Page 119 of The Bone Code

Ryan’s next call came around noon. The ringtone was now Unified Theory. Chris Shinn’s “A.M. Radio” definitely beat the didgeridoo.

“Laval is lousy with biotech and big pharma. Roche. Corealis Pharma. Biodextris. A lot of companies are located in a research-and-development center called La Cité de la Biotech.”

“Biotech City. Catchy.”

“Probably paid some marketing prodigy a million bucks for that handle.”

“What goes on there?”

“Manufacturing. Testing. R and D. Anything health-technology related. Get this. Biotech City covers about a million square meters.”

“That’s big.”

“Very big. So big that—”

“I get the picture.”

“La Cité is located within the Laval Science and High Technology Park, which opened in ’eighty-six. In—”

“Do I need the full history?” Grumpy, I know. But I wanted to hear about Lena Chalamet.

“Stick with me, butter bean. Later came a two-hundred-fifty-million-dollar influx, part from government funding, part from the private sector. The result was major expansion and a surge of new hiring.”

“Did—”

“That surge began around 2000, 2001.”

I realized where Ryan was going.

“One of those companies hired Mélanie Chalamet,” I guessed.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Which one?”

“InovoVax.”

“Never heard of it.”

“They’re not Merck or Pfizer, but they’re big enough.”

“What do they do?”

“Manufacture vaccines.” I heard pages flip. “Apparently, they’re testing some newfangled method using mRNA.”

“Did you say newfangled? Is this 1920?”

“Cutting-edge.”

“Better. You found someone who remembers Mélanie?”

“I found someone willing to pull up old personnel records.”

“How long was she employed there?”

“Are you ready for this?”

I waited.