Chen decided they should do it in the evening and pick Rennie Mulcahy up at home, when and where they expected she would be alone. Instead, when she opened the door, there was an elderly woman, stark naked, doing a hula dance. She smiled at the men and said, “Reach down to the beach and lift the shell.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Rennie said.
“Why are you apologizing?” said Maria. To the men, “What are you doing here? Do you have a warrant? You can see this is not a good time.”
“I just lost her caregiver,” said Rennie. She guided her mother away. Was there a back door? Chen and Dawit exchanged glances and Chen followed.
“Dr. Castillo,” said Dawit. “I’m surprised to see you here.”
She touched his arm. “Sit at the computer.” She led him to the kitchen table. “See, we can model in 3-D.”
We. Meaning Emine?
“You must miss it,” Maria said.
She was trying to distract him. And she unnerved him, the skeletal teeth in receding gums and the sunbaked brown skin that gave her the look of a mummy, the way she regarded him squarely with what seemed like defiance but might have been pity.
“Miss what?”
“Research,” said Maria. “You used to care about expanding knowledge. I googled you.”
From the bedroom came a scream and then a falsetto voice singing in what sounded like Russian.
“What are you learning, Dr. Castillo?” he said.
“This software. Look at this—”
He wondered why Rennie Mulcahy had such sophisticated software at home.
“You want to disrupt retroviral protease?” Maria said. “Specifically, M-PMV. You know what that—?”
“Yes, yes. The enzyme,” Dawit said. “You’re looking to disrupt the multiplication of HIV.”
“Maria, I need help,” Rennie called.
In the bedroom, Mrs. Mulcahy was squirming and swinging her arms, only one of which was inside a sleeve.
Maria pushed past Chen and said, “You could lend a hand.”
Rennie said, “Come on. You know she won’t let a man touch her.”
Maria put a teddy bear in Mrs. Mulcahy’s arms while Rennie stroked her hair. They calmed her enough to get her to sit on the hospital bed, and then Rennie slowly pulled on a pair of underpants. Her mother released her bladder, without malice, without shame. The only one who blushed was Chen. Maria stripped the bed. Rennie stripped off the panties. Mrs. Mulcahy, somewhat subdued now, let them adjust an adult diaper. Dawit hovered in the doorway as Rennie made the bed with fresh sheets.
“Get the door,” said her mother.
They got her to lie down and pulled up the railings around the bed.
“That will usually keep her,” said Rennie. “Go to sleep, Mom. Bob Hope won’t be here tonight.”
“Who is Bob Hope?” asked Dawit.
Chen followed Rennie as she took the dirty linens to the laundry room and started the wash.
“You guys investigating the hate crimes?” she asked.
“The—?”
“The white terrorists who shot the halal butcher and his son in their store,” she said. “And the attack on the Sikh gurdwara. The—”
“That’s a different task force,” he said, wondering if such a task force existed.
“You need a model for molecular replacement,” said Maria. Click click, she showed Dawit. “I know I’m going very fast. We already figured this out, I just want you to see it.” A ploy, treating him as a colleague. The images and the words: partial threading, crystal structure.
Rennie joined them. “You should start a lab in your garage,” she said to Dawit. “It’s not hard to do these days.”
They wanted him to be a scientist, not an investigator. Did that mean he was getting too close? But his own lab, he thought. Then nothing he created could be patented by a corporation for profit. His discovery would not be owned. His employer couldn’t call it proprietary information. If he made a breakthrough, he’d assign the patent to humanity. He’d give it away, open source, where anyone could build on it. And then, he thought, he’d be investigated too.
“It’s really Dr. Albaz we’d like to talk to,” said Chen.
“She’s not here,” Rennie said.
“We can see that.”
“Will someone please answer the door!” came a shout from the bedroom.
Rennie shook her head. “I thought she’d sleep.”
“What we need to know—” said Dawit.
“Here’s the core of the protein. Tuck the loop here. You’re going to need backbone rearrangement. Now here you see the monomer surface—”
“Makes more sense to me than vulture vomit,” said Rennie.
“Emine Albaz,” Chen prompted.
“The Director told her to take all her vacation time,” Rennie said. “I don’t know where she went.”
Dawit said, “My work was on BRCA1 and BRCA2.”
“Estrogen receptor reporter genes,” said Maria.
She didn’t use the words breast cancer. A way perhaps of distancing herself from that possibility, he thought. It was a choice, he thought, to live without fear, and he thought again of his wife, how women’s bodies were so fragile and women so strong.
“You handle all the travel arrangements,” said Chen.
“Not the personal—”
“Answer the door!”
“I’ll get it, Mom,” said Rennie, and stayed where she sat.
“We want to predict,” said Dawit, “from the genetic profile who actually benefits from chemo and/or radiation.” NDO be damned, he wanted to talk. How easily a researcher can be seduced, he thought.
“Of course that’s valuable,” said Maria. Pat on the head. “But imagine finding a way to repair the mutation. Or design a drug that specifically targets a specific woman’s specific disease.” Or a bioweapon, he thought, targeting a specific race or gender or individual high-value target human being. “That’s actionable information,” she said. Actionable intelligence, he thought. “Make a cut in the cell. Insert what the patient needs.”
“Simple,” said Rennie because now they were in territory she understood and she had nothing, really nothing more, to say to Chen. “You create the blueprint, then you send it out for actual fabrication of the bioengineered gene.”
“And where would I send it out to?”
“To us,” said Rennie.
“But you see, this is the problem,” said Dawit. “People who haven’t been vetted receiving whatever they want—any kind of pathogen, for example—by mail order.” Lethal snake venom, he thought, and wondered if it could be aerosolized, and he wondered why they’d been told to pick Mulcahy up, and not Dr. Castillo.
“Oh, please,” said Rennie. “I’m talking about designer genes, recombinant DNA.” She chattered on. “We need a revenue stream. No more depending on government or being beholden to corporations.”
“Even recombinant DNA, it’s a risk.”
“It’s the entrepreneurial small business model,” she said. “We’ve done too much low-fee work for amateurs. We have to up our game.”
The singing began again.
Dawit wasn’t happy about it, but the decision had been made.
“It would be very helpful to have you come to the office, walk us through some of your procedures.”
“Now? At night?”
“We’re 24/7 these days,” said Chen.
It’s her own fault, thought Dawit. Why did she have to act the know-it-all? But he couldn’t help feeling bad about her and wondering what would happen to the old lady.
“You don’t have to go with them,” said Maria. “Rennie, don’t go.”
“OK, Mom,” said Rennie. “I’m checking the door.” She laughed and picked up her shoulder bag. Chen assumed she was glad for the excuse to leave Maria stuck with her mother. But the laughter hit Dawit hard. He was sure she was entirely unconcerned, thinking No problem. This is America.