Vitals

It was the PalmSec that was beeping. The pert little a.m. triple-tone told me two things, that I had a call, and that it was before noon. I flipped open the jacket, keyed in my unlock, and answered. ‘Cousins.’

‘Dr Cousins, Betty Shun. How are you?’

‘Dandy,’ I said, and regretted the flippancy.

‘We’re very sad here,’ she said. ‘We’ve lost a lot of friends.’

‘Yes. I know.’

‘We need to get together. I’ll bring along a man who also works for Owen. He wants to talk with you.’

‘When?’ I asked.

‘We’re in a car in front of your hotel. We’ll take you to the Crab Cart for breakfast.’

I had been given my marching orders. But I wanted to find out about my specimens. Time was running out.

As always.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#ulink_c89ebb98-fc22-5eb1-bb09-c827b6d55745)

Betty Shun stood in the lobby, dressed in a green-leather coat and green slacks. I turned and saw a blocky, balding man in his late forties push through the men’s room door, blowing on his hands. He made sure they were dry before he offered to shake.

‘Hal Cousins, this is Kelly Bloom,’ Betty introduced. Shun, Bloom, Press…I was seeing a pattern here, all members of the Monosyllabic Verb club. Bloom wore denim all over – denim pants, denim jacket with brass buttons, a blue-denim shirt. And Air Jordans, old but scrubbed clean.

‘Dr Cousins, first off, congratulations,’ Bloom said. ‘Let’s get out of here and go someplace quiet.’

They escorted me to the drive. I had expected a limousine or at the very least a BMW, but the car parked in front of the hotel lobby, beaded with rain and speckled with mud, was a mid-nineties Ford Taurus, conspicuously purple, with a dented right fender and scrape marks all along the driver’s side.

‘Yours?’ I asked Bloom. He grinned.

‘It’s going to be a long day, isn’t it?’ I asked Betty. She gave me a studied smile.

The Crab Cart was quiet and dark. In the back, under windows overlooking yachts at private moorings, the booths were separated by barriers of glass and wood. Betty ordered first, oatmeal and two eggs. Bloom had nothing, not even coffee, maintaining his ascetic posture. I ordered a bowl of Wheat Chex, toast, and a small crab omelet. Bloom smiled as I laced into my food. Betty ate half her oatmeal, both of her eggs, and patted her mouth fastidiously with the cloth napkin.

The questions began. Bloom spoke in a pillowy bass, with a gentle North Carolina accent. He kept his hands folded on the oak tabletop. ‘Do you know why anyone would want to kill you?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re a private investigator, aren’t you?’

‘We both work with Owen’s security detail,’ Betty answered. She cocked her head at my raised eyebrow. ‘Did you think I was window dressing?’ She laughed, a tinkling trill. ‘Owen can afford much prettier, just not much smarter, or more cautious.’

‘Okay,’ Bloom said. ‘You understand we aren’t trying to go around the police investigation, and that we have no authority? You don’t have to answer.’

‘Decent of you to warn me,’ I said. The corporate Seattle way – a shakedown without the hard edge.

‘We try,’ Bloom said. ‘Owen wants to understand what happened. You were down in the DSV with Dave Press during the shooting on the Sea Messenger. Did you think Press was acting funny?’

‘He was acting scary,’ I said. ‘Not in the least funny.’

‘What did he do?’

‘I told the police, he was trying to curse and not doing a very good job of it.’

‘Was he asking inappropriate questions?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But that wasn’t so bad…I mean…’ I paused. ‘I never mentioned that to the police.’

Bloom shrugged. His shoulders strained at the denim jacket. ‘Did he talk about Mr Montoya?’

Bloom was new to Montoya’s staff, I guessed.

‘He asked how we’d met, like that. Nothing suspicious.’

‘He wondered what you were doing with Mr Montoya?’

‘He talked about my getting special privileges with regard to the dives, the submarine. Jealousy aboard the Sea Messenger.’

‘Jealousy involving Dr Mauritz?’

‘I suppose. But mostly it was just water cooler talk – you know.’

Bloom nodded, but he wasn’t satisfied. ‘Dr Mauritz did anonymous peer review on one of your scientific articles,’ he said. ‘He recommended it be rejected.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ I said. ‘But then, I wouldn’t, would I?’

‘Did he ever show any animosity?’

I heard it first as anonymosity. ‘Not to my face. He seemed pleasant, but we had very little contact.’

Betty Shun broke in. ‘This isn’t going anywhere. Dr Cousins, Owen had your specimens taken off the Sea Messenger and sent to your lab.’

‘You should have told me that right away,’ I said.

‘He made sure they were delivered to your postdocs and they’re being well taken care of.’

‘They’re in special pressurized containers,’ I said, my anger building. ‘They should have been transported in a powered van. We agreed, the specimens are incredibly delicate – the temperature down there makes their membranes –’

‘Everything was done according to your instructions,’ Shun said. ‘If you’d like, we’ll drive you over there.’

‘It’s just a short hike. I can go myself,’ I said through clenched teeth.

‘A car is faster,’ she said persuasively. ‘And Owen –’

‘Yes, yes. Owen wants a report.’

We drove to the old Genetron Building. It’s in a former power plant that was given a multimillion-dollar makeover when Genetron moved in. You can see the building, with its tall exhaust stacks, from the I-5 bridge. Genetron was sold to the Swiss-French pharmaceutical giant Novalis, which rented me lab space in the now-vacant facility for a good rate – and with guaranteed security.

The lobby was an expensive waste of blond wood and stainless-steel, with a cut-pile green carpet that matched Betty Shun’s leather jacket. A security guard checked my card and gave Shun and Bloom temporary passes. I showed them the way to the ground-floor lab, at the end of a long hall on the north end of the building.