Chain of Evidence

by Ridley Pearson

  “What, you’re going to get mad at me for helping you?”

  “I appreciate the help. It’s not that-”

  She interrupted. “I want us back together.”

  The building was heated by forced air, and it was the only sound in the room as Dart averted his eyes back to his notebook, and Ginny scratched at some epoxy stuck to the table.

  “I miss you,” she said.

  “I miss you too,” he answered honestly. “You’re involved with someone,” he reminded her.

  “From what I hear, we both are.”

  “Yes, I am too. Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “I am.”

  “Abby Lang,” she said.

  He had nothing to say. Ginny had left him. What he did now was his business, and his alone.

  He said, “Companies have their own computer security systems, isn’t that right? They monitor their own systems for breaches. This bank, for instance.”

  “It’s subcontracted usually. Yeah.”

  “So if anyone knows about you, it’s them-this private firm or the bank itself.”

  “I did it from home,” she said, as always, two steps ahead of him. “All my stuff is on my home machine.”

  “Can they trace it back to you?”

  “Depends how good they are,” she replied. “How long they were on to me. I had the call switched through New Haven and routed through a Yale web site. Normally they wouldn’t be able to break that, but I was on there pretty long. They might have. Depends.”

  “And if they did?”

  “They could act, or they could sit on me and go for a second hit. Two or three hits are more convincing … easier to use against me.”

  “But you will not go back there.”

  “No.” She chuckled nervously. “Not likely.”

  “So we wait and see,” he offered. She nodded. “Are you okay?”

  “Worried.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  “If they’re private, they might watch me, something like that. I think that’s what’s bugging me the most-the idea of that. You know, surveillance.”

  “They might,” he admitted. “But if they misstep,” he reminded her, “then you can turn right around and sue them-and that just might get the charges dropped.”

  She nodded, but her fear was palpable.

  “It’s a thought,” he said. “If you suspect something like that-electronic surveillance, anything like that-you should let me know. Maybe we can turn the cards on them.” He asked, “Are you okay?” She looked like hell.

  Again she nodded, but it was all show. “What about it?” she asked. “What about us?”

  “Zeller used to say to me, ‘You come to a fork in the road, take it,’” Dart answered.

  It elicited a smile from her. A soft laugh. Dart coughed.

  “I guess that’s where I am,” he said, “at that fork in the road.”

  She pursed her lips. “I understand.”

  “I’m not saying no.”

  “I understand.”

  “Abby may try to reconcile with her ex. If she does, and it works … Who knows?”

  “And you’re all right with that?” she asked incredulously.

  “It’s a unique relationship,” he answered. “We’re very much in the here-and-now.”

  “Well, I can’t say that I’m not jealous.”

  “Tomorrow is a long way off, where Abby and I are concerned.”

  She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. He let go of her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Yeah,” answered Joe Dart. “Me too.”

  Dart called Bud Gorman at home and caught him before he went to bed.

  “I need yet another favor,” Dart said cautiously, testing if he had asked for too much lately. Referring to the speeding tickets, he added, “I’m going to owe you a hell of a lot of fixes.”

  “Screw fixing the speeding tickets. I’m getting a Jeep. I hit a piece of metal yesterday-one little piece of shit on the center line. I was only doing about seventy …” Probably in a thirty-five zone, Dart thought. “Thing had such low clearance, it jumped up and punctured my gas tank. Lucky I didn’t flame out. Shopped Jeeps this afternoon. It’s not safe out there.”

  “It’s a company called Roxin Incorporated.”

  “It’s called Roxin Laboratories, Inc.,” Gorman corrected. “It’s a biotech, genetics firm. I take it you got the e-mail I sent you.”

  Genetics? Dart thought. “But how do you know-?”

  “Did you get the e-mail or not?” Gorman interrupted.

  “I haven’t checked today. It’s swing shift. I’m brain dead.” Genetics, he thought again. Roxin Laboratories, Inc., had purchased medical insurance policies for known sex offenders-protecting themselves in case the test program went badly. And it’s gone badly, Dart thought.

  “Brain dead, huh? Well, come alive for a minute, ’cause what I’m talking about is the Proctor Securities client list you asked for. I turned up every check written to the company for the last twenty-four months. Posted the list onto CompuServe for you.”

  “But Roxin?” Dart again began but was immediately interrupted.

  “Is on the list, Joe. Proctor Securities is on retainer to them. They’re a big client. I placed them in the top ten of my Proctor list.”

  “Oh, my God,” Dart blurted out. Zeller would have discovered Roxin while working for Proctor. It fit.

  “You want a credit run on Roxin?” Gorman offered. “No problem.”

  Dart couldn’t get a word out. His mind cluttered with a dozen thoughts.

  “Joe? You there?” Gorman added, “Know anybody who can get me a good deal on a Jeep?”

  CHAPTER 30

  The space-age facility was surrounded by a nine-foot wrought iron fence enclosing what appeared to be three or four acres of park. The fence carried evenly spaced signs warning against unlawful trespass. In the crotch of an elm tree, Dart spotted one of what he suspected were dozens of hidden security cameras. Roxin Laboratories was a small fortress. Nine miles west of downtown and a few miles south of the town of Avon, nestled away in a thickly wooded hillside and overlooking the Farmington River, the physical plant consisted of a large five-story geodesic dome of steel and mirrored glass, and a similarly constructed multistory laboratory attached like a box to the dome’s south. There were two vehicular entrances-the main one with a manned booth and an automated entrance to the employees’ parking lot alongside the box. Dart showed his ID to the guard and parked in a visitor’s spot close to the main doors.

  All security guards wore dark blue uniforms, pressed and starched, with emblems stitched onto the right sleeve and name panels above the right breast pocket. Dart surrendered his weapon and his cellular phone and passed through a cleverly disguised metal detector, met there by a man in his early twenties who owned a severe haircut and piercing green eyes and who introduced himself as Richard. Richard wore a light blue suit and expensive shoes shined to a mirror finish. He instructed Dart on how to use his visitor’s pass in order to log in to the computerized security system.

  To Dart, this felt a little bit like entering a prison.

  The elevator panel operated only after Richard swiped his credit-card-sized security pass through the reader. He and Dart changed elevator cars on the third level, after passing through another security station and entering the lab building. A series of air locks gained them access to the second set of elevators and offices and labs beyond.

  The need for an escort became quickly apparent-hallways and doors lacked identification, except for a cryptic band of bricked colors, reminding Dart of nautical flags. On foot, they crossed a skybridge connecting the elevator bank to the third floor of the lab building, high above what Richard called the “terrarium”-a small enclosed courtyard complete with a running fountain and a living lily pond. Offices looked out onto the courtyard. “The security is somewhat ominous, I know,” Richard apologized, “but recombinant genetics is not to be taken ligh
tly. The security has much less to do with the integrity of our ideas than it does with the preservation of environmental continuity.”

  “That’s certainly reassuring,” Dart said.

  Richard attempted what passed for a smile. “Yes, well, we wouldn’t want anything getting away from us,” Richard explained.

  “No,” Dart agreed, “we wouldn’t.” After another ten yards, Dart said, “Expensive facility,” exploring with a compliment.

  “When we started up, biotechs were the darlings of Wall Street. The board wanted to make a statement with the facility-and I think they have.”

  “Definitely,” Dart agreed.

  “We’ve had enormous success with our arthritis drug-Artharest, is its commercial name,” he announced. “And big things are expected of our prostate drug-an anticancer gene therapy drug.”

  They arrived at a door marked with a red flag, two blues and another red. Richard used his ID card to gain them access and showed Dart inside a generous conference room. The table, a series of thick slabs of black granite on a chrome frame, had down its center three flat conferencing microphones that looked more like ashtrays. The chairs were black leather slung between polished steel and braided wire. A large abstract mural of polished pink stone and blue glass occupied most of the far wall. A set of floor-to-ceiling white laminate cabinets occupied the far end of the room, presumably housing audiovisual equipment.

  Richard seated him, asked if he could bring him something to drink, and when Dart declined, retreated through a door that made a sound as if locking behind him. Four excruciatingly long minutes later, the door opened and a tall, slightly heavy, middle-aged woman with dull dark hair wearing a conservative gray suit and cream blouse entered, graceful and poised. She carried a large black leather briefcase with her that she parked in the chair next to the one into which she lowered herself. She wore cream tights and black shoes with low heels.

  She had never been pretty, though always smart, Dart decided, before she spoke a word. “Welcome to Roxin,” she said, like a tour guide, allowing the heel of her shoe to flap off her foot.

  “It’s quite the place,” Dart said. “You don’t see it from the road.”

  “No. Only from the river, and only then if you’re looking. It’s remarkable for its privacy.”

  “I’m told that your time is extremely valuable, so I’ll get right to it,” he said.

  “That’s kind of you, Detective.”

  “I need to confirm some names with you … men involved in a test you’re conducting …”

  “A clinical trial?” she corrected. “Which one?”

  Dart felt out of his element. Dr. Arielle Martinson was Roxin’s director of research and development and CEO. It surprised him that he had gained access to the top on his first try-not at all what he had expected. Typically he had to stair-step his way up the corporate ladder.

  “I have the names here,” he said, passing her a sheet from his notebook. The small, wrinkled piece of notepaper suddenly seemed unprofessional to him. He felt half-tempted to apologize for it.

  Martinson was a woman with a formidable presence, commanding a great deal of space around her, the kind of person in whom he immediately sensed both leadership and integrity. The two articles he had gleaned from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times cast her as a woman pioneer in a predominantly male field, the recipient of dozens of prestigious awards including a three-hundred-thousand-dollar MacArthur while at Michigan, where she had worked as part of the Human Genome Project. Her specialty was hormonal gene therapy. The Journal had speculated that Roxin was on the verge of a gene therapy treatment for menopausal side effects, with a market projection of eight hundred million dollars annually.

  She had a nervous habit of tugging her short-cropped dark hair down past her right ear and fiddling with it. She kept herself nearly in profile to him, shielding the practice as best as possible, as if she was aware of it but could not control herself. This, from a woman who seemed, by all measurable appearances, in total control.

  She accepted the notepaper, read the names from it, and made a phone call, reciting the names into the receiver for the benefit of someone named Angelica. “I see,” she said, thanking the woman before hanging up. She half turned to not quite face Dart and, looking at him out of the side of her eyes, said, “Yes, they are listed with us, though I’m afraid that’s all I can share with you at this time.”

  Dart was amazed by her frankness. He had expected the runaround. “They are,” he repeated, not quite knowing where to go, having prepared for a battle.

  “Yes.”

  He thought, considering alternatives. He felt certain from her preemptive statement that she would not discuss the nature of the trial. “Are you aware that all three men are deceased?” He paused, “Suicides?”

  The news clearly had an effect, though she contained her surprise well. “Clinical trials are conducted in the blind, Detective. Are you aware of that? As the creator of the drug, we can either hire an independent or remain with an in-house team for our stage-two efficacy trials. Either way, these trials are conducted in the blind; that is, though we’re made aware of the names of the participants, and occasionally have a role in selecting those individuals, we are not informed as to who is receiving the actual drug and, in stage three, to whom the placebo is administered, if, in fact, placebo testing is involved.”

  “I see,” Dart said, again feeling out of his element. “Would you be willing to discuss the nature of this particular trial?” he inquired.

  “Your mention of suicide troubles me, obviously,” she said. “And all that I can tell you is that were the suicides in any way linked to the trial, we most certainly would have been notified. I can assure you of that. Guidelines are quite rigid in that regard.”

  “So you’re saying these three suicides are unrelated?” he asked incredulously.

  “Can you prove otherwise?” she asked, voicing concern, not anger.

  He decided to drop the bomb. “We’re not entirely sure they were suicides, Dr. Martinson.”

  She turned as gray as her suit, and her hand became busy with the lock of hair. “Sabotage?” she asked. “Are you saying that someone is attempting to sabotage my clinical trials?”

  “If the suicides were connected to the trials,” he asked, “what then?”

  She smirked, not liking that thought one bit. She shook her head, offering him a better view of her neck, her hair whipping out of the way and briefly revealing what looked like a wide scar just below her ear. Her hand returned there quickly, and turning her head away, she said, “If our drug is made to appear to cause severe depression or other psychological side effects, I can assure you that the trials would be immediately halted and we would take a serious look at the causal relationship. But let me say, too, that one of the benefits of gene therapy is the specific targeting of the medication, and therefore the lessening of many side effects associated with other groups of medications. As to how it would affect us-well, it would devastate us, of course. We don’t think highly of killing our test subjects, Detective. And let me just say that these drugs see rigorous testing prior to human trials, and I certainly would not expect severe psychological disorders to go unnoticed and therefore untreated.”

  “You’d catch it first,” he said.

  “You bet we would,” she answered.

  “So someone could hurt your company if they were to imply an association between your trial and these suicides?”

  “This kind of sabotage could ruin us.” She appeared nervous then, irritable and anxious to be done with Dart. She said, “To be perfectly honest, Detective, the idea of this is frightening, and I’d like to get right on it. Again,” she said strongly, “I think if there were any such connection to be made, I most certainly would have heard about it, but if you’d excuse me-”

  “I need to know what’s going on,” he said bluntly.

  “I understand,” she said.

  “I may be able to help you,” he of
fered.

  “Yes.” She attempted a smile, but it failed. She was too shaken.

  “One last question,” Dart said. He felt invasive with these questions. Here was Martinson, having been told that someone was trying to sabotage her company, and he, Dart, continued to pry into every dirty corner. “Is Proctor Securities-your security firm-ever involved in these trials in any way? Do they ever have access to these trials or to the trial results?”

  “I should say not!” She flushed a bright crimson. “They police our parking lots for God’s sake. They help us with corporate espionage from at home and abroad.” Her eyes went wide and she snapped, “Where the hell are they when we need them?” He could see her making a mental note about this. She pulled herself together and said, “This is a highly competitive field, Detective, with tens-hundreds-of millions of dollars at stake. If one product fails, another may be in position to take its place. Terry Proctor is supposed to stay on top of that kind of thing. Protect our interests.” She tried another smile, this one more effective. “Can we continue this another time?”

  Dart nodded. She spun her head around as she stood and Dart stole a look at her neck.

  Definitely a scar. A knife wound. And by the look of it, a nasty one.

  CHAPTER 31

  Dart didn’t want to return to 11 Hamilton Court because the house was being kept under surveillance on the hope that Wallace Sparco-Walter Zeller-might be apprehended. But it was Zeller’s own teachings that leaned Dart toward going back and reexamining its contents. That house remained the only physical link to the visitor at the Payne suicide. Always return to the crime scene, Zeller had taught him.

  “Usually I hate being on call,” Samantha Richardson said, flirting with Dart as she unlocked the door to the photo lab. Bragg’s assistant and photographer wore blue jeans and a red flannel top that looked suspiciously like pajamas. At eleven-thirty at night, anything was possible-people showed up in the strangest clothes. Dart was hardly sleeping, between the night tour and day calls, like the one at Roxin Laboratories. He felt a wreck, and looked it too.