CHIMERAS (Track Presius) Read Online Free PDF Page B

countertops: optical microscopes, centrifuges, precision scales—all familiar but one. A sleek copy machine, I would’ve guessed, although it lacked a lid and had only few subtle buttons on the front.
    “Isn’t she a beauty?” a voice behind me said. It came with a whiff of caffeine, a badly digested lunch, and fabric that reeked of chemical reagents—a lab technician.
    “Yeah,” I agreed without having a clue to what exactly we were talking about. “What the hell is it?”
    “An Illumina Beadstation,” the man replied, his voice betraying disappointment in my question. I bobbed my head and humbly submitted my ignorance to his judgment.
    “What does it do?”
    “SNP genotyping.”
    It must have been my lucky day: I kept running into the most useful people. I slid the badge out of my pocket and flashed it in front of the man’s nose. “I’m looking for Jennifer Huxley,” I said. “I’m told she usually works here.”
    Fabian Payanukis had ghostly white complexion, a precociously hunched back, and long eyelashes hidden behind thick lenses. His outdated sweater smelled feminine, too flowery to be the scent of a girlfriend, a mother rather, the kind who calls three times a week and sends friendly reminders in the mail, lovingly tucked in pink, perfumed stationary. We each pulled a stool and sat at the corner of the working bench, in front of a compact centrifuge whose two dials kept eyeing me sternly.
    “Jennifer and I work together on the leukemia study,” he told me, grabbing an abandoned pipette bulb and pressing it between his index finger and thumb. His fingernails were polished and struck me as too long for a guy. “It’s kind of strange she hasn’t showed up for three days in a row,” he said in a low voice. “Maybe she had a family emergency?”
    “Tell me about this leukemia study you guys work on.”
    “The project is funded by an NIH grant. The recipient is Dr. Cox, my boss. The purpose of the study is to find possible genetic predispositions with the disease. We call them genetic markers: mutations along the genome that can predict the onset of leukemia. Genetic markers for breast cancer have already been published. Women who carry these mutations have a higher risk of developing breast cancer.” While he talked, Payanukis blinked often and rarely made eye contact. His voice was as flat as an ironing board—perfect for Sunday morning readings on public radio.
    “The Illumina we have in our lab is a million dollar baby,” Payanukis’s voice surfaced over my digressions. “It’s the state of the art for DNA sequencing.”
    An Asian guy with spiky hair stepped into the lab, acknowledged our presence with a brisk nod, and then sat by an optical microscope at the other end of the room, the sour smell of the fish-based lunch he’d just consumed trailing behind him.
    “What’s Jennifer’s role in all this?”
    “She prepares the samples to be genotyped and feeds them into the machine,” Payanukis replied. “Sounds simple, but the whole process is fairly complicated and takes hours of work.”
    I had no doubt. “How many hours a day does she spend here at the lab?”
    “It depends. Lately she’s been at her desk a lot, writing a manuscript. She’s always out of here by five, though.”
    I winced. Not quite the picture Samantha Green had depicted. “Are you sure?”
    Payanukis nodded. “We usually leave together. I work on a second project, at another lab on campus. I walk her to the parking lot every night.” He looked down while proffering the last bit. Beads of perspiration appeared over his brows. He fancies her .
    “And you’ve never seen her come back here afterwards?”
    He paused for a moment and then pointed a bony index finger at me. “You know, come to think of it, once I forgot my notes, so I came back around half past six and found her here.”
    I imagined him walking by Jennifer’s side at the end of the day, living off her small smiles and polite nods, while