Near Death (12 page)

“I miss you.”

“Then you’re going to have to come here, mate. I met a lady who’s got loose girlfriends. We’ll get you taken care of.”

“I can’t change your mind?”

“You sure you’re all right?” Joe asked. “You’re not trying to tell me you’ve got two months to live or some bollocks like that.”

“No, I’m good. Really.”

“Well, that’s fine then. You’re good, I’m good, the whole bloody world is good.”

Alex learned the name of the girl from the papers. Bryce. He held the tube up to the light. Bryce’s clear, pure 854.73 fluid, lots of it, thanks to her tender age and refinements he’d made in the purification process.

Every drop was hard fought.

The girl had struggled to hold on to life. And four days after the murder, Cyrus O’Malley wanted to meet again. Alex had listened to the early morning voice mail and rushed into the bathroom to inspect his face. The swelling had gone down but the scratch marks, though healing, were plainly visible. He’d told Jessie he’d slipped on the ice and done a face-plant. She always believed what he told her, cooed in sympathy and gently applied antibiotic ointment with the tip of her finger.

O’Malley wouldn’t be so gullible. He was on his way to Alex’s lab and would be waiting for him.

The bathroom vanity was crowded with Jessie’s tubes and jars. He started working on a particularly long, angry streak on his cheek. First some foundation makeup smeared in, then a twirl of powder, then a few light wipes with a bit of toilet paper: Jessie’s technique. The scar disappeared. The others followed.

The meeting with O’Malley had been brief by the clock, long by perception. He was sure the FBI agent was scrutinizing his face but he’d kept the fluorescent lights off; the natural light of his office and makeup seemed to do the trick. The discussion revolved around Alex’s whereabouts the night Bryce Tomalin was killed. When Alex replied he’d spent all night tending to an experiment in his lab he thought he detected incipient eye rolling from O’Malley. Then came a second request to attend a salon, which he parried by explaining that there wouldn’t be any more till next year. As O’Malley was leaving, Alex politely asked after Tara and received a curt reply: she was fine. And that was it.

It took a quarter of an hour sitting quietly at his desk before he was composed enough to get on with his day.

This time he was sure he had a sufficient quantity to finish his analytical studies—that is, if he restrained himself and didn’t use too much for personal trips. A
colleague in a lab across the quadrangle who specialized in protein and peptide chemistry gave him after-hours access to her Applied Bio Voyager system to do peptide fingerprinting.

Once he had good mass data, he plodded ahead toward identification of the elusive structure doing ion trap mass spectroscopy on her Agilent XCTplus machine. One night rolled into another. The data wasn’t making sense, things weren’t fitting together. He needed help but was scared to ask for it. He’d keep pressing forward on his own.

It got dark quickly this time of year. Even though he and Jessie were having an early dinner, it was already black outside. He wasn’t talkative and she followed his lead. They ate in silence like a couple of Trappist monks. Afterward, he helped clear the table.

“Do you have to go back to the lab tonight?”

“Not tonight.”

“What then?” she asked. “You’re in a mood. I can tell.”

“What kind of mood?”

“You’ve got something on your mind.”

“I’ve always got something on my mind.”

She put down the pot scrubber, dried her hands and laid them on his chest. “You’ve got another sample, don’t you? You want to take it again.”

He kissed her. “Does anyone in the world know me as well as you?”

That made her smile. “No, just me. When?”

“Now. The dishes can wait.”

He readied himself on the bed and Jessie obediently lay beside him, her head propped on an elbow. He gently moved strands of hair and secured them behind her ear so he could see her face better. Sometimes, he’d study that face when she didn’t know he was watching. There was a sorrow in her moist green eyes that disappeared whenever he allowed her to dote on him. He filled a deep void, a chasm. Without him, where would she be? How would she get along? It was an abstract question. He needed her as much as she needed him.

He had a pipette in his hand. “I shouldn’t take this,” he said softly.

“Why not?”

“
You
should.”

“Me? Why?”

“Because I love you.”

She liked hearing him say that but then admitted, “It scares me.”

“Don’t be scared. I want you to know the joy I felt.”

She frowned like a little girl. “Will I be okay?”

“Yes.”

She let out a sorrowful, dutiful sigh. “Okay.”

He didn’t give her time to change her mind. “Open your mouth for me.” He let the drops slide under her tongue and kissed her when she swallowed. “Here, let me make you comfortable.” He sat her up, unbuttoned her blouse, took it off then unsnapped her bra. After he kissed each breast, he fetched one of his clean T-shirts, the ones she liked to sleep in. She slipped it on. He helped her out of her jeans and laid her back down, her red tresses overflowing a red pillow.

In his most soothing, caring voice, he bade her to close her eyes and breathe slowly and deeply. Then he held her hand, watched, and waited until ten minutes passed and her tight grip relaxed and went slack.

“Jessie?” he whispered.

He gently prodded her, then a stronger shake.

Her breathing was faster, her heart rate accelerated but she looked peaceful. He lifted an eyelid and saw the tranquility of a green eye and normal pupillary reaction to light.

He felt compelled to look at the ceiling: if she was hovering and looking down on the bed, he wanted her to see how calm and happy he was. He said to the ceiling, “I love you,” and returned to tending her physical needs and protecting her during her journey.

At once it dawned on him that he was a scientist and even though this was Jessie, this also was an experiment. He hurriedly checked his watch and began to make time-based entries on a notepad grabbed from the dresser: her runway time, her heart and respiratory rates, her skin color and temperature.

Her fingers were making small grasping movements, which he noted. Her calf muscles were twitching. Each small sound she uttered he captured phonetically, every
ahhh
,
uh
,
hmmm
,
phoo
.

After a further fifteen minutes of tranquility she became restless and the beatific look on her face replaced with a strong grimace. She thrashed, rather violently. He held and talked to her, telling her everything was all right and that he was there with her.

Where was she in her journey? Was she being sucked off the stepping-stones in reluctant return?

Then, she was back, staring at him through wide green eyes that flooded with tears the moment she recognized his face. “Alex.”

“I’m here, Jessie.”

“I never …” She choked on her sobs and began to cough.

He sat her up, gently thumped her back, and held her. “I know,” he said. “At least I think I know. Tell me when you’re able.”

“I-I was there,” she finally sputtered.

“How was it? Was it beautiful?”

“Yes.”

“How did it make you feel?”

“Happier than I’ve ever been. More than happy … I don’t have a word for it.”

“Did you see anyone?”

She nodded and began to sob again. He waited for her to cry herself out. “Gran.”

“Your Grandmother Martha?”

She nodded.

“I’m not surprised.”
The only one who’d ever treated little Jessie with tenderness
. He knew the family history well.

She used some of the tissues he handed her. “She looked lovely. She was so happy to see me. She wanted me to cross over. I almost made it …” Her voice petered out.

Alex clenched his fist triumphantly behind his back. “I know,” he said. “I know.” Then he asked, “How close did you get to her?”

“I made it to the last stepping-stone.”

His eyes narrowed. “That’s closer than I got!”
Bryce was the youngest
, he thought.

The younger the better
.

“And Alex,” she said after a while.

“Yes?”

“I think God was there.”

Fifteen

His face was cello-shaped, too young for jowls but ample and bottom-heavy. With age and prosperity the jowls surely would come. His beard, cropped and black, spread lavishly over fleshy tan cheeks. He rubbed at the dense growth in a deliberately pensive way, as if to counter youthfulness with the theatrical gesture of gravitas. A single sheet of paper lay before him.

“So … what do you think?” Alex asked.

Miguel Cifuentes was a gregarious sort of fellow who gave off an air of familiarity even to those meeting him for the first time. Alex had made his acquaintance three years earlier in the cafeteria, when without invitation Cifuentes joined him and amiably introduced himself.

Alex learned Cifuentes was an organic chemist, newly arrived from Mexico City where he’d recently received his PhD from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He’d come to Harvard to work in the lab of the legendary molecular biologist Martin Longacre, and he made it abundantly clear to Alex that he was one of the best young chemists to come out of the best chemistry program at the
best university in Mexico. And miraculously, he was able to make these declarations without coming across as boastful or arrogant. His jovial self-confidence, then as now, proved to be thoroughly disarming.

Cifuentes finally spoke. “This is an interesting molecule.”

“Yes it is.”

The chemical structure on the page was computer-generated, based on countless hours of hard labor. Alex had been staring at it for the past two days so intently that he felt it had burned itself onto his retinas. He saw it on the mirror when he shaved in the morning. He saw it on the windshield of his car. He saw it floating in front of him whenever he closed his eyes.

Five amino acids, the building blocks of life, linked to one another in a daisy chain, a circle. A circle, believe it or not! Like the Uroboros! How perfect!

“What is it?” Cifuentes asked.

Alex had a rehearsed answer, part truth, part artifice. “It’s a novel neuropeptide—at least I think it’s novel. I can’t find it in any online databases. It’s from the spinal fluid of mice and dogs.”

“And it’s important why?”

“It’s not normally present in detectable quantities. But it’s produced in abundance during the moments before death.”

Cifuentes snorted. “What else would I expect from you, eh?”

Alex played along. “Yeah, what else?”

“What’s its locus of activity? Any idea?”

“I’ve found a new receptor in the limbic areas of the brain. But it’s early days. I haven’t even filed patents. It looks like this peptide binds like crazy in the amygdala and hippocampus.”

“Ah, the old parts of the brain, the seat of the soul,” Cifuentes said brightly.

“Good for you,” Alex replied. “I’m duly impressed.”

Cifuentes responded well to the stroking. “And the purpose of these receptors is?”

Alex was evasive. “To be determined. But I’m pretty excited.”

The chemist waved his hand at Alex’s paper. “So, it’s a cyclic pentapeptide, five different amino acids, molecular weight about six hundred fifty. I’ll take your word that it’s novel. I’ve certainly never seen it before.”

Alex tapped the page with his forefinger. “Can you make it?”

“Which one?”

Alex shook his head in confusion and tapped the diagram again. “This one!”

“Okay, time for a lesson in chemistry,” the Mexican said with his trademark benign pomposity. “The compound has five chiral centers, see?” He took out his pen and pointed in turn to five carbon atoms in the ring. “Each one of these carbons can be cis or trans, up or down, mirror images of one another. With five chiral centers you can have thirty-two possible forms. So if your question is, ‘Can you make it, Miguel?’ my question back to you is, ‘Which one?’”

“Christ,” Alex whispered, his frustration palpable.

“Well, it’s not quite as bad as all that,” Cifuentes added. “Not all the forms are going to be stable. I can take you through the conformational physics if you’ve got the stomach for it, but some of the hypothetical combinations can’t exist in nature.”

“How many?”

“I’d have to do some work on it but I can see at least a dozen that are physically impossible or improbable.”

“What about the
most
probable ones?” Alex asked with a touch of renewed hope.

“Look, if I had the time, I could model it out and list them in a probabilistic ranking but I’m a short-timer.”

Alex vaguely remembered the details from their last cafeteria conversation. “When are you going back?”

“Less than a month. And man, am I busy trying to finish up! Between Professor Longacre and my wife, my balls are in a vice.”

“I need your help, Miguel,” Alex pleaded. “You’re the best peptide chemist I know.”

“I’m certain of that,” Cifuentes replied with a grin. “But I’m not going to be able to take this on now. Maybe when I get my own lab set up in Mexico City. Give me three, maybe six months, and I’ll collaborate with you. Okay, my friend?”

Alex remembered with exquisite detail the way the chemist perennially complained about his finances. He and his wife scrimped to get by on a postdoc fellow’s salary and she couldn’t get a work permit—not that she had the time anyway with the young kids. Though Miguel came from a reasonably comfortable middle-class family—his father owned a marginally profitable shoe factory—it wasn’t until he came to Boston that he realized how impoverished he was relative to his American friends.

Alex looked into the young man’s chestnut-colored eyes and had a brainstorm. “Did you rent an apartment yet in Mexico City?”

“Yeah. The lease starts in January.”

“Nice place?”

“Nicer than what we’ve got here in Jamaica Plain but still a dump.”

“They’re not going to be paying well?”

Cifuentes grimaced. “Junior faculty, man. What can I say? Maria’s going to go back to work but we’ll have to pay for a nanny so it won’t be a big net positive. It’ll take a while but I’ll get there. Full professors live pretty well in Mexico, and who knows, maybe I’ll jump ship and work for a drug company to make some serious coin.”