With both children dying at once, there was no way it could have been an accident. With a sudden chill of fear, Victor wondered if the area of chromosome six that he’d chosen to insert the manufactured genes was not an area of nonsense DNA as most people thought. Maybe its location in respect to an indigenous promoter caused the gene to turn on by some unknown mechanism. If that were the case, then VJ would indeed be at a risk too. Perhaps his gene had turned on for a short burst of activity back when his intelligence fell.
Victor tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. Picking up all the samples, he went to the water fountain and took a drink. There were a number of lab assistants working in the main room, but Victor was in no mood to talk. He hurried into his research office and closed the door behind him. He tried calming himself, but just as the pounding of his heart began to ease he remembered the photomicrographs he’d made of VJ’s chromosomes six and a half years ago.
Jumping to his feet, he dashed to the files and frantically searched until he came up with the photos he’d taken when VJ’s intelligence fell. Studying them, he let out a sigh of relief. VJ’s had not changed at all. His chromosome six looked exactly the same six and a half years ago as it did today. There was not even the slightest uncovering or unraveling of the DNA.
Breathing more easily, Victor left his office to find Robert. The technician was in the animal room, supervising Sharon Carver’s replacement. Victor took him aside. “I’m afraid I have some more special work for you.”
“You’re the boss,” Robert answered.
“There is an area on chromosome six in the brain samples where the DNA is exposed and unraveled. I want the DNA sequenced just as soon as you can.”
“That is going to take some time,” Robert said.
“I know it’s tedious,” Victor said. “But I have some radioactive probes you can use.”
“That’s altogether different.”
Robert followed Victor back to his office and collected the myriad small bottles. For a few moments after he’d left, Victor stayed in his office, trying to come up with another explanation besides the cephaloclor. Why else would the NGF gene turn on in the two infants? At age two and a half to three, growth was decelerating, and there were no monumental physiological changes such as those that occurred at puberty.
The other curious fact was that the NGF gene had apparently turned on in the two children at the exact same time. That didn’t make sense. The only way the two children’s lives intersected at all was that both attended the day-care center at Chimera. That was another reason Victor had selected the two couples. He’d wanted an opportunity to view the children during their development. He had also made sure that the Hobbses and the Murrays did not know each other before they became parents. He didn’t want them comparing notes and getting suspicious.
Reaching across his desk for the phone, Victor called personnel and got the bereaved families’ home addresses. He wrote them down, then went to tell Colleen that he’d be out for several hours.
Victor decided on the Hobbses first because it was closer. They lived in an attractive brick ranch in a town called Haverhill. Victor pulled up to the front of the house and rang the bell.
“Dr. Frank,” William Hobbs said with surprise. He opened the door wider, and gestured for Victor to enter. “Sheila!” he called. “We have company!”
Victor stepped inside. Although the house was pleasantly decorated in a contemporary fashion, an oppressive silence hung over the rooms like a shroud.
“Come in, come in,” William said, escorting Victor into the living room. “Coffee? Tea?” His voice echoed in the stillness.
Sheila Hobbs came into the room. She was a dynamic woman with bobbed hair. Victor had met her at several of the obligatory Chimera social occasions.
Victor agreed to some coffee, and soon all three were sitting in the living room, balancing tiny Wedgwood cups on their knees.
“I was just thinking about giving you a call,” William said. “It’s such a coincidence that you stopped by.”
“Oh?” Victor said.
“Sheila and I have decided to get back to work,” William said, directing his attention at his coffee cup. “At first we thought we’d get away for a while. But now we think we’ll feel better with something to do.”
“We’ll be pleased to have you back, whenever you choose,” said Victor.
“We appreciate that,” William said.
Victor cleared his throat. “There is something I wanted to ask you,” he began. “I believe you’d been warned that your son was allergic to an antibiotic called cephaloclor.”
“That’s right,” Sheila said. “We’d been told that before we even picked him up.” She lowered her coffee cup and it rattled against the saucer.
“Is there any chance that your son had been given cephaloclor?” Victor asked.
The couple looked at each other, then answered in unison: “No.” Then Sheila continued: “Maurice hadn’t been sick or anything. Besides, we’d made sure that his antibiotic allergy was part of his medical record. I’m certain he’d not been given any antibiotic. Why do you ask?”
Victor stood up. “It was just a thought. I didn’t think he would have, but I’d remembered about the allergy . . .”
Back in his car, Victor headed toward Boston. He was pretty certain the Murrays would tell him the same thing the Hobbses had, but he had to be sure.
Since it was the middle of the afternoon, he made excellent time. His major problem was what to do with his car when he got there. Eventually he found a spot on Beacon Hill. A sign said it was a tow zone, but Victor decided to take the chance.
The Murrays’ house was on West Cedar, in the middle of the block. He rang the bell.
The door was opened by a man in his late twenties or early thirties, sporting a punk hair style.
“Are the Murrays in?” Victor asked.
“They’re both at work,” the man said. “I work for their cleaning service.”
“I thought they’d taken some time off.”
The man laughed. “Those workaholics! They took one day after their son died and that was it.”
Victor returned to his car, irritated with himself for not having called before coming. It would have saved him a trip.
Back at Chimera, Victor went directly to the accounting department. He found Horace Murray at his desk, bent over computer print-outs. When the man saw Victor he sprang to his feet saying, “Colette and I wanted to thank you again for coming to the hospital.”
“I only wish I could have done something to help,” Victor said.
“It was in God’s hands,” Horace said resignedly.
When Victor asked him about the cephaloclor, the man swore that Mark had not been given an antibiotic, especially not cephaloclor.
Leaving the accounting department, Victor was struck by still another fear. What if there was a link between the deaths and the fact that the children’s files were missing? That was the most disturbing thought of all because it implied that the genes had been turned on deliberately.
Heart pounding again, Victor ran back to his lab. One of his newer technicians tried to ask a question, but Victor waved the man away, telling him to talk to Grimes if he had a problem.
Inside his office Victor bent down in front of a cabinet at the bottom of his bookcase. He unlocked the heavy door and reached in to grasp the NGF data books that he’d written in code. But his hand met empty space. The entire shelf was empty.
Victor closed the cabinet and carefully locked it even though there was no longer anything to protect.
“Calm down,” he told himself, trying to stem a rising tide of paranoia. “You’re letting your imagination run away with itself. There has to be an explanation.”