House Blood - JD 7

by Mike Lawson

  “A lot of people in this world are in much worse shape than you are,” Emma said scornfully. “You’ll adjust and most likely have a long life. And Kelly told DeMarco you have money, so that should make your life even better.”

  “What sort of deal will I get?” Nelson said.

  From the way he said this, DeMarco got the impression Nelson didn’t really care about a deal, but Emma answered his question. “If you cooperate and give us the information we need to convict Mulray, you’ll be released from prison.”

  DeMarco looked over at Emma. She had no authority to make any sort of deal, particularly one that generous, and she knew it. But Nelson didn’t question her authority or her generosity. Instead he shook his head and said, “I might be able to help you get Fiona, but me testifying won’t be enough to get Mulray. Kelly and I officially worked for Lizzie Warwick. There’s no documented connection between us and Mulray’s company, and you’re not going to be able to trace the money we were paid back to Mulray. And I never met Mulray. I only met Fiona, I only met her four times, and the only people who can confirm that those meetings took place are Kelly and Hobson, and they’re both dead. Now, I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure if I testify that I helped kill a bunch of people because Fiona told me to, it’d just be my word against hers, and the only one that will go to jail for murder will be me. And even if you could find enough evidence to convict Fiona, Mulray will just say that she was an overzealous employee and he didn’t have anything to do with the things she did.”

  “But if you’re willing to testify,” DeMarco said, “we can get the FBI to start digging, and they have the smarts and the resources to find the evidence we need.”

  “Maybe,” Nelson said, “but I’ve got a better idea.”

  “What’s that?” DeMarco said.

  “Let me tell you something about Fiona,” Nelson said. “When she thinks people are a threat, she kills them. She ordered me and Kelly to kill Phil Downing when he discovered what was going on in Peru, but when you think about Downing, you’ll realize that killing him wasn’t really necessary. All Fiona had to do was pay him off and he would have cooperated. She also ordered us to kill you two when you started poking into things, and she did this before she even knew if you’d found out anything that could harm her. And then there was Hobson. Hobson was definitely a guy she could have simply paid to keep his mouth shut. What I’m telling you is, the way Fiona solves problems is by killing people. It’s like she can’t think of any other solution.”

  “I don’t understand,” Emma said. “How does knowing this help us?”

  Nelson smiled. “If you’re able to convince Fiona that Orson ­Mulray’s a threat, she’ll kill him.”

  DeMarco said, “We’re not going to do that.” But at the same time, Emma said, “How would we do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Nelson said, addressing Emma. “But if you can figure out a way, I guarantee you Fiona will have someone take ­Mulray out.”

  Neither Emma nor DeMarco said anything for a moment, until DeMarco repeated what he’d previously said. “We’re not going to do that. We need to do this the legal way. You testify, the FBI gathers up evidence to support your testimony, and Fiona and Mulray go to jail.”

  Nelson laughed. “DeMarco, do you really believe that a rich son of a bitch like Orson Mulray will ever see the inside of a prison?” Before DeMarco could answer, Nelson said, “No, if you want my help, we’re gonna do this my way. You’re going to convince Fiona that Mulray’s a threat—and after he’s dead, come back and see me. Then I’ll do anything you want. I’ll testify to everything. I’ll tell you what I did to help test Mulray’s drug and how Kelly and I set up Kincaid for Downing’s death. I’ll give you whatever you want—after Mulray’s dead.”

  They wasted the next half hour trying to get Nelson to change his mind. They told him if he didn’t help them, he was going to be put back in Wallens Ridge where somebody would eventually kill him. And if he wasn’t killed, he was going to spend fifteen years in a cell and when he got out—if he got out—he’d be nothing more than a penniless cripple, because they’d make sure he never got the money Mulray Pharma paid him. Their strongest argument was that if he didn’t cooperate, Kelly’s death would never be avenged.

  But Nelson turned to stone on them.

  “So now what?” DeMarco said.

  They had left Nelson in the cabin and gone outside to talk. They were sitting on a fallen log next to a burbling brook shaded by old trees. The setting was incredibly tranquil—and completely at odds with the subject matter of their conversation.

  “The first thing we have to do is decide if Nelson is right,” Emma said.

  “Right about what? That Fiona is willing to kill people to protect herself?”

  “No—I think he’s right about that. What we have to decide is if Nelson went to court and testified, could the government convict Orson Mulray. And I think Nelson’s right about that, too. The government wouldn’t have a chance, because there’s no evidence that Mulray ever ordered Nelson to do anything.”

  “Yeah, but how ’bout all the other stuff?” DeMarco said. “The fact that Hobson was killed and that Lee killed Kelly, and the attempt on Nelson’s life at Wallens Ridge? That’s a lot of circumstantial evidence.”

  “Those events all make for an interesting tale, but again, there’s nothing to positively connect Mulray to them. If Mulray’s indicted—and right now I can’t imagine why he would be—he’ll hire a battalion of lawyers, they’ll delay the trial forever, and while they’re delaying, he or Fiona will try to kill Nelson again and maybe succeed this time. And when the case finally does go to trial, with or without Nelson testifying, Orson Mulray will walk.”

  “So what do you want to do?” DeMarco asked again.

  Emma picked up a rock and flung it into the stream. “I want to do what Nelson said. I want to figure out a way to make Fiona believe that Mulray poses a threat to her.”

  “You’d be willing to do that? You’d be willing to let her kill him?”

  Emma answered immediately. “Yes. Think about Orson Mulray, Joe. Think about who he is and what he did. He was already a rich man before this drug was developed. He was richer than most people can ever imagine being. I read he inherited over a billion dollars from his father. A billion! The Ugandans who died to develop his new drug would have felt rich if they had a thousand dollars. And the worst thing is that he didn’t have to kill anyone. He could have developed his drug in the normal, legal manner; it would have just taken longer if he’d followed the rules. But Mulray couldn’t wait. He couldn’t wait a few years to go from being merely rich to obscenely rich. And for people like Mulray, I don’t think it’s really about money at all. I mean, how much money can one person possibly spend on himself? No, it’s not about money. It’s about ego. Orson Mulray doesn’t want to be richer—he wants to be a financial icon. And it appears right now that there’s nothing that can be done to bring him to justice, and as his wealth and influence grows it will become even harder. So will it weigh heavily on my conscience if we do something that causes Fiona to kill him? I don’t think so.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And another thing,” Emma said. “If we push Fiona, maybe she won’t kill him but maybe she’ll do something else, something we can use to get more evidence against her and Mulray. I’d rather push her than do nothing.”

  “But how do we push her?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  The drive from the Blue Ridge Mountains back to Washington took three hours, and while they were driving they barely spoke. They were about a mile from Emma’s house in McLean when DeMarco said, “I have an idea.”

  “What is it?” Emma said, sounding skeptical.

  “At his press conference, Mulray said the people who died during the clinical trials were given funerals in accordance with their
religions and customs. He wouldn’t have said that publicly if it wasn’t true; he wouldn’t want to be caught in a lie.”

  “So?”

  “So that means there are bodies out there, bodies that can be exhumed and autopsied again.”

  “And you think if a second autopsy was performed, a pathologist could figure out that some people were poisoned like Kelly said?”

  “I think—”

  Before DeMarco could complete the sentence, Emma said, “It would never work. First, we’d have to figure out which corpses we need to exhume. Second, the corpses are in Thailand, and I can’t even imagine what hoops we’d have to jump through to get one out of the ground. But the main thing is, Orson Mulray runs a pharmaceutical company. Don’t you think if he poisoned somebody he’d make sure he used a poison that couldn’t be detected during an autopsy?”

  “Emma,” DeMarco said, “I’m not talking about exhuming and autopsying anyone. I’m talking about making Fiona believe we can do it.”

  “But she already knows the government isn’t willing to investigate what Mulray did in Peru and those other places.”

  “Who says the government has to be involved?” Before Emma could interrupt him again, DeMarco said, “Who has the greatest motive for getting Orson Mulray in legal hot water over this new drug of his?”

  It took Emma less than a second to answer. “Another pharmaceutical company.”

  “That’s right. Some competitor that has pockets just as deep as Mulray’s and who has just as much influence would want to cause him problems, because that might give them an edge. So here’s what I think we should do.”

  After he explained his plan, and when Emma couldn’t think of any substantial objection to it—other than the fact that it was his plan and not hers—DeMarco said, “I’ll go see Fiona the day after tomorrow. That should give us enough time.”

  “I think I’m the one who should talk to Fiona,” Emma said.

  “It won’t work if you do it. I’m a lawyer and I work for Congress. You don’t have any official standing.”

  Emma shook her head. “You have a law degree, but you’re not a real lawyer. You’re Mahoney’s bagman.”

  “Hey—”

  “And you don’t look like a lawyer. You look like a guy some mob lawyer would defend.”

  How many more times could she insult him?

  “It doesn’t matter,” DeMarco said. “It won’t work unless I do it.”

  54

  DeMarco dressed in a white shirt, a dark suit, and a somber tie—he figured he looked pretty lawyerly, in spite of Emma’s belief to the contrary—and drove to Fiona West’s place in Wilmington. She had a condo in a building on Brandywine Creek where the cheap units sold for two million bucks. He parked in the loading zone in front of the building and a uniformed doorman immediately charged out—like a linebacker planning to sack a quarterback—to tell him he couldn’t park there.

  DeMarco flashed his Congressional ID in the doorman’s face and said, “I’m a government lawyer here on official business. If my car is towed, I’ll have your ass arrested for interfering in a federal investigation. Now get out of my face.”

  Fiona’s condo was located on the seventh floor—the entire seventh floor. When DeMarco stepped off the elevator, he found himself standing in Fiona’s foyer, a room with marble floors and decorative wall sconces. The foyer was separated from the rest of the condo by a massive oak door that had to be nine feet tall. DeMarco rang the doorbell, waited a bit, and rang it again, and when Fiona still didn’t respond he began to hammer on the door with his fist. Fiona finally flung open the door.

  “Who are you,” she screamed, “and what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  She was wearing sweatpants and a tank top and there was a sheen of sweat on her arms and face. She had apparently been exercising, and DeMarco was willing to bet there was a fully equipped gym somewhere in the condo.

  “I’m Joe DeMarco. The guy you told Nelson to kill.”

  Fiona’s face registered her surprise—she’d never seen DeMarco ­before—and for a moment she looked fearful. But she quickly regained her composure. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now get out of here or I’ll call the police.”

  “I’ll leave if you want, but I think it might be smarter if you listened to what I have to say. I’m here to make you a deal.”

  “A deal?”

  “May I come in?” DeMarco said.

  Fiona hesitated, then her curiosity got the best of her. “I’ll give you five minutes, but if this is some kind of …” She didn’t complete whatever threat she was about to make; instead she just turned around, and DeMarco followed her into the living room.

  DeMarco had once been in the Asian Art Museum in San ­Francisco —and that’s what Fiona’s living room reminded him of. The room was filled with beautiful Japanese screens, paintings, and sculptures. He had no idea what period the artwork came from, but he was willing to bet that the pieces were very old and very expensive. He was sure the Oriental rug on the hardwood floor in Fiona’s living room had cost more than his Toyota. The woman may have been a murderer, but she had excellent taste, or an excellent decorator.

  Fiona took a seat on a couch that was itself a work of art and pointed DeMarco to a love seat that looked so delicate he was afraid it might collapse under his weight. “All right. What do you want?” she said.

  “I don’t want anything,” DeMarco said. “I’m here to tell you what’s going to happen to you if you refuse to testify against Orson Mulray.”

  Fiona laughed. “Testify? Why would I testify? Orson hasn’t done anything illegal, and neither have I.”

  “Yeah, well, you can keep saying that, but I know what you’ve done. You see, there’s something you don’t know. The night Kelly was killed, he talked to me. He told me everything you did. He told me how he killed Phil Downing and framed Brian Kincaid, and how he killed those old folks in Peru with a nasal spray. He told me all these things because he was trying to get Nelson out from under a prison sentence, and because of what he told me, an investigation is under way.”

  “Bullshit. No government agency is investigating Mulray Pharma. I’d know if one was.”

  “You’re almost right. No law enforcement agency is investigating—but a select group of congressmen has decided to investigate themselves. And do you know why?”

  Before Fiona could respond, he said, “Because one of Mulray’s competitors has decided that if Orson Mulray had a few legal problems, it could be to their advantage.”

  “Who is it?” Fiona snarled. “Pfizer? Eli Lilly? Which one of those bastards is doing this?”

  DeMarco almost laughed. “It doesn’t matter who it is. What matters is that a pharmaceutical company with extremely deep pockets has convinced a few congressmen that Mulray should be investigated. And these congressmen, who weren’t all that hard to buy, agreed.”

  DeMarco reached into his suit coat, pulled a folded piece of paper from an inside pocket, and handed it to Fiona.

  “What is this?” Fiona said.

  Her question was understandable, as the words on the paper were written in Spanish. They’d been written by Emma.

  “That’s a copy of a letter written by a woman named Mercedes Acorta requesting that the body of Frederico Salas be returned from Thailand to Peru. If you can’t read Spanish, I’m sure someone will translate the letter for you.”

  “Who is—”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you don’t know who Frederico Salas is—or was. To you he was just a piece of meat with a microchip stuck in his arm. Well, Frederico was one of the people Kelly killed in Peru, and Mercedes Acorta is Frederico’s only living relative, a distant, distant cousin. I was able to convince Ms. Acorta that returning her cousin’s body to Peru would be in the interests of justice, and since a certain drug
company is paying for everything, including a small stipend for Mercedes’s suffering, she agreed.

  “Now, the Thai government hasn’t agreed to allow us to exhume the body yet, but they will eventually, because my friends in Congress are applying pressure to the right people and our friendly pharmaceutical company is spending money to grease the skids. In the meantime, a private security firm has been hired to watch Mr. Salas’s grave at the Christian cemetery in Bangkok to make sure the body doesn’t disappear. And do you know who is going to perform the autopsy on Mr. Salas?”

  Fiona didn’t say anything. She was scratching her arm like she was trying to dig ticks out from under her skin as she glared at DeMarco.

  “Dr. Jonathan Hayes,” DeMarco said. “Dr. Hayes is one of the most highly regarded forensic pathologists in the world, and he specializes in detecting toxins during autopsies. Google him; there are about a million articles on the Internet talking about all the cases he’s solved here and overseas.”

  “You see, Fiona, the problem you and Orson Mulray have is that what you did was enormously complex and involved a lot of people. People in Simon Ballard’s lab in Smyrna, Delaware. People associated with Dr. Panyarachun’s clinic in Thailand. All we need is a crack in the door and some of these people will be convinced to talk to strengthen our case. You also gave money to a lot of people, including Kelly and Nelson and Hobson. You don’t think the money can be traced back to Mulray Pharma, but my buddies in Congress are eventually gonna get the accounting geeks at the FBI involved. You know, the guys who are able to follow money laundering schemes involving Mexican drug cartels—criminals a lot smarter than you and Orson Mulray, in other words. It will take some time, but the guys with the green eyeshades will find a money trail leading back to Mulray Pharma.”

  Fiona finally spoke. “If you can do all this, why are you here?”

  “Because it’s going to take a lot of time and a lot of money,” ­DeMarco said. “Frankly, I don’t really care about the money, since it’s coming from a drug company and the U.S. Treasury, but I do care about the time—my time, that is. I don’t want to spend the next three or four years of my life working on putting you in a jail cell. But if you cooperate, it will make my job easier, and you’ll get a deal from the government—a reduced sentence for sure, if you help.”