“Tell me the number,” Shalini said. Then she raised a hand. “Wait, must get in the right mindset first. Have to be convincing.” She winked, grinning. “Should I say my name is Yak Adura?”
She was taking this too lightly, Grace thought. “He won’t even know what that means,” she said. “He barely knows any Sinhala.” She frowned, looking at the white bandage wrapped around Shalini’s midriff. “Are you sure you shouldn’t go to the clinic first?”
“Later, men,” Shalini said. “Only a flesh wound, no? If we don’t do this now, they might all get off scot-free.”
“Put it on speaker,” Grace said as Shalini dialed the cell number.
“Hello?” Bent’s voice said.
“My name is Shalini Samaraweera,” Shalini said. “I’m the journalist who picked Duncan up at the Galle house.”
There was a long pause before Bent said sharply, “Where is my daughter?”
“You’ve been in touch with Hammond, it seems,” Shalini said, her voice pleasant. She gestured at Grace, mouthing, “Don’t worry.”
“Is Janie with Grace and Duncan?”
“I’m sure that’s what Hammond told you,” Shalini said.
Another pause, and then, “What do you mean? Where is she?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you,” Shalini said.
Bent’s voice rose. “Where are Duncan and Grace?”
“They’re at her parents’ house. No thanks to you,” Shalini said. “But only Hammond can tell you where Janie is. And he’s not going to tell you that, because he needs her.”
“What? Whose . . . What are you talking about?”
“We already know everything,” Shalini said calmly. “The Criminal Investigation Department here is involved. Your friends in the police can try to help you, but they will all be indicted for their part in this. A Sri Lankan citizen has been killed.”
“I don’t know of any—”
“Look,” Shalini said, her voice businesslike. “We know all about Frank Salgado. Also the other deaths. Minowa Costa, Danibel Garwick. Angie. The hooniyam research, Symb86.”
“I was not involved—”
Shalini cut him off. “The thing is, right now, Hammond is going to say that he doesn’t have Janie. But that’s because he’s not sure whether his police friends can help him. When the Sri Lankan police, the real ones who don’t take bribes, take him in, he’s going to implicate you. His story is going to be that you were the only one masterminding all this. That you were the one behind Angie’s death. All of them. Minowa, Danibel, Salgado. And you’re going to have to go along with that because he has your daughter.”
“Utter bullshit,” Bent said, but he sounded frightened. “He doesn’t have Janie. I’ve spoken to him.”
“You can believe him,” Shalini said. “Or you can be smart and make sure Janie is safe.” She tapped her fingers on the phone. “You can verify what I’m saying. Grace and Duncan are here, if you want to talk to them. They’ll tell you we don’t have Janie. Or you can call your police friends. Their fellows tried to pick us up in Colombo. They’ll tell you we didn’t have Janie.”
“Let me talk to Grace,” Bent said.
“Tell us where Hammond is, Bent,” Grace said, choking back her reluctance. “The police are looking for him.”
“I don’t know where he is,” Bent said. “Some place where he’s being treated for a cobra bite.”
Grace gasped. Shalini’s mouth had fallen open.
“I couldn’t talk to him for long, but he said you had Janie,” Bent said.
“Is he going to be—” Grace started to say, but Shalini was gesturing at her, mouthing, “Say you don’t have Janie!”
“We don’t have her,” Grace said, not wanting to talk to him. What if he weren’t involved in all this? They’d be putting him through this for nothing. “Shalini’s right. I’m worried . . . and Duncan, about Janie. Go to the Bambalapitiya police station. You can get a plea deal if you go forward now. Report Janie’s kidnapping so the CID can look for her.”
“You better do it before Hammond dies,” Shalini said, her tone grim. “I don’t know of anyone who has survived a cobra bite. If he dies, you’ll be the one who’ll get blamed. And we won’t know where he put Janie.”
55
DUNCAN
Tuesday
“That was Mo,” Grace said, coming out to the sitting room after answering the phone call she had received. “Mortensen called him.” She took a deep breath. “Apparently Bent turned himself in to the US embassy. That’s why Ragu Uncle hasn’t heard anything yet. Bent’s been offered full immunity in exchange for revealing everything he knows. The FBI is involved now. They must have called Mortensen.”
“I’ll let the embassy know we have the child,” Ragu said, rising.
“Did Mo say anything else?” Duncan said.
“The reason Mo called here trying to reach me yesterday was to say someone from the FDA was involved. He showed Mortensen a photo he had found at Angie’s house. A photo with Bent and Hammond Gleeson and another guy, and Mortensen told him the guy was a big shot at the FDA.”
Shalini leaned forward. “Christian Nolan? Was that the guy at the FDA?”
“Yes, that’s the name Mo mentioned,” Grace said. “Do you know who that is?”
“Someone Angie suspected was involved,” Shalini said. “But we didn’t have proof he was connected to Cinasat.”
“This photo’s going to help with that,” Grace said.
56
GRACE
Wednesday
Duncan emerged from a door at the side of the waiting room and beckoned to Grace. She had already been interviewed. She’d been waiting in the chilly air-conditioned interior of the US embassy for more than an hour while Duncan was being interviewed.
“They suggested we talk to Bent,” Duncan said, taking her arm. “They think it’ll help them to get more from him.”
They followed a somber-faced young man wearing a black tie down a long hallway. The man swiped a key card through a slot, and they entered a room glaring with fluorescent light. Bent was seated on one side of a long wooden table, facing the door. A formally dressed man with a shock of red hair sat next to him, a tablet computer balanced on one knee. Another man, with a long-jawed, weather-beaten face, sat opposite, a laptop open on the table in front of him. When Grace and Duncan entered, he indicated the two empty chairs beside him. “I’m Garrett Johnson,” he said. “State Department.” He gestured at the red-haired man. “This is Blue McAllister. He’s acting as Mr. Hyland’s attorney.”
They sat. Bent was hunched over in his chair, his elbows on his knees.
Duncan was silent. Grace waited, not knowing what to say.
“How could you have lied about Janie?” Bent said, raising his eyes to Grace.
“It was the only—” Grace started to say, but Duncan interrupted.
“How can you be asking? All the lies . . . You pretended Janie was kidnapped to show you weren’t involved? You let her be involved in all this?” Duncan said, his voice barely controlled.
“I never meant for everything to go this far,” Bent said, looking down at his hands. “I didn’t have anything to do with any of the deaths.”
Grace drew a deep breath. “Was Angie killed?” she said. She closed her eyes. She didn’t really want to know the answer, she thought.
McAllister turned to Bent and said, “Don’t answer that.”
“Who killed her?” Grace said. Her voice came out sounding choked. She couldn’t even believe she was asking the question. She couldn’t believe that it was Bent she was asking. This was the first man she had ever dated. There was a time she had thought she loved him. She had kissed him, made love to him, slept with him. She had cooked for him, and eaten the food he’d cooked. She had watched him brush his teeth, cut his toenails. How could she have been so intimate with someone, and yet have known so little about him? Or had he changed after she had known him?
McAllister tapped Bent. “Don’t
answer,” he said again.
Bent waved his hand dismissively. “That wasn’t my idea,” he said. “Look at me, Grace. It wasn’t me.”
Grace saw that he had tears in his eyes. Were they real?
“You know I was close to Angie once. You think I would have her killed? Let her be killed? That is ridiculous.” He shook his head. “She contacted me before the reunion, but I told her I didn’t know anything. When she showed up, I knew she was going to try to talk to me. I wanted to warn her to let go of this story. But I never got to do that. She died before I could talk to her. Angie said she was being followed by Cinasat, so I was afraid something would happen. I saw two people on the trail that afternoon who I thought were from Cinasat. Those gunshots that morning. That was me. I was trying to scare them off.”
“You brought a gun to the reunion?” Grace said.
McAllister took Bent by the arm. “Don’t say any more,” he said.
Bent shook off his hand. “It wasn’t illegal. I have a permit.”
“Did you tell Mortensen all this?” Duncan said.
Bent looked down at his hands. “At the time . . . Look, I had no proof that Cinasat was involved. I talked to Hammond to—”
The attorney touched his arm.
Bent turned to Grace. “I gave Angie a message the night before, telling her to meet me, to warn her. But she never showed up.”
“How did you give her the message?” Grace said.
“What does it matter?” Duncan said. “All a bunch of fucking lies anyway.”
“I’m not lying,” Bent said. “She was talking to people that night, so I couldn’t say anything to her directly. I slipped a note into her sweatshirt pocket when I went by to say hello.”
Grace fumbled in her purse. Bentley’s card, with its handwritten message, was lying at the bottom. “This?” She handed it to Bent.
“How did you get this?” Bent said.
“It was in the sweatshirt you brought me. Remember, from the picnic area that night? You must have picked up Angie’s sweatshirt—it must have been lying there.”
“This proves it,” Bent said to the attorney, to Johnson. He handed the card to McAllister, who read it and passed it to Johnson. “I tried to warn Angie.”
“It shows you may have met with Angie just before she died,” Johnson said.
“She didn’t show up,” Bent said. His face had crumpled. “I don’t know why. She wanted to talk to me. But she didn’t show.”
“We have only your word for that,” Johnson said.
“What about her cell phone? Her computer? What happened to those?” Grace said. “Was that how Cinasat found out about what she was working on? Who was leaking to her?”
“I don’t—”
“That’s enough,” McAllister said to Bent, his voice firm.
“You thought Cinasat was involved, and you didn’t say anything,” Duncan said, his voice flat.
“Mr. Hyland has nothing more to say about this,” McAllister said.
“What about that phone call I heard you on? At the reunion,” Grace said.
Bent frowned. “What?”
“Outside the kitchen building,” Grace said. Realization dawned on her. “You knew it was Cinasat. You were trying to get them to cover it up.” He was lying. He had to have known. “Was that how a different medical examiner showed up? Someone Cinasat paid off? Oh my God.”
“What the hell?” Duncan said. “Is that even possible?”
Bent said nothing. McAllister was whispering to him, his hand cupped over his mouth.
“Mortensen was suspicious about the whole thing,” Grace said. “My God. That was why Mortensen got Internal Affairs involved. Because he figured out the investigation had been rigged. Is that what happened?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bent said, but his expression said everything.
Grace covered her mouth, incredulous.
“Mr. Hyland has nothing more to say about Ms. Osborne’s death,” McAllister said.
There was a thick silence for a moment. Then Duncan said, “The other deaths?”
“I only knew after they happened . . . ,” Bent said, trailing off when McAllister seized his arm again.
“You knew about Minowa Costa’s accident,” Grace said. “So-called accident.”
“Only after it had happened,” Bent said.
“You thought no one would connect the accident to Cinasat because she quit months ago. That’s why you were worried about that photo Mo had. With her and Angie at Cinasat. Because that would show a recent connection between Cinasat and Minowa. You must have known Cinasat was involved in the accident. You tried to cover it up.”
“Enough,” McAllister said, his eyes on Bent.
“And Danibel Garwick?” Grace said.
“That was not in my hands,” Bent said.
“But you knew, didn’t you?” Grace said. “Her tongue was hanging out when she died.”
“What?” Duncan said.
Grace nodded. “That’s what her neighbors said. Just the way you described Angie.” She leaned forward. “Was it some special poison that does that?”
“I don’t know,” Bent said, looking down at his hands.
Duncan said, “Was it a video?”
Bent’s reaction was enough for Grace, before he said wearily, “I told you, I was not involved in any of that.”
“The deal was based on your providing information,” Johnson said, his face grim.
Grace stared at Bent. “My God. A video? It made her what . . . have a heart attack?”
“It wasn’t meant for that,” Bent said. “We’d been testing the videos in lab studies. We could get people to experience all kinds of things. Simple discomfort. Shame and guilt. Pain and insomnia. Fatigue. Nausea. Cold.”
“That was what the hooniyam research was for?”
Bent nodded. “And some of the thovil research on trances. We were getting amazing results. We could get people to feel unbearably cold. Get them to go to a different building to ask for a blanket. Some of the effects lasted for weeks. We were sure we’d be able to get people to go to their doctors, go to the drugstore to get a drug.” There was a note of pride in his voice. “It was a brilliant idea. A technological innovation that could have given us unprecedented sales. I didn’t mean for it to be weaponized. That was Hammond’s . . . He had it tried on Salgado after we found out he was leaking.”
“So Salgado was murdered,” Grace said. She couldn’t believe it still. Duncan had almost been killed.
Bent shook his head. “They weren’t murders. Showing someone a video isn’t a crime. Salgado felt unbearably hot. He jumped. His own free will.”
“My God,” Grace said. “That’s how Angie had a heart attack. She watched a video? Someone showed her one on the trail out there?”
Bent covered his face with his hands. “Hammond’s idea. I had nothing to do with it. After it worked on Salgado, he had the research division design one for a heart attack. I told you. I only found out after it was too late. No one would ever know, he said. Because she had an elevated risk for heart disease. But no one expected the tongue. No one knows why that happened.” He sighed. “There’s still a lot we don’t know. We were still refining the technique . . . Weaponizing was a mistake.” He pulled at his hair, angrily.
“All this to market Symb86?”
Bent sighed again. “You’re making it out to be something terrible. It’s not. Drugs are already marketed this way. Think about all the ads you see on TV. Not just from Cinasat. All the major players use this strategy. All we do is show how our products are useful to people. Show them how we can make their lives better. Men used to think not being able to have sex was normal, yeah? Just a part of getting older. But once they realize there’s something called erectile dysfunction, they know they can fix it. That makes their lives better. We’re doing people a service.”
“Like RLS,” Grace said.
“What?” Duncan said.
“Restle
ss legs syndrome. You create disorders,” Grace said.
“Nonsense,” Bent said. “We create nothing. People already have experiences they’d rather not have, but they put up with them. We point out the emotions that go along with those experiences. That makes people see the experiences are really symptoms, symptoms that can be eliminated.”
“So this is all okay? You don’t see a problem with using hooniyam?”
“Kattadiyas know how to make people believe. To persuade. We wanted to see what we could learn from them. If people don’t believe they have a symptom, how can they believe our drugs will help?” He shook his head. “All we were doing was refining our marketing strategy. I don’t see anything unethical about it. We consulted our lawyers. They agreed this was only a refining of what was already being done. That’s just what ads do. Evoke strong emotions. Guilt, shame, fear. Then people don’t just tolerate discomfort. We show them they don’t need to be uncomfortable. Show them how to be happier.”
Duncan was looking down at the floor between his knees. His hands were clenched. “With Symb86? A drug that doesn’t fucking exist?” he said.
Bent sighed. It was a deep sigh, as if he were trying to breathe out his despair. “It exists. In theory, on paper . . . it could have worked. But our testing . . . We found out it was inert. That’s when we decided to use it as a placebo.” He rubbed at his forehead, leaving red marks on his skin.
“It would have done nothing for CFS? For infertility?” Duncan said.
“Of course it would have. It could have helped people enormously, yeah. The idea itself, it’s genius. The placebo effect is real. People get better when they believe they will. Cinasat was just helping them to believe.”
“How could you possibly . . . Why did you think this could be pulled off?” Grace said. “What about the FDA? All those steps to go through to get approval.”
Bent shrugged. “Money talks,” he said, his lips twisted cynically. “Cinasat knows how to get things done. We know the right people.”
“A great company,” Duncan said sarcastically.
“This could have really worked out for you,” Bent said. “The project was going strong. If not for the leaks . . . Salgado was too fastidious, that was the problem. That was what started everything. Going on about how the locals were being used. Talking about how they had no power. He’s the one who corrupted Minowa. And Danibel.” He shook his head. “To think I trusted Danibel. She was the one who researched your school . . . You were the first person I thought of when Salgado . . . when we lost him. Your anthropology background, your thovil expertise.”
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