Chapter Thirteen. #2
“Fuck!” I roared. I should have stayed with Ed last night or insisted that he leave.
“Rain, it’s no one’s fault. Corporate have closed our level off for now. Security is reviewing the footage for any clues. From what I’ve been informed, the intruder headed straight for our floor and laboratory,” Paulson continued.
“How’s Ed?” I said.
“Ed was struck five times over the head. He’s been rushed to the hospital,” Sophie said softly.
Aggrieved, I closed my eyes. That could mean brain damage. Ed was a brilliant technician, and if he lost the capacity to do what he loved… shit.
“Five times is overkill; there’s anger behind it,” Paulson murmured.
I nodded; I couldn’t disagree.
“Dr Paulson, can you and Dr Wright please come inside? We need you to check for whatever is missing,” a guy said, approaching. “Detective Brown from the Bell Fourche PD. I’m the lead on this.”
“Wish I could say it was a pleasure, but the circumstances…” Paulson shook his head.
“Sorry for your colleague’s attack. Dreadful thing to happen. This isn’t the best time, but I need to understand what’s missing in the laboratory. The intruder took several items, but we don’t know what they were. It would be helpful if we knew what we were searching for.”
“Sure,” I replied.
I thought I’d prepared myself for the lab being a mess.
I hadn’t. There was blood spatter near a bench.
Nearby lay a pool of blood where Ed had fallen.
Smashed glass was strewn across the floor, and two stools had been overturned.
Paper and liquid were scattered randomly, and several items had been knocked over.
A plate sat where Ed usually worked, with a dried-up sandwich and a cold cup of coffee. That brought a lump to my throat.
A violent fight had happened here, and Ed had clearly fought back. I prayed my colleague would get better and make it through this.
There were two officers inside, fully suited to prevent contamination, and I thanked God for that. If I’d have had to start from scratch, I’d have been furious, not that I already wasn’t.
“Weird,” I said, staring at the fridges.
“What?” Brown demanded.
“We either had a total idiot, an amateur, or someone who had no idea what they were looking at. Those are the rejected cultures he’s taken. That doesn’t make sense,” I remarked, puzzled.
“Rejected?” Paulson asked.
“Yes, sir. Those were the non-viable tests. They were waiting to be incinerated,” I replied.
“What the hell are you working on?” Brown exclaimed.
“That’s not for public knowledge. NDAs will need to be signed by detectives.”
“You say he came straight to this fridge? He didn’t check the others?” I frowned.
“Yes,” Brown confirmed.
Confused, I opened the fridge, which contained the viable tests. With suspicion, I checked them all.
“What is it?” Paulson questioned as I chewed my bottom lip.
“I had a rather nasty thought. But it was wrong,” I replied.
“Oh? Elaborate, please,” Brown said.
“I wondered if someone had swapped a viable sample out for a non-viable one. But I make a special mark, and nobody knows about it. They’re all here,” I mused as I kept checking the trays.
“You do?” Paulson asked, amused.
“After what happened at my last place? Hell yeah. Paranoia saves lives,” I muttered. “This doesn’t make sense. Why take those that are worthless? That speaks of a suspect who had no idea of what he was stealing. Which means there’ll be a second attempt.”
“You know what they were after?” Brown asked.
Paulson and I held each other’s gaze for a few moments. I wouldn’t comment on this.
“Yes,” Paulson finally said. “Something that may prove incredibly valuable to us, but might bankrupt other pharmaceuticals.”
“That’s a massive motive,” Brown agreed.
“Huge.” Paulson stared around the destroyed lab. “The company put security in place to prevent this, and it still happened. We need to know how. This is disturbing, and Ed’s attack is an escalation.”
“If you wouldn’t mind…” Brown waved at us to leave.
“Someone needs to make sure those cultures aren’t contaminated. All it takes is one of your men opening the refrigerator and a stray skin cell, and we lose years of work,” I argued. “Ed nearly died defending them. I won’t allow any contamination to happen.”
“Rain, I’ll stay, and before you argue, Detective Brown, none of you are cleared to be in here. Not around our work anyway, I will sit in the corner next to the fridge and ensure nothing happens,” Paulson stated.
Brown appeared displeased and about to quarrel.
“Please don’t make me force my hand,” Paulson said quietly.
Brown hesitated, but finally nodded. “Fine. But stay out of my way.”
“Actually, it’s a good job I’m staying. Don’t touch that!” Paulson ordered. “That’s acid and will burn straight through your protective garments.”
Brown winced and sent his officer a dark look as I exited the lab and decontaminated.
“Rain, we’ve been asked to attend the lecture room. The corporate team wants to talk to us,” Sophie said, approaching as I began heading towards the elevators.
“Do they? I hope they have something in place for this,” I replied.
ENS Pharmaceuticals was a massive square building.
The ground floor held conference rooms and a staff cafeteria with a small food court.
There was also a lecture hall for presentations, along with some private bathrooms with showers.
The first and second floors were laboratories, while the third level was dedicated to corporate.
That floor had its own separate entrance, so the comings and goings of the floor did not disturb those in the labs below.
As they all worked together, those in the separate teams knew to move quietly around their floors.
The office workers above, quite simply, didn’t.
After several experiments were ruined because people were startled by the corporate staff’s loudness, a separate entrance and elevator block had been built.
“Can you believe this?” Sophie asked as we headed down.
“No. I was probably the last to see him. Ed didn’t leave with me yesterday. He went back to check his culture, the one that seemed to be mutating.” I paused and stopped walking.
Had I seen Ed’s experiment there? I wracked my brains before turning on my heel and heading back to the lab.
“Rain?” Sophie called. I banged on the glass to get Paulson’s attention and picked up the handset outside.
“What is it?”
“Check Ed’s desk. He had an example that was mutating incorrectly, not behaving as it should. Is it still there?” I demanded.
Paulson looked around before shaking his head.
“Re-check the fridge; had he put it back?”
“No, I can’t see it.”
“They took Ed’s sample,” I stated.
“Could that be what they wanted?” Paulson asked as Brown stood beside him.
“Doubt it because not even we knew what it was doing. It wasn’t the target, but a bonus they grabbed. It proves one thing: they’d no idea what to take,” I said.
“How so?” Brown demanded.
“Because it was labelled waste. There was nothing special about Ed’s sample; it had a few curious mutations that Ed wanted to check out. Whoever contracted these men hired idiots,” I replied.
“Thank you, Rain. I’ll keep an eye out, and I’ve accessed the list, so we have the batch numbers of those that were taken,” Paulson said.
I lowered my voice. “Watch them carefully, sir, if we had a dirty security guard… police aren’t paid that well.”
“Understood,” Paulson agreed with a sharp nod. He moved back into the room and retook his seat. Being so suspicious was a nightmare, but it might keep people alive.