"Specifically," Hawthorne said, "we have a fish retrovirus modified to infect humans and insert animal genes. We have a genetic engineer who worked with fish and has demonstrated the ability to pass genes from one species to another. We have an agricultural firm sold to a pharmaceutical conglomerate with enough subsidiaries to research every question mankind has ever pondered, and an indian--"
"Native American."
"--who seems to be right in the middle of everything."
Carver looked at Ellie, who sat quietly on the couch, listening with a strange expression on her face he couldn't quite read. Her eyes met his and she finally spoke.
"Where do I fit in? I don't know anyone who works in genetics. I don't even understand half of what you guys are saying. I'm an evolutionary anthropologist. I dig up bodies buried hundreds of years ago and study them. That's all. I just want to go back to Peru and resume my normal life."
Carver walked out from behind the computer and sat beside her. He wished he knew something comforting to say, but it had been so long since he'd offered more than hollow consolations that nothing sympathetic came to mind. Only another question.
"Have you ever heard of Candace Thompson?"
Ellie shook her head.
Carver's brow creased when the idea struck him.
"Are there any samples of your blood or DNA on file anywhere?"
"Maybe at the university. I don't know. Why?"
"She did look an awful lot like you," Wolfe said.
Carver thought of his first reaction, that Ellie and the girl in the facial reconstruction photo could have passed as twins. He remembered the picture of Charles Grady and how much he had looked like Special Agent Locke. What had Locke said?
Certainly was a good-looking guy, wasn't he?
They were running around the desert chasing their own tails. The time had come to be proactive.
"Pack your bags," he said to Kajika. "You're going to take us on an insider's tour of HydroGen."
"What? I can't just leave--"
Carver cut him off to address Hawthorne. "And you. I want a plane fueled and waiting at Sky Harbor by oh eight hundred. In the meantime, you're going to tell me everything you know."
Chapter Five
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.
--Carl Gustav Jung
I
Rocky Mountain Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory
Centennial, Colorado
Marshall had still been waiting for a return call from Special Agent Manning when Carver had called to make yet another request of him. Under normal circumstances, he would have busted Carver's chops a little before relenting, but right now he was happy to have something to occupy his mind. The most recent favor had seemed unreasonable at first, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that if he were able to find what they were hoping to, they might finally be able to shed some light on the case. Technically, what he was now attempting was illegal, but he figured since they had the subject's permission it would only be an issue if he got caught. And he was way too good for that. Besides, it would have taken time they didn't have to procure the necessary signed consent forms or a subpoena. He would be in and out before anyone even suspected the database had been hacked.
It was also kind of nice to have the opportunity to flex his cyber-muscles.
The Montana State University database was protected by the standard firewalls and fail-safes, which proved easily enough bypassed. He imagined if he were going after the grades he would have come up against some stiff security, but breaking into the employee health records was about as difficult as finding porn on the internet.
He glanced at the timer on his watch. Ten minutes, twenty-eight seconds. He was losing his touch.
After copying the files, he slipped back out of the university mainframe without leaving a trace.
Thank God for paranoia and perverts. Once upon a time, collecting blood and DNA samples from the staff would have been considered a violation of individual rights, but due to the preponderance of fraternizing professors and teaching methods that occasionally bordered on criminal, such testing was now commonplace. At least at schools where such scandal was a blemish rather than a recruiting tool.
Dr. Elliot Archer's genetic profile stared at him from the screen of the laptop. It wasn't as thorough as he had hoped, but then again, he supposed it didn't have to be. Her scanned fingerprint was of the whorl variety, her blood type O positive. He whistled at her picture in the top right corner. She really did look almost identical to the image he had created of the mummified woman.
Her DNA wasn't broken down to the chromosome level, but there was still enough to work with. He brought up her genome and downloaded it into the same program with which he had been working all day. Now all he needed was for Manning to get off her ass and return his call.
He grabbed his empty coffee mug and started down the hallway, making it only halfway to the freshly brewed pot before his phone rang.
"Marshall," he answered, heading back to the lab.
"What do you know about sick fish?" a curt female voice asked.
"Enough to warrant a faster return call, Special Agent Manning."
"Consider yourself fortunate I called at all. I'm literally buried in work here. So don't waste my time."
"Fair enough. I need everything you have on Candace Thompson."
"Who?"
"Cuerpo numero uno."
"You ID'd her?" Manning paused. "You're the facial reconstruction guy. I'm impressed. I didn't think you had a shot at beating me to it."
"While I'd like nothing more than to hear you sing my praises, all I have is a name. The girl's a specter. Outside the word of a landlady and an employer who've physically shared space with her long enough to notice her absence, I have no proof she ever existed."
"I can vouch for her. I pulled her remains out of the ground myself. Probably still wearing her fragrance, in fact," Manning said. "So what do you have that warrants stealing my work?"
"Show me yours and I'll show you mine."
"You first."
Marshall explained everything he had discovered regarding the connection between the Schwartz case and the one she was working, lingering at the point of detailing the insertion of the animal genes. It took longer than he thought it would to convince her of the validity of his results. Had their roles been reversed, he speculated he might have been an even tougher sell. He emailed her the comparisons between the chromosomes and walked her through each one, making sure she was clear on every point before leading her across the scientific line between fact and theory.
"That's wild speculation," she said. "It's irresponsible. Little girls with the potential for night vision and venom production? Do you just sit around all day reading comic books?"
"You don't have to believe me. The evidence is there. Draw your own conclusions. All I really need is for you to forward the results of the PCR test and whatever genomic fingerprint you were able to create. I'll do my job and you can go back to doing yours. By the way, how are you washing all the foul dead stuff off your hands out there in the desert?"
"I wear gloves, you idiot."
"Yeah. A thousandth of an inch of latex. I'll bet that makes all the difference in the world. Would you just email me the data already? I have to go refill my coffee from the steaming pot I just brewed. I can smell it from all the way down the hall. Is that hazelnut?"
"Low blow. Suddenly I can't seem to maintain my internet connection."
"Touché. Now send me the file while you tell me what you know about the virus."
Manning explained how she isolated the retrovirus and how she determined it to be a modified epsilon variety. After Marshall overcame his incredulity at the prospect of his virulent suspect being unmasked as an obscure fish disease, he was fascinated by the modification of the protein structure to imitate that of a lentivirus. Manning's research was impressive, but the work invested into the virus was brilliant. The way she described it, the retrovirus had been redesigned so that it was innocuous to the snakehead, but massively infectious to humans. The pathogenic RNA had been replaced by segments she had yet to thoroughly analyze. He asserted they were the coding proteins for animal genes. She was reasonably comfortable working under his contention, but only until able to prove him wrong. He knew she reveled in the prospect. The same as he'd be thrilled to gloat when she couldn't.
"So we're on the same page now?" Marshall asked when her file was completely downloaded.
"You know what I know. You're going to call me back the moment you learn anything new, right? Anything at all."
Marshall promised he would, though he figured he'd make her sweat it for a while. Just to be difficult.
"What a woman," he said after making sure the call was indeed terminated.
His first task now that he had Candace's chromosomes was to feed them into the database and initiate a search for potential matches. Carver could wait a few extra minutes. This was far more entertaining. Her DNA was substantially degraded due to the process of curing and the subsequent years under the ground, but it still only took a moment to retrieve a match.
"
Elaphas maximus?
" he said aloud. "A freaking Asian elephant? What the hell?"
The
Elaphas maximus
genes were a direct match on the X chromosome at the p11.2-22.1 loci. Unlike the other girls he had studied, Candace was affected on the X sex chromosome, implying that the mutation was a product of inheritance versus reverse transcription. Yet the retrovirus was still present. He refined the search to exclude the X and Y chromosomes, and found another, though less prominent, match on the third chromosome. The p14 locus. He recognized it immediately. The site coded for the nyctalopia disorder. Candace's genes had been replaced by those of a timber wolf.
"Son of a bitch."
There was his undeniable link between the cases. A grown woman nearly a decade underground and a pre-teen still on a steel slab, both bearing matching wolf genes on the third chromosome. But what about the X mutation?
Another search explained that aberrations at the Xp11 to Xp22 loci could produce Turner's syndrome, which manifested as various deficiencies in non-verbal memory, sense of direction, and manual dexterity. An elephant was said to have an amazing memory and staggering sense of direction. Could those genes have been used to enhance those traits in a human?
Marshall gnawed on his thumbnail while he thought, making an obnoxious clicking sound. There were inconsistencies between the woman and the girls that troubled him. The combination of genes in Schwartz's victims had been precise, while Candace's felt more random. Perhaps she was a product of early experiments with the retrovirus before they were able to fine-tune it? That in itself could be a novel development. Then there was the X mutation, which was a product of breeding and not the retrovirus. He was going to have to come back to it with a clear mind and a body full of caffeine.
For now, he'd just set up the program to compare the DNA between Elliot Archer and Candace Thompson, go refill his mug, and--
He barely had time to stand up from his chair before the computer displayed the results. All he could do was stare.
Marshall cleared the fields and ran the comparison again.
The results were the same.
He opened his phone and speed-dialed Carver, waiting only long enough to hear the sound of a voice from the other end before blurting, "You are
not
going to believe this!"
II
Flagstaff, Arizona
They were on their way back to the motel. Wolfe drove, following the black sedan conveying Locke and Hawthorne. Kajika sat shotgun, Carver and Ellie in the rear. There were no other cars on the road, the darkened desert an Apocalyptic wasteland, cacti standing like pitchforks from the hellish landscape. Ellie leaned against Carver, eyes closed. He was thankful she was able to sleep. With the world falling apart around her, she was going to need whatever strength she could muster. He wished he could stash her somewhere safe, but there were too many potential leaks and too few people he could trust, present company included. The only way he could ensure she was protected was to keep her right by his side, and even then he was going to have to stay alert. Until he could understand how she was involved, he couldn't afford to let her out of his sight. Somehow, she held the key to unlock the mystery, whether she knew it or not.
His phone rang and he answered it in a whisper on the first ring so as not to rob her of the little sleep she would get before they boarded the plane.
"Hi, Paxton," Jack said. For the first time in all the years Carver had known him, Jack sounded worn down.
"Hey, Jack. Anything new?"
"I've been beating the bushes, but haven't flushed anything else. I'm going to have to call it a night. I'm sorry, my boy. Turns out this old man can't run with the wolves like he used to. I'll start back up in the morning after a few hours of shuteye. You going to be carrying your cell?"
"I'll have it with me the whole time."
"Did you come across anything new?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"The body may be in need of a little repair, but the brain's still as sharp as it ever was."
"That's what scares me, Jack."
Jack laughed. "I'm still a good couple of years from standing out on the lawn in my robe and slippers and shaking my fist at all the young whippersnappers."
"If I know you, your mind will be intact long after you're gone. They'll keep it frozen and on display like Walt Disney's."