Chapter Eight
THE LOUDOUN PHARMA campus consisted of two main buildings. One held the offices for the C-suite, middle management and support staff, local reps and the company’s lobbyists for D.C. and Richmond. The other contained the labs, which housed the scientists, the IT people, and their respective support staffs.
The office building was a wreck. Every window on the east side of the structure was shattered and had fallen out of the walls. Most of the rest of the windows were in various stages of damage. Paperwork wafted out of holes, fluttering in the air before coming to rest in the shady boulevard that separated the two buildings from each other.
The labs were mostly gone.
Fire engines from every corner of Loudoun County surrounded the rubble, and firemen looked for something to put out. There was very little to put out. The explosion had collapsed the building on itself, smothering any incipient fire before it could catch. EMTs circled the collapsed building, using scanners to locate RFID-equipped personnel badges the Loudoun Pharma staff used.
There were six badges pinging, all for janitorial staff. The EMT deployed roach and snake bots to scurry through the wreckage toward the badges to see if they were still attached to anyone alive.
They were not.
“Here’s what the security guards saw,” I said, to Vann. We were in her car and I was porting the images to her dash. She was sucking like a demon on one of her cigarettes. It might have been a side effect of sexual frustration, but now was not the moment to ask. I kept the door on my side open to vent the smoke.
In the dash, we were treated to a guard-post camera view of an SUV accelerating into the parking lot and then ramming through the gate, snapping it off as it drove through.
“Back it up and pause it just before the snap,” Vann said. I did. She pointed. “License plate and face,” she said.
“Right,” I said. “Neither of which match the RFID badge that pinged when the SUV rammed through, though.”
“Who does the badge belong to?”
“Karl Baer,” I said. “He’s a geneticist. Works in the lab. He’s also a Haden, which is why we were pinged.”
“That’s not a threep driving the SUV,” Vann said. “So whoever this is stole Baer’s ID. But why would they do that and then just ram the goddamn gate?”
“They needed the ID to access the parking garage under the labs,” I said. “Staff parking is in the garages. Visitor parking outside.”
“And an SUV full of explosives is much more effective under the building than next to it.”
“I imagine that’s the thinking, yes.”
“So if it’s a stolen ID, do we need to be here?” Vann asked. “Still?”
I paused for a second, wondering why she would ask me that, then remembered it was still my first day with her, unbelievable as it was at this point. She was still testing me.
“Yeah, we do,” I said. “One, we need to check in on Baer to make sure the ID was stolen. Two”—I pointed back to the image of the SUV about to ram the gate—“there’s the fact that this SUV is registered to Jay Kearney.”
“Am I supposed to know who Jay Kearney is?”
“You might,” I said. “He’s an Integrator. Or was.”
Vann took a final suck on her cigarette and put it out on her window glass. “Show me a clean picture of Kearney,” she said.
I loaded his Integrator license picture into the dash and placed it next to the image of the person driving the car. Vann leaned in and peered.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“Could be. Could be,” she said. She glanced up over the dash toward the collapsed building and the flashing lights of the cops, firemen, and EMTs. “Have they found him yet?”
“I don’t think they’re looking for him,” I said. “They’re looking for the janitors. And anyway if he was in the SUV when it went up then he’s a fine coat of ash all over that parking garage.”
“You share this with anyone yet?”
“No one here is interested in talking to me,” I said. “I’m Haden affairs, not terrorism.” As I said this the distant sound of a helicopter became loud and got louder.
“That’s probably terrorism right now,” Vann said. “They like to make an entrance.”
I motioned back at the image. “I got this from security the same time the Leesburg cops and the Loudoun sheriffs did but I don’t think they’ve looked at it yet.”
“All right,” Vann said. She wiped the images off her screen. “Where are you parked?”
“I’m not,” I said. “I caught a ride with Jim Buchold, the CEO. He’s over yelling at the Leesburg cops.”
“Good,” Vann said. She started her car.
“Where are we going?” I closed the door on my side.
“We’re going to visit Karl Baer,” Vann said. “Pull up his address, please.”
“Do we need a warrant?” I asked, as I did it.
“I want to talk to him, not arrest him,” Vann said. “But you might see if you can get a warrant for Kearney’s records. I want to know who he was integrating with. See if you can pull Nicholas Bell’s records too. Two Integrators possibly tied up with murder in a single day is a little much for me.”
* * *
Karl Baer’s apartment was in a little gray apartment complex in Leesburg, next to a supermarket and an International House of Pancakes. He was in a bottom corner apartment, tucked underneath a stairwell. There was no response when we knocked.
“He is a Haden,” I pointed out.
“If he’s living here he’s got a threep,” Vann said. “If he’s got a damn employee badge at Loudoun Pharma then he’s got a threep. He can answer the door.” She knocked again.
“I’ll go around back and see if I can see in a window,” I said, after a minute.
“Yeah, okay,” Vann said. “No, wait.” She tried the doorknob. It turned all the way.
“You really going to do this?” I asked, looking at the doorknob.
“The door was open,” Vann said.
“The door was closed,” I said. “Just unlocked.”
“Are you recording?”
“Right now? No.”
Vann pushed the door open. “Look, it’s open,” she said.
“You’re just a beacon of safe constitutional practices, Vann,” I said, echoing her from earlier in the day.
She grinned. “Come on,” she said.
We found Karl Baer in his bedroom, a knife shoved into his brain. A threep was standing beside his cradle, knife handle in hand, flush with Baer’s temple.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“Go open the window blinds,” Vann said. I did what she told me. “If anyone asks, you came around the back, looked in and saw this, and that’s when we entered the apartment.”
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” I said.
“What’s to feel good about?” Vann asked. “Are you recording yet?”
“No,” I said.
“Start,” she said.
“I’m on.”
Vann went over to the light switch and flipped it on with her elbow. “Start mapping,” she said. She put on a pair of gloves as I did so. After I was done mapping, she went over and picked up a tablet on the side table next to Baer’s cradle and turned on the screen.
“Shane,” she said. She turned the tablet around so I could see the screen. Jay Kearney was on it.
“Is it a video?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Vann said, turning the screen back to her. I walked over to her and she pressed “play.”
On the screen Jay Kearney came to life. He was holding the tablet so that he and Karl Baer were both caught by the camera.
“This is Karl Baer,” Kearney said. “I am speaking for myself and for my good friend Jay Kearney, with whom I am now integrated. For the past eight years I have worked at Loudoun Pharma as a geneticist, as part of a team working to reverse the effects of Haden’s syndrome.
“When I joined Loudoun, I believed that what I was doing was right for Haden’s. None of us asked to be trapped within our bodies. I know I didn’t. I was a teenager when I got sick and all the things I loved to do were taken from me. Working to reverse the changes that Haden’s had brought into my life made sense to me. I looked forward to the chance to have that new life.
“But as I went on I began to realize that Haden’s wasn’t some life sentence. It was just another way to live. I began to see the beauty of the world we Hadens were creating, the millions of us, in our own spaces and in our own way. And I began listening to the words of Cassandra Bell, who said that people like me, people who were working to quote-unquote cure Haden’s, were in fact killing the first new nation of humanity to come along in centuries.
“She’s right. We are. I am. And it’s time to put a stop to it now.
“It’s not something I could have done by myself. Fortunately my friend Jay believes as I do and believes it enough to help me. Others, who will remain nameless, helped along the way to provide us with materials and planning. And now all that needs to be done is to set it all into motion. Jay and I will do it together. And when his part is over, then I will come back here in order to join him on the next part of our journey together. I guess if you’re seeing this you know how I did this.
“For my family and friends, I know that my actions—our actions—may not seem comprehensible. I know that there’s a chance that a few innocent people will be harmed or even killed. I regret this and apologize to those who will lose loved ones tonight. But I ask them to understand that if I don’t take these actions now, then what Loudoun Pharma is doing will lead to the extinction of an entire people. A genocide committed through quote-unquote kindness.
“To my colleagues at Loudoun Pharma, I know many of you will be angry with me, now that my actions have set back your work and research by years. But what I ask of you now is to spend that time you have to think about the consequences of what you are doing. Read and listen to the words of Cassandra Bell as I have. I believe in what she has to say. I believe in her. I follow her philosophy in the things I do today. I believe that you might do the same in time.
“Good-bye and all the best to Hadens everywhere. I am with you, always.”
* * *
“None of this makes any goddamned sense,” Jim Buchold said.
We were in the family room of Buchold and Wisson’s home outside Leesburg. The Leesburg police, Loudoun County sheriffs, and FBI apparently had to just about forcibly remove Buchold from the Loudoun Pharma campus in order to get him out of the way so they could do their work. As a result Buchold was pacing around his family room, feeling useless. Wisson had fixed his husband a drink to calm him down. It sat undrunk on the table. Eventually Wisson helped himself to it.
“Why doesn’t it make any goddamned sense?” Vann asked.
“Because Karl was a principal investigator for Neuroulease.”
“Which is,” Vann prompted.
“It’s the drug we were developing to stimulate the voluntary nervous system in Haden’s victims,” Buchold said. In spite of myself I felt vaguely annoyed at the use of the word “victim” in that sentence. “Haden’s suppresses the ability of the brain to speak to the voluntary nervous system. Neuroulease encourages the brain to develop new pathways to the system. We’ve done tests on chips that worked and have been working on genetically modified mice. Progress was slow but encouraging.”
“Is ‘neuroulease’ the actual chemical?” I asked.
“It’s the brand name we’re planning to use for it,” Buchold said. “The actual name of the chemical compound is about a hundred and twenty letters long. The most recent iteration of the compound—the one Karl was working on—was called LPNX-211 for internal recordkeeping.”
“And Dr. Baer never showed any indication of developing a moral opposition to what he was researching,” Vann asked.
“Of course not,” Buchold said. “I didn’t spend that much time with him, but as far as I know the only things that Karl actually cared about were his work and Notre Dame football. He went there for undergrad. When he had a presentation he always managed to put in a slide with the team in it. I tolerated it because his work was that good.”
“What about his relationship with Jay Kearney?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The Integrator whose body we think Baer used to drive the vehicle into the parking garage,” Vann said.
“Never heard of him,” Buchold said. “Karl always used his threep at work.”
“Did you see Kearney integrating with Baer outside of work?” I asked.
Buchold glanced over at his husband. “We didn’t exactly run in the same social circles,” Wisson said. “I don’t encourage Jim to be overly friendly with his staff. It’s better if they see him as a boss rather than a friend.”
“So that would be a no,” Vann said.
“It’s not because he’s a Haden—was a Haden,” Buchold said. He turned to me. “I treat all my employees equally. We have a compliance officer in HR to make sure of it.”
“I believe you,” I said.
“Yes, but you also heard that son of a bitch Hubbard running me down tonight,” Buchold said. “I have fifteen Haden researchers on my staff. None of them would be there if they thought I was treating them as subhuman, or what we were doing was bad for Hadens.”
“Mr. Buchold,” I said, and held up a hand. “I’m not here to judge you. And I’m not here to run back to my father and whisper into his ear about you. Right now I am here investigating the bombing of your facilities. Our primary suspect at the moment is one of your employees. Our only interest is finding out if he’s really the bomber, and why he did it.” Buchold seemed to relax a bit at that.
And then Vann tensed him all up again. “Did Dr. Baer ever talk about Cassandra Bell?” she asked.
“Why the hell would he do that?”
“Jim,” Wisson said.
“No,” Buchold said, shooting a look at his husband. “I never heard him speak about Cassandra Bell.”
“What about the researchers around him?” Vann continued.
“There would be casual talk about her because she’s on record opposing our line of research,” Buchold said. “We always wondered if protesters would show up like they do because of the animal testing we have to do. But none ever did and I don’t think anyone really gave her a whole lot of thought. Why?”
I looked over to Vann to see what she thought. She nodded at me. “Dr. Baer left behind a suicide note,” I said. “He mentioned Cassandra Bell in it.”
“How? Is she behind this in some way?” Buchold asked.
“We don’t have any reason to believe so,” Vann said. “But we also have to follow up all the leads.”
“I knew this was going to happen,” Buchold said.
“What was going to happen?” I asked.
“Violence,” Buchold said. “Rick will tell you. Those dipshits passed Abrams-Kettering and I said to him that sooner or later there was going to be a mess. You don’t just take five million people sucking on the government teat and punt them into the street and expect them to go without a fight.” He looked over at me. “No offense.”
“None taken,” I said, which wasn’t entirely true, but I let it go. “How far does this set you back?”
“You mean our research?”
“Yes.”
“It sets us back by years,” Buchold said. “There’s data in the lab that wasn’t anywhere else.”
“You don’t have multiple copies of your data?” Vann asked.
“Of course we do,” Buchold said.
“And you can’t pull it down off your networks?”
“You don’t understand,” Buchold said. “We don’t ever put anything genuinely sensitive online. The moment we do that the hacking begins. We’ll put up dummy servers with nothing on them but encrypted pictures of cats, for fuck’s sake, and we won’t tell anyone we’ve put them out there. Within four hours we’ve got hackers from China and Syria cracking them open. We’d be idiots to put actual confidential data into an outside-accessible server.”
“So all your data was stored locally,” I said.
“Stored locally,” Buchold said. “Stored multiply on internal servers.”
“What about archives?” Vann asked. “Data stored off-network.”
“We did that, of course. And stored it in a secure room on campus.”
“So all of it—local and archived data—went up with the lab building.” Vann glanced over to me with an expression that I suspect meant these people were sloppy.
“Right,” Buchold said. “It’s possible we can piece together some recent data from e-mails and the computers in the office building. If they weren’t destroyed by either the blast or by the fire-suppression system. But realistically speaking—years of research. Gone. Dead. Destroyed.”
* * *
“Oh, look, it’s midnight,” I said, to Vann, as she drove me home. “My first real day on the job is over.”
Vann smiled at this, the cigarette in her mouth bouncing as she did so. “I’m not going to lie to you,” she said. “It’s been a little more hectic than most first days.”
“I can hardly wait for tomorrow,” I said.
“I doubt that.” Vann drooled smoke out of her lips.
“You know that shit’s going to kill you, right?” I asked. “The smoking. There’s a reason why no one does it anymore.”
“There’s a reason why I do it,” she said.
“Yeah? What is it?”
“Let’s say we keep some mystery in our relationship,” Vann said.
“Whatever,” I said, with what I hoped was just the right amount of casual flip. Vann smiled again. Score one for me.
My phone went off. It was Tony. “Shit,” I said.
“What?”
“I was supposed to meet with my maybe new roommates tonight,” I said.
“Do you want me to write you a note?” Vann asked.
“Cute,” I said. “Hold on.” I opened the channel and spoke with my inside voice. “Hey, Tony.”
“So we were all hoping that you might pop by tonight,” Tony said.
“Yeah, about that,” I began.
“But then I saw that Loudoun Pharma exploded and they think it might be a terrorist plot or something, and I thought to myself, I’m guessing Chris might be a little busy this evening.”
“Thank you for understanding,” I said.
“Looks like you had an exciting day.”
“You have no idea.”
“Well, then, let me end it with a bit of good news,” Tony said. “The group tried you in absentia and found you guilty of being a probably worthy flatmate. You are hereby sentenced to the nicest room in the brownstone. May God have mercy on your soul.”
“That’s great, Tony,” I said. “No, really. I appreciate it.”
“That’s good to hear. And the rest of us appreciate you paying rent so that we’re not thrown out in the street, so we’re even. I’m sending your house code now. Once you’re here change it so no one but you knows it. I got your first and last and security deposit, so you’re good to go. Show up anytime.”
“Probably tomorrow,” I said. “I’m already close to my parents’ place. I’m going to crash here for the night.”
“Sounds good,” Tony said. “Now get some rest. You sound beat. Good night.”
“Night,” I said, and then switched back to my outside voice. “I got the apartment.”
“That’s nice,” Vann said.
“It’s actually a room in an intentional community,” I said.
“Funny, you don’t look like a hippie.”
“I’ll work on it,” I promised.
“Please don’t,” she said.