Never Tell

by Alafair Burke

  “So let’s say the drug combo works,” Rogan said. “That means you’re knowingly depriving some of these subjects of treatment, all in the name of science. Sorry, Doc, that sounds a little cold.”

  “It’s not easy, Detectives, but that’s the scientific method. And that’s why our subjects have to sign rigorous disclosure and waiver forms. If it makes any difference, we can’t yet say we’re really depriving them of anything. Every subject receives outpatient therapy from me, a service for which some people in this city pay healthily, if I may say so. The whole point is that we don’t know yet whether the drug even offers a benefit. Equivan might do nothing. It might even make matters worse.”

  “Our understanding is that subjects are paid to participate,” Ellie said. The Casden kids pay a fortune to be numbed, while the drug companies pay to get the rest of the population hooked as well.

  “That’s not unusual. It’s not a tremendous amount of money, just modest compensation for time and transportation.”

  Maybe it wasn’t a lot to an Upper West Side psychiatrist, but a hundred bucks to a sixteen-year-old homeless kid like Brandon Sykes was an entire day of panhandling plus a lot of luck. “Could someone fake a manic-depressive diagnosis?”

  “In theory. It has happened before. But the DSM includes criteria that are specifically intended to help weed out false reports.”

  “Got it. Now, still sticking to general information . . . is it true that someone with manic-depressive disorder might be more prone to coercion?”

  “Certainly. In a depressive state, the person might not have the will to withstand pressure. They don’t really care about the downside because they’re feeling hopeless anyway, plus they don’t have the mental energy to counter the coercion.”

  “And in a manic phase?” she asked.

  “That one’s less intuitive. You might think that mania would cause a person to fight back. But in a manic episode, the person is not thinking about consequences at all. They start out dropping a buck in a homeless man’s donation cup. It feels so good to help another person that they hand the guy a twenty instead. The next thing you know, they’re at the bank, closing out their accounts to hand out cash on the street. In the situation you describe, a manic person might comply with one request, and before they know it, they’ve lost all control.”

  “What about credibility? Might a manic-depressive be more likely to lie if he thought it would somehow help him?” She was thinking now about the credibility of Brandon Sykes.

  “I mean we’re talking generalities, but, yes, that would be fair to say, for essentially the same reasons.”

  “What about murder?” she asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Might a manic-depressive suddenly become violent and kill a friend during what should have been a minor argument?”

  “It has certainly happened before. Manic episodes can be completely uncontrollable.”

  “So if we have a homicide defendant who may be manic depressive, we’ll need to know whether they were taking drugs for the condition, right?”

  “Well, the whole purpose of treatment is we hope it helps people. We hope that, with continuous use, it keeps them at normal for longer periods of time. We may not be able to cure the disorder, but we try to reduce the frequency, longevity, and severity of the swings between the two poles.”

  Ellie smiled. She had thought Dr. Bolt’s offer to speak only in generalities would be a waste of time. She jotted down his last sentence verbatim in her notebook. He had just given them what they needed to force him to turn over Casey Heinz’s and Brandon Sykes’s patient files.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Max leaned back in his chair and let out a small groan. “Fuck. First Social Circle’s Internet traffic records, and now a doctor’s files from a drug study? These document demands could mark a new circle of hell for lawyers.”

  Ellie gave his shoulders a quick squeeze until she felt the tension drop. “Sorry, dude. Catching bad guys is, like, soooo hard.”

  “Fine, I’ll stop whining, but this is a little tricky.” He stared at the keyboard in front of them. On his computer screen were the beginnings of a search warrant application for David Bolt’s files. Max was planted at one computer, drafting the affidavit in support of the warrant, while Rogan helped pull up information as necessary on a separate laptop. “Okay, we’ve got everything in here about what you learned from Dr. Bolt. Tell me what you know about the expert himself—education, credentials, that kind of stuff.”

  Rogan pulled up a copy of Bolt’s curriculum vitae and let out a whistle. “Academic appointments at NYU and Harvard. Hospital appointments from New York Presbyterian, Columbia Medical Center, and Sloan-Kettering. Recipient of all kinds of NIH and private grants. A trillion awards. Two books. Residency at Mount Sinai. Graduated from Harvard Med, Yale for undergrad, oh—and how sweet, the Casden School as a wee lad. That enough?”

  Max was typing away. “Looking good. Just want to make it sound like we’ve done our homework. And what about the two drugs in Equivan?”

  Rogan looked up the information for Equilibrium and Flovan. Ellie laughed as he struggled to pronounce the drug’s ingredients. He finally gave up and turned the screen toward Max.

  “Got it. And the companies who produce the drugs?”

  Ellie recognized the names of two large pharmaceutical corporations. “Does the judge really need to know all this?”

  “Hopefully not. My worry is that the judge will want us to pull in the drug companies, too, in which case we’re looking at months of stalling. We only have four days to make a decision on Casey.”

  “Would they really care about two patient records?”

  “If the drug companies are funding the research, they might have privacy interests at stake: confidential business information, proprietary research and development stuff, etcetera.”

  Rogan was still surfing for additional information to fatten up the warrant application. “Based on Bolt’s history, I’d say the likelihood of private funding’s high.” He swung the laptop back toward Max and Ellie.

  “The Blood Pact Between the Psychiatric and Big Pharm Industries.”

  It was a post from two years earlier on a website called Healthcare Is a Right. The author purported to document the incestuous relationship between pharmaceutical companies and the psychiatric industry. The American Psychiatric Association was phasing out the funding of its trade conventions by drug companies to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. The decision followed a multipart exposé in the New York Times highlighting the millions of dollars’ worth of perks flowing to the very doctors responsible for writing the prescriptions that fueled the burgeoning business of psychopharmacology.

  At the bottom of the post was a list of the twenty “poster children” for the “blood pact” between psychiatry and “big pharm.” Number twelve was Dr. David Bolt, thanks primarily to the research money he’d received from drug makers in recent years.

  “This is interesting,” Rogan said, scrolling back up into the heart of the article. “It says here that in the wake of the recent controversy, the leading med schools required their faculty and attending physicians to disclose to their boards of trustees all income received from private sources. Looks like Bolt resigned his appointments at NYU and Harvard rather than comply with the new regulations. Apparently most of his research is sponsored by pharmaceutical companies.”

  Ellie had never had occasion to think about the sources of funding for drug research. “That’s ridiculous that companies control the testing of their own drugs.”

  “Given these days of reduced spending, who else is going to pay?” Max said. “One blogger says David Bolt is the medical equivalent of a war criminal, but New York magazine lists him as one of the top child psychiatrists in the city.”

  “But it’s not just a matter of opinion if Bolt’s research is being funded by the companies that manufacture Equilibrium and Flovan. Bolt said Equivan was about combining the best of tw
o treatments. Obviously both companies would have an interest in the tests going well. More kids medicated means more drugs sold.”

  Max was too busy reading his own composition on the screen to continue following her rant. “Let’s just stick to Casey and Brandon’s files for now, okay?”

  Ellie thought there was more to the story, but she also knew that an investigation into a drug company’s research practices would take far longer than the few remaining days they had to make a decision about Casey Heinz’s guilt. Not to mention that the last time she checked, drug research protocols were well beyond the NYPD’s jurisdiction. She’d have to settle for a phone call to the Food and Drug Administration. Hopefully they’d see the same red flags.

  “The request for Casey’s records is pretty tight,” Max noted. “He’s a suspect in Julia’s murder. We’ve got his lawyer telling us he’s in this study, and we’ve got the shrink telling us that manic depression could be relevant to both the murder and his disposition on the night of the arrest.”

  Rogan slapped his palms and then rubbed them together. “All right, then. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  “But you’re also looking for Brandon Sykes’s records.”

  “And we’ve got it all spelled out here.” Ellie reached around Max for the keyboard and scrolled down to the relevant paragraphs of the affidavit. “If Brandon lied to get into the study, then we need to know that before you put him on the stand. Conversely, if he is manic-depressive, then Bolt says it’s possible he’d be more likely to lie to us. It’s relevant either way. We lay that all out here.”

  “Except the records won’t actually tell us if he lied to get into the study. We don’t even know if he’s in the study. It might be too tangential. And if the judge thinks we haven’t done our work on the Sykes part of the warrant, he might ding us on the request for Casey’s records, too. I don’t think we can risk it.”

  “So what choice do we have?”

  “Talk to Brandon Sykes first, just to be safe. At least see what he says, so I don’t look like an idiot when the judge asks me.”

  Ellie looked at her watch. “It’s already seven o’clock. Unless Bolt takes appointments on the graveyard shift, we won’t get to Brandon and a judge and to Bolt’s office tonight. You only have four more days before the clock runs out on Casey’s hold.”

  “I know, but if I go to a judge now and get slammed, it’ll be even worse. Go find Brandon.”

  Chapter Forty

  Chung Mei Ri was not happy to see them.

  Even when Gundley’s people had stormed into Promises with Casey to search his room, Ms. Ri had been exceedingly polite to Rogan and Ellie, despite her displeasure. She offered them coffee and joked that they worked even longer days than she did. She also told them they were wrong about Casey. She insisted that this was all a misunderstanding and that they would see they were mistaken. But she maintained the same calm voice and warm smile throughout the encounter.

  Today, though, something had changed at the Promises Center for Young Adults. Same welcoming glass atrium. Same girl with the pink mohawk stationed out front. Same Ms. Ri charging into the lobby with her no-frills suit and black stockings. But this time there was no warm smile. And the calm voice had been replaced by a low hiss.

  “I tried to tell you. I tell you that Casey is innocent. I tell you I know he could not hurt a flea.” What had been a faint accent grew stronger as she seethed. “I also tell you about Brandon Sykes and Vonda Smith. I do not like to say bad things about the people we are helping here. It goes against everything we stand for. But I did it. I told you about them so you would know not to trust them.”

  “We’re still looking at the case, Ms. Ri. The DA’s office has a few days before convening a grand jury. That’s why we’re here to talk to Brandon. We’re still gathering information.”

  “Thanks to you, there is no Brandon. There is no Vonda or Brandon or Casey.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean, Ms. Ri.”

  “What were you thinking, giving them that kind of money?”

  “We didn’t give them anything. Julia Whitmire’s parents—”

  She waved an irritated hand at them. “You, the parents. You work together. What were you thinking? I turned her away last night because she causes so many problems. Then today he comes back and takes all of his things.”

  Ellie was having a hard time following her from one sentence to the next. “Brandon left because Vonda couldn’t stay here?”

  “I don’t know if that was his reason or not. But ten thousand dollars to two drug-addicted children? He says he doesn’t need to be here anymore.”

  “Who said that? You mean Brandon?”

  “Yes. Brandon. They got their reward money. They’re gone, Detectives. He said they were going west. Until they shoot up all of that money or die, they’re gone. I hope you’re happy with yourselves.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Four days later . . .

  “Are you two okay with this?”

  “Yes,” Rogan said. “No question. Absolutely. Sí. Oui. We are totally down.”

  Max had asked them the same question three different ways already. Ellie cut in before her partner could continue with his list. “I think what Rogan’s trying to say, Max, is that we can’t recall having an ADA be so concerned with what we thought about a charging decision.”

  “And I can’t recall ever having two detectives who were so peachy keen about springing a suspect loose from custody.”

  “This case was a no-go from the very beginning,” Rogan said. “This whole mess with Casey is all that damn Bill Whitmire’s fault. You best be boycotting his records from now on, woman.”

  “Request noted,” Ellie said. Bill Whitmire had sabotaged their investigation. He had been the one to wave that exorbitant award money around. He had been the one to hire Earl Gundley, the private investigator whose team had taken Casey into custody. They still weren’t entirely sure what Gundley’s people had done, but Gundley had since admitted some of his tactics might have been “aggressive.”

  It was a mess.

  The tipping point had come when Casey had volunteered for a polygraph over the weekend and passed it.

  Granted, the test results were inadmissible. And knowledgeable experts could assure them that well-versed liars can beat the machine.

  But then they’d met the previous night with the Whitmires to detail the status of the case. Although Max said he could probably get a murder charge against Casey through the grand jury, he explained why he would never be able to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. Casey had a key to the apartment, but there was no evidence he had used it that night. Vonda Smith and Brandon Sykes were gone, and there was no guarantee they’d be found before trial. And on top of it all, there would be no shortage of red herrings a good defense lawyer like Chad Folger could use at trial: the possibility (probability, in Ellie’s view) that Julia had in fact committed suicide; Casey’s diagnosis as bipolar and his use of an experimental treatment; and evidence that Julia had been threatening her friend’s mother, perhaps with a still-unidentified accomplice who continued to harass the woman. Plus, Max had added, there were the troublesome polygraph results.

  At Max’s mention of the poly, Ellie had known immediately that something wasn’t right.

  Bill looked huge on the tiny settee in the Whitmires’ living room, his feet crossed at the ankles like a child. He stared at his hands, planted on his knees, and did not look up when he finally spoke. “I was only trying to help.”

  “Excuse me, sir?” Max had asked.

  “I was trying to help.”

  Ellie couldn’t hold her tongue. “Like you helped by paying Vonda and Brandon before trial, even though we specifically warned you against it?”

  He nodded. “I’m sorry. I was—oh my God, are you telling me I may have been wrong?”

  She’d wanted to scream at him. Of course what he did was wrong. But that is not what he meant.

  “I w
as so sure she did it. This fucked-up girl who thinks she’s a boy had a key to our house, and two of her friends told us she did it. I was so sure. Damn it, I screwed this up. I told Gundley to do what he had to do. That’s what I told him, exactly: ‘to do whatever you have to do.’ ”

  And that’s when Ellie knew. “You paid him, didn’t you?” Ellie had asked. “Not just for manning the tip line. Or for finding Casey. You paid him extra to seal the deal. What did you expect would happen?”

  He had broken down in tears at that point. He had apologized. He reached out a hand to his wife in search of some sign of forgiveness, but instead received a view of the back of her turned head. Ellie had felt sick to her stomach as she watched him, so oblivious to the harm he had inflicted by trying to buy private justice.

  “So you guys are okay with this?” Max asked one more time, pen in hand over a motion for dismissal.

  Rogan let out a small scream of frustration. “Just sign the damn thing already.”

  It was a lighthearted moment, but Ellie took no happiness in it. As pissed as she was at Bill Whitmire, she was angrier at herself. She had known in her gut that Casey wasn’t guilty but had allowed the investigation to get away from her. He had spent nearly six days in custody.

  Ellie had been wrong about so much, from the very beginning of this case. She was off her game. She was still tiptoeing around Rogan, even around Max. Now they were correcting at least part of the harm by dismissing charges against an innocent, troubled kid.

  She knew one thing, though. Even if Julia wasn’t murdered, she had left this world shrouded in secrets she never had a chance to tell. It was another wrong that Ellie had to correct.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Ellie was nestled into the space between her couch and her trunk-doubling-as-coffee-table, pen in right hand, nan bread in left. She was prepping a huge scoop of saag paneer onto her flatbread when she heard keys in the door. Before she realized it, she had dropped her pen and was checking her breath in her hand. She and Max had exchanged house keys nearly three months ago, but she still got a little rush when he popped in unexpectedly.