Fair Warning - Jack McEvoy Series 03 (2020)

by Connelly, Michael

  “He worked for a lab that subcontracted for the company I’m looking at,” I said. “Then he got fired and sued them.”

  “GT23?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Myron. He said you might need help on it.”

  “I just need to find this guy.”

  She nodded.

  “Well, there’s four here,” she said.

  I remembered how Hwang was described in the lawsuit.

  “Lives in L.A.,” I said. “He’s got a master’s in life sciences from UCLA.”

  She started looking at the pedigrees of the four Jason Hwangs, shaking her head and saying “Nope” each time.

  “Strike four, and you’re out. None of these are even from L.A.”

  “Okay, thanks for looking.”

  “You could try LexisNexis.”

  “I did.”

  I went back to my desk. Of course, I had not run Hwang’s name through LexisNexis as I should have. I now called the law office and quietly asked Sacha Nelson to do the search. I heard her type it in.

  “Hmm, only the lawsuit comes back up,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I have a few other tricks up my sleeve.”

  After hanging up I continued the search for Jason Hwang. I knew I could simply call the attorney who had filed the lawsuit on Hwang’s behalf but my hope was to get to Hwang without his lawyer sitting on his shoulder and trying to control the flow of information. The attorney was useful, however, in that he had listed Hwang’s credentials and experience in the claim, noting his receiving the master’s degree from UCLA in 2012 before being recruited by Woodland Bio. That told me that Hwang was a young man, most likely in his early thirties. He had started at Woodland as a lab technician before being promoted to regulatory-affairs specialist just a year before he was fired.

  I conducted a search for professional organizations in the DNA field and came up with a group called the National Society of Professional Geneticists. Its website menu had a page labeled Looking for a Lab, which I took to be a help-wanted section. Hwang claimed in his still-pending lawsuit that he had become a pariah in the genetics industry because of the accusation made against him. In the #MeToo era, just an accusation was enough to end a career. I thought maybe there was a chance Hwang had posted his résumé and contact information in an effort to land an interview somewhere. He could have even been instructed to do so by his lawyer to help prove his inability to get work in the field.

  The résumés were listed in alphabetical order and I quickly found Jason Hwang’s curriculum vitae as the last entry under the letter H. It was the jackpot. It included an email address, phone number, and mailing address. The work-experience section revealed the responsibilities of his GT23 job as a quality control specialist and liaison between the company and any regulatory agencies that kept watch on the various aspects of DNA analysis. The primary agencies were the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Federal Trade Commission. I noticed Hwang had also listed several references. Most were personal or academic supporters but one was a man named Gordon Webster, who was described as an investigator with the Federal Trade Commission. I wrote the name down, thinking that Webster might be useful to interview.

  I wrote Hwang’s details down as well. I was in business and keeping my momentum. If Hwang’s mailing address was his home, he lived just over the hill in West Hollywood. I checked the time and realized that if I left the office now I could probably get through Laurel Canyon before it became clogged with rush-hour traffic.

  I put a fresh notebook and batteries for my tape recorder into my backpack before heading to the door.

  11

  The winding two-lane snake that was Laurel Canyon Boulevard took nearly a half hour to pass. I relearned another object lesson about Los Angeles: there was no rush hour because every hour was rush hour.

  The address on Jason Hwang’s CV corresponded to a home on Willoughby Avenue in a neighborhood of expensive homes with high hedges. It seemed too nice for an out-of-work biologist in his early thirties. I parked and walked through an archway cut into a six-foot-thick hedge and knocked on the aquamarine door of a two-story white cube. After knocking I rang the doorbell, when I should have done just one or the other. But following the doorbell I heard a dog start to bark inside and then the sound was quickly cut off by someone yelling the dog’s name: Tipsy.

  The door opened and a man stood there cradling a toy poodle under one arm. The dog was as white as the house. The man was Asian and very small. Not just short but small in all dimensions.

  “Hi, I’m looking for Jason Hwang,” I said.

  “Who are you?” he said. “Why are you looking for him?”

  “I’m a reporter. I’m working on a story about GT23 and I would like to talk to him about it.”

  “What kind of story?”

  “Are you Jason Hwang? I’ll tell him what kind of story.”

  “I’m Jason. What is this story?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it standing out here. Is there a place we can go to sit down and talk? Maybe inside or somewhere nearby?”

  It was a tip my editor Foley had given me when I started out in the business. Never do an interview at the door. People can shut the door if they don’t like what you ask.

  “Do you have a card or some sort of ID?” Hwang asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  I dug a business card out of my wallet and handed it to him. I also showed him a press pass issued six years earlier by the Sheriff’s Department when I was regularly writing crime stories for the Velvet Coffin.

  Hwang studied both but didn’t mention that the press pass was dated 2013 or that the man in the photo looked a lot younger than me.

  “Okay,” Hwang said, handing me back the card. “You can come in.”

  He stepped back to allow me entrance. “Thank you,” I said.

  He led me through the entryway to a living room decorated in white and aqua furnishings. He gestured toward the couch—that was for me—while he sat on a matching stuffed chair. He put the dog down next to him on the chair. He was wearing white pants and a sea-foam-green golf shirt. He blended in perfectly with the house’s design and decor, and I didn’t think that was by happenstance.

  “Do you live here alone?” I asked.

  “No,” Hwang said.

  He offered no further details.

  “Well, as I said at the door, I’m doing a story about GT23 and I came across your lawsuit. It’s still pending, correct?”

  “It’s pending—we don’t have a trial date yet,” he said. “But I can’t talk to you because the case is still active.”

  “Well, your case is not really what I’m writing about. If I steer clear of the lawsuit, can I ask you a few questions?”

  “No, impossible. My lawyer said I could not speak at all when the other journalist called. I wanted to, but he wouldn’t let me.”

  I was suddenly gripped by a reporter’s greatest fear—being scooped. Another journalist might be following the same trail as me.

  “Who was the other journalist?” I asked.

  “I don’t remember,” Hwang said. “My lawyer told him no.”

  “Well, was it recent? Or are you talking about when you filed the lawsuit?”

  “Yes, when I filed.”

  I felt a wave of relief. The lawsuit had been filed almost a year ago. It was probably a routine call from a reporter—probably from the L.A. Times—who had noticed the lawsuit on the courthouse docket and called for a comment.

  “What if we talk off the record?” I said. “I don’t quote you or use your name.”

  “I don’t know,” Hwang said. “It still sounds risky. I don’t even know you and you want me to trust you.”

  This was a dance I had engaged in many times before. People often said they couldn’t or didn’t want to talk. The trick was to leverage their anger and give them a safe outlet for it. Then they would talk.


  “All I can say is that I would protect you from being identified,” I said. “My own credibility is at stake. I burn a source and no source will ever trust me. I went to jail once for sixty-three days because I wouldn’t give up the name of a source.”

  Hwang looked horrified. Mentioning that experience often worked with people on the fence about talking to me.

  “What happened?” Hwang asked.

  “The judge finally let me go,” I said. “He knew I wasn’t going to give up the name.”

  All of that was true, but I left out the part about my source—Rachel Walling—coming forward and revealing herself. After that there was no point in continuing the contempt order and the judge released me.

  “The thing is, if I talk they’ll know it came from me,” Hwang said. “They’ll read the story and say, Who else could it come from?”

  “Your information would be for background only. I won’t record. I don’t even have to take notes. I’m just trying to understand how all of this works.”

  Hwang paused and then made a decision.

  “Ask your questions and if I don’t like them, I won’t answer.”

  “Fair enough.”

  I had not really thought about how I would explain myself should Hwang agree to talk to me—on or off the record. Now it was time. Like a good police detective, I didn’t want to give the subject of my interview all my information. I didn’t know him and didn’t know who he might pass it on to. He was worried about trusting me but I also had to worry about trusting him.

  “Let me start by explaining who I am and what I’m doing,” I began. “I work for a news site called FairWarning. It’s consumer-protection reporting. You know, watching out for the little guy. And I’ve been assigned to look at the security of the personal information and biological material in the genetic-analytics field.”

  Hwang immediately scoffed.

  “What security?” he said.

  I wanted to write the line down because I instinctively saw it as possibly the first quote in a story. It was provocative and would pull the reader in. But I couldn’t. I had made a deal with Hwang.

  “It sounds like you were not impressed by the security at GT23,” I said.

  The question was deliberately open-ended. He could run with it if he wished.

  “Not the lab,” Hwang said. “I ran a tight lab. We adhered to all protocols and I will prove that in court. It was what happened afterward.”

  “Afterward?” I prompted.

  “The places the data went. The company wanted the money. They didn’t care where it went as long as they were getting paid.”

  “When you say ‘They,’ you’re talking about GT23?”

  “Yes, of course. They went public and needed more revenue to support the stock. So they were wide open for business. They lowered the bar.”

  “Give me an example.”

  “Too many to list. We were shipping DNA all over the world. Thousands of samples. The company needed the money and no one was turned away as long as it was a lab registered with the FDA or the equivalent in other countries.”

  “So then they had to be legit. It wasn’t like somebody drives up and says, I need DNA. I’m not understanding your concern.”

  “It’s the Wild West right now. There are so many directions to go with genetic research. It’s really in its infancy. And we—meaning the company—don’t control what happens with the bio and how it’s used once it goes out the door. That’s the FDA’s problem, not ours—that was the attitude. And let me tell you, the FDA didn’t do jack.”

  “Okay, I get that and I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but wasn’t there the safety that it was all anonymous? I mean, these researchers were given the DNA but not the identities of the participants, right?”

  “Of course, but that’s not the point. You’re thinking in the present. What about the future? This science is very young. We haven’t even had the whole genome for twenty years. New things are discovered about it every day. Will what is anonymous now stay that way in twenty years? In ten years? Or will usernames and passwords not matter? What if your DNA is your identifier and you’ve already given it away?”

  Hwang raised his hand and pointed a finger at the ceiling.

  “Even the military,” he said. “Did you know that this year the Pentagon told all members of the military not to do DNA kits because of the security issues they pose?”

  I had not seen that report but I did grasp Hwang’s point.

  “Were you warning GT23 about this?” I asked.

  “Of course I was,” Hwang said. “Every day. I was the only one.”

  “I read the lawsuit.”

  “I can’t talk about that. Even off the record. My lawyer—”

  “I’m not asking you to. But the lawsuit, it says the employee who filed the complaint against you—David Shanley—set you up to get your job and that it was not investigated by the company.”

  “It was all lies.”

  “I know. I get that. But the motive. You don’t think it could have been to shut you up about this—about the lack of controls or concern over where the DNA was going?”

  “All I know is that Shanley got my job. He lies about me and gets my fucking job.”

  “That could have been his reward for getting you out of the company. They were afraid you would be a whistleblower.”

  “My lawyer has subpoenaed company documents. Emails. If it’s there, we’ll find it.”

  “Let’s go back to what you were saying about the DNA being sold by the company. Can you remember any names of labs or biotechs that were sold samples?”

  “There were too many to remember. We put bio-packs together almost every single day.”

  “Who was the biggest buyer of DNA? Do you remember?”

  “Not really. Why don’t you tell me what it is you’re looking for?”

  I looked at him for a long moment. I was the seeker of facts and information. I was supposed to hold them close to the vest and not share them until it was time to put them into a story. But I felt that Hwang knew more than he was saying, even if he didn’t yet realize it. I felt that I needed to break my own rule and give in order to get.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you why I’m really here.”

  “Please.”

  “A young woman was murdered last week in L.A.—her neck broken. I was looking into it and came up with three other women in California, Texas, and Florida who were killed in exactly the same way.”

  “I don’t understand. What does it have to do with—”

  “Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s all coincidence. But all four of the women were GT23 participants. They didn’t know each other but they had all sent in their DNA. Four women killed in the same way, four women who were participants. To me, that moves beyond coincidence and that’s why I’m here.”

  Hwang said nothing. He seemed to be contemplating the possibilities of what I was telling him.

  “There’s more,” I said. “I haven’t done a lot of work on this yet but there may be another commonality.”

  “Which is what?” Hwang asked.

  “Some sort of addictive behavior. The L.A. woman had been treated for alcoholism and drugs. She was sort of a party girl—went out to a lot of clubs, met men in bars.”

  “Dirty four.”

  “What?”

  “Dirty four. It’s what some geneticists call the DRD4 gene.”

  “Why?”

  “It has been identified in relation to at-risk behavior and addiction, including sex addiction.”

  “Is it in the female genome?”

  “Both male and female.”

  “Take a woman who frequently goes to bars by herself to pick up men for sex—are you saying it’s because she has the DRD4 gene?”

  “Possibly. But the science is in its infancy and everybody is individual. I don’t think you can say for sure.”

  “As far as you know, are any of GT23’s collaborators studying the dirty-four gene?”

  “It�
�s possible, but that’s what I’m saying is wrong. We can sell DNA for one purpose, but who’s to stop them from using it for another purpose? What stops them from selling it again to a third party?”

  “I saw a story about the company. It listed some of the places the DNA was going. It mentioned a study of addiction and risky behavior at a lab down in Irvine.”

  “Yes. Orange Nano.”

  “That’s the lab?”

  “That’s the lab. Big buyers.”

  “Who runs it?”

  “A bio guy named William Orton.”

  “Is it part of UC–Irvine?”

  “No, privately funded. Probably Big Pharma. You see, GT23 liked to sell to the private labs better than to universities. The private labs paid more and there wasn’t a public record of transactions.”

  “Did you deal with Orton?”

  “A few times on the phone. That was it.”

  “Why were you on the phone with him?”

  “Because he would call me and ask about a bio-pack. You know, checking to see if it had shipped or maybe to add to an existing order.”

  “He ordered more than once?”

  “Sure. Many times.”

  “Like every week? Or what?”

  “No, like once a month or sometimes longer.”

  “And what would an order be? How much?”

  “A bio-pack contains one hundred samples.”

  “Why would he need to keep ordering bio-packs?”

  “For continuing-research purposes. They all do that.”

  “Did Orton ever talk about his lab’s research?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much. Just that that was his field of study. Addiction in many forms. Alcohol, drugs, sex. He wanted to isolate those genes and develop therapies. But that’s how I know about dirty four. From him.”

  “He used the phrase ‘dirty four’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Had anybody else used it with you before?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Have you ever been down to Orange Nano?”

  “No, never. My only contact was by phone and email.”

  I nodded. I knew at that moment that I would be going down to Irvine to visit Orange Nano.