| General Fiction posted August 18, 2025 | Chapters: |
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Brian prepares to catch the saboteur
A chapter in the book Beating the Devil
Beating the Devil - Chapter 5
by Jim Wile
| Background A cancer researcher invents an early cancer detection system. |
Recap of Chapter 4: Maddy and Bo stay for lunch with the Kendricks after the testing is complete. She hears the story of how Julia, a world-famous solo violinist, came to be the fiddler and banjo player in a little bluegrass band.
Brian offers to pay Maddy for her work, but the only payment she will accept is an impromptu concert from Julia and Johnny.
Brian calls Abby that night with the results of the sniff test. Abby is relieved to hear her modeling was correct, but they still have the problem of determining the source of contamination of the samples. It turns out that sabotage by one of Brian’s lab technicians is the most likely.
Chapter 5
“How did Abby take the news?” asked Julia when Brian ended the call.
“Well, she was relieved to hear it wasn’t her algorithms causing the problem, but her final words were ’Jesus, not again’ when I mentioned probable sabotage.”
“I second that. Why does everything have to be so damn difficult? And you vetted those guys so well before you hired them.”
“We both know that doesn’t guarantee anything. Don’t forget about Woody.”
Brian was referring to one of the three bodyguards they had hired to protect them against threats from Big Pharma five years ago. This was during the phase-2 human trials of his new painkiller, Glyptophan. Woody had been turned by a large offer of money to betray the Kendricks, and he had been one of Johnny’s two kidnappers. He was the one shot and killed by Brian’s FBI agent sister, Fran.
“So, you think Big Pharma is at it again?” asked a worried Julia.
Brian sensed her trepidation at his mention of Woody. He took her in his arms and momentarily rested his chin on top of her head. In a few moments, he said, “It could be anyone really—Big Pharma, a university researcher, a private individual like myself. I know I’m not the only one working on early cancer detection, but I may be the closest to succeeding. This could be an effort to slow me down… and it’s working.”
“Does either Mal or Larry know of the problem with the last test?”
“No. They’ve been off all week, so I haven’t shared the results with either of them yet. They also don’t know about Bo’s coming to double-check the data. I’d rather keep both of them in the dark until I can figure out a way to trap the culprit, assuming it’s one of them.”
“Maybe they’re both in on it.”
“I doubt that. I’m sure there’s a backer. Why pay two when all it takes is one to get the job done?”
“Any ideas on how to discover which one?”
“Yeah. Try to get him to do it again. But this time it will be caught on camera because I’m going to install miniature cameras in the storeroom where the sabotage is likely to take place. There are just five boxes of filters left in there, and more than likely, those were tampered with too. I’m going to have Mal order another batch of 10 boxes and make sure Larry hears me ask him. Of the two, I’d almost bet Larry is the culprit.”
“I agree,” said Julia. “I just can’t picture Mal betraying you after what Glyptophan did for his pain.”
Mal, short for Malcolm Roberts, is a 36-year-old graduate from Winston-Salem State University. He is a beefy-looking African-American disabled vet who was one of Brian’s test subjects in his phase-1 drug trials for Glyptophan. He had been in great pain from the leg injury acquired while serving in Afghanistan, and Glyptophan has all but eliminated it. He takes it to this day for the chronic pain he would suffer without it.
“And as competent as you’ve told me Larry is, I’ve never been thrilled with his personality,” continued Julia. “He seems awfully self-absorbed.”
“I have to agree with you there.”
At only 24, Larry Posner is a grad student working on his master’s degree in biochemistry at North Carolina State University. Although Larry’s credentials are spotless, and his work in the lab so far has been first-rate, he has a tendency to get under Brian’s skin. He is cocksure and argues with Brian to the point that Brian has had to finish many arguments with, “Just do it my way, please, Larry.”
The following morning, a Monday, both technicians arrived by 9:00. After they’d coffee’d up, and talked about what they’d done on their week off, Brian called a short meeting to discuss the test results with them.
“I hate to tell you guys, but the results of the previous week’s test were inconclusive. As you know, the purpose of it was to test Abby’s detection algorithms. We had been getting too many false positives, so she tightened up the parameters to try to eliminate those, but in so doing, Callie, the programmer, introduced a bug that resulted in no VOCs at all being detected.”
This news was met with groans from Mal and Larry.
“She was extremely apologetic and quickly found the bug, but we’ll have to rerun the test. To be safe, we’ll plan to run it at least two more times in case some other bug was introduced. Unlikely, but you never know. Mal, could you order another 10 boxes each of the filters and sorbent tubes? We’re running low. Let’s plan on running the next test on Wednesday. That should give us enough time to get them in and to get set up for the first test.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Mal. “I’ll have them overnighted, so they’ll arrive by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Okay, great. Then I’d like you both to begin putting together, configuring, and calibrating the first batch of home breathalyzers. We’ve got all the parts here now for six of them.”
Larry said, “Do you think that’s such a good idea since we had a complete failure of the current calibration?”
“It won’t change how you put them together,” Brian said, “and there are still some intermediate calibrations you can do that have nothing to do with the main one we were testing.”
“Yeah, but how do you know it won’t change the configuration of the input and output ports if you have to change the main calibration?”
Brian’s personal nickname for Larry, but one he never voiced, was “Yeahbut.”
“Even if it does, which I don’t expect it to, it’s a simple enough matter to adjust the location of the ports. It wouldn’t take more than a minute or two per. The home breathalyzer is going to be the hallmark of our system, you remember, so adjustments have to be quick and easy to do.”
It truly would be an outstanding feature—the fact that a complete analysis could be done by customers in their homes without having to carefully package and send the breath samples, which degrade quickly, to a lab to be analyzed. Brian designed the breathalyzer to be easy to configure, calibrate, and use at home. Customers could get the results right away without the worry that might accompany a several-day delay.
He knew that Larry would prefer to do almost anything else than build and calibrate breathalyzers, a tedious and monotonous job, but it wouldn’t be fair to put it all on Mal. Plus, they could easily double-check each other’s work.
“You know, I still—”
“Larry,” Brian interrupted, “please just do it.” He winked at Mal as he said this, and Mal grinned and shook his head slightly.
“Yes, Boss.”
Later in the morning, Brian called the security company that had set up his home security system when the house was built. The scope had not included his laboratory storeroom. He agreed to pay a premium if they would come this evening and install miniature motion-activated cameras in his storeroom that would be unobservable by his lab technicians.
The shipment of filters and sorbent tubes arrived the following day. Mal was at lunch at the time, so Larry received the shipment and shelved all the boxes.
Since he had announced two possible tests tomorrow, Brian figured tonight would be the night to catch any sabotage because some of the newly arrived filters would be needed. In truth, he was not planning to conduct any tests tomorrow because they would be a waste of time with doctored filters, but his lab technicians didn’t know that.
It was 2:00 AM when the saboteur parked his car off the side of the road 100 yards up from the Kendrick residence. He hiked back and made his way around to the basement side door. Brian had given both technicians a key to get in when the family was away, and he used that now.
Before he left from work the previous afternoon, the saboteur had gone upstairs on the pretense that he needed some ice from the refrigerator to cool off a fake burn from a soldering iron. He snuck into the front hall, where the control panel for the home security system was housed, and disabled it. The system included the exterior motion detectors and cameras. He would reenable it in the morning when he came to work.
Thus, he was able to gain entry to the basement door without setting off any lights, cameras, or alarms. He entered the storeroom, flipped on the lights, and closed the door.
The new shipment of filters was separated from the old ones on the shelf—something Brian insisted be done whenever a new shipment arrived. Brian instructed them to always use up the older filters first before opening any new boxes.
As before, he brought down the 10 new boxes and would follow the same procedure as before by injecting acetone into three filters from each. He did not have to worry about varying the procedure, since the programmer error had destroyed and thus masked his previous efforts. No pattern would therefore be recognized.
Unbeknownst to him, three hidden miniature cameras were recording his every move. They had also triggered a silent alarm that alerted Brian, who had stayed up.
As the saboteur began removing the filters from the first box, the storeroom door opened, and there stood Brian.
 Recognized |
Brian Kendrick: A 41-year-old neuroscientist and cancer researcher
Julia Kendrick: Brian's 41-year-old wife. She is also a world-class violinist.
Johnny Kendrick: Their 6-year-old son
Lindsay Kendrick: Their 3-year-old daughter
Dr. Marie Schmidt: Julia's mother
Madison (Maddy) McPhail: Owner of Bo
Bo: Maddy McPhail's cancer-sniffing therapy dog
Abby Payne: Brian's partner on the project. She is 65 and a brilliant mathematician
Callie Bennett: The programmer on the project. She is Abby's cousin.
Malcolm Roberts (Mal): One of Brian's two lab assistants
Larry Posner: One of Brian's two lab assistants
Picture courtesy of Imagen-4-Ultra-Exp
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