Lock In (Lock In, #1)(28)

“To my colleagues at Loudoun Pharma, I know many of you will be angry with me, now that my actions have set back your work and research by years. But what I ask of you now is to spend that time you have to think about the consequences of what you are doing. Read and listen to the words of Cassandra Bell as I have. I believe in what she has to say. I believe in her. I follow her philosophy in the things I do today. I believe that you might do the same in time.

“Good-bye and all the best to Hadens everywhere. I am with you, always.”

* * *

“None of this makes any goddamned sense,” Jim Buchold said.

We were in the family room of Buchold and Wisson’s home outside Leesburg. The Leesburg police, Loudoun County sheriffs, and FBI apparently had to just about forcibly remove Buchold from the Loudoun Pharma campus in order to get him out of the way so they could do their work. As a result Buchold was pacing around his family room, feeling useless. Wisson had fixed his husband a drink to calm him down. It sat undrunk on the table. Eventually Wisson helped himself to it.

“Why doesn’t it make any goddamned sense?” Vann asked.

“Because Karl was a principal investigator for Neuroulease.”

“Which is,” Vann prompted.

“It’s the drug we were developing to stimulate the voluntary nervous system in Haden’s victims,” Buchold said. In spite of myself I felt vaguely annoyed at the use of the word “victim” in that sentence. “Haden’s suppresses the ability of the brain to speak to the voluntary nervous system. Neuroulease encourages the brain to develop new pathways to the system. We’ve done tests on chips that worked and have been working on genetically modified mice. Progress was slow but encouraging.”

“Is ‘neuroulease’ the actual chemical?” I asked.

“It’s the brand name we’re planning to use for it,” Buchold said. “The actual name of the chemical compound is about a hundred and twenty letters long. The most recent iteration of the compound—the one Karl was working on—was called LPNX-211 for internal recordkeeping.”

“And Dr. Baer never showed any indication of developing a moral opposition to what he was researching,” Vann asked.

“Of course not,” Buchold said. “I didn’t spend that much time with him, but as far as I know the only things that Karl actually cared about were his work and Notre Dame football. He went there for undergrad. When he had a presentation he always managed to put in a slide with the team in it. I tolerated it because his work was that good.”

“What about his relationship with Jay Kearney?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The Integrator whose body we think Baer used to drive the vehicle into the parking garage,” Vann said.

“Never heard of him,” Buchold said. “Karl always used his threep at work.”

“Did you see Kearney integrating with Baer outside of work?” I asked.

Buchold glanced over at his husband. “We didn’t exactly run in the same social circles,” Wisson said. “I don’t encourage Jim to be overly friendly with his staff. It’s better if they see him as a boss rather than a friend.”

“So that would be a no,” Vann said.

“It’s not because he’s a Haden—was a Haden,” Buchold said. He turned to me. “I treat all my employees equally. We have a compliance officer in HR to make sure of it.”

“I believe you,” I said.

“Yes, but you also heard that son of a bitch Hubbard running me down tonight,” Buchold said. “I have fifteen Haden researchers on my staff. None of them would be there if they thought I was treating them as subhuman, or what we were doing was bad for Hadens.”

“Mr. Buchold,” I said, and held up a hand. “I’m not here to judge you. And I’m not here to run back to my father and whisper into his ear about you. Right now I am here investigating the bombing of your facilities. Our primary suspect at the moment is one of your employees. Our only interest is finding out if he’s really the bomber, and why he did it.” Buchold seemed to relax a bit at that.

And then Vann tensed him all up again. “Did Dr. Baer ever talk about Cassandra Bell?” she asked.

“Why the hell would he do that?”

“Jim,” Wisson said.

“No,” Buchold said, shooting a look at his husband. “I never heard him speak about Cassandra Bell.”

“What about the researchers around him?” Vann continued.

“There would be casual talk about her because she’s on record opposing our line of research,” Buchold said. “We always wondered if protesters would show up like they do because of the animal testing we have to do. But none ever did and I don’t think anyone really gave her a whole lot of thought. Why?”

I looked over to Vann to see what she thought. She nodded at me. “Dr. Baer left behind a suicide note,” I said. “He mentioned Cassandra Bell in it.”

“How? Is she behind this in some way?” Buchold asked.

“We don’t have any reason to believe so,” Vann said. “But we also have to follow up all the leads.”

“I knew this was going to happen,” Buchold said.

“What was going to happen?” I asked.

“Violence,” Buchold said. “Rick will tell you. Those dipshits passed Abrams-Kettering and I said to him that sooner or later there was going to be a mess. You don’t just take five million people sucking on the government teat and punt them into the street and expect them to go without a fight.” He looked over at me. “No offense.”