Biofire, page 37
Miranda turned her face up to the falling rain, hoping it would clear her thoughts.
Miranda kept walking around the building as Jorgan leaned against a warm dryer in the closed laundry room and stared at the black eye of the 9mm pistol being aimed at his face by a large man with a white Santa Claus beard and mustache. Juarez stood beside him, holding his .38 special at his side.
“Who are you?” Santa said.
“Dr. Alan Jorgan.” His voice wavered as he spoke and a bead of sweat dribbled down his forehead, over his temple, and down into his beard. “I work for OdysseyCorp Labs and I’m looking for Emma Shaw.”
Santa frowned at Jorgan’s answer in surprise, as if it was not what he had expected.
“Well, you’re honest, I can say that for you,” he said. “But who are you, why are you looking for Emma?”
Jorgan flinched. “She’s here? Where? Where is—”
“What do you want with her?” Santa did not raise his voice, but what it lacked in intimidation was compensated for by his face: eyes cold, cheeks tense, lips pulled back to show teeth between the beard and mustache.
It was enough to make Jorgan gulp, clear his throat, and speak with a fearful politeness when he said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought I said that I’m, uh, her doctor. Didn’t I say that?”
“You’re the one who did that to Emma?”
“You mean…the operations? Yes, I did. At OdysseyCorp.”
“And you’re planning to take her back to your lab?”
“Oh, no, absolutely not, that would be too dangerous.”
P.W. blinked and frowned again. “Then why did you come here for her?”
“To protect her from her husband.”
P.W. cocked his head, suddenly extremely suspicious of this odd, scruffy man. “Well, you’re full of surprises, aren’t you? Go on, tell me more.”
Jorgan frowned and looked at P.W. with genuine puzzlement, and something else: the dawning of the realization that he might have stepped into a deeper puddle than he had thought.
“Has Shaw been here?” Jorgan asked.
“Who?”
“Landon Shaw. Emma’s husband, the man who really did this to her. Has he been here?”
“What if he has?”
Jorgan sighed with frustration and snapped, “Dammit, will you—who are you, anyway?”
“P.W. Meredith.” He switched the gun to his left hand, still aiming it at Jorgan as he reached out his right hand to shake. “Pleasure to meet you.”
Jorgan’s face curled into a slightly wincing look of confusion. After a moment, he shook P.W.’s hand cautiously.
P.W. dropped the hand abruptly and began to pat him down, walking around him slowly. Jorgan absently lifted his arms out of P.W.’s way.
He found a heavy lump and removed a .25 caliber automatic from a pocket of the lab coat. He smiled broadly as he extended the gun to the young man beside him.
“Here, Juarez, go put this in the nursery toybox,” P.W. said, then watched Jorgan’s eyes widen as he realized what he had just heard. Reaching over to pat him on the shoulder, P.W. said, “Just kiddin’ ya, babe. Hell, the kids in this part of town’d probably break in their teeth on a pea-shooter like that.”
“Well,” Jorgan said, failing to conceal his defensiveness, “I couldn’t very well protect Emma unarmed, could I?”
“Oh, you had the right idea, but that’s a damn-fool place to keep your gun. People’d be dressin’ for your funeral by the time you got it outta that pocket. Now, let me get this straight, Doc. You cut open that girl’s head a couple times, played with her brains like she was a fuckin’ board game, and now you wanna protect her?”
“I-I…I couldn’t help her then. I was…doing my job. I couldn’t—”
“Just doin’ your job?” P.W. said. “Hey, Juarez, get some strudel for Herr Eichmann here, maybe get him a chair. He’s probably tired from doing his job.”
Jorgan’s confusion and frustration were replaced by a growing fear. “Now, wait, you don’t honestly think I’d just walk in here and introduce myself if I wanted to hurt her, do you?” There was note of desperate pleading to his voice.
“Well, until you convince me you don’t want to hurt her, that story works for me, Doc. So what really brings you to this part of town so late on a rainy night? Shouldn’t you be at home reading Scientific American? Smokin’ a pipe, maybe?”
Jorgan sighed again, running fingers through his stringy hair nervously. “I came here to keep her from her husband and get her some treatment.”
“Treatment? For what you did to her?”
“No, for what went wrong with what I did to her.”
P.W.’s face became serious as he stepped closer to Jorgan. “What the hell’re you talking about?”
Jorgan took in a deep, steadying breath. “I think she’s contagious.”
P.W.’s lips parted and his jaw slackened as his mind bombarded him with the possible significance of that statement, and he swayed with its impact.
“Come again?” he whispered.
“Are you familiar with her condition?”
P.W. had thought he was, but now he was not so sure. “Why don’t you fill me in, Doc.”
Jorgan sputtered for a moment as he groped for the simplest explanation, then spoke rapidly, cutting through the information as quickly as possible. He stopped halfway through, took a deep, calming breath, then said, “But something went wrong with that synthetic virus, something early on that slipped right by us. The virus is mutating now. Rapidly. I don’t know how it’s transmitted, I’m not sure what the reaction of the infected might be, I don’t know what symptoms might appear, but I’d rather find out in a laboratory than in the streets.” He took another deep breath to calm his frustration and fear.
P.W. nodded slightly. “Tell me, Doc, does your mama know you do this kinda thing for a living?” His voice was flat and low and humorless, distracted by the frantic thoughts tripping over each other in his head.
“Oh, for crying out loud—look,” Jorgan barked, “if you’re gonna shoot me, then shoot me, but don’t lecture me. There’s a good possibility we might be able to use the same technology to heal without surgery, I just don’t happen to work in that department.”
“Mm,” P.W. grunted. “Kill ’em, then cure ’em.”
“If she’s here, please tell me. I need to get her to a facility with the means to treat her and start the appropriate tests.”
P.W. realized he had been buying the whole thing, even starting to feel panicky, until Jorgan said that. A “facility”—he was just going to walk into a hospital and admit Emma, hook her up to some machines? That made no sense. Aside from the fact that P.W. doubted such a facility existed outside Jorgan’s own laboratory, Shaw would be on them in a heartbeat. If Jorgan was indeed trying to protect Emma from him, which P.W. was beginning to doubt.
“Why don’t you keep the doc company for a little while, Juarez,” P.W. said, turning away from Jorgan. “Maybe get some free medical advice while you got him here. I’ll be back.”
He unlocked the basement door and closed it behind him before starting down the stairs.
While P.W. went down to the basement to tell McNolte and Emma about their visitor, Tonya Cox drove slowly past the South Street Mission and turned right on Beacham.
“I remember when this was a department store,” Parson Higgins said, looking out his window at the building. “My mother used to bring me here every Christmas to see Santa Claus. Then she’d take me down to the basement, which was where they had their toy department, and she’d leave me there while she shopped. I usually ended up breaking something, then she’d take me home and beat the shit out of me with a broomstick. Miserable bitch.”
Tonya parked at the curb across the street from an alley that ran behind the mission.
“A man whose own mother hated him,” Tonya muttered as she killed the engine. They both got out, Parson carrying a small but bright flashlight, and went to the rear of the car, where he took the keys from Tonya and opened the trunk.
“They don’t make department stores like that anymore,” Parson said with a wistful nostalgia uncharacteristic of him. “Everything you wanted in one big place. The elevator bells ringing…the sound of cash registers. And it always had a…a new smell, like a new car does, only it was the smell of new…stuff. Just all kinds of stuff. I did my first shoplifting in that store.”
“Good times,” Tonya deadpanned.
Parson reached into the trunk and opened a bulky black satchel. As Tonya lifted a small, heavy, gray suitcase from the trunk, Parson opened his black bag and shined his light into it, checking its contents. He removed a small, plastic, rectangular device that looked like a beeper and clamped it to the lapel of his overcoat.
“Now all we got,” he muttered, “are a bunch of big fuckin’ neon-rainbow-colored oversized daycare centers. Malls,” he said with a disdainful grunt as he hooked the satchel’s strap over his left shoulder and slammed the trunk.
The two of them jogged across the street toward the mission.
While Tonya Cox and Parson Higgins approached the mission, Emma followed P.W. up the basement stairs with McNolte right behind her. The three of them stepped into the unusually quiet laundry room.
“Dr. Jorgan,” Emma said coolly and uncertainly when she saw him.
She was about to say more, but Jorgan held both arms out to her and took a broad step toward her, saying, “Emma, thank God, I thought—”
Juarez stepped in front of him and pressed the gun to his chest. “Uh-uh, no, that ain’t no good for the health of your ass,” he said, pushing him back. “Just stay right there so you don’t get yourself killed, man.”
Jorgan’s attention was only vaguely distracted by the gun against his chest. He tilted his head from left to right to look at Emma over Juarez’s shoulders as he continued to talk in spite of the interruption.
“I thought he might have you by now. Look, Emma, I’ve got to get you out of here, you need treatment, and I can help you hide from—” He cut himself off bluntly and winced with confusion at Emma. “Why is your face—and your hands, my God, why are they black?”
Emma’s and McNolte’s hands and faces had been blackened with shoe polish and they wore ragged, dirty clothes. Each carried a cloth bag hanging from their shoulders by a strap and a heavy eighteen-inch Mag-Lite.
“What’s this about my condition being contagious?” Emma said curtly.
“I tried to tell you before you left the lab, but you wouldn’t let me. The virus is mutating, Emma. I need to see how far it’s gone and what it’s done to you, if anything. I’ve got a friend in Boston who has access to a lab in the basement of a university hospital.”
As he went on, she remembered how nice Dr. Jorgan had been to her, how well he had treated her in every way, and she felt those good thoughts being sucked down a drain in the back of her mind when it struck her that she was no longer confined and did not have to listen to him or even let him anywhere near her.
“You want me to go to Boston with you?” she said, incredulous.
“We’ll have to drive to an airport out of town. Shaw’s probably covered every—”
“You cut my head open,” she said, clenching her black hands into fists. “Twice!”
Jorgan paused as he watched the black-faced man beside Emma put his arm around her shoulders protectively. His throat tightened, but he tried to conceal it as he spoke soothingly to her.
“Don’t get upset, Emma, please, you know what might happen if you let yourself—”
“You cut my brain,” she shouted, and the man held her to him, bowing his head to whisper something in her ear.
Jorgan slipped the small, thin syringe from his coat pocket and started to remove the plastic cover from the needle as he said, “I brought this for you, it’ll make this easier and safer, and I can—”
“Hey, doctor-boy,” P.W. barked as Juarez touched the barrel of his gun to Jorgan’s left eye and shouted, “Drop it, man, drop it now.”
The syringe skittered over the floor.
Tonya Cox and Parson Higgins stepped up on the curb and approached the closed doors of the delivery elevator in the sidewalk that stretched along the west side of the South Street Mission. Tonya stopped at the elevator, but Parson walked on toward a dark, unmarked door in the side of the building.
“I thought we were gonna use the elevator,” she said.
“Who the fuck’m I, Batman? I’m not jumping into any fuckin’ basement from the sidewalk. C’mere.” Parson shined the flashlight over the door, tried the knob, made a cursory inspection of the locks. There were two: the one in the knob and a deadbolt. “Hold the light,” he said, handing the flashlight to Tonya. Parson opened his satchel, removed a foot-long black leather case and opened it to reveal a row of various-sized drill bits. He chose one, slapped the case shut, and put it back in the satchel. His hands moved fluidly and quickly as he removed a cylindrical, gray and black device. “Put the light on the locks,” Parson said, fitting the bit into the end of the device. The drill made hardly any noise as Parson drove the bit into the deadbolt. It was almost inaudible beneath the sound of the pouring rain.
The bit moved through the lock’s brass-coated steel as if it were clay, then Parson slid it into the doorknob. He dropped the drill into the satchel, opened another black case, this one smaller, and chose one of several narrow strips of metal with small barbs cut into the edges. He slid the metal strip into each lock and turned it as easily as if he were unlocking his own front door. Parson took the flashlight from Tonya and shined it into the doorway as the door opened. The light fell on a narrow, steep staircase that led downward into blackness.
“Jump into the fuckin’ basement from the sidewalk,” Parson muttered, shaking his head. “Where the fuck did Leo find you, anyway? Shee-zus.”
They passed through the doorway and descended into the dark.
As Tonya Cox and Parson Higgins disappeared through the doorway, Miranda stood at the mission’s corner entrance watching them. She had been there for half a minute, having cut another walk around the building short when she saw them huddled at the door.
For a moment, Miranda felt the bitter cold of the night and the aching wetness of her clothes, and she felt completely solid and visible. With that brief feeling of solidity came a high, keening panic, and she knew she should leave immediately because there was going to be trouble.
She was still bothered by the way that young man had ushered Dr. Jorgan away, and she was quite certain now that he had been holding a gun to the doctor’s back. And now there were two suspicious men sneaking around inside the mission.
Dr. Jorgan had walked into a trap set for Emma by Mr. Shaw, that had to be it. That meant she might never see him again. Shaw’s people would not let anyone stand in the way of getting Emma, especially if Shaw knew what Dr. Jorgan was doing there. He might never get out of there alive. And all because of that bitch, because she had posed and strutted and convinced him that she was what he wanted, what he needed, when she was nothing but an empty-headed, overgrown, spoiled brat.
The biting chill went away and Miranda felt an overwhelming calm. She started down the sidewalk, wondering if the two men had left the door unlocked.
In the mission’s laundry room, Jorgan raised his arms, palms out, fingers splayed as he stared at Juarez’s gun.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Jorgan said. “It’s a sedative, that’s all, I don’t want to hurt her, I…I’m sorry.” His hands trembled.
“I’m not going anywhere with you, Dr. Jorgan,” Emma said. “Tell Landon I said he can go fuck himself.”
“I won’t be seeing him, Emma, because if I did, he’d kill me for doing this. If he gets you back to the lab, you’ll never come out again.” He lowered his arms slowly, never quite relaxing them.
“He’s already tried to kill me,” Emma said. “He’s still trying. There are two men downstairs, one dead. They’re wearing surgical masks,” she added.
“Surgical masks, you see?” Jorgan said. “I’m not making it up, it’s not just me. Landon knows you’re contagious, and if he’s afraid of it, then you should be, too.” He looked at the others. “All of you.”
Emma’s body stiffened as she leaned against McNolte. Her mind was spinning with the possible consequences if the virus were actually contagious, and the surgical masks on those two men made it seem quite possible. But how could she trust Jorgan?
“What do you want to do about it?” McNolte said.
Jorgan said, “I need to take her to a—”
“What’s your second choice?”
“Second choice? I…I don’t understand.”
“What other options do you have?”
“Options? There are no other options. I need to take her to Boston, where I can—”
“You’re not taking her anywhere,” McNolte said. “What can you do here.”
“Here?” Jorgan laughed without smiling. “That would be…well, I couldn’t do anything here, except maybe examine her.”
“How long would that take?”
“No,” Emma shouted. “He’s not touching me.”
McNolte turned to her. “What if he’s telling the truth?”
“If he were telling the truth, he wouldn’t be here.” She narrowed her eyes as she glowered at Jorgan. “Why are you here if I’m contagious? If it’s so dangerous, why are you putting yourself at risk?”
Jorgan’s arms became limp at his sides and his shoulders sagged. Deep creases cut into his forehead as he looked directly into Emma’s eyes.
“Well, I huh-had to c-come here,” he said quietly. “For, um…for you, Emma.”
“It’s a little late to start being noble, don’t you think?” Emma was unconvinced.
“No, no, you don’t under—” He stopped and pressed his lips together hard, willing himself to stop stammering. “Emma, please, could I speak with you? Just for a few seconds?”
