Wayward Sons

by Wayne Stinnett

  “Why would I be in danger?”

  “You wasted a doctor working for a big company. You played with their money. They don’t like that.” He said it as if that were some kind of explanation.

  Hildon wouldn’t be after her. She was a good employee of the company; she’d put her best years and her best work into making Hildon Pharmaceuticals richer and better. Even when Flor was at her worst, she’d never called out of work more than she absolutely had to. So many of her co-workers and her bosses were more than just that—they were practically family. Lord’s sake, since neither of them had family in Puerto Rico, she’d gone to Tamara Price’s condo last Thanksgiving.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re just a prison guard.”

  “Got me there,” he said with a laugh. “But you think I do favors for anybody who asks me? Collat told me about you. Told me everything. He took you to a holding room this morning, right? And you told him about your girl and your debts and everything else?”

  The thought of Flor sent her head spinning, but she regained herself. “That has nothing to do with my job.”

  “Hildon’s lawyers called up Collat’s local station.” He paused and looked at her like that should’ve meant something more to her than the words he said. “You gotta understand that nobody calls up the station houses. They shouldn’t have known he was working on the case, but Hildon is a big company, and probably somebody owes them favors.”

  “You mean you’re taking bribes. I hope the money spends well.” She almost spat at his feet but thought better of it.

  “No one cares about paying off a prison guard,” he said with a grin. “And nobody’s dropping off bags of cash to precinct captains, so if you think that’s happening, think again. They’re just being extra nice to cops. Giving them extra work for some extra dough at a competitive rate—like running security at that big party they’re about to have.”

  The kickoff for the new campus.

  “You know how much guys are getting for that?” Officer Oliveria asked.

  “No.”

  “Twenty-five hundred. For one night of work. And that’s just the grunts I’ve talked to. I’m sure the sergeants handing out the extra work to their most loyal guys are getting at least twice as much. Probably one of them squealed to Hildon when they saw Collat bringing you in. Nobody wants to piss off Hildon before they get paid.”

  The room spun around her. She couldn’t stop it this time. She plopped down on the bed in a daze.

  “They didn’t even like Dr. Markel,” Gabriela said to herself in disbelief. “They settled a lawsuit with him. I was a good employee. I didn’t kill him.”

  “Maybe they didn’t like you as much as you thought. Maybe it’s nothing personal, and they just want to shove through this whole mess as quickly as they can. An employee killing a contractor can’t be good for business. Gotta be hurting their bottom line.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I’m going to get you some lunch. How do you feel about bologna and mustard?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Well, that’s what you’re getting.” He unlatched her handcuffs, then turned his back to walk out of the cell but stopped short. “By the way, I’ll have someone from the infirmary come take a look at those filthy bandages on your arms.”

  He walked out. A motor in the wall whined, and then the door banged shut.

  She’d almost forgotten about the wraps on her arms. Now, with nothing else to focus on in her bare, gray cell, she couldn’t stop her fingers from picking at them.

  Contacting Dr. Markel was a mistake, Lord help her. And she’d like to say she never would have called him had she known this would have happened, but she couldn’t lie to herself. Flor was too important.

  An employee murdering a researcher wasn’t a good look for Hildon. She knew that. Pharma corporations like Hildon worked tirelessly to keep a benevolent face. Their business models revolved around convincing the public that they were working toward cures and bettering mankind and whatever else they could say to keep people from digging too deep.

  A majority of the drugs “researched” by Hildon and companies like it were actually researched by smaller, independent labs like Dr. Markel’s. Those labs then turned around and sold the rights to Hildon, who then handled production and marketing.

  Getting the patent was the most important thing. A patent granted a small monopoly over a treatment for a disease, and as long as companies like Hildon followed the rules, they were perfectly within their rights to set the price to whatever they felt the market owed them for “innovating.”

  The drug Markel had developed to treat Li-Fraumeni syndrome, the drug Hildon bought the rights to, Anthradone, had an extenuating set of rules. Li-Fraumeni syndrome was a special disease—a rare disease—and treatments for rare diseases were given legal exceptions to normal drug pricing controls.

  In the end, Anthradone would probably get sold to patients for tens of thousands of dollars a treatment, maybe more than a hundred thousand. Faced with the prospect of putting down a home’s worth of money on a drug treatment would’ve put most people into a tailspin.

  Gabriela was already so far in debt, what did an extra zero or two added onto the bill really matter?

  Those extra digits only mattered to Hildon, really. They inflated the company’s value, which added to their stock price, which kept the real money coming—the money that came from investors.

  Officer Oliveria was right: this was all about protecting an image for the business. Investors didn’t like any kind of legal entanglement. The quicker Hildon sewed up this mess with Dr. Markel, the less of a threat it became to their revenue stream.

  Hildon may have been in pharmaceutical research when they started out, but they’d left it as soon as their name became an abbreviation sliding across a stock ticker. They were little more than a highly specialized bank now. One focused entirely on extracting as much money as they could from medicine.

  Gabriela Ramos’s life was nothing more than a cost-benefit analysis now. Would putting her in jail lower the company’s overhead, regardless of whether she committed a crime? Answering that question was everything now.

  Her blood boiled as her fingernails dug deeper into her palms. She had only just noticed the drop of blood that fell onto the top of her pale sneakers. She unclenched her hands, and stared at her wet, red palms.

  The Lord would guide her. The Lord would save her. He could not let the unrighteous destroy Flor like this.

  Angel of God, my guardian dear.

  “I’m going up to the marina,” I said as I came through the salon door and onto the cockpit. Alicia looked up at me from her spot on the couch, Flor’s eyes glanced in my direction, then scurried away.

  “Are you going for a run?” Alicia’s ability to read me outmatched my own. A run sounded good. A run was what I needed.

  I pulled my sneakers out of the compartment next to the swim platform gate, put them on, then hopped off the swim platform and onto the dock. “I’ll be back.”

  A jog would cool me off. Exercise usually did. I spent most of my free time jogging or swimming or snorkeling. I was always a three-sports kid growing up. Football in the fall, wrestling in the winter, lacrosse in the spring. It kept me even. Kept me focused.

  I leaned up against the nearest post, stretched one quad, got too impatient to stretch the other, then took off at a trot. My body slowed and focused on doing a job, shedding the jitters like a drunk steadying his hand to toss back his first nip of the day.

  The dock pilings vibrated as I cleared them, one after another after another. A colony of gulls wheeled overhead, as if worried about the trouble they smelled coming off me. I ignored them, letting them disappear in the soupy air as I ran up the dock steps, then through the marina parking lot.

  While my legs carried me, my mind wandered. It replayed my phone call with DJ, wondered what Gabriela was doing at this moment, and visited the ghosts of six men who were behind everything I did now. My strides lengthened, m
y pace intensified and before I knew it, I found myself running full bore along the shoulder of a road I didn’t recognize, my pulse driving up and down my body like a sonar sweep.

  I stopped. I wasn’t aware how long I’d been running. My T-shirt stuck to me from collarbone to navel, my legs throbbed, and my feet hummed. I planted my hands on my knees, fighting to catch my breath for the first time since DJ’d hung up on me.

  When I brought my eyes up and surveyed the craggy green hills taken hostage by stretches of flat scrubland, the liar in me said running up those hills and hiding in another of Puerto Rico’s low, concrete houses would be easy. I was healthy, just this side of thirty, with a bank account that could tend my physical needs until I died decades from now.

  Meanwhile, I’d spend the next fifty or so years locked in the worst agony I could possibly experience. I wasn’t cast as a hermit. I owed too many people. So, I turned around and ran back.

  At the marina office, I threw open the front door, then turned right and grabbed the first cell to catch my attention. I didn’t notice the brand or care about the features. I just needed something that could make calls, take pictures, and wasn’t in pieces across our bedroom. I’d order a new sat phone and have it shipped from the States. Maybe a few of them, the way I went through them.

  The same girl from before worked the register. I approached, then dropped the phone on the counter between us.

  “How was the run, Mr. Snyder?”

  “Therapeutic.” I was still out of breath, but my head was clearer.

  New phone in hand, I made for the door. No matter how far I ran, this wasn’t going away, and work waited for me on Wayward.

  I walked down to my boat, thinking about my next move. DJ was out of the picture now. All I could do was let him disappear. Collat might be some help, but I had to take care not to go back to that well too soon, or I was sure, as Bob Marley said, “the bottom a-go drop out.”

  Why had that song sprung into my consciousness? When I lived in California, I assumed his music was primarily Jamaican, but all through the Caribbean, people seemed to see him as a mystic of some kind. And lately, some of his words had taken on new meaning. In that particular song, the sheriff had harassed Bob over and over, as habitual as going to the well each morning. Then one day, he’d had enough—the bottom fell out of the bucket—and he shot the sheriff.

  Who did that leave me? Stockwell? I didn’t want him involved. Not this early into my work with Armstrong. If I gained a reputation of incompetence, I was as good as done.

  Gabriela? What was she going to do for me?

  I looked up to see my wife standing in Wayward’s cockpit, waiting for me. “Good to have you back.”

  “You can’t get rid of me that easily.” I handed her the package with the cell phone, then came aboard the swim platform. “Where’s Flor?”

  “Tired.” A spark of anguish played across her face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I knew you weren’t feeling right when you woke up, so I didn’t want to put this on you…” Her words trailed off.

  I wrapped my arms around my wife and pulled her close. She didn’t care about my sweaty shirt. Her little hands rubbed my shoulder blades, and she kissed my neck, then I let my arms slacken. The tension was like pebbles under her skin.

  “What if we don’t bring Gabriela out again?” Alicia’s jaw trembled.

  The only response I had was wrapping my arms around her shoulders and pulling her close again. Between the straps of her tank top, Alicia’s flesh was smooth and firm and her ribs trembled against my waist. Her hand clutched the top of my shoulder, and she buried her face against my neck.

  A string of heat unfurled down my chest. One of her tears. I stroked her silky blond hair.

  “I don’t quit until Gabriela is out of jail,” I finally said. “That’s a promise.”

  “Flor’s not eating. She misses her mother.” Alicia kept her cheek against me. “She’s already so little. She said the doctors told her she was done with chemo and radiation, but what if her nerves get her now?”

  “I shouldn’t have asked you to do this,” I said. “It’s too much.”

  Alicia pulled away from me. My arms were still locked around her, but there was space between us. Her eyes locked on mine. “I’m here because I want to be here.”

  I kissed her on the forehead. “You’re right,” I said, then kissed her again.

  “This hasn’t been easy on you, either.”

  “This is new for all of us.”

  Alicia laughed. “Is that doubt I hear?”

  This time, I backed away and stared at her.

  “It’s just funny,” she said. “All that training you did? The guy who used to tell me,” she took a step back from me and swelled out her chest and arms, “‘I’m Special Forces. I’m a Jack-of-all-trades, master of none. I can jump out of airplanes, run a swift boat, survive outdoors as long as I want, do surgery with a couple sticks, and shoot a hole in a dime.’”

  She’d deepened her voice, too.

  “That’s not a brag,” I said. “I can do all those things. And more.”

  “And you, Jeremiah Arlen Giuseppe Snyder the Third, can do this too.” She tapped my chest.

  I knew she was right.

  “You didn’t have to say my middle names out loud.”

  She rolled her eyes. Then she put her arms around my shoulders and kissed me. “Giuseppe is a cute name.”

  “That’s not the one I don’t like.”

  “I had to annoy you just the right amount to snap you out of whatever funk you’re in,” she said. “And don’t tell me you aren’t. I saw you run up that dock.”

  Why bother denying it? She’d get it out of me eventually, anyway.

  “It’s DJ,” I said. “He’s the human equivalent of stepping on the neighbor’s dog’s turd.”

  She laughed. “At least he’s good for a surprise. Keeps life interesting.”

  I nodded. “He said he found the man who burnt down the Markels’ house.”

  Alicia wrinkled her brow and blinked at me. “Shouldn’t we go help him, then?”

  “I’d like to, but he’s drunk, Alicia. He’s been at a bar all day.”

  “With the guy he arrested?”

  “We don’t have the power to arrest.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Detain, hold for the police, whatever.”

  I grinned. “I don’t think he’s arrested him yet—I don’t know if he’s even seen the guy.” I stepped past my wife, toward the steps up to the flybridge. “I can’t count on DJ’s help. We’ve got a little girl in there,” I motioned toward the salon, “with her mother in jail, and the man I need to arrest in order to prove she’s innocent and get her out is—”

  I shook my head, ending my thought.

  “Out there somewhere?” She leaned against the stairs, and a corner of her mouth slid toward her ear. “You did this job before DJ. We can do it without him.”

  We had to. If DJ wanted to drown himself, that was his choice. Man-to-man, I wouldn’t intervene. It’d be hard, and I had a sense that fixing this whole mess would take a miracle, but I’d do it.

  I came off the steps, then flopped down into the cockpit couch, my arms and legs suddenly heavy.

  “Things are different from what we thought they’d be, aren’t they?” Alicia turned her chin up, her eyes studying the underside of the cockpit awning. “Guess that’s the way it’s always been.”

  She brought her eyes to mine and grinned at me.

  I chuckled and smiled right back at her. “Sticking to a plan isn’t really my thing.”

  Which reminded me of Arlen. I hadn’t told Alicia that he’d called me. The moment that realization popped into my head, my smile faded.

  “What?” Alicia asked.

  “There’s something else I need to tell you.”

  She broke contact with the stairs and took a slow step toward me.

  “Arlen called me yesterday.” I didn’t want to let t
he words out. As if not saying it would keep it from being true. “He’s in Puerto Rico.”

  Alicia’s mouth flexed into a thin line. “Why?”

  I spat out a bitter laugh. “Why does Arlen ever do anything? He’s got a business interest in Hildon Pharmaceuticals.”

  The tension in Alicia’s lips spread across her face. Then she took a breath through her nose, puffed her cheeks up and blew out the air. “That’s okay,” she said. “What’s another curve ball? We don’t need to worry about him right now. We can keep clear of Arlen. No matter what he thinks or says, he doesn’t get a say in your life, Jerry. He never has, right?”

  I knew that. But so did he. It never stopped him from trying.

  “Jerry?”

  I brought my face up, meeting Alicia a step in front of me. She put her hands on my shoulders.

  “Maybe you should take a minute, and—”

  “No, I’ve already taken a whole day. We need to get going.”

  I didn’t know exactly where we needed to go, but it had to be somewhere away from here. I started to rise to my feet when Alicia’s hands clamped onto me, keeping me on the couch.

  “Maybe you should take a minute,” she repeated, “and call Gene.”

  I tilted my head. “Gene? Why?”

  Alicia ran her fingers through my hair. “It’s okay to ask for help when you’re lost.”

  I sank onto the couch in Wayward’s salon, my legs throbbing from the run, but my head cleared. Without DJ’s cooperation, I had to figure out my own way forward. Getting Gabriela out of jail was my first priority, meaning I had to prove her innocence, which I would do even if I had to nab our suspect out from under DJ.

  A knife sat on the counter to my right. I grabbed it, then sliced open the package with our new cell phone and its charger. No sooner did I have it open than I realized I needed a SIM card before I could call Gene. I went down to the master stateroom.

  The sat phone lay in pieces on the bed like little rips in the image I had of myself. I gathered the pieces together, laying them on the foot of the bed, and wondered where I got off warning DJ about flying off the handle when I did something like this?