Banks grimaced. “What did she say, at least?”
Dopp grabbed the thin transcript off his desk, which Trent had handed him only minutes before. “Here,” he said, bringing the transcript close to his face. “Yesterday, Trent asked her, ‘How are things at the clinic these days?’
“And she said, ‘Okay. Frustrating that I’m not seeing patients. I’ve been seeing more of that inspector lately, though.’
“‘Really, how come?’
“‘It’s part of their new policy to monitor doctors now.’
“‘That must bother you, doesn’t it?’
“‘Yeah, it’s annoying. But not that big a deal. By the way, I wanted to tell you about this book.…’”
Dopp sighed in disgust and slammed the page onto his desk. “Why doesn’t she seem to care that you’re there, watching her, all day?”
“She doesn’t seem to care,” Banks said. “But she did change the subject right afterwards, like she didn’t want to dwell on it.”
Dopp seized the transcript again. Rereading it, Arianna’s words seemed both flippant and circumspect, as if a secret lurked between the lines.
“That is strange,” he agreed. “She didn’t appear to react at all. It’s unnatural. She must be holding back for some reason. Lying.”
“She just needs to be broken down,” Banks said. “I’m telling you, Gideon, she has the Devil’s force in her. If you had to be with her, you’d know.”
“Trust me, I know. Now, today’s your last chance this week, so go and stay by her side all day.”
* * *
To witness time passing, those in the outside world looked up at the sun and the moon; Sam looked down at his petri dishes. Eight of them lined a shelf in the incubator, all injected with the slightest variances of molecular growth factors. Since Wednesday night, when he had extracted stem cells from the embryos Trent brought him, and then altered the cells with injections, he had not slept for more than an hour and a half. Every two hours, he carried the dishes, one by one, to his inverted microscope to check on the progress of their growth. Every two hours, he jotted down notes, checked them against previous attempts, and returned them to the incubator. Each dish was carefully labeled, one through eight, with a corresponding chart of which molecules he had injected in each. After an injection, it took about thirty-six hours for the cells to differentiate into their final form. To Sam, it was always a period of time both hateful and exhilarating, thirty-six hours of pacing and nervousness brought on by renewed hope. And despite hundreds of attempts, it was always followed by a thirty-seventh hour of gut-wrenching disappointment.
His stomach was rumbling when the two-hour alarm on his cell phone went off again, near his head on the cot. For this batch of experiments, it would be the last time he needed to get up, open the incubator, and carry the dishes to his microscope. It was during these final two hours that the cell development had often faltered, spewing mistakenly differentiated cells like a malfunctioning vending machine. But recently the cells had been tantalizingly close to the goal, developing as astrocytes or microglia instead of oligodendrocytes, like Cokes instead of Diet Cokes.
Sam’s eyelids drooped. Even though he would never admit it, part of him longed for the days when Patrick and Ian were here, and the three of them switched twelve-hour shifts to monitor the cells. And then, after Ian had quit, he and Patrick had each taken on eighteen hours—exhausting, though not unthinkable. But to handle thirty-six hours alone was close to disorienting. He did not know if he was hungry for breakfast or dinner, or which was even appropriate. And his circadian rhythm was disrupted. Was he dreaming that he was opening the incubator, cradling the warm circular dish in his palm, walking to the inverted microscope on the counter? Had he even fallen asleep at all? He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them wide. They felt dry and scratchy. Yes, he was awake.
He consulted the label on the dish in his palm: number one. The first of eight chances, he thought as he slid the dish under the microscope’s indifferent lens.
* * *
The flat-panel screen on Arianna’s office wall let out a screeching whistle, followed by bursts of red light. Unfazed, she barely glanced up as she hit the OFF button on her remote. Inspector Banks’s prompt morning arrival was as consistent as the numbness in her legs. She no longer bothered to wheel herself to the waiting room to greet him. Oppressive though his presence was, together they had slipped into a tense routine—first, he would walk unescorted down the hall to her office, and then they would silently proceed to the laboratory at the rear of the clinic. After his inspection, she would sign the same bureaucratic form and then he would follow her back to her office, where he would plant himself in a chair across from her. Arianna hardly ever initiated conversation, and neither did he. As she updated patients’ files and accounts, she tried to avoid his gaze, but she could always feel his empty-looking eyes feasting on her, like a vulture waiting to swoop upon a dying animal.
While she found him nearly unbearable, she sensed that he somewhat enjoyed the hours. He never sighed or made a point of checking his watch, but rather leaned back in the chair, the epitome of patience. The other day, she had deigned to ask him if he was bored.
“No true Christian is ever bored,” he had replied. “There’s always a passage from the Scriptures to think about.”
Great, she thought, all I need in my office is a Sunday school.
Now she heard his shoes slapping down the hallway.
At least—at the very least—it was Friday.
* * *
Trent nodded at the towering presence in his doorway. Dopp’s voice filled the tiny office with a suffocating fullness.
“Make sure,” Dopp said, “that you are in the park at four forty-five today to watch her leave. Banks will be with her until then. And then if she goes straight home, call and tell
