chapter fifteen

The security guard ushering me away from H.R. Director Emily Som and toward the CEO’s office was a wiry South-Asian with restless eyes and a perpetual frown.

He handed me over to Chiara, Maclaren’s polished assistant in a cream-colored suit. Via private elevator, she led me up to the third floor. We passed a set of bullet-proof metalglass security doors with an iris scan. The offices got bigger as we walked down another corridor towards the mucky mucks.

The door to Chris Maclaren’s office stood open.

“Come in, detective,” Maclaren’s steady deep voice sounded from across the room.

High tech contemporary, his office was the size of my dining room and kitchen combined. A coffee table with a sculptured base of black coral under floating glass fronted the soft leather sofa against the wall near the door. Mounted on their horizontal frame atop the table lay a pair of Samurai swords, the dai-katana on top and the short sword below. Museum quality. Maclaren’s desk and two ghost-guest chairs stood all the way across the room. A straight flush of Harvard diplomas was in full view on the wall behind his desk. CEO Maclaren had an M.D., Ph.D. and MBA.

Even leaning against his glass desk, Maclaren was tall. From the tips of his handmade shoes to the black hair flecked with silver, I put him at about my height—6’2”, maybe an inch shorter. He was dressed in that cashmere casual only the uber-wealthy can afford—with designer jeans that cost a fortune and a V-neck sweater in pale blue I was guessing cost even more.

“Thank you, Chiara.” Maclaren smiled his polite dismissal after we both refused drinks. His assistant handed him a brown paper bag containing something compact and rectangular, and disappeared on cue. Maclaren’s calm baritone had the assurance of a man who never raised his voice since his every suggestion was taken as an order. He placed the bag down flat on the surface of the desk behind him and gave me his full attention.

I figured I had about five minutes before I’d be ushered back out too.

“Chris Maclaren,” he said as he waited for me to approach for the obligatory handshake. Maclaren had the toned physique of a man twenty years younger than his age. But the shadows pooling under the intelligent pale blue eyes told me he wasn’t getting much sleep lately.

“Have a seat.” Maclaren gestured to one of the clear plastic ghost chairs fronting his desk. I caught a glimpse of my own face hovering over the glass and steel desktop before he shut down the file. He remained leaning against his desk.

“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice,” I said.

“Actually.” He flashed a bright smile at me. “I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, detective.”

Flattery from a CEO only meant one thing.

“The Sphinx case,” Maclaren said on cue. “My wife and I followed that in the news. Especially your work, detective. Impressive.”

Sphinx was the codename for the serial killer whose arrest had gotten me my fifteen minutes of fame and my promotion to Homicide Special three years ago.

“My staff tell me you were looking for one of my employees?”

“Dr. Lee.” I pulled up Lee’s picture on my glove phone and held it out towards Maclaren.

The CEO barely glanced at the photo. “Gabriel,” he said, looking genuinely concerned now, “is more than just an employee. He’s a brilliant scientist. One of our stars. If there’s any justice in this world, he’ll get the Nobel prize.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“On sabbatical.” Maclaren’s eyes widened a little. “Why? Has something happened?”

“Do you have an address for him? Besides the house in the Palisades?”

Maclaren slowly shook his well-groomed head. “He’s due back within the month. What’s this about, detective?”

I pulled up the picture of the stripper and held it out to him. “Do you recognize this woman?”

Maclaren studied Britney’s picture before turning back to me and shaking his head. “I think I would’ve remembered if I had. Who is she?”

“She’s dead. Her last call was to Lee.”

Maclaren looked at me for a full second before responding. “Surely, you don’t think Gabriel Lee had anything to do with . . .?”

“You said he was on sabbatical. Did he have personal problems? Maybe girl trouble?” I cocked my head at the stripper’s image.

Maclaren’s eyes widened just enough.

“You seem surprised.”

Maclaren fumbled about for words. “Gabriel Lee isn’t that kind of man.”

“The kind to cheat on his wife?”

“The kind to waste time,” he said. “We’re all workaholics here, detective. I make it a point not to get involved with my employees’ personal issues, unless it affects their work. And whatever he was going through, Gabriel’s work never suffered.”

“Then why is he on sabbatical?”

Chris Maclaren gave me an appraising look. “We’re all under a lot of stress with this plague. As team leader for the Alz-X group, Gabriel’s felt it more than most. He’s a conscientious man. And then the death threats started.”

“Death threats?” I kept my voice neutral, but my senses had snapped to high alert.I’d run Lee’s record. There was no history of death threats or any reported incidents on file.

Maclaren gestured to the window. “You must have seen the protestors outside. Those are the moderates.” His smile had turned grim. “The fanatics,” he said, “are Pro-life—except when it comes to killing scientists. They’re not fond of our company in general. But they practically issued a fatwa against Dr. Lee. I thought he might have a breakdown if he didn’t get some rest away from here.”

The security hardware on Lee’s house suddenly took on new meaning. “Did they ever do more than threaten?”

Maclaren nodded. “At first it was just vandalism, graffiti, that sort of thing. Then somebody lobbed a rock through his living room window. Lee upped security. That’s when a ‘stray’ bullet from a drive-by hit his front door.”

“Why didn’t Lee file a police report?”

“No one was hurt, and he didn’t want to fuel publicity and further endanger his family. Radicals have fire-bombed the homes of other scientists, you know.”

I did. “Why was Dr. Lee specifically targeted? Did it have anything to do with that business up at Cal? I read he got in trouble faking research.”

“Not faking,” Maclaren said, eyeing me cooly. “Running insufficient trials. A youthful mistake, but one our protocols here at Genesys would prevent in any event. Fanatics don’t care about that. They targeted him because he invented a test to detect the genes responsible for Alzheimer’s during pregnancy or IVF. The test resulted in unintended consequences.”

“Abortions spiked?”

Maclaren nodded. “People don’t want to bring a child into the world with the curse of dementia looming if they don’t have to. But a lot of people view genetic testing as an invasion of privacy. With the increase in abortions . . . well they went after Lee. But they’ll all want his cure for Alz-X when he nails it.”

“If Lee’s test screens out Alzheimer’s in the womb,” I said, “how has the dementia spread so fast to young people?”

“Traditional Alzheimer’s, even the early-onset variety, and Alz-X aren’t the same disease. There might be a mutation or more genes involved in Alz-X. We think something’s triggering the Alzheimer’s genes to turn on very early.”

“Like marijuana and schizophrenia,” I said. “Or smoking and lung cancer?”

“Exactly.” Maclaren nodded. “It’s complicated. But we’ve narrowed the possibilities.Dr. Lee’s current work,” he said, “is key to finding that cure for Alz-X. If we do, we’ll save millions, possibly billions, of young lives. We’re close.” Maclaren grabbed fistfuls of air with both hands. “Very close. That’s why we need Dr. Lee rested and back at work as soon as possible.”

I thought about those blank-eyed kids wandering the streets or warehoused in clinics—casualties of this plague.

“Any of those protestors personally threaten Dr. Lee?”

“Harvey Pink.” Maclaren spat out the name like it had a bad taste. “We have a whole file on him.”

“Pink?”

Maclaren moved to the window and pointed out the skanky hype I’d seen earlier.“He’s out there practically every day. But security ranked him as a nuisance, not a serious threat.” Maclaren’s expression told me he might be revising that threat assessment.

I looked out the window at the protestors stilled massed there. Pink stood a little apart from the others, chin lifted. He stood still—staring up at the building, at us.

“I’d like a copy of that file on Pink,” I said.

Maclaren nodded. “I’ll have security send it along.”

“Thank you for your time. I hope you find that cure soon.”

“So do I.” Maclaren stood and shook my hand again as his assistant magically appeared to get my contact information and lead me out. “Very nice to meet you, detective. And I hate to ask, but . . .” Maclaren smiled a sheepish smile as he reached for the brown paper bag and extracted a brand new copy of Riddle of the Sphinx, the ghost-written book the LAPD was still hawking as a joint publicity-fund-raising effort. He held it out to me. “Would you mind? My wife Paige would love an autographed copy.”

“If you hear from Dr. Lee . . .” I scrawled my best wishes to Paige over my face and handed the book back.

“I’ll be sure to contact you,” Maclaren said. “And would you let me know if you find him first? I’d like to know Gabriel’s all right.”

I nodded. Time to move. Unanswered questions about Britney Devonshire and her connection to the MIA scientist kept snowballing. I walked out of there with a jumble of new information and the name Harvey Pink etched on my dance card.