“Dr. Zuckerman couldn’t be trusted. She was weak and prone to panic. Not like you.”
Why didn’t Lucas shoot me?
“Did you kill your victims, Dr. Lucas? Or merely steal from their corpses?”
Lucas swallowed and his Adam’s apple bounced like a kid on a bungee.
“We would have made a great contribution.”
“Or a black market killing.”
Lucas’s lips curled in an imitation grin.
“You’re even better than I thought. All right. I do love it when the gloves come off. Let’s discuss science.”
“Let’s.”
Stall!
“Your president has sent ES cell research back to the twelfth century.”
“He acted out of a commitment to scientific ethics.”
“Ethics?” Lucas laughed.
“Their argument has no validity?”
My thoughts were fragmenting. It was becoming harder and harder to think.
“That the retrieval of stem cells requires the killing of little babies? That stem cell researchers are no better than Mengele and his Nazi mutilators? You call that bullshit scientific ethics?”
Lucas waved his gun at a list of safety regulations taped to the wall.
“A blastocyst is no larger than the dot on that ‘i.’”
“It is life.” My words sounded slurry and far away.
“Throwaways from fertility treatments. The discards of aborted pregnancies.”
Lucas’s agitation was growing. I was doing this all wrong.
“Hundreds of thousands suffer from Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, crushed spinal cords. We could have helped them.”
“That was Zuckerman’s goal?”
“Yes.”
“And yours was to fatten your wallet.”
“Why not?” Spittle glistened at the corners of his mouth.
“Mechanical hearts. Pharmaceuticals. Patents on orthopedic hardware. A smart doctor can make millions.”
“By killing or just stealing embryos?”
Hadn’t I asked that eons earlier?
“Zuckerman would have taken forever mixing eggs and sperm in her little dishes. My way was quicker. It would have worked.”
I wanted to close my eyes.
“You know it’s over,” I said.
“It’s over when I say it is.”
I wanted to stop hearing and sleep.
“Zuckerman’s death will be solved. Her lab has been seized.”
“You lie.” The bottom rim of his eye twitched.
“Two detectives are on their way here. I was to meet them.”
Lucas wet his lips.
I hammered on, barely conscious of what I was saying.
“The truth is coming out about Chupan Ya. We’re putting on record what happened to those poor people.” My knees began to buckle. “And the blackmail’s over. Diaz’s involvement in the massacre has been exposed. He won’t be your patsy anymore.”
Lucas’s fingers tightened on the grip of the pistol.
“Jorge Serano is in custody. They’ll cut him a deal and he’ll give you up.”
A derisive laugh. “Give me up for what, stealing a few dead embryos?”
“For murdering Patricia Eduardo.”
Lucas’s gaze remained level and unblinking.
“That skeleton’s long gone. Its identity will always be conjecture.”
