sheet while traffic droned drearily above us on the gray concrete roadway of the viaduct, she said, “Yamani sounds like an Arab name, and this sure as hell is a homicide. So tell me doc,” she asked McKean, who was indulging one of his curious habits, rocking gently from his toes to his heels with his hands knit behind his back like an impatient schoolteacher waiting for class to end. “Do you see any connection here to terrorists?”
“Answer: no,” McKean asserted. “Smith never mentioned Arabs or terrorists. I took his remark about his impending murder to be a joke of some kind. Our interest was keyed on science, not assassination or international intrigue.”
* * * * *
An hour later, Kyle Smith’s body left in a coroner’s van. Officer Stanwood followed us into ImCo, wanting to see the last whereabouts of Smith before his demise. McKean showed her around the labs, ending at Smith’s temporary office, which was a Spartan space with a view of traffic rushing past on the viaduct. The shelves were bare with the exception of a few thick books on computer programming and computer graphics.
“A rather meager space,” McKean explained, “loaned to him begrudgingly by ImCo’s head honchos for his computer programming while collaborating with me. I thought you’d be particularly interested in it, because this is the very place where Smith mentioned the death threat while Fin and I sat in those two guest chairs, discussing molecular modeling.”
Stanwood looked around the bare walls and shelves, and then her eyes fell on the computer, a modest-sized but, as I knew, highly powered machine centered atop the small desk. She touched the radio handset clipped to her shoulder and said, “Captain, tell Evidence they should send a team up after they finish with the crime scene.”
The desk was, like the room, nearly devoid of clutter: just a few books, pens, pencils and scribbled-upon notepads, not surprising given that Smith had occupied it for only two months. Stanwood sat in Smith’s chair and rummaged through the sparse drawer contents and thumbed through a computer manual lying on the desktop without remark. Then she pressed the spacebar of the computer keyboard and its screen lit up with a background photo of Mount Rainier. Across it were scattered a dozen icons representing Smith’s projects at ImCo.
“Any idea what all this is?” Stanwood asked.
“Answer: yes,” McKean responded. “They’re computer programs that produce animated molecular models of proteins.”
“Proteins?” Stanwood puzzled. “You mean, like food or something?”
“Or something,” McKean replied. “Proteins are the active molecules of the body. The molecules that make muscles move, or that make your liver burn off alcohol.”
Stanwood seemed interested, so, as will happen with scant provocation, Dr. McKean went into lecture mode.
“Kyle Smith and I have been developing a new imaging software capable of producing movies of protein molecules in motion. For example, here is a proteinase.” He took the mouse and clicked an icon and the screen displayed a very complex looking molecule. “In this image, he’s rendered a digestive enzyme made of literally tens of thousands of spherical billiard-ball shaped atoms clumped together in an over-all form that is approximately Pac-Man shaped. A prodigiously intricate image I might add, and one Dr. Smith and I were quite proud of.”
McKean clicked on a toolbar at the bottom of the screen and the image went into motion. Its knobby surface of thousands of atoms rippled and flexed and it began a slow tumbling motion set against a clear blue watery background. As we watched, another equally complex protein floated onscreen. “That’s lactalbumin, a milk protein,” McKean narrated. Watching the new molecule, shaped rather like a kidney bean, float toward the proteinase, he said, “You are witnessing the digestive process on a molecular level.” When the two molecules collided, the
“Answer: no,” McKean asserted. “Smith never mentioned Arabs or terrorists. I took his remark about his impending murder to be a joke of some kind. Our interest was keyed on science, not assassination or international intrigue.”
* * * * *
An hour later, Kyle Smith’s body left in a coroner’s van. Officer Stanwood followed us into ImCo, wanting to see the last whereabouts of Smith before his demise. McKean showed her around the labs, ending at Smith’s temporary office, which was a Spartan space with a view of traffic rushing past on the viaduct. The shelves were bare with the exception of a few thick books on computer programming and computer graphics.
“A rather meager space,” McKean explained, “loaned to him begrudgingly by ImCo’s head honchos for his computer programming while collaborating with me. I thought you’d be particularly interested in it, because this is the very place where Smith mentioned the death threat while Fin and I sat in those two guest chairs, discussing molecular modeling.”
Stanwood looked around the bare walls and shelves, and then her eyes fell on the computer, a modest-sized but, as I knew, highly powered machine centered atop the small desk. She touched the radio handset clipped to her shoulder and said, “Captain, tell Evidence they should send a team up after they finish with the crime scene.”
The desk was, like the room, nearly devoid of clutter: just a few books, pens, pencils and scribbled-upon notepads, not surprising given that Smith had occupied it for only two months. Stanwood sat in Smith’s chair and rummaged through the sparse drawer contents and thumbed through a computer manual lying on the desktop without remark. Then she pressed the spacebar of the computer keyboard and its screen lit up with a background photo of Mount Rainier. Across it were scattered a dozen icons representing Smith’s projects at ImCo.
“Any idea what all this is?” Stanwood asked.
“Answer: yes,” McKean responded. “They’re computer programs that produce animated molecular models of proteins.”
“Proteins?” Stanwood puzzled. “You mean, like food or something?”
“Or something,” McKean replied. “Proteins are the active molecules of the body. The molecules that make muscles move, or that make your liver burn off alcohol.”
Stanwood seemed interested, so, as will happen with scant provocation, Dr. McKean went into lecture mode.
“Kyle Smith and I have been developing a new imaging software capable of producing movies of protein molecules in motion. For example, here is a proteinase.” He took the mouse and clicked an icon and the screen displayed a very complex looking molecule. “In this image, he’s rendered a digestive enzyme made of literally tens of thousands of spherical billiard-ball shaped atoms clumped together in an over-all form that is approximately Pac-Man shaped. A prodigiously intricate image I might add, and one Dr. Smith and I were quite proud of.”
McKean clicked on a toolbar at the bottom of the screen and the image went into motion. Its knobby surface of thousands of atoms rippled and flexed and it began a slow tumbling motion set against a clear blue watery background. As we watched, another equally complex protein floated onscreen. “That’s lactalbumin, a milk protein,” McKean narrated. Watching the new molecule, shaped rather like a kidney bean, float toward the proteinase, he said, “You are witnessing the digestive process on a molecular level.” When the two molecules collided, the
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