by Shanon Hunt
“I, uh … What time is it?” She rolled over to look at the clock. 9:20 a.m. Christ.
“Kiran’s on his way over for a major announcement at ten. Do you not read your goddamn email?”
Shit. Why hadn’t she thought to contact Quandary’s legal counsel herself? Obviously, that’s what a chief of staff would have done. She felt like such an idiot.
“Um, right. Okay. I was, uh, just finishing up something. I’ll be there in thirty.”
She dropped the phone and flew out of bed. She was never going to have any credibility with these guys if she didn’t start acting like a professional. She grabbed her jeans, thought again, and tossed them aside. Kiran would expect her in business attire. And, damn it, Austin had trusted her to take on this role. He believed she could do it. She found one pair of unwrinkled dress pants and pulled on a shirt and sports jacket.
She looked in the full-length mirror. Good enough—for someone who was the last to know about an announcement she herself should have initiated.
***
“I’m so sorry about all this, Allison.” Kiran Parsons was waiting in her office when she arrived.
“Thank you so much for coming.” She leaned in for the loathsome East Coast cheek kiss. “I’m sorry, I should’ve called you. I just wasn’t sure how to proceed in a situation like this.” She’d practiced several excuses during her drive into the office. This one was the best she could do.
“Of course. Listen. Austin was released on bail yesterday, and he’s staying home today to be with his family. He’s asked me to make an announcement to the whole team, but I thought I should share it with you first. We should be on the same page.”
She knew it. He wasn’t holed up in some jail cell. She couldn’t decide if she was hurt or angry that he hadn’t called. She smiled to try to be polite, but she was sure Kiran could see how distressed she was. She closed her office door and turned to face him.
Kiran leaned back to half sit on her desk. “Austin was arrested for illegal insider trading and fraud. He’s allegedly been trading call and put options on Quandary, then leaking information to investors to manipulate the stock price in his favor.”
She stared at him, unable to speak.
“The SEC was alerted of suspicious trading activity on Quandary’s stock by an anonymous tip about a month ago. The FBI and SEC followed the money coming in and out of Austin’s various accounts and discovered a trading account and a trust had been set up using the identity of his wife’s deceased brother, a guy by the name of William Chase Stetson. Does that name ring a bell to you?”
The phrase “insider trading and fraud” looped through her head like a stuck record.
“Anyway, allegedly Austin has been trading with this account. The SEC is focused on the insider trading, hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the FBI has built a case for identity fraud.” He offered a sympathetic smile. “It’s a white-collar crime. Unfortunate, but it does happen more than you think.”
She felt like a house had fallen from the sky and landed on her. Or maybe she just wished one would.
He stood up and gazed out her office window into the lobby, as if this was just a routine legal status report. “Not gonna lie, the SEC has a strong case. The penalties for this kind of fraud are a bitch. If Austin’s convicted, he’ll be on the line for stiff fines and even jail time—usually only Club Fed, but a felony’s still serious business.”
A wave of nausea ran through her, and she leaned on her desk to keep from fainting. She sucked in air, hard.
“Are you all right?” He sounded concerned but he didn’t move to help.
“Fine.” She squeaked out the next question, not wanting to hear the answer. “And Quandary?”
“I don’t know that yet. Quandary stock will fall when this gets out. You could be a target for acquisition. Plenty of sharks out there who will smell blood.”
She clenched her jaw, grinding her teeth together so hard they hurt.
Kiran said gently, “We need to get out there, get this over with.”
She envisioned the lecture room filled with all eighty-two Quandary employees. They would feel angry, betrayed. How could this man they’d trusted for years have deceived investors? They would ask about their jobs, remind her that they had families to support. They would need answers and emotional support she was unable to give.
Allison felt as though she was shrinking.
“Are you ready?”
They already hated her. She was sure of it. They believed she was too inexperienced for her job. And as soon as she stepped out there with Kiran, she would prove them right.
She glanced at the clock: 10:10.
She scooped the pen and notepad tidily left on the corner of her desk and followed him down the hall. What would she jot down? How do you spell “fraud,” Kiran? Do you happen to know the visiting hours at Club Fed for homewrecking girlfriends?
The air seemed thick and hot, as if she were breathing in a steam room. All her strength left her body, and she felt simultaneously sweaty and cold.
“Kiran.”
He glanced back questioningly.
“I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I can’t go out there.”
His piteous look at her—Allison Stevens, Quandary’s chief of staff and program leader for the life-changing DMD drug—validated what she’d always known deep down. She was an imposter, an unworthy fake who’d built a career by fucking the boss.
Without a word, he hurried onward to the lecture room alone.
Chapter 5
Six weeks into this damn case, and he’d gotten nowhere. DEA Special Agent Peter Malloy eyed the stack of folders in the tray labeled DEA-994. He’d combed through the case files day after day, looking for connections between the six victims he’d identified so far. Nothing. It didn’t help that four of the vics were Does, three Johns and a Jane, and their case files were little more than an autopsy report and a few postmortem pictures.
As he waited the usual ten minutes for his computer to boot, courtesy of the agency’s excessive IT policies, he got up and stood at his window, sipping his urn coffee and admiring his view of the parking lot. The sun was already beating down at ninety-three degrees, and he could see heat haze coming off the asphalt. Ironically, the day would be significantly less gloomy if it would just fucking rain. But this was the desert southwest, not known for moisture.
He polished off his coffee and sat down again when his DEA login page appeared. The machine whirred loudly like it might die at any moment. Goddamn government-issue technology. How could they be expected to keep up with the bad guys with bullshit tools more than a decade old?
His brain seemed to be spinning in the same hateful blue cursor of death. He’d gone over these cases a dozen times. Six bodies across Nevada, Arizona, and Southern Utah. His team had interviewed the families and friends of their two identified victims. The case profiles were damn robust.
What frustrated him the most, however, was that this case was like nothing he’d ever seen—and he was certain that over the course of twenty-five years with the DEA, he’d seen everything. Two months ago when Cramer had approached him, he’d tried to avoid taking this case. Opioid pumps were rising in popularity but still within the purview of physician practice, and this didn’t feel like an illegal drug case. Pumps certainly weren’t being implanted at the local opioid den, not to mention that he was short-staffed and had his hands full with the meth problem. But he’d lost the fight, and the files had landed in his lap. It hadn’t taken long to figure out that opioids weren’t the problem. Whatever was going on didn’t involve any known controlled substance, narcotic, stimulant, depressant, or performance drug.
He poured another cup of coffee and pulled the two identified victims’ folders from the stack. He rubbed his tired, gritty eyes and scratched at his beard stubble before pulling on his reading glasses.
Eric Sparks, age twenty-one, African American, played football for UNLV, wide receiver. Died of traumatic brain injury after six d
ays in a coma, and his autopsy revealed multiple recent severe skull fractures for which he hadn’t received medical care. In fact, his medical records showed he hadn’t visited the team’s physician at all since his physical exam at the start of the school year. The autopsy report also mentioned Eric had three broken ribs and a broken clavicle, which his brother had said probably occurred when he jumped out of his second-floor dorm room window a month ago and landed on a cement stair rail below his room. Yet Eric hadn’t missed a game or even a practice.
Why hadn’t Eric seen a doctor after a stupid stunt like that? Improperly healed injuries might’ve cost him his scholarship, not to mention his future if he planned to go pro. Malloy made a note to have his guys talk to the team physician about the injuries.
He tossed his reading glasses back onto his desk and sat back in his chair. He wasn’t doing his best work. And dammit, he owed it to these families to try harder. He put his glasses back on and picked up the second folder, then stood up and paced while he reviewed it.
Karen Richmond, twenty-three-year-old Caucasian woman, living with her father and three younger siblings in Tempe, Arizona. Karen was a long-distance runner who’d completed most of an ultramarathon in the Yukon Arctic before collapsing and dying of hypothermia. According to other competitors, she’d shown signs of hypothermia at mile 148 but refused help from the support crew, insisting she was fine. They’d allowed her to continue to the mandatory checkpoint at mile 156, eight miles ahead. Her body was found on the course at mile 180. There was no record of her stopping at the mandatory checkpoint, and given the distance and her time of death, she couldn’t have stopped, slept, or eaten. That would have been nearly twenty-four hours of continuous running in subfreezing temperatures and a foot of icy snow.
“The most she’d ever run without resting was thirty-eight miles, which took her six hours,” reported her father, Lyle Richmond. “She’d been excited about this race because the longest leg was only thirty-four miles. She ran these races for the social part, makin’ friends and talkin’ about running with other like-minded folks.”
Malloy tried to put himself in her head. Even if she’d taken a drug that made her feel—what? elated? superpowered?—why would she have attempted such an absurd distance? What told her she should just keep going? Based on her psychological profile, which admittedly came from anecdotal reports from friends and family, her behavior didn’t fit the kind of person she was.
He closed her file and opened her online file, scrolling through the images until he found the one he was looking for. He enlarged it on the screen and focused on the subcutaneous port surgically implanted at the base of her spine—the one and only physical feature that linked all six victims.
“Talk to me,” he growled. “What are you hiding?”
Barely the size of a quarter, the port would probably have been overlooked on anyone not lying on an autopsy table. The small, round chamber with a silicone center had been found embedded under the skin between the L2 and L3 vertebrae on every victim, next to a two-inch incision scar. In both the Richmond and Sparks cases, not a single friend or family member had ever seen the port or knew anything about it. It was the best-kept secret he’d ever encountered in a case, confirmed by the fact that no one else had come forward either with a port or knowing someone who had a port, despite widespread communications to local hospitals and clinics.
He’d spent an entire day with his team researching the device and discussing how such an apparatus might be used. An opioid pump was the obvious first idea. Pain pumps were available for patients with terminal illnesses, and perhaps they’d made their way to the street by some ethically challenged or disgruntled jackass doctor who didn’t like his cut from the HMOs. But the autopsies showed no implanted intrathecal pumps. The ports appeared to be nothing more than a simple way to inject a drug directly into the spinal cord in a precise location.
That led the team to their second idea, injectable morphine. To their astonishment, not one of the victims had even a trace of morphine or any opioid or analgesic drug in their bodies. No performance enhancers. Not even goddamn Tylenol. The labs had been such a shock that he’d ordered a second report for every victim from a different lab. The results had been the same.
Someone suggested that perhaps the victims were on an experimental medication. He consulted colleagues in the Diversion Investigations to see if any pharmaceutical companies might be conducting ongoing clinical studies in the US or Mexico requiring a spinal fluid port. No luck.
He groped for his phone without looking and speed-dialed.
Danny Garcia picked up at one ring. “Yeah.”
Garcia was his youngest but best agent, well trained in Malloy’s no-nonsense work style. Malloy appreciated that Garcia didn’t wear him down with unnecessary greetings.
“Did we ever find a manufacturer of the spinal ports?”
“Nope. Called every supplier I could find and showed ’em the pictures. All legit suppliers have product numbers imprinted on their devices.”
“What about residue? Did Forensics find anything?”
“Nah. Nothin’, boss. The ports were clean.”
“Shit.”
Malloy hung up. This case was nothing but dead ends, and it was only a matter of time before the media got ahold of it and turned his case into a goddamn circus.
***
Malloy glanced up from his lunch as Garcia entered his office without knocking. Even though Garcia was over six feet tall, Malloy figured he must weigh maybe a hundred forty soaking wet. He kept his jet-black hair in a ponytail most days, but today it hung over his shoulders. If he’d been wearing some eye makeup and bell bottoms, he could have doubled for a young Cher.
Garcia dropped a folder onto his desk. “Latest vic.”
Victim number seven.
Malloy glanced down at the file, labeled with a name and the picture of a teenage boy. He tossed the rest of his sandwich in the trash. “All right. Spill it.”
“Mark Vespe, a freshman at ASU, living in a frat house. His body was found in the basement after a party early this morning at”—he opened the folder—“3:24 a.m. One of the kids called the police saying Vespe had cut his wrists, so the university police show up expecting a suicide scene. But you’re not gonna fuckin’ believe this—it was a five-finger fillet game that ended badly.”
Garcia pulled out two enlarged photos of Vespe’s hand, one taken before it had been cleaned of the blood. His hand was in fact completely filleted. Although the fingers were still intact, it looked like the hand had been pushed through a material shredder.
Jesus. He didn’t have the stomach for that kind of thing, despite working in crime so many years.
The cleaned photo showed much more detail: inch-long cuts, maybe fifty or a hundred even, from each fingertip to his wrist. In some places the flesh was missing and the thin metacarpal bones were visible.
He turned away.
“I haven’t even gotten to the fun part yet.” Garcia pulled out a flash drive, his expression saying You ain’t gonna like this, boss.
Malloy plugged the drive into his USB port and sat back in his chair, as if distancing himself from the screen might make it less horrifying. It was a video clip, apparently taken by another student at the party. It was shaky and often bounced around the room, but it was good enough to clearly depict what had happened. The screaming and yelling in the video were so loud he lowered the volume on his speaker.
Vespe stood in front of a poker table with his left hand flat on the table, fingers spread wide. In his right hand, he held a long-bladed kitchen utility knife, which he stabbed madly into his left hand. He alternated between singing the five-finger fillet song and laughing maniacally, his eyes wide with excitement. Or delirium. He wasn’t watching his precision, as the game’s supposed to be played; instead, he was watching the crowd and looking into the camera. It was eerie; it reminded Malloy of a guy on PCP. Then a loud male voice shouted Stop it! Vespe startled, and his stabbing hand shif
ted. The next plunge of the knife went straight through his forearm.
The video ended.
“Holy fucking mother of god,” Malloy said in one long exhalation.
Garcia seemed unfazed by the horror. “The cops questioned everyone at the party, though a lot of them had already taken off. Supposedly Vespe stopped the game and walked casually to the bathroom. They said he sounded completely lucid, assuring everyone it was just a cut, and he wasn’t hurt, and he was just gonna go wash it up. Then he locked the door to the bathroom, and someone called university police. By the time they arrived on the scene, Vespe had bled to death sitting with his back against the locked door.”
Garcia stopped talking and sat down in the chair opposite Malloy.
“And the kid has a port?” Malloy didn’t know why he asked such an obvious question.
“Yepper.” Garcia pulled out the picture taken by the medical examiner.
“I need those labs. Let me know when the autopsy report comes in. And can we please send our forensics guys over there immediately? Those mall cops will just fuck everything up.”
“Got it.” Garcia stood up and walked out.
“And get interviews from everyone in that video!” he yelled after Garcia.
He clicked Play to watch the video again. The senseless stabbing had continued for twenty-two seconds before the scream. Twenty-two long seconds—Vespe had stabbed himself repeatedly for the same amount of time his own son ran the two hundred meter. His stomach churned, and he mindlessly reached for his bottle of Tums, shaking a couple directly into his mouth.
His runner was now in graduate school. How many times over the past twenty-four years had he tormented Robbie with his nuggets of parental wisdom? You know marijuana is a gateway drug, don’t you? Robbie’d always had a smart retort. Really? Wow! That’s news to me! Guess the son of a DEA agent is always the last to know, followed by a smile and an eye-roll. Dad, come on. Seriously? And somehow, he felt sure that Vespe’s parents were no different than he was. They’d brought up a fine young man, prepared him for the road ahead, made sure he had pizza money. They probably couldn’t wait for him to come home for Christmas. A tragic, drug-related death wasn’t in the cards for their little boy; illicit drugs killed addicts with unfortunate upbringings or who made too many bad choices, not college students with loving parents and bright futures.