Chapter 23

Harvard Medical School was located between the Mission Hill district of Boston and the Charles River to the north. Harry and Dixie rode a Metro Cab taxi from Logan Airport to the medical school. As they sped along Huntington Avenue, they chatted idly in the rear seat until the driver veered off the freeway and onto a crowded side street.

He stopped on Shattuck Street opposite the lawn in front of the medical school building. The 1906 Beaux Arts complex comprised five imposing structures on a twenty-six acre site, with one building for administration and four for laboratories, grouped in a U-shaped quadrangle around a long open-ended court. The complex’s white Dorset marble exterior was said to have been intended for the New York Public Library. The medical school building proper was a three-story marble and granite affair with six Greek columns in its facade.

They crossed the tree-lined quadrangle, entered the building, and quickly found Dr. Stanley Eagleton’s office. He was head of Harvard’s Human Disease Genome Project, dedicated to sequencing the genome of patient’s with heritable disorders and building a database available to all medical practitioners.

They waited in a cramped office so typical of professionals engaged in academic pursuits. Next door was Eagleton’s lab and the sounds of various machines humming made Harry think of Chloe Rawlings’s laboratory. A short, squat secretary typed on a computer terminal and now and then the woman shot Harry a look and smiled.

A tall, thin man breezed into the office, glanced at the secretary, and approached Harry and Dixie. He was young, in his thirties, wore an open-necked shirt over a rumpled lab coat. Coming closer, he extended his hand.

“Dr. Olson, I presume,” he said in a deep graveled voice. “I’m Stanley Eagleton.”

Harry stood and shook hands.

“Nice to meet you,” he said. “And this is my wife, Dr. Dixie Olson. We are pleased you were able to meet with us.”

Eagleton took Dixie’s hand and held it for a moment.

“Married doctors, eh?” he said with a chuckle. “Rare in our business. Please come into my office.” Directing his attention to the secretary, he said, “Mary, bring us some coffee, please.”

Eagleton ushered Harry and Dixie into his office, the usual space filled with books, journals, computer, microscope, and a large screen television. Mary followed carrying three cups of coffee that she set on the desk.

The Harvard doctor ambled to a chair behind his desk while Harry and Dixie seated themselves in wooden chairs opposite him. Once they were seated, Eagleton lit a pipe.

“My only remaining vice,” he said between puffs, “besides good bourbon. Now, on the phone, you mentioned Millie Harbaum. She was working for you, correct?”

Harry cleared his throat and leaned forward in his chair. “Was is the operative word, Dr. Eagleton.”

Eagleton held up a hand in protest.

“Please,” he said. “Can we not be on first names here? Call me Stanley.”

“Thank you, Stanley,” Harry said. “As I mentioned on the phone, I am--or was--the chairman of the anthropology department at California Pacific University. Millie was the associate director of our Primate Research Facility located in Nevada. Originally, as a graduate student, she worked to sequence the genomes of a pair of Yeti we had brought from Mongolia.”

“Yes,” Eagleton said. “It was in all the journals. Quite an accomplishment.” He turned to Dixie. “And you were part of this project, Dixie?”

“I was a member of the two expeditions that discovered the Yeti and brought them to the States,” she said. “But Millie was working on her own project after obtaining her doctorate.”

“She was under my responsibility,” Harry said, after a sip of his coffee. “Millie was a new faculty member. As such, ultimately she was my responsibility.”

“You keep using the word was Harry. The past tense.”

“I am no longer employed by Cal Pacific.”

“Because of Millie’s actions?”

“Partly. It’s a long story.”

“My husband has been unfairly terminated,” Dixie said, placing a hand on Harry’s arm. “I resigned in protest. We need to locate Millie and her chimera. For Harry’s sake as well as her own.”

“Stanley,” Harry said, “what can you tell us about Millie? On the phone you mentioned you communicated with her.” He hoped for something, anything the man could tell them that might shed light on Millie’s whereabouts.

“Yes, we talked a number of times, emailed each other also. She wanted information on the techniques of inserting DNA material into cells and cultivating the resulting embryos. The simplest way bacteria can take up foreign DNA is through transformation, a technique used very frequently in molecular biology labs. In this technique, bacteria take up purified DNA through chemical and heat shock. Bacterial cell walls do not normally allow DNA in and must be made competent to take up DNA. Treating bacteria with calcium chloride makes them take up water and DNA, and a subsequent heat shock activates genes that help bacteria recover from the calcium chloride treatment.”

“It’s not the only possibility, I take it,” Harry said.

Eagleton shifted in his chair, puffed on his pipe a few tomes. “No, in the process of bacterial conjugation, bacteria transfer native plasmids, small circular pieces of DNA, to other bacteria. This technique can be harnessed in the molecular biology laboratory to insert a DNA sequence of interest into bacteria. Like animal cells, bacteria have viruses that can infect them. Bacterial viruses are called bacteriophages. The life cycle of a bacteriophage involves the insertion of the bacteriophage’s DNA into the host cell DNA, followed by removal of the bacteriophage DNA when the phage is ready to reproduce itself. Bacteriophage insertion is known as transduction. Generalized transduction is used to insert foreign DNA into bacterial cells in laboratories.

“Finally, mammalian cells can be made to take up foreign DNA through two methods, both of which are called transfection. Chemical transfection involves treating cells with a chemical like calcium phosphate, which allows them to take up DNA by a mechanism that isn’t understood. Another method involves using viruses to insert foreign DNA in a manner similar to bacterial transduction. This method is called virus-mediated transfection, or simply transduction.”

“Very complicated,” Dixie said. “Millie was interested in all of this?”

“She was primarily interested in the microinjection method. She said her facility had an inverted phase contrast microscope and monitor and she was able to find the autoinjector for use with micropipettes. I gave her some pointers on using the very small micropipettes to physically puncture a cell and inject the DNA material into it. During microinjection, DNA is injected directly into the cell, or even into the cell nucleus via an inserted cannula. The process is observed on a monitor and controlled with the microscope. The technique is easy once learned but does take some practice as one is working with small single cells. The DNA is then integrated into the animal genome during the cell’s own DNA repair processes.”

“Is it a common procedure?” Harry said.

“More and more it is, yes. The beauty is that not a lot of expensive equipment is needed in order to be successful. All one needs is a microscope, a micromanipulator, micropipettes, and a microinjector. Which, I learned, was available at her facility. Bingo, after some practice, you can make all the DNA transfers you want. Assuming you have a purified DNA solution.”

“We have a complete DNA sequencing lab at the primate facility, so Millie was well versed in genetic research techniques.” Harry leaned forward again and gulped his remaining coffee. “I’m not surprised that she was able to develop the technique by herself in a short period of time. She’s a very talented scientist.”

“Dr. Eagleton, Stanley, I’m sorry,” Dixie said, “do you have any idea where Millie might have gone?”

“So she actually created a chimera, did she? Your Yeti DNA and who else’s?”

“Her own,” Harry said.

Eagleton set his pipe in an ashtray and stood. He strolled around his desk and paced the small office.

“You mean there’s a chimera out there somewhere that is part Yeti and part Millie?”

“I’m afraid so,” Harry said.

“Why, it’s outlandish.” Eagleton stared at Harry, his mouth open. It was as if the full impact of what Millie had done finally hit him. “I don’t believe it. I refuse to believe it. I can’t believe it.”

“It’s true,” Dixie said in a voice barely above a whisper.

The Harvard doctor returned to his chair and fell into it, silent for a while.

“She had a boyfriend once,” he said finally. “She left him cause he roughed her up. I believe it was when she worked for the State of California in Sacramento a long time ago. Name of George...let me see...I don’t remember his last name. George...Trench, that’s it. George Trench. But he may no longer reside in Sacramento. Could be anywhere.”

Harry stood, and Dixie followed. He held out his hand.

“Thanks, Stanley,” he said, shaking Eagleton’s hand. “We’ll be going. Thanks for your time and information.”

“My pleasure, Harry. You and Dixie come back soon and let me give you the grand tour. And I hope you find Millie soon.”

***

Back in San Mateo Harry hurriedly answered a few emails regarding inquiries he made about employment. The most intriguing was a positive response from the Institute for American Antiquities, a nonprofit concern who underwrote archeological expeditions around the globe. Their director recently retired, and they were searching for her replacement. Harry scribbled a quick reply, sending his resume, while Dixie busied herself with household chores.

As he listened to Dixie’s humming in the next room, Harry searched the Internet for a George Trench in Sacramento. He found several listed. When his wife returned, he closed his laptop.

“I found several people named George Trench living in Sacramento, honey. Tomorrow we should drive up there and check them out.”

“How do we know if they are still living there?” she asked. “The Internet is notorious for not having up-to-date information.”

“It’s all we have to go on at present. We might get lucky.”

“How many years ago did Millie know this man?” Dixie said.

“Well, Eagleton did say it had been quite a while. It may turn out to be a wild goose chase.”

“I’m starved,” Dixie said. “Let’s go get a hamburger and we can talk about it while we eat. What do you say?”

“I am hungry at that. Okay, I’m with you. That place down by the Bay?”