by Jeff Buick
Oh, my God, would they pay.
He found a parking space almost directly in front of his unit. Another sign the gods were smiling on him. He unlocked the door and pushed it open, a handful of mail in his right hand. He swung around and closed the door with his left. For a split second he was face-to-face with another man. A stranger. A stranger in his house. He reacted, but it was far too late for that.
Evan grabbed him by the hair and spun him 180 degrees, pulling him back all in the same motion. Evan’s forearm closed over Albert’s windpipe and instantly cut off the air supply. Albert tried to grab the assailant’s arm but found both his arms trapped against his body. His attacker had immobilized both arms by pinning them behind his back. He tried to scream, but there was no air. He fought to find some way to breathe, but the arms that held him were like vises. Panicked and seething with adrenaline, he mustered every ounce of strength and lashed out with almost superhuman strength. He felt the pressure on his windpipe slip a fraction as he managed to turn slightly, but the grip on his arms tightened and only a tiny gulp of air got through. The room went fuzzy, then gray, then black. His body stopped fighting and the pressure subsided. He willed his muscles to move, but there was no response. Then, as the last neurons in his brain stopped firing, he realized he was already dead and that his brain had taken longer to die than his body. He had a strange thought as his brain shut down; how long did the brain continue to function after the guillotine came down?
Evan let the lifeless body drop gently to the floor. The last thing he needed was bruises anywhere on the corpse; they might be noticed in the autopsy. He had been very careful not to squeeze the windpipe so hard as to crush it, a useful trick he had picked up during his tenure with Team Six. He had picked up a lot of useful information while with the Navy SEALs, most of which dealt with killing people. It was proving to be most valuable.
He carried the body into the kitchen so there would be no drag marks on the floor and propped it against the stove. He retrieved the plastic pouch from his pocket and carefully opened it by cutting a slit down one side. Inside were three smaller plastic bags, the combined contents weighing no more than one ounce. Another cut in one of the tiny bags and the odor of sulfuric acid wafted up and stung his nose. The other two contained potassium chlorate and methenamine. He mixed the three chemicals together and gently set them on the counter. They were a ticking time bomb now. He had less than ten minutes before the mixture would ignite. But he didn’t need ten minutes of gas in the house or the entire block would disappear. Three minutes tops. He had a few minutes to kill before he removed the piece of tape from the gas line.
Rousseau’s ID card was attached to his shirt pocket, and Evan glanced at it. Something wasn’t right. He cradled it in his right hand and read the inscription: Clearance level 6…Statin Group. He held the photo ID for a few moments, then let it drop back against the dead man’s shirt. Statins. That wasn’t right. Statins were cholesterol drugs. Bruce Andrews had sanctioned Albert Rousseau because he was threatening the BioTech research into brain chips.
Or so Andrews had said.
Evan recoiled from the body and almost toppled over one of the kitchen chairs as he staggered backward. Jesus Christ. What was going on? How could Rousseau be a threat to the brain chip program if he worked on cholesterol drugs? That didn’t make any sense. The two weren’t even in the same building. Evan knew the corporate structure of Veritas well, and he was positive the statin research group was in BioTech Five, along with the corporate offices. Brain chip development was in one of the satellite parks in White Oak, a biotechnology park in Henrico County, miles from the Richmond research park.
Evan checked his watch. Shit, he had to get moving or the trigger was going to ignite before the house had a chance to fill with gas. He grabbed the kitchen chair that had fallen over and tucked it back under the table, then hopped up on the counter and slid his arm down behind the stove. He felt the tape with his fingers and pulled. The unmistakable odor of natural gas immediately filled the room. He set the trigger device on the back of the stove, picked up the plastic bag and left through the back door, locking it behind him. There were no neighbors about, and he walked briskly down the back lane and around the corner to his car. He checked his watch again, quickly started the car, and pulled away from the curb. He was less than a block away when the town house exploded.
The explosion blew out the back of the unit and all the front windows on the main floor. The side walls held, which was good as it limited collateral damage. Flying bricks, jagged shards of glass, and splintered wood rained down on the town houses backing onto the target. Dogs were barking, children screaming, and adults yelling as Evan rounded the corner and the carnage disappeared from his view. He would read about it in tomorrow’s newspaper, but the explosion had gone off almost exactly as he had hoped and he doubted there would be any casualties except for Albert Rousseau.
But that didn’t mean no innocent people had been killed.
Evan pulled over at the first coffee shop he passed and ordered an extra-large latte. He sat by the window and watched the rain splatter in the puddles. Albert Rousseau was a lab rat from BioTech Five, not a key player in the brain chip department, as Andrews had said.
How many of the four people he had killed for Andrews were legitimate threats to the program that could give his son back feeling in his body? One? Two? None? He drained the last of his coffee and returned to the rental with one thought on his mind:
Get face-to-face with Bruce Andrews and ask the question.
Why is he killing these people?
9
Elsie Hughes stuffed her groceries in the plastic bag, wondering who had come up with the bright idea of charging three cents per bag. As if they didn’t make enough money off the food she had to buy every few days. She smiled at the clerk as she left; it wasn’t his fault.
The Texas sun was hot, the mercury pushing ninety-two, as she exited the store. It took less than a minute to load the bags in her trunk and return the cart to the small corral and retrieve her quarter. She plopped into the front seat and checked her watch. She could stop by the bank if she hurried; the kids wouldn’t be out of school for another eight minutes. Her paycheck sat on the passenger’s seat, and she ripped off the stub showing her deductions as she waited for a traffic light. Fleetwood Mac played softly on her radio, and she twisted the knob slightly to the right. Stevie Nicks’s quivering voice shot shivers down her spine. The light changed and she hit the gas, singing along with Stevie.
Her bank was two blocks north of the supermarket and on the way to the kids’ school. She pulled into the parking lot and lucked out with a spot right by the ATM. There was no line, and she took the open machine on the far left. Deposit envelopes were tucked in a slot next to the machine, and she pulled one out, slipped her check in, and licked the flap. It tasted tart, but she swallowed the glue residue and tucked the check in the opening. She glanced at the account balance and grimaced slightly. Why was money so hard to earn and so easy to spend? She returned to her car and dropped the slip of paper into the console between the two front seats. The dashboard clock read 3:15, the exact time her kids were released from classes. She swung out onto the road from the parking lot and gunned the car. She’d make it in time.
The taste from the envelope lingered on her tongue, and she scraped the top side against her upper teeth. First the grocery store charging three cents for plastic bags, now foul-tasting glue on the envelopes.
Why were the simple things getting complicated?
10
The law firm of Stevens and Hilbrecht was tucked away on the second floor of one of the old historical buildings on Harrison Street. On the side of the building was a prominent ghost sign in white paint on red brick, promoting the long-defunct Bronx Lounge. Parking was in a secluded lot behind the building, and Gordon left his BMW in the stall closest to the alley and entered through the rear door. A musty smell tickled his nostrils and he sneezed a couple of times. It happe
ned every time he visited his lawyer.
The stairs were wooden and creaked slightly under his weight. He reached the second-floor landing and veered right, down the hall and into Christine Stevens’s office. Her receptionist and paralegal, Belinda, was manning the scarred wooden desk and smiled as he entered.
“Hi, Gordon,” she said cheerfully. “Christine said to send you right in when you arrived.”
“Thanks, Belinda.” He tried to force a smile, but he couldn’t seem to force his lips to make the journey. He strode down the hall and into the second office on the left. A mid-thirties woman sat in the pewter and tanned-leather chair behind the desk, a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. She was diminutive, no more than five-four, with a slender figure that probably fit into a size two, three at best. Her hair was dark brown with a few lingering streaks of color she’d tried months back and realized she didn’t like. Her face was chalk white and bony, and her teeth were too big for her mouth when she smiled. But this Friday morning, she wasn’t smiling. She pointed to one of the chairs facing her desk, and Gordon sat. The chairs were more tanned leather on pewter frames and decidedly uncomfortable. They melded with the rest of the room, which was sparsely decorated with spindly halogen lamps and cold metal sculptures.
“I’ve been on the phone for fifteen hours on this file, Gordon,” she said. Christine Stevens charged by the hour and didn’t make idle conversation. “And I don’t have very good news.”
Gordon was stone-faced. “Just tell me what you found.”
Christine Stevens focused on some papers on her desk. “Veritas Pharmaceutical is a medium-size company if you compare it to the Big Pharma companies, but that doesn’t mean it’s small potatoes.”
“Big Pharma?” Gordon asked.
“Marcon, Frezin, GlasoKlan-the big guys in researching and marketing new drugs. They’re collectively referred to as Big Pharma. I don’t think it’s meant as a term of endearment. These are the guys who spend up to eight hundred million to bring a new drug to the market. Their research and marketing budgets are in the ozone. We’re talking big-time here, Gordon. Anyway, Veritas is a few billion short of fitting in with the big boys.”
“Okay,” Gordon said.“What did you find out aboutTriaxcion?”
She flipped over a few pages. “Not the best drug on the market. There have been some rumblings over the past couple of years that Triaxcion might cause peripheric tissues to mutate slightly, rendering A-positive blood incapable of coagulating.”
Gordon stared at her. “What?” he finally said. “What are you saying?”
“Billy was A positive, Gordon. And when he slashed himself with the chain saw, he bled to death because his blood wouldn’t clot. And Billy was taking Triaxcion for his hair loss. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together.”
“That drug caused Billy’s death?” Gordon said quietly.
Stevens leaned back in her chair. “I can’t say that with total conviction, Gordon. If you were to ask me if I thought Triaxcion was responsible for Billy dying, I would say yes. But proving it in a court of law won’t be so easy. I’ve spoken with twelve other lawyers who have clients with family members they suspect have died as a result of Triaxcion, but none of them feel they have what is necessary to go to court.”
“Each one of them has a body, Christine,” Gordon said tersely. “What more do they need?”
“Definitive proof. Veritas isn’t going to lie down and die on this, Gordon. This drug is worth hundreds of millions of dollars to these guys. They have a legal department that rivals Microsoft. Forty-two lawyers, three times that many paralegals, and an investigative budget in the tens of millions. They’re going to protect their patent and their legal right to keep the FDA approval until someone can prove beyond any doubt that the drug can be fatal. And we don’t have that proof.”
“Billy wasn’t a bleeder, Christine. When we were kids, he used to get cut all the time. His blood always clotted. Something caused things to change, and the only variable is Triaxcion. I say that’s definitive proof.”
She shook her head. “If you’re going to initiate a class-action tort suit against a major pharmaceutical company, you’d better have the evidence and the money to back it up.”
“We have both,” Gordon said.
“No,” Christine said slowly, “you don’t. You have a few million dollars, Gordon. Maybe twenty or thirty tops. If we’re going after Veritas, we’ll have to bring in another firm, a major player, with at least twenty lawyers on retainer. You’ll have a fight that will last years and eat up every dollar you’ve ever earned. You’ll lose the mill, spend more time in court than at home, and in the end, probably lose. And you’ll lose because they have the connections-inside the FDA and on the Hill in D.C. You’ll lose because you’re angry at what happened, but they’re ruthless. You’re a decent person, Gordon, and these guys eat decent people for breakfast. You’ll lose because sometimes life just isn’t fair.”
Gordon was silent. He stared at her with tired eyes. “And this is one of those times,” he finally said.
She nodded. “I can take the case, Gordon. I can bring in medical and pharmaceutical experts and have them testify. I can build a solid legal team and fight a good fight. I can bring public awareness to the drug’s side effects. But I can’t win, Gordon. I know that going in.”
“Then what do I do, Christine?” he asked.“Just accept the fact that these people killed my brother and get on with my life?” She didn’t answer. “How can I do that, Christine?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, Gordon. But I do know this. Billy wouldn’t have wanted you to destroy yourself over this. It was his mistake with the chain saw that caused the accident. And he chose to take the drug to stop his hair loss. There are always choices in life, Gordon, and your brother made a couple of bad ones. Don’t get me wrong, I’m on your side. But if you want to pursue this, it’s against my advice.”
“There’s no other lawyer ready to file a litigation claim against Veritas?” he asked.
She shook her head.“As I said, I’ve managed to dig up twelve other lawyers looking at Veritas, but none of them are willing to serve papers. And every one of those twelve firms is considerably larger than this one.”
“How did you find them?” Gordon asked.“The other deaths?”
“Sometimes lawyers file paperwork with their respective jurisdictions when they have a client who may have a litigation claim. It’s precautionary, that’s all. It doesn’t mean they have to proceed, but just filing gives them the option to pursue an action against the drug’s manufacturer at some point in the future.”
“Can I have the names?” Gordon asked.
Christine didn’t waver for a moment with her response. “The information is privileged, Gordon. It’s not in the public domain until they begin proceedings. These families would get pretty upset if someone showed up asking questions. Imagine how you’d feel.”
“If a stranger showed up on my door and told me someone they loved had died as a result of Triaxcion, it would give me hope. It would let me know I’m not alone.”
She shook her head. “I can’t do it, Gordon. I could get disbarred.”
He ran his fingers through his hair, then pulled a toothpick from his pocket and peeled off the protective cover. “Where do we go from here?”
“Wherever you want. But keep in mind that I’m strongly opposed to starting any legal action against these guys.”
“All right. Leave it with me. Let me think about it.” He stood up and offered his hand. “I’ll get back to you in two weeks, around the end of May.”
She nodded and walked him to the door. “This could consume you if you let it, Gordon,” she said, her voice softer now. Like a friend would tell another friend not to do something stupid.
“Yeah, I understand. It’s a big decision.”
The sun was just touching the tips of the trees on the westerly foothills as he exited the legal office. He slowly walked ac
ross the parking lot, fingering the keys to his car. Even with his wealth, he was powerless against this corporation. They were killing people and they knew it. But the dollar signs outweighed the rights of the poor bastards with A-positive blood who were losing their hair. What were thirteen dead when profits ran into the hundreds of millions? What did it matter if every one of those dead people had families who loved and cherished them? Who missed them?
He set his hand on the roof of his car and stared at the darkening sky. He had to decide which way to go. Indirectly, someone at Veritas had murdered his brother. Yet pursuing them would probably destroy him. For a split second he wished he’d never found the pill bottle; that the police had cleaned out
Billy’s medicine cabinet and thrown the damn thing in the garbage. But that hadn’t happened. He knew, and now he needed to decide. He felt sick to his stomach, because he knew one thing for certain.
He was facing a lose-lose situation.
11
BioTech Five was a busy place for a Friday, even busier than usual with the aftermath of Bruce Andrews’s press release the previous day. The reporters were gone, but the activity levels were exaggerated, employees moving briskly about with purpose, fueled by the positive quarterly report on earnings. The company was on a high, and everyone was looking to its CEO as the driving force behind the surge. It was an image Bruce Andrews did little to dispel.
He was in at six, and by nine had made rounds through four of the on-site labs, shaking hands and thanking his staff for their efforts. At nine-fifteen he was back in his office, checking e-mail and waiting for his nine-thirty appointment. He glanced at the lone file on his polished desk and opened it, although he already knew what was inside.
