The Methuselah Gene (15 page)

Wary of movement, Cody kept back from me as I walked out and ahead of him into the office.
 
I dialed eleven digits on the black rotary phone, which seemed to take forever.
 
Just as the ringing started at the other end of the line, the front door opened and a pretty young woman entered.
 
I continued to wait, listening to the distant ringing, as the Sheriff attended to her.
 
But I couldn't stop looking at her, all the same.

“I can come back,” the woman said, seeing me on the phone.

“No, that's all right,” Cody told her, his smile maintaining its borderline hold on sanity.
 
“This is the man I wanted to know if you've seen before.”

The lady and I exchanged looks, something I didn't mind at all.
 
She was a natural beauty, and wore no makeup.
 
Didn't need it.
 
Her long chestnut brown hair had a luster to it, and she had perfect but pale skin, too, as if she hadn't been out in the sunshine much.
 
But her deep brown eyes studied me warily, while her brave innocence reminded me of actress Madeleine Stowe in
The Last of the Mohicans
.

“I've never seen him before,” she told Cody, her eyes never leaving mine.

“Well, that's good news.
 
Good.
 
Can I get you some coffee, Julie?”

“No, thank you.”

“Water?”

“No!” I almost shouted.

They both looked at me as though I'd just belched, long and loud.
 
Then at the tenth ring, an answering machine was activated, and my connection was made.
 
“This is Darryl,” a doubly distant voice I recognized announced.
 
“At the tone you know what to do.”

But you can't convince me you're not involved in this, buddy,
I realized,
if you're not even home.
 
And I really don't know what to do, in point of fact.

There was a beep.
 
But after a moment of ubiquitous panic, I instinctively hung up.
 
Just before regretting it.

“No one home,” I told Cody.

Cody didn't seem to hear me.
 
His back was to me.
 
“Okay, thanks for stopping in,” he said.
 
“Thank you so much.”

The mysterious young woman smiled politely and then exited as quickly as she'd entered.
 
Something about that seemed like
deja
vu.
 
Like some kind of recognition I couldn't define, although I was sure I'd never seen her before.
 
I wanted to label it physical attraction, to explain it, but that didn't let me escape it.
 
I stared after her in odd fascination, considering the possibility that maybe I'd never found the perfect, unassuming woman because she was living in a tiny town on the edge of nowhere.
 
Plus I got the impression she was hiding from people like me.

“Who was she?” I asked the Sheriff in the silence that followed.

“That's not for you to know, son.”

“Son,” I repeated, feeling the irony.
 
“Do you have a son, Sheriff?
 
Never mind.
 
Just tell me what you are going to do about what I said, okay?”

“Now I'm going to call your boss,” he announced.

“I thought you tried already.”

“Getting to him is not easy.
 
But they were kind enough to give me his home phone number.”

“Kind?” I said with incredulity.
 
“Whose home phone number?”

“A gentleman named Carson Jeffers.”

Oh my God.
 
“Let me do it, I can do it.”

The Sheriff drew his gun once again from its unbuttoned holster.
 
“You've had your turn.
 
Now please be nice and return to your cell.”

“Nice?” I said.
 
“You're so nice to me, Sheriff.
 
It must be the new you talking.”

On the way back I found myself looking for something to use to surprise Cody with.
 
The gun rack we passed was locked.
 
Cody retrieved the cell's key ring once more from the hook beside it, and we entered the back room.
 
I walked to the back of the open cell as I was told, although I felt preeminently more anxious about being locked inside it, the more I considered the consequences.

“Just relax, now, and this'll all be over soon,” Cody reassured me, perhaps sensing my rising anxiety with his new empathic faculties.
 
“Everything will be fine, you'll see.”

“Right,” I said, “nice and peachy.”

Instead of returning the key to its hook on the other side of the wall, next to the gun rack, Cody dropped the key ring on a chair outside the door in passing.
 
As if he'd be coming back to me soon—possibly for my execution, if the virus affecting him obeyed Murphy's Law of
Hydrodramatics
.
 
Then he walked directly back to the phone.
 
But it rang before he could pick it up.
 
Unrelated business.

I went to the cell window just in time to see Julie walking away from the building, down a path in the direction of the distant boarding house.
 
My call to her was more like an intense whisper.
 
“Hey, over here.
 
Julie.
 
Julie!”

In peripheral vision she saw my arm waving from the cell window.
 
She turned, and I beckoned her to come back.
 
Her look was one of puzzled wariness.

“Please,” I mouthed.
 
“Please.”

Against her better judgment, she seemed to let curiosity get the best of her.
 
She came toward me with experimental steps, stopping just within whisper range.
 
A breeze tossed her hair around and into her face.
 
She put up one hand to keep it back.
 
Involuntarily, I swallowed the lump in my dry throat, and kept my voice low, occasionally looking over my shoulder toward Cody, who was busy on the phone.

“Julie, my name is Alan,” I said, keeping my voice low.
 
“I work for a pharmaceutical company in Virginia.
 
Tactar
Pharmaceuticals.
 
A virus was stolen from my plant, and whoever stole it has put it in your water supply to test it.”

She backed away involuntarily at my words, as if the slight breeze held deeper sway over her spontaneous but fragile trust.

“Have you seen anyone reacting strangely, like George at the drug store?” I asked.
 
“I think it was done last night, or maybe earlier, at the water tower.”

“Water tower?” she asked, tentatively.

“The Sheriff is under the influence too.
 
Haven't you noticed?
 
Oh, and by the way, have you had any water yourself this morning?
 
Iced tea?
 
I've had coffee, but that's okay, because heat renders any virus harmless.
 
Let's hope this breeze dies, so that water tower up there gets hot enough.”

She'd begun to turn her shoulders away from me, although her eyes lingered on mine.
 
If I allowed any pause to last for long, I knew she'd be gone forever.

“It's called M-Telomerase,” I added, although my words, forced from desperation, supplied a name to the fear I knew she now felt.
 
“It's made with a genetically altered retrovirus and a gene from the bristlecone pine tree.”

At that, she turned back slowly to face me full on.
 
Her hand dropped as she hung back, until only her hair moved about her shoulders and face.
 
“You're serious?” she asked, but with obvious hesitation, as though dreading any confirmation.

I nodded slowly.
 
“I don't claim to understand why they're testing it here, or how they got it to live in your water supply, unless they replaced all the water or otherwise neutralized the chlorine.
 
I don't even know how it can infect people who drink the water, because usually a virus will die when ingested, due to stomach acids.
 
Unless maybe massive amounts were used.
 
But something is happening here, and right after I saw two men up at that water tower last night.”

I indicated the wooded hill, but after looking she remained turned away from me.
 
“I don't know,” she said.
 
“How dangerous is this virus, and why did Cody lock you up?”

“I had to pretend to be someone else, is why.
 
And I don't know how dangerous.
 
I'm looking for these men.
 
One in particular, went by the name Walter Mills.
 
Ever heard of him?
 
He could be using the name Sean, now.
 
It's important, because this virus could be more dangerous than they may have known at the time of its theft, whoever they are.
 
At least I'm hoping they didn't know, because if they did . . .”
 
I left the sentence unfinished, and looked up at the trees that partly hid the tower.

She turned and took two steps closer to me, her eyes brightening with what I hoped was genuine concern, linked to belief.
 
“What happens to people who drink the water?”

“That may depend on the dosage and what else they might have done to it.
 
Someone is testing that here to find out.
 
Can you help me?
 
If the Sheriff calls this in prematurely, they'll blame me just for talking about it, and whoever's doing this may escape.
 
I didn't know the Sheriff would lock me up for coming in with the truth.
 
And I'm telling the truth, Julie.
 
I don't want anyone else to get hurt.”

“Else?”
 
She looked away suddenly, back toward the rolling green hills beyond where I suspected she lived.
 
“I don't know, I—”

“I know this guy named Sean or Walter pretended to be someone else on the Internet.
 
Got my notes somehow, then destroyed them with a computer virus.
 
That same night someone broke into the plant, right after I was followed.”

“Followed?”
 
Julie rocked her head slowly, now, as conflicting thoughts confused her.
 
If my revelation had been about a UFO abduction, the effect might have appeared the same.
 
She began to step back again.
 
“Really, this is just too—”

“Please, he's got a post office box here.
 
Box sixteen.
 
It's why I'm here.”

She stumbled slightly over a stone.
 
She steadied herself, coming back to the reality that she was talking to a stranger behind bars.
 
She held up one hand as if to fend off a phantom, turning away.
 
“I'm sorry, I . . .”

“They thought I was a hit man,” I said, just blurting it out.
 
“Because I lied about who I was.
 
Were you in a mob trial or something?”

She stopped cold, staring down at the ground, but this time she didn't turn back to me.

“Witness protection program?” I asked, before realizing my question had been a mistake.
 
That I'd crossed the line.

She started walking away with determination now, decision made.

“Please!” I called.
 
“That's none of my business, really.”

Too late.
 
She continued away from me, even faster.

“Who you talking to out there?” Sheriff Cody interrupted.
 
I turned to see him standing in the doorway behind me.

“Please, you've got to listen to me.
 
For the town.
 
You have to believe something I'm saying here, or you're—”
 
I stopped, focused on Cody's face.

It looked as if a cartoonist had drawn it.
 
Droplets of sweat now glistened on his wide forehead.
 
His lips stretched up and gelled into a grin that seemed about to be stitched into place.
 
“I want to believe,” he claimed, “but then you should tell me something I can believe, shouldn't you, son?”

He did a clumsy pirouette, turning on his heel like a mechanical soldier, and almost marched back to the phone.
 
He thought he was doing his duty, I realized.
 
That sense overpowered others, at least for the moment.
 
So hysterics would be of little use in trying to manipulate him.