I, Richard

“I don't have any name.” Charlie was feeling hot now, and she was growing confused. “I thought you had it. I assumed that because when you came to the house and then left with nothing and then the house was searched again… What were you looking for? Whose name? All I have is the…”She couldn't bring herself to say it, so horrible and low it seemed to her that her husband-a man she had adored and had thought she knew- had actually stolen from his employer. “I want to return the money,” she said in a rush before she could think of an excuse not to speak.

Sharon said, “What money?”

“I've got to return it because they're not going to let up if I don't. Whoever they are. They've searched the house once, and they'll be back. No one puts out that kind of money without expecting… what do you want to call it?… the goods?”

“But that's not how it works,” Sharon said. “They never pay. So if there's money somewhere-”

“Who are they?” Charlie heard her voice grow louder as her anxiety increased. “How do I contact them?”

Sharon said, “Ssshhhh. Please. Look, we can't talk here.”

“But you came to my house. You searched. You were looking-”

“For their names. Don't you see? I didn't know who Eric was talking to. He just said that it was CBS. But CBS where? LA? New York? Was it Sixty Minutes or just the local news?”

Charlie stared at her. “Sixty Minutes?”

“Keep your voice down! Good grief! I'm on the line here, about six steps away from losing my job or going to jail or who the hell knows what else, and then what good will I be to anyone?” She looked to the doorway, as if expecting a camera crew to come barreling through. “Look, you've got to leave.”

“Not till you tell me-”

“I'll meet you in an hour. In San Juan. Los Rios district. D'you know it? Behind the Amtrak station. There's a tea place there. I don't know the name, but you'll see it when you cross the tracks. Turn to the right. It's on the left. Okay? An hour. I can't talk here.”

She shoved Charlie toward the door of the coffee room and quickly walked her back to reception. In the lobby she said heartily, “You've saved me about ten days of work. I can't thank you enough,” and she strong-armed her right out into the sunlight, where she said, “An hour,” in a low voice before disappearing back into the building where the door clicked shut behind her.

Charlie stared at the darkened glass, feeling her body like an unwieldy weight that she was supposed to propel to her car in some way. She tried to assimilate what Sharon had said-CBS, 60 Minutes, the local news-and she set the information next to what had happened and what she already knew. But none of it made sense. She felt like a passenger on the wrong airplane without a passport to show at her destination.

She stumbled to her car. The shivers came upon her there, so badly that she couldn't for a moment get the key into the ignition. But she finally managed to steady one hand with the other and in this manner, she started the engine.

Back down the drive and onto the highway, she wove her way in the direction of the coast. As she drove, she thought about all the things she'd heard about this stretch of road in the years she'd been in Southern California: how it was the ideal place for dumping bodies, frequented by such notable serial killers as Randy Kraft; how contract killings took place in its pull-outs and abandoned vehicles were set fire to in the gullies that bordered its sides; how drunks ran off the road and died at cliff bottoms, their bodies not to be recovered for months; how big rigs crossed the double yellow line and smashed head-on to obliterate anything in their paths.

What did it mean that Biosyn, Inc. was located here, of all places? And what did it mean that Eric Lawton was talking to someone from CBS?

Charlie had no answers. Only more questions. And the only option available to her was to find the tea house in the Los Rios district of San Juan Capistrano and hope that Sharon Pasternak was as good as her word.

She was. Seventy-one minutes after Charlie left Biosyn, Eric's colleague walked into the tea house, a building from the early 1900s, once the home of a founding family of the town. It was a good place for an assignation, the least likely spot any individual would choose with surreptitious activity on her mind. Coyly decorated with lace, teapots, antiques, hat stands, and chapeaux for the sartorial entertainment of its customers, it offered, at exorbitant prices, an American version of English afternoon tea.

Sharon Pasternak looked over her shoulder as she came into the building, where Charlie was seated at a table for two just inside the door. There was another table occupied in the room, a round one at which five women in hats borrowed from the establishment were having a merry birthday tea, looking in their anachronistic chapeaux as if Alice and the March Hare were about to join them.

“We need a different table,” Sharon told Charlie without preamble. “Come on.” She led the way to a second room and from there to a third at the back of the house. This was furnished with five small tables, but they were all empty, and Sharon strode to the one that was farthest from the door. “You can't come to

Biosyn again,” she told Charlie in a low voice. “Especially if you come asking for me. It's risky and obvious. If you'd come to talk to the Human Resources people-about Eric's retirement package or insurance or something-you might have gotten away with it. You and I running into each other in the hall or something. But this? No way. Marion's going to remember and she's going to tell Cabot. She's worked for him for thirty-five years- since he was just out of grad school, if you can believe it-and she's more loyal to him than she is to her husband. She calls him David, all stars in her eyes. By now, he knows you've put in an appearance and asked for me.”

“You said CBS,” Charlie began. “You said Sixty Minutes.”

“He came to me about Exantrum. His lab was working on something different, but he knew about Exantrum. Everyone in Division II knew. Everyone knows even if they pretend they don't.”

“His lab? Whose lab?”

“Eric's.”

“What're you talking about?”

“What d'you mean?”

“Why would Eric have had a lab? He was director of sales. He had meetings and business trips all over the country and… Why would he have a lab? He isn't… He wasn't…”

“Sales?” Sharon asked. “That's what he told you? You never knew?”

“What?”

“He's a molecular biologist.”

“A molecular…No. He was director of sales. He told me.” But what had he told her? And what, from his behavior and allusions, had she merely assumed?

“He's a biologist, Mrs. Lawton. I mean, he was. I ought to know since I worked with him. And he… listen, I have to ask this. I'm sorry, but I don't know how else to make sure… Did he die the way they said he died? He wasn't…? I wouldn't put it past Cabot to have him snuffed out. He's a secrecy freak. And even if he weren't, this stuff's so nasty that if Cabot knew Eric was taking it to CBS, believe me, he'd do something to stop him.”

“To stop him from what?”

“Contributing to the expose. Eric was blowing the whistle on Biosyn. He was scared shitless to do it-we both were scared shitless-but he'd made up his mind. I smuggled out a sample of Exantrum one night-and I can't even tell you how freaked out I was to get close to the stuff without a safety suit on-and I gave it to Eric. He was set to meet with the journalists, to hand it over so they could get it tested for themselves in Atlanta, and then… This was three weeks ago. I guess he might've met with them but he didn't say and then he was dead. There hasn't been even a sign at Biosyn that anything's the least bit wrong, so I started to think Eric never made contact and I wanted to get the name of the journalist myself to find out. That's what I was looking for at your house. The name of the journalist. Either that or the Exantrum. Because if he didn't make contact, I've got to get that stuff back into a controlled environment. Fast.”

Charlie stared at the woman. She couldn't digest the information she was being given quickly enough to make a coherent reply.

“I can see he didn't tell you any of this. He must've wanted to protect you. I admire that. It was decent of him. Typical, too. He was a great guy. But I wish he'd confided in you because then at least we'd know what we were dealing with here. We could set our minds at rest. As it is… Either that stuff's out there waiting to wreak havoc on the state of California or it's safe at the Centers for Disease Control. But in either case, I need to know.”

The Centers for Disease Control. “What is it?” Charlie asked, and the words sounded