by Ritu Sethi
“Close enough,” he said, squinting. “And lucky me, there seem to be two of you.”
“I’ve called one of the doctors.”
The dizziness began to fade. Lines and swivels took solid form and colors stabilized. Behind him, the officers took statements from the bystanders. A doctor wearing a white coat hurried to Gray’s side and knelt beside him, introducing himself, but Gray didn’t catch the long name. He grimaced and counted to ten as the gloved hands probed his ear.
Gray answered his questions and endured the penlight blinding each eye in turn, all the while thinking about Director Cousineau – how he would advise Gray to give up the case, run with his tail between his legs. A hot flush ran up his face and burned his cheeks. No way. Never in a hundred years.
The doctor stood, his stern face resolute. “We have to go to the emergency department, now. You need sutures to control the bleeding and a full exam. Did you hit your head today?”
“No, something hit my head.”
“Then, we’ll need an MRI.”
Gray held up his hand. “Just patch me up. It’s enough for now.” He felt better, and feeling was returning to his limbs.
The doctor crossed his arms across his chest and tapped his foot. However frantic Gray’s day might be, the doctor clearly felt his to be worse. “We’re going,” the doctor said.
A figure approached them, casting a still, ominous shadow on the tile in front of Gray.
“What the hell happened?” Detective Douglas Green crouched down, his brow furrowed with lines thick and deep for his age, thin lips pressed together and his face, much too close – close enough to smell tuna on his breath.
Gray forgot he’d arranged to meet his junior detective.
Bracing against the couch meant he could stand, at least, feel the strength return to his body. He followed the doctor towards the emergency room. “Just a normal day in the life of a detective.”
“You’re bleeding, Sir.”
They entered the connecting hallway. Doug came up beside him, matching his strides, the young face more stern than concerned. Vivienne once said Doug reminded her of a Chicago gangster from an old 1940’s movie, something his square-shaped head, furtive eyes, and thug-like personality did nothing to counter.
They passed mirrored walls, and Gray watched Doug in the reflection, shoulders straight, eyes hooded, the young man’s mouth a horizontal slit, with only the requisite fedora and clutched machine gun missing.
Gray wasn’t indulging in idle speculation. Someone had wired his car to blow, possibly a police officer with easy access to the crime scene, an officer with a certain kind of audacity. And now someone had shot at him. Come to think of it, Gray had seen Doug – a junior officer – interacting on multiple occasions with both Séverin and Cousineau, which was odd since both men conformed to a more formal hierarchy.
Pushing down his natural aversion to Doug, Gray filed the thought in a corner of his mind. He needed this detective’s particular skills for this investigation, which would involve cutting through the impossible bureaucracy of a government hospital in Quebec. And he needed to keep his enemies close.
“Dr. Norman Everett was our victim,” Gray said, breaking the silence. “We don’t know yet for certain, but I have a hunch. He brought his stepson’s Personalized Antibiotic System to the hospital. And I’ve read that PAS is worth a fortune.”
Doug opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. They reached the emergency department, and the doctor led them to a procedure room filled with steel implements.
When Gray hesitated, the doctor gave him a stern look.
“All right.” Gray climbed onto the medical bed. “I’ll play the part of a pin cushion, but under protest.”
To Doug, he said, “Go up to Norman Everett’s office and look through his papers. Documents relating to his stepson’s startup, or their hospital trials. I’ll meet you in the Infectious Disease Ward as soon as I’m finished here.”
“What are we looking for?”
“No telling what’s relevant. And who knows if anything is left to find.”
The junior detective left, just as Gray registered the burning of the disinfectant on his ear. What a day.
A half hour later, stitched, bandaged, and having somewhat ungraciously thanked his doctor, he proceeded to the nursing station on Norman’s ID, infectious disease, floor to get an explanation of how the startup’s PAS system worked. The very sexy Nurse Adeline Dubois provided the explanation. She also informed Gray that Norman had changed the entire nursing staff on the ID ward a year ago.
Footsteps signaled Doug’s approach. Thanking Adeline, Gray left the nurse’s station.
“Get a court order to look at Everett’s medical charts,” Gray said to Doug while heading towards the elevators. “Everyone who received a PAS antibiotic in the last year.”
“Man, that’s gonna be a huge list.”
“Focus on those who died after receiving the startup’s customized antibiotic.”
Dismissing Doug, he rode the elevator down to the main floor and left by the back exit, not wanting to see the shattered glass or his blood all over the floor. He paused outside the door and looked in either direction. No one.
Gray headed towards his replacement car. Snow had replaced freezing rain, and oversized flakes fell sideways across the air and over the nearby road and river. There had to be easier jobs than this, in other cities with departments less riddled with cynicism and corruption.
But what if Sita returned, and he wasn’t here? Didn’t he owe it to her to be here? Even as that question entered his mind, he wondered if he could be a family man again. Each morning, he looked pain straight in the eye and calmly moved past it to where nothing which occurred ultimately mattered: it was a deal with life lived in grays and, above all, lived in freedom.
He sincerely wondered if he could ever be with Sita again – if he wished to abdicate the solitary life tragedy had imposed – and wasn’t that thought, in and of itself, the greatest betrayal of all?
Reaching for his car keys, he found a piece of paper shoved into his jacket pocket with Adeline’s name and number on it. She must have slipped it in earlier. He smiled and replaced it in his pocket.
As he drove away, he recalled the phantom bullet ripping through his ear, and a thought struck home – a memory of something Vivienne had once mentioned in passing: that Detective Doug Green always carried a concealed revolver. That he never left home without it.
CHAPTER 4
April 1, Noon
THE TERM SHEET GLARED back at her from the computer screen, but the person on the other end of the phone had to be placated first.
Holly Bradley, CEO of the tech startup HealSo, ran her blood-red fingernails over the white leather armrest of her desk chair. It scratched easily, leaving four parallel gouges.
“Of course, your investment with the startup will remain secret. No one knows about you except Norman and me. Do you think I’m stupid enough to risk the company’s sale by talking to the police?”
She dug her nails further into the leather. This was her third chair in the past year, she couldn’t care less if she went through twenty. The pretentious startup owed everything to her. Including the genuine opportunity to sell their Montreal-based company.
“I don’t know where Norman is. Nothing’s happened to him, I promise.”
But the caller described the body by the beach, and Holly’s heart slammed in her chest. Was this person responsible for that hanging body or merely informing her of the fact? Had Norman made a deal with the devil and dragged her into it?
“You’re overreacting,” she said. “Yes, I’ll do what needs to be done on this end. Don’t worry.”
She ended the call. Engineers and other startup employees bustled outside her office door; their annoying feet shuffled and clicked on the lacquered cement floor, making it impossible to think.
Still, it was a step up from the modest family farm in Haiti where she’d grown up, with its severe e
rosion and steep slopes, poverty, and sluggishness; all that seemed a lifetime away – a childhood memory belonging to a stranger she scarcely recognized.
The intervening years of technology and startups had obliterated that young farm girl, and if colleagues derogatorily referred to her as having edge, they were purposefully understating; Holly aimed for an edge people frequently fell off.
Outside her expansive windows, sunlight bolted off a nearby silver-domed roof. Montreal sludged by below at its annoyingly flaccid pace. Nondescript figures walked on the road, people who felt happiness they hadn’t rightfully earned. Assholes. She had to get out of here, had to make it to the big time in The Valley or New York.
Holly reexamined Guilter Pharma’s term sheet – outlining the conditions of sale for the company – on her computer and slammed the top of her glass desk. Only forty million instead of the agreed two hundred. Why was it so damn hard to sell one bloody company?
Both Guilter and the startup’s founder, Simon, would find out who they were dealing with – Super Bitch with a capital B. The roar of anger and acid that ran through Holly’s veins frightened even her, and if she could breathe out fire and obliterate everyone in her way, she definitely would. This world had given her few choices, all of them unsafe.
Everything hung on selling the company for a great deal of money. Then there would be peace; then there would be security.
The importunate burring of the phone yanked her from her reverie.
“You left early,” the woman on the other end said. “I didn’t see you this morning.”
“You were sleeping, Mel.” Holly cradled the phone with her chin while composing a well-crafted response to Guilter, one that would show them who they were dealing with.
The silence stretched, save the tapping of keys.
“How are you?” Holly said.
“Alice cried most of the night. Didn’t you hear her? What time did you get in?”
“I worked late, again. I’m sorry.”
“We’re supposed to be doing this together. I can’t take care of her alone.”
Holly stopped typing. A familiar pain crept up her chest, from too much coffee, too many arguments; she rubbed the sore spot. “You knew what this job meant when I took it. If it works, we’ll have security for the rest of our lives. We agreed on this plan together. You agreed. The baby – I wanted to wait.”
“I’m forty-two. I couldn’t wait. I adopted her alone, remember.”
“Oh, not that again.” Holly got up and closed her door. She had no intention of showcasing her domestic troubles to the rest of the office. Reaching for her mug, she downed the cold coffee sitting on her desk; a hand twisted in her chest.
“You always do that,” Melanie said. “You won’t tell me why... it can’t be the only reason. The adoption agency wouldn’t have held that against you.”
“Of course, they would. What are we arguing about? We’re together. We have a baby, just like you wanted. And it’s only one baby, for God’s sake. How hard can that be? I’m wrestling a company full of idiots, a team of lawyers and programmers, and a founder that wants me dead. I’m buried in problems, and I can’t deal with this right now. You know I don’t like it when you call me at work.”
“You weren’t like this before... it’s since you met that doctor – Norman Everett – you’ve become obsessed with selling the company. You don’t love us anymore.”
“Of course, I love you,” Holly said.
“I miss Robert.”
“I told you never to mention –”
“I know,” Melanie said. “I have to move on. It’s you and me and Alice – no one else. You were so different in Alabama. Maybe if you cut back on your pills–”
Melanie suddenly stopped talking, but the line had been crossed, the gauntlet thrown. Silence stretched between them – until the tapping of keys resumed.
If Guilter thought Holly would accept their offer of only forty million lying down, they were in for a big surprise. They didn’t know who they were dealing with.
“Oh God, I’m sorry,” Melanie was saying. “I can’t seem to relax. It’s like I don’t know myself anymore. You’re taking care of us. I’m just at home, and you’re working. Forgive me?”
A cry echoed over the phone from Melanie’s end. The familiar wail drowned out Holly’s tapping.
“What’s happened?” Holly said, gripping the phone.
The crying grew louder, accompanied by the rapid thudding of feet – Melanie probably rushing upstairs to the baby’s room to pick her up, coddle her, help her get back to sleep.
The baby might have had another allergy attack. The last time, she’d needed an adrenaline shot at the hospital, and it had killed Holly to see the tiny ribs gasping to get in air, the large needle jabbing into the pale skin, the oozing of blood.
Breathe in, breathe out. Holly waited for the wailing to stop, but her heart jack-hammered. She’d wanted this baby as much as Melanie, even if she couldn't admit it.
Suddenly, a different scream sounded over the line, primitive and deep, and Holly nearly dropped the phone. This second scream momentarily silenced the child.
“Mel, was that you?” Holly asked. “Are you with Alice?”
Still nothing. Why didn’t she answer?
A moment later, the phone was picked up, and Melanie spoke coolly and calmly in a stranger’s voice.
“Yes. Everything’s fine. I have to go.”
“What happened? Tell me.”
“It’s nothing. Alice threw up, again. That’s all. The room’s coated in vomit.”
Holly exhaled and hid her irritation. The baby was fine. Why did everything have to be portrayed as such a bloody catastrophe?
Though, one didn’t need to imagine the state of the crib, the blankets, the floor, not to mention the wet and sticky baby herself. Even the familiar stench lay fused in memory; thank goodness she wasn’t the one to have to clean it up.
She refocused on her crucial email to Guilter’s acquisitions department.
Muted sounds, tenuous at first, became clearer over the phone cradled between Holly’s ear and shoulder. The sounds grew stronger, at first flat, then more jolting – two voices – Melanie’s and the baby’s. Mother and child were weeping together.
Then, the line went dead.
For a solid minute, Holly didn’t move. What her partner had said wasn’t true. Late last night, Holly had tiptoed into Alice’s room and stood over the baby’s crib, watching the one-year-old sleep with a peace that she herself could scarcely contemplate.
She’d stood for a long time, absorbing the regular breathing, the pudgy Asian face puckering in a frown, then relaxing, the soft belly rising and falling. What could be more beautiful? And she’d softly sung, to the baby, the Haitian Creole lullaby her mother had always favored whenever Holly felt scared: ‘dòmi, dòmi ti bebe – sleep, baby, sleep’.
If she didn’t spend much time with Alice, didn’t fuss over motherhood as Melanie wanted, it was because this distance helped put domesticity out of her mind. What was the alternative? Succumb to hormones and abandon the startup to the mercy of its infantile founder?
Holly shook herself out of it. Enough. She rose and moved to the window, her stiletto boots clicking against the lacquered cement floor of the formerly industrial space in Montreal’s Griffintown, by the canal – now trendy and renovated using chrome, cement, and glass. The fifteen-foot ceilings of the startup echoed the clicking through the room and probably beyond.
Everything came down on her at once like a ton of bricks: the first caller who had unlimited power and might do anything – even to Melanie and the baby, Norman – who was probably dead if not hanging by the St. Lawrence River, and the shattering of an acquisition worth hundreds of millions of dollars... Oh God, what was she going to do?
A crash from the outside office made her swing around. Somebody shouted.
Holly ran to the door, wondering what would go wrong next.
***
; HealSo’s young Chief Engineer, Jimmy Cane, spoke in hushed tones while moving away from al the smashed glass. “What do you mean, Norman’s missing?”
An overturned trolley with drinks glasses, beer bottles, and plates lay on the ground in the large open office.
Simon Everett, the Founder of the health tech startup, answered him with his usual arrogant drawl. “You gotta do something about your shakes, man.” He motioned for the office manager to begin the cleanup. The thirty or so engineers and programmers working at their desks had stopped to stare, including Holly who had jumped out of her office because of the commotion. Seeing the broken glasses, everyone got back to business.
“Just tell me,” Jimmy said.
Simon moved him to a corner by the floor-to-ceiling windows of the trendy, industrial space where they wouldn’t be heard. “Norman didn’t come to our business meeting last night. I reported him missing to the police early this morning because I knew Mom wouldn’t. In fact, I think she’s relieved he’s gone – and who the hell could blame her?”
“What could have happened to your dad?”
“Step-dad.”
“But...but without him, HealSo may not sell.”
The startup’s revolutionary precision medicine technology allowed them to make custom antibiotics for each patient. It was the reason the fifty-person, not-yet-profitable company stood poised to sell for an estimated two hundred million.
Simon snorted. “Hope you’re right. I got people looking up to me; they’re my tribe. I’m not going to sell them out to a money-hungry mega pharmaceutical.”
Silence ensued, with only the thumping of Jimmy’s heart sounding in his ears.
If the sale of the company were off, there would be no due diligence. And without due diligence, he’d be safe. Or else... or else someone had erased Norman permanently from the complex equation.
Simon leaned against the cold floor-to-ceiling glass and folded his arms. “I gave an interview to that sexy reporter, but our Halle Berry look-a-like barged in and cut it short. Apparently, the Board wants all interviews to go through her until the acquisition’s done. Bitch. I invent the product, and she rides in as CEO and steals all the glory.”
