Jeff Buick - Lethal Dose

She checked her watch. Almost five o’clock. She couldn’t have picked a worse time to drive over to White Oak. I-64 was a mess. A semi with a full load of live chickens had jackknifed and spilled its load across the westbound lanes. Some of the crates had split open, and the road was littered with dead chickens. Live chickens were running around in no particular direction. The eastbound lanes were clear, but the rubberneckers were in fine form, slowing traffic to a crawl so they could have a good look at the carnage. It was after seven when she passed the Richmond airport and the traffic thinned out. She reached the intersection of I-295 and I-64 and took the off-ramp, watching her speed as she drove the last half-mile to the research park. The cops loved to check their radar guns along this stretch.

She reached the entrance to the park, identified by a slab of white stone with a large green W etched in it. Underneath, just in case the visitor didn’t know what the W stood for, was “White Oak Technology Park.” Technology Boulevard was still busy, mostly with vehicles exiting the park. A good number of the research staff worked flex hours and preferred to come in late and leave long after rush hour had run its course. Jennifer pulled in at the second set of buildings on her right and parked in the third lot, next to a grove of mature hickory. The building housing Veritas’s office space was a sleek two-story silver structure with neatly trimmed lawns and a bank of windows framing the foyer. She walked through the storm door and swiped her card. The interior door opened automatically and the guard at the front desk smiled as she passed.

“Good evening, Dr. Pearce,” he said.

“Hi,” she said, returning the smile. At first, she had wondered how the guards knew everyone’s name, but after a while she noticed that a new line scrolled across their screen every time someone entering the building swiped his or her identity card. Technology in a technology park-go figure.

Veritas shared the building with the software development division of another corporation. The Veritas offices and labs were to the right of the main entrance, and she used her card to open the steel fire door that automatically closed at six o’clock every weekday. Once she was through the outer security door, there was a short section of hall, perhaps twenty feet, then another set of doors. A security camera registered every person who swiped their access card through the card reader. The doors were steel, with rectangular glass windows, but Jennifer suspected that this particular glass was virtually indestructible. She smiled at the camera, ran her card through the reader, and moved into the secret world of Veritas Pharmaceutical, White Oak Division.

Most of the Veritas labs were relegated to White Oak, for two reasons. The first was cost. Square footage at White Oak cost the company less than half what they paid for their space at BioTech Five. Second was security. Security in the new complex, built two years earlier, was vastly superior to that in Richmond’s older buildings. There were no back entrances or windows to smash for easy entry or exit. The glass in every exterior window was bulletproof, and every exit was monitored with a closed-circuit camera and an alarm. All the systems reported back to a central location that was constantly monitored. Secrets were easy to keep at White Oak.

Jennifer walked the length of the off-white sterile hallway and past scores of blue doors to the first of three crossroads. She turned right and walked into a construction zone. Three midsized HEPA filtration units and a pile of other boxes were sitting in the hallway outside the entrance to the brain chip department. The HEPA units were high-end systems designed to keep even the tiniest airborne particles from entering or leaving a sterile lab environment. She suspected that the intricate design of the brain chips required the air to be totally purified. She glanced in the open door as she passed. Rows of sophisticated machines were in the process of being moved. A researcher in a lab coat was involved in a heated discussion with one of the moving men. He was Chinese, slim with thick black hair and a long oval face. She recalled seeing him in the halls a couple of times, but they had never stopped to talk. His picture was on one of the staff memos, and it occurred to her that he was a department head, but she couldn’t remember which one. She continued down the hall, blue doors flashing by on both sides. At least her department was not in flux, she thought as she reached the doorway that gave access to the Alzheimer’s department. She had enough on her plate right now without her labs undergoing renovations. She swiped her card and entered the lab.

Veritas’s Alzheimer’s lab at White Oak was state of the art. Seven different and distinct labs were functioning as one, with each division having their own thrust at the problem. She had structured the labs that way, and the results to date were exceptional. Her staff members were in healthy competition with one another, approaching the disease from different directions but ultimately all with the same goal: to develop a drug to cripple the debilitating disease.

“Dr. Pearce,” a young woman said as she entered. “Thank goodness you’re here. Team Three is getting some really strange results. They want you to have a look.”

“Sure,” she said, slipping on a lab coat and entering the lab.

Two hours later she removed the coat, washed her hands, and left the building. The wonky results were a direct result of improper lab procedures. The samples had become contaminated, and it was the contaminants that had reacted to the enzyme. They had identified the guilty party and she had spoken with him-quietly, off to the side. There was no reason to go off the deep end-she just had to make sure it didn’t happen again.

As she reached her car, her mind went back to the thoughts of Kenga crashing over the cliff in the car, the driver somehow escaping. Things that didn’t add up. And things that were not subsiding into the far reaches of her memory. She couldn’t shake the idea that there was more to Kenga’s death than a simple automobile accident. Maybe she would take a detour on the way home and visit Kenga’s house.

Another look on Kenga’s home computer would dispel these crazy thoughts.

Kenga’s condo was dark as Jennifer pulled up in front. She switched off the car ignition and fingered the keys for a minute, wondering if she really wanted to know what was on the dead woman’s computer. What if these crazy suspicions she had were true? What then? If Veritas was killing its employees to keep them quiet, what could she do about it? And if they were, wouldn’t that put her next in the line of fire?

Jennifer sucked in a couple of deep breaths. What were the chances her suspicions would play out? Marginal to nil. She found Kenga’s key and held it tight between her thumb and index finger. As she exited the car, she glanced furtively up and down the street. Parked cars, a couple walking hand-in-hand, lights on in most of the houses. Nothing sinister. She walked quickly to the front door and let herself in. The cat poked his head out, saw it was her, and came over to rub against her leg.

“Oh, you poor thing,” she said, crouching and gently stroking the animal.“Your master isn’t coming home. You’re a nice cat- someone will want you.”

She straightened and walked directly to the bedroom Kenga had converted to a home office. She approached the desk and stopped. The computer was not as she had left it. Every time she left the office or shut down her home computer, she centered the mouse on the pad and laid a pen across the mouse pad at a forty-five-degree angle. It was a quirk of hers, but now she was glad she had done it. The pen was not on the mouse pad but beside it, on the desk. Someone had been in the house since her last visit on Wednesday.