
Wallenberg turned and saw headlights approaching. Yarborough’s black Lincoln bounced onto the dirt road and braked to a stop at the construction fence. The driver’s door opened and slammed shut again.
A bright light came on, its beam flooding the construction pit. Wallenberg stumbled backward, shielding his eyes from the sudden glare. He heard the frantic grinding of other tires over gravel, then heard two more cars doors slam shut, and the sound of running footsteps.
He squinted as the silhouettes suddenly appeared before the floodlights. Not Yarborough, he thought. Who are you?
Two men walked toward them.
Fresh air flooded her lungs, so cold it seared her throat. She gasped in another breath, and another, wheezing in air between coughs. Something was pressed against her face, and she fought to escape it, thrashing out at the hands trapping her head. She heard voices, too many voices to keep track of, all of them talking at once.
“Get that oxygen back on her!”
“She’s fighting—”
“Hey, I need a pair of hands here! I can’t get the IV in.”
She twisted, clawing blindly. There was a light shining in the distance, and she fought to tear her way through the darkness, to reach the light before it vanished. But her arms felt paralyzed; something was pressing them down. The air she breathed in smelled of rubber.
“Toby—stop fighting us!” She felt a hand grasp hers as though to drag her from the darkness.
A black curtain suddenly seemed to tear apart before her eyes and she surfaced into a stream of light. She saw faces staring down at her. Saw more lights now, blue and red, dancing in a circle. Beautiful, she thought. The colors—so very beautiful. Static crackled in the night. A police radio.
“Doc, you’d better come and see this,” one of the cops said.
Dvorak didn’t respond; his gaze was focused on the ambulance, taillights shuddering as the vehicle drove up the dirt road, bearing Toby to Springer Hospital. She should not be alone tonight, he thought. I should be with her; it’s where I want to be. Where I want to stay.
He turned to the cop and realized his legs were not quite steady, that in fact he was still shaking. The night had taken on a crazy neon quality. All the cruisers, all the lights. And there were onlookers gathered outside the construction fence—the expected crime scene groupies, but this was an older crowd, residents of Brant Hill who’d heard the multiple sirens and, curious, had wandered out into the night still dressed in their bathrobes. They stood in a solemn line, staring through the mesh of the fence into the foundation pit, where the two bodies had been uncovered and now lay exposed on the dirt.
“Detective Sheehan’s waiting for you up there,” the cop said. “He’s the only one who’s touched it.”
“Touched what?”
“The body.”
“Another one?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Dvorak followed the cop out of the foundation pit, both of them stumbling their way up to the fence.
“It was in the trunk of the car,” the cop panted as he climbed.
“Which car?”
“Dr. Yarborough’s Lincoln. The one we followed here from the Howarth building. Looks like he was bringing a last-minute addition to the burial. We sure didn’t expect to see that when we popped open his trunk.”
They walked past the gathering of elderly onlookers and crossed to Yarborough’s car, parked by the fence. Detective Sheehan was standing beside the open trunk. “Tonight they come in threes,” he said.
Dvorak shook his head. “I’m not sure I can handle much more of this tonight.”
“You feeling okay, Doc?”
Dvorak paused, thinking about the night that lay ahead. About the hours it would take him to reach Toby’s bedside. The delay could not be helped; this he had to do.
He took a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. “Let’s get on with this,” he said and looked into the trunk.
Sheehan trained his flashlight beam on the face of the corpse.
For a moment Dvorak could not say a word. He stood gazing at the girl’s face, at the bruise marring that fragile skin, at the gray eyes, open and soulless. Once there had been a soul there; once he had seen it, shining brightly. Where are you now? he wondered. Somewhere good, I hope. Somewhere warm and kind and safe.
He reached down and, gently,
closed Molly Picker’s eyes.
The sound of nurses laughing in the hallway roused Dvorak from a fitful sleep. He opened his eyes and saw daylight shining in the window. He was sitting in a chair by Toby’s hospital bed. She was still asleep, her breathing slow and steady, her cheeks flushed. Most of the dirt had been wiped away from her face last night, but he could still see a few grains of sand sparkling in her hair.
He rose and stretched, trying to work the kinks out of his neck. At last a sunny day, he thought, staring out the window. Only the smallest wisp of a cloud drifted in the sky.
Behind him, a voice murmured: “I had the worst nightmare.”
Turning, he met Toby’s gaze. She held out her hand to him. He took it warmly in his and sat down beside her.
“But I didn’t dream it, did I?” she said.
“No. I’m afraid it was all too real.”
She lay silent for a moment, frowning, as though trying to gather all her fragments of memory into one comprehensible whole.
“We found their medical records,” said Dvorak.
She looked at him, her eyes questioning.
“They kept data on all the brain implants. Seventy-nine files, stored in the basement of the Howarth building. Patient names, operative notes, follow-up head scans.”
“They were compiling data?”
He nodded. “To back up their claims of success. By the look of it, the implants did have benefits.”
“And hazards too,” she added softly.
“Yes. There was a cluster of patients early last year, when Wallenberg was still using aborted fetuses. Five men received their implants from the same pooled fetal cells. They were all infected at the same time. It took a year for the first one to come down with symptoms.”
“Dr. Mackie?”
He nodded.
“You said there were seventy-nine files. What about all the other patients?”
“Alive and well. And thriving. Which presents a moral dilemma. What if this treatment really does work?”
By her troubled expression, he knew she shared his concerns. How far do we go to prolong life? How much of our humanity do we sacrifice?
She said, suddenly, “I know where to find Harry Slotkin.” She looked at him with startling clarity in her eyes. “Brant Hill—the new nursing home wing. A few weeks ago, they poured the foundation.”
“Yes, Wallenberg told us.”
“Wallenberg did?”
“They’re at each others’ throats now. Wallenberg and Gideon against the Trammells. It’s a race to pin the blame. Right now, the Trammells seem to be in the worst trouble.”
Toby paused, gathering the courage to ask the next question. “Robbie?”
“It was Richard Trammell. The gun was registered to him. We expect ballistics will confirm it.”
She nodded, absorbing the painful information in silence. He saw tears flash in her eyes and decided he would wait to tell her about Molly. This was not the time to burden her with yet more tragedy.
There was a knock on the door, and Vickie stepped into the room. She looked paler than she had last night, when Dvorak had seen her visiting Toby. Paler and strangely afraid. She paused a few feet away from the bed, as though reluctant to approach.
Dvorak stood up. “I think I’ll leave you two alone,” he said.
“No. Please,” said Vickie. “You don’t have to go.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” He bent down and gave Toby a kiss. “But I will wait outside.” He straightened and crossed to the door.
There he paused.
Glancing back, he saw Vickie suddenly break free of some invisible restraint. In three swift steps she crossed to the bed and took Toby into her arms.
Dvorak brushed his hand across his eyes. And quietly left the room.
Two Days Later
The ventilator delivered its twenty breaths per minute, each whoosh followed by a sigh, the deflation of ribs and chest wall. Toby had found the rhythm soothing as she combed her mother’s hair and bathed her limbs and torso, the washcloth gliding across landmarks she had come to know so well. The star-shaped patch of pigment on the left arm. The biopsy scar on the breast. The arthritic finger, bent in a shepherd’s crook. But this scar on the knee—how did Ellen get it? Toby wondered. It looked like a very old scar, well healed, almost invisible, its origins lost in the forgotten reaches of her mother’s childhood. Gazing at it under the bright lights of the ICU cubicle, she thought: All these years Mom has had this scar, and I never noticed it until now.
“Toby?”
She turned and saw Dvorak standing in the cubicle doorway. Perhaps he’d been there for some time; she hadn’t noticed his arrival. That was simply Dvorak’s way. In the day and a half she’d been hospitalized, Toby would awaken and think she was alone. Then she’d turn her head and see that he was still sitting in her room, silent and unnoticed, watching over her. As he was doing now.
“Your sister’s just arrived,” he said. “Dr. Steinglass is on his way upstairs.”
Toby looked down at her mother. Ellen’s hair was splayed across the pillow. It looked not like the hair of an old woman but the luxurious mane of a young girl, bright as windblown sheets of silver. Toby bent down and touched her lips to Ellen’s forehead.
“Good night, Mom,” she whispered, and walked out of the cubicle.
On the other side of the viewing window, she took her place beside Vickie. Dvorak stood behind them, his presence felt though unseen. Through the glass they watched Dr. Steinglass enter the cubicle and cross to the ventilator. He glanced at Toby, a silent question in his eyes.
She nodded.
He turned off the ventilator.
Ellen’s chest fell still. Ten seconds passed in silence.
Vickie reached for Toby’s hand, held on tight.
Ellen’s chest remained motionless.
Now her heart was slowing. First a pause. A stumbled beat. Then, at last, the final stillness.
From the moment we’re born, death is our final destination, thought Toby. Only the date and time of our arrival is unknown.
For Ellen, the journey was completed at two-fifteen, on this afternoon in late autumn.
For Daniel Dvorak, death might come in two years or in forty years. It might be heralded by the tremor of his hand, or arrive without warning in the night while his grandchildren sleep in the next room. He would learn to cope with that uncertainty, as people coped with all the other uncertainties of life.
And for the rest of us?
Toby pressed her hand against the glass and felt her own pulse, warm and strong, in her fingertips. I’ve already died once, she thought.
This was a brand-new journey.
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POCKET BOOKS
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BLOODSTREAM
Tess Gerritsen
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The following is a preview of
Bloodstream. . . .
Tranquility, Maine, 1946
If she was still enough, quiet enough, he would not find her. He might think he knew all her hiding places, but he had never discovered her secret niche, this small hollow in the cellar wall, concealed by the shelves of her mother’s canning jars. As a young child she had easily slipped into this space, and every game of hide and seek had found her curled up in this lair, giggling at his frustration as he thumped from room to room, searching for her. Sometimes the game would go on so long she’d fall asleep, and would awaken hours later to the sound of her mother’s voice worriedly calling her name.
Now here she was again, in her cellar hiding place, but she was no longer a child. She was fourteen and barely able to squeeze into the niche. And this was no lighthearted game of hide and seek.
She could hear him upstairs, roaming the house, searching for her. He rampaged from room to room, cursing, slamming furniture to the floor.