by Lori Ryan
He nodded and she turned to walk away. He watched her go. He needed to let her go. But, hell, he didn’t have to like it.
Chapter 13
They couldn’t get a warrant based on bloody shoes and a strange feeling, but Jarrod got with Cal so they could head over to Oak to check out the Chris something-or-other lead. It didn’t take long to find the right room. A woman in a strappy tank top with skin that looked like she'd seen a few too many sunny days without sunscreen was happy to tell them where they could find the kid. She didn’t like him.
“Saw him kick a dog once.” She turned her tanned and wrinkled face up toward them and Jarrod could tell Cal was itching to lecture her about sunscreen use. “Who does that? Who kicks a dog?”
Maybe someone who beats a man to death with a pipe.
She pointed them to his room. They wouldn’t be able to do much if he didn’t want to talk to them. They could ask about anything he might have seen down at the shelter, but that was about it.
Jarrod rang the small doorbell and looked up and down the hall. The place was dingy, with many of the hallway lights out. The carpet looked like it had been in place for more than twenty years. Bare spots where it had worn clear down to the concrete subflooring dotted the middle tract where feet hit most often.
“Yeah?” A tall lanky kid who couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen opened the door. The odor of hard alcohol wafted toward them, mixed with filth. The smell of unshowered human. Stringy hair corroborated the assessment.
“Are you Chris?” Jarrod asked as he and Cal produced ID.
Calm eyes stared at them. “Yeah.” He didn’t slur and Jarrod wondered how much alcohol was still in his system and how much might be left over from a previous day. He also didn’t bat an eye at the fact that two New Haven police detectives were at his door. He leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb. Jarrod understood what Carrie meant about feeling that something was off about him. He couldn’t place it, but he understood her concern.
“We’re asking around about some events that took place down at the Step Up Homeless Shelter. I understand you’ve been to the soup kitchen?”
“Sure.”
“What’s your last name, Chris?” Cal asked.
“Hemsworth.” The smirk confirmed he was lying through his teeth.
“Funny.” Jarrod deadpanned back at the guy.
“Jarrod,” Cal said, taking a step back, one hand going to his sidearm. Jarrod didn’t wait to see what Cal had seen to cause the change in stance and tone. His hand also went to the service weapon at his hip.
“Step out of the apartment, Chris. We’re going to put you in cuffs for our safety while we talk.” Cal and Jarrod each stepped to either side, giving the man space to move out into the hall. For a long beat, he simply stared at them, then he stepped into the hall with a shrug.
Cal cuffed him as Jarrod covered Cal, ready to step in if needed. Cal turned the man and moved him against the wall after he’d checked his pockets. “Stand right there for me. Is anyone else in your room, Chris?”
“S’empty.”
“Is that your bag?” Cal gestured inside the room. In plain view of the open door where they’d been talking, Jarrod now saw it. He wasn’t sure how he’d missed it, but he was glad Cal hadn’t.
He’d never get over how stupid criminals were. It never ceased to amaze him. Sticking out of what looked like a gym bag was the end of a heavy pipe at least an inch and a half in diameter. The end of it was visibly coated in something thick. Jarrod would be willing to bet it was blood. It had that thick gooey look to it, and if he wasn’t mistaken, there was hair imbedded in it. If it proved to be their murder weapon with the blood of either or both of their victims on it, it was a hell of a piece of evidence to pull into court.
Chris nodded in answer to Cal’s question and Jarrod stepped into the apartment to look at the pipe more closely.
“Can he do that?” asked Chris. No panic in his voice. Almost curiosity. A mild curiosity. “Can he go in my place without a warrant?”
“Yes,” Cal answered. “That pipe is in plain view and it gives us probable cause to search the apartment.”
“Okay.”
Jarrod removed a pair of gloves from his pocket and used a single finger to pull back the side of the gym bag and look inside. Just as he’d thought. Hairs clung to the pipe. Hairs, blood, tissue. It was all there.
Reading Chris his rights and bringing him into the station had gone smoothly. And he hadn’t hesitated to talk. He’d been hired to kill the two men. It had all been prearranged a month before. He had been told he would get a call when the time came and he’d be paid if he got the job done. Make it look like someone had beat the homeless men to death for shits and giggles. In fact, he told them calmly, he’d planned to “take out” one or two more, just to make it look good. It had been easy to do. The men were asleep, so there was nothing to it.
Jarrod couldn’t get over the calm demeanor. He’d studied sociopaths in his criminal justice courses, but he’d never met one. He was sure they would find out down the road this guy was a true sociopath. He bet the doctors that studied this kind of thing would have a field day with this kid. He watched as Chris picked at a scab on his elbow.
“So, when you were first approached about the homeless men, who approached you?”
Chris looked up, leaving the scab sitting on the table. “Tall guy. Skinny. Thinning hair and glasses.”
Jarrod flipped through some photos on his phone and showed him a picture of Alan Sykes. “Is this him?”
Chris peered at the image. “Yeah. That’s him.”
“Did you talk to him at any other time?” Cal asked.
“Nope. We get messages at the apartment building. Got a message to take care of it last week. I did the job. My pay showed up the next day.”
“You did them both in one night?” Jarrod asked.
“Yup. Told you. Once I found them, it was easy. Hard part was tracking down where they’d fallen asleep.”
“So, what, you just walked up, hit them once, then walked away?” Jarrod wanted details. He had a sense this guy was telling the truth, but he wanted details to pin it down for them. Throwing in the single hit as a false detail would tell him if this guy was really their guy.
“No.”
“Okay, well, why don’t you tell us how it went,” Cal said.
Chris detailed the evening. The gist of it was that a friend drove him around looking for both men. He killed them. The friend didn’t witness the murders but he drove Chris away from the scenes. He corrected Jarrod’s mislead about the number of hits. He’d counted as he hit. Twenty-two times for Max, eighteen for Carlton, he’d said, his mouth taking the shape of a grin.
“We’re gonna need the name of the friend that drove.”
Chris shrugged again. It was a frequent answer of his.
“How did you get paid for this?” Jarrod asked.
“Next day, my payment was waiting for me at the apartment.”
“What were you paid?” Jarrod braced himself. He’d heard answers to this question that made you want to give up on humanity. He had a feeling this one would top them all. Chris didn’t disappoint on that score.
A wide grin. “Two bottles of Jack. The big gallon ones.”
“Jack Daniel’s?” Cal asked, keeping his tone even. Their job right now was to get the information on the record.
“Uh huh.” Chris smiled.
“How did the man who hired you find you?”
Chris shrugged. “Came around talking to people one day. Eventually asked me about doing the job.”
“Did he tell you why he wanted these men killed?”
“Nah.”
“You didn’t ask?” Jarrod pressed. “Didn’t you want to know?”
Chris stared back at him, then went back to picking at his elbow with a shrug.
“Did the man tell you his name or who he worked for or anything like that?”
“Sure. He said his name was Jonath
an Simms.”
Cal and Jarrod exchanged a glance and Jarrod pulled his phone out again. He pulled up a photo of Jonathan Simms.
“Just one more thing, Chris, and then we’ll go ahead and get you processed.” The kid nodded his head, as if it were an everyday event to be processed for first degree murder. “Do you recognize this man? Ever have any contact with him?” Jarrod showed him the photo of Jonathan Simms.
Chris shook his head. “Nope, never seen that guy.”
Chapter 14
Cal stared at him. “You want to do what?” He didn’t give Jarrod a chance to answer. “Since when do we worry about protecting pharmaceutical companies? Or any company, for that matter?”
“We don’t, usually.” Jarrod didn’t know how to explain this.
Sure, he could go with the gut feeling excuse he’d been using all along. And his gut was coming into play here. He knew something was wrong.
Still, he tried to justify it some other way. He was asking Cal to do the unthinkable. He wanted to use his relationship with Carrie to get a meeting with Warrick Staunton without getting a warrant. If—no, when, because this was definitely a when kind of thing—Captain Calhoun found out, they could very well lose their jobs.
At the least, they would be treated to one of Calhoun’s very long what-the-hell-were-you-jackasses-thinking speeches. “If we file for a warrant, you know some reporter out there will get hold of it even if we try to keep it quiet. As soon as that warrant exists, this becomes a matter of public record. Simms Pharmaceutical employs a lot of people around here. Something like this could sink the company. All those employees would be sunk right along with it.”
Everything he said was the truth, but he never felt more like he was skating some razor thin line where any misstep could trash his career. He was ignoring for now the fact that he himself had to come to grips with what he was doing.
“I suppose you have an idea for how to proceed without a warrant?”
“Yeah. You go back to the station and work the case.” He didn’t want Cal taking the risk he was about to take. “I’ll go talk to Carrie and get her to get me in for a meeting with Warrick Staunton.”
“Oh hell no. We’re going together. No way I’m letting you question anyone on your own. Not with all the people who have dropped in this case already.”
Jarrod didn’t argue. Cal wouldn’t let him walk out of there any more than Jarrod would have if their roles had been reversed.
Twenty minutes later, he thought for sure Carrie was going to throw them out her office as soon as they told her what they wanted. But when he explained how the warrant process worked and she began to understand what was at stake for her friends, she made a call. She hadn’t asked to go through a secretary. He had a feeling she called Warrick Staunton’s cell phone directly, or maybe a personal line at his office. Whatever the case, she came through. Two hours after leaving her office, they were following Warrick Staunton’s secretary down the hallway at the headquarters of Simms Pharmaceutical.
She stepped in ahead of them and they heard the announcement of their arrival.
“Gentlemen,” Warrick offered his hand to each of them as Jarrod and Cal produced identification. “What can I do for you? Carrie was pretty vague on the phone. Does this have anything to do with Mark Coleman’s death?”
“Did you know Dr. Coleman?” Jarrod asked.
Jarrod studied Warrick as he answered, and thought he saw real distress at the man’s death in Warrick’s eyes. “We went to college together. Shared a house the last two years with a few other guys.”
Cal launched directly into the heart of things, not one to pull any punches. “We’re here because at least eight homeless men have died in New Haven in the last two months. They had your drug in their system at the time of death.”
Warrick looked back and forth between the detectives. “You’re joking, right? We don’t provide medications or supplies to the clinic. I know some of the local medical companies do, but our donations are always cash.”
Cal read the FDA application number, referring to his notes, and Warrick looked as though he recognized it immediately. Jarrod wondered if he had that good of a memory, or if this application was memorable for some reason.
Warrick didn’t comment further, but frowned and picked up his phone. “Nan, can you see if Jonathan is free? And ask Joe to step down to my office.” He turned back to the men. “That drug never made it to market. The trial was halted, but my uncle Jonathan was the scientist who ran the trial. I’m having him join us, as well as our head of counsel.”
Jarrod had expected Warrick to bring a lawyer into the room and tell them they couldn’t discuss anything with the detectives, but the way Warrick was talking, he made it sound like they might be about to have a genuine discussion where information was exchanged. He wasn’t going to get his hopes up yet. This could be Staunton’s way of trying to look cooperative. Get the lawyer in the room and let the lawyer be the one to kick them out. Jarrod had seen that happen before.
A tap on the door preceded a smaller man with a face only a mother could love into the room. He had dark hair and olive-colored skin with a comb-over hairstyle that spoke of a man either losing hair from stress or genes. He wasn’t Jonathan Simms, so Jarrod guessed this was the lawyer, Joe.
Staunton stood and approached the man, speaking quietly to him in the doorway for a moment. The pair was joined by Jonathan Simms and the men continued to nod and speak. Jarrod could make out some of the conversation. Staunton seemed to be filling the men in on the little he knew. He could hear the lawyer agreeing they’d cooperate, but told Staunton to pause before each answer in case he wanted to step in. Again, Jarrod was surprised by the level of cooperation, and every one of his cop instincts was screaming at him. Was he that jaded that he couldn’t believe these people might just flat out answer a few questions?
Yeah, he had to admit. He was.
The three men stepped into the room, Warrick making quick introductions and steering them all over to where a small conference table sat. It was large enough to seat all of them.
“Can you tell us about the drug trials the FDA halted?” Cal began. “The ones for, uh,” he looked at his notepad again, “SP-1090?”
Jonathan and Warrick paused until Joe nodded at Jonathan. The scientist launched into his explanation. “If it had worked, it would have revolutionized the treatment of heart disease.” He sat forward in his chair, forearms on the table in front of him, as if willing the men to understand the power of the drug. “It would have reversed heart disease, not just stopped it in its tracks. That’s not something we can do yet.”
“That can’t be done now?” Jarrod asked, even though the man had just told them. He wanted to keep Jonathan talking.
“To some degree, yes. With medicine and very significant lifestyle changes. Many people aren’t committed enough to do that, despite the threat to their lives. They’ll make some changes. Enough to stop the threat and repair some of the damage. But not enough to truly heal the arteries and the heart. SP-1090 was so unique, there wasn’t even a USAN stem for it. We couldn’t even figure out what to name the damned thing.” Jonathan huffed out a laugh and looked eagerly at the other men in the room for agreement.
Warrick smiled at his uncle with a little shake of his head, as Cal and Jarrod looked to him for translation. “United States Adopted Name stems and the World Health Organization’s International Nonproprietary Names are what’s used in the industry to name a new drug. The stems are related to the drug’s chemical makeup and its functions. For example,” he waved a hand, “an epidermal growth factor receptor will always have the -nib stem to indicate its function. So, you see toferitinib citrate and you know it includes an epidermal growth factor receptor.”
Jarrod’s brows rose. “Uh huh.”
Warrick laughed. “All right, so some people see toferitinib citrate and know it includes an epidermal growth factor receptor.”
“Yes,” Jonathan cut in, seemingly frust
rated with the sideways track the conversation had taken. “So, you see, this was so unique in how it worked, that we didn’t even have a stem for it. SP-1090 was just a temporary shorthand of the chemical compound of the drug so we had something to call the damned thing.” Jonathan’s excitement about the drug was clear and Jarrod wondered again how the man had given up working on something he seemed so committed to.
If he did give it up.
Joe put a hand on Jonathan’s arm and stilled the man. “We can’t get into how it works, gentlemen. That information is still proprietary.”
Cal sat forward. “So, you’re still developing the drug?”
Jonathan’s face fell, but Warrick spoke up quickly. “No.” His tone was decisive. “Absolutely not.”
“Is that prohibited after the FDA pulls the plug on a trial?” Jarrod wondered at the man’s vehement reaction.
“No,” Warrick said after looking to Joe for an approving nod. “We could have continued to work on the drug and reapplied with a different formulation later. It would have needed to be significantly different. We’d have had to start back at square one with the testing.”
Jarrod couldn’t help but notice the tension in Jonathan now. If he had to guess, he’d say the man was grinding his teeth. “So, you chose not to do that?”
“Right.” Warrick said, but didn’t expand.
“And what about the deaths?” Cal asked. “People died during the trial. I don’t remember seeing this in the news. How was it you kept this quiet? Wouldn’t there be lawsuits?”
Warrick looked at Joe, while Jonathan looked away.
“The people involved in a drug trial sign an agreement waiving their right to sue,” Joe said simply.
“And that works?” Cal hadn’t been able to keep the shock out of his voice, and Jarrod didn’t blame him. He wondered if these people truly understood they might die from participating in a drug trial.
