Monahan 02 Artificial Intentions

by Rosemarie A D'Amico

  It was too sick to think about.

  “Where is Ben now?” I wanted to know so I could go and kick the shit out of him.

  “Being booked right now at the Precinct,” Kelly said. “They found Ben and his van on the side of the freeway on the Jersey side. His van was fried and he was wheeling himself along the shoulder of the road. Patrolman didn’t know who he was when he picked him up, but being a good Samaritan, he put him in the back seat of the cruiser and loaded his wheelchair into the trunk. Our Miss Scott had already squealed on him so an APB was in the system. The Jersey cop was pretty happy to find out he had a live one locked in his back seat.”

  Jay laid a plate in front of each of us, laden with toast slices, scrambled eggs, bacon and tomato wedges. Not much was said for the next few minutes as we dug in. I was surprised to have an appetite.

  When we were loading dirty plates into the dishwasher, Kelly’s cell phone rang and he excused himself to take the call. Jay was at the kitchen sink with his hands in soapy water, scrubbing the frying pan. I stood behind him, wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my cheek against his back. I winced at the sharp pains in my rib cage. My legs were stiff and my upper back throbbed with pulsating pain. But, regardless of the aches and pains, I’d be happy if I could stay right here, forever. Being here in the kitchen, with Jay, was uncomplicated, simple and pure. The way things should always be. I gave him a squeeze which hurt me more than him, and grabbed the dish towel and got back to reality.

  Kelly came back into the kitchen and told us, “That was Detective Shipley on the phone. Natalie Scott has herself an attorney.”

  “Yippee for her,” I sniped.

  Kelly ignored me. Like the professional he was.

  “She’s apparently wantin’ to tell her story. Detective Shipley asked if we wanted to come down and listen.”

  Jay and Kelly looked at me.

  “Hell yeah,” I said in my best Texan drawl. “Count me in.”

  chapter sixty

  Detective Shipley met us in the lobby of the 20th Precinct on West 82nd Street and escorted us up the staircase to the second floor. The main area of the floor was populated with desks where a few people sat, working. Along one wall were several enclosed rooms. Shipley opened the door to one of these rooms and waved us in.

  A small table was pushed up against the far wall and four folding chairs were stacked against the end of the table. An inside wall, adjoining the next enclosed room, had a large window. Shipley pointed at it.

  “We’ll be in the next room. Keep the lights off in here so you can see. That switch there,” she pointed at a knob on the wall, “is the audio. I’ll be back later.” She stared at me for a moment and I was thinking she wanted to say something to me but she turned and left.

  We waited silently in the darkness for about five minutes and I stared into the next room, looking at the table, the chairs, the video camera set up in the corner. It had been almost three weeks to the day since Tommy had been murdered. Senselessly.

  The door in the next room opened and Natalie Scott was ushered in by a female police officer. She was wearing a white jumpsuit that looked like it was made out of paper. Her feet were shackled. Around her waist she was sporting a wide, leather belt to which her hands were cuffed. The police officer pulled out one of the chairs, sat Natalie in it, and then stood on the opposite side of the room, guarding her.

  Her skin had a greenish tinge under the harsh florescent lights and her hair hadn’t improved since she and I had seen each other the night before. It remained matted and greasy. She sat quietly, her chin resting on her chest. Resigned.

  The bitch is near. Her smell is in the air. So close to being victorious. So close to snuffing out her vile being. So close to finally having it all under control.

  A few minutes after Natalie Scott was seated in the room, the door opened again and several people entered and took seats around the table. Detective Shipley and Lieutenant Linda Derek took chairs across from Natalie. A very tall, heavy-set woman took the place next to Natalie. She heaved a large briefcase onto the table, took out a pad of paper and several pens, and then stowed it under the table. Two others, an older man and a middle-aged woman took seats at opposite ends of the table.

  Detective Shipley turned on a tape-recorder in the middle of the table and the police officer standing by the wall turned on the video camera.

  “For the record,” Shipley started. “I am Detective Shipley.” She recited her badge number, the case number, the date, and the names of the people present. The large woman beside Natalie was her lawyer, and her name was given as Anne Nicholas. The other two people were Assistant District Attorney’s - Webster Purcell and Sheila Miller.

  Out of control. No longer in charge of one’s destiny. Caged like an animal. The rage was back. No control. You make me sick. You cannot do anything right. The bitch was free. You are not. You cannot live like this. This is not living. Rage was boiling again.

  Shipley: For the record, Natalie Scott, represented here by Anne Nicholas, has indicated that she is willing to make a statement about the events of last night.

  Nicholas: For the record, this statement is against counsel’s advice and my client understands that what she says here will be used against her.

  Purcell: For the record, the DA’s office is not offering any deals for Miss Scott’s statement.

  Shipley: Miss Scott. Please tell us what transpired at your mother’s apartment last night.

  Natalie Scott looked up for the first time. She stared at Detective Shipley for a long moment and then began talking. Her voice was a monotone and sounded almost robotic.

  Scott: It didn’t work.

  Shipley: What didn’t work?

  Scott: The way we planned it.

  Natalie kept her head bowed, and her handcuffed hands on her lap.

  Plans that don’t work out are not plans. It was fucking bullshit. The stalker was angry, riled. The serenity and control were gone.

  “This is bullshit,” I stated. “She’s acting like she’s been beaten down. Bullshit. Last night she was a maniac. She would have killed me.” I felt the tops of my ears turning red and I craved a cigarette.

  Jay knew better than to tell me to calm down, but he did take a chance and gently laid his hand on my upper arm. He rubbed it a bit.

  “She’s acting,” Kelly said. “I agree with you. Let’s just see how this plays out.”

  I started pacing in the small room. Bullshit.

  Shipley: Can you be a little more specific? What did you plan?

  This time Nat took an extra long time without answering and several minutes of silence ensued. Lieutenant Derek lost patience. She slammed her hand down on the table. Everyone jumped. Except Natalie Scott. It was as if she were drugged.

  Nicholas: Was that really necessary, Lieutenant?

  Derek: This is bullshit.

  Exactly!

  Derek: If your client has a statement to make or something to tell us, I suggest she gets on with it.

  The stalker’s heart was beating so fast and so hard, it hurt. But pain was the least of the worries now. This was going to end now. Breathing was becoming more and more difficult. It would be alright, soon.

  Scott: We needed one more healthy body. It was going to work. We had run the diagnostics and conducted several simulations. It was perfect. The piston.

  Everyone in the room was looking at Nat Scott in disbelief.

  Shipley: Did you say piston?

  Scott: Yes.

  Shipley: Can you explain? What piston?

  Nat paused again for a long time. The Lieutenant was losing patience, and the two Assistant DA’s were rolling their eyes at each other. Me? I knew we were being hoodwinked. The bitch was playing with us.

  I turned around to Jay who was standing behind me. “Piston. Percutaneous intelligence system transfer nephrology. It’s the name of the Phoenix interface that we developed with the Global Devices artificial kidney.”

  Jay nodded.
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br />   The air surrounding his head was orange. It was swirling. He was hot and sweat poured down out of his hair, down his back, between his legs. Everything was orange. The colour of his rage. He stared at the damp, cement wall and watched it turn red before his eyes. The jail-issued orange coveralls were drenched now in his rage, his sweat, his life.

  Scott: Piston is the name of the prototype interface we developed to power an artificial kidney.

  The Lieutenant sighed and shook her head in disgust. Twenty minutes had passed and we were no further along.

  Shipley: Thank you. You said you needed one more healthy body. Can you tell us about that?

  Scott: It had to be Monahan. We had tried and failed with the others. But Monahan stood in the way of it ever working. So we took her. Took her from the hospital. We were going to take her kidneys and give her an artificial one.

  I wanted to throw up. I turned around from the glass. I couldn’t look at her. Jay put his arms around me and I buried my head in his chest.

  The stalker was strong. His mind was strong but his body was stronger. Breathing hard but under control he pulled himself up the bars and threaded the coveralls through the cross bar. Hanging on with one hand. Biceps and triceps screaming. His brain screaming. He used his free hand and his teeth to secure the overalls and then knowing that blissful peace would be with him soon, he slipped the knotted legs of the coveralls over his head and gratefully let go.

  I heard a wail from the room next door and turned around to the window and saw Natalie Scott slump to the side, and fall off her chair. She was moaning loudly and lay on the floor in a fetal position.

  The Lieutenant stood up. “We’re done here people. Officer, call the medics.”

  The police officer was attending to Natalie on the floor, and everyone else was standing up, watching her.

  The door to the room opened half way and someone motioned at Shipley, who left the room. She was back very quickly and whispered something to her Lieutenant. They both left as a medic from the jail arrived.

  The door to our room opened and Shipley stuck her head in.

  “Ben Tucker, or Don McLean, just committed suicide in his cell. We’ll talk later,” she told us, and quickly left.

  It had rained while we were in the Precinct and the air was heavy with moisture. The sun was coming out and the temperature was just below blistering. The three of us stood on the sidewalk for a moment, adjusting our eyes and bodies to being outside again. We used the sunshine as an excuse to stand still for a while, all of us stunned by the news of Ben, or Donald’s, suicide.

  “Kelly,” I said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Take the rest of the day off. That’s an order.”

  “Thank you ma’am. But I’ll respectfully decline.”

  “Come on. Tucker slash McLean is dead. Nat Scott is locked up and probably comatose. And Belinda Moffat is under police guard at the hospital.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Kelly agreed with me, nodding his head. “But are we sure they are the only ones responsible? Until I’m convinced, we’ll be watching you.”

  chapter sixty-one

  This statement is of my free will. It is being written without coercion and without promise of any leniency by the District Attorney’s office. My name is Belinda Moffat. I am 33 years old and I live in the Borough of Queens. I have a Ph.D in Bio-medical Engineering. I am employed by Phoenix Technologies where I have worked for approximately three years as a project manager in the research and development department. About six months ago, my boss, Natalie Scott, came to me and told me that she had a top-secret project that I was to work on with Ben Tucker. I didn’t object. I did as I was asked by my bosses at Phoenix. It was certainly more workload but I was glad for the opportunity. Several months later, though, when it became clear to me that this top-secret project was all about falsifying records and test results, I objected. That’s when Miss Scott threatened to fire me. I make no excuses for my behavior, but I could not afford to lose my job. It costs me close to $6,000 a month to pay for round the clock care for my twin sisters, both of whom suffer from cerebral palsy.

  Again, making no excuses, I participated in the falsification of records which were submitted to the FDA by Global Devices for their artificial kidney project. You see, Ben Tucker was desperate for an artificial kidney to be approved. Because of his paraplegia, he is in renal failure and must take dialysis several times a week.

  Dr. Jordan Francis, the vice president in charge of the project at Global Devices suspected that the test results were being falsified and he shared this information with Mr. Connaught, who was the president of Phoenix. How do I know this? Because Jordan Francis was my fiance. He told me of his suspicions. I didn’t have the courage to tell him that I knew, and that I was participating in the fake tests. Natalie Scott and Ben Tucker suspected that they might be found out when Dr. Francis and Mr. Connaught invited them to a meeting and started to question their test methods and the results. I was at that meeting as a member of the team. Three days later Jordan stopped calling me. I was desperate to talk to him, to see him, but the people at Global said he had resigned from his job and moved away. Several days later, Mr. Connaught was murdered. I don’t know for a fact that Natalie Scott or Ben Tucker killed Mr. Connaught, but I do know for a fact that they killed Jordan. They told me that they kidnapped him, drugged him, took his kidneys out and used him as a human guinea pig to test the artificial kidney. He lasted seven days. They made me help them get rid of his body.

  Jordan Francis was the only man who truly loved me. In the beginning he thought it was Nat Scott who wanted him, but it was me. I got him to love me. The letters weren’t from her, they were mine. Everyone thought Natalie was beautiful. Natalie didn’t love him. She loved Ben.

  Natalie Scott and Ben Tucker are evil. When the artificial kidney didn’t work on Jordan, they tried it on Natalie’s mother. The poor woman was in her nineties.

  Ben Tucker was a surgeon before he came to work at Phoenix Technologies. He was in love with Natalie and she adored him. Until he operated on her mother. After that, Ben had to make Natalie take pills and that way she still adored him.

  My job was to help them kill Kate Monahan. She was a bitch and she was getting in the way of Ben getting well.

  I hired Bill Collins to shoot her. Bill went to high school with me but lately he’s been out of work and needed money. I offered him $500. He shot her bodyguard but missed her. So then we had to get her out of the hospital because Ben thought it would be a good idea to take out her kidneys and make her suffer.

  I put the paralytic drug in her IV and Bill and I took her out of the hospital. I must have not given her enough because it wore off too soon and then she hit me and knocked out my teeth.

  There was more but it wasn’t relevant. Stuff about her sisters and how they needed a bath every Thursday night. Belinda had clearly gone over the edge, into the deep end.

  It was good to know that Dr. Francis was not in on the fixing of the test results, and I know Dr. Pritchard would be happy to hear this. At least the reputation of Global Devices would be intact.

  Nat Scott was more clear-headed the day after her original try at confession. Apparently, Tucker/McLean had been doping her. It took a good twenty-four hours for the drugs to leave her system. I wondered what type of cocktail he was feeding her if she could be so full of rage, and then be practically catatonic ten hours later.

  Scott: I shot Tom Connaught.

  Shipley: Why?

  Scott: Because he and Dr. Francis found out about the test results. At first we denied it and we tried to hide it but I knew that Tom had copied the hard drive of my computer. He had all the test result files from the Piston trials. It wasn’t as if we reported huge variations in the readings on the external system. We changed some numbers by fractions. Fractions only. Ben knew this version of the artificial kidney could work. It would save his life. And my mother’s. You have to understand. My mother had been ill for so many years and Be
n was so dependent on dialysis. He was determined to make it work. But Tom Connaught was going to expose us. Ben couldn’t go back to prison. He’d die there. So I called Tom Connaught and told him that I would give him all the faked test results. I told him to meet me behind the Van Buren Medical Center. When he came I was too scared at first to shoot him. But Ben would have been furious with me if I didn’t do it. Just before Tom showed up, I got down on my knees and prayed for forgiveness for what I was about to do.

  Shipley: Were you praying when you shot Mr. Connaught? Were you on your knees? Please answer the question out loud, Miss. Nodding your head can’t be picked up on the tape recorder.

  Scott: Yes. I was kneeling when I shot Tom.

  Shipley: And what happened after that?

  Scott: Kate Monahan showed up and made things worse. I knew Tom had documents from my hard drive in his apartment and I had to get them. I used an old building key and got in. Kate Monahan was there, but I only hit her. Hit her hard. I should have killed her too, right then.

  Shipley: Did you help Mr. Tucker?

  Scott: Doctor Tucker. And yes, I helped him. I loved him. I would do anything for him. When you love someone, you help them. No one ever helped me.

  Shipley: How did you help Doctor Tucker?

  Scott: I gave them the drugs. I helped Ben operate. But it didn’t work. They both died.

  Shipley: Who died?

  Scott: Dr. Francis and my mother. Ben decided it would help with the research if we used the artificial kidney on a healthy patient and an aging, ill one. Dr. Francis stayed alive for seven days. My mother died on the operating table.

  Shipley: Were you going to help operate on Kate Monahan?

  Scott: Yes. It was my job to keep her paralyzed and wait for Ben. He was late coming. I couldn’t keep her on the table and she got away. Ben never came. And now he’s dead.

  Before I left New York, Cleve and I, and the senior management team spent several days on more damage control. Big time damage control this time. We talked to analysts, bankers, clients, and employees.