“I am a bit manic,” Sean agreed. “By the way, what did you think of those charts?”
“I guess you were right,” Janet said. “Not all the charts had reference to economic status, but those that did indicated that the patients were CEOs or family members of CEOs.”
“All part of the Fortune 500, I’d guess,” Sean said. “What does that make you think?”
“I’m too exhausted to draw conclusions,” Janet said. “But I suppose it’s a strange coincidence.”
Sean laughed. “What do you think the statistical probability would be of that happening by chance?”
“I don’t know enough about statistics to answer that,” Janet said.
Sean held up the flask and swirled the contained solution. “This looks good enough to pass,” he said. “Let’s hope old Doc Mason remembers enough of his inorganic chemistry to be impressed.”
Janet watched Sean carry the flask into the glass enclosure. She wondered if he was losing touch with reality. Granted, he’d been driven to increasingly desperate acts, but abducting the Masons at gunpoint was a mind-numbing quantum leap. The legal consequences of such an act had to be severe. Janet didn’t know much law, but she knew she was implicated to an extent. She doubted Sean’s proposed coercion theory would spare her. She only wished she knew what to do.
Janet watched as Sean presented the fake nitroglycerin to the Masons as the real thing. Judging by the impression he made on Dr. Mason, she garnered that the Forbes director recalled enough of his inorganic chemistry to make the presentation plausible. Dr. Mason’s eyes opened wide. Mrs. Mason brought a hand to her mouth. When Sean gave the flask a violent swirl both the Masons stepped back in fear. Then Sean jammed the flask into the ice bath he’d set up on the desk, collected the charts Janet had left in there, and came out into the lab. He dumped the charts on a nearby lab bench.
“What did the Masons say?” Janet asked.
“They were suitably impressed,” Sean said. “Especially when I told them the freezing point is only fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit and that the stuff is extraordinarily unstable in a solid form. I told them to be careful in there because bumping the table would detonate it.”
“I think we should call this whole thing off,” Janet said. “You’re going too far.”
“I beg to differ,” Sean said. “Besides, it’s me that’s doing this, not you.”
“I’m involved,” Janet said. “Just being here probably makes me an accessory.”
“When all is said and done, Brian will work it out,” Sean said. “Trust me.”
Janet’s attention was caught by the couple in the glass office. “You shouldn’t have left the Masons alone,” Janet said. “Dr. Mason is making a call.”
“Good,” Sean said. “I fully expected him to call someone. In fact, I hope he calls the police. You see, I want a circus around here.”
Janet stared at Sean. For the first time, she thought he might be experiencing a psychotic break. “Sean,” she said gently, “I have a feeling that you’re decompensating. Maybe you’ve been under too much pressure.”
“Seriously,” Sean said. “I want a carnival atmosphere. It will be much safer. The last thing I want is some frustrated commando like Robert Harris crawling around through the air ducts with a knife in his mouth trying to be a hero. That’s when people would get hurt. I want the police and the fire department out there scratching their heads but keeping the would-be paladins at bay. I want them to think I’m crazy for four hours or so.”
“I don’t understand you,” Janet said.
“You will,” Sean assured her. “Meanwhile, I got some work for you to do. You told me you know something about computers. Head up to administration on the seventh floor.” He handed her the ring of pass keys. “Go into that glass room that we saw when we copied the charts, the one where the computer was running that program, flashing those nine-digit numbers. I think those numbers are social security numbers. And the phone numbers! I think those were numbers for insurance companies that write health insurance. See if you can corroborate that. Then see if you can hack your way into the Forbes mainframe. I want you to look for travel files for the clinic, especially for Deborah Levy and Margaret Richmond.”
“Can’t you tell me why I’m doing this?” Janet asked.
“No,” Sean said. “It’s like a double blind study. I want you to be objective.”
Sean’s mania was oddly compelling—and persuasive. Janet took the keys and walked to the stairwell. Sean gave her a thumbs-up in parting. Whatever the resolution of this madcap, reckless escapade would be, she’d know within four or five hours.
Before he got down to work, Sean picked up a telephone and called Brian’s number in Boston and left a long message. First he apologized for hitting him. Then he said that in case something happened to go horribly wrong, he wanted to tell him what he believed was happening at the Forbes Cancer Center. It took him about five minutes.
LIEUTENANT HECTOR Salazar of the Miami Police Department normally used Sunday afternoons as an opportunity to finish the reams of paperwork generated by Miami’s typically busy Saturday nights. Sundays were generally quiet. Auto accidents, which the uniformed patrol and their sergeants could handle, comprised the biggest portion of the day’s workload. Later on Sundays, after the football games were over, domestic violence often flared. Sometimes that could involve the watch commander, so Hector wanted to get as much done as he could before the phone started to ring.
Knowing that the Miami Dolphins game was still in progress, Hector answered the phone at three-fifteen with little concern. The call was patched through the complaint room to a land line.
“Sergeant Anderson here,” the voice said. “I’m at the Forbes Cancer Center hospital building. We got a problem.”
“What is it?” Hector asked. His chair squeaked as he leaned back.
“We got a guy holed up in the research building next door with two, maybe three hostages,” Anderson said. “He’s armed. There’s also a bomb of some kind involved.”
“Christ!” Hector said as his chair tipped forward with a thump. From experience, he knew the paperwork this kind of scene could generate. “Anyone else in the building?”
“We don’t think so,” Anderson said. “At least not according to the guard. To make matters worse, the hostages are VIPs. It’s the director of the center, Dr. Randolph Mason, and his wife, Sarah Mason.”
“You have the area secured?” Hector asked. His mind was already jumping ahead. This operation would be a hot potato. Dr. Randolph Mason was well known in the Miami area.
“We’re doing it now,” Anderson said. “We’re running yellow crime scene tape around the whole building.”
“Any media yet?” Hector asked. Sometimes the media got to a scene faster than backup police personnel. The media often monitored the police radio bands.
“Not yet,” Anderson said. “That’s why I’m using this land line. But we expect a blizzard any minute. The hostage taker’s name is Sean Murphy. He’s a medical student working at the clinic. He’s with a nurse named Janet Reardon. We don’t know if she’s an accomplice or a hostage.”
“What do you mean by ‘some kind of bomb’?” Hector asked.
“He mixed up a big flask of nitroglycerin,” Anderson said. “It’s standing in ice on a desk in the room with the hostages. Once it freezes, slamming the door can set it off. At least, that’s what Dr. Mason said.”
“You’ve talked with the hostages?” Hector asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Anderson said. “Dr. Mason told me he and his wife are in a glass office along with the nitro. They’re terrified, but so far they’re unharmed and they have a phone. He says he can see the perp. But the girl is gone. He doesn’t know where she went.”
“What’s Murphy doing?” Hector asked. “Has he made any demands yet?”
“No demands yet,” Anderson said. “Apparently he’s real busy doing some kind of experiment.”
“What do you mean experimen
t?” Hector asked.
“No clue,” Anderson said. “I’m just repeating what Dr. Mason said. Apparently Murphy had been disgruntled because he’d been denied permission to work on a particular project. Maybe he’s working on that. At any rate, he’s armed. Dr. Mason said he waved the gun in front of them when he broke into their home.”
“What kind of gun?”
“Sounds like a .38 detective special, from Dr. Mason’s description,” Anderson said.
“Make sure the building is secure,” Hector said. “I want no one going in or out. Got it?”
“Got it,” Anderson said.
After telling Anderson that he’d be out on site in a few minutes. Hector made three calls. First he called the hostage negotiating team and spoke with the supervisor, Ronald Hunt. Next he called the shift SWAT team commander, George Loring. Finally he called Phil Darell, the bomb squad supervisor. Hector told all three to assemble their respective teams and to rendezvous at the Forbes Cancer Center ASAP.
Hector heaved his two-hundred-and-twenty-pound frame out of the desk chair. He was a stocky man who’d been all muscle during his twenties. During his early thirties, a lot of that muscle had turned to fat. Using his stubby, shovel-like hands, he attached to his belt the police paraphernalia he’d removed to sit at his desk. He was in the process of slipping into his Kevlar vest when the phone rang again. It was the chief, Mark Witman.
“I understand there’s a hostage situation,” Chief Witman said.
“Yes, sir,” Hector stammered. “I was just called. We’re mobilizing the necessary personnel.”
“You feel comfortable handling this?” Chief Witman said.
“Yes, sir,” Hector answered.
“You sure you don’t want a captain running the show?” Chief Witman asked.
“I believe there’ll be no problem, sir,” Hector said.
“Okay,” Chief Witman said. “But I must tell you I have already had a call from the mayor. This is a politically sensitive situation.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, sir,” Hector said.
“I want this handled by the book,” Chief Witman said.
“Yes, sir,” Hector said.
SEAN ATTACKED his work with determination. Knowing that his time was limited, he tried to work efficiently, planning each step in advance. The first thing he did was slip up to the sixth floor to check on the automatic peptide analyzer that he’d set up on Saturday to sequence the amino acids. He thought there was a good chance his run had been disturbed since Deborah Levy had appeared to read him the riot act just after he’d started it. But the machine hadn’t been touched, and his sample was still inside. He tore off the readout from the printer.
The next thing Sean did was carry two thermal cyclers down from the sixth floor to the fifth. They were going to be his workhorses for the afternoon. It was in the thermal cyclers that the polymerase chain reactions were carried out.
After a quick check on the Masons, who seemed to be spending most of their time arguing over whose fault it was that they’d been taken hostage, Sean got down to real work.
First he went over the readout from the peptide analyzer. The results were dramatic. The amino acid sequences of the antigen binding sites of Helen Cabot’s medicine and Louis Martin’s medicine were identical. The immunoglobulins were the same, meaning all the medulloblastoma patients were being treated, at least initially, with the same antibody. This information was consistent with Sean’s theory, so it fanned his excitement.
Next, Sean got out Helen’s brain and the syringe containing her cerebrospinal fluid from the refrigerator. He took another general sample of tumor from the brain, then returned the organ to the refrigerator. After cutting it into small pieces, Sean put the tumor sample in a flask with the appropriate enzymes to create a cell suspension of the cancer cells. He put the flask in the incubator.
While the enzymes worked on the tumor sample, Sean began loading some of the ninety-six wells of the first thermal cycler with aliquots of Helen’s cerebrospinal fluid. To each well of cerebrospinal fluid he added an enzyme called a reverse transcriptase to change any viral RNA to DNA. Then he put the paired primers for St. Louis encephalitis virus into the same well. Finally, he added the reagents to sustain the polymerase chain reaction. These reagents included a heat stable enzyme called Taq.
Turning back to the cell suspension of Helen’s cancer, Sean used a detergent designated NP-40 to open the cells and their nuclear membranes. Then, by painstaking separation techniques, he isolated the cellular nucleoproteins from the rest of the cellular debris. In a final step he separated the DNA from the RNA.
He loaded samples of the DNA into the remaining wells of the first thermal cycler. Into these same wells Sean carefully added the paired primers for oncogenes, a separate pair for each well. Finally he dosed each well with an appropriate amount of reagents for the polymerase chain reaction.
With the first thermal cycler fully loaded, Sean turned it on.
Turning to the second thermal cycler, Sean added samples of Helen’s tumor cell RNA to each well. In the second run he was planning to look for messenger RNA made from oncogenes. To do this he had to add aliquots of reverse transcriptions to each well, the same enzyme that he’d added to the samples of cerebrospinal fluid. While he was in the tedious process of adding the oncogene primer pairs, a pair in each well, the phone rang.
At first Sean ignored the phone, assuming that Dr. Mason would answer it. When Mason failed to do so, the continuous ringing began to grate on Sean’s nerves. Putting down the pipette he was using, Sean walked over to the glass-enclosed office. Mrs. Mason was sitting glumly in an office chair pushed into the corner. She’d apparently cried herself out and was just sniffling into a tissue. Dr. Mason was nervously watching the flask in the ice bath, concerned that the ringing phone might disturb it.
Sean pushed open the door. “Would you mind answering the phone?” Sean said irritably. “Whoever it is, be sure to tell them that the nitroglycerin is just on the verge of freezing.”
Sean gave the door a shove. As it clunked into its jamb, Sean could see Dr. Mason wince, but the doctor obediently picked up the receiver. Sean turned back to his lab bench and his pipetting. He’d only loaded a single well when his concentration was again broken.
“It’s a Lieutenant Hector Salazar from the Miami Police Department,” Dr. Mason called. “He’d like to talk with you.”
Sean looked over at the office. Dr. Mason had the door propped open with his foot. He was holding the phone in one hand, the receiver in the other. The cord snaked back into the office.
“Tell him that there will be no problems if they wait for a couple more hours,” Sean said.
Dr. Mason spoke into the phone for a few moments, then called out: “He insists on talking with you.”
Sean rolled his eyes. He put his pipette back down on the lab bench, stepped over to the wall extension, and pushed the blinking button.
“I’m very busy right now,” he said without preamble.
“Take it easy,” Hector said soothingly. “I know you’re upset, but everything is going to work out fine. There’s someone here who’d like to have a word with you. His name is Sergeant Hunt. We want to be reasonable about all this. I’m sure you do too.”
Sean tried to protest that he didn’t have time for conversation when Sergeant Hunt’s gruff voice came over the line.
“Now I want you to stay calm,” Sergeant Hunt said.
“That’s a little difficult,” Sean said. “I’ve got a lot to do in a short time.”
“No one will get hurt,” Sergeant Hunt said. “We’d like you to come down here so we can talk.”
“Sorry,” Sean said.
“I’ve heard that you’ve been angry about not being able to work on a particular project,” Sergeant Hunt said. “Let’s talk about it. I can understand how upsetting that might be. You may want to lash out at the people you think are responsible. But we should also talk about the fact that holding people ag
ainst their will is a serious offense.”
Sean smiled when he realized the police had surmised he’d taken the Masons hostage as a result of being kept off the medulloblastoma protocol. In a way, they weren’t far off.
“I appreciate your concern and your presence,” Sean said. “But I don’t have a lot of time to talk. I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Just tell us what you want,” Sergeant Hunt said.
“Time,” Sean said. “I only want a little time. Two or three, or perhaps four hours at most.”
Sean hung up. Returning to his bench, he lifted his pipette and went back to work.
RONALD HUNT was a six-foot redheaded man. At thirty-seven, he’d been on the police force for fifteen years, ever since graduating from community college. His major had been law enforcement, but he’d minored in psychology. Attempting to combine psychology with police work, he’d jumped at the chance to join the Hostage Negotiating Team when a slot became available. Although he didn’t get to use his skills as often as he would have liked, when he did he’d enjoyed the challenge. He’d even been inspired to take more psychology at night school at the University of Miami.
Sergeant Hunt had been successful in all his previous operations and had developed confidence in his abilities. After the successful resolution of the last episode which involved a discontented employee at a soft-drink bottling plant who’d taken three female colleagues hostage, Ronald had received a citation from the force for meritorious service. So when Sean Murphy hung up on him, it was a blow to his ego.
“The twerp hung up on me!” Ron said indignantly.
“What did he say he wanted?” Hector asked.
“Time,” Ron said.
“What do you mean, time?” Hector asked. “Like the magazine? Does he want to be in Time?”
“No,” Ron said. “Time like hours. He told me he has to get back to work. He must be working on that project he’d been forbidden to work on.”
“What kind of project?” Hector asked.
“I don’t know,” Ron said. He then pushed the redial on the portable phone. “I can’t negotiate unless we talk.”