YPSILANTI, MICHIGAN
Chapter 24
THE ANOMALY

“I’ll be the son of a monkey,” Dr. Eugene Walker prepared yet another slide, carefully staining the specimen a third time. “This is just . . . well, shit.” He scratched his head, bewildered.

“Armand would crap his drawers.” A cotton ball fell from Gene’s ear into the blue stain. He inserted another clean one, drowning out the white noise from the fluorescent lights. He examined the specimen again.

“I’m a goddamned genius, that’s what.” Gene slammed his lab book on the marble counter then looked around to make sure Tara Brampton didn’t think he was nuts. She was hunched over her work on the other side of the lab, long brown braid hanging down her back.

She didn’t notice. I can’t stand it—this is just too much to keep under my hat.

“Tara.” He took out his earplugs and was ready to yell at the top of his lungs.

She replied calmly, as if he were an idiot. “Can I help you? Or did you just want to bust up the lab all by yourself?” Her smile was so sweet he couldn’t be grumpy.

“Can you look at this? I can’t focus with this hum making my synapses snap, crackle, and pop like Rice Krispies,” he gave her a goofy grin. “I’ve been looking at this so long, my eyes are crossing.”

At that moment, Tara dropped a Petrie dish full of E. coli, a bacterium found in common feces. Being a 26-year-old resident for a wildly eccentric pathologist was an exercise in patience.

“Hold on a sec.” Tara rinsed her shoe and sprayed it with disinfectant.

“Is that my fault?” Gene turned his slide this way and that, wondering if he’d somehow swapped it with a teaching slide from the Twilight Zone.

“Of course it is,” she replied. “It’s always the guy’s fault—I read it in NOW magazine.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Gene said while holding up a slide. “Besides, this is a poser. You get one shot at figuring it out.”

“It’s not like I’m going to tell you anything you don’t already know.” She crossed the room and took the slide from him. “You’ve got quite a cotton-ball farm going here, doctor. I hope that blue stain didn’t come out of your ear.”

“Never mind about that. Look at this. It’s brain tissue,” Walker said.

“It’s brain, all right,” she fiddled with the focus knob as she examined the slide. “I see some swelling.”

“What else?” He tested her.

“You win the trip to downtown Beirut!” Gene rifled through a batch of slides, preparing kidney specimens. “Now look at these. Put aside everything the books told you and think outside the box. Want a soda?”

He asked this only because he didn’t want to be impolite. She declined, still unable to mix food and drink with examining human remains.

She looked at the slides and appeared confused.

“The same inflammatory reaction. This child had a very unusual infection.”

“This is a rare but nasty little animal,” he burped. “Excuse the eructation. This protozoon likes to find a nice rabbit, or dog, sometimes a primate in the zoo, like an orangutan for instance.”

“Not people?” Thoughts of the spilled E. coli rattled around in her brain along with this new and unusual bug.

“I’ve never seen this in a human,” he cried. “Fact is, I’ve never seen it in an animal either, except in books. I’ve checked all my resources. It’s never been written up as being transmissible to humans.”

“Even if it’s an obscure pathogen, death from natural causes is my guess.” She looked at his face for some signal she was on the right track.

“Okay, we can go that way,” Gene replied. “If she died of natural causes, like the infection, explain to me why someone would abandon her in a field. What did someone have to hide?” Gene leaned back in his chair. He thought he knew the answer, but only Armand D’Argenta could confirm it.

“Jehovah Witness or Christian Scientist, perhaps?” Tara said confidently. “The parents were afraid they’d get in trouble for not calling a doctor.”

“Hmmmm. Well, I hadn’t thought of that. Or maybe they didn’t realize she was sick—maybe they thought it was murder.”

“But if she was sick, then this bug is dangerous. Right?” Tara paled. A shit bug like E. coli was nothing compared to a virulent protozoon on the rampage.

“I don’t know.” He was honest. “I’ve seen it in critters, though. In your average rabbit, it’s a minor infection—clears up with any antibiotic. It certainly doesn’t kill its host.”

“But in a human?” She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to speculate.

“Who the hell knows?” Gene flipped through his lab journal as if an answer might suddenly appear. “But, as interesting as the beastie is–and it’s a humdinger, there’s something else very unusual about this case.”

“What?” Tara said, annoyed.

“Look at those stained slides—the chromosomes. I kept making another, and another, thinking I was goofing up.” He smiled. “Of course, that’s not possible, right?”

Tara Brampton was tired and not in the mood for ego boosts this evening, but she took a look.

“It is odd,” she frowned. “Okay, I give up. I don’t know a frigging frog chromosome from a Drosophila melanogaster.”

“House fly was the first thing you should have learned in Genetics 101. Now, go over there and peek under the sheet,” he directed.

Tara moved across the room; her wet shoe squeaked, and she imagined a bacterium struggling to survive the crush of her heel. She lifted the sheet. A fragile child lay beneath it.

“Oh my, it’s so much different when you see their faces, isn’t it?” Tara felt tears coming.

“You need to toughen up, kiddo. So, what do you see?”

“Just a sweet little girl. A cute, red-headed girl.”

“Look in her throat—use that tongue depressor and take a look.” He hovered over the resident as she opened her mouth and used a speculum to look deep into the throat.

“Is that the uvula?” She was puzzled. “Guess not. You can’t have two of those, can you?”

“Actually, yes. If it’s a bi-fed uvula.”

“A what?”

“A uvula that didn’t develop properly before birth. A more severe issue would be a cleft palate or harelip.”

“Ah, I understand. But these don’t appear to be symmetrical or connected in any way.”

“They are totally separate structures,” he admitted. “So, what’s wrong with this picture?”

“I don’t know,” but she could see he’d stopped listening. Gene Walker was heading back to the Land of the Lost—looking at his chromosome slides once again.

“I hope you sort it out,” she continued. “But I have to go now. I have a class right after dinner.”

“I’ll just sit here and look at fragments of dead people,” Gene slurped his soda and returned to his microscope, giving it his full attention.

“Are you going to tell me what you find?” Tara swapped her lab coat for a denim jacket.

“Maybe. I’m going to check in with an old friend first. Ask me in a few days.”

He watched her walk away; her hips had an alluring sway. Gene regretted not asking her out, maybe for coffee or dinner. He hadn’t been on a date in two years.

The last one ended when she lost her appetite after he described a fascinating autopsy. She went to the bathroom in the middle of dinner and never came back.

What about the hair? He thought about this and then reached into the drawer for his digital recorder. Gene flipped the switch.

“Armand, my dear old friend. I’m making this recording for you. Must be getting paranoid in my old age. If you agree with my findings, you might find yourself looking over your shoulder as well.”

He turned the machine off, thought for a minute, then resumed.

“My first clue about this find was the hair—the deceased is a child. But as you can see from the enclosed sample, the hair is very coarse. It has a sparse distribution. No ethnicity matches this pattern, but it is strikingly similar to a lower primate’s coat.”

“I’m not going to discuss the abuse she endured. That’s not why I’m sending this to you. Here’s the real bombshell. Look at the chromosomal anomalies—are you paying attention, Armand? Well, look, damn it. Okay, now do you see it? I know—impossible. Still, it’s right there in full color.”

“Now, look at the bug that got her. It’s a protozoan. Not likely to make a human sick, right? Have you figured out the puzzle yet? If not, check out the pictures of her pharynx—I took some close-up shots of the back of her throat. That should blow your mind. Call me!”

The phone rang.

“Walker,” Gene snapped, irritated by the interruption.

“Gene, I just got your message. Sorry it took me so long.”

“Armand, hot damn. I’m glad you called. This is so big, my French froggy friend—of course, I could be wrong.”

Armand D’Argenta was Gene’s former colleague, now working at Mayo Clinic.

“You’ve captured my interest,” Armand was intrigued. “Go on, what’s the good news? Have you found a cure for hemorrhoids?”

“No, Armand, but your secret’s safe with me. Seriously, I can’t tell you on the phone. It’s big—enormously big,” he was eager to spill the beans.

“So, why can’t you just tell me?”

“Two reasons. One is security—I don’t want anyone here to find out about this. Second, I could be wrong. I’m sending you the slides by Air Express. You should receive the package tomorrow. You can tell me then if I’ve lost my mind.”

“You’re making me nervous,” Armand admitted. “This better not be one of your tricks, Eugene. You lost your mind years ago.”

“This is the best damned thing I’ve ever shared with you. But be careful, Armand. It could be dangerous. Remember what we were searching for? Okay, I’ve got to pack this up, along with a flash drive, and get it in the mail. Bye, friend.”

Armand looked at the phone. Eugene Walker was terrible at keeping secrets. He was usually overly talkative to the point of being irritating. Now he sounded scared and paranoid as well.

Drat and damnation, Armand thought. Then he poured himself a nice glass of wine and picked up the paper. His mind was buzzing with Gene’s words. What we were searching for.

That translated into genetics, and genetics suggested an important breakthrough in cloning. That would mean Eugene Walker discovered a clone—a true DEAD clone. Could it be? And if so, who achieved it?

In his lab at St. Cecelia’s, Gene focused on packing the slides, hair, photos, and his dictated note into the shipping box. He taped it securely and, driven by obsessive-compulsive tendencies, added another layer of tape, turning the whole bundle into a neat package. As was his habit, he cleaned the black marble epoxy counter and pushed his notebook far back in the drawer.

“There, that’s done.” Gene realized he was very tired. He put on his sweats and running shoes and grabbed the parcel. Then, almost wistfully, he looked around his lab. Everything seemed the same. But he knew. The find in this package would change everything. A clone. Someone finally did it.

The lab doors swung open. Flo Shoemaker, his morbidly obese secretary, was busy spraying her desk with antibacterial spray. He’d told her a thousand times that it wasn’t necessary, but she always had a can within reach–that, and chocolate.

“Haven’t you licked that case of spermophobia yet?” he laughed. Noticing the chocolate bar on her desk, he added, “Apparently, you’re not afraid of chocolate worms.”

“I’m not afraid of sperm, either,” she aimed the spray at him menacingly. “And there’s no such thing as chocolate worms.”

“A spermophobe is someone afraid of germs, Flo. Not sperm.” He’d long ago given up on enlarging the woman’s vocabulary or breaking her eating disorder. Besides, he had no doubt that spermatozoa were as afraid of Flo as he was.

“Why haven’t you gone home?” he frowned. “I must be working you too hard. Either that, or that spray has eaten a hole in your frontal lobe.”

“I had some reports to catch up on,” she ignored him. “Things have been hectic with that dead little girl and that young policeman fainting in the hallway.” She squirted the phone receiver and coughed. “Did you wrap that? Amazing. That’s a very tidy job for someone like you. I’ll drop it off for you.”

“It’s important that it gets sent tonight,” he said, looking a little worried. “But if you don’t mind, it would take a load off of me. Besides, I always screw these things up. Can you check Armand’s address?”

“Sure. How about I take half that tape off as well,” she laughed. “It looks a little suspicious. Air Express is on my way home.”

“Thanks, Flo. I suppose I got a bit carried away.”

“That would make you a tape-o-phile, right?” She countered.

“Wow, that’s good.” He handed the package to her with newfound respect. “But English is a damned funny language. Just remember: spermophile isn’t love of germs, and it isn’t love of sperm, it’s a ground squirrel.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, doctor.” She was never sure how to interpret his sense of humor, but she liked him anyway. She liked him a lot. As Gene left, she grabbed the chocolate bar and took a big bite. It tasted a little like antibacterial spray. She examined the stump for worm bodies, then turned her attention to the package.

Flo Shoemaker was busy tearing off tape as Eugene Walker caught the elevator going down. Reaching ground level, he pushed through double glass doors and stepped into the cool night air. He had a lot on his mind, and running was his favorite way to clear his head when he needed to think things through.

Gene didn’t see the car pulling up behind him while he jogged around the hospital’s circular drive. He didn’t hear the car accelerate as it closed in on him. In fact, he didn’t have time to think about his problems at all.