Red Clover (16 page)

Later, Lee went over to the inn for a late dinner. After his meeting with Stonebugger, he looked forward to seeing a friendly face. When he sat down at the bar, he saw CJ several yards away with her back to him. When she turned toward him, the bruise on the side of her face was noticeable even in the dimly lit room.

She walked toward him, her expression as serious as he had ever seen it.

“What on earth happened to you?”

“Nothing. I’m just clumsy.” She proceeded to pour him a beer. Lee waited for her to make eye contact, and when she didn’t he reached out to touch her arm, but she turned and scooted away before he could get her attention.

CJ continued to avoid him. When he signaled for her to come get his food order, she said something to the other bartender, who then went over to take Lee’s order.

He left the inn as soon as he had finished his dinner, without ever speaking to CJ, and sat in his car in the parking lot for two hours until the bar closed. When CJ eventually came out and headed toward her car, he got out and approached her.

“CJ, I need to talk to you,” he said, walking up behind her.

She didn’t turn around to face him. “Not tonight.”

He continued to follow her. “CJ, please stop and talk to me.”

“No!” She unlocked her car door and proceeded to climb in.

“Is everything all right, CJ?” a deep male voice behind Lee shouted.

CJ waved to the inn’s other bartender standing just outside the front door, started her car, and drove away, leaving Lee standing alone in the middle of the parking lot.

“You’d best be going,” the bartender said to Lee.

Lee turned around and acknowledged him with a nod before he headed toward his car, wondering what that had been about.

For the next few days, Lee thought of nothing else beyond his two challenges: how to get a second crack at convincing Stonebugger to let him support Dr. Rad’s research and how to affirm CJ’s general well-being without making her feel like he was interfering in her life. CJ wasn’t actually a close friend—he didn’t even have her phone number—and he ran the risk of alienating her if he meddled in her personal affairs.

Both issues mattered to him, and Lee wasn’t sure which one would affect him more if it didn’t have a favorable outcome.

14 | “You Need to Leave”

Lee called Stonebugger’s office and left a voice-mail message requesting a meeting. Two days later, when his second voice-mail message went unanswered, Lee called a third time. This time his secretary answered. She apologized for not getting back to him, but Mr. Stonebugger had taken a leave of absence, and she was having difficulty following up with everyone in a timely manner.

“I have business with him, and it’s important,” Lee told her. “What can I do?”

She suggested he write a letter stating his business and send it to her and she would talk to him about it.

Frustrated with the impending delay in dealing with Stonebugger, Lee rambled into the sunroom and plopped down on the chair nearest the windows. The reflection of the trees on the lake had a calming effect and reminded Lee of the trees on his property where he planned to build the house.

What would cause someone to take a leave of absence? Illness probably. But based on what the secretary had said, Stonebugger was well enough to work from home. Maybe it was a family member. Whatever the case, with Ebenezer’s attention to his work now compromised, Lee figured he needed more ammunition than ever to fire at him, and the most promising source was Dr. Rad.

The long drive to Peoria gave Lee time to think about how he could construct a new letter to Stonebugger with his plan. He would have to be judicious in the way he crafted it, as this second chance would likely be his last.

He found Dr. Rad slumped in the same chair he had been sitting in during the last visit, with the same blanket draped over his lap and wearing the same broken facial expression. This surprised Lee, as he had left Dr. Rad in good spirits just weeks earlier.

“It’s good to see you again, Dr. Rad,” he said.

Dr. Rad responded with a nod.

“I need to pick your brain on something.”

“I’m afraid there may not be much to pick from, son,” he said weakly.

“Please bear with me. This is important.”

Dr. Rad nodded.

“Tell me all you know about the parallelism between cancer in plants and humans.”

The doctor shook his head and viewed Lee with lifeless eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“Tell me where you are going with this.”

“The last time I was here, you gave me the go-ahead to try to help you get back on track with your research. I think, if I’m very smart about it, I can do just that. But I need your help.” He paused. “Please don’t give up on this.”

“For whose benefit are you doing this, Lee?”

“Mine. I couldn’t care less about you,” he said through a smile.

Dr. Rad’s suppressed smile revealed he understood the sarcasm in Lee’s remark. “Okay. I’ll give you the big picture, and if you want, you can go through my journals and pick up the smaller details.”

“That’s just what I wanted to hear.”

Lee spent the next three hours listening to Dr. Rad talk about plant cancer, specifically crown gall disease. He told Lee of two Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine consultants who had recently completed research that involved using the plant alkaloid camptothecin to interfere with cancerous tumors in monkeys. Dr. Rad was excited about their findings and thought their groundbreaking research could potentially augment his own.

“I have to ask you, Dr. Rad, why didn’t you pursue working with them?”

“I tried, but at that time, the university was already focusing on other research, and I didn’t have the financial support I needed.”

When they finished talking, Lee stayed for a lunch prepared by Dr. Rad’s sister, and then went into the spare bedroom where all the doctor’s research books, journals, and notes were stored. He turned down the invitation to join them for dinner and instead worked long into the evening. Between what he had gathered that day and the copious notes he had taken when he had interned with Dr. Rad, he believed he had everything he needed.

“I ran across your notes on Henrietta Ray,” he said to Dr. Rad afterwards. “Can you tell me what the connection is between what she’s doing at Texas A&M and your research?”

“She’s using red clover to try to convert some of the leaf cell chemicals in order to prevent protein from breaking down, so the cattle or sheep or whatever animals graze on it get more protein in their systems. She wanted to know more about some of my extraction techniques.”

“Your notes ended rather abruptly. What happened?”

“I’m not sure. She stopped communicating for some reason.”

Lee prepared to leave. The expression on Dr. Rad’s face, and the brusque wave he gave Lee on his way out, told Lee the good doctor might still not be completely on board with him, but he wasn’t going to let that deter him. He was on a mission.

The next day, he contacted his former Cornell biochemistry professor and told him of Dr. Rad’s research and the potential link to the recent research performed at Johns Hopkins University. The professor told Lee he had met one of the Hopkins researchers at a conference in Washington the previous month and was intrigued with the idea of getting him and Dr. Rad together. He offered to contact him.

Next, Lee called Robin and asked her if she could help him get letters of recommendation from the University of Illinois regarding Dr. Rad’s research. She was certain she could, given that her father was still the dean of students there and had connections.

The next call he made was the most difficult, but it had the potential of having the greatest impact on Dr. Rad’s work.

“Hello, Father?”

“Yes.”

“How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

“I have a favor to ask of you.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m told the University of Wisconsin has plans to build a medical research facility outside of Lake Geneva. They’re not publicly disclosing this, but I have reason to believe they may be using unprecedented plant genetic modification techniques in their research at this new facility.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“I’m getting to that. Do you remember Dr. Rad, the U of I researcher I worked under as an intern in between semesters at Cornell?”

“Vaguely.”

“Well, he has done phenomenal work in this area, and I would like to put the right people at UW in touch with him. I was hoping that with your contacts, you could help me with that.”

Silence.

“Are you still there?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“So can you help me with this?”

“Send me something I can work with. Keep it short...and intelligent. Anything else?”

“No, Father. That was it. Goodbye.”

* * *

It didn’t take long for Lee’s former Cornell professor to tell him the Hopkins researcher was interested in Dr. Rad’s work and would meet with him. A few days later, Lee received a glowing letter of recommendation for Dr. Rad from the chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Illinois.

After hearing nothing back from his father two weeks after he had personally delivered the synopsis of Dr. Rad’s genetic modification work to him, he asked his mother about it.

“He’s been very busy lately.”

“He has no intention of making the call, does he?”

“I’m sure he’ll get to it as soon as he can, Lee.”

“It means a lot to me.”

“I know, dear.”

Surrendering to the expectation that his father wouldn’t come through, Lee drafted a three-page letter to Stonebugger that he believed contained the right balance of science and persuasion. He drove to the nearest mailbox and said a silent prayer as he dropped it in. Then he drove to his property where the contractor had broken ground for his house the day before.

The sight of an excavator, bulldozer, and front-end loader made him beam. If it hadn’t been for his research on what it took to build a house, he would have had no idea what these things were or what they were used for. He walked to the edge of the massive hole that would be the basement and foundation for the house.

Later, he went to the inn for “a cold one.” He was disappointed CJ was not behind the bar.

“Where’s CJ tonight?” he asked the bartender.

“Called in sick.”

He downed his beer and left.

Lee headed west toward Durand where CJ lived, although he didn’t know what he would do once he got there. When he reached her house, which was only partially visible from the road, he pulled onto the shoulder and sat for a few moments. He wished he had her phone number, as a phone call would have been far less intrusive than a knock on her door. The more he thought about knocking, the more he thought that was a bad idea. Sighing, he put the car in drive and pulled up a couple of feet to turn around and head home.

He shot one last glance toward her house and saw the tail end of a sheriff’s patrol car in her driveway. Lee knew McHenry County had more than one sheriff’s car in its fleet, but odds were this one belonged to the father of CJ’s children. His mind raced through the possible scenarios of why DeRam would be there. Perhaps CJ had called in sick in order to spend time with him—a discouraging thought, but he had to consider the possibility. His next thought was even more disturbing: what if she was in trouble and needed help?

Lee instinctively got out of the car and started walking up the driveway toward the house.

“No! I said no!”

CJ’s voice was unmistakable.

Lee ran to the door and tried to open it. It was locked. He backed up to get a running start and slammed his body against it. The door gave way, and he flew into CJ’s living room, landing on his shoulder not ten feet from her and DeRam, whose trousers were partially down. The half-naked sheriff had CJ pressed up against the sofa. The fear on her face incited Lee to act.

Words he had heard his karate masters speak through the years raced through his head.

Keep a calm mind and your emotions under control.

Use words first before you strike.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” De Ram shouted.

Lee stood tall. “Get off her,” he said in a calm voice.

“Mind your own goddamn business!” DeRam’s upper body twisted as he reached over CJ toward his utility belt that lay on the sofa cushion next to them and grabbed his gun.

Using a move he hadn’t practiced since his last karate class, Lee deftly kicked the gun out of his hand and sent it flying into the hallway.

The look of surprise on DeRam’s red face quickly turned into a menacing scowl. “What the fuck?”

Clumsily pulling up his pants, he stood and faced Lee.

“Get in the other room,” Lee said to CJ, without taking his eyes off DeRam. She did as he said.

“You fucking bastard. Who the hell do you think you are busting in here like that?” He glanced over to where his gun had landed.

“You need to leave.”

“You know who you’re talking to, prick head? You’ve just busted into someone else’s home and damaged her property in the process. I ought to arrest you.”

Lee maintained his composure. “You need to leave.”

DeRam took a step closer, showing Lee his clenched fist, as he used the other hand to hold up his pants. “You’re going to be taught a lesson, rich boy.”

“I wouldn’t try that if I were you.”

DeRam lunged at him.

Lee ducked out of his way.

“Now you’re really pissing me off, you son-of-a-bitch.”

Though fighting the urge to explode, Lee managed to remain calm, exactly as he had been taught in karate class.

DeRam lunged repeatedly, and each time Lee ducked out of his way. Then DeRam bent over, pulled out a knife from underneath his pant leg, and lifted it as though to strike. Lee heard a gasp from CJ, who was now peering around the corner from the hallway.

Lee kicked the knife from DeRam’s hand, inflicting a strong reverse foot punch to his forehead. He executed the blow in such a way as to stun DeRam and avoid causing a serious injury. Lee then initiated a side-thrust kick to his ribs that caused the sheriff to collapse to the floor. CJ ran into the room to retrieve both the gun and the knife and then quickly ran out again.