“What the hell?” one of the security men said. “Who is he, anyway?”

Ah shit, Vasco thought.

The kid had pushed some override that had jammed the elevator circuits. It took them forty minutes to get the doors open and haul him out. He was long since dead, of course. The instant he fell, he was immersed in 100 percent nitrogen atmosphere, from the liquid nitrogen that was streaming from the dewar. Because nitrogen was heavier than air, it progressively filled the elevator from the bottom up. Once the kid flopped on his back, he was already unconscious, and he would have died within a minute.

The security guys wanted to know what was in the dewar, which was no longer smoking. Vasco got some gloves and pulled out the long metal stick. There was nothing there, just a series of empty clips where the embryos should have been. The embryos had been removed.

“You mean to say he killed himself?” one of the security men said.

“That’s right,” Vasco said. “He worked in an embryology lab. He knew about the danger of liquid nitrogen in a confined space.” Nitrogen caused more laboratory fatalities than any other chemical. Half the people who died were trying to rescue co-workers who had collapsed in confined spaces.

“It was his way out of a bad situation,” Vasco said.

Later, driving home with him, Dolly said, “So what happened to the embryos?”

Vasco shook his head. “No idea. The kid never got them.”

“You think the girl took them? Before she went to his room?”

“Somebody took them.” Vasco sighed. “The hotel doesn’t know her?”

“They reviewed security cameras. They don’t know her.”

“And her student status?”

“University had her as a student last year. She didn’t enroll this year.”

“So she’s vanished.”

“Yeah,” Dolly said. “Her, the dark-skinned guy, the embryos. Everything vanished.”