The Miracle Strain (2 page)

Boston

What Dr. Jasmine Washington couldn't figure out was why Tom Carter had done it, particularly so soon after the shooting. Perhaps it had something to do with the tumor the Swedish surgeon had found in Olivia's brain when examining her head wound. Whatever the reason, it made her angry.

The lawns of Mount Ashburn Cemetery were white-gray with frost, the same color as the winter sky. A watery afternoon sun failed to warm the hundred or so people who had gathered in this monochrome landscape to celebrate Olivia's life, and mark her death.

Jasmine Washington stood between her goddaughter and her tall fiance, Larry Strummer. She was relieved that for once the media was keeping a respectable distance, along with the discreet police presence, some forty or so yards away. In addition to Olivia's relations, GENIUS colleagues, and Tom's peers from the scientific and medical community, Jasmine recognized many of the mourners. The state governor stood alongside the Swedish ambassador, come to show his countrymen's horror and sorrow. Next to them were teachers from South Boston Junior High School, where Olivia had taught English and music. Children from her class were there too, the same class Holly attended. Some were crying, but all kept still and silent. Olivia would have been proud of them.

Jasmine felt too angry to cry for the loss of her best friend. She'd already cried more tears in the last eleven days than in all her thirty-three years. Jasmine had still been a sassy scholarship kid from the projects when she'd first met Olivia at Stanford. Gaining a prestigious computer sciences scholarship to one of the top schools hadn't seemed such a big deal at the time. As a kid, her strict Baptist parents had banned her from the streets of South Central L. A., so she'd built her first computer when she was eleven and spent most of her formative years prowling the cyber-streets instead. Still, it was ironic that it had been a computer error at Stanford that had roomed her with a blond, artistic WASP from Maine, majoring in English literature. It still made Jasmine smile remembering how, despite being opposites, they had been drawn to each other from the start.

Jasmine pulled her canary yellow cashmere coat tighter around her shoulders. It was the brightest color she could find for the funeral. Her friend would have approved. She watched Tom, Jack, and the other pallbearers carrying Olivia's coffin to the grave. She winced with Tom as she saw how he favored his wounded leg, no doubt welcoming the distraction of the pain. If she'd hated the last eleven days, then he must have been through the worst kind of hell. Even so, she still couldn't help feeling anger at what he'd done since the killing. Or at least what she thought he'd done. The evidence she'd seen in the lab this morning wasn't conclusive.

She looked down at her goddaughter, standing silently next to the slender, white-haired figure of her grandfather, Alex Carter. She wondered how the semiretired Harvard professor of theology would explain why Olivia had been gunned down. It had certainly stretched her faith. The Swedish police, and now the FBI, had a theory that it was some antigenetics activist trying to kill Tom. But despite having the killer on film, they still had no real idea of who he was or why he'd done it.

At least the psychiatrists had been encouraged by how well Holly was coping. Far from blotting out the horror of seeing her mother shot, she had almost perfect recall. In many ways she was more prepared to face up to what had happened than anybody. Jasmine had even heard the little girl ask Tom on more than one occasion how he was coping. It was this courage, and the fact that Holly was doing well, that made Jasmine so angry with her father.

Her eyes searched Tom's long face as she watched him and the other pallbearers lay Olivia's coffin beside the grave. The more she looked into those blue eyes, the more she saw something other than grief there: fear, or something close to it. Every time Tom looked at his daughter, Jasmine became more and more convinced that what she had found in the lab this morning had been his work.

It had to have something to do with the tumor the Swedish surgeon had found in Olivia's brain, when he was examining her. A tumor that by all accounts would have killed her, even if the killer's bullets hadn't. Tom's mother had died of a similar cancer about thirty years ago; Jasmine knew that. It hadn't taken a shrink to know that this was one of the main reasons Tom had applied his incredible intellect to curing the disease, not only qualifying as a surgeon at Johns Hopkins two years ahead of his peers but then completing a Ph. D. in genetics at Harvard with more ease than it takes most people to graduate from high school. Still, just because his mother and wife had similar cancers, that didn't justify running a full gene scan on Holly.

As Tom moved away from the coffin, Jasmine cast her mind back to her third year at Stanford. Over twelve years ago now. She thought she was so smart until she attended that talk given by Tom Carter, M. D., Ph. D. Tom was in his early thirties then and already a force in genetics--seeing gene therapy as the way ahead for curing cancer and inherited disease. At the time, his company, GENIUS, specialized in gene therapy trials and the development of genetically engineered proteins, such as recombinant Interleukin 2 and growth hormone. The company was relatively small, but already growing in size and reputation.

Tom's talk at Stanford had been entitled "The Use of Computers in Decoding the Human Genome." Jasmine remembered how she had stifled a laugh when this tall, gan gly guy with wild hair stood up to speak. But she stopped laughing as soon as he began talking about his vision of a hybrid computer/microscope that could read an individual's entire genome from the copy stored in the DNA of one body cell. The machine he was talking about would be able to decode every single one of a person's hundred thousand genes from one hair follicle. Tom Carter had wanted to do nothing less than decode the software of the human race. At that moment Jasmine had known she had to work with him, and be part of his vision.

Over three years ago they had realized that vision and created the Genescope. But now just the thought that Tom was using it on his perfectly healthy eight-year-old kid made her seethe. Whatever his reasons were, and however brilliant he was, there were times when Tom Carter could be plain stupid.

Tom limped over to them from the coffin, and stood between Alex and Holly. As the priest began to say his words, Tom reached down to take Holly's hand.

Jasmine tried to catch Tom's eye, but he would only look straight ahead at the grave. There was still time, she told herself. Even if he had run the scan, she could still stop him from reading the results.

Tom was oblivious of both Jasmine's stare and the utterances by the priest at the head of the grave. He could think only of Olivia and his guilt.

Meeting Olivia and marrying her had been his greatest, and most undeserved, piece of good fortune. He had always been clueless with women, regarding them as a charming, but confusing distraction from his work. He still couldn't understand how he had managed to attract the few girlfriends he had. All had been intelligent and most beautiful, although he had never pursued any of them. As they might some problem child, they had adopted him, convinced that with enough love and affection they could make him their Mr. Right. All of them had eventually given up on him.

But with the golden-haired Olivia Jane Mallory it had been different. When the precocious Jasmine Washington had introduced Tom to her roommate, he had suddenly understood what the poets meant by love at first sight. His reaction had been a clinical definition: sweaty palms, pounding heart, loss of appetite, distraction. He had no problem identifying the symptoms, but the sickness and its cause were less scientific, more metaphysical. In one blinding moment Olivia had become as important to him as a part of his own body. From that point on he had pursued her with a passion he hadn't known outside his work. In Paris eight months later, she stunned him by accepting his marriage proposal. He couldn't dance, but that night in Montmartre he forgot, and they had danced till dawn.

Now she was dead. He still couldn't believe it. Only yesterday afternoon he had been in the conservatory of their home in Beacon Hill--her favorite room. He had walked in half expecting to see her reading, or tending her plants. Part of him still thought she would always be in the house, forever in the room next to the one he was in.

He felt Holly's small hand squeeze his, and looked down to see her eyes, staring up at him. She was so desperately trying not to cry that if he'd felt less numb he would have cried for her.

He bent down and hugged her, trying to squeeze the pain out of her.

"I miss Mommy, Dad," she whispered through her sobs. "I wish the bad man hadn't killed her."

"So do I, Holly. So do I. But she's safe now, and it's going to be okay," he soothed in her ear. But he couldn't see how it was ever going to be okay again. He wished he could take Holly's sorrow and feel it himself. His own grief seemed too deep to reach. He felt so numb he couldn't even summon up rage for the person who had done this.

Only guilt breached his defenses. When he had thanked Jack for saving his life, both of them had looked away, not meeting each other's eye--both knowing that Jack's reflexes had not only saved him but also killed Olivia. Tom shifted his weight to his wounded leg, welcoming the pain. One bullet had passed through his leg, while the others had ripped into Olivia's body.

The guilt didn't stop there. It revived memories of his mother's death, and how he had been powerless to help her. Then, after learning of Olivia's tumor, a new strain of guilt had infected him. Instinctively he hugged Holly again. Had other slower, more silent bullets already been fired? Bullets that would again miss him, this time finding an even more vulnerable target?

He had to know.

The priest continued to intone the burial service as the coffin was lowered into the ground. It was only then, as he watched the last, weak rays of the sun catch the brass handles of the casket, that Tom realized his wife was really leaving him; that the sun would never shine on Olivia again. Along with the others he and Holly threw earth into the grave and waited patiently for the priest to finish his words.

It was as the mourners began to move away from the grave and head toward the cars that he felt the tug on his sleeve. He turned to see Jasmine glaring at him. She was alone, her fiance, Larry, already walking off to his car. "Tom, we need to talk. Now!"

"Can't it wait till we get to the wake?"

"No!"

Tom's father, Alex Carter, was at his side. Stern-faced beneath his mop of white hair, his piercing blue eyes glared out from behind elegant glasses. As always he looked as if he were talking to one of his theology students. "What's the problem?"

"Something I need to talk to Tom about," said Jasmine, giving Tom a meaningful look. "Alone!"

Tom suddenly understood. He had been in such a rush this morning he had left his lab workbench a mess, deciding to tidy it up when he returned after the wake to read the results. Jasmine must have been into GENIUS and guessed what he was doing. "Dad, could you take Holly on to the wake. We'll follow behind you."

Alex looked incredulous. "You should be going to the wake with your family," he said. "You have to be with Holly."

Tom raised his hand. "Dad, please, I can't explain now." He knelt down to Holly's level and saw her face crumple in disappointment, her eyes red-rimmed. "Hol, I just want to talk to Jazz about something. You go home with Grampa, and I'll meet you there for the wake. Okay?" He hated doing this, but he couldn't talk to Jasmine about this in front of Holly. Hugging his daughter to him, he kissed her cheek. "We'll be right behind you. Okay?"

She gave him a small nod, trying to understand.

"But, Tom--" protested Alex.

"Dad, I'll explain later," he said, taking Jasmine by the elbow, walking her swiftly away from the mourners waiting to offer their condolences, following her into one of the waiting limousines.

"When are you going to check the results on Holly's scan?" asked Jasmine, once she'd closed the car door.

Tom said nothing at first. He felt strangely relieved that she had found out. He hated keeping secrets. "After the wake," he replied eventually.

"Why did you do it, Tom?"

"I had no choice," he said. "I have to know."

"Bullshit!" Jasmine replied. "Complete bullshit. The Genescope will tell you stuff you don't want to know--or even need to know. And certainly not right now, Tom."