Group three is acting sluggish. All four mice have burrowed into the wood shavings, their bodies flittering with rapid heartbeats as the other groups scurry around. Dick takes out one of the rodents, extracts a small drop of blood, and examines it under his microscope. The problem is the same as before; the binding agent is not metabolizing and is therefore building up in the system. Dick documents the results, which are exactly what he expected from groups one and three.
The other two groups are exhibiting very positive results. The anti-allergen appears to be working with no notable side effects. Group four is especially encouraging. The mice are not only responding well to the treatment, but there’s indication that the animals’ immune systems might be contributing. If this is true, eventually the mice will be able to be weaned from the medicine, and the allergies will be held at bay by the host unaided.
He returns to his cubicle. Now that the study is up and running, there’s not much to do but wait. He pulls up his baseball team’s stats from the last game and tabulates the final batting averages. He smiles at Jim’s on-base percentage.
He texts him:
Jim’s response is almost instant:
He looks at the starburst crack on the screen of his monitor, his focus narrowed on the epicenter. Despite the bluster he showed two days ago while talking to Steve, he’s not eager to return to the pursuit, his nights haunted by what happened in Las Vegas.
He jiggles the mouse to wake his computer and, for a long time, looks at the small red chili in the upper right corner of his screen, which is the icon he created for “Pepper.”
Blowing out a breath, he opens a program called Family Watchdog and types in the address for Pentco. He restricts the search to a twenty-five-mile radius and, in seconds, gets the results. Within twenty-five miles of where he is sitting, there are seventy-two registered sex offenders who committed crimes against children.
Seventy-two. How many of those will rank above the Mendoza Line? He really doesn’t want to find out, knowledge a great burden he doesn’t want to bear.
His phone pings, and he looks at it to see another message from Jim:
Seventy-two released felons who have hurt children live within minutes of his son . . . his daughter . . . the boys on his team.
He texts Jim:
Then he sets down his phone, copies the first name from the Family Watchdog list, and pastes it into the name search field in the prison database. He reads through the record for the contributing factors and moves on to the next name on the list.
When he leaves for the day, he’s completed six of the seventy-two files. He saves his work to a thumb drive along with “Pepper,” then scrubs the files and search history from his desktop. He has no idea if Steve is watching, but he’s not going to take the chance.