Near Death (13 page)

Alex sprung the trap. “Would twenty thousand dollars help get you set up?” He couldn’t access his grant funds for something like this but he had savings in the bank.

The chemist sat up a bit straighter. “And where would I get that?”

“From me.”

“And you’d want me to do what?”

“Make this peptide for me—the most likely configuration.”

“How much of it do you need?”

“Milligrams for sure. Grams if possible.”

“When?”

“As soon as possible. Definitely before you leave for Mexico. I’ll give you ten thousand today, ten thousand on delivery.”

“You’d give me ten thousand dollars now?”

“Interested?”

Cifuentes fingered his beard again and whispered, “Jesus, I don’t know if there are enough hours in the day to get everything done.”

Alex had a spare check in his wallet. It had been tucked away for a while and it was a bit grimy. He unfolded it and began to write
Miguel Cifuentes
on the Pay to the Order line.

Cifuentes licked his lips as if he could taste the money. “Do you have a name for this molecule yet?”

“Only an informal one. I’m calling it the Uroboros compound.”

The chemist shrugged and snatched the check dangled seductively in front of his face.

Sixteen

Cyrus cracked off a mock salute as Marian and Marty left.

The garage door rumbled, the car engine came to life and they were gone. He had Tara to himself for three hours. He selfishly hoped she wouldn’t sleep the whole time.

Up in her room she was swaddled in layers of flannel, goose down and chiffon. He stood at the foot of her oversized bed and watched her breathe through her dry lips. Her eyes were closed. She was wearing padded headphones. The bedroom was packed with toys and stuffed animals and resembled a showroom at FAO Schwarz, years of gift-giving achingly compressed into a too brief period, credit cards swiped over and over to assuage grief. Cyrus felt a brief wave of compassion for good old Marty: the man probably didn’t know what else to do.

Tara’s eyes fluttered open and she pulled off her headphones. “Hi Daddy!”

“I’m sorry I woke you.”

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

“You weren’t?”

“No.”

“Sure looked like you were.”

“I was doing an Emily exercise.”

“What’s that?”

“She made me something for my iPod. Want to hear it?”

Cyrus squinted suspiciously, donned the headphones and began to listen to Dr. Frost’s voice speaking to Tara, invoking her name, seeking to soothe her with soft, mesmerizing suggestions.

“Tara, now I want you to take a deep breath way down into your belly. Let it go and hear the whoosh of the air coming out. And when you’re ready take another breath. Let it out with the whooshing sound, like the wind. Each breath leaves you more and more calm. Now, let your breathing slow down. Each time you breathe out silently, say to yourself ‘calm.’ Let that be your special word. ‘Calm.’ Breathe in and out. Make the whooshing sound with your lips. Say ‘calm’ each time. Just let go. Any bad thoughts, let them go. Let them go. Good. Now, Tara, imagine a place where you feel safe, secure and calm. Whether it’s indoors or outdoors or a place you’ve never even seen. You’re going there now. As you get there, you can see the shapes and colors of your special place, like a picture. And now you begin to hear the sounds of your special place. And now you
can feel your special place against your skin. Take a deep breath. And as you let the happiness of your special place spread through your body, enjoy it, let it nourish and calm you. Stay there a while, and remember, you can go back there anytime you like.”

He stripped off the headphones. Nothing too subversive. “Is it all like this?”

“Yes.”

“So what’s your special place?”

“My old room.”

“Which room?”

“You know, in our old house when Mommy and you were still married.”

Tara’s old bedroom in Sudbury was half the size, fairly dark, fewer toys, no TV, no Wii, no Playstation. Just a five year old’s bedroom with her original parents in her life. That was her special place.

Cyrus turned away so she wouldn’t see him tear up. He wiped his face with his palms, snorted back the secretions and asked her if she wanted to play a board game.

Midway through Chutes and Ladders, Avakian called. Cyrus let it ring through to voice mail but later, when he went to the kitchen to get juice for Tara and coffee for himself, he returned the call.

“I talked to the IT guy at Harvard,” Avakian reported. “Weller was checked into his lab the entire night when Bryce Tomalin was killed.”

“Shocking,” Cyrus deadpanned. “What about the pattern search?”

“It’s not too convincing one way or another. He’s pulled about a dozen all-nighters in the past three months on days we’ve got no known homicides. You could argue the guy’s a workaholic.”

“He may be,” Cyrus said, “but he’s other things too. How’s the other project?”

The kitchen phone started ringing.

“Slow. When are you coming in?” Avakian asked.

The voice message began to play through the speaker. “Oh, hi, Mister and Missus Taylor, this is Doctor Frost calling from Children’s. I was just checking on Tara and wanted …”

“Gotta go,” Cyrus said, abruptly hanging up on his partner. He grabbed the kitchen phone and hit Talk. “Hi, Doctor Frost, this is Tara’s dad, Cyrus O’Malley. How are you?”

She hesitated a moment, reacting to the surprise, he imagined. “Mister O’Malley! I was calling to see how Tara was doing.”

“When I came to visit this morning she was listening to your tape.”

“I see. Did you listen to it too?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“Very relaxing. Almost put me to sleep.”

She laughed. “Well, that’s part of the idea.”

“I didn’t hear the word
death
once, which is good.”

“We only talk about death and explore a child’s feelings about it if she asks. Tara hasn’t brought it up explicitly. She talks around it.”

“Like how?”

“For instance, last week she asked me what Daddy will do when she’s gone.”

“Jesus,” he whispered. “What did you say?”

“I told her that you’d be very sad for a while but you’d carry her in your heart forever.”

The tears started running again. “I will.”

“Of course you will.” He heard her take a breath. “I never properly thanked you for intervening after my fender bender.”

“It was nothing. The guy was a jerk. I’m good with them.”

“Still, thank you. It was very gentlemanly.”

The words slipped out without premeditated thought. “Maybe we could get a coffee sometime.”

He waited for one of those tiny moments of time that seem to take ages. “I’d like that.”

On his way up the stairs he asked himself,
Christ, Cyrus, did you just make a date?

Seventeen

Christmas week was dry and brutally cold. There were no big fronts heading toward New England so Christmas day would not be white.

Alex’s lab was quiet. His research fellows had left town to visit with their parents and Frankie Sacco didn’t have enough work to justify his brooding presence. Alex had patted him on the back and sent him home with the assurance he would fiddle the time cards so he’d be paid.

Alex came in early with a full day of experiments scripted in his head. He’d made progress on his new limbic receptor; in his notebooks it went by the designation LR-1. More and more, the evidence showed that he was dealing with a newly described type-2 sigma receptor—an electrifying discovery. For years he’d held the opinion that this poorly understood class of brain receptors well might play a role in near death experiences. The Uroboros compound had subpicomolar activity at the LR-1 receptor: minute, almost immeasurable concentrations had tremendously powerful activity. He was zeroing in on something important; he could feel it.

With the lab to himself and freed of inhibitions, he drew from a sad old well and began to part sing, part hum a medley of Christmas carols. He’d been a caroler in Liverpool as a boy. He and Joe had belonged to a church group that raised alms for the poor and he remembered the pride in his father’s face when the group serenaded the pub; but when he got to Dickie Weller’s favorite,
Good King Wenceslas
, his mood, already brittle, clouded.

Sire, the night is darker now
,

And the wind blows stronger
.

Fails my heart, I know not how
,

I can go no longer
.

He closed his eyes and saw his father standing on the other side of the river of light. Yes, he looked happy, but he was so alone, a solitary figure in an incomprehensible vastness. He wanted to be with him so badly it hurt. He had no more of the 854.73 fluid. All had been exhausted in experiments. He’d heard nothing from Cifuentes beyond an e-mail that he was working through synthetic problems. There was no way to reach his father.

Or was there?

It wasn’t the first time he’d had that thought. He’d beaten it out of his mind before, but the grayness of the day, the emptiness of the lab, the approaching Christmas—always a bleak holiday since the car crash—all these things conspired against him. There was a razor-sharp letter opener in his desk. He could sit down in his comfortable chair, cleanly slice the artery at his wrist, look at the sky one last time and in minutes he’d be there, in his father’s arms. Forever.

It would be easy, fast. All the troubles, all the struggles, his guilt over the killings would be over. Jessie would be sad and Joe would be bereft of family. He’d be abandoning his science before he had his answers; but still.

He shuffled robotically toward his office, toward the blade. At the very least, he’d hold it in his hand and think some more. Maybe he’d put it back in the drawer. Maybe he wouldn’t.

His body stiffened at the sound of urgent knocking against glass. He automatically shouted, “Come in!”

Cifuentes opened the laboratory door, smiled wearily, and when he saw no one else was there he held out a small box wrapped in glossy red wrapping paper adorned with a gold stick-on bow.

“Merry Christmas, Alex.”

“Miguel! I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Well, my friend, it’s the time of year when people traditionally exchange presents. Here.”

Alex accepted the package and said, “You’re embarrassing me. I’ve got nothing for you.”

“Oh, I think you do. Ten thousand dollars.”

Alex tore at the paper, muttering, “Christ, you’re joking! I’d no idea you’d finished.”

Nestled inside a cardboard box was a screw-capped bottle, three-quarters filled with fine, snowy-white crystals.

“Just over nine grams,” Cifuentes said proudly.

“My God!” Alex said. “That’s a huge amount!”

“I’m a very good chemist, Alex. And I’ve been working my butt off. I’ve got a method that produces excellent yields. I made the most stable of the possible isomeric forms, one with alternating cis and trans moieties. Here’s the structure.” He fished out a folded three-by-five card from his pocket.

Alex was overcome. “Unbelievable. This is really unbelievable. I can’t thank you enough, Miguel.” He blinked away some tears and added, “You’re a lifesaver, know that, mate?”

“Sure I am.” Cifuentes chuckled. “So listen, I’ve got to run. My wife’s going to kill me. I was in the lab all night doing the last purification step.”

Alex told him to wait for a second, hurried into his office and pulled open the desk drawer to retrieve his checkbook. The letter opener was there, shiny enough to reflect his dark eyes.

He gently touched the edge of the blade and asked his father to wait.

Less than a mile away, Cyrus was at a coffee shop on Brookline Avenue nervously checking his watch with the anticipation of a teenager. He had a nice warm table away from the entrance and was nursing a dark roast. Emily was only a few minutes late but he couldn’t help wondering if he was being stood up.

When she arrived she was bundled against the cold, her face half hidden in a scarf. She unwrapped it on the way to his table, exposing frosted cheeks. Sliding into the booth, she said hello and told him she’d need to keep her coat on till she warmed up.

“It’s brutal out there,” Cyrus agreed.

“I’m always cold,” she said. “It’s my southern blood.”

By the time her cappuccino arrived, she’d peeled off her gloves and removed her coat. They were done talking about the weather.

“I’m glad we could get together,” Cyrus said.

“I’m sorry it took a while to arrange. One of the doctors on my service broke her leg. It’s been hectic covering for her.”

He watched her sip at her coffee and suppressed a smile when it made a foamy moustache. “So, listen,” he began. “I want to apologize.”

“For what?”

“For unloading on you the first time we met. It wasn’t cool.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Mister O’Malley.”

“No, I do. It was a knee-jerk reaction.”

“But perfectly understandable.”

“You think so?”

“There’s nothing harder than having a sick child—nothing. The rules of civility can be legitimately suspended.”

He smiled at that. “For how long?”

“Well, not indefinitely.” She laughed. “But seriously, I’m sure it would have been better if both you and your ex-
wife had participated in the decision to have me consult on Tara’s case. You were blindsided.”

“I was.”

“How’s she doing?” she asked.

He rubbed his hands together, a nervous habit he’d recently picked up, but he stopped doing it out of self-consciousness when she noticed the gesture. “Every day she fades a little, sort of like an old photograph left in the sun. We’re losing her.”

He didn’t want to cry but his eyes began to sting. She responded by reaching out and touching his hand. It was a momentary gesture but feeling three cool fingertips against his skin was strangely calming.

Her blue eyes were damp too. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “She’s such a sweet child. It tears your heart out.”

She’s not putting it on
, he thought.
She loves my little girl too
. “I don’t want to let her go,” he whispered.