Burnout (Goosey Larsen Book 1)

by James Vachowski

  I nodded one more time, but stopped when I noticed that no one else in the group was.

  Brewer went on. “At first it looked as if Smithson might have broken in looking for some ‘scripts, but then trashed the place when he couldn’t find any. And as far as the fire, well, I got the impression that the dude just plain went crazy and tried to burn the place down.”

  That sounded just about right, but I could tell by the way everyone was looking at me that it wasn’t. “So what am I missing here?”

  Brewer grabbed one of the file folders up off of the floor and handed it over to me. “Take a look at this. I might’ve missed it completely if I hadn’t slipped on all this crap and damn near fell right on top of it.”

  I opened the file and thumbed through some kind of medical record from one of Demming’s patients. It looked like a treatment log that had been updated on a daily basis, with the last entry being the previous Sunday. I flipped back to the first page in the file and saw that the entry had been made on January 3rd, apparently at the beginning of treatment.

  I looked back at Agent Brewer and shrugged my shoulders.

  He stepped over a pile of papers to close the folder, then tapped a thick finger at the name written on the index tab.

  James Smithson.

  The realization took a second to hit me, but when it did it hit hard. I thought back to the day before, when I’d shown Doctor Demming the flyer with Smithson’s photo. His reaction hadn’t made sense then, but I was finally starting to understand. I looked up from the file and saw that all the faces in our circle had turned toward me. “So James Smithson was actually one of Doctor Demming’s patients?”

  Big Jim harrumphed a thick cough into his sweaty hand. “It looks that way, Goosey. We should finally be able to start piecing this puzzle together in a couple of minutes. Look, here come de’ judge.”

  He pointed back down the hallway to where Powers and Geary were showing Judge Martins in. The judge was dressed for casual Friday, wearing a flannel shirt, old blue jeans and a pair of waterproof duck boots. From the looks of his outfit we must have interrupted his plans to sneak out early for a long weekend with the boys.

  I turned back to the group. “Why do we need a judge?”

  If I’d previously suspected that Agent Mackenzie had been talking down to me, the look of amazement he gave me removed any doubt. He shot me a dirty look before saying, “James Smithson had been reported missing back in January, but according to that patient record he’d been here the entire time.”

  I nodded, waiting for him to go on.

  Mackenzie’s look of condescension shifted to one of absolute frustration. “Detective Larsen, your patrol officers entered this building along with the fire department under exigent circumstances. You do know what exigent circumstances are, don’t you?”

  What a jackass, I thought to myself as I did my best to tune him out. Any rookie fresh out of the Academy knows what exigent circumstances are, just a fancy term for the word “emergency.” Given the situation, I knew I probably should’ve given him another submissive nod, but I just couldn’t bring myself to knuckle under again. In the end, I decided to hit Agent Mackenzie with a silent stare while he gave me a refresher course on legal procedure.

  He sighed. “Your patrol officers had no choice but to enter this hallway. What with the fire and the smoke, there was an imminent danger to anyone who might have been trapped inside. Their duty was to clear the building and make that no one else was in harm’s way. Are we tracking?”

  I wasn’t, but I still said “Okay.”

  “Then, once the patrolmen saw that the office had been burglarized, they naturally assumed that Doctor Demming was the intended victim so the pursuit of drugs seemed the most likely motive. You’re still with me?” He nodded his head up and down slowly, as if he was trying to prompt me to do the same thing. I did, following his lead even if I couldn’t follow his reasoning.

  “Okay, great. So that’s why DEA Agent Brewer was called in, and why he had to go inside to investigate what we thought was the crime. He slipped on the papers, fell, and that’s when he saw the dead arson suspect’s name printed on a patient file. All of that was in plain view where Brewer had a legal right to be, so it’s all legally admissible. Right?”

  Mackenzie gave me the encouraging head nod prompt again, but I’d had just about enough of his crap. I knew there was something wrong with the whole deal because of the way all the cops had been huddling up like they were all getting their stories straight. I’d shown up too late to have done anything wrong, so I dropped all my politeness and cut him off cold. “Look, what’s up with the legal play by play? If Smithson really did do all of this, what does it matter now? He’s dead!”

  Mackenzie’s face finally went red with fury, and he probably would’ve went into a rage if Big Jim hadn’t spoken up from behind me. “Take a look at some of those other files down there, Goosey.”

  I held Mackenzie’s stare for another moment, then stepped over some loose charts and printouts. There were almost a dozen files strewn across the floor, so I bent over and snatched one of them up. Once I saw the name on the filing tab, I froze.

  Encienario, Leonard. The accidental drowning case on Monday morning.

  I felt dizzy. The room was spinning and for the first time in a long while, it wasn’t because I was hung over. As soon as I’d managed to catch my breath, I looked down at the rest of the files. The other names were mostly strangers, but my heart fluttered when I saw McGurn’s name sticking out.

  After a few more seconds, my pulse rate slowed down enough for me to speak so I took a few deep breaths and tried to hold my composure. “So…all of them were Doctor Demming’s patients?”

  Big Jim stepped forward. “That’s right, Goosey. And by the looks of this mess, there’s still a lot more people out there.”

  “But…why didn’t he just tell me that?”

  Mackenzie spoke up again. He had switched to a softer tone of voice, which almost made it seem like he had calmed down some. “That’s what we’d like to find out. Lieutenant Cobb already filled us in on your recent cases. Counting Smithson, that makes three missing people who all died on this campus in the same week. Each of them went missing right around late December or early January too. Now after seeing this,” he swept his hand over the mess, “we’ve also found that all of the dead men were being treated by Doctor Demming. It’s still all circumstantial, but highly suspicious to say the least.”

  Big Jim growled, “That unknown chemical Katie Maslow found during McGurn’s and Encienario’s autopsies? How much you want to bet she’ll find it in Smithson’s blood too?” The way he asked made it seem more like a point of fact than an actual question.

  “So Demming lied to my face.”

  Mackenzie nodded. “It looks that way.”

  I cursed and kicked the wall behind me. I knew that uppity prick had been holding out on me, but I just hadn’t been able to pin down what he’d been hiding. I let out a loud sigh as I tried to collect my thoughts. “So, what do we do now?”

  Agent Mackenzie jerked his head at Judge Martins, who was holding a piece of paper against Powers’ back and scribbling his signature. “As soon as he signs off on the search warrant, we’ll form up and dig through this paperwork piece by piece.”

  “What do we need the warrant for?”

  “Just in case this thing ends up in court a couple years down the road. Add it up, Larsen: we’ve got three men, all missing, all patients of Doctor Demming’s and now, all dead. At the very least, all this might make for a pretty high-profile negligence case. I’ll bet anything that the victims’ families will get the ball rolling on a civil lawsuit before the end of next week.”

  I grumbled at the thought of having to deal with pushy media types, corrupt lawyers and distraught family members all at the same time. “That’s at the least, you said? So what’s the worst case scenario?”

  He gave me a grim look. “These men were supposedly volunteers for a rese
arch study, but did any of them tell their families where they were going? Did any of them have contact with the outside world during the past four months?”

  I shook my head. “Not that I know of.”

  Mackenzie put his hand on his chin. “A prosecutor might take a look at those facts and see Demming as some kind of white-collar kidnapper.”

  I’d almost forgotten that Squealer was still there, he’d been so quiet, but that little rat let loose a little chirp of excitement that made my jaw clench in annoyance. Big Jim turned to give him a look of disgust that went unnoticed since Squealer had already ducked behind his camera and started snapping photos of the whole mess.

  Once Judge Martins had finished signing the search warrant, he handed it to Powers and rushed out the door before anyone could stop him. Powers handed the warrant over to Big Jim and joined our little group in the process. I looked past him to watch Geary leading an entire squad of CPD detectives down the hallway, including a bleary-eyed Chadwick Lyons and Debbie Carlson with her fat ass in tow. A few more feet behind them, Clyde Edwards was shuffling along with his eyes cast down to his loafers. I’d never really been impressed with Geary’s work before, but anyone who could pry Clyde Edwards away from his desk was worthy of at least a grudging respect.

  The hallway was getting a little cramped, so I nodded at Jim and said in a low voice, “Boss, I’ve got to get some air.”

  He gave me a pat on the shoulder. “We’ve got more than enough people here, Goosey. Go ahead and I’ll meet you in a few minutes.”

  As I headed for the door, Debbie Carlson shot me an evil look as I shouldered past. I made a mental note of her expression, and also to steal her folding chair if I beat that witch back to the station.

  20.

  I pushed open the double doors and took in a deep breath of the muggy morning air. The fire trucks and traffic cops had already pulled off, and the block seemed much more peaceful. There were still a handful of unmarked cruisers parked up and down Courtenay Street, but the few pedestrians walking by weren’t paying them any mind. It was almost as if no one cared about James Smithson, and the world was moving on unchecked.

  I pulled up a seat on the curb and tried to get my thoughts together, going over everything that had happened and everything I’d done. I rehashed my actions while I wondered if I could’ve done anything better, but again and again I kept hitting dead ends. My mind was wandering too much for me to concentrate, and I kept coming back to thinking about how I was wasting my life slaving away at the Department while rich jerks like Doctor Demming played by their own set of rules.

  I sat there and watched the people passing by for a little while longer. It could’ve been fifteen minutes or it could’ve been an hour before Big Jim came outside and parked his rear end on the curb next to me. He was quiet at first, but naturally the silence didn’t last long. “It looks like the Feebs are going to have one hell of a case against Demming.”

  I nodded, but couldn’t find any words that needed to be said.

  Jim pulled a stack of papers out of a file folder and handed them over. “Read this.”

  I wasn’t in a reading mood so I just gave the first page a quick skim. The title said, “Contract for Services” and it looked like some kind of agreement between Doctor Demming and this company called PharmaCor. “Yeah, boss, Demming told me he does research for drug companies. So what?”

  Jim reached over and flipped to the fifth or sixth page down in the stack. He tapped his index finger against the paper, leaving a grease stain about halfway down the page on a section marked “Compensation.” I scanned the paragraph and tried not to move my lips too much as I read, but my progress came to a dead stop once I saw the amount they’d listed for a completion bonus. Twenty million bucks, all contingent on government approval of some drug called CRX.

  I let out a low whistle before I flipped back to the first page and started re-reading through the contract, with a lot more interest this time. Big Jim just sat there quietly until I’d finished and looked back up at him. “So this is it, then? Demming was doing research for PharmaCor’s new drug?”

  He nodded. “They’re still going through it inside, but the whole thing’s finally starting to make sense. That narc Brewer was explaining how big the stakes are with those pharmaceutical companies. One new wonder drug like Viagra could mean billions in profits, so it’s a cutthroat business. The big name companies are always spying on each other, trying to steal information and get ahead.”

  I snorted. “Sounds just like CPD at promotion time.”

  Jim smiled. “We found a stack of non-disclosure agreements that were signed by the patients, fifteen in all. These guys weren’t even allowed to tell anyone they were participating in the study.”

  I chewed on my lip for a moment. “Which explains why all of them suddenly up and vanished.” As he nodded, a horrible thought crossed my mind. “Wait, Jim, you said there were fifteen patients total. We’ve only got three dead right now, at least that’s all we know of. What about the other twelve?”

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “I think they’re probably all okay. Powers found a list of room assignments for all the other participants in the study. It looks like Demming must have checked them into long-term care at the hospital’s Institute of Psychiatry using false names, so the nurses would think they were all just ordinary basket cases. We’ve got campus security heading over there now to check it out.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. I thought back to Tuesday, when Miriam Smith hadn’t been able to find Leonard Encienario’s name in her database. Finally, all the pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together.

  Big Jim gave me a moment before he said, “You okay, Goosey?”

  I swallowed and nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Come on back inside then. Who knows what those Feebs have managed to screw up since we’ve been lounging around out here.”

  We stood up and walked back toward the main entrance. Even with all of the answers we’d found, I still couldn’t come up with anything other than more questions. “Jim, what was Demming studying? I mean, what could possibly have been so important that all these guys abandoned their families to be here?”

  “Well, we’ve gotten a little further through Doctor Demming’s paperwork. The drug he was testing, CRX, I guess, was PharmaCor’s latest medication. Looks like they were hoping it was some kind of miracle treatment regimen for Parkinson’s disease.”

  He held the door open for me, and I walked inside. “What the hell is Parkinson’s disease?” I thought about all the time I’d spent in the autopsy room that week, and about how disgusting Smithson had looked the day before when he’d approached me at the station. “It’s not contagious or anything, is it?”

  We turned the corner and saw both Agent Mackenzie and Squealer standing there. They must have overheard our conversation because Squealer piped up and said, “No, Mike, it’s not contagious. Parkinson’s disease is a degenerative physical disorder. No one really knows what causes it, but the first symptoms to appear are those uncontrollable tremors. Over the course of a few years the patient will simply lose all control of their body.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Listen, Squealer, I know you’ve spent a lot of time here at MUSC this week but tell me, just when did you become a doctor?”

  Big Jim tried to interrupt, but I raised a hand to hold him back while I gave Squealer my best glare. The guy just stood there looking down at the floor for a few seconds before he said, “My dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s three years ago. He can’t care for himself anymore, so he lives with us now.”

  I felt my face go hot with embarrassment. Both Jim and Agent Mackenzie looked as awkward as I felt, and it seemed like the best thing I could do in that situation was to shut my big mouth for a change. I certainly wasn’t going to say anything that would dig me into an even deeper hole. See, that’s the problem with talking. If you keep your mouth open long enough, eventually you’re going to wind up sticking your foo
t in there.

  The four of us stood together in this nervous little circle while we stared down at the ground. The only noise was an occasional rustling from the other detectives as they continued searching through all the scattered papers. In that quiet moment, I couldn’t help wondering what else I didn’t know about Squealer. I had no idea how he found the time to take care of his sick dad, especially since it seemed like that guy was always working late on some case or other.

  Squealer was the first one to break the ice, and he actually looked me in the eye when he did it. “You really should see some of these case files, Mike. They’re going to make a huge pile of evidence against Demming! Think about it, he had all those people hidden away here at the hospital. Some of them even came in from out of state, which might make this a federal kidnapping charge. I think that still carries a life sentence?”

  He looked over to Mackenzie, who nodded in confirmation. Squealer stuck out his fingers and counted off the pieces of evidence as if he was already standing in front of a jury. “On top of all that we’ve got the employment contract which provides a motive, Demming putting money ahead of his patients’ welfare. We’ve got all the medical records, and the fact that these people were admitted under fake names makes Demming look really shady. And finally, all of the victims were either physically or mentally incompetent! No way in hell he’s going to beat this rap!”

  Squealer looked absolutely triumphant. His excitement was obvious because I’d never heard him use the word “hell” before, and it made me wonder why the guy didn’t try to swear more often. That one little thing might have made all the difference since it’s hard to trust a guy who never curses. I knew how much of a victory it must have been for him, seeing as how his dad had Parkinson’s disease and all, but one thing still didn’t make sense. “Sq…Mealor, how could Demming’s patients have been mentally incompetent? You just said that Parkinson’s disease is a physical disorder, right?”