After the Cure, Deirdre Gould [the beach read TXT] 📗

still, when he says that he never meant the original strain to harm anyone. I believe that it really was an accident. But he knew he had to get Dr. Schneider to admit she was responsible and to tell him the location of the resistant strain. So he locked her up and recorded her. It was all a setup.” She rubbed her sore shoulder gently and her face twisted as if she had tasted something sour and sad. “He knew the samples were missing, because he was the one that took them. He let us see the video because he knew we would run after Dr. Schneider. We played right into his hands. This whole thing was about holding her responsible.”

Frank’s face relaxed and he even looked cheerful. “Then maybe he’s already destroyed the samples. Maybe they aren’t even a threat.”

“No,” Nella said, as grim as before, “He wouldn’t have destroyed them. He needed them as evidence. And as leverage against Dr. Schneider. In fact, he’d probably want them as close by as possible. In his control.”

“How would he have gotten them in? Prisoners are searched when they are booked. Everything is taken from them.”

“Everything?”

“As far as I know.”

“Maybe he got someone else to bring it to him. Or send it to him.”

“He doesn’t have anyone, Nella. No matter what else he may have lied about, I believe him when he says we are the closest things to friends that he has. Besides, all packages- anything delivered to prisoners would be checked.”

“Checked how? We’re only talking about small vials here.”

“I’m not sure.” Frank ran his hands slowly over his head in frustration. He looked up at her suddenly. “But I bet Stan Kembrey would be able to tell us. I need to get the video from the Warden’s office anyway, and I want to talk to Dr. Pazzo about all this-”

“No! No Frank, he can’t know that we’ve found him out.” She gripped his arm so hard that he winced.

“Ow. Why not? We’ve done what he wanted, we brought Dr. Schneider back for trial. Why would he bother trying to hide it now?”

“If he doesn’t want to hide it, he’ll turn over the samples when you tell him we didn’t find them. It will help his defense. You don’t have to tell him you know that he has them.”

“I don’t know that he has them. This is all guesswork. And you still haven’t answered my question, why is it important to act as if I don’t think it’s him? I’m angry that he used me. Especially that he used you. You’ve been hurt because of him. He needs to answer for that.”

She put a gentle hand on either side of his face. “Because I’m not entirely certain that’s all that he wanted. What if there is something else? Something we are both missing? If he intends to use the samples, then telling him we know he has them would force his hand, he’d release them immediately. I need time to find them before he finds out we know, and before whatever deadline he’s set has passed. If he turns them over of his own free will, then wonderful, we can all relax. But if you go to your next meeting with him and he says nothing when you tell him the samples have been stolen, then we’ll know he’s not done with them yet.”

“Nella, this is assuming way more than I’m comfortable with.”

“This is how I work. This is what I get paid for, what I do every day. You need evidence because of what you do every day. I’m not asking you to do anything, except to go on acting the same way, treating him the same way as you have all this time. I can do the rest, probably with less suspicion than you can. Please trust me. Let me do my job.”

He closed a warm hand around hers. “I do trust you. Just tell me what you need me to do. If I can do it without compromising the case, I will.”

“Judge Hawkins is holding a copy of the video right? We need to tell him the result of our search. We also need to ask him to keep it quiet for a little while longer. You can pick up that copy and we can check it without anyone knowing we accessed the evidence cache at the prison. When is your next meeting with Dr. Pazzo?”

“Normally, it would be any time between now and court on Monday.”

“Would it be odd or out of the ordinary to schedule a meeting with him this afternoon?”

“A meeting with you too?”

“No, just the two of you, to discuss court strategy.”

“Then it wouldn’t seem odd, that would be pretty normal.”

“Did you tell him where we were going before we left?”

“No, but given Dr. Schneider’s presence in the prison last night, he’s going to know.”

“Good. When he asks, tell him everything about the trip. Give him a chance to turn over the samples or give him enough rope to hang himself. Either way, we’ll know.”

“Nella, you are ignoring the possibility that someone else took them.”

“Because the possibility is so small. Look, Frank, I’ve thought about this nonstop for days. There were only four people who knew about the resistant strain. I’m convinced we’ve eliminated three of them either through motive or capacity. Dr. Pazzo is the only one that’s left.”

Frank sighed. “What are you going to be doing?”

“I need to find out if anything was delivered or returned to Dr. Pazzo. I guess I’ll start with Officer Kembrey. Do you think he can keep his mouth shut?”

“Stan? I’d trust him with my life.”

“Okay then. I need some clothes.”

Frank grinned for the first time that day. Nella laughed. Frank swung his legs out of bed to begin the day.

“Frank, one more thing.” Frank turned toward her.

“What’s that?”

“He can’t know about this- about us. Don’t give him any more power than he already has.”

 

No Good News

Nella let the cold flickering light of the screen strobe over her without registering what she was seeing. It had taken Frank almost an hour to convince Judge Hawkins to give them more time before publishing a warning to the City about the missing Recharge samples. They had agreed that she wouldn’t meet the Judge, so that the sight of her injury wouldn’t cause an immediate and irreversible call to the military governor. She didn’t know what he had said to finally persuade Judge Hawkins to give them more time, but she didn’t envy Frank. He’d had to walk a fine line in the narrow space between the truth and implicating his client. His nature was too open to enjoy any aspect of it. Nella shook her head. How had he become a lawyer in the first place?

They sat in her living room combing through the images on Dr. Pazzo’s videos, looking for a shot of the closet door. Frank kept on, frame by frame, pausing and playing, rewinding and pausing. Nella had stopped paying attention. She didn’t need any more proof. She’d been convinced as soon as she heard the lock click in Frank’s bathroom. Her thoughts instead, stuttered and sparked and prickled. She bounced between wondering what Dr. Pazzo was waiting for and how he planned to release the bacteria. It never occurred to her to wonder whether he would release it.

“I can’t believe it,” Frank said, shattering the vague haze that surrounded Nella’s thoughts. He was leaning forward, almost tilting himself off the chair in his excitement.

A still image of the closet door sat on the screen in brooding green. A single frame as Dr. Pazzo smashed the camera against the wall in his staged frenzy. He had been so careful, showing only the walls or his face, even the panel of the door at times, but never the knob. But he’d lost track of it. He wanted to be convincing in his fury, to appear truly infected, that he’d forgotten to hide the lock. It was a push button, just as Nella had thought. She watched Frank sink back into the cushions beside her, almost felt his certainty and confidence drain away.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“What do I do?”

“Stick with the plan. Maybe he’ll admit to having the samples when you tell him we didn’t find them. But if he doesn’t- we’ve only got one shot to find them. Once he knows that we suspect him, he’ll push up any plans he might have for the bacteria. You have to play dumb, Frank. Let him think he’s got the power.”

“You were right all along. You told me he was trying to establish himself as the dominant one, but I didn’t believe you. How did I fall for his story?”

“It was a good story. He said it himself. We hate it when the bad guy gets away. I think he’s mostly telling the truth actually. His version of events seems to be verified by the others. I don’t think he was involved in releasing the original disease. I think he did argue against using a more resistant strain. The question is, why did he fake his infection? Why did he wait to recover the resistant samples? And what’s he planning on using them for? Why hold onto them for all these years?”

Frank stood up. “I guess we’ll find out. I’ve got a meeting scheduled with him in twenty minutes. Are you going to come too?”

“I’ll come to the prison with you, but the meeting should just between you two. He’s more likely to make a mistake with you. I seem to put him on edge. I want to talk to Officer Kembrey. Dr. Pazzo had to get the samples into the prison somehow in order to keep them safe or start to revive them. I could ask the Warden, but I have a feeling that Kembrey knows everything that goes in and out of that place.”

“Stan will keep his mouth shut too. Isn’t it going to look weird if you just go to talk to him though?”

Nella waved Ann Connelly’s medical record. “I can use Ann’s test results as an excuse.”

Frank looked grim. “Is there anything you can do? Is she going to get better?”

She sighed and shook her head. “No. In some cases, there is just residual swelling in the brain and we can treat that. Even with medieval methods. But Ann’s brain- the bacteria was active for too long. People that were infected early and treated late have holes in their brain, where the bacteria has actually eaten away at it over time. I can’t put back what’s not there any more. She won’t get worse and we might be able to build different pathways in her brain for some things, but she’ll never be even close to what she once was.”

“There just doesn’t seem