Authors: John Saul
“I’ll take it to the lab,” he said quietly. “But I can’t believe—” His voice dropped. “I’ll take it to the lab.”
Leaving Malone in his office, Arthur Wiseman went into his examining room and opened his medicine cabinet. He scanned the shelves quickly, then again, more carefully this time.
Where he was sure the jar of BCG had been, there was now only an empty space on his shelf.
He picked up the phone and reached his nurse. “Has anyone been in my treatment room this morning?”
“Why, yes, Dr. Wiseman. Bob Pender dropped by, and I let him take an inventory of the PharMax products you use.”
Wiseman felt a sudden pain in his chest as his heart began to pound. “I see,” he said. “Thank you.”
Sensing the strain in his voice, the nurse spoke again. “Wasn’t that all right? Bob’s been inventorying your drugs for years.”
“It’s all right, Charlene,” Wiseman assured her. “I’m sure it’s quite all right.” He hung up the phone and slowly made his way back to his office. Mark Malone looked up at him, then, seeing the expression on his face, rose.
“What is it, Arthur?”
“Bob Pender was here,” Wiseman said softly. “And the BCG is gone.”
“Then we’ll order more,” Malone said. He picked up the phone and asked the hospital operator to connect him with the PharMax sales desk.
“BCG?” the man at the other end repeated. “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of that.”
Malone started to explain what it was he wanted, then changed his mind and handed the phone to Wiseman.
“Bicalcioglythemine,” Wiseman snapped. “I want a twelve-ounce far, and I want to pick it up today.”
There was a pause. Wiseman could hear pages being turned. Finally the voice at the other end spoke again. “Are you sure you have the right company? This is PharMax.”
“TharMax Is who I want. I’ve been getting BCG from you people for ten years.”
“And this is Eastbury Community Hospital?”
“That’s right”
“One moment.”
This time Wiseman was put on hold. Nearly two minutes later the voice came back on the line.
“I’m sorry, sir, but this company does not make a product called bicalcioglythemine, and I’ve just checked your records on our computer. I see nothing indicating that you’ve ever ordered such a thing before, nor have we ever shipped it or billed you for it. I’m afraid you must have the wrong company.”
“I see,” Wiseman whispered. When he faced Malone again, his whole body was trembling.
“I don’t think we need to have it analyzed, Mark,” he said softly. “I suppose, if I did enough research, I could tell you which enzymes must have been in it. There must have been some kind of restriction endonuclease and a ligase. Maybe even some free nucleotides to zip into the DNA. And, of course, the calcium base. But I don’t think I could tell you how they put it together or made the whole process work. As far as I knew, what that compound must have done isn’t possible even now, let alone ten years ago. But they must have done it. Recombinant DNA, accomplished within the uterus.”
The phone rang on Wiseman’s desk and he spoke with the nurse once more. When he hung up the phone, his eyes avoided Mark Malone’s. “Sally and Steve are here,” he said. “Will you talk to them? I don’t think I can face them right now. I think I have to … well, I have to think this thing through. I have to decide what it all means.”
Mark Malone rose and started toward the door. Then he turned back and faced Wiseman. “Arthur,” he said, his voice low and deadly, “are you sure you didn’t make this compound yourself?”
What little color still remained in the old man’s face drained away. “Mark, what are you saying?”
“Only that when the time comes, I doubt that anyone will believe you got that stuff from PharMax. Frankly, I don’t believe it myself.” Malone turned away, and a moment later Arthur Wiseman was left alone in his office.
T
IM CORLISS CAST DOLEFUL EYES
on the chain blocking I the driveway to the Randolph estate. “Maybe we’d better just leave the car here and walk.”
“Nope. I want it near the house.” Bronski opened the trunk of his car and took out a large set of chain cutters. “These should do the trick.” A moment later the chain, its end link neatly severed, lay on the asphalt, leaving the drive clear. They proceeded on to the gate, where Bronski cut the second chain, then dismantled the electric opening device so the gates swung freely. “After this, the house should be a cinch,” he remarked. He put the chain cutters back into the trunk, slid behind the wheel, and gunned the engine.
They drove around to the back of the house, parking the car where it couldn’t be seen from the gates. Then, with Lucy and Randy trailing them, the two men approached the house. They knocked loudly at the back door, waited, then knocked again. When there was still no response, they went around to the front and repeated the procedure.
“There’s no one here,” Lucy said at last. “They’ve all gone.”
“We still have to try,” Bronski replied. “Let’s go in.” He stepped back from the house and gazed up at the
barred windows of the second floor. “Seems as though it would be the lower windows they’d keep bars on.”
“It was to keep us in,” Randy said. “And they always had someone in the hall too. Except that Miss Bowen didn’t always stay there.”
“Well, at least that makes it easy for us,” Bronski murmured. He led the others around to the side of the house, where French doors opened onto a terrace overlooking the lawn. Using the butt of his gun, he shattered a pane of one of the doors, then reached through and twisted the dead bolt. He winked at Randy. “Just like in the movies.” He opened the door and led the way in.
“It’s the dining room,” Randy explained. “And through there is the kitchen. The other doors lead to a big hall, and in the back everyone had offices.” He started eagerly across the room, but Bronski stopped him.
“I’ll go first.”
“Aw … there’s no one here.”
“I’ll still go first,” Bronski insisted, even though he agreed with Randy. He led the way through the dining room and stopped in the foyer, staring up the broad staircase. “What’s up there?”
“The bedrooms,” Randy explained. “Mine was almost at the end of the hall. Wanna see it?”
“Okay.”
They moved up the stairs, Bronski still in the lead. At the top, situated so that it had a full view of the wide corridor that ran the length of the hall, was a desk, emptied of its contents. They started down the hall.
“This was Eric’s room,” Randy said, pausing at a closed door.
Bronski glanced at Lucy. “Eric who?” he asked.
“Carter. I think he was from California.”
So there it was. Eric Carter had been reported as a runaway from San Jose. Unless.…
“Randy, did you look at all that stuff we were reading last night?”
Randy shook his head.
“You’re sure?”
Randy shrugged. “It was only a bunch of numbers and stuff like that. Why would I want to read that?”
“Okay. You said this
was
Eric’s room. Isn’t it anymore?”
“Eric died” Randy said. Lucy gasped, and Randy looked anxiously up at her. “That’s why I ran away. After Eric died, I got real scared. So I ran away.”
“Of course you did,” Jim Corliss said. “Why don’t you show us how you got out of the house?”
Randy led them to the end of the hall, then up the narrow stairs to the attic, where the ladder, still extended, led up to the open skylight. “Then I went across the roof, and climbed down a tree,” Randy explained. “It was easy.”
Bronski nodded. Everything was exactly as Randy had said it would be. “Let’s go back downstairs.”
Now it was Randy who led the way, explaining to his parents and the sergeant what each of the rooms had been used for. At last they were in the clinic area, and Randy showed them the room where Peter Williams had lain unconscious for several days.
“And what’s back there?” Bronski asked, pointing to the only door they had not yet opened. Randy stared at it, his lips pursed, and his brows knit together in puzzlement.
“I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “I was never back there.”
“Then let’s have a look.” Bronski, followed by the three Corlisses, started toward the door that would lead them into the laboratory.
Morantz and Kaplan moved through the trees, being careful to stay well back in their shadows. The boy, they had been told, was the primary assignment Arid so, when the house in Eastbury had suddenly disgorged its occupants an hour before, it was the two men, the woman, and the boy whom they followed. It had been an easy tail, for they had known within minutes exactly where they were going. They had hung back, well out of
sight, until their quarry reached its destination. Now they were closing in.
“There’s the car,” Morantz said. Even though there were no prying ears, he still used his habitual working voice, just above a whisper, which he knew only Kaplan could hear.
“Well go in from behind the garage,” Kaplan replied in the same lowered tone. His grip tightened on the canvas bag he was carrying. “Even if they look out, we shouldn’t be visible for more than a second or two.”
They worked their way a little farther south, putting the large garage between themselves and the house. Only when they were certain they couldn’t be seen did they leave the shelter of the woods and dash across the narrow expanse of lawn to crouch beside the brick wall of the outbuilding. Once there, Kaplan opened the bag and removed its contents.
It was a small device—no larger than a cigar box—and all that was visible on its exterior were several tiny, but very powerful, magnets. Kaplan opened the box, carefully rechecking the receiver, the capacitor, and the firing cap. Satisfied, he made the final attachments that would allow the cap to accomplish its purpose, imbedded it in the mass of gelignite that took up the bulk of the space in the box, and reclosed it.
“See anything?”
Morantz, his binoculars pressed to his eyes, shook his head. “If they’re in there, they’re still up front. Looks like right now is as good a time as any.”
Kaplan crouched and, keeping his head low, darted out or the lee of the garage and moved swiftly across the concrete apron upon which Carl Bronski’s car, closed and carefully locked, was parked. He stopped next to the right rear wheel, knelt down, and reached under the car with his left hand. A moment later he had found the spot he was looking for, and heard a distinct
thunk
as the magnets on the exterior of the box clamped themselves firmly to the gas tank of the car.
A few seconds later, both Kaplan and Morantz had faded back into the woods.
For now, all they had to do was get back to their van, and wait.
Lucy Corliss stared at the mess and instinctively touched her son. “But what is this place?” she asked, although she knew the answer even as she spoke.
Even in its disheveled state, it was still obvious that the room was some kind of a laboratory. Hiere was a long counter that took up most of one wall, with various pieces of equipment that neither Jim nor Carl Bronski recognized. On the wall opposite the counter, five filing cabinets stood, most of their drawers open, all of them empty.
“Seems like they took the records and left the hardware,” Bronski commented.
“Which fits in with a government operation,” Jim Corliss pointed out. “Generate a mass of paper, never lose track of a single piece of it, but let the equipment rust. But what was it all about? If all they were doing was medical research, why the secrecy?”
“Come on, Jim. Let’s not kid ourselves,” Bronski said. “This wasn’t just research. Children were being kidnaped and brought out here, where apparently they died.” He glanced toward Randy, who was already disappearing into yet another room. When he spoke again, his voice was grim. “And I’ll bet that even after they died, they stayed on the premises. Let’s see what’s in there.” The trio moved toward the door of the lab.
They found Randy standing in the small room behind the laboratory, staring at a large piece of equipment, his face puzzled.
“Is that an iron lung?” he asked.
Carl Bronski shook his head. “Not quite,” he said, his voice shaking slightly.
“What is it, then?” Lucy asked.
“It looks like a decompression chamber.” He hesitated, his eyes once again flickering toward Randy. Lucy, reading Bronski’s expression, gently nudged her son.
“Wait for us in the other room, sweetheart,” she said.
Then, when he was gone, she turned her attention back to the sergeant. “What’s it for?” she asked.
Bronski swallowed hard. “It’s the kind of thing they use in dog pounds,” he said at last.
Lucy, still not quite comprehending, turned to Jim.
“They use it for the puppies,” he explained. “For the puppies nobody wants.”
Lucy paled. “Dear God,” she whispered. “You mean they used that thing to—?”
“That’s the way it looks,” Bronski said, his voice suddenly hard. “But they still had bodies to dispose of. And it looks to me like that’s why they had that thing.”
Lucy, her face ashen, stared at the firebox. “Isn’t it just a furnace?”
“It’s not like any furnace I ever saw,” Bronski replied. “The only place I’ve ever seen anything like that is in a crematorium.” As the Corlisses numbly looked on, he approached the crematory and touched the door.
It was still warm, but not too warm to prevent him from opening it.
The chamber inside was empty.
“They cleaned it up pretty well, but not quite well enough.”
In the corners of the chamber there were a few flecks of grayish matter. Producing a plastic bag from his coat pocket, Bronski scooped up a sample of the stuff, sealed the bag, and replaced it in his pocket.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. We’ve seen enough, and it’ll take a team of techs to go over this place properly. But offhand, I’d say it ought to be pretty easy to find out who was here. There’ll be prints all over the place, and God only knows what else.” He chuckled, but there was not even a trace of humor in the sound. “When you clear out as fast as they did, you don’t stop to clean up after yourselves. You take what you can and run. And that’s what these people did. I’ll bet they didn’t even waste time looking for Randy. Just packed up everything and took off.”