October 5, 2018
Galveston, Texas
At 4:00 p.m., Chris and Marnie appeared at the Gulf National Laboratory on the campus of U.T.M.B. Since they had submitted their identification, the campus police had their visitor badges ready. As they waited for their guide, they studied the handsome mural in the lobby which gave a brief history of infectious diseases in Galveston. They were relieved that plague, yellow fever, and malaria no longer threatened the city. There was also a model of the lab with its new addition.
Since her office was off the main lobby, Kathy Walsh greeted them.
“Hi. So good to see you again, Dr. Liccione. I remember when Gen brought you for a tour right after we opened.”
“Marnie, please. I meant to say hi to you at the memorial, but I lost track of you in the crowd. This is Chris Hill, from the Bay City Daily,” Marnie said.
After shaking hands, Kathy said, “Dr. Salinas asked if I would start showing you around. I thought you might want to see Gen’s office and lab, where she used to work. We’ve been moving personnel around since her death. Her boyfriend came by the other day and picked up her personal belongings. I’ve been keeping my eye out for anything we missed but haven’t seen anything.”
As Kathy guided them through the maze of hallways, Marnie was struck by how little the lab had changed. When she had visited Gen here ten years ago, Gen had been as proud of it as a new parent. Despite the panoramic views of the bay and gulf, which Marnie glimpsed out of certain windows, the lab felt like a prison to her. She got the creeps when checking in and out. With its submarine-like doors, the structure was claustrophobic.
Marnie smiled at Kathy and said, “We’re grateful for you helping us look around. I’m still trying to grasp that Gen isn’t going to come around the corner and show us around herself.”
Kathy nodded. “It’s like her spirit is still here. She was very dedicated and anxious to get her latest research validated so it could be used to help people.”
“What happened to the project she was working on?” Marnie asked.
After glancing around to make sure no one was within ear shot, Kathy replied, looking pointedly at Chris, “Off the record. It was very strange. We had a power outage the day Gen’s body was found. The emergency power came on immediately but there was a little bit of a panic. All of the data was found to be in place. A couple of days later, members of her team noticed that the raw data was there, but the report Gen was working on was missing. Unfortunately, no one has been able to find her analysis and conclusions.”
Prior to proceeding to the upper levels of the building, Kathy showed Chris and Marnie the model by her office. She explained that Level 1 labs were open to administrative personnel as the agents being studied were not known to cause disease in the average person. The joke was that they were safer than hospitals. Level 2 labs were designed to work with moderate agents that could cause severe diseases but were not easily transmittable. HIV and hepatitis viruses were in this group. Level 3 labs, which are the type of labs that housed insectariums and where Gen primarily worked, involved microbes which can cause serious, and potentially lethal, disease. Researchers must wear protective gear called “bunny suits” that provide head-to-toe coverage, along with respirator masks and goggles. Work was conducted in biosafety cabinets. Foot traffic was restricted. Research on agents like West Nile, tuberculosis, and dengue fever was conducted there.
Seriously dangerous diseases like Ebola were studied in Level 4 labs. The agents studied in this level were easily transmitted through air and had no readily available vaccines or treatments for their infections. Since the Level 4 lab that Chris and Marnie were going to see was not yet operational, they would not have to undergo all the training usually required. They would be able to get into a full hazard suit to experience what the researchers go through.
Kathy led them to a small office.
“This was Gen’s. Her main assistant, Billy, is moving in here.”
Marnie looked around. It was full of a clutter of boxes, half unpacked. Nothing in the space suggested Gen’s obsessive neatness.
“Any chance we can see her lab?” Marnie asked.
Kathy nodded, “Dr. Salinas said that he would be here shortly. He’s going to give you a tour of the new lab and let you suit up there. Then, he will take you down a level to Gen’s lab.”
Right on cue, a middle-aged man dressed in a polo shirt with a GNL logo appeared in the doorway.
“Welcome back to the lab, Chris,” said Dr. Salinas, moving in for a handshake. “It’s been a while.”
Chris greeted him with a smile and introduced Marnie.
“I’ll take it from here, Kathy. Thanks.” Sal nodded at Kathy in a way Marnie felt to be dismissive.
“Let’s get this show on the road. You two are lucky with your timing. The new wing of BSL4 is ninety percent complete. Follow me, and we can talk on our way over.”
The three set off at a brisk pace down a long hallway. On the walk, Sal explained BSL4 lab procedures. “Personnel must wear a protective suit supplied with positive air pressure, or more commonly called a ‘space suit.’ All personal clothing must be removed in the changing room and replaced with laboratory clothing, including undergarments, pants, shirts, jumpsuits, shoes, and gloves. When leaving the laboratory, a researcher must take a thorough shower. Used laboratory clothing is treated as contaminated materials. After the laboratory has been completely decontaminated, necessary staff may enter and exit.”
Marnie said, “The procedure does sound thorough. It’s every researcher’s nightmare that something would escape from a lab.”
“No joke,” Sal said, taking a deep breath. “Since the new lab is not operational at this time, we can skip the showers and undergarment changing but I thought it would be fun for you to put on the space suit. Maybe you can use it as background in your next piece, Chris. Right now, it’s the only place you can go six feet without needing a security badge.”
After clumsily getting into the suits, Sal helped them guide their hoses through the lab. The positive pressure hoses were quite powerful and had to be carefully tended.
“Man, I could never do this. These masks are horrible,” Chris said.
Marnie laughed. “I can’t stand it, either. I even had trouble in surgery with the masks and gowns. I thought if I was going to stitch and sew, I would rather be doing it from the comfort of my recliner.”
“At least here the air conditioning is top notch,” Sal said. “People suited up to work on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014 were passing out from heat exhaustion.”
After seeing the new lab and removing their suits, Marnie and Chris followed Sal to Gen’s lab. Most of the staff had left for the day. Sal said that he would be leaving them there and Billy would show them the lab. He would be able to do all the security badge openings required to guide them out.
“Hey, Sal, thanks for the tour. This is great background for the story about the opening,” said Chris.
“I’m counting on a good review, man,” replied Sal over his shoulder. He was gone as abruptly as he had appeared.
A gangly young man approached from the other end of the corridor. Marnie looked up and gave him one of her smiles.
“Hi!” Billy stammered. “I’m Billy Stanton. I used to be Gen’s right-hand man.”
Marnie and Chris introduced themselves as they walked to Gen’s lab.
Billy said, “I can’t tell you how much I miss her. She was such an amazing researcher. She taught me more in the last year than I learned in graduate school. She was so precise and thorough. If you stopped by her old office, you can see that neatness is not my strength. But I have maintained her order in the lab.”
Marnie looked around. This place did seem to hold Gen’s spirit. Everything was labeled and in its place. She immediately looked for anything with “Liz” on it.
“Where did Gen keep her thumb drives?”
“There’s a row of the current ones here. But I’ve looked through each one carefully and there isn’t a final report on any of them. Some older ones were kept in her office—but again, I searched them before the police took them last week. It doesn’t make sense. I’m sure she finished it, but it seems to have been erased. I’m trying to recreate it, but I don’t have a full grasp of the research in the same way Gen did.”
Marnie and Chris exchanged glances. After looking around the lab carefully, they could see Billy was fidgeting with his keys.
“Sorry,” Billy said. “I have an eighteen-month-old and a newborn at home. I promised my wife I’d be home by 6.”
“No problem,” Marnie said with a resigned smile. “I think we aren’t having any better luck finding Gen’s report than you are.”
On their way back to the main lab, Billy started babbling.
“I keep thinking about the last day she was at work. We had the surveyors here. She had a meeting with one of them around three. I don’t think it went well. But by the time she left she was upbeat. Triumphant. There seemed to be a glow about her. She smiled and gave me a thumb’s up.”
He looked nervously in Marnie’s direction as if gauging whether to go on. Marnie nodded reassuringly and he continued.
“She told me that all of ‘this’ was going to work out. She congratulated me on my new son. She said she was going to talk to Kathy, and then head out for the day. The word around the lab now is that she was transgender. I both would never have guessed and feel that it fits perfectly. It seems irrelevant now.”
Marnie stopped him. “She spoke to Kathy before she left?”
“I gather that Kathy wasn’t actually in her office when Gen got there. She said that she saw Gen in the hallway as she was leaving. Gen said that she would talk to her later and left.”
“Thanks, Billy. We’ve kept you long enough,” Marnie spoke softly, calming him.
Having opened and closed all the security doors, Billy left them in the hallway to Kathy’s office.
Marnie whispered to Chris, “I need to get a good look around Kathy’s office. If she’s there, you need to distract her.”
“Got it,” Chris replied.
They spotted Kathy in her office, getting ready to leave for the day.
“How was the tour?” Kathy asked.
Chris took the lead. “Great. It was good to see the new lab and Gen’s space. Do you think you can answer some questions for me about the model?”
“I only have a few minutes but, yes, I’ll try.”
As Kathy walked to the model with Chris, Marnie meticulously scanned every inch of Kathy’s office. It made her think of looking at a chest X-ray. Start with the general picture, and then look line by line, quadrant by quadrant for an outlier—trying to see not only what the test was ordered for, but for what you don’t expect. In plain sight, Gen had written.
Going down Kathy’s bookshelf of manuals and code books, Marnie saw it. A big binder. Citations. In plain sight/cite? Is that what she was trying to tell me?
After opening the manual, Marnie saw it there in an inside pocket. A thumb drive. Carefully taking it out, she put it in her pocket and put the binder back on the shelf. Then, she wandered over to where Chris and Kathy were.
“I think that pretty much answers my questions,” he said. “Can we walk out with you?”
“Oh, I’m parked in the back. If you go through the main exit with a security badge, the alarms will go off. I’ll have you wait here in the atrium for a security guard to take you out front. Let’s get together sometime soon and have a drink to Gen.”
As Chris and Marnie waited in the atrium, they examined the displays which told stories of researchers making historic breakthroughs.
From the reflection off the cases, Marnie saw a disguised figure coming at them down the hall. As he got closer, Marnie could see that he was inappropriately dressed in a bunny suit and mask. There was something menacing about his approach. She didn’t want to be caught with the flash drive in her pocket.
Turning to Chris, Marnie said, “I don’t like the look of this. Let’s get out of here.”
They turned down the hall but were quickly blocked from going forward without one of the magic badges. Looking up a side hallway, they spotted the new BSL4 lab entry on the right. Not needing to use a badge there, they ducked in.
They heard the man behind them. They picked up their pace to a run.
Marnie and Chris tried to get their bearings. They were now in the suit up alcove, where they had connected their suits to the oxygen line. Their pursuer approached from across the wide room.
“What are you two doing here? Don’t you know that snooping around isn’t good for your health?” the man snarled.
Chris signaled Marnie to move to the room’s other exit thirty feet to the left. Chris turned to face their pursuer.
“What are you talking about? And why the hell are you slinking around after us?” Chris demanded. At close range, Chris saw that the man’s respirator mask obscured his face.
As Marnie headed to the exit, Chris grabbed one of the oxygen hoses, flipped the switch to start its flow and aimed it at their pursuer’s face. The strong blast of air knocked back their attacker.
When he tried to get up, Chris swung the hose as hard as he could, landing a solid thunk on the side of the man’s head. He tore the man’s security badge off his neck.
Using the badge to make their way to the public access area, Chris and Marnie ran out the door, leaving their pursuer stranded.
Composing themselves, Chris examined the badge. It was totally unhelpful, having only a barcode on it. No name. Tossing it in a nearby trash can so that it didn’t set off the buzzer, they calmly walked out the main exit, waving to the state police. They hurried through the picturesque campus of the medical school and headed straight to Chris’s car.
Settling into Chris’s Saab, Marnie exhaled. “I need a drink.”
“My place?”
“Sounds good. Let me call my pet sitter to take care of the dogs. I’m eager to see what’s on this flash drive.”
Chris nodded in agreement, enjoying the knowledge that this woman could rob a Level 4 biosecurity facility one minute and the next minute propose cocktails and arrange her dogs’ dinners.
A minivan parked three rows behind Chris and Marnie sat idling. Billy Stanton was in the driver’s seat, clutching the steering wheel with white knuckles. He needed to calm down before going home. His anxiety was through the roof after an intimidating phone call informed him that he was being monitored. His subsequent involvement with Gen’s data was strongly discouraged. Plus, by the tone of the caller, he didn’t think he had a choice if he wanted to stay employed at the lab.