Forty-Eight X (12 page)

Margaret Wagner’s plane landed in San Jose, California. She rented a car and drove directly to the Santa Clara Coroner’s Office. She would check into a hotel later. She wanted to see her father first and deal with putting him to rest. She picked at her cuticles nervously and wanted to boost her courage with something artificial. She pictured the movie solution to ease the stress—a shot of vodka or a cigarette. But she wasn’t much of a drinker, and she didn’t smoke. She imagined seeing her father’s burnt body pulled from one of those vaults she had seen dozens of times on television crime dramas. But government bureaucracy, which has a track record of compounding everyone’s life stressors, this time set her anxieties free.

“We don’t have the personnel or facilities to allow viewing here,” the clerk in the medical examiner’s office said. She barely looked at Maggie as she stamped, signed, and folded the appropriate documents. Clearly it was her ad nauseum routine.

“You don’t want me to identify the body?”

“No, no. That’s not necessary. The coroner made a positive ID. Just sign here and we can release the body to a mortuary of your choice. You can view the body there—either before or after preparation—whatever you prefer. And… we are very sorry for your loss.”

That was it—quick, cold, efficient, with a touch of coached condolence. Maggie signed a receipt and was handed an envelope. It contained the coroner’s autopsy report. Although the body was described as extensively burned, death was noted as due to “exsanguination with gunshot wound to the chest.” The envelope also contained her father’s possessions. There was a frayed and burned wallet with melted credit cards and some burnt photos with only shadow images left that she was sure were once photos of her mother and her, as a toddler; a cheap digital watch her father favored because it had all the electronic gizmos he liked—stopwatch, calculator, world times, memo and alarm settings; and a bent, blackened gold wedding band that had been cut from his burnt and swollen finger.

This was the beginning, she thought, of the tedious and lonely job of packing up her father’s life, his possessions at work and at his home. But she was his only child, and there was no one else to carry the weight of death and scandal—not friends, not colleagues.

After making arrangements at a local mortuary, her next surprise was that there was not much to collect at her father’s Stanford University office.

“I’ve only been here a few weeks,” his administrative assistant explained apologetically. She was a buxom black woman in her early thirties who clearly seemed overwhelmed by events. “I was only hired as a temp for the professor until he settled on someone permanent. I liked working for him. He was very nice and—I’m terribly sorry.”

“Where’s Sarah?”

Sarah Zito, her father’s previous administrative assistant, had been with him for twenty years. She was almost like family.

“Oh, they told me she quit just a few weeks before I came. I think she got another job.”

Maggie glanced at a few pieces of recent correspondence on her father’s desk.

“They’re letters I typed for him, replies for requests for speaking engagements. He turned them all down.”

This woman was indeed new to the job. Maggie noted that she couldn’t even spell
genomics
, the field in which her father won his Nobel Prize.

“He cleaned out most of his office about a week ago,” the assistant explained. “He wanted to take it all home to organize his work better, he said.”

His drawers were empty. His computer was virtually wiped clean—full of desktop shortcut logos with nothing inside.

“I rarely saw him,” she said apologetically. “He spent most of his time these past few weeks traveling or interviewing.”

“Do you know what he was working on?”

She shrugged. “I just made phone calls for him. Made appointments. Scheduled flights. I only heard him mention it once.”

“What was that?”

“The Lemuria Project. I think that’s what his grant was called. But I don’t know if it was a grant. He seemed embarrassed he even mentioned it. But I don’t know—I don’t know what it was.”

“He never mentioned working on anything like that to me.”

“Well, maybe it wasn’t important. Like I said, I’ve only been here a few weeks.”

Maggie inquired about a forwarding address for Sarah Zito. There was none, nor any “contact” information either.

While she never knew her father to have much of a social life, he had a vigorous professional one. His enthusiasm for his research always percolated through their conversations. And since she had begun pursuing the same field of work as her father, he enjoyed keeping her apprised of his projects. But he had never mentioned anything called Lemuria.

Maggie spoke to a few of her father’s graduate students. None worked on anything called Lemuria. And several of the PhD students were unhesitant in grumbling that the research they’d been assigned or encouraged to undertake for their theses were just repetitions and fine-tuning of the breakthrough genetic research her father had done nearly two decades earlier, research that had won him his Nobel Prize. Julius Wagner had worked on identifying and manipulating genes that controlled development—limb growth, organogenesis, brain growth. Professor Wagner had been the first to make the leap from using the genes of the rapidly developing
drosophila
, or fruit flies—that his peers used for research—to using identical genes in higher organisms, particularly mammals. And his work over the years since had progressed by discovering the enzymatic “triggers” that could speed gene activation. The shortcoming in his research, however, was that speeding up gene activation often caused
homeosis
, a Greek word that described the malformations and mutations caused by genes behaving inappropriately. In the fruit fly, these mutations might lead to an extra set of wings; in a rhesus monkey, a fusion of the eyes or a
cyclops
. That’s why most direct human research was still taboo.

University professors often used their graduate students to assist with and become partners in publishing new research. Professor Wagner, however, in the last several years, seemed to neglect most of his doctoral students as if he had other, more important, and—with his travels—more distant projects on the fire.

One of his graduate students, Jordan Parry, a frail-looking kid with curly black hair and a goatee, did remember an unusual event.

“Barry Wilde,” he recalled, “one of your father’s favorites, finished his doctoral thesis last year. We were celebrating, and he asked me if I would be joining the team. I didn’t know what he was talking about, and he just shut up after that. I should have asked more questions then. I don’t know.” Clearly Jordan was second-guessing himself.

“You know,” he went on, “if your father had a new project, he could at least have given his grads a shot. I know he’s dead and all—but I’ve lost three years of my life now. I’ve got to start all over again.”

“Where can I find Mr. Wilde?” Maggie asked.

“I don’t know. He just disappeared off the face of the earth. We were friends. I send him e-mail. He doesn’t reply.”

“What about his family?”

“Oh, I spoke to his mother. She says he’s traveling with friends. They get e-mails from him from all around the world.”

“That doesn’t sound very unusual. He’s taking some time off.” After completing the rigors of their academic years, graduate students often took prolonged time off to travel.

But Jordan Parry made one more telling point. “As far as I know, Wilde never had any friends. In my four years here, I was the closest friend he had. So what friends is he traveling with? And anyway, he’s in a wheelchair.”

Obscure research projects, affairs with prostitutes, disappearing assistants and graduate students—did her father have another life of which he kept her totally in the dark?

Julius Wagner’s home was a two-bedroom Spanish-style bungalow in Palo Alto just off University Avenue, within walking distance of his office. Everything in her father’s home spoke of a man who was meticulous and well organized. Unlike the disarray she had seen in the offices of many of her professors, with papers and books piled high as if they were spewed from some academic volcano, her father’s home library was painstakingly alphabetized to topic and author. The sliced bread in the kitchen had its own container, labeled “sliced bread.” The shelves inside cabinets were labeled with headings like “cleaners,” “polish,” “insecticides.” Even the toilet paper in the guest bathroom had its ends folded hotel-fashion. She found a smattering of drafts of old research papers and some receipts for travel expenses, but nothing that referred to a Lemuria Project. Interestingly, Julius Wagner had kept a file—perhaps a father’s scrap-book—labeled “Maggie.” Inside were multiple folders, categorizing every aspect of his daughter’s life. There was an academic section with everything from her grade-school report cards to college transcripts. A sports section held certificates of completion for her black belt in karate and awards for soccer and dance competitions. Most interesting was the collection of documents in her medical file. The requisite vaccination records were there. But there were also receipts and letters from doctors before she was born, mostly fertility specialists. Her mother had difficulty getting pregnant and had taken Clomid, the first-line drug used to induce ovulation in patients with fertility disorders. She had two miscarriages before getting pregnant with Maggie. Clomid was a new drug when her mother had taken it, and long-term side effects were unknown, particularly congenital defects or long-term predispositions to diseases. There was another receipt in her medical file. It was a receipt for the cryogenic storage of Maggie Wagner’s umbilical cord blood. Cord blood stem cells are used to treat life-threatening illnesses such as leukemia, cancer, and immune deficiencies. But twenty-five years ago, no one stored cord blood or talked about stem cells. Decades before the science had become practical, her father had realized its potential and saved her cord blood as a source of future stem cells—the building blocks of life. Her father had loved her very much. He had even kept her cord blood as insurance. Then she came upon another receipt in the file that was baffling. Her father had withdrawn her cord blood from storage five years ago. Stored for nearly twenty years; removed five years ago. Why? Did she have an identical twin who was ill? Absurd. Lots of things were not making sense.

The movers would pack up most of the house, but Maggie personally packed a few boxes—mostly family photographs that she would keep, and her father’s awards. She hefted his Nobel Prize. The medal was made of eighteen-carat gold and weighed 193 grams, worth about $4,000. Tears finally came to her. His life was worth so much more. The questions she had about her father’s life were painfully twisted with the shock and grief she was feeling. After the funeral, she would return home. There, she thought, her confusion and emotions would unknot as she resumed her work.

Professor Wagner’s funeral was held at the Memorial Church of Stanford University. The nineteenth-century Romanesque church sat in the most historic section of the college campus by the main student quadrangle. Campus security prevented anyone but invited guests from entering. The crowds outside were a mixture of frustrated press and uninterested students busily walking or biking to their next class. There were a dozen Nobel Prize winners at Stanford. And in this campus of twenty thousand students, perhaps two hundred had ever come into contact with any of them. And of those, perhaps only twenty or thirty knew Dr. Wagner and his work. The few dozen guests—mostly professors and graduate students—listened quietly as the minister lauded a great man’s achievements, noted a daughter following in his footsteps, and mentioned nothing at all about the circumstances of his death.

As guests filed out and offered polite condolences, one man stayed behind—a lithe, handsome man in his early fifties. Crew-cut, pale, with thick-rimmed black glasses and a tweed blazer, he looked stereotypically like the physics professor he was.

“Miss Wagner, my name is Ryan Petersdorf. I was a friend of your father. I knew him well. Do you have a moment?”

No one, other than the minister, had said a good word about her father, and she needed to hear from someone that he was not loathed.

“I was your father’s friend,” Professor Peterdorf began. “His best friend, I think.” His speech was clipped, and almost whispered, as if he had rehearsed what he wanted to say but was hesitant to say it. “My wife died about the same time as your mother, and we spent a lot of time together, often burying our grief in drink, but talking a lot, too, about campus politics, politics in general, and of course, our work, which was totally different but intellectually stimulating for both of us. But—let me, let me get to the point.”

Professor Petersdorf sighed and looked about him. Photographers were snapping photos of them. He took her arm and moved with Maggie behind a sandstone pillar. “I don’t believe,” he said, “that your father was a murderer or committed suicide. I think he was murdered.”

“What?!” Maggie was startled; crackpots and conspiracy theorists were everywhere. “Mr. Petersdorf, I don’t need this.” And she tried to move away.