"The Transgenic Falcon"

We walked along towards our meeting with Tara O’Neil in silence. Come on Belinda! Admit it! I kept thinking over and over. Her face was composed, but I was sure she was mulling over how to tell me she was also one of Cho’s ex-lovers, and as such, one of the new suspects. With every step a little bit of me died, as my once great love didn’t come to the decision she could trust me. It’s a feeling no one should have to have.

O’Neil’s office was a lot swankier than Taylors. Not only was it bigger, like three times as big, but she had a niche for an assistant. Sitting behind the small desk was a secretary or maybe a lab assistant. Either way the young man looked up attentively when we came through the open doorway.

“Good morning,” the assistant chirped, too perky by half. “You must be Mr. Hunt and Ms. Morris.” He didn’t wait for us to confirm our identities. “Dr. O’Neil is expecting you. I’ll just let her know you’re here.”

I’m not a violent person in terms of temperament, I’d rather talk someone into submission than resort to any kind of combat, but something in his oh-so-happy delivery made me want to punch Skippy the Assistant right in the throat. Between being a little more hung-over than I wanted to admit, and Belinda disappointing me second by second, I was getting into a stormy mood. Not good.

Right there in chapter nine of the Fifteen Steps it talks about the importance of being in control when interviewing suspects. I took a few calming breaths, and firmly pushed my issue with Belinda to the back of my mind while we waited for O’Neil to come and collect us.

After a minute I was much more centered. I glanced over and saw that Belinda had her game face on as well.

Tara O’Neil looked like a different person today. Gone was the shocked, weepy woman. Now O’Neil was carefully put together, her smile still a little haunted, but she looked the part of a cutting-edge scientist rather than the grieving ex-girlfriend.

“Hello Eamon, Belinda” O’Neil said as she came out of her office. We went through the usual dance of getting settled, her behind her desk, me in a visitor’s chair, Belinda leaning against a wall doing her best to look dangerous. I nodded for her to close the door.

O’Neil watched our little play, a bit of nervousness showing on her face. I pulled out my G-T handheld and brought up a notes screen. Belinda was in a position to see there was nothing there, but O’Neil was not.

“Have you made any progress in finding Constantine’s killer?” O’Neil asked, leaning forward to flash a significant amount of cleavage visible between the neck-line of the bright blue silk blouse she wore. Yeah, I looked. Face it, at our base humans are just a bunch of horny plains-apes. Like all apes, the males are cued to visual sexual traits. So when confronted with a display like the one before me, we look. However, I’m not a plains-ape 1.0; all instinct and no impulse control. I turned my mind firmly away from the firm flesh and gave some of the world’s best eye contact.

“We’re making progress, but as to the person responsible? We are not there yet.”

“Who do you suspect?” O’Neil asked.

I leaned back in my chair, and lost the smile. “That’s not the kind of thing we can really talk about. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course, don’t want to tip off the bad guys that you’re on to them.”

“Bad guys?” I asked, “What makes you think it was more than one person?”

She shrugged, the gesture pushing her breasts together and forward. This time I didn’t look, I was more interested in what she had to say.

“Oh, I assumed that it had to be a conspiracy of some kind, what with all our security and the odd wounds on the bodies. The Warriors of Christ, or some other group of their ilk.”

I made a show of making a note of what she said. “I really couldn’t comment.” I told her. “If you don’t mind I just have a few questions to ask and we’ll be out of your hair.”

“Ask away Eamon,” O’Neil said.

“Can you tell me when you started working with Dr. Cho?”

“It was seven years ago. We were put on the same project and found we worked well together.”

“So, you worked with him for the whole time since then?”

“Yes. Well, we often had side projects with other teams, but Constantine and I mainly worked on joint projects.”

I nodded, “And what do you do on Cho’s teams?”

“Coding and integration, mostly. I developed an artificial restriction enzyme that allows the removal and insertion of up to a thousand base pairs.” I understood what she was saying but gave a blank look anyway.

“Which means what exactly?”

“Well, you know that restriction enzymes or restriction endonucleases are used slice DNA and RNA at certain points based on the sequence of the base pairs?”

I nodded again.

“Right,” O’Neil continued warming to her subject, “When that happens you can insert sections of designed DNA, as long as they are complimentary and will bind with the original strand. But what if you want to insert a sequence that is not at all like the one you’ve snipped? Then you need to something like what retroviruses like HIV and ASV do.”

“ASV?”

“Avian Sarcoma Virus.” O’Neil provided, “The point is viruses of this class not only make cuts in of the DNA strand, they also insert a set of base pairs that are not the opposite of the ones on the other part of the strand. Then they insert a new section on the end of the mismatched or frayed strand that will match and the whole thing zips shut, with the new sequences ready to be replicated by the normal cell functions.”

“Okay,” I said slowly thinking my way through what I’d been told, “So using these frayed ends, you can put long sequences into DNA. And you developed a better way to do it?”

She smiled the sunny smile I’d seen in the pictures in her apartment. “Exactly so, Eamon! Not only a better way, but one with a built-in series of checks that keep everything organized while doing multiple location editing.”

“Sounds to me like you are a rock star in your own right. Why work under Cho?”

“Call it the difference between being a rock star and a legend. In what I do I am among the elite, but Constantine? He was elite in a range of fields. More importantly, he was adept at learning from others and leveraging their work in new ways.”

“I see.” Time to hit her with the bad news. “Dr. O’Neil, Tara, we have uncovered a series of recordings from Cho’s apartment. Did you know he was making video files of the two of you having sex?”

O’Neil paled. It was hard to tell with someone that pale, but it was definitely there, and combined with the widening eyes, it told me she had not known. I wasn’t particularly surprised; it seemed that Cho made those little movies for his own later enjoyment.

“I, uh, that is, no. No, I didn’t know he was recording us,” she stammered out.

“You never hand any idea? None at all?” I pressed.

She shook her head, “No, I never knew. I wonder why he didn’t say. I would have been willing to do it, but it would have been nice to know at the time.”

“That’s quite a… forgiving attitude, Tara,” I told her a little nonplused. “Most folks would be angry about it; being recorded in a private situation like that.”

O’Neil recovered her smile, though this time it was a little dreamy. “I can see why you might think that. But let me ask you Eamon; have you ever been in love, truly in love?”

I earned full marks for control by not shooting Belinda a glance. Instead I said, “I think so, why?”

“Well, then you know what it is like. When you find that true love, there is very little you would not do for them if it made them happy. If I’d known it gave Constantine a thrill to watch a play by play after the fact, I would have been more than happy to indulge him.”

Huh, not what I expected. It’s not like she wasn’t making sense. There are a limited number of variations in terms of sex between two people. Once you’ve run through them a few hundred times (or less); they might get a little stale. If the love of your life thought it was a hot idea to record the two of you, would you really turn them down flat? But I had a feeling that wasn’t why Cho recorded his paramours. He never told them because, for him, the thrill was the power to re-live the experience at a later date, with his partners none the wiser.

“So it wouldn’t have bothered you. Even if the file got out?”

O’Neil blushed, a little, a flush of rose on the porcelain white of her skin, “Well, given what we were up to, I wouldn’t love to have my mother or grandmother see them. Can I assume they will be kept in confidence when the investigation is over?”

“Yeah, if they get out it won’t be because of me or my team. There are too many people who would be embarrassed.”

“Oh? There were others?” she asked seeming a little let down. I nodded my agreement. “Probably that skinny bitch Simone Ferguson,” O’Neil said nearly spitting the name out.

“You knew it was Ferguson he saw after you?”

“Yes,” she said very precisely, “After Constantine broke it off with me I was devastated. It’s a little embarrassing but I harassed him until he told me who he was seeing and why.”

“And what did he tell you?”

“Well, you’ve probably seen it, but Ferguson likes to dominate men. Constantine found it all very exciting. He said it was some of the best sex he had ever had.”

“That must have been hard to hear.”

“No, it was only hard to hear that he went to someone else for it. I told you Mr. Hunt, I loved him, and I was willing to make his sexual fantasies come true. And I proved that to him.”

Now I traded a glance with Belinda. This was new information. “You proved it, how?”

“I read up on the whole thing, found an outfit that I thought he’d like and went to him one night. We had a very good time.”

“That’s what you meant when you said you were working things out?” I asked, remembering her comment form the day before.

She smiled, “Yes, I just had to show him that I could do everything that little whore Ferguson could. And I would love him as well.”

“When was this tryst?”

“Last Thursday. And I hope you won’t think I’m bragging when I say he was a puddle when we were done.”

Time to change the subject. Mick Taylor still looked like the guilty party, and O’Neil had worked with him for years.

“Can you tell me what how Dr. Taylor and Dr. Cho got along?”

“Mick?” O’Neil asked probably startled by the quick change of topic.

“Yes, did they work well together? Was there any friction?”

She was silent for a moment; I could see her thinking, looking at things from a different point of view. Finally she spoke. “Well, Constantine could be harsh in the lab, but he hand picked Mick to work with him.”

“So, no unusually intense arguments between them?”

“Now that I think about it, things had been a little strained between them recently. I just put it down to the ebb and flow of work.”

“What about when you found the bodies? Did anything strike you as strange, the way Taylor behaved?”

“Do you think Mick killed Constantine?” O’Neil asked quickly.

“I really can’t discuss it. But back the question, did he seem oh I don’t know, surprised to find the bodies?”

“Oh, no! Mick was as shocked as I was!” O’Neil insisted.

“But he didn’t scream,” I pointed out.

“He also wasn’t dating Dr. Cho,” She countered, then paused, “Or at least I hope he wasn’t?”

“Not as far as we can tell, it was only women on the recordings we found,” I reassured her.

There was a long beat of silence, then O’Neil said, slowly, “Now that I come to think of it, there had been some odd moments between the three of us. I’d come into the lab and they would suddenly end their conversation. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but in light of everything it might be more than meets the eye.”

I made a couple of notes. “Well, I appreciate you telling us what you know. That’s all we had for now.” I said standing. O’Neil stood as well; she leaned forward over the desk to offer me her hand, not incidentally giving me another flash of cleavage. It would be great to say I am so in control of my instincts that I ignored it. Reality is, I looked, then hauled my eyes back up to her face and shook. Belinda and I took our leave.

Out in the seemingly endless hallways of G-T I stopped her at a corner with a hand on her arm.

“What did you think of all that?”

“Well, she was more than willing to push her tits in your face,” Belinda observed tartly. “And you didn’t seem too unhappy about it.”

“Guilty, I was a bottle baby, what can I say?” I replied. “But if your great love had just died, would you be on the hunt that quick?”

“Me?” asked Belinda and gave it a moment’s thought, “No, I don’t think so, but that doesn’t mean I don’t see how it could happen.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning she’s one of those women who feels incomplete without a man. She’s lost, then got back, then lost again someone who she built up a future history with in her head. For all her claims of true love, Cho was just filling the central roll in her fantasy. With him gone, she’s at loose ends. But she’s probably been getting men’s attention with her chest since high school or earlier. So, when in doubt, she falls back on what she knows and tries to gin up some interest from the new man in the mix.”

“What about the way she took the news of the sex recordings? Between her and Ferguson I might have to rethink that learning the existence of the files is a motive for murder.”

“I don’t know about that. O’Neil, for all her idolizing Cho, was in love. She could rationalize it. Ferguson would probably only care if she was recorded as the dominated one. As long as she’s in charge it would be nothing but good advertising, if it made public. It’s too small a sample set to make a general conclusion from. Other women might feel differently.”

While she was telling me this she was looking in my eyes. There was slight a hint of pleading in her expression, like she was trying to get me to acknowledge I knew and that she knew I knew. As if we could simply pretend that she wasn’t in file after file with the murdered man having sex that would make her, at best, a laughing stock here at Gen-Tech, if it were made public.

I can’t speak for other folks; maybe they would have been saddened by the whole situation. Me it mad angry. I was half a second away from saying ‘you’d know’ and having the whole thing out, when my handheld rang.

The part of me who’s not a jealous asshole was faster to the punch than the rest, so I pulled out the phone and answered it. It was Round.

“Hunt, we got him!” Johnny growled through the wide smile showing on the screen.