(1995) Chain of Evidence

by Ridley Pearson

  Gone.

  His killer?

  For a fraction of a second Dart wondered if he had imagined this conversation. He scanned the area again, carefully probing every possible hiding place.

  Gone.

  They’re murders, Ivy, but it’s not what you think.

  Lies! Dart thought. Tricks! He’s toying with me.

  Find it, damn it all. Do your fucking homework.

  Dart felt sick to his stomach. The smoke curled into the night sky, and then it too was gone.

  CHAPTER 29

  Over the course of the transition between day and night tours, detectives worked poorly, sometimes falling asleep at their desks, in the middle of interrogations, or even during phone calls. Moods went sour, and tempers flared. Haite’s unit, including Dart and Kowalski, had just switched to the graveyard shift, and walking through CAPers was like entering an area laden with land mines. To make matters worse, the building was going to shit; a leak that no one seemed able to stop ran a slow but constant drip into a five-gallon white plastic container in the far corner by the coffee machine. The uninterrupted sound of it was a source of constant irritation, covered only by the drone of activity to which Dart and his colleagues had long since become accustomed.

  Dart cleared a domestic stabbing in the north end—a black woman had killed her drunken lover. He felt lucky because it was an early call, eight-thirty at night, and that took his name off the phone list. The rest of the night would be spent writing up an easy report, speaking with the on-call prosecuting attorney, and waiting for sunrise to free him.

  He was midway into his report when the familiar banter inside CAPers slowly trickled down to nothing and the room was silent. This took a moment to register, at which point Dart looked up and spun around to see Ginny Rice standing in the CAPers’ doorway. Everyone in the division had closely followed the drama of their split, and her unexpected appearance had quieted his colleagues.

  She wore a pair of Gap khakis and a white shirt under a green sweater. She had two earrings in her left ear and a small gold chain worn as a necklace.

  Dart stood and walked over to greet here, doing so in as quiet a voice as possible. “Hey there,” he said.

  “Hey, Dart. Somewhere where we can talk?”

  He lead Ginny to the crib and sat down with her at the scarred table, where a copy of Guns and Ammo lay open.

  “I may be in some trouble,” she said. Up close, she appeared dazed, or overtired. Worn at the edges.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “It may be nothing.”

  He reached over and took her hand, a mass of confusion. He wondered how, after the pain she had caused him, he could feel so instantly comfortable with her.

  She said, “The new policies. Remember? I accessed billing—” Twice Dart had covered for her, had helped her out of a legal knothole, only to have her caught hacking a third time. That had brought a federal conviction, something that Dart could not help with. Now he found himself feeling guilty about having asked her to do this.

  “It turns out, there are dozens of new accounts, all paid for by fund transfers from the same account. It’s a Union Bank corporate account.”

  “Dozens?”

  She nodded. “All males, and though I haven’t confirmed all of them, I know that at least three have wives who were kicked by the system as victims of abuse.”

  The tests, Dart thought. He said nothing.

  “I think what happened was that I tripped a security gate going into Union Trust.”

  “You broke into a bank.”

  “Electronically,” she said, adding defensively. “How else could I identify who paid for all this insurance?”

  “It was a perk,” he said, guessing that the insurance coverage had been used as an incentive to gain test subjects.

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” he said.

  “I thought I had a hole in the firewall,” she explained. “I thought I had a clean entry. But maybe I stepped on something getting out. I’m not sure. All I know is that my software detected surveillance—”

  “They watched you?” he exclaimed.

  She nodded. “Chances are, they know what I went after.”

  “And did you come straight here?”

  Her face tightened. “I shouldn’t have done that, should I?”

  “You never know,” Dart said. “It’s doubtful they would have put you under physical surveillance. If it was federal—”

  “They would have busted me,” she answered. “You see?” She craned forward, “That’s one reason I came straight here. I’m hoping—hell, I’m praying—that maybe you, HPD, has some kind of white-collar crime thing in place. Because other-wise—”

  “It’s private,” he answered.

  “Yeah, private. And shit, they could sue the pants off me. I’d rather face you guys than a corporation any day.”

  “They can sue you either way.” He added, “They won’t, though.” Corporations rarely sued. That brought the case public, and exposed their system as vulnerable to electronic attack. They preferred keeping things as quiet as possible, often dropping all charges in exchange for a gag order against the hacker. On occasion the hacker got a job offer from that very same company. He reminded, “And you wouldn’t rather face us. You’re on probation. A second conviction—”

  “And I do time. I know.” She crossed her arms and shuddered. “I’m scared to death, Dartelli,” She said, “But hey, I got the name of the company for you. At least I didn’t come out empty-handed.”

  “The people buying these policies?”

  “Paid out of a corporate account under the name Roxin Incorporated.”

  Bud Gorman would be able to answer questions about Roxin. Dart wrote the name down.

  She said, “I thought you’d like that.”

  Dart looked up from his notebook, still angry with her. “Why, Gin? Why take the chance?”

  “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 lightly. 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, allo
wing 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.”