Read Online Worst Case Scenario by Michael Bowen - Free Book Online Page B

Marciniak said as he slipped a glass slide from the viewing tray and tucked it between two holders in a ceramic case a few feet away on the long, slate table. Slipping off the stool where he’d been perched, he strode briskly across the large room’s echoing tile floor.
    â€œBetween seven-fifteen and eight-thirty is the only time I can actually do hands-on science here in the lab,” he said. “From then on it’s paperwork, committee meetings, and making nice with politicians. Let’s go to my office.”
    Michaelson followed Marciniak through a swinging double door and down a long, institutional gray hallway. Marciniak’s cardigan sweater this morning was red, his dress shirt blue and neatly pressed but open at the neck.
    â€œWhat’s your reaction to Sharon Bedford’s death?” Michaelson asked.
    â€œIt’s a shame she’s dead, and the way she died stinks out loud. I’ve asked for a copy of the autopsy report.”
    They stepped into a sunlit office, rather spacious by GSA standards but seeming cramped because of the piles of paper, books, reports, and pale green-jacketed files that filled the desk, shelves, floor, windowsills, and two of the chairs.
    â€œMy office doesn’t usually look this bad,” Marciniak said offhandedly as he circled behind his desk. “It usually looks worse. Sorry, old joke. See if you can find a place to sit.”
    Michaelson obeyed the instruction, transferring a top-heavy paper tower from a chair to the floor.
    â€œWhat bothers you about the way Ms. Bedford died?” he asked.
    â€œYou’ve got a reasonably healthy young woman without any obvious bad habits who’s eating breakfast and walking around like nothing’s wrong one minute and the next thing anyone knows her heart stops beating. You don’t have to be Quincy to figure we’re not talking about natural causes here.”
    â€œJust a doctor’s professional curiosity, then?” Michaelson prompted.
    â€œA scientist’s professional curiosity,” Marciniak corrected him. “My M.D. proved I have a memory. It was my Ph.D. that proved I have a mind.”
    Michaelson nodded deferentially.
    â€œYou didn’t know Sharon Bedford before the conference, though?” he asked.
    â€œMatter of fact, I did know her,” Marciniak said. “She’d talked to me about getting a serious policy-area job somewhere. She got to be a gluteal pain about it, in fact. I mean, she was hungry and I can understand that, but it gets old after a while. She thought we’d be doing her a favor to let her work fifty hours a week for thirty-two thousand a year, but I can’t just snap my fingers and make something like that happen.”
    â€œDo you have any idea why she picked you as a possible job contact?”
    â€œI had a pulse, for one thing,” Marciniak said. “She’d network with anyone who was breathing regularly, and I qualified. Plus, I’d done in spades what she was trying to do in clubs. I elbowed my way from glorified desk clerk to a senior policy-making job. I guess she figured I’d empathize.”
    â€œDid you?”
    â€œI suppose so. I see classmates in the private sector at outfits like Triangle Research, making twice my top government salary, flying first class, staying at hotels that you couldn’t even see a Holiday Inn from, driving a Lexus provided by their companies—and you know what? I wouldn’t trade places with them. I couldn’t stand to be out of it, away from the action. So sure, I understood her feeling the same way.”
    â€œDo you know how she happened to get so knowledgeable about your career?” Michaelson asked. “The through-the-hawse-hole stuff, I mean.”
    â€œNow, I’m gonna sound like an egomaniac, but what the hell. They knew my name over there at NSC when she was there. There’s a computer entry over there saying I’m a whiz