going to need you to be more specific,” she heard herself say. “About what you want to know.”
“Dr. Albrecht worked with Dr. McCaid, didn’t he.”
“Yes.” She closed her eyes. “He did. He was hired into the Infectious Diseases division when we graduated. Dr. McCaid was his supervisor.”
“But you were somewhere else in the company.”
“That’s right. I’m in Gene and Cell Therapy. I specialize in immunotherapy for cancer.”
She had always gotten the impression that BioMed had really only wanted Gerry, and had agreed to hire her solely because he’d made it a contingency to his own employment. He’d never said as much, of course—and ultimately, it hadn’t mattered. Her work was more than solid, and academic research centers around the country routinely tried to hire her. So why did she stay in Ithaca? She’d been wondering that lately and decided it was because BioMed was her last tie to Gerry, the last choice they had made together … the dissipating mirage of the future that they had planned on being long and happy and fulfilling.
But which had turned out to be anything save all that.
Lately, she had begun to feel that her grieving process had stalled because she was still in this house and at BioMed. She just didn’t know what to do about it.
“My mom died of cancer nine years ago.”
Sarah refocused on the agent and tried to remember what his comment was in reference to. Oh, right. Her job. “I lost mine from the disease sixteen years ago. When I was thirteen.”
“Is that why you got into what you’re doing?”
“Yes. Actually, both my parents died of cancer. Father pancreatic. Mother breast. So there’s an element of self-preservation to my research. I’m in an iffy gene pool.”
“That’s a lot of losses you’ve been through. Parents, future husband.”
She looked at her ragged nails. They were all chewed down to the quick. “Grief is a cold stream you acclimate to.”
“Still, your fiancé’s death must have hit you very hard.”
Sarah sat forward and looked the man in the eye. “Agent Manfred, why are you really here.”
“Just asking questions for background.”
“Your ID has you from Washington, D.C., not an Ithaca field office. It’s seventy-five degrees in this house because I’m always cold in the winter, and yet you’re not taking that windbreaker off while you’re drinking hot coffee. And Dr. McCaid died of a heart attack, or that’s what both the papers and the announcement at BioMed said. So I’m wondering why an imported special agent from the nation’s capital is showing up here wearing a wire and recording this conversation without my permission or knowledge while he asks questions about a man who supposedly died of natural causes as well as my fiancé who’s been dead for two years courtesy of the diabetes he suffered from since he was five years old.”
The agent put the mug down and his elbows on the table. No more smiling. No more pretext of chatting. No more roundabout.
“I want to know everything about the last twenty-four hours of your fiancé’s life, especially when you came home to find him on the floor of your bathroom two years ago. And then after that, we’ll see what else I need from you.”
Special Agent Manfred left one hour and twenty-six minutes later.
After Sarah closed her front door, she locked the dead bolt and went over to a window. Looking out through the blinds, she watched that gray sedan back out of her driveway, K-turn in the snowy street, and take off. She was aware of wanting to make sure the man actually left, although given what the government could do, any privacy she thought she had was no doubt illusory.
Returning to the kitchen, she poured the cold coffee out in the sink and wondered if he really did take the stuff black, or whether he had known he wouldn’t be drinking much of it and hadn’t wanted to waste her sugar and milk.
She ended up back at the table, sitting in the chair he’d been in, as if that would somehow help her divine the agent’s inner thoughts and knowledge. In classic interrogation form, he had given little away, only plying her with bits of information that proved he knew all the background, that he could trip her up, that he would know if she were lying to him. Other than those minor factual pinpoints on whatever map he was making, however, he had kept his figurative topography close to his chest.