"The Transgenic Falcon"

Walking down one of the main halls in R&D with Belinda giving me the hairy-eyeball was about as fun as it sounds. She’d, finally, accepted that solving the case required me making the deal with Lynn Delfore, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. As a rule it is always better to let Belinda calm down on her own. She might have a fiery temper and is likely to say anything in the heat of the moment, but when she cools down she is fair and willing to see other points of view. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to wait for her to settle.

Besides, she was walking next to the world champion in getting her spun up. A drinking buddy of mine had once compared us to a neutron star/normal star binary system. I’d feed matter to her until she blew, blasting everything on the surface into space. I didn’t disagree, but what he didn’t get was that while it was explosive, it also is where all the elements of existence come from. That kind of fire burns, sure, but it also creates.

Braving the hairy-eye, I turned my head Belinda’s way, “So, who do you like for the killer?”

For a second or so I thought she might not answer, but she did, “Off the top of my head? I’d have to say the religious nuts. Chief Round has a huge file of death threats; he has to archive them on a monthly basis because of the volume.”

“I can see that, but it doesn’t really fit, does it?” I asked, “The Warriors of Christ are hard core and violent, but do they strike you as the kind of folks who can plan and carry out something like this? Put the boot to you in the street, yeah, but a locked door murder, it doesn’t seem like their style.”

We walked in silence for a moment while she digested that. We arrived at a bank of elevators, and stepped into the first one that opened.

“Well, if I need to do something that I don’t have the skills for, I hire someone, maybe they hired someone inside Gen-Tech” Belinda offered.

“You think you have a lot of murder for hire folks in this company town?” Belinda was slower to answer than my peace of mind liked.

“No, you’re right. But if they had some leverage over someone, they could make them do it.”

I smiled; the Angle’s mind was as hot as her body. “Now you’re thinking like a detective. WoC shock troops wouldn’t be able to do this job, but someone on the inside could. We’re well into Chapter Three now.”

Belinda gave me a smile with those amazing lips, “What is in this famous chapter then?” she asked.

“Suspects and Alibis.” I told her as we stepped out into a new hall that looked a lot like the one we’d left two floors below, this one had dove gray doors instead of blue, savourer la difference. “We’re about to get ourselves a huge bag of suspects, alibi’s are going to help us eliminate some of them.”

“So why talk to O’Neil and Taylor?” Belinda asked, “They’re both on Cho’s team, they seem pretty low on the possible suspects lists.”

“Yes and no. That’s where the Fifteen Steps come in. See, it’s a sad fact but many times the person who finds and reports the body is the killer. It’s kind of Killer 101 for a half-way clever person to try push suspicion away by ‘finding’ the body. So much so, that it is one of the first places where cops look when they are looking at a murder.”

“You think it’s one of them?”

I shrugged and we stopped in front an office door. “I don’t know at this point, but it’s worth talking to them. Also they saw the scene first, even before Round and his team, so they might have useful observations. Add to it all that they worked closely with Cho, so they might know something about the killer without knowing they know.”

Belinda nodded and reached for the handle to open the door. I put my hand out and stopped her. We might be about to get into another counting situation and I did not want to do it in front of the interviewee.

“One last thing before we go in. Let me do all the talking.” She started to bristle, no one likes being told that, “We only have a very little time, and as smart as you are, you aren’t a detective. So you asking questions might or might not help. But you watching and not talking, observing the room, the interviewee, how they react, where they look, that is all useful. Can you help me with that?”

Belinda’s face became frozen while she processed what I had said. This was a big change from when I knew her, you used to be able to see not just that she was thinking, but get some gist of where it was going by the fluid play of expressions across her face. Now there was no movement at all; simply the barest glimmer of thought on the surface of her green-grey eyes.

After a brief moment she nodded decisively. I guess she couldn’t poke any holes in my logic (I should think not!) and so was willing to go along, for now. “Very well, what do you want me to do?” she asked

“Introduce me, then while I talk, look for anything unusual.”

“With Mick Taylor, that is going to be a hell of a list,” Belinda muttered and opened the door.

If I say the word kitsch, many things might pop to mind; painting of Elvis on velvet, dogs with a gambling problem, big eyed kittens gazing at soulfully around a ball of twine. All of those are within the standard definition of kitsch, but there are sub-types, niche culture specific variants for many levels of bad taste.

Mick Taylors office was decorated, if that’s the right word, in one of these variants. The room was a typical cubby of a lower-level worker, ten by ten, with bright indirect light reflected off of the ceiling from a band of high output bulbs hidden behind a reflectors that ran around the walls like a very plain crown molding. There were the usual office accessories, a desk, a good chair behind it, two less comfortable chairs in front. A computer, a heavy-duty locking file cabinet, and lots of shelves rounded out the standard equipment.

From there the décor veered off into something that resembled an explosion in a Comic-Con clearance bin. Sure, there were some reference books on the shelves, but they were fighting for space with model rockets, graphic novels with large-breasted heroines in very tight spandex, and a couple of grand worth of action figures. To my left, at eye level, there were a set of Star Wars figurines from Episodes VII and beyond. Kylo Ren and Captain Phasma were doing something rather naughty with a couple of Wookies and what looked like Admiral Akbar. I didn’t know action figures were that flexible; or detailed for that matter. Yep, kitsch, sub-type nerd, sub-sub-type creepy.

Behind the desk, having pride of place were two large pictures. The first was the iconic picture of Richard Branson VI stepping down on to Mars from the Virgin Galactic lander. Next to it was even better known picture of Hu Ling, the commander of the Chinese state mission and rescuer of Branson and his crew. Hu has one arm slung around Branson as he dragged him from the failing base-camp and up to the waiting return ship. Virgin been there first, but it was Hu and the Chinese who managed to get everyone off of the Red Planet and home to Earth. Given that, I’d have to give the Chinese the nod for first on Mars, but it’s a topic of never ending argument in certain bars and lots of mother’s basements world wide.

Under the pictures was the man we’d come to see, Dr. Mick Taylor. He was tall and thin, with the dark hair and pasty complexion you find on a lot of folks from Great Brittan. His hair was long, to his shoulders, his eyes were a muddy hazel and he had at least a days worth of stubble on his cheeks. A lab coat, pristinely white, hung on the back of his chair, and he was dressed in wrinkled kakis and a faded black tee-shirt that read, “If you have an erection that lasts more than four hours, get more women!” Based on the manner of dress I’d seen at Gen-Tech so far, I had to assume his skills were deemed more important than the dress code.

“Dr. Taylor?” Belinda said as Mick looked up. “I’d like to introduce you to Eamon Hunt. Mr. Hunt is here to help us find out what happened to Dr. Cho. I would take it as a personal favor if you answered all his questions. He has been cleared for all levels as he works on this case.”

Taylor stood and offered me his hand. I took it and gave him a solid handshake. There were no macho crushing games, and his hands felt rather soft. I guess time in the lab doesn’t really put on calluses.

“Nice to know you, Mr. Hunt,” Mick said in a heavy London accent.

“I wish I were here under better circumstances, Dr. Taylor.”

“Oh! Please, call me Mick. I break out in hives every time someone calls me Doctor,” Mick said waving us to our seats. I noticed Belinda hesitate for a brief second to make sure nothing on Taylor’s guest chairs was going to leave a stain on her suit. Me? I just sat.

“Please call me Eamon, in that case” I told him.

“I like your shirt, Eamon,” Taylor said, as he sat. I shot Belinda a glance of victory. “Tell me, did you have any trouble with the exotic animal importation act?” I didn’t bother to glance again. I knew her lips would be curled is the faintest of smiles, something to make Mona Lisa’s look like a big toothy grin. Besides, Taylor looked more than pleased enough for both of them at his joke. I decided to take the high road and plunged in.

“I understand you were part of the pair that found Dr. Cho and the Eolin-I this morning?” I asked.

The memory of his find wiped the smile right off of Mick’s face. Dead bodies and blood on the floor can have that affect.

“Yeah, Tara, Dr. O’Neil, and I found poor Dr. Cho. It was horrible, you know?” Mick said, becoming even more pale.

“I do. I know this is hard, but can you tell me everything you saw, in order?”

“I, I’ll try.” Mick said and picked up his mug for a swallow. “Tara and I were coming in as usual. We were talking about this test series we’ve been working on as we passed through security. When we got to the lab, the door was shut, but the bio-hazard light was out, so I carded in, then she did, and I pulled the door open for her. She went in ahead of me, then started screaming. I looked around her and saw Dr. Cho on the floor. He was dead.”

“How did you know he was dead? Did you check?” I asked.

Mick nodded, “Yeah, but it was just to be sure. I’m a bio-genetic engineer, mate; I know what a dead body looks like.”

“Right, good.” I agreed, “Then what happened?”

Mick took a breath, like he needed to calm himself. “Well, Tara, she was screaming her head off. She kept screaming No over and over and looked like she was ready to tear her hair out.” He paused for a second and glanced at Belinda. “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble or anything, but she and Dr. Cho were…”

“They were seeing each other” I offered trying to keep him talking.

“You could call it that,” Mick said with a nod. “You might know that Cho was a bit of a player. Tara had been on his play list for a while, but then it had fallen off. It was hard on her, poor thing, but just this week she kept telling me they were getting back together.”

I frowned, that did not sound like what Lynn Delfore had told me about Cho. “Did you see any signs of that?”

Mick shrugged, “I couldn’t really say. I never knew about their first time around until Cho broke it off. Tara and I have worked together for a few years, and she came to me for sympathy when he did.”

“You check Dr. Cho, and O’Neil was screaming. What did you do then?”

“Well, it was no good letting her stand there and take it all in, was it? I turned her around and walked her out of the lab, then went back in to check if any of the Eolin-I were in any better shape. They were all dead too. I called the security on my phone and went to wait with Tara, see if I could calm her down some.”

“You didn’t touch anything in the lab?”

This pulled a smile back on to Mick’s face. “Oh, hell no! I’ve seen enough crime drama’s to know not to do that!”

I let that statement hang in the air. If someone is trying to lie to you, they often can’t stand silence. Mick looked a little nervous but he didn’t rush to speak.

“Okay, so that’s all you did at the crime scene. Can you tell me if you know of anyone who’d want to hurt Dr. Cho?”

“Sure, those pricks who stand out front all day, for a one.” Mick said.

“The Warriors of Christ?” I asked.

“Them tossers, sure, but also the Fast Forward freaks. The ones claiming Cho had lost his nerve after the Eolin-I were announced. They went from his greatest fans to howling for his blood in a snap.”

“Fast Forward? Is that your name for them, or is that an organized group?”

“A group, mate, a group. As in they want to hit the fast forward button on human evolution.”

“And you don’t agree?” I asked. If you look on page 67 of the Fifteen Steps you’ll find a nice discussion about letting people run on at the mouth. When they are passionate and spun up, people just say what’s on their minds, far less censoring. Plus, once their in that state, even if you change the topic, they’ll still be less guarded. Mick Taylor had an axe to grind here, so I kept the grindstone spinning.

“Yes! Or rather, no, I do agree, with the goals, but not the instant time frame. Those idiots don’t really understand how complex it all is. They just think because we have a genetic fix for hair-loss they should be able to custom order their children’s physicality. Bunch of wankers, the lot of them.”

“So, you and Dr. Cho’s team weren’t working on accelerated human evolution?”

Mick paused, and gave me a pained look. “Um, I have signed about five hundred non-disclosure forms, Mr. Hunt.”

“Mick, I don’t care about your work, except in how it might bear on who killed Dr. Cho and how. Plus, I’ve signed my own non-disclosure forms,” I told him reasonably. It didn’t work. I finally gave up and turned to Belinda. “Will you please tell him this has been okayed all the way to Otho’s office?”

Mick sucked in a breath at my casual use of the holiest of holies name, but Belinda did react at all.

“Dr. Taylor, Mr. Hunt has been given full and complete access to anything he needs. Treat any questions he might ask as if they came directly from Mr. Johnson.”

I was annoyed that I had to have someone else confirm my authority, but more and more I was coming to see that if you wanted to work and live at Gen-Tech, you did so on Johnson’s approval.

“So, Mick,” I said to bring his attention back to me, “what was Cho’s team working on? Does it have to do with advanced human evolution?”

“That’s kind of the wrong question,” Mick said, “See, DNA? It’s all the same, you, a jelly-fish, a bird; all use the same base-pairs. It’s the way they are ordered and what transcription factors are present that determine if you get a bone cell or a brain cell. With me so far?”

I nodded and he continued, “So, when we are talking about ‘human’ DNA you’re really talking about sequences that occur in humans. But we didn’t spring up just last week. Lots of animals have similar sets of genes and transcribers that work like humans. Take your octopus’s eye for example. The end result is very like a human one, its has a lens, an iris, a gel filling, pigment cells and photo receptors. Just like we do. They even have a transcription factor called Pax6 that determines how the eye develops. And so do humans. Now, we don’t share a lot of ancestors with your common octopus. The evidence is strong that the two Pax6 transcribers evolved separately. So, if I’m doing work on a Pax6 variant, which is it, human or octopus?”

“It’s a difference without a distinction until you get to the full organism, fine,” I said, mostly to show I understood what he was talking about, “What were you working on? This Pax6 transcriber?”

Mick shook his head. “No, that’s old hat. We’ve been spending the last few months on accelerated inter-phase processes.”

“Inter-phase, that’s the point when the DNA in a cell has been replicated and moved apart but the cell hasn’t started dividing yet, right?”

“Just so!” Mick said with a grin. People love it when you understand what they do. “We’ve been trying to find a way to control it, so we can speed it up or slow it down as needed.”

“And what good will that do?”

“Oh! All kinds of things! Faster maturity for any number of our biological products, retard the growth of cancer cells, maybe even limb regeneration, long term.”

“Well, that sounds exciting, but hardly something you’d kill someone for. I assume you and the team will be continuing with the work?” I asked, disappointed that I didn’t find the perfect motive on my first interview. I know; I have unrealistic expectations. I blame it on actually getting a pony when I was five.

“Not likely, mate.” Taylor said in a disgusted tone, “I’m probably going to be shipped back to the cold rainy shores of England, with not much more than a “Thanks”.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m here on an H-1B visa. Cho was my sponsor, and now that he is dead, in all likelihood I’ll be shipped home. Five years here, and locked up in non-compete agreements for another five. I’ll about have enough change for the Tube when I hit Heathrow.”

“I’m sorry to hear about that, Mick. I’d offer to put in a good word, but Johnson has a low opinion of me, I fear. Do you know if Dr. Cho kept a dairy? Any kind of journal or such? You’d be surprised what people notice, and even write down, that can give a clue to who was gunning for them.”

Taylor tensed at the question, not a lot, but enough to notice. He also paused a beat before saying, “If he kept anything like that it would be on his handheld. He always had it with him, and made notes all the time. I don’t know if it was private or work. He used Korean characters and I don’t read those.”

“Anything else you can tell us? Anything at all that might point us in the right direction?”

“I don’t know if it will help, I don’t even know what it was about, but maybe a month ago I was coming back to the lab and found him and Chief Round nose to nose shouting.”

“Really? Did you hear what they were fighting about?”

“No, they both stopped when I walked in, and Dr. Cho asked me to give them a few minutes. I left and shut the door. I didn’t hear any more shouting so I didn’t think anything of it. Dr. Cho got into shouting matches a lot.”

I gave him a good smile, “I’m starting to get that impression. Well, thank you for you’re time Mick. If you think of anything, and I do mean anything, that might help, please get with me at this number.” I gave him a card. “I might have some other questions as this thing goes on, so if you could make sure someone knows how to contact you, it would really help.”

Mick took the card and held it up, “I’ll do that.”

We left him in his creepy little den and re-entered the mind-deadening corporate decoration scheme of the halls.