Dick needs to get away. Since Hamilton’s death, he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it. He was honest with Steve. He made the choice he could live with, but that doesn’t lessen his guilt.
Wednesday morning, he did everything in his power to find Frankie so he could warn him not to go to Hamilton’s. He called every school in Huntington Beach. None would acknowledge whether or not Frankie was a student. He tried calling Zack again but got no answer.
He was parked outside Hamilton’s shop, watching him work, stressed and unsure what to do as time ticked down. He had no idea if Frankie’s parents were dropping him off or if he was walking to the condo or which direction he would be coming from. And once Frankie was inside, it would be too late.
At one o’clock, after nearly three hours of racking his brain, Hamilton knocked off for lunch. He pulled off the respirator mask, shook the foam from his clothes, and walked toward the sandwich shop on the corner.
As he walked, he whistled, and Dick wonders if that jaunty little tune was what ultimately tipped the scales, Hamilton in an especially good mood.
As soon as the door to the sandwich shop closed, Dick pulled on a pair of gloves and hurried into the bunker. He injected the foam rim of the mask with Cameron’s Cocktail and hurried back to his car. As he carefully wiped the syringe, repacked the vial, and pulled off the gloves, he prayed the amount he used would only knock Hamilton out or possibly make him sick, buying Dick more time. The exact potency of the drug is unknown, and he also had no idea how much of the drug would evaporate from the mask in the time it took for Hamilton to finish his lunch.
The drug was originally developed as an anesthesia for horses. Its beauty was that it worked quicker than other large mammal anesthetics, thereby eliminating the stress horses suffered from fighting the effects of being induced into unconsciousness against their strong wills. FDA testing on drugs for animals is not as stringent as it is for people, and the drug, called Equine Z, had been on the market over a month before the first tragedy struck. Though at the time, no one associated the death of Cameron’s lab assistant with the drug. The massive heart attack she suffered was believed to be from natural causes. It was almost two years after her death before the connection was made.
A private detective hired by the family of a woman who also died of a heart attack was the one to figure it out. The family believed the woman’s husband had a hand in her death. The woman had been soaking her nails in preparation for a manicure when she died. The suspected husband was a veterinarian at a racing stable. The detective tested the drugs the husband had access to and hit pay dirt when he put a drop of Equine Z on a mouse, and within seconds, the mouse dropped dead.
Pentco assigned Dick the task of figuring out why Equine Z was lethal and how it made it to market without anyone realizing it. What Dick discovered was that the very thing that made Equine Z so effective also made it deadly. The reason the drug worked so well was its exceptionally thin viscosity, which allowed it to be absorbed quickly into a horse’s bloodstream. Because of its almost vaporous liquidity, the drug evaporated very quickly when exposed to air, requiring it to be produced, stored, and administered in hermetically sealed vials. Which was the reason Cameron and the other scientists who worked on the drug never realized it was permeable to skin, making it alarmingly deadly to humans. An average horse heart weighs nine pounds, a human’s only ten ounces. A few drops of Equine Z would stop any human heart cold.
A week after the discovery, Cameron resigned. Four deaths, including that of his beloved assistant, were attributed to his drug. Two weeks later, his own heart attack was reported. There was no evidence Equine Z was involved.
In an effort to put the disaster behind them, Pentco issued a recall of the drug and ordered all of it destroyed. And all of it was except the dozen vials Dick had been issued for his investigation. Dick’s not sure why he kept them. Perhaps he couldn’t stand the thought of destroying them. Tragic as the drug turned out to be, it was also a work of genius and Cameron’s life’s effort. For five years, the vials have sat in an empty Ben & Jerry’s ice cream tub in his freezer. He often smiles when he sees the mint-chip carton, the same way an art collector might smile at a stunning, morbid masterpiece like Peter Paul Rubens’s Massacre of Innocents, an exquisite revelation of the shadow side of something meant to be beautiful, whether it be religion, medicine, or people.
As Dick drove away, he passed Hamilton returning from his lunch. He carried a coffee in one hand and a donut in the other. Dick didn’t think he slowed, but something made Hamilton look up. Through the open window, their eyes connected, and a flicker of recognition crossed Hamilton’s face. He raised the hand with the donut in a small wave and smiled, and Dick smiled back, a moment he’s relived again and again, a perpetual, exhausting reel in his mind that will not stop.