Blood Brothers

by Rick Acker

  “I just want to see you give a blood sample before we vote. If it comes back positive, we can have another vote.” Gunnar unbuttoned his sleeve as he spoke and began to roll it up. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll have a sample drawn too.”

  “This is outrageous!” said Karl loudly, his face darkening further. “I’m not going to stand for this . . . this completely unjustified invasion of my privacy!”

  “Of course not,” replied Gunnar coolly. “If you did, you would be out as president in two days.”

  “Enough!” shouted Karl, slamming his fist down on the table. The protective glass sheet covering the wood cracked from end to end. “This meeting is over!” He grabbed his jacket and stormed out, leaving stunned silence in his wake.

  For several seconds, no one in the room moved. The only sound was Karl’s footsteps fading down the corridor. Then everyone began to talk at once.

  “Have you ever seen him act like that?” asked one director.

  “When did we begin drug testing our executives?”

  “Maybe we should start.”

  “Order!” called Gunnar in a booming voice. “Order! This meeting has not been adjourned!”

  The chatter died down, and the directors looked expectantly to Gunnar. “We still have a vote to take,” he began.

  “Hold on,” interrupted Bert Siwell, standing as he spoke. “As the company’s outside counsel, I can’t permit this vote to go forward under these circumstances. I—”

  “Don’t you have a conflict?” asked Ben. “You’re not just the company’s lawyer; you’re Karl Bjornsen’s lawyer too. That’s fine as long as his interests and the company’s interests are completely aligned—but they aren’t anymore, are they?”

  Siwell froze for a moment. “Yes, they are, Ben. It’s in Karl’s interest to be president, and it’s in the company’s interest to keep Karl as president.”

  “The directors are about to have a vote to decide that,” observed Ben.

  “Let me give you a little lesson in corporate law, Ben. Decisions about what are and are not appropriate matters for the board to vote on are made by the company’s attorney, not some random lawyer who happens to have wandered into a board meeting.”

  Ben leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “Bert, if you try to interfere with this vote, I will call the Disciplinary Commission first thing tomorrow morning and you’ll be explaining yourself to an ethics panel by the end of the month.”

  “Don’t you threaten me!” shot back Siwell. But he sat down and said nothing more for the rest of the meeting.

  The remaining directors voted six to two to remove Karl as chairman and president and replace him with Gunnar. Ben noted with satisfaction that the only two who voted against Gunnar were the ones Noelle had identified as bribe recipients.

  Gunnar’s first act as president was to fire Bert Siwell.

  Karl sat in his car in the hotel parking lot and brooded. He chewed over the evening’s events again and again—or, rather, they chewed over him. The injustice of what had happened gnawed at him. Gunnar couldn’t beat him in a fair fight in court, so he sucker punched him during an “emergency” board meeting. And what was that “emergency”? That Gunnar wanted to ambush his brother, of course.

  And he had played right along like an idiot. He had let Gunnar provoke him into a rage, and then that cheap hotel tabletop had broken at the slightest impact. That was a nice dramatic touch. Gunnar probably planned it, Karl thought, his anger building. He’s seen me talk often enough to know I sometimes hit the table or podium to make a point. He planted a piece of weakened glass in that conference room to make me look out of control.

  He had decided to sit in the car for a few minutes to cool off before driving home, but the longer he sat, the angrier he got. The rational part of his brain could plainly see what he should have done, how he could have managed the meeting so that he both avoided having a blood sample taken and won the vote. If he could have kept his temper, it would have been a simple matter to promise to have a blood test the next day if the board really wanted that. And then he could have handpicked the phlebotomist who did the test and taken steps to make sure the right results came back—or, better yet, flown off to DC first thing in the morning and promised to reschedule the test. By the time he got back from the FDA negotiations, events would have moved on and the whole blood-test issue would have been forgotten.

  Knowing how he could have avoided Gunnar’s trap only made him madder for having fallen into it. “Din idiot!” he muttered. “Jeg kan ikke fordra—”

  He caught sight of Bert Siwell walking across the parking lot, followed by a minion who hurried to keep up with him. Neither one looked happy. Karl turned toward the hotel lobby door and saw three of the directors emerge. He couldn’t make out their faces well enough in the fading light to read their expressions, and their body language told him nothing.

  Gunnar, Henrik, and Ben Corbin walked out next. They stood for a moment in the well-lit area immediately outside the doors, talking and laughing. Then they shook hands and walked toward their cars.

  Karl’s jaw muscles bunched and his hands reflexively tightened into fists. He had known how the board would vote from the moment he walked out of the conference room, but seeing Gunnar and his team celebrate was still like a hard punch in the stomach. He felt an unreasoning urge to drive over and smash his car into that smug little group, but he resisted.

  He watched as they started driving toward the parking-lot exit. He found himself starting his car and following them at a careful distance. They split up as they reached the highway. Corbin headed north, and Henrik’s rental car turned toward Gunnar’s home in Hinsdale. But Gunnar didn’t follow Henrik; he drove east, toward Chicago. Toward the company, Karl realized.

  Karl’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel as his anger flamed into rage. So Gunnar couldn’t wait to go visit his prize. He was going to show a copy of the board’s resolution to the security guard and maybe get a congratulatory handshake. Then he was going to take the elevator up to the executive office suite and go into the president’s office. He would sit in the president’s chair and lean back with a smile on his face. He might even find a box and start dumping Karl’s personal items into it—as Karl had done to Gunnar hours after he won the presidency.

  The image was unbearable. Karl wouldn’t allow it. He couldn’t.

  Gunnar turned into the company’s dark, empty parking lot. Karl pulled up to the edge of the driveway but idled there, far enough away to be out of earshot. He watched as Gunnar parked in the president’s space and got out of his car.

  Gunnar stretched his legs and began to walk toward the building, but he stopped in surprise as Karl zipped in front of him and parked on the walkway to the building entrance.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Gunnar demanded as Karl stepped out of his car.

  Karl leaned over the top of his car and pointed a thick, meaty finger at his brother. “Leave!” he ordered.

  Gunnar pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and held it out. “Here’s a copy of the directors’ resolution. You’re not president or chairman anymore—I am. Now get out of my way and move that car before I have it towed!”

  Karl did not move. “I don’t care what you tricked the directors into doing. Stay away from my company.”

  Gunnar’s eyes flashed and he walked toward the entrance. Karl stepped in front of him, and Gunnar tried to push his way past. Karl’s fist shot out, almost of its own volition, and struck Gunnar on the jaw.

  Gunnar’s head snapped to the side and he staggered back several steps. He regained his balance and stared at Karl with a mixture of shock and fury. A trickle of blood came from the corner of his mouth, and he spat out a broken tooth. He walked back to his car, took off the jacket of his expensive, tailored suit, and laid it carefully on the passenger’s seat. Then he came back, breathing heavily. “Du skal angre dette, lille bror!”

  Gunnar balled his massive hands into fists
and threw a quick jab with his right. Karl ducked easily away from the blow—and straight into a left uppercut, falling victim to a bar-fighting trick Gunnar had picked up in his younger and less-civilized days.

  Karl felt almost no pain from the blow, but a red haze of rage filled his mind, and he was only dimly aware of what happened next. He fought with terrible strength and speed, intent not just on winning, but on destroying.

  Less than a minute later, Karl landed three punches to his brother’s head in quick succession. Gunnar stumbled backward, twisted his leg awkwardly, fell, and hit his head on the asphalt of the parking lot. He lay unmoving, stretched out on the blacktop.

  Karl stood panting for several seconds. “Get up!” he shouted, but Gunnar did not respond. “I said get up!” He kicked Gunnar in the ribs. Gunnar twitched and moaned weakly before lying still again.

  Karl’s eyes moved back and forth between Gunnar’s bloodied face and his exposed, vulnerable neck. A hard blow to the throat would certainly kill him. Karl got down on his knees beside his brother’s head, his fists clenched and every muscle in his body tense. Sweat and blood dripped from his face, and his eyes were empty and dark. Twice he raised his hand for a killing blow, and twice he stopped. Then he lifted his fist a third time and, with an inarticulate roar, smashed it down into the asphalt a fraction of an inch from his brother’s head.

  Karl rose to his feet and looked down on Gunnar’s unconscious body. The sudden agony from the torn skin and broken bones in his damaged hand hovered on the edge of his mind as he stared down into his brother’s face. Then he turned and walked into Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals for the last time.

  Gunnar awoke to the sound of sirens. He opened his eyes and saw a confusing blur of moving lights. He blinked and squinted, and his vision cleared a bit, but he couldn’t quite focus. He could discern, however, that a fire truck had stopped a few yards away, and could see men jumping off of it.

  He tried to stand, but got no further than his hands and knees. His head pounded and spun, and sharp bolts of pain tore through his body. He heard running steps, and a man’s voice asked, “Are you okay?”

  Gunnar lifted his head and looked up into the face of a young man in firefighting gear who squatted down beside him, his face bathed in orange and yellow light. Gunnar was dimly aware of other figures running and shouting in the background. “I . . . I’m . . .” he began, but he had trouble finding words.

  The firefighter turned and yelled over his shoulder, “EMT!” He turned back to Gunnar. “Don’t try to get up. Just lie down and relax.” He gently maneuvered Gunnar back to the ground. “Good, good. Now I need you to tell me if there’s anyone left in the building.”

  “Building?” Gunnar replied groggily. He couldn’t remember any particular building.

  “That building right there.” The firefighter pointed, and Gunnar’s eyes followed. He saw a massive building half-engulfed in flames. The company’s main building.

  Sheets of fire spread up two sides of the building and sent streams of sparks and cinders into the night sky. Fire poured out of the lab windows where he had spent thousands of hours developing and testing new products. Long scorch marks already discolored what was left of the limestone cladding he and Karl had argued over when the building went up nearly twenty years ago.

  “That’s . . . It’s the company,” he said weakly. “Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals.”

  “I know,” said the firefighter. “I need you to tell me if there are any people inside.”

  “It’s burning!” Gunnar exclaimed in panic. “Stop it! Put it out!”

  “We’re doing everything we can, but right now I need you to focus,” the firefighter said urgently. “Is anyone in there?”

  Gunnar’s head pounded and felt like it was full of cotton gauze, but he tried to concentrate. “Security guard . . . ground floor,” he forced out. “Desk just inside . . . near some candy machines.”

  The firefighter turned and shouted, “Check for a security guard just inside on the ground floor!” He turned back to Gunnar. “Okay, is there anyone else?”

  Gunnar looked back at the burning building, trying to remember. He noticed Karl’s empty car parked on the path leading to the building entrance. That meant something, but he couldn’t remember what. Something. “I don’t know.”

  Two paramedics arrived, and the firefighter jogged back to the truck. One man put a neck-immobilization collar on Gunnar and carefully slid a flat backboard under him while another checked his extremities for sensation, flashed a light in his pupils, and asked him who he was, where he was, what day it was, and so on. Gunnar could remember his name and recognized the burning building, but that was all.

  As the paramedics worked on him, Gunnar helplessly watched the fire. More fire trucks arrived, and their crews poured streams of water into the blaze, but still it grew. His shock and panic faded into despair and emptiness as the flames ate away more and more of his life’s work. He tried to look away and slip back into the thick fog that enshrouded his mind, but his eyes kept coming back to Karl’s car. Why was it there? Where was Karl? Finally, it dawned on him: Karl might be in the building. He grabbed the arm of the nearest paramedic. “The president’s office . . . top floor.”

  The paramedic looked up doubtfully at the towering flames. “Is someone up there?”

  “I think . . . I think my brother is.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  AFTER THE WORLD’S RUIN

  Gunnar woke in the hospital the next morning, remembering nothing that had happened after the end of the board meeting. A staff doctor told him it was the result of a concussion, one of a catalog of injuries that would keep him in the hospital for some time. He had three cracked ribs, two missing teeth, hairline fractures in his right hand and femur, a bruised spleen, a fractured eye socket, a broken leg, and dozens of bruises and abrasions. The doctor commented that if he hadn’t known better, he would have assumed Gunnar had been hit by a truck.

  Karl was in the intensive-care unit of the same hospital. The firefighters had found him in the president’s office, sitting in the president’s chair, behind the president’s desk. He was unconscious by the time the firefighters found him, and the office was filled with smoke and toxic fumes. They had managed to drag him out and carry him down a fire escape moments before the building collapsed. He had been in a coma ever since.

  Over the next few days, Gunnar occasionally envied his unconscious brother. An unremitting tide of bad news threatened to overwhelm him. First, he learned that the company complex was nothing but a field of scorched rubble. Then came the fire inspector’s initial report finding clear signs of arson and noting that traces of diesel fuel, apparently from the building’s backup generator, had been found both around the building and on Karl’s clothes. The company’s insurance company struck next, denying coverage on the basis of the fire inspector’s report. Then the FDA announced that they were placing a hold on all Neurostim clinical trials until Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals could prove that the drug had not contributed to David Lee’s death—a task that became practically impossible the next day, when blood tests showed significant levels of Neurostim in Karl’s blood as well.

  A week after the fire, the last straw broke the company: a major wholesaler announced that it was going to switch suppliers because of uncertainty over when—and if—Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals was going to resume production. Gunnar had a long conference call with Henrik Haugeland and Tim Hawkins, the company CFO. Both agreed that the company’s financial situation was untenable and was only likely to grow worse.

  After the call ended, Gunnar lay back in his bed, physically and mentally exhausted. His body was a mass of aches, and the aftereffects of the concussion made focused thinking difficult. Still, it didn’t take much concentration to see the obvious next step. He called Ben Corbin and asked him to begin preparing a bankruptcy petition for Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals.

  Detective Frank McCormick sat at his desk with his morning coffee, a Starbucks venti caramel macch
iato. His wife, a dietician, regularly tried to convince him to give up his macchiatos, objecting that his favorite drink “isn’t even really coffee—it’s just a hot candy bar in a cup.” But then, she was in Burbank, and Starbucks was right on his way from the parking garage to the police station.

  He worked through his in-box as he sipped from his cup. Near the bottom, he found a report from the fingerprint lab in the David Lee investigation. The lab had been able to compile several usable prints from the dozens of small partial prints on the Neurostim gelcaps found in Lee’s apartment. The prints belonged to two individuals, both of whom the lab had positively identified. One was David Lee, but the other—much to Detective McCormick’s surprise—was not Kim Young. It was someone named Dr. Daruka Reddy. The big detective raised his eyebrows and put down his coffee. “And who is Dr. Daruka Reddy?”

  He reached into an overstuffed accordion folder and fished out his “Who’s Who” list for the investigation. There was no Dr. Reddy on it. Puzzled, he pulled out the fingerprint-request form he had sent to the lab. Stapled to the back of it was a long list of people for whom they had prints. Most of these were Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals employees who had access to controlled drugs and were therefore fingerprinted and given criminal-background checks before they were hired. Dr. Reddy was there, listed as a “senior research scientist, development.”

  Detective McCormick didn’t see anything linking Dr. Reddy to David Lee, but that could change with more digging. He made a note on his calendar to get Dr. Reddy’s personnel file, phone records, and e-mail archive.

  He sat back and smiled as he finished his coffee. He had liked Kim Young when he interviewed her, and he had wanted to believe her when she professed her innocence. That had just gotten easier.

  Anne and Markus walked into Gunnar’s room as he was picking at an admirably healthy, but barely edible, hospital breakfast. Ten days had passed, and Gunnar was well enough to go home. “Good morning,” said Anne. “We’ve got the SUV downstairs. Are you ready to go?”