The Beekeeper's Secret

by Sally Fernandez

  Chapter 24

  The Whiteboard Conclusions

  Sam heard Max turn the front doorknob and skirted into the reception area. “What’s with the swift retreat, my dear? And by the by, who was that guy?” Sam had a vivid image of the look on her face when she caught a glimpse of the mystery man.

  “How poetic—and I have no idea who it was. The pizza box was in the way. All I saw was a guy that looked like Chef Boyardee etched on top of the box.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Gianni said the guy thanked him for the pizza and took off.” If I tell him Daniel’s back, he’ll move into overprotection hyper-mode and get in the way. Max held off for the moment.

  “Same here, couldn’t see a thing.” Hmm, Sam wondered, doubting her every word. He also knew any attempt to drag it out of her would be fruitless. On second thought. “Where did you take off to in such a hurry?” He gave it a shot.

  She ignored the question and stared out the front window.

  “Max, what’s with you? I saw the look on your face when that guy rolled down the window. You looked as though you saw a ghost.”

  “Please, Sam. Chalk it up to this case and a lack of sleep.”

  He relented for the time being. “Go heat up a slice a pizza and c’mon into my office.”

  “In a minute.” Max needed time to wrap her head around what had just happened. She headed into her own office and tried to pull it together. Once less flustered, she joined Sam.

  “Wow! What are you working on now—missing-persons cases?” Max asked, seeming more like herself. Plastered in front of her, Sam had projected seventy-seven headshots from his computer onto the wall—seven rows down with eleven rows across.

  Pleased at the sudden change in her demeanor, he responded, “No, sorry to say they’re dead doctors. Remember Erin Elizabeth?”

  Max was aghast at first by the sheer number of faces. Then she recalled the Health Nut News site. “Oh, yeah, I vaguely remember seeing that posted on her website.”

  “On the far left, fourth row down, is Dr. Bradstreet’s photo, the first doctor Erin reported dead.”

  “Wait a minute—Jeff’s last words to Allison had to do with Bradstreet. Something about needing to ensure it would never happen again.”

  “Well, evidently something happened. I worked through the night trying to connect your notorious dancing dots.”

  “You have a theory?”

  “Sort of. Whenever a doctor died, Erin reported the death on her site.”

  Max again studied the wall trying to assess the magnitude. “Seventy-seven doctors met their deaths. That doesn’t compute as a coincidence.”

  “As of now, Erin has reported over eighty deaths, and most practitioners were associated with alternative or Eastern medicine in some capacity. From the evidence, many of these deaths can without a doubt be explained—but just as many are suspicious.”

  “What’s in it for Erin? What’s her end game?”

  “I can’t speak to her intent, but she’s created quite a conspiracy theory. From the perspective of this case, it all appears to start and end with Dr. Jeffrey Bradstreet!”

  “Allison’s conversation with Jeff seemed to suggest that…” Max’s voice trailed off as she stared at the wall.

  “Max, are you with me?” Sam studied her face.

  “Yes—I’m listening. You reported earlier that Bradstreet was illegally using GcMAF treatments to reverse autism. And that the Feds raided his office, days before his death. But how does this connect to Jeff and the beekeeper?”

  “Hear me out. Bradstreet’s body was discovered on June 19, 2015. It appeared that he committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest.”

  “Still seems like an odd way to kill yourself,” Max interjected.

  “My thought as well. But then two days later, on June twenty-first, incidentally on Father’s Day, Baron Holt, a chiropractor, was found dead while visiting Jacksonville, Florida. But he lived in North Carolina, near where Bradstreet’s body was located. Reports indicated he was there to have his spine realigned, but according to Erin’s sources, Holt, a devout Christian, died from an overdose of a street drug called ‘Molly’—leaving a wife and a three-year-old daughter behind. On the same day, another chiropractor by the name of Bruce Hedendal was found dead in his car after a sporting event. Some attribute it to heat exhaustion; others find it suspicious. Then again, on June twenty-ninth, Dr. Teresa Sievers, who practiced holistic medicine, was discovered bludgeoned to death in her home in Bonita Springs. But this case was a weird one. Apparently, the husband is accused of hiring a boyhood friend, who was then joined by another friend to do the dirty deed, supposedly for the insurance money. The boyhood friend pleaded guilty to murder and was convicted. But as of May, two years later, both the husband and the other accomplice were still on trial facing the death penalty. And given all the evidence, some are still convinced the husband was framed. What’s most intriguing is that the local news reached out to the FDA in an attempt to link Sievers’s murder to the Bradstreet case and they were pushed off to the Georgia State Attorney’s Office. Again, according to Erin, the Georgia official involved in the Bradstreet case declined to comment on whether there was a possible criminal investigation underway.” Sam could see that Max was becoming impatient and quickly rattled off the next depressing story. “The same day Sievers was murdered, Dr. Jeffrey Whiteside, a pulmonologist, walked away from a family vacation in Wisconsin, reportedly after an argument with his wife. Three weeks later, the body turned up, along with a .22 caliber gun that had been purchased back in the ‘60s by his father. The death, like Bradstreet’s, was deemed a suicide.”

  “Sorry, but it seems to be a wide stretch between your infamous dots.”

  “Agreed, but in the span of ten days, five doctors are dead. One presumed of natural causes, one murder, and three suicides—yet all are painted with the same suspicious brush.”

  “Is that Erin’s opinion or the plain facts?”

  “Not sure, but it could be a motive.”

  “Sam, I agree it doesn’t smell right, but doctors die just like the rest of us. There are over a million doctors in the US alone. I read a stat somewhere, that given the ratio of doctors to the general population who die each year, upward of seven hundred doctors a month could expect to die from some accidental or natural cause.”

  “Granted, some of these doctor’s deaths could be explained away, but let me highlight a few more that have gone unanswered. Starting with Dr. Nicholas Gonzales, who died a month after Bradstreet’s body was uncovered. He was considered one of the preeminent authorities on curing pancreatic cancer. He advocated a protocol using detoxification, diet, and supplements, including pancreatic enzymes.”

  “Hold on a sec.” Max brought up the message app on her phone and looked for Allison’s text message, the one with the list of alternative doctors Jeff had contacted. She looked up at Sam. “Einstein, you just might be on to something. Gonzales was one of the doctors Jeff contacted in early 2015 when he was first searching for a cure. The protocol you mentioned was the same one Allison described to me and Jeff followed.” Max’s interest was suddenly heightened. “What was his cause of death?”

  “At first, it was reported that he died of a heart attack, but a preliminary autopsy found the results to be inconclusive. I couldn’t find any mention of the outcome anywhere. However, suspicions continue to swirl to this day, with some even claiming that succinylcholine, a neuromuscular paralytic drug, was injected to mimic a heart attack.”

  “Aha, the old CIA frozen-dart theory.”

  “It may not be that crazy. Gonzales wrote a book called What Went Wrong, where he exposed the sabotage of clinical trials conducted to compare his protocol against the chemotherapeutic drug called gemcitabine, which goes by the brand name Gemzar. It’s used in the treatment of pancreatic cancer. He blamed the poor trial design and implementation, along with the mismanagem
ent of two government oversight offices and their scientists. He alleged the results were manipulated to yield a negative conclusion. He went so far as to acknowledge that he was forced to use unconscious patients, who were obviously unable to swallow the almost 200 pills per day, as part of his cancer protocol. Gonzales was also heard saying on numerous occasions that ‘he thought Big PhRMA wanted him to get hit by a bus or that he might die suddenly.’”

  “Are you suggesting that Jeff’s quest for a cure may have by accident tossed him into the middle of a major cover-up?”

  “Let’s come back to that question. Listen to the woes of two more doctors and then see what you conclude. A well-respected oncologist from New York, by the name of Mitch Gaynor, and a huge proponent of alternative medicine, died on September sixteenth in the same year.”

  “And how did he die?” Max was quick to ask.

  “Suicide.”

  “What’s that make—five, six alleged suicides?” She was clearly baffled.

  “I’ve lost count, but I fear we’ve only scratched the surface. But this case in particular is a real spy thriller. Four days before his death, Gaynor was interviewed on The Big Picture by Thom Hartmann on the Russian RT news network. He was promoting his new book Gene Therapy Plan, which had been published a few months earlier. And according to Erin, he had sent a copy of his book to her around the same time.”

  “So, his life was moving in the right direction…”

  Sam noticed Max was about to expound and held up his hand to hold her off. “In November, the founder of RT, Mikhail Lesin, was beaten to death in his hotel room in Washington, DC. It was the night before he was scheduled to meet with someone at the Department of Justice. Rumor had it that the Fast and Furious AG wanted to know how the Russian propaganda machine worked and believed Lesin was a good resource.

  Max could not resist any longer. “Please, not Russian collusion again.”

  “Hey, Miss Sharpshooter, please don’t shoot the messenger. One more. In January 2016, Dr. John Marshall...”

  “Sam, I get it!” Max’s mind was spinning like a top with the number of deaths occurring in a comparatively short time span. At the same time, she was developing her own conspiracy theory. It began to mimic Erin Elizabeth’s. Then, the immortal words of Joe Friday popped into her head. Just the facts, ma’am.

  “I know this seems unbelievable, but hear this one out.” Sam gave her a moment to refocus and then continued. “As I was saying, Dr. Marshall, a surgeon at the Mann-Grandstaff Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington State, was found dead in the Spokane River the day after he went out for a morning run, never to return home. After an investigation, the Spokane Police Department reported it as an accidental drowning. But his wife, Suzanne Marshall, also a doctor, didn’t buy it and hired Ted Pulver, a private detective. The Spokesman-Review, a local publication, reported that Pulver ‘believes at least two people with military or police training grabbed Marshall, waterboarded him, killed him, and staged his body on the banks of the river in the early morning.’ There was more evidence to support his assertion. To be transparent, there were reports of marital and financial difficulties, but that would not explain the contrary opinions between the police and private investigations. You have to admit, there may be more than meets the eye.”

  “Being in the biz, I agree,” Max replied. “But you still have me hanging by the thumbs.”

  Although, a theory was crystalizing, a sudden flashback of her seated next to Daniel in the park and his threatening her to get off the case was unsettling.

  “Sam, if doctors practicing alternative medicine are being killed—and in many instances their deaths are made to look like suicide, you—we—better be right!”

  “What other conclusion is there to draw? “Sam asked.

  “But what does this have to do with Jeff?” Max demanded.

  “Remember, Jeff met with Dr. Stanislaw Burzysnki.” Sam was growing impatient.

  “Yes, but he’s alive.”

  “Surprisingly, because Burzynski is on record as having questioned the billions of dollars at stake and to what lengths Big PhRMA would go in an effort to silence those promoting natural cures.”

  “Didn’t he also say, ‘that being a holistic health care provider that promotes natural health can now be dangerous to one’s own health’?”

  “Something like that. But his Personalized Gene-Targeted Cancer Therapy was also consistent with Dr. Gaynor’s Gene Therapy—who is not alive, to make a point. But to answer your first question, I’m starting to think Jeff might have been trying to prove not only that these doctors are connected, but for the ones who met a tragic end—their deaths may be tied into the big picture.”

  Max pondered for a moment as her gut tried to steer her away from Sam’s conclusion. “Maybe that’s how it started. Or perhaps it goes back to the beginning and is somehow connected to one of his committee investigations.”

  “But?” Sam sensed there was more.

  “But, after Jeff faced his own health crisis, he may have intentionally become part of a larger battle—fighting for alternative medicine. It would pull the curtain away and put a new spotlight on ways to treat cancer. Possibly even prove that Bradstreet, Gonzales, and Burzynski were all correct.”

  Sam refocused on the wall with the faces of victims looking back. “Many of the profiles you’re looking at are medical doctors who replaced the traditional course of radiation and chemotherapy with alternative medicine. I agree some of these people were not doctors per se, but naturopaths. But they all led the pack, promoting diet and exercise as a means to treat diseases. I’ve been reading up on this stuff, and some of their cures are rather miraculous as shown in their case studies.”

  “Then it begs the question,” she emphasized. “Why would anyone be resistant to anything that could cure autism, Alzheimer’s, and a myriad of cancers?”

  “Call me a cynic, but in the words of Woodward and Bernstein, follow the money. The cancer industry is more like an industrial complex. It includes radiation and chemotherapy drugs that produced over one hundred billion dollars in revenue last year. Their profits are predicted to increase eight percent each year going forward. Reportedly, share buybacks and increased dividends for the major drug companies overshadowed their research development by a significant margin. Drug development was being supplemented by decades-old patents, at a time when drug costs were skyrocketing. Straight and to the point, I don’t see where there’s a monetary incentive for Big PhRMA to want to find a cure. After all, who would willingly empty their wallet? Problem is, there’s no way of proving it.”

  Sam had been carrying on for over an hour, listing the sad tales of doctors’ deaths, reading at times from autopsy reports, other times from the Health Nut News site—but in the end, there was still no direct motive or link to Jeff’s death. However, both he and Max conceded that somehow Big PhRMA was involved, even if only based on circumstantial inferences.

  Throughout Sam’s filibuster, Max had multitasked, jotting down a series of notes. She took a moment to study them again. Six of the names jumped off the note pad. “Hold on; I want to confirm something.” Max scooted into her office and retrieved the beekeeper’s calendar and returned within seconds.

  “What is it this time?” Sam was hoping for a breakthrough.

  “Give me a moment.” Max skimmed down the list of appointments and tallied up the numbers in her head. Then she grabbed her phone and retrieved Allison’s text message with the list of alternative medicine practitioner Jeff had contacted. “Unbelievable!”

  “Max, cut with the suspense. What gives?”

  “In the last two and a half years, Jeff contacted twenty-two of the doctors you mentioned—seventeen are dead. Sam! Eight died suspiciously—and they also met with our beekeeper. That must be the connection! One that explains why Jeff lost his life.”

  “What the frig is happening?�
� Sam sighed. Then he caught that look in her eye. “Max?”

  “I can’t shake this gnawing feeling. There’s something we’re missing.”

  “You mean separate from these deaths?”

  “Hold that thought. You want a cup of coffee?”

  “Sure thing, if you’re buying!” He needed the pick-me-up because he wasn’t processing. Either that or Max was more befuddled than he expected.

  “I’ll be right back.” Max sauntered into the kitchen to fetch the java. It also gave her a few minutes to roll a few things around in that complex brain of hers. How is Daniel, and by way of extension, the Consortium, wrapped up in this whole torrid mess? What threat could these practitioners possibly pose to the Consortium?

  Questions she could not yet bring to the discussion.

  Chapter 25

  Admissions and Denials

  Max returned with two cups of much-needed caffeine hoping it would spur them onto a finite conclusion. She handed one cup to Sam, but remained standing, contemplating the faces of the dead doctors. As the faces peered back, there was one face that was wedged in her mind; the one that shared her own flesh and blood. How can Daniel possibly be involved?

  Sam left her to ponder while trying to read her mind. Unsuccessful and unable to wait any longer, he asked, “And your conclusion is, Madame Investigator?”

  “Okay, say we assume all roads lead to Big PhRMA and the FDA, its unwitting handmaiden. But with everything we’ve uncovered, I still find it farfetched that they are intentionally fighting natural remedies that have promising results. That would be absurd and inhuman. And you have to admit they do serve a purpose. The FDA protects us at some level from toxic foods and drugs. And Big PhRMA manufactures drugs that alleviate symptoms and sometime cure, as with antibiotics. So, we can’t knock them completely.”

  “Max, are you getting soft? Look no further than your medicine cabinet. Have you seen Big PhRMA’s advertising campaign lately? It’s on steroids. They audaciously call it GoBoldly.” Sam was suddenly distracted by her rapid movements, interrupting his chance to continue.