“I think that there’s a good possibility that Dr. Dunham thought that he was ingesting Oxycontin, but it was actually heroin.”
It was starting to make sense. “That’s how he was murdered.”
“Right.”
“What brought you to this insight?”
“Well, it makes sense on two levels. One, why would he ingest heroin? He was a doctor. He had to know the dangers of heroin. You know how a lot of times heroin is cut with rat poison, and how the purity level is always varying. You never know what you’re going to get with heroin, because it’s not regulated. Why would Dr. Dunham take a chance like that? Especially if he had a game going with Sharita to where he was getting Oxycontin every week.”
I looked out the window and steepled my hands. “Yes, and the other level?”
“Sally seemed convinced that somebody did Dr. Dunham in. The perfect way of doing that would be to tamper with the Oxycontin he got every week and put heroin into the pill instead. Dr. Dunham ingests it, thinking it’s his usual Oxycontin, it’s actually heroin, and he dies. That’s my theory, anyhow.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, thinking that she might be onto something yet. “Well, it wouldn’t hurt to have the drug tested. Then, it’s just a matter of finding out who was behind tampering with the Oxycontin and why. I guess that we can implicate Sharita, considering how weird she got when I asked her a simple question on what she was pitching to Dr. Dunham, but we’re going to have to find a motive for her. I think that we need to look closer at the drug company that was supplying the Oxycontin myself. Osiris.”
“Here’s the thing, though,” Harper said. “There was only one pill left in that Oxycontin pill bottle. It was a seven-day supply. It’s possible that only one of the pills was tainted, because it appears that he took the other pills in the bottle without any ill-effects. So, the pill that was left over might or might not have also been tainted. I guess that it’s possible that two pills were tainted, and the rest were not.” She nodded her head. “I’m just trying to temper expectations.”
“Noted,” I said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and the one pill left over was also tainted. If it was, it would certainly make our job much easier. It would be much easier to show that he was murdered by somebody other than my mother.”
I went to find Pearl to ask her to call a chemist who worked for a pharmaceutical research company, Dr. David Dudley, so that I could have the pill tested. I came back, and sat down. “Okay. Now. Let’s see. Dr. Dunham has been denied his inheritance thus far. His brother, Robert Dunham, is a major shareholder in Osiris.” I picked up the documentation that I had on Robert Dunham. “Looks like he has 75% of the stock, plus he sits on the Board of Directors for that company.”
“Do you have any information on that company, as far as financials go?” Harper asked.
I looked through my file and pulled out the information I had gathered on Osiris. “Yeah. Looks like the company does about $500 million in sales a year.” I looked through the portfolio more closely. “Also looks like the main thrust of this company, which is relatively small in comparison with the biggies that do literally billions of sales a year, is opioids.” I read a bit further. “Looks like their researchers are hard at work at bringing a new opioid to the market early next year. That’s just one of the drugs that they’re working on.”
Harper nodded her head. “It’s all fitting together. But we’re going to have to find out what was going on with Dr. Dunham and his brother. I have a feeling that the brother might have been behind Dr. Dunham not getting his inheritance just yet. Or maybe he would have never gotten his inheritance. At any rate, we’re going to have to get to the bottom of that.”
I suddenly knew that I had a firm direction to go into.
And I owed it all to Harper.
A few days later, our theory got stronger. Harper had Anna download Sharita’s bank account information, and we saw that there was a direct deposit from Dr. Dunham to Sharita, made once a week. The deposit was for $500.
“Okay, so now we know,” Harper said. “Dr. Dunham was paying Sharita for something. It makes sense that he was paying her for delivering Oxycontin to him. He writes her the prescription, she gets it filled, and she sells it back to him.”
“Sounds about right,” I said.
Now, to prove it.
Chapter 22
In the meantime, I had to deal with the Michael Reynold’s situation. Thus far, he had not done anything to defend our petition. My discovery requests went unanswered, and he hadn’t even filed an answer.
It was time to apply for a default judgment.
I prepared a motion for a judgment in default, and gave it to Pearl to file.
Then I went into Harper’s office to tell her what I did.
When I went into her office, she was sitting at her desk, looking very pale. At first, I thought that maybe she was feeling sick. She was wearing a shawl that she kept pulling tighter and tighter around her, and she was shaking a tiny bit.
I cocked my head. “Harper? What’s going on?”
She pushed a thumb drive towards me. “Here,” she said. “This is what is wrong.”
I didn’t know what the thumb drive was, but, from Harper’s expression, I could tell that whatever was on there was something that was freaking her out.
I went over to Harper’s computer. “Do you mind if I play this?”
“That’s why I gave it to you.” She started to bite her nails. “Oh, God, if anybody finds out about this…”
I took a deep breath, not liking the look of this at all.
I stuck the thumb drive into Harper’s computer and immediately saw that it was a video diary for one Carrie Blackwood. It started two years ago, and I saw that it was segmented out so that I could jump to any diary entry that I wanted to.
“Go ahead,” Harper said. “I’ve watched the entire video diary. Most of it is pretty irrelevant. She documents her day to day struggles with her job and her relationships. She also talks a lot about recovering from anorexia. I think that that stuff is interesting, and it kinda explains why she committed suicide. It wasn’t just the fallout from the video. She’s apparently been suffering from depression and anxiety for quite awhile.”
“Well, that’s okay,” I said. “Her having pre-existing depression isn’t fatal to our case. The point is, the viral video pushed her over the edge. I think that we would win this case even if the guy wasn’t in default, which he is.”
“Oh, you haven’t gotten to the good stuff yet. Look at her October 13 entry. Go to that one. You’ll see what’s going to sink us like a torpedoed submarine.”
I got to that diary entry, and I watched.
Carrie was sitting in front of the camera, smiling. “I’ve decided that I’m going to do it. It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do, and I’m going to. I’m going to make a sex tape and put it on-line.” She laughed. “I’ve even found the guy who’s willing to do it. His name is Michael Reynolds and he’s really game for it. I met him last night at a bar and we hit it off. We had sex last night and I asked him this morning if he would make a sex tape with me, and he’s totally down. So, I’ll be making that tape and it’ll be live in the next few days. I don’t know, it feels right to do something so kinky and so out of character. I’m tired of being the depressed pediatrician. I want to do something wild, and this is it!”
I sighed. “Michael was the one who posted the video,” I said. Dammit. “But it was apparently at her request.”
Harper nodded her head. “The next entry explains why Michael posted it and not her.”
I went to the next entry, which was dated October 15. “We did it. Michael recorded us, but I don’t know how to get it on-line. I’m pretty illiterate when it comes to technology. He knows how to do it, though, so he’s going to be the one to load it up and put it on-line.”
This was bad. Very bad.
The last video entry was Carrie talking about how her life had been destroyed by the video. “This v
ideo was a mistake, a horrible mistake. I didn’t think that it was going to go viral. I thought that…” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I was thinking. But all I know is that I can’t function anymore. I don’t want to wake up in the morning. I’ve been zoning out at work, making mistakes. I don’t feel like I can face the parents of my children. I’ve been so paranoid that they’ve seen the video and just are too polite to say anything. So, I’ve told each one of my patients that they need to find a new doctor. I just can’t face them. They’re going to find out about me, sooner or later, and they’re going to think that their child’s doctor is a pervert and that would be humiliating.”
And…it was getting worse and worse. She lost her practice not because the parents of her child patients fired her for being in a sex video, but because she got rid of them.
There was no rape. No invasion of privacy. And no loss of business. Her suicide was because she had struggled with depression and anxiety for years. Apparently, she also was slightly paranoid, so there must have been some other kind of mental illness lurking about.
I looked over at Harper. I had no idea how she was going to react to what I was about to say.
“Do you remember us talking about The Postman Always Rings Twice?” I said to her.
She nodded her head. “I do. I love that movie.” She nodded her head. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I saw it after you talked about it, and it’s fitting for this situation. As you remember, in that movie, a man, Frank, commits a murder, but he escapes detection. He isn’t tried for the murder, so he was never brought to justice. Then, later on in the movie, he accidentally kills his former lover. It was a pure accident, but he’s charged and convicted for her murder. He’s on death row for that accident. He’s not that upset about being on death row for a murder he didn’t commit, though, because he knows that he was guilty of another murder for which he was never brought to justice. He knows that his punishment is well-deserved, so he accepts it.”
Harper looked like she was only half-listening. “Okay,” she finally said, looking miserable. “Go on.”
“Well, you and I know that Michael Reynolds is a bad guy who has done bad things in his life. Many bad things. He killed his father-in-law in cold blood. He raped you. Those are just two despicable things that he has done in his life, and, so far, he’s not been brought to justice. He was in prison for awhile after you threw him under the bus by throwing his murder case, but he got out, and he’s now free as a bird. He was never charged with raping you, because you were afraid to go to the authorities. He’s probably done a lot of other bad things that we don’t even know about, but a rape and a murder are pretty bad just by themselves.”
Harper’s face was starting to color again. She nodded her head, but it looked like she was still lost in thought. “And…”
“And, well, we now know that Michael wasn’t guilty of raping Carrie Blackwood. He wasn’t guilty of invading her privacy. He didn’t cause her suicide. But the guy was guilty of so much else. Maybe we need to keep pursuing this case and pretend that we never saw that video. We have him on the ropes, because he didn’t respond to our petition and discovery requests. A judge will sign this default judgment, and we’ll have him on the hook for millions. A judgment like this will ruin him. It’ll follow him around for his entire life. He won’t be able to rent an apartment, let alone buy a house. He’ll have problems finding employment because most employers do background and credit checks. His bank accounts are going to be frozen.”
“I-” Harper began but then stopped.
I wasn’t going to go forward unless Harper gave me the go-ahead, so I found myself literally holding my breath.
“Harper?”
She swiveled in her chair and bit her nails. “I don’t know. It goes against everything I’ve learned in my practice of law. I mean, I know that I threw his case, but that was different. He was guilty as sin in that case. His girlfriend told me the plot and she admitted that he was the one who pulled the trigger on that judge. I threw it, but he was good for that murder. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have thrown it.” She took a deep breath.
“I won’t take my cut of the judgment,” I said. “If that helps.”
“We’ll get a judgment and then what? He appeals it and-”
“He won’t appeal it. He doesn’t have the money to hire an attorney to defend himself. He certainly won’t have the money for an appellate attorney.”
“He appealed his murder conviction and won,” Harper said.
“He had the money then. He was still married to his sugar momma. He doesn’t have the money now.”
She looked down at her hands. “Somebody knows about this video diary. I don’t know who, because it was sent to me anonymously. If he can hire an appellate attorney, he’ll be sure to win on his re-trial.”
“Whoever sent it didn’t send it to help him. Otherwise, he would have a copy of it, and he would have given it to us in person. That’s what I would do if I were him and I knew about this video diary.”
“But who would send this to us? Why?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Honestly. But I say we go ahead and file for a default judgment and just hope that this video doesn’t surface anywhere near Michael Reynolds. If it does, it does. But I think it won’t.”
Harper nodded her head. “Give me a copy of the judgment. Let me read it.”
She read it through, seeing that the judgment was for $10 million, which included $8 million in punitive damages.
“Okay,” she finally said. “File it.”
I took the judgment back, but I didn’t leave her office.
“Harper…”
“I’m okay,” she said. “I’m good. I agree, after all he’s done in his life, he needs to pay. I just wish I felt better about this.”
“Harper, if you don’t want to file this, I won’t. I’ll dismiss the case.”
She swiveled some more in her chair. “No, file it. File it. Let him twist in the wind. Let his life be ruined, like he ruined mine.” Then she smiled, but it was a rueful expression, not one of joy or mirth. “I think I’m just having a hard time finding the joy in anything these days. Axel is gone and this victory is Pyrrhic now. My life is still ruined by what Michael did all those years ago, and nothing is going to change that. We can get 1,000 judgments against him for things he didn’t do, and that isn’t going to change how I feel about myself. I don’t know. It all just seems empty to me.”
I shook my head. I was hoping that Harper would be happier about finally bringing this guy to justice. I wasn’t ready for this reaction.
I put my hand on her shoulder and she put her hand on mine. She squeezed it, and then she stood up and threw her arms around me.
“Thank you, Damien, for doing this for me. You don’t know how much I appreciate it. You’re willing to go above and beyond to help me get justice. I love you for it, because I know that you’re only doing this for me. But-”
I nodded my head. “I’ll dismiss the case.”
She smiled. “I think it’s best.” Then she took a deep breath. “I think it’s best. You better call Audrey Blackwood and tell her.”
Audrey. She was going to be devastated to know that her daughter wasn’t the person she thought she was.
Then again, maybe she was the one who sent the video to Harper. Maybe it was on her conscience and she couldn’t stand it, so she sent the thumb drive to us.
Maybe we would never know.
Two days later, justice was well and truly done.
Michael Reynolds was hit head-on by a drunk driver and was killed instantly. It was front-page news. The irony was that he was on his way to hire an attorney to defend his case at the time of the accident. I got in touch with his girlfriend after I found out about the accident, and she told me that he was on his way to see an attorney to defend him in the wrongful death case when he was killed.
If we didn’t file the case against him, he wouldn’t have died, in other words.
I drew a strange sense of satisfaction in knowing that I, along with a willing universe, helped in making this guy meet his fate.
I went to see Harper to tell her, and she evidently already knew.
She was smiling and looked like a million pounds of stress had been lifted off of her.
“The postman always rings twice,” she said with a smile. “The postman always rings twice.”
Chapter 23
After Michael Reynolds bit it on the highway, Harper seemed as if she had turned a corner. She was back in AA, and she was talking to a brand-new sponsor, whose name was Amber Wittig. She told me every day when she came into work that she had called Amber the night before, instead of taking a drink. And that’s what she was supposed to do. She was even starting to accept the fact that Axel was no longer in her life. He had moved back to Australia, and the two of them agreed that it was best that they didn’t keep in contact. They both wanted just to be able to move on with their lives, without stringing the other along.
She still seemed to be sad, but not quite as devastated as she was. I think that she realized that the universe had finally taken care of her problem. The man who tormented her for her entire adult life was now no more, and she felt that he got his just desserts.
I felt the same way.
So, Harper was sitting in my office when I got the phone call from Dr. David Dudley. Dr. Dudley was the chemist to whom I sent the Oxycontin that was packaged in the box that was given to me by Sally Wallace, Dr. Dunham’s office manager.
Dr. Dudley was a friend of mine, for I had used him on other cases. Never for something like this, but he had testified as an expert witness on a few medical malpractice cases I had in the past. He was an excellent chemist, his reputation beyond reproach. He was going to make a very good expert witness on the stand, if it came to that.
“Hey, David, good to hear from you. What did you find?” I asked him.
“You better come in my office. I don’t really want to talk over the phone.”
Until Proven Guilty Page 15
