Free Near Death by Glenn Cooper

synthesis to biology, and, finally, from biology to real answers.
Yes
, he told himself again and again,
the end does justify the means
.
    The pumpkin girl was the youngest and that was exciting. Thomas was in his late thirties. The first two prostitutes were in their late twenties and their mystery peaks were even more abundant. He’d seen the same things in animals and had tucked the observation away. Younger animals had bigger peaks. The pumpkin girl was the youngest yet, twenty-two.
    Cyrus O’Malley, this inconsequential man, had interrupted his reverie and pulled him back into the world of fear and hazard. O’Malley had clearly connected the dots between Thomas and the others, but that was inevitable. He had nothing concrete, he was fishing; otherwise, he would have played his cards already. Alex had been as careful as he could: gloves to prevent DNA transfer, leather car seats and plastic floor mats to avoid fibers. The drill bit and needles obsessively autoclaved. The syringes, melted into plastic globs. He was sure he was safe, at least for the time being, especially if the pumpkin girl was the last.
    He prayed she was the last.
    And what of the exquisite irony, that his pursuer’s daughter was his patient? This was a triangle, he thought; no, a circle! Like the Uroboros! O’Malley had the power of the FBI over him, he had the power of a doctor over Tara, and she had the power of a sick child over her father.
A serpent swallowing its tail: it was meant to be
, he thought. All this was meant to happen.
    His Agilent LC-MS system was a state-of-the-art instrument purchased under his last NIH grant. It could separate unknown compounds in complex mixtures and then identify them through mass spectrometry analysis. Throughout the afternoon he followed the instrument’s progress via its graphical interface and drew closer to the bench when he saw that fraction 6 was being processed. He stopped humming and stood silent before the monitor, watching the countdown to readout as if he were watching a rocket launch. Thirty seconds. Fifteen. Ten … he held his breath. Three seconds.
    854.73.
    The fraction was pure. No other peaks.
    And it was lavishly abundant.
    He had a large, pure sample of his beautiful unknown.
    He could see the pumpkin girl’s face in his mind.
    The younger the better
.
    He exhaled and felt gloriously light-headed.
    The killings could stop.

Ten
    Alex pushed the living room furniture around and tossed pillows and cushions onto the floor until there was an imperfect circle. These Saturday evenings meant everything to him but tonight he had trouble keeping his mind off the screw-topped plastic tube chilling in the fridge beside a carton of eggs.
    His place was tastefully furnished, nothing very expensive but each piece chosen with care. It wasn’t a large house, about the size of his childhood home in Liverpool: living room, dining room, kitchen and master bedroom on the ground floor, two guest rooms up top. A small back yard had enough green space for an herb and vegetable garden and a barbecue.
    There were a few admirable pieces scattered about the house, some objets d’art, wooden and brass statuary of Hindu gods, African masks, Chinese ceramics and, over the mantel in pride of place, a fine nineteenth-century copy of a drawing by Theodorus Pelecanos, from his fifteenth-century book of alchemy, of the pink and gold Uroboros. And books, of course: shelves and shelves of books on art,religion, the occult, mythology, philosophy, anthropology and the natural sciences. He aspired to nothing more materially. He was well-satisfied. Financially, he’d already achieved more than his father had during a life of heavy toil, and that was enough.
    Jessie was in the kitchen making hummus. This, she held, was her main contribution to the salons. She had made it abundantly clear to Alex that she felt intellectually outgunned by the high-octane minds who gravitated to Alex’s orbit, so typically she remained silent