drug. Not by a long shot. That is going elsewhere, courtesy of your stupidity.”
His face took on color. “Are you threatening me?”
“You can take the truth as you wish, Sheldon. I know where I want to go with my research. You don’t. No one else does. For the past few months I’ve been biding my time, waiting to see whether Marcon would back a new approach to fighting Alzheimer’s. Now I know. Looks like keeping my trump card close to my chest was a good idea.”
“Maybe if you’d brought it out,” he said, “we would have seen things differently. Maybe the funding would have gone your way.”
“I doubt it,” she said. “I don’t think you understand. Marcon doesn’t think like it did when Vagelos was at the helm.” She turned to the door and opened it. A gust of cool spring air rushed in. “Have HR send my final check to my house. And don’t forget the vacation pay. You can keep whatever personal stuff is on my desk.”
She jumped into the Taurus and jammed it into gear. What a disaster. But in the back of her mind, she had suspected Zachery might hedge on her funding. Her group’s approach to the Alzheimer’s quandary was not novel, but more of the same, targeting the beta amyloid protein that was known to force healthy tissue aside and invade key spaces in the brain. But what Zachery and the other Marcon brass didn’t know was that she had isolated a new chemical in the sequence, one unknown and unnoticed in the hundreds of thousands of previous screened molecules by all the big pharmaceutical companies.
She had the key. She just had to prove it in clinical trials. And that knowledge was going with her when she left Marcon.
8
Evan Ziegler deplaned in Richmond, cursing the rain. It was the last day of April, but there was no warmth to the heavy mist. Just a gray day that chilled the bones and made driving ugly. He navigated the rental car through the sodden streets, past a group of school kids on their way home from classes, splashing in puddles and laughing when one of them slipped and fell, soaking his pants. Evan cracked a smile as a memory of Ben, drenched from a sudden downpour, came to mind. The smile faded as quickly as it had materialized.
He found the Commonwealth Park Suites Hotel easily enough and collected the package from the front-desk clerk. He sat in one of the wingback chairs in the oblong lobby and slowly opened the sealed flap. He tilted the envelope and the contents spilled onto his lap. There were three pages and a small plastic envelope with three tiny bags inside. He slipped the plastic envelope into his pocket and perused the written material. The cover page had a picture of his target and a brief bio. Albert Rousseau. Ziegler had pictured him as a geek, and he wasn’t far off. The man’s skin was pockmarked and fresh acne was scarring the few remaining smooth patches. Under the unruly mess of hair was a pasty complexion and bad teeth. Albert was never going to make the cover of
The address was on Cooley Avenue, in Carytown, a trendy section of Richmond just off the Fan District, and Evan found a Starbucks on the way. He picked up a latte and set the car’s radio to a classic rock station as he sipped on the drink. It was a few minutes after four o’clock when he pulled up in front of Rousseau’s town house. He found a parking spot halfway down the block and walked around to the rear of the dwelling. Each of the units had a small yard with a wood deck and a gas light. He counted the units from the corner and let himself into Rousseau’s yard. A neighbor three doors down glanced over, but Evan knew the look: Nothing was registering. He wouldn’t even remember that someone had entered the yard, let alone what that person looked like.
The back door had two locks, one on the handset and the other a deadbolt. Evan picked the lower one and tried the door. It opened. He grinned at the stupidity of having an expensive deadbolt on an outer door and not using it. He closed the door quietly behind him, listening for any sound that would indicate the house was protected by an alarm. Nothing.
He was in the galley-style kitchen, dated but clean. He glanced at the stove and noticed the gas burners. Excellent. A quick tour through the town house assured him that no one was home and that he was in the right place, then he got to work. The stove pulled away from the wall with a minimum of effort, and he hopped into the narrow space between the stove and the wall. The flexible gas line to the stove was old, probably twenty years. He smiled at that; this was getting easier all the time. Grasping the line with both hands, he bent it back and forth, weakening the line at one of the joints. It took the better part of fifteen minutes before the line cracked and the unmistakable odor of natural gas stung his nostrils. He immediately placed a small piece of clear tape over the break. The smell lingered for a moment, then dissipated through the house. He jumped up on the counter, then dropped to the floor and pushed the stove back in place.
Now it was time to wait.
Albert Rousseau counted the number of days until he would be fabulously wealthy. Twenty-three. He grinned and shut down the operating system on his office computer. He wanted to be home by seven in case it was a
Oh, my God, would they pay.
He found a parking space almost directly in front of his unit. Another sign the gods were smiling on him. He unlocked the door and pushed it open, a handful of mail in his right hand. He swung around and closed the door with his left. For a split second he was face-to-face with another man. A stranger. A stranger in his house. He reacted, but it was far too late for that.
Evan grabbed him by the hair and spun him 180 degrees, pulling him back all in the same motion. Evan’s forearm closed over Albert’s windpipe and instantly cut off the air supply. Albert tried to grab the assailant’s arm but found both his arms trapped against his body. His attacker had immobilized both arms by pinning them behind his back. He tried to scream, but there was no air. He fought to find some way to breathe, but the arms that held him were like vises. Panicked and seething with adrenaline, he mustered every ounce of strength and lashed out with almost superhuman strength. He felt the pressure on his windpipe slip a fraction as he managed to turn slightly, but the grip on his arms tightened and only a tiny gulp of air got through. The room went fuzzy, then gray, then black. His body stopped fighting and the pressure subsided. He willed his muscles to move, but there was no response. Then, as the last neurons in his brain stopped firing, he realized he was already dead and that his brain had taken longer to die than his body. He had a strange thought as his brain shut down; how long did the brain continue to function after the guillotine came down?
Evan let the lifeless body drop gently to the floor. The last thing he needed was bruises anywhere on the corpse; they might be noticed in the autopsy. He had been very careful not to squeeze the windpipe so hard as to crush it, a useful trick he had picked up during his tenure with Team Six. He had picked up a lot of useful information while with the Navy SEALs, most of which dealt with killing people. It was proving to be most valuable.
He carried the body into the kitchen so there would be no drag marks on the floor and propped it against the stove. He retrieved the plastic pouch from his pocket and carefully opened it by cutting a slit down one side. Inside were three smaller plastic bags, the combined contents weighing no more than one ounce. Another cut in one of the tiny bags and the odor of sulfuric acid wafted up and stung his nose. The other two contained potassium chlorate and methenamine. He mixed the three chemicals together and gently set them on the counter. They were a ticking time bomb now. He had less than ten minutes before the mixture would ignite. But he didn’t need ten minutes of gas in the house or the entire block would disappear. Three minutes tops. He had a few minutes to kill before he removed the piece of tape from the gas line.
Rousseau’s ID card was attached to his shirt pocket, and Evan glanced at it. Something wasn’t right. He cradled it in his right hand and read the inscription:
Or so Andrews had said.
Evan recoiled from the body and almost toppled over one of the kitchen chairs as he staggered backward.
