Natural Causes

by Michael Palmer

  There was a small anteroom near where the Huron truck was parked. Matt glanced around for the driver, and then rolled along the wall and peered in the window. The space was empty save for two freezers, both top-opening. Each had Huron Pharmaceuticals painted across the front, in letters identical to those on the truck. Neither appeared locked.

  A final check around him, and Matt slipped inside. The half-glassed door from the anteroom to the main building was closed. Through it, Matt could see twenty or more women, each at a work station, filling shipping boxes with what he assumed were the components of the Ayurvedic Herbal Weight Loss System. He backed away from the door and moved to the freezer that was out of the line of sight of any of the women. KEEP VITAMINS FROZEN UNTIL SHIPMENT was stenciled on the lid. Carefully he twisted the handle to one side and eased up the heavy lid. The fitted rack, containing sheets of vitamin capsules, completely filled the space just beneath the lid. Matt studied the sheets for a moment. They were identical to those Sarah had received from Annalee Ettinger. Each contained ninety capsules—a three-month supply. He was about to lower the freezer lid when, for no particular reason, he lifted one of the racks.

  The body beneath it, a man’s, lay serenely on its back. Eyes open, it was staring sightlessly up at Matt. It was dressed in a dark business suit and red silk tie, and fit into the freezer with no more than an inch or two to spare at each end. Its hands and bronze, mustached face were covered by a thin film of rime. But Matt had no difficulty recognizing the man. He had seen him a number of times on videotape and had wondered about him often over recent weeks.

  Pramod Singh, the X-factor in the Ayurvedic puzzle, was a factor no more.

  Suddenly queasy, Matt lowered the freezer lid and wiped off the handle with his jacket. Then he slipped out the back door and braced himself against the building, breathing deeply and deliberately, fighting the vision and the nausea. Sarah nearly murdered. Colin Smith and Pramod Singh dead. Peter Ettinger either guilty of killing them or, more likely, set up to look guilty. Someone was tying up loose ends in a hurry. Someone was panicking.

  Relax, Matt said to himself. Just get the hell out of here and back to Sarah.

  He sensed the presence behind him an instant before he saw the shadow on the wall—the shadow of an arm, slashing downward toward his head. He began to react, but way, way too late. An object, heavy and unyielding, slammed onto a spot just behind his right ear. His teeth snapped together as paralyzing pain exploded through his head and into his neck. The last thing he saw was the ground, careening up toward his face.

  CHAPTER 40

  ROSA SUAREZ HAD JUST PASSED THE GLOUCESTER ROTARY at the end of Route 128 when the Medical Center’s ancient Chevy wagon began handling strangely. She sped up, wondering if perhaps she had snagged a branch. But the problem only worsened. Cursing softly in Spanish, she pulled over. As things were, she had gotten off to a much later start than she had wanted. If Martha Fezler closed her shop early for any reason, the day, and possibly the whole weekend, would be lost. She carefully folded the map that was spread open on the passenger seat and slid across. Chastising herself for not renting instead of borrowing the wagon, she stepped out onto the soft shoulder and into the hazy midafternoon glare. The problem, it was immediately apparent, was the right rear tire, which was shredded and hanging off the rim in spots.

  Rosa had never in her life changed a tire. She opened the rear door and located the jack and the spare. Then she retrieved the owner’s manual from beneath a stack of repair receipts in the glove compartment. If the procedure seemed clear to her, she decided, she would give it a try. If not, she would risk flagging someone down.

  She returned to the rear of the wagon, engrossed in the instruction manual.

  “Hi.”

  The man’s greeting startled her so, she dropped the instruction book.

  He was standing a few feet away, arms folded, grinning kindly. He was in his late twenties, Rosa guessed, with a fine, handsome face and wire-rimmed glasses. He wore a woolen seaman’s cap and a dark windbreaker. His car was parked twenty or so feet behind hers, its hazard lights flashing.

  “Sorry if I frightened you,” he said. “I just stopped to see if you needed a hand.”

  Rosa took a calming breath, assured herself that her heart was still beating, and retrieved the manual.

  “Oh, my,” she said, patting her chest. “You did startle me, yes. But I thank you for stopping. It’s very kind of you. As a matter of fact, if I change this tire myself, it will be a first for me.”

  “I’d be happy to do it for you.”

  The man came forward and pulled out the jack and spare. He walked with a fairly marked limp, caused by his left leg, which seemed not to bend at the knee at all. She hoped the problem was nothing permanent.

  “An old college football injury,” he said, setting the jack in place. “I often wish I could have that moment back.”

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t mean to be staring.”

  “You weren’t, really. It’s just that I notice things. Except that I didn’t notice that linebacker. If I had dodged to the left instead of to the right, who knows where my life might have gone? You heading into Gloucester?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am. Are you from there?”

  “Temporarily. I’m a biologist with the Department of Marine Fisheries. We’re doing a lobster project up here.”

  “How interesting. I’m a scientist with the government, too. An epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control.”

  “Atlanta’s a nice place,” he said. “Although a little hot for my taste. One hint in changing a tire is always to loosen the lugs before you jack up the car. It makes everything much easier and safer. Where’re you headed in Gloucester?”

  “A place called Fezler Marine.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  The man took off his cap and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. His hair was the color of the sun. He had all the physical attributes of a movie star or a model, Rosa noted. Yet here he was, a highly educated scientist. She was impressed.

  “It’s on Breen Street,” she added.

  “Never heard of that either,” he said, jiggling the spare into place and spinning the lugs back on. “Maybe I should pay more attention to where I’m living.”

  “I suspect you have more important things on your mind. I’d like to pay you for helping me. I’m very—”

  “Nonsense. I could use a cup of coffee, though, if you’d like.”

  “I’m sorry. I would very much like to learn about your work. But I really must get going. I’m terribly late.”

  “Hey, no problem. My name’s Darryl. It’s been a pleasure.”

  “Rosa,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

  The man smiled warmly, shook her hand, and then hobbled back to his car and drove off. Rosa glanced at her watch. Fifteen minutes was all it had taken.

  “Díos hace las cosas,” she said as she slid back behind the wheel, and headed into Gloucester. God provides.

  Two sets of service station directions and two missed turns later, Rosa found Breen Street. It was tucked among a tangle of narrow waterfront byways that were paved, but were probably still laid out exactly as they were when the Revolutionary War began. Fezler’s Marine Railway and Automotive was a huge, decaying, shingled barn, flanked by two equally dilapidated wooden warehouses. The whole area seemed like a tinderbox—a conflagration just waiting to happen. Rosa drove nearly two blocks away before she found a street wide enough for parking.

  Both of the large street-side doors, and a smaller entrance just around the corner of the building, were closed. Rosa knocked once, waited, knocked again, waited, and finally entered, shutting the door behind her. It was as if she had taken a step back in time.

  The inside of Fezler’s Marine Railway was as cluttered and dimly lit as it was spacious. Tools, some fairly modern, many antique, filled the barnside walls. Lines and chains and hauling blocks of various sizes hung everywhere. The atm
osphere was heavy with the pungent odor of oil, grease, and gasoline. To one side of the shop was a large rolltop desk, cluttered with invoices, magazines, and catalogs. Above the rolltop was the same calendar Rosa had seen in Elsie Richardson’s bedroom. From somewhere on the far side of the shop, classical music was playing. Almost certainly Mozart, Rosa thought.

  “Hello?” she called out.

  No one responded. There was an enclosed loft on the water side, accessed by an open staircase that climbed up one wall. Rosa glanced upward at the moment someone closed the door at the top of the stairs.

  “Hello,” she called again. “Is anyone here?”

  “In the back,” a gravelly voice hollered.

  Rosa followed the voice toward the music and the water. The huge doors at the rear of the building were open to the harbor. A set of steel rails rose up from the water, cut through an opening in a narrow platform, and leveled off on the floor of the shop. Two feet above the tracks hung a large marine engine. It was suspended perhaps thirty feet from the ceiling by a complicated series of pulleys and lines. Standing beside the engine, working on it, was a woman. She was not impressively tall, but she was physically imposing in almost every other respect. Big was the only word that came to Rosa’s mind. Not fat. Not even heavy—although she most certainly was that. Just big. Her broad shoulders and back splayed the straps of her grease-stained bib overalls. The sleeves of her black T-shirt were stretched to the limit by her arms. Her hair, beneath a Mobil cap, was tied back in a short ponytail.

  “Welcome,” she said. She glanced up at Rosa just long enough to size her up and then returned her attention to the engine.

  “I’m looking for Martha Fezler,” Rosa said.

  “You found her.” She loosened several bolts and dropped them into a coffee can half filled with an acrid-smelling liquid. “Fezler’s famous degreaser,” she explained. “Gasoline, boric acid, and just the right amount of saliva.” She looked up at Rosa again, smiled mischievously, and winked. “The boom box is over there by the stairs. Feel free to turn it down if you want me to hear what you have to say.”

  Rosa did as the woman requested. When she returned, Martha Fezler had taken hold of a heavy, oil-stained line and was hoisting the massive engine up over her head.

  “How heavy is that?” Rosa asked.

  “Without the reverse gear? Oh, two-fifty, three hundred maybe.”

  “I’m very impressed.”

  “No need to be. With the block and fall setup I have here, I could lift two of these at once if I ever really wanted to or had to.… At least I think I could.”

  She wrapped the greasy line just a single time around a cleat on the wall and tucked a loop under to secure it. Rosa could not believe what she was witnessing.

  “Just that one loop will hold it up there?” Rosa asked as the woman reached overhead and loosened the oil pan.

  “Will if no one messes with it,” Martha said. “And since I work alone here, no one does.”

  Her moonish face was unlined and open. And although her manner was brusque and her voice like sandpaper, there was an appealing quality to her. Rosa introduced herself.

  “Miss Fezler, I need your help,” she said.

  “It’s Martha. And unless you’ve got car or boat trouble, I don’t see how I can—”

  “Martha, I need to find your brother Warren. It’s very, very urgent.”

  Martha lowered her hands and wiped them with a towel that seemed incapable of absorbing any more grease. For just a moment, Rosa thought she was going to deny having a brother and demand that she leave. Then, just as quickly, the woman’s expression changed.

  “Maybe we ought to go sit down,” she said. “Would you like some coffee?”

  The small, metal-top table overlooked the placid harbor from a spot just to one side of the rails. Seated across from Martha Fezler, Rosa traced her involvement in the DIC cases from her arrival at the Medical Center of Boston, through her discovery of Constanza Hidalgo’s diary, and finally to Ken Mulholland, and their efforts to pin down the source of the virus CRV113.

  “I believe that somehow the women I have been investigating became infected with the virus that your brother created,” she concluded. “It is quite possible that some component of this diet powder they all were taking was contaminated. I don’t know. I hope Warren does. Once the virus got into the women, their natural defenses battled back, but never completely eliminated it. It remained in balance with their bodies, until the stress of labor upset that balance.”

  “How many women have died from this?”

  “Two that we know of. And their babies. A third woman—the one we cultured the virus from—lost her baby and almost died. I fear she is not going to be the last case, Martha. That’s why I need to find your brother.”

  Martha Fezler stared out at the water and the lengthening afternoon shadows. Finally she handed a pencil and notepad to Rosa.

  “Write down your name, where you come from, the name of the virus, and the name of that disease,” she said. She waited until Rosa had complied, then tore off the sheet and slipped it into her overall pocket. “Wait here,” she said.

  She lumbered up the staircase and disappeared through the door to the loft. Rosa doodled absently on the pad as she watched a pair of gulls do strident battle over a mussel. Only when she glanced down did she realize that she was shading in the carefully blocked letters BART.

  Five minutes passed. Once Rosa swore she heard Martha Fezler shouting. The gulls resolved their dispute and glided off across the harbor. Finally the loft door opened and Warren Fezler emerged, followed by his sister. He was even slighter than Rosa remembered from the time he dashed past her on the MCB campus. Compared to him, Martha looked positively hulking. He approached Rosa and smiled sheepishly.

  “S-sorry I’ve given you s-such a hard time,” he said. “I’ve been v-very frightened.”

  He took the seat opposite Rosa. Martha brought over another folding chair and settled onto it, facing the tracks.

  “Warren says it’s okay if I stay for this,” she said.

  “That’s fine,” Rosa replied. “Believe me, Warren, coming forward is the right thing to do.”

  “Even if I g-get k-killed?”

  “We’ll have to see to it that doesn’t happen. When my department head finds out what’s going on, you’ll get all the protection you need. If I’m right, Warren, others have already died from this virus. There’s a good chance that by coming forward, you may save a lot of lives.”

  “I honestly d-didn’t know it was hurting anyone. He said that D-Dr. B-Baldwin caused their problem. N-not the virus.”

  “Who’s he, Warren?”

  Warren Fezler rubbed at his eyes, which looked flat and tired. He turned to Martha, who gave an encouraging nod.

  “Blankenship,” he said, suddenly. “Eli B-Blankenship.”

  Rosa stared at him incredulously. Blankenship! The one person aside from Sarah and Matt Daniels whom she had trusted with all her information. She felt a sick, empty churning beginning in her gut.

  “Explain,” she said.

  “I s-stutter a lot. I’m s-sorry.”

  “There’s nothing to apologize for, Warren. Don’t even think about it. Just tell me about CRV113 and Eli Blankenship.”

  “If I sp-speak slowly, it’s not as bad.”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  Fezler took a calming breath. In fact, when he did begin to speak again, he seemed more composed and fluent.

  “The CRV s-stands for coagulation-related virus. I stumbled on its weight loss p-property by accident. I th-think it’s due to some sort of gene that’s closely linked on the chromosome to one of the ones I w-was working on. The linked gene interferes with the digestion and cellular storage of fat by blocking a specific enzyme. In isolating my clotting genes from their chromosomes, I apparently cut away the genes that provide the checks and balances on the fat-inhibiting one. My m-monkeys began losing weight. A lot of them died. After I realized wha
t was happening with them, I p-played around with the inoculum size and some other stuff. They stopped dying, and just lost weight—right down to dry weight. F-finally I ingested the virus myself. It w-worked perfectly. I l-lost a hundred pounds in just a f-few months with no p-problem and absolutely no side effects.”

  “But Cletus Collins said all your monkeys died.”

  “I—I’m ashamed to say it, but I k-killed them m-myself to protect the secret. It was B-Blankenship’s idea. We were classmates in graduate school. He has an M.D. I have b-both an M.D. and Ph.D. I s-swear I n-never thought anyone would get hurt. You’ve g-got to believe that.”

  “She does, Warren,” Martha said sadly. “Just go on.”

  “I t-told Eli about the virus and what I h-had found. He said we could get very rich from it. There were two p-problems, though.”

  Already, for Rosa, the final pieces had dropped into place.

  “The patent,” she said.

  “Exactly. B-BIO-Vir owns the virus.”

  “And I guess the second would be the FDA.”

  “You’re very s-smart,” Fezler said.

  Rosa thought about how much she had shared with Eli Blankenship—especially over the past two days.

  “Not so smart,” she said. “So, Blankenship concocted the Herbal Weight Loss powder to avoid any lengthy research protocol with the FDA.”

  “Which they w-would n-never have approved of anyhow. Eli set up the whole thing. He’s incredibly b-brilliant. But he’s a demon. He’s a liar, and he’s v-very, very secretive. No one involved ever knew w-what anyone else was doing. N-not Singh, not Ettinger, not Paris, n-not even me.”

  “None of them knew about the virus?”

  “Just me … and Eli.”

  “But it’s in the diet powder.”

  “N-no. Not in the powder. In the vitamins. One of the vitamin capsules—n-number nine—is different f-from the rest. I made them myself in a lab Eli s-set up for me. At first I believed him about D-Dr. Baldwin being responsible for those women. Then I b-began to have doubts. I got f-frightened about what we w-were doing. Especially with s-so many people buying the p-powder.”