Damaged

by Pamela Callow

  Friday, May 18, 5:10 p.m.

  The security door buzzed and Kate let herself into the hallway of Blue Water apartments. She took the small elevator to the second floor. The smell of bacon frying tantalized her nose. She heard a baby crying.

  She knocked on 214 and the door opened immediately. A small woman with skin the color of almond biscotti answered. A TV babbled in the background.

  “Ms. Wright?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Her face had a wary look that Kate was becoming all too familiar with. She reminded Kate of a fawn, her delicate frame poised to flee.

  “I’m Kate Lange.” She smiled and held out her hand. “Thank you for agreeing to see—”

  “Who’s that, Mama?” A tiny little girl poked her head around Claudine’s legs. She had rows of little pigtails all over her head. Inquisitive brown eyes stared up at her. Kate wasn’t good at guessing kid’s ages, but she thought she was about six.

  “Hi. I’m Kate,” she said to the little girl.

  “I’m Tania.”

  “Tania, you go watch your brother,” Claudine said. “I’ve got to talk to this lady for a few minutes.” Kate wondered how such a tiny child could be responsible for watching anything.

  “Do I have to?” Tania said. “He’s so annoying.”

  Claudine gave her a warning look. “Do as I say.”

  Tania turned reluctantly from the door, throwing one last look over her shoulder at Kate. Kate gave her a sympathetic smile. She remembered with a pang what it was like babysitting her younger sister.

  Claudine held the door open. “Come in.”

  She walked into the apartment. It was smallish and cheaply furnished, but clean and bright. Tania scrambled over an old velour couch and whispered something into the ear of a little boy who looked twice her size. A cartoon blared but they both ignored it.

  Claudine threw them a stern glance and turned to Kate. “We can talk over here.” She pointed to a table and chairs set up by the galley kitchen. “Coffee?”

  Kate smiled. “Yes, please.”

  Claudine poured two mugs and brought them on a tray with a small pitcher of milk, a sugar bowl and a plate of sugar cookies. She had obviously set it up in anticipation of Kate’s visit.

  “Thank you.” Kate added some milk and sugar to her mug and took a sip.

  Claudine sat down close to her. She cupped her mug between her slender hands. “You said you had some questions about Vangie?” Her voice was low.

  “Yes. First of all, did she ever use the name Mary Littler?”

  Claudine shook her head. “Not that I know about. She always stuck with Vangie.”

  That did it. Mary Littler was a fake name, Kate was sure of it. But just to make sure, she asked, “Did she have a tattoo of a hummingbird on her ankle?”

  “Yeah, she got it when she was seventeen. Why do you want to know? Have you seen her?” Her eyes searched Kate’s face anxiously. That question slaughtered any lingering doubts Kate had about Anna Keane’s guilt.

  She swallowed. She had been practicing what to say during her drive over, but telling Claudine that her sister’s body had been sold for parts stuck in her throat. “I believe she is dead.”

  Claudine looked down into her coffee. “I thought so.” She raised her chin and met Kate’s eyes. “She was pretty sick by the time I heard about it.”

  “Sick?” Kate stared at her. “With what?”

  Claudine pulled out a letter. “I never heard of it. Kratz-filled Jacob or somethin’. Here, you read it.”

  Kate unfolded the letter. The logo of the Nova Scotia Department of Health was at the top.

  “They sent the letter just after Vangie went missing.”

  “To you?”

  “They tried to reach Vangie but she was on the streets by then. I was her next of kin.”

  Kate put her coffee down and skimmed the letter:

  Dear Ms. Wright:

  The Department of Health has received information of grave concern to recipients of the human growth hormone. Our records indicate you received human growth hormone from a donor who subsequently developed Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. You may be at risk for developing CJD. Please contact us immediately upon receipt of this letter.

  Kate put the letter down slowly. “Did Vangie know she’d been exposed to CJD?”

  Claudine shook her head. “No. But I think she had it. I seen her a few weeks before she went missing and she was acting strange. She’d been strung out for months, so I figured it was the crack, and I got real mad at her. I didn’t even know she’d gone missing till the police called me. One of her friends had filed a missing persons report.” She sipped her coffee. Her eyes were sad. “When I got the letter, I called the health people. They told me some of the symptoms.”

  “And she got it from human growth hormones?”

  “Uh-huh. Vangie was real little. Kind of like—” She jerked her head in Tania’s direction. “We’re all little in my family, but she was the smallest. The doctors gave her these shots when she was eight. To help her grow.”

  But the shots had been infected with CJD. Kate’s mind whirled. If Mary Littler was really Vangie Wright, her infected body had been cut up and distributed by BioMediSol. Who knew if any of her body parts had been implanted into other people. People who had thought they would be healed, not harmed, by the surgery.

  “So she’s dead?” Claudine’s doelike eyes probed hers.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “I thought she was. But I hoped—” Claudine looked down into her coffee cup. “I hoped maybe she’d gone into rehab somewhere and kicked the crack. She’d done it before.” Tears welled in her eyes. “But somethin’ told me she was dead.” A tear trailed down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. “She was my big sister. My half sister. She sent me money, you know, helped me get a job at the drugstore before she got so strung out.” She looked helplessly around her apartment. “I wouldn’t have any of this if she hadn’t helped me. And then when I tried to help her…” She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “I really tried to help her. But she wouldn’t listen…she just wanted the crack. She kept hangin’ up on me…”

  “I’m sorry,” Kate said softly. “You tried.”

  “But it didn’t make any difference. She’s dead, isn’t she?” Claudine looked at her, anger in her eyes. Anger not at Kate, but at herself.

  Kate understood it only too well. That was how she’d felt. Still felt.

  “You did your best.”

  Claudine looked away, out the window at the fog-brushed water. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe she didn’t want you to save her,” Kate said softly. Imogen’s angry eyes flashed through her head.

  “I don’t want to leave yet. Stop bossing me around, Kate. I can make my own decisions!”

  “Yeah, right. Like snorting up?”

  She’d looked away in shame. Then her righteous anger returned. “I like it! It’s not hurting anybody!”

  She’d run back to the porch of that house they’d gone to. The one with the party that all the kids wanted to be invited to. Kate had stared after her, fear battling with anger. Her sister had ignored her, was running off into a den of lions. Her sister didn’t want her to protect her anymore.

  She’d banged on the door and forced Imogen to come with her, threatening to call the cops if anyone interfered. Knowing that she had sealed her fate socially. She was furious her sister had put her in this position. She’d never get asked to another party again.

  Both of them were simmering with rage when she peeled away from the curb.

  “I hate you. I hate you! Do you hear me?” Imogen had shouted. Her face twisted with anger.

  Kate had flinched. Never in her life had her sister said those words to her. After all they’d been through with their father, it’d been an unspoken pledge between them to never hurt each other. They had protected each other.

  Until that night.

  Imogen seemed to realize how deeply she’d wounded her. She retreated
into sulky silence.

  Then she blurted out: “I need it, Katie. It makes me feel good. It makes me forget. Don’t tell Mom, please. Please.”

  Despair had flooded through Kate. She understood now her sister’s secretiveness. This wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t the second time, either. Her sister had been withdrawing for months. “You don’t need it, Gennie,” she’d said fiercely. “We have each other. You don’t need it.”

  “I do. I want it. Nothing else makes me feel like that.”

  Fear chased away her caution. “No! It’s wrong, Gennie. It’ll kill you!”

  “No, it won’t,” she’d said. “I’m going to do it whether you like it or not!”

  Then the anger came. How could her sister do this to her? She’d made her the bad guy. She’d made her a social pariah. Why couldn’t she see she was playing with fire? “Don’t do it again. I’ll tell Mom—”

  Something warm trickled down her sleeve. She looked down, her heart racing. The trembling of her hand had made the coffee slosh over the rim. Two separate streams of liquid ran down her wrist.

  She placed the mug on the table and hurriedly wiped her hand. Claudine had gotten up and returned with the coffeepot.

  Kate shook her head. She needed to leave before Vangie’s sister asked her for details. Claudine didn’t need to know what had happened to Vangie’s body. It had already been ravaged by drugs and disease. She didn’t need to know it’d been ravaged after her death, too. That the no-man’s-land Vangie had existed in for most of her life had swallowed her up after death, leaving only traces of her.

  She stood. “Do you think I could borrow this letter and make a copy of it?”

  “Okay.” Claudine rose, looking doubtfully at the letter.

  Kate walked to the door. She had the paper trail she needed. Vangie hadn’t died in a car accident. And since Claudine hadn’t even known her sister was dead, she obviously hadn’t given consent to her body being “donated” to BioMediSol.

  But how had Vangie died? Was it the crack? Was it CJD?

  She had got in the car with some guy and no one had seen her again, Shonda had told her.

  Something bad had happened to Vangie. She needed to find out from Ethan what Vicky had learned about Vangie’s disappearance and convince him there was more to this than the police thought.

  “The police will probably be in touch with you,” she said at the door.

  “Yeah. They’ve spoke to me before. But they did nothin’.”

  The children turned on the sofa. “You goin’ Kate?” Tania asked. Her little brother stared at her, obviously used to letting his older sister do the talking.

  “Yes. It was nice meeting you.” She looked at Claudine. “You have lovely kids.”

  Claudine allowed a small smile that couldn’t hide her pride. “They’re okay.”

  “Take care.”

  She left the apartment and returned to her car. She had gotten what she came for. In more ways than one.

  She’d seen through Claudine’s eyes what the path of addiction led to. She had tried to stop her own sister from being lured down that path. Her sister hadn’t wanted to be saved.

  Her cell phone rang. She started violently. “Hello?” Her voice was trembling. She swallowed.

  “Kate. It’s Randall.” There had been no mistaking his impatience, but now he paused. “Are you okay?”

  Her breath caught. She wanted, more than anything, to tell him no. She wasn’t. The pain of her sister’s abandonment—for she now realized that was what her sister had done: she had abandoned the silent, struggling partnership they had forged after her father’s imprisonment for the oblivion of drugs—was spilling through the cracks of her reserve. Threatening to reveal the depths of her pain at being left alone. The sole survivor of the destruction her father had brought down on their heads.

  She forced herself to inhale. She could not, would not, let her boss—this man who had both stolen from her with one hand and offered comfort with the other—know that, at this moment, her heart was riven. Wide open and raw. For all and sundry to see.

  She needed to pull it together.

  She needed to help Claudine and the families of all the other victims that BioMediSol had stolen from. And that meant keeping her boss at a distance until the job was done.

  “I’m fine.” She made her voice as cold as possible. It worked this time.

  There was silence. “Did you get my message?” he asked warily.

  “Yes.” Again, cool, distant.

  “Why didn’t you return my phone call?”

  “It seemed pointless.” The words came out before she could stop them. But she was glad she said them. She hoped it would eradicate whatever concern Randall might feel about her. They both needed to retreat behind the professional divide of boss and employee, managing partner and first-year associate.

  There was a stunned pause. She allowed herself a flash of weary triumph. It wasn’t a response a man like Randall got very often. If ever. He inhaled sharply. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.” She could sense his antagonism building. She shouldn’t have been so brusque. She didn’t need to offend him, just keep him away. She added, “I’m sorry I didn’t return your call earlier.”

  “You can give me a full explanation in my office,” he said curtly. “I need you to come in now.”

  Damn. “I can’t come right now, Randall. I’ve got an urgent matter to attend to.”

  “I’m not asking, Kate.” His voice was steely. “Come now. Or don’t bother coming back at all.”

  The phone went dead in her ear.

  She threw it on the seat. “Damn him!” But she was really damning herself.

  She headed toward the new bridge, debating her course of action. Police cars flashed up ahead. The traffic had slowed to a crawl at the tollbooths. Cars were veering away, racing to the old bridge. A gap in the traffic showed there had been an accident.

  “Damn.” She abruptly turned down one of the exits, heading for the old bridge. Her frustration—and her pain—threatened to boil over. She had wanted to avoid Randall until she’d presented her case to the criminal investigations unit. But Randall’s phone call had reminded her of something she’d forgotten.

  She drove over the bridge, turning off Hollis Street toward Lower Water Street. The gleaming monolith housing LMB was five minutes away.

  Once she presented her case to the police, it would blow the lid off BioMediSol and, in turn, TransTissue. Legal ethics dictated she give her firm warning of what was about to go down with one of their top clients.

  And resign before the shit hit the fan.

  48

  Friday, May 18, 5:50 p.m.

  Kate Lange still had not come home. Where the fuck was she? He couldn’t wait for her any longer. John Lyons’ mind raced as he drove against the tail end of rush hour traffic to his office.

  Despite his resolve, cold sweat ran down his back. Had Barrett found out about the withdrawals John made on his clients’ trust accounts? John had paid them back with the money he’d borrowed for BioMediSol. BioMediSol had never needed the money—their overhead costs were minimal thanks to Anna Keane’s on-site facilities—but he’d convinced Anna that the money was needed for future expansion. Eager to grow her empire, she was all over that suggestion.

  But he hadn’t been able to pay the loan back. He’d been actively buying properties in the U.S., leveraging them to the hilt to buy more. He’d been like a kid in a candy shop. And then everything crashed. The banks were calling in their loans. One after another. He hadn’t been able to recover.

  He drove into the parkade and took the elevator to LMB’s reception area. He stopped, gazing around. He had helped build this firm. He remembered when they moved into these offices. Right on the water, the top two floors. He loved being on the penthouse level. Stunning views of Georges Island and the mouth of the harbor. They had furnished it as befitting a firm of their reputation: with high quality, tasteful and expensive pieces, th
ick carpeting, stylish cubicles for the support staff and an extensive legal library staffed with their own librarian.

  John had personally chosen every piece of artwork on the walls. It was a collection that had taken ten years to build, but it was worth it. He had enjoyed the thrill of scouting emerging Canadian artists, convinced that the value of their paintings would jump exponentially over time.

  Everything he had built, had strived for, was teetering on the brink of disaster. His partnership in the firm was his final reserve. The last bastion that could hold the wolves at bay. And now Randall Barrett had called him.

  It rankled. Deeply.

  He strode into Barrett’s office. He’d always hated the stark modernism Barrett surrounded himself with. Harsh angles, hard materials. Barrett had blatantly ignored the design aesthetic John had chosen for the firm.

  Barrett swung his chair around, surprise flashing across his face. “I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind about coming in, Lyons.” Barrett kept his gaze cool, but John could feel the anger emanating from him.

  John had rarely seen his partner show emotion. He’d have to tread carefully. He lowered himself into a leather-and-metal chair that was so ingeniously constructed he couldn’t figure out the seams. He kept his features blank. He wasn’t going to give an inch to this upstart bastard.

  “You said you had something to discuss.” There was only one way to conduct this meeting: on the offensive.

  “I had a phone call this afternoon. From a lending agency called CreditAngels.”

  John tried to lean back in the chair but it was almost impossible. “And?”

  “They are calling in a loan. One you signed on behalf of the firm. Fraudulently, I might add.” Barrett’s tone was casual. He could have been recounting a golf game.

  No point in lying about it. Barrett would have seen the loan document by now. “I’ll repay it. With interest.”

  “Of course you will. The question is, are there other loans out there that we don’t know about?”

  “No.” He held Barrett’s gaze. “Just that one. I was short on cash. I needed it to invest in a promising new company.” He made his voice earnest. “It was such a good opportunity, I couldn’t walk away from it. The tissue industry is booming. I’ll be able to repay the firm within six months.”