Miracle Cure

by Michael Palmer

  He found her at her desk.

  “Teri, I’m going to overnight you a complete summary of everything I think is going on with Vasclear. I’m sending copies to the papers up here as well. Maybe someone will sense I’m not crazy.”

  “But you still have no proof?”

  “No. Not really, but I’m going after that tonight. I worked with Carolyn Jessup on a difficult case yesterday, and she took care of my father before he died. She really is a very good doctor. Even though I kept refusing surgery for Jack, she kept pushing to have him operated on. I think it was because she knew the Vasclear he was getting wasn’t ever going to work. I don’t know how she’s gotten mixed up with these Newbury people, but I’m hoping she’ll come forward when she hears what they’ve been doing.”

  “For your sake, I hope so, too. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Where are you staying here tomorrow?”

  “I’m not. We’re flying back right after the ceremony.”

  “That’s just as well. I think you’d best keep out of this anyway. Phil didn’t, and look what happened to him.”

  “Brian, are you sure you’re okay? The papers down here have had some pretty unkind things to say about you.”

  “I’m sure they have. Teri, I wish this weren’t happening, but unless I see it through somehow, I don’t have a chance. The envelope should be at your office by ten tomorrow. Read what I have to say, and then see how you feel.”

  “I will. You take care. Don’t do anything foolish.”

  Brian set the receiver down and closed his eyes. He was beginning to drift off when the sound of the key in the lock startled him. The aroma of Freeman’s pipe preceded him by several seconds.

  “One cellular phone. One set of keys to a Ford Taurus,” he said, ceremoniously depositing each on the table. “Express mailers from your post office. Street address and phone number of one Dr. Carolyn Jessup. Street-map book of metropolitan area including the town of Nahant.”

  “Nahant,” Brian said. “I heard her talking about living on the North Shore, but I didn’t think Nahant.”

  The one-time island was now connected to the mainland by a mile-long causeway. It consisted primarily of hilly neighborhoods of closely packed clapboard houses, but it also boasted many beautiful oceanfront homes, most with views across the harbor to Boston. Actually, now that he thought of it, Nahant—remote, pristine, interesting—seemed a perfect match for Carolyn Jessup.

  It was midafternoon when Brian sealed the last of the envelopes and left them on the kitchen counter.

  “Thanks for all you’ve done for me, Freeman,” he said, taking his sponsor’s hand. “And look, you’ve been a total success. Through everything that’s happened, I haven’t touched a drug or a drink.”

  “Just don’t lose that priority,” Sharpe said. “You’ve always got a place here, my friend. And I expect a call as soon as you’ve seen this woman on Nahant. Use that phone, then keep it as long as you need to. And as for the car, well, I signed up for all the insurance waivers and also took the liberty of having an extra key made. That leaves me with the original set in case someone happens to steal the poor thing. And here, just in case it’s not safe for you to hit a money machine.”

  He passed over an envelope.

  “I owe you,” Brian said without looking inside it. “Big time, I owe you.”

  “Just don’t get killed. That’ll be payment enough.”

  Brian packed his gym bag with some clothes, the cell phone, and the street-map book.

  “If this doesn’t work out,” Freeman asked, “are you planning on turning yourself in?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll rent The Fugitive, then decide.”

  “At your size, you’re a little more conspicuous than Harrison Ford.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Brian hugged his sponsor and held the embrace for a time.

  “The car’s right out front,” Freeman said finally. “I thought you’d want black.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Just remember, pal, God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.”

  “Freeman, pardon me for saying it,” Brian replied, “but with my father and my friend both dead, and me wanted for murders I did and didn’t commit, this isn’t such a great time to be talking to me about God.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  THROUGHOUT THE FORTY-FIVE-MINUTE DRIVE TO NAHANT, made in early rush-hour traffic, Brian was on high-tension alert. The slightest fender bender or illegal lane change could mark his last minutes of freedom.

  Would he really have to go on the run? Once he started running, he knew there would be no sudden salvation, no triumphant vindication as the credits rolled. Vasclear would be released—or rather, some harmless, chemically related placebo labeled Vasclear. Years and maybe billions of dollars later, Vasclear would simply slip from the marketplace, another promising drug that just didn’t pass the test of time. But hey, no harm, no foul … except, of course, for Jack Holbrook, Bill Elovitz, Phil, and a few others.

  Brian headed up the Lynnway, a two-mile eyesore of automobile dealerships, restaurants, car washes, power lines, and gas stations. It was after four now and, for the moment at least, the rain had yielded to a pale wash of late-afternoon sun. Even the Lynnway looked fresh. An apartment complex, one final restaurant, and he was at the causeway to Nahant. A cruiser sped up behind him, strobes on, sirens blaring. Brian felt his heart stop dead. He meekly pulled over, ready to surrender, as the black-and-white sped past. This was how it was going to be for the rest of his life if he ran.

  Thanks to Freeman’s map, he had no trouble negotiating the tangle of narrow streets that made up most of the town. Carolyn Jessup’s place was on the water at the end of a small side street on the southeast end of the peninsula. The lot was modest, but completely secluded from her neighbors and much of the street by carefully trimmed eight-foot-high hedgerows. The house itself, a ranch with a single-car garage attached, was back from the road, on a small promontory above the water. The street-side windows of the place were unimpressive, but Brian suspected that those facing the harbor and the city skyline provided a spectacular view.

  Unwilling to stay too long in one place, he made several passes around the town. By the time the streetlights winked on, he had found a dark side street where he could leave the Taurus without the local police taking undue notice. A face-to-face meeting was the only chance he had of getting the truth from Jessup.

  The causeway was a problem. If Jessup was determined to protect herself and Newbury, and she knew he was nearby, one call to the police would have the mainland end of the mile-long road sealed off before he could ever get off the peninsula. Another problem was his reluctance to stay in the car on the side street. A routine patrol wouldn’t pay any attention to the Taurus unless they noticed someone inside it. For the next hour, he cruised onto the mainland and back several times, once risking a stop at a burger place for takeout. Twice he passed a Nahant cruiser.

  It was nine o’clock when Brian realized that new lights were on in Jessup’s home. Wearing a dark windbreaker, he took the cell phone, left the Taurus, and hurried across the deserted street to the safety of the hedge. Next he worked his way around to the water side. There was a narrow, well-maintained lawn behind the house, and then a rocky slope of twenty feet or so to the ocean. The dense overcast helped keep the entire yard in darkness, but there was some glow across the water from the city.

  As Brian had anticipated, the south side of Jessup’s house was almost entirely glass, with a ten-foot-square deck off the kitchen. He made his way to the edge of the yard, then dropped down and maneuvered himself over the embankment and several feet down the sea-smoothed rocks. From that vantage point, he had a clear view into Jessup’s kitchen and living room. He fished out her phone number, then stopped as she entered the kitchen.

  He was fifty or sixty feet away, but even at that distance, he could tell she was agitated. She was still dressed in her skirt and blouse, p
acing about the room. Then suddenly she stopped, took a bottle from a cupboard, splashed some liquid in a tumbler, and drained it in a single gulp. She poured another but left the drink on the counter as she crossed to the sliders and gazed out across the water at the city.

  Brian slid farther down the wet, rocky embankment. It felt uncomfortable to be spying on her this way, but at this point, the more connected he was to her, the better. Jessup appeared drawn and very tired. She loosened her dark hair and shook it free. It was time, Brian decided. He punched in her phone number and watched with relief as she reacted to the ring. Freeman’s NA sources had come through again. Her phone was a portable on the built-in desk in one corner of the kitchen.

  “Hello?”

  “Dr. Jessup, it’s Brian Holbrook.”

  She stiffened at the mention of his name.

  “How did you get my number?” she asked.

  “My back’s against the wall. Desperate people can be very resourceful. I’m sorry to call you like this, but as you know, I’m in a great deal of trouble. And the truth is I have no one to turn to.”

  “You need to be turning to the police, not to me.”

  “Dr. Jessup, yesterday you and I worked together to save the life of a man on the surgical service. I think you’re a remarkable doctor. I also think you’re fair enough at least to hear what I have to say. And one other thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “I think you tried to save my father’s life by insisting he have surgery instead of Vasclear.”

  During the few seconds of silence that followed, Brian watched her retrieve the tumbler of liquor from the counter and drain it.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “Dr. Jessup, I didn’t kill Phil Gianatasio. He was my friend. But I did have to shoot the man the papers are calling a part-time security guard for the hospital. He might have worked part-time for the hospital, but he worked full-time as a hired gun for Newbury Pharmaceuticals. I shot him because he was about to kill me. And he was about to kill me because I was leaving the film library at the cath lab with the before-and-after angiograms of Nellie Hennessey. I know the before film wasn’t hers, Dr. Jessup. I didn’t check any other patients, but I’d bet whatever you like that close study of their films would reveal the same thing. Phil was beginning to realize what was going on, too. That’s why they killed him. That’s why they burned the films.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The people at Newbury. I think Art Weber is at the center of what’s going on, although I don’t believe he controls the whole company.”

  There was another telltale hesitation. Jessup was braced against the refrigerator.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said. “If you have accusations to make, you should go to the police. Now, I’m going to hang up—”

  “Please! Please, Dr. Jessup. Just listen. My life depends on you. So do a lot of other lives. I can’t believe you wouldn’t at least listen.”

  “Go on,” she said finally.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t know how you got into all this so deeply, but I don’t think you fully understood what these people have done. All those Phase One patients—the patients who started developing pulmonary hypertension from their Vasclear treatments—Newbury has been arranging accidental deaths for those of them who didn’t die of PH. While you were creating a phantom medical miracle by curing patients who had no heart disease to begin with, Newbury has been eliminating anyone who could possibly slow down the approval process for Vasclear. Killing them.”

  “You have proof of what you say?”

  “You’re my proof, Dr. Jessup. You could have just let my father die, but you tried to save him. If you had known what Newbury was doing to the Phase One patients, I think you would have come forward. I need your help. I need you to do what’s right.”

  In the silence that followed, he watched her once again take a drink.

  “I … I don’t know if I can,” she said finally.

  She had sunk onto a kitchen chair now, and was staring, unseeing, out the sliders.

  “Will you at least talk to me in person?” he asked. “I need you to fill in some gaps for me. Then, if you don’t want to do any more, that’s up to you. I’ll take my own chances.”

  Jessup was beaten—exhausted. Brian could see that now.

  “When?” she asked.

  “Right now. I left instructions just under the stairs off the deck in back of your house. They’ll tell you where to meet me.”

  Brian had come up with the lie as a way of neutralizing the danger of Jessup calling the police and getting the Nahant causeway sealed off. She still had no idea he was on her property. If she hung up on him now, or made a phone call to anyone, he would simply leave. If she came directly out onto the deck and then later refused to help him, he would have to tie her up so he could get away.

  Keeping Jessup in his line of sight, and staying low, he moved to a spot where he could insert himself between her and the sliding doors. In the kitchen, she cradled the phone as she mulled over his request. Finally, after an interminable minute, she opened the sliders and stepped out onto the deck. Brian forced himself deeper into the shadows. She looked around cautiously, then moved to the stairs and stepped down to check beneath them. Brian bolted from his concealment and leaped up onto the deck.

  “Dr. Jessup, please don’t be frightened,” he said quickly. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk.”

  Jessup stumbled backward a step and glared up at him, her lips pulled tight in a startled snarl. For a moment Brian thought she was going to charge him.

  “How dare you sneak in here and spy on me this way,” she said, her voice raspy.

  He had to hand it to her. He held the advantage in size and position, yet she looked completely unintimidated.

  “Dr. Jessup, my father died because I believed what I read and was told about Vasclear. Now my friend is dead, I’ve had to kill a man, and my own life is going down the drain. It’s got to end. Fabricating research results is one thing. But people are getting murdered. You can’t let it go on any longer.”

  Jessup continued glaring up at him, but Brian could see the fatigue and confusion in her eyes. Finally, she let her breath out in a long, defeated sigh.

  “Do you want to go inside?” she asked.

  “I’d rather stay back here.”

  He motioned her to a spot on the edge of the deck and set his windbreaker down for her to sit on.

  “I really am deeply sorry about your father’s death,” she said.

  “I know you are. At least now you’ve got a chance to do something about it.”

  “I’m very frightened.”

  “So am I.”

  Jessup rubbed wearily at her eyes.

  “Okay,” she said finally, “where do you want me to begin?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I need to know about Vasclear. I need to know how this could have happened.”

  “A number of years ago, Art Weber was working with an international medical group at a clinic in the Amazon River basin in Columbia. That’s where he discovered Vasclear. Or thought he did, anyway. There was a tribe of primitive meat eaters that chewed some sort of boiled bark every day and lived to be a hundred or more with no sign of hardening of the arteries. Art believed he had found the fountain of youth, but he needed money to analyze the contents of the bark, isolate the bioactive substance, synthesize it, and test it. And he wanted to retain as much control and profit as possible. I don’t know how he knew the people who own Newbury, or what sort of deal he made with them. But I’ll tell you this, he could talk a frightened rabbit out of its hole.”

  “He made a deal with the devil,” Brian said. “They’re Russian Mafia.”

  Jessup looked over at him, impressed.

  “Actually, they’re Chechen Mafia,” she said, “although I didn’t know anything about them at all until things began to go wrong. According to Art, even the Russian Mafia is scared of the
Chechens.”

  “I believe it.”

  “The people behind Newbury anted up an enormous amount of money, but Art had made clear to them how much they had to gain. It took three years of chemistry and animal work just to isolate the bioactive substance they named Vasclear. I was made director of clinical research, and Newbury began funding a number of BHI projects in exchange for the work I was doing. Everything seemed fine with Vasclear until we began our Phase One testing. The drug showed some initial promise. But first the animals got in trouble, especially the primates, then some of the patients.”

  “Eosinophilia followed by pulmonary hypertension.”

  “Exactly. Art told his partners at Newbury that they had to go back to the drawing board. They said that would be fine with them as long as he repaid the tens of millions of dollars they had already laid out, plus interest.”

  “But how did he get you to go along with the hoax?”

  She looked away. Even in the semidarkness, he could see her cheeks flush. She and Art Weber were lovers!

  “There … there was a great deal at stake for me,” she said, carefully choosing her words, “financially and otherwise.”

  “I understand,” Brian said, sparing her the humiliation of spelling things out.

  “Art was genuinely panicked. He said the people at Newbury wouldn’t hesitate to kill both of us unless we found a way to recoup their money. That was when I came up with the idea to create fake heart disease in patients, then cure it. Yes, the idea was mine, almost all of it. Art made some refinements, but I set up the framework. We even calculated how long the drug would have to be on the market before we were safe from Newbury.”