Shadows of Lancaster County (26 page)

“Sorry, French was another bigwig in the field of DNA research. In 1990, he treated some kids who had severe combined immunodeficiency by removing cells from the patients, growing them in the lab, inserting the missing genes into the cells, and then reinserting them into the patients’ bodies.”

“Is that what’s meant by gene therapy?”

“Yes, that’s the most common approach, replacing a missing or nonfunctional gene with a normal one by inserting it into a nonspecific location within the genome. Geneticists may also choose to swap genes through homologous recombination or selective reverse mutation. Or they can regulate the degree to which an abnormal gene is turned off.”

“Okay. I understood about ten percent of what you just said.”

“Sorry. In plain English, the hardest part of gene manipulation is getting the genes back into the body and making sure that they go to the right place and do the right thing once they get there. It’s a very complex process.”

His words echoed similar comments Melody had made earlier.

“So was the study described by Dr. Updyke in this file a success or a failure?”

“A little of both, I guess. It was a step in the right direction, but it wasn’t a cure. The study was closed out by the end of that year. According to the FDA, that was the last approved study Dr. Updyke conducted. Now keep reading.”

I glanced out of the window at the curvy road in front of us and realized I was starting to feel vaguely carsick. I told Reed as much, asking if he could pull over before I went any further.

“Sure. I think this is what I was looking for anyway,” he said, putting on his blinker and turning onto a gravel road. It led us through a field on someone’s back acreage. When we reached the end, he simply stopped the car and put it in park, though he left the engine running for the heater’s sake.

Hoping it was okay to be trespassing out here, I returned my attention to the pages in front of me, moving on to the next patient file. This one was dated January 1995 and began the same as the previous one, with the notation
Newborn presents with Wolfe-Kraus syndrome.
This time, however, no study was mentioned. From the series of treatment notes that followed, the child was given some sort of procedure and then seen a number of times over the next three months. Unlike the first file, however, entire paragraphs from this report had been blacked out, so it was hard to tell everything that had been done. Near the end, it was noted that the child had a “significant tumor on the pituitary.” At the bottom of the page, Doug had circled the last sentence:
Tumor proved fatal. File closed on this date of April 6, 1995, HU, MD.

“Does WKS cause tumors?” I asked Reed.

“No,” he said, studying the horizon in front of us. “But gene therapy can.”

I took a deep breath, trying to understand. “So you think this file shows that Dr. Updyke tried gene therapy again on another patient, even though the study was finished?”

“Yes.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Unless it’s part of an FDA-approved trial, gene therapy is unethical, not to mention illegal.”

“So why try to skirt around the law? Why not just do another study?”

Reed shrugged.

“Lots of reasons. The application process is grueling. Once you submit it to the FDA, approval can take forever—if the study you’re proposing even gets approved. All results have to be reported, tons of paperwork has to be done, and on and on. All deaths must be carefully autopsied. With DNA research, human trials are so heavily regulated that every time a researcher wants to modify a treatment, they practically have to start back at square one. I’m guessing that Dr. Updyke followed the rules that one time and then decided that was for the birds and just did it on the sly after that. To be honest, back then a lot of researchers were going that route. It wasn’t until 1999 that the FDA really cracked down, and even then they got serious only because a young man died from a gene therapy procedure, one that had broken all sorts of rules.”

“Yeah, Melody mentioned that.”

Outside, a flock of birds landed in the field next to us and began pecking at the ground.

“So all the heavy regulation on DNA human trials is a bad thing?” I asked.

“On the contrary,” Reed replied emphatically. “It’s absolutely, vitally necessary. We can never, ever underestimate the implications of gene manipulation, especially if modified genes get into the germline. Approved studies are a lot of trouble, but considering the consequences, that trouble is worth it.”

He was getting technical again, so rather than ask what “the germline” was, I looked again at the pages from the file and the words obscured throughout.

“I wonder if there’s any way to recover the text that’s been blacked out.”

“We should find out soon,” Reed replied. “The FBI is working on that as we speak.”

I gasped, putting one hand to my mouth.

“You turned this over to the FBI?” I asked, wondering how Bobby was involved and if he was going to end up going back to jail—if he was
ever found. I wondered if maybe that’s why he had wanted to disappear, because he couldn’t take the thought of yet another conviction and sentence.

“Keep reading,” Reed said, gesturing toward the papers in my lap.

I did as he said, noting that there were two more patient files. One was very brief, with a single entry that indicated prenatal testing for WKS had been conducted on a twenty-one-year-old pregnant woman, one who had lost two infants to the disorder in the past. The fetus she was currently pregnant with, however, tested negative. At the end of that entry was the sentence:
Patient indicates that her mother, age forty, is also pregnant, due in August. I have recommended testing for her as well, particularly considering her age. File closed on this date of December 21, 1996, HU, MD.

“Explain something to me,” I said, glancing at Reed. “How does this disorder thing work? This woman lost two previous babies to WKS, but then her third baby apparently didn’t have it. Why is that?”

“Didn’t you ever have to diagram genetics in high school, back in biology class? You remember those little charts that showed dominant genes and what chance the offspring of two people would have for inheriting blue eyes or a big nose or something? It’s a statistical thing. For a child to be born with WKS, both parents have to have been carriers. Even then, there’s only a twenty-five percent chance that their offspring will have the disorder, but when you consider that’s one in four kids, that’s pretty high.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Keep reading.”

I turned to the next page, which was apparently the file for the previous girl’s mother. The forty-year-old woman had come in for testing, only her news was not so good, as the fetus did test positive for WKS. Though parts of this file had also been blacked out, it looked as if a different treatment approach had been used this time, some sort of procedure done to the fetus in utero rather than waiting to treat the child once it was born. It must not have worked though, judging by the final entry:
In-home delivery at 9:35 pm, male infant pronounced dead at 10:15 pm.
The rest of the paragraph was blacked out, and there were no other pages.

“What was it about this file that bothered Doug so much?”

“Check the name and the date.”

I looked at the top of the page to see that the pregnant woman in question, the one whose baby had WKS and died shortly after it was born, was listed as “Katherine Beiler Schumann.”

“Katherine Schumann…is that Kate Schumann? Lydia’s mother?” I cried. Flipping backward, I checked the name on the previous patient, which confirmed it. The twenty-one-year-old whose fetus tested negative was listed as “Grete Schumann Stoltzfus.” That must have been when she was pregnant with Tresa. Flipping forward again, I scanned all of the dates in her mother’s file until I got to the one that mattered: According to the final entry, Grete’s mother’s baby was born and then died on August 16, 1997, the very night of the fire.

The night that changed all of our lives forever.

At first, I was simply speechless. I needed to process this, to think, to walk, to
move.

“Can I walk around out here?” I asked, nearly hyperventilating. “I need some air. I have to process.”

“I don’t see why not. It’s just a field.”

Not even waiting for him to join me, I simply got out and started running. I ran back up the gravel road the way we had come, blood rhythmically coursing through my veins like a drum. When I reached the blacktop, I turned around, slowed my pace, and jogged all the way back to the car. By the time I got there, Reed had turned off the car and was standing in the sun, leaning against the hood, his back to me. He was talking on a cell phone, and by the tone of his voice and the words I could hear, the conversation sounded personal, not business.

I walked toward him, and when he noticed me, he spoke again into the phone.

“Sorry, Heather. I have to go. I’ll call you later. You too.”

After he had hung up the phone, I spoke.

“First of all, this means we didn’t kill three people, only two. Not that it makes that much of a difference, but in a way it does. At least in here.”

I put a hand on my heart, the ache of guilt and loss fading just a little
as I absorbed the realization that my actions that night hadn’t helped to kill a newborn baby. By the time the fire started, that baby was already dead—and had been dead for several hours.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Though, as Doug pointed out in his phone message, in another way this makes it worse. The Schumanns had already been through the heartbreaking death of their baby on that very night. After going through all of that, then they ended up burning to death in the fire? It’s enough to make you sick. No wonder Doug was compelled to send me those records.”

Reed was right. Regardless of the exact sequence of events, by the end of the night three charred bodies were found in the remains, even if one of them had been dead before it happened.

“I have questions, lots of questions,” I said, pacing in front of the car. “First, what does this have to do with Bobby? These files are old. His only connection to any of those procedures is that he was an intern at the WIRE the summer that Kate Schumann was a patient. I know Bobby’s smart, but you can’t tell me that any of his duties there involved high-level stuff like this.”

“No, of course not. I was the highest-ranking intern that summer, and even my work was pretty low level. At least I got to deal with viral vectors. Bobby’s job was pretty basic. Lab cleanup, sterilizing equipment, things like that.”

“So what does any of this have to do with him?”

“I’m not sure. My guess is that Dr. Updyke continued to be involved with clandestine human trials—and maybe, these days, they’re still going on, only now Bobby helps in some capacity. You know how your brother always worshipped the brilliant Dr. Updyke. Maybe Doug found out about these old experiments, so he called Bobby to get more current information about what might be going on over there.”

“Actually,” I corrected, thinking of the phone message that night from Doug to Bobby, “Bobby is the one who asked Doug to get some information. There’s a message on Bobby’s machine from that night, from Doug. He said something like ‘I have the info you asked for, including some you didn’t expect.’ ”

“Maybe it was the part he didn’t expect that caused the problem. Then, instead of ratting out the doctor, Bobby acted to protect him instead.”

“Protect him. By killing Doug?”

“It sure could look that way.”

I moved in front of him, hands on my hips.

“You think Bobby killed Doug to protect Dr. Updyke?”

Reed studied my face, the blue of his eyes almost piercing in their intensity.

“I’m afraid that’s one possibility. I’m sorry, Anna, but it’s a logical conclusion, given all the facts. We know for sure Updyke didn’t do it himself. He was at a symposium in Pittsburgh that night, speaking to an audience of a couple hundred people.”

I paced some more as my mind rolled around the possible events of last Wednesday night.