The Death Row Complex (19 page)

“I might not mind any of that so much, given that there conveniently doesn’t seem to be any real threat after all, except for the fact that
I’m
still stuck here on an assignment I never wanted while you wrap up whatever you’re doing for apparently no reason. So do me a favor, will you? Hurry the hell up.”

Katrina had not responded but her breathing was quickening. She now turned from her work and strode quickly toward him. Inches from his face, she looked defiantly into his eyes. “Use your brain for just a minute here, genius. If I wanted to kill a prisoner it would be Lawrence Naden. You know who he is, right? I certainly hope so, or else the FBI has been crawling up my ass for the last three months for no reason.

“And
if
I wanted to kill Lawrence Naden, I wouldn’t do it with something that is uniquely traceable to myself. I’d just send Naden some cyanide in a Ziplock bag labeled ‘Free Cocaine.’ Now, if you don’t have any other ground breaking hypotheses for me, I’m excusing myself from this conversation.”

Katrina turned to leave, and then turned back around. “And by the way, I don’t know who
you’ve
been talking to, but I have hardly made friends around here and I’m certainly no hero. You recently heard a conversation I had with the chair of my department. Yeah, that guy yelling at me with the cookies flying out of his mouth? He’s my boss. And he’s mad as hell.

“Richard and the rest of the faculty are holding me personally responsible for obstructing their work—as if I have any control over the military presence and press, which nobody at the FBI seems able to do anything about either. You guys can make someone disappear, but you can’t make a news van use a different street—which means you have less power to facilitate this work than Cal Trans. So what are you even doing here? You don’t seem to be helping things much.

“And you know what else? You’re not the only one stuck here, asshole. I’m working myself into the ground over what should have been my holiday season. My entire staff, in fact, has given selflessly to make this project work because you guys seemed to think the country was depending on us.
You
came to
me
about this, remember? I’m doing this because you have asked me for help to do work that the government
will never let me publish
.

“In academic science—which is what I
normally
do here—the rule is ‘publish or perish.’ If we don’t publish work, it’s as if we never did it. You heard Richard.
Science
or
Nature
—the two top journals. But I
can’t
publish my work on the Death Row inhibitors.

“So everything I’m doing right now is for absolutely nothing as far as my career is concerned. All of my current government funding is only temporary, and the plug can be pulled at any time. And since I’ve pissed off the entire biology department, they’ll never float me. So great, I have a nice new shiny lab, but if I can’t get a grant after all this is over, it’s going to go to someone else while I end up unemployed.

“The sad thing is, I almost
needed
for there to be another terror attack to justify how I’ve spent the last three months. How sick is that?

“Taking this project has all but ruined me. I’m thirty-four years old. I still have a very long way to go. So you know what I’m going to do now? I’m going to drink. And you’re not invited, fucko.”

Katrina turned to grab her purse and keys from her office before storming out of the lab and slamming the door behind her. The printer was still whirring next to Gilman.

5:42 P.M.
PST

Katrina was muttering under her breath as she walked briskly toward the parking lot. After a few moments to think, she pulled her cell phone from her purse to call Sean McMullan.

McMullan sounded out of breath when he answered the phone.

“Sean, it’s Katrina.”

“Hey! What’s up?”

“I need to talk to you and I don’t want Roger Gilman to be there. Where are you?”

“I’m at the gym.”

“Which one?”

“Uh, it’s the Fitness Land on the corner of Eighth and E, downtown.”

“I’ll be there in twenty,” she said and hung up.

She found him at the free weights, bench-pressing what looked to be an enormous load. It was the first time Katrina had seen Sean McMullan outside of a work environment.

McMullan’s long athletic shorts revealed calves that were toned and tan. He was wearing a gray T-shirt that read “USMC” across the chest in large navy blue lettering. McMullan’s muscular left forearm was covered with a faded tattoo that read “Semper Fi.” Katrina briefly remembered the first time she had met McMullan in her office, when she had noticed a tiny fraction of the tattoo below his shirt cuff.

“Want to take a walk?” she asked.

Resigned to the fact that his workout was cut short, McMullan reached into his gym bag and pulled on a sweatshirt. Then he and Katrina headed west into the Gaslamp Quarter.

“So, what’s on your mind?” McMullan asked casually.

“Gilman,” Katrina answered.

McMullan chuckled. “Heh, you sure I should hear this?”

“What is his problem? I see how he acts toward you, and everyone else for that matter. He’s not an asshole to anyone but me. Obviously, I’ve done something to offend him.

“Truth be told, I don’t really care if the dude likes me or not. But he’s interfering with my ability to do my job when he comes into my lab and my office flinging accusations at me. I thought talking to you about it might help me to figure out how to deal with the jerk before I accidentally kill him.”

Between Eighth and Fifth Streets, the downtown area became noticeably brighter and livelier as McMullan and Katrina approached the buzz of Friday night activity. Well-dressed couples zigzagged along Fifth Avenue between the more scantily clad groups of twenty-somethings. Bars and restaurants overflowed; at the entrances to some, the lines stretched through the doors and down the sidewalk. Pedestrians swerved around each other on both sides of the street, stepping out into the street to bypass the crowds outside of the busier establishments.

The scientist and the FBI agent crossed Fifth Avenue and waited for the signal to cross E street. “Well, Roger is very conservative,” McMullan offered.

“And what am I, some kind of hippie? I own a gun, I know how to use it, and my ex was a jarhead and an active member of the NRA!” She laughed.

“Well, fair enough,” McMullan said. “But still, your work… you represent… change. Something Roger doesn’t do well with. I think if it was up to him, we’d still be in one-room schoolhouses… What in the world is that?” McMullan pointing one block westward to where E street abruptly came to an end.

Katrina smiled. “That’s Horton Plaza. I know… it looks like something out of an Escher print. But it’s actually just a mall. You ought to check it out sometime—there are all these whacky levels that don’t really match up with each other, and escalators only going one direction without a corresponding escalator going the other direction. So you can see the store you want to go to, but you have to travel around a little bit in order to figure out how to get there. Unless you want to run up the down escalator or down the up escalator, which my daughter likes to do.” She giggled. “Lexi calls Horton Plaza the Yuppie Ant Farm.”

At that moment, a security guard was making his rounds inside Horton Plaza. As he rounded a corner, a young woman came into his view and his pace quickened. “Excuse me, miss! You’re going to have to get down from there!”

The teenager was standing on a bench along the mall’s uppermost walkway and leaning precariously over the balcony, the protective stucco wall only reaching to her knees. Below her was a several-story drop to ground level, where shoppers milled about the numerous kiosks in the center of the mall. She was taking a photograph with her cell phone.

The girl glanced in the guard’s direction but then turned back to snap three more photographs, the flash of her phone’s camera ricocheting from the window of a pet store across the open space before her. Satisfied, she jumped down and smiled at the guard. “Sorry,” she said politely.

A young man appeared at her side and put his arm around her.

“Also,” the guard said. “No photographs are allowed at Horton Plaza without permission. You’ll have to go to our security office.”

“Aren’t you the security office?” the young woman asked.

“It’s not my decision,” the guard said. “Just don’t take any more pictures until you’ve gotten permission. The office is closed now, so you’ll have to come back tomorrow during the day.”

The young couple thanked the guard politely and walked away. A few moments later, he saw the flash once again, this time angled upward from the floor below. The guard lunged down an escalator and approached the teenagers from behind. Without warning, he snatched the girl’s cell phone away. “I told you no photographs!”

“Give me back my phone!”

Before the guard could react, the girl’s companion lurched forward and grabbed him by the shirt, shoving him backward into a wall. “Who the
fuck
do you think you are!” the boy yelled. Several mall patrons turned to look as he grabbed the phone away from the startled security guard and then pushed him away. He then roughly took the young woman’s hand and led her toward the large escalator that would exit the mall onto Fourth Avenue.

Kids
, the somewhat shaken guard thought, but he held the butt of his nightstick as he followed behind to confirm that they were really leaving.

The girl abruptly stopped walking at the top of the escalator.

“What?” her companion asked.

“My mom!” she said and turned on her heels.

6:13 P.M.
PST

“How, it’s crazy down here,” McMullan said. “I’ve been in San Diego for a little while, but I’ve never been downtown on a Friday night except to go to the gym.” The light was still red, and they were still standing on the corner of Fifth and E. “I like the cool old buildings,” McMullan said, motioning down Fifth Avenue.