by Rick Acker
“You’ll have it this afternoon.”
Karl was driving back to the office for a victory celebration when the call came. “Karl, it’s Bert. You’re not going to believe what Corbin and Gunnar are doing now.”
Karl sighed. “After fifty-five years of knowing Gunnar, I believe a lot more things than you’d expect. What is it this time?”
“Corbin just called to tell me that Gunnar is calling an emergency meeting of the board of directors for tomorrow night at seven o’clock to consider removing you as an officer of the company.”
Karl laughed harshly. “Their timing is off by a couple of days, wouldn’t you say? I thought they might pull this kind of stunt, but before the jury came back, not after.”
“It’s totally outrageous,” agreed Siwell. “It would be laughable if it weren’t for the inconvenience to you and the company. Do you want me to try to enjoin the meeting? I can have a team of lawyers work on the brief through the night and be ready to file when court opens in the morning.”
“No,” replied Karl. “I’m tired of screwing around with Gunnar. Let him have his meeting, and we’ll put an end to this. I know all of the directors well enough to know that there’s no way a majority of them will vote with Gunnar.”
“Then why is he calling this meeting?”
“Spite.” Karl spat out the word. Then he glanced at the speedometer and realized that his speed had crept from 75 to 90 as he talked. He eased his foot off the accelerator. “Either that or he expects us to try to stop the meeting. Then he’ll argue that we’re trying to hide something from the directors.”
“Good point,” agreed Siwell. “They want to hold the meeting at Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals. Do you want me to make them rent a hotel conference room somewhere instead?”
“Sure. Why make life easy for the other guy?”
“Words to live by,” replied the lawyer.
Dr. Goldberg was in Dr. Gomez’s office two hours after he received David Lee’s records. Larry Goldberg was a small, precise man with quick, birdlike movements and a perfectly bald head. He placed a stack of papers on the corner of Dr. Gomez’s cluttered desk. “This compound in the young man’s brain is similar to several chemicals that have been tested in rat and nematode studies,” he announced.
“What does that family of chemicals do?” asked Dr. Gomez, leaning back in his chair. “Anything that might have contributed to David Lee’s death?”
Dr. Goldberg raised a finger. “Ah, you assume they all belong to the same family. They don’t. One chemical affects the limbic nervous system, keeping it continually activated.” He pulled out a copy of a journal article and pointed to a chemical diagram. “Look, see the molecular similarities there and there. Now, look at this.” He flipped to another page and pointed to a series of bar charts.
Dr. Gomez leaned forward and pushed his thick black hair out of his eyes. “High adrenaline levels, just like Lee.”
“Exactly,” Dr. Goldberg said. He pulled out another article, this one marked with neatly annotated Post-it notes. “And here’s the other study. This one is about multireceptor agonists in nematodes. I’ve tabbed the pertinent data.”
Dr. Gomez took the journal from his colleague and skimmed through it quickly. Then he hunted for his notes from the Lee autopsy. He found them and compared them to the article as Dr. Goldberg watched with a smile of intellectual triumph. After a few minutes, Dr. Gomez uttered an expletive and looked up. “So this kid was in full fight-or-flight mode, plus he had something else amping up his nervous system?”
Dr. Goldberg sighed. “You sound like one of my students, Tony. I haven’t studied this precise chemical, so I don’t know how it interacts with the human nervous system. But it does share similarities with chemicals that have those effects on less-complex life forms.”
“Wow!” Dr. Gomez pondered silently for a moment. “Wow. Well, someone better study this precise chemical. So where do you think it came from? A metabolite of that drug Lee was taking?”
Dr. Goldberg nodded. “That is the most probable source.”
“The company didn’t list it as a metabolite,” observed Dr. Gomez, arching his eyebrows.
Dr. Goldberg shrugged. “I noticed that as well. Perhaps it was intentional, perhaps not. The chemical does not appear in high concentrations outside of the neural tissues, and it’s not always easy to tell what by-products will result when the body metabolizes a drug. They may have missed it.”
“Maybe. Well, I’m going to put it in my final report as a contributing factor, especially since I don’t have anything else.” He pulled out the draft report and started jotting notes on it.
“Will you notify the FDA?”
“Yeah, or I’ll make sure the company does.” Dr. Gomez stopped writing and looked up at his colleague. “The FDA will shut down their clinical studies, won’t they?”
“Very likely, at least until the company performs significant additional preclinical testing.”
Dr. Gomez whistled. “Some executive over there is going to go berserk when he hears about this.”
Kim walked up the steps at the West LA precinct station with her lawyer. She felt lightheaded, almost drunk. She remembered coming here as a wide-eyed fourth grader on a field trip. She had stayed very close to her mother, who had been a chaperone, because she worried that some of the people in the police station might be criminals who would attack her. Afterward, she had had occasional nightmares about being trapped in the police station without her mother or teacher to protect her. And now it was happening.
Her lawyer, a woman of about forty named Julie Neuhaus, had advised her to wear a conservative suit. Fortunately, the only suit she owned—the one she had last worn at her interview with Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals—was dark navy-blue wool, and its skirt ended below her knees. She wore her hair in the tight bun she used whenever she wanted to make an impression as a serious, responsible young woman.
Julie knew the station and guided Kim through the various layers of security. Soon they were sitting in a plain, windowless interview room. Across a scarred wooden table sat a large African American man in his fifties wearing a herringbone blazer and a red tie. A small tape recorder sat on the table between them, resting on a phone book to prevent distortion from vibrations in the table.
He took out a yellow legal pad with notes on it, turned on the tape recorder, and said, “Good morning, Miss Young, Miss Neuhaus. Thank you for coming in today. My name is Frank McCormick, and I’m a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. I’m going to ask you some questions, and I’d like you to speak clearly and give audible answers rather than nodding or shaking your head so that everything we say can be recorded.
“Miss Young, I see that you have an attorney with you. Is she representing you?”
“She is.”
“And you are aware that you have the right to remain silent and that anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law?”
This was now the third time Kim had been given the Miranda warnings. “I am.”
“All right. You worked at Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals in Chicago over the summer, correct?”
“Yes.”
The detective made a check on his pad. “When did you start and what was your last day there?”
“I started in the third week of June. I’m sorry, but I don’t remember the exact date.” She glanced at him quickly, half wondering if he would challenge her. “My last day there was August fifteenth.”
“What were your job responsibilities?”
“I was an intern. I did pretty much whatever I was told to do.”
“That describes most jobs, doesn’t it?” said the detective with an easy smile.
“Yes, I guess it does,” replied Kim. “I spent most of my days doing different jobs in their new drug–development program. Sometimes I helped the research team go through applications for our clinical trials. I also helped take data from animals and stuff like that.”
“Did you ever go into the drug-storage roo
m located in the laboratory area of Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals?”
“I’m not sure. I went in there when I got a tour on my first day, but I don’t know if I went in there after that.” Realizing that she was fidgeting with her watch, Kim clasped her hands in her lap. “I might have, but I’m not sure.”
“So if we found your fingerprints in there, that wouldn’t surprise you?”
“I—I guess not.”
“Did you ever go into the storage room alone?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Were you issued a key card when you started working at Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals?”
“Yes.”
“Did it give you access to the drug-storage room?”
“Maybe. I don’t remember.”
Detective McCormick scribbled something on his pad.
“I think it gave me access to everything on the lab floor,” Kim added.
The detective nodded. “You know what Neurostim looks like, right?”
“Yes. I saw it in solution form when researchers were injecting it into animals. I saw Neurostim pills in the storage room and on the production line where they were making it.”
Julie put her hand on Kim’s arm as the detective took notes. “He only asked you if you knew what it looked like,” she cautioned.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Yes, I knew.”
“That’s all right,” said Detective McCormick. “Did you have access to the production line?”
“I think everyone did,” Kim replied.
“Including you, right?”
“Yes. You had to use a key card to get into the building, but I don’t think the production floor was specially secured. I do remember them having locked rooms where they kept some ingredients and products—narcotics and stuff like that. But the lines were in a big, open room.”
“So, would it have been possible for you to walk into the production area and take some Neurostim as it came off the production line?”
“You’re asking her hypothetically?” interjected the lawyer.
“Sure, hypothetically,” agreed the detective. “Could you have done that?”
“Maybe, but there would have been people there and someone would have seen me and stopped me.”
“Did you ever try?”
“You mean try to take Neurostim from the production floor?”
“Yes.”
“No, I never did that.”
He made another check mark on his pad. “And did you ever try to take any Neurostim from anywhere else, including the storage room in the laboratory area?”
“No.”
Another item checked off. “Did you ever give Neurostim to David Lee, directly or indirectly?” he asked, reading the next question on his pad.
“No.”
“Did you ever help him get it?”
“No.”
He looked up. “I thought you helped him get into the Phase I clinical trial. Didn’t he get Neurostim as part of that trial?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Kim quickly. “Yes, I didn’t think you were talking about that. Other than that, I didn’t help him get Neurostim. Ever.”
“Let’s switch gears. You said that you found Neurostim under the sink in David Lee’s apartment, right?”
“Yes, but he told me he got rid of it. I—” Julie raised her hand and Kim stopped short.
The detective glanced at the lawyer. “What were you going to say, Miss Young?”
“Just that I believed him. I thought he had gotten rid of it until I saw him in the bar.”
“The day he died.”
She looked down and nodded.
“I’m sorry, you’ll have to speak up,” he said.
“Yes. I believed him until then.”
“All right. When you saw the Neurostim under his sink, did you touch it?”
Kim thought for a moment. “Yes, I did. I poured a capsule out on my hand and sniffed it to make sure it was Neurostim. Then I dumped it in the toilet.”
“So you wouldn’t be surprised if your fingerprints were on the Neurostim capsules we found in Mr. Lee’s apartment?”
Kim felt a sudden urge to run out of the room. She could see the trap slowly closing around her, and she didn’t know how to escape. “I . . . I don’t remember if I touched any capsules except the one I threw away, so I guess the answer to your question is ‘I don’t know.’ I was really upset.”
“I understand,” said the detective in a soothing, slightly paternal tone. “You were also upset when we talked to you on the day Mr. Lee died, weren’t you?”
“Yes. I was very upset.”
“Are you upset now?”
“No. Well, I’m a little nervous, but that’s all.”
Detective McCormick smiled sympathetically. “I’d be surprised if you weren’t. When we talked to you last, we asked you if you knew how Mr. Lee might have gotten the Neurostim you saw under his sink. Do you remember that?”
“Yes.”
“And do you remember saying that you didn’t know, but that you were too upset to think clearly?”
“Yes.”
“Since then, have you thought more about that—about how Mr. Lee could have gotten the Neurostim?”
“I have.”
“Have you thought about it a lot?”
“Yes.”
“And can you think of any way he might have gotten it?”
Kim’s hands started to shake, so she put them under the table. “No.”
The Serena conference room at the Oak Brook Holiday Inn was full—overfull, in fact. Ben had made sure there would be enough seats for all nine Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals directors, Henrik, Bert Siwell, and himself. He had not counted on Karl inviting a couple of major shareholders or Siwell bringing a factotum of some sort. After several minutes of people standing around and grumbling, however, the hotel staff brought in more chairs and everyone was seated, though several non-directors had to sit against the wall rather than at the large dark-wood table. Gunnar had positioned himself at one end of the table, while Karl had seized the other. Each was flanked by his lawyer and an advisor. The directors were in the middle, like a battlefield to be fought over.
Gunnar stood to speak, but before he opened his mouth, Karl announced, “Before we get started, I wanted to let everyone know that there is an important issue we need to address as soon as Gunnar’s business is done. We’re about to start some critical emergency negotiations with the FDA that I’d like to discuss with you.”
Ben was irritated, but he couldn’t help admiring Karl’s initiative-stealing tactic. Gunnar could either stick to his agenda and have a distracted board that was impatient to hear Karl’s news, or he could give Karl center stage at the outset and then try to wrest it away from him later in the meeting. He opted for the latter. He sighed heavily and sat down. “All right, Karl. What are the negotiations about?”
Karl stood. “This afternoon, we learned that a participant in our Phase I clinical trial of Neurostim died and that the autopsy report will show Neurostim as a contributing factor. There’s a real risk the FDA will shut down our clinical trials and send us back to square one as soon as we tell them, so I’ve requested an in-person meeting with senior staff in Maryland. I’m hoping we can persuade them that the lab that did the autopsy was wrong.”
Several directors started talking at once while Gunnar watched stone-faced. Karl held up his hand, and the room fell silent. “If we handle this right, I think we have a chance of nipping it in the bud. A good chance. The young man died during a bar fight, and our research team is convinced—”
“Stop!” Gunnar said loudly. Karl stopped in surprise, and everyone in the room stared at Gunnar as he rose to his feet. “I called to warn you about this months ago, but you never returned my calls. Archaeologists found the cave where the plant came from. It was used by the berserkers. The archaeologists think they ate the plant to make them go berserk before battles. You said this man was in a bar fight; how did it start? Did he act unusually aggressive?”<
br />
The directors stared at Gunnar in openmouthed shock, but Karl recovered quickly. His strong face turned grim, and he glared down the table at his brother. “You knew this for months and you did nothing but leave me a few phone messages? Why didn’t you pull me aside after court and say ‘Karl, I need to talk to you?’ Why didn’t you send me a letter, or even an e-mail? Didn’t you realize how reckless you were being?”
“I was being reckless with the drug?” Gunnar shot back. “Well, I hope I was the only one in this room. We’re about to find out.” He nodded to Ben, who got up and left the room. “During the trial, Ben Corbin and I both noticed how quick you were on the stand. Amazingly quick. Quicker than I’ve ever seen you in all the years I’ve known you.”
“Thank you,” Karl replied coldly, “but I’d appreciate it if you stopped changing the subject. We have a very serious situation with the FDA, and”—he paused for just an instant as Ben walked back in, accompanied by a woman carrying a medical bag—“and you just told me it’s worse than I thought. Now if you’ll all excuse me, I have to get back to the office. It looks like we’re not as ready for our meeting with the FDA as I thought a few minutes ago.”
He turned to go, and Siwell put away his notepad and stood.
“Just a minute,” called Gunnar. “I called this meeting, and I haven’t adjourned it yet. Sit down.”
Karl remained standing. “Fine!” he snapped. “Take your vote so we can put an end to this farce.”
“Before we vote, please let this young lady draw a sample of your blood,” Gunnar replied calmly.
Karl looked at his brother incredulously. “What? Why?”
“To find out whether you’re taking Neurostim. I think you are, and I think the directors are entitled to know one way or the other before they vote.”
There was a murmur around the table, and the directors looked uncertainly between the two brothers. Karl’s face reddened with anger and the veins on his bull neck stood out, but he managed to keep his voice calm. “Gunnar, I don’t have time for your desperate games. The company doesn’t have time. You’re not even making sense. The blood work won’t come back for days. You want us to sit here and wait until then to vote?”
