Holly looked around the car for something she could use as a tourniquet, but there was nothing.
Then a trucker who had seen the accident and stopped to help stuck his head into the car. “There’s an ambulance on the way. Anything I can do here?”
“Give me your belt,” Holly said.
“My belt . . . Why?”
“So I can stop her bleeding.”
“Okay, sure.” After he’d stripped it off, he looked at the woman’s arm and hesitated. Apparently anticipating that his belt was going to get blood on it, he removed the silver-dollar buckle before handing it over. “I don’t need it back.”
Holly wrapped the belt twice around the redhead’s upper arm and pulled it tight, holding the two free ends in her hand. The bleeding slowed to a trickle then stopped. Through the cracked windshield, she saw Susan come around the lawyer’s car and hustle toward the open door on the injured woman’s side.
“How’s the situation here?” she said, bending down and looking in.
“Under control. What about the lawyer?”
Not wanting to upset the girl who’d hit him, Susan simply shook her head.
“I want to go home,” the redhead said.
Susan took the girl’s left hand and patted it, taking her pulse at the same time. “This won’t last much longer.”
Even though Holly relaxed the tension on the belt periodically to prevent tissue damage below the tourniquet, her hand was aching by the time the ambulance arrived. While the paramedics loaded the redhead onto a gurney, Holly joined Susan to watch a patrol car, approaching fast.
“We’ll have to tell them what we saw,” Susan said. “But this isn’t the time to get into all the rest.”
“Why not?”
“Those are merely patrolmen. They wouldn’t know how to handle it. For now, our story begins when he passed us in the gas station.”
“As eyewitnesses, we’ll have to give them our names and addresses,” Holly said. “They’ll want to know why we’re in Dallas.”
“No they won’t. That focuses on us. They’ve got other things to worry about.”
“What if they ask?”
“Then we’re here on personal business.”
“That’s pretty vague.”
“Precisely. I’d rather not lie to them.”
Seriously doubting the wisdom of Susan’s position, Holly agreed to go along with her plan. And it unfolded just as Susan had predicted. The cops never asked why they were in Dallas.
Holly had managed to help the injured woman without getting any blood on herself. Even so, she washed her hands thoroughly in the gas station’s restroom. Returning to the car, where Susan waited, Holly got in and made a suggestion. “We could call the police right now and find out who we should contact to tell our complete story.”
“Not just yet,” Susan said, starting the car. “There’s something we need to do first.”
“What?”
“I’ll show you in a few minutes.”
Susan left the station and headed toward Dallas, quickly leaving the crash scene behind. She drove until they came to a small shopping strip, where she pulled into a parking space well away from any other cars. She then reached into a pocket of the light jacket she wore and withdrew a man’s wallet.
“Oh no,” Holly groaned. “That isn’t . . . You didn’t . . .”
“It was lying beside him. I didn’t take it off the body.”
“This is not good. I can’t believe you did that. Now the cops won’t even know who he is. How will they notify his nearest relative of his death?”
“We’re not going to keep it. I just didn’t want us to be totally dependent on the police for information. They have a way of keeping everything to themselves. If it should happen that they don’t respond in an effective way to our story, which is highly possible, we’ll at least have whatever we learn from this.”
“You sure don’t think much of the police.”
“I just don’t like being left in the dark. Now, let’s see who that lawyer really was. Have you got something in your bag to take notes?”
While Holly looked, Susan started going through the wallet.
“All right,” she said quickly. “According to his driver’s license, his name is Palmer Garnette and he lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Are you writing?”
“How do you spell Garnette?” Holly asked, her ballpoint poised over the back of a grocery receipt supported by her own driver’s license.
Susan spelled the name and recited his address in Madison. She then turned the license over. “He didn’t check the organ donor box. Pity.”
She put the license back in the slot where she’d found it and looked further.
“We’re not going to just march into police headquarters and hand over the wallet when we’re through with it, are we?” Holly asked.
“That wouldn’t be wise. Ah, here’s his AARP card. Palmer Garnette, same as before. So that’s probably who he really is. It’s funny, I never think of old crooks belonging to AARP. But I guess they don’t have their own retirement organization.”
“If we’re not going to admit we picked up the wallet, shouldn’t you be wearing gloves when you’re handling all that stuff?”
“You’re worried about my fingerprints?” Susan said incredulously. “They’re not going to give that a thought. They don’t even look for prints when somebody ransacks your house. It’s like they have to pay for that black powder themselves, out of their paycheck.” She pulled an insurance card from another slot. “He left a Chrysler Sebring back in Madison. State Farm. Guess they insure anybody.”
The wallet subsequently produced a small cache of credit cards, a video rental membership, a couple of business cards from antiques shops in Madison, a Blue Cross/Blue Shield ID, and a wad of receipts from Dallas restaurants. Then Susan noticed a scrap of paper tucked into a slot so just a tiny edge of it showed. She took it out and unfolded it.
“What’s that?” Holly asked.
“A phone number. Write this down.”
She recited a phone number with no area code and Holly entered it on her grocery-receipt dossier.
Now it was about time to contact the cops.
7
ZANE BRUXTON STOPPED abruptly at the door to the lab, the pain almost more than he could bear. Knowing what was happening, his personal aide, Phillip Boone, steadied him.
Unwilling to live in the twilight existence that pain medication imposed, Bruxton was left to fight back with only the force of his will. And he exerted it now, shutting the door that had let the demon in. He gently pushed Boone away. “I’m all right now.”
When he’d first been diagnosed, the irony of the situation had fed his anger. Pancreatic cancer—one of the few malignancies unresponsive to Vasostasin. The first round of chemo had sent the disease into remission. But it had returned, stronger. His doctors had fought back, changing drugs, trying different combinations, and once more they had driven it off. Then, three months ago, it had stormed his gates, overwhelming the chemicals deployed against it. And now he was dying.
Had he been a man of limited means, he might have gathered what resources he could and traveled to a place he’d never seen. But he’d been everywhere. Or he might have mended broken relationships or made amends for offenses he’d committed. This too was denied him because he’d done nothing he was sorry for. Moreover, his heart and mind were as cold toward religion as they ever were. There was no God and there was no Hell, and he couldn’t even hedge his bets by giving lip service to the possibility. Not only would that be hypocritical, it wouldn’t work.
His vast fortune, recently augmented by the six hundred million dollars he’d made by selling ten percent of his stock in Bruxton Pharmaceuticals, had turned from a comfort to a problem. Business was war, and money wa
s the spoils of war. It belonged to victorious generals. Inherited money was a curse, dulling the spirit of the beneficiary and killing incentive. A person who isn’t able to figure out for himself how to make a fortune wouldn’t be capable of handling one given to him. The money his two ex-wives were enjoying had been taken from him unwillingly. And look at them. What have they done with it? Nothing. They consume, but don’t create. It has damaged them.
So he had decided that his fortune must go to institutions, as with the MRI he’d given to the hospital. Eight million dollars for a plaque on the wall with his name on it. A high price to pay even for posthumous virtue. So he would use his money for a library at the University of Oklahoma, a park in Harlem, a children’s museum in Houston, an athletic field in Toledo.
As for his disease, until the day came when he could function no more, it would be doors open as usual. No quarter asked, none given.
The pain shut out for the moment, Bruxton entered the lab and looked around for Henry Pennell. Though the place was fairly neat by most standards, Bruxton’s forehead wrinkled at what he perceived as a sloppy operation. A scientist’s habits should be as meticulous as his mind. It was all attention to detail. And that being so, he wondered once more whether Pennell was capable of delivering.
Bruxton found Pennell in his office, his back to the door, reviewing tables of data on his computer. Back to the door—so trusting—a child who’d spent his life suckling at the academic nipple. Well, he was in the real world now.
“So you’re here,” Bruxton said loudly, intending to startle, to show Pennell how vulnerable he was sitting like that.
Pennell turned and shot to his feet, his discomfort at being in Bruxton’s presence already in full bloom. To make the other man even edgier, Bruxton stood in the doorway without speaking, staring into Pennell’s eyes.
Pennell was a long-faced man with eyes too bright, a chin too long, and hair too short; a fellow who probably looked out of place in his own home, a self-conscious man whose very essence shouted social misfit so loudly that even if he’d been wearing a suit by Bruxton’s personal tailor instead of khaki pants and a wrinkled white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, anyone could still spot him for what he was.
Finally, Bruxton said, “Sit down.”
Pennell sat gingerly in his chair as though, while he’d been standing, someone had booby-trapped it.
Bruxton could have summoned Pennell to the main office during the day to have this talk, but surprising him in his own space after normal business hours was far better. It showed him there was no haven from Bruxton’s reach.
Growing tired, but being careful to hide that, Bruxton sat in the chrome-and-leather visitor’s chair and crossed one leg over the other. “I came by Saturday morning and the place was locked.”
“I ah . . . had something important to do. And I was here until at least ten o’clock every night last week.”
“Doctor Pennell, do you remember what you told me when I interviewed you for this position?” Bruxton asked coldly.
“I said I was the man for the job.”
“And I believed you. But what has my faith produced?”
“I am making progress.” He gestured to his computer. “This table . . .”
“Progress? Doctor Pennell, this isn’t an NIH-funded project where progress is a satisfactory achievement. Do you have any idea what your delay is costing this company? No, of course you don’t, because you think that’s not your problem. But you’re wrong. It is very much your concern. And every day that you fail to deliver what you promised me drains the life from this company.”
“If I don’t understand that, perhaps it’s because I’ve never been told what use the company will make of the techniques I’m working on. May I know what the large goal is?”
“You may not. Just do your job.”
“I will accomplish what I said I would, Doctor Bruxton.”
Though the pain had begun to creep under the door Bruxton had shut against it, there was no evidence of this on his face as he rose from his chair. “See that you do.”
A few moments later, in the car on his way home, when the pain was once more banished, Bruxton’s thoughts returned to Pennell. Of the twenty men he’d considered for the job, he still believed Pennell had the best chance of succeeding. So he had no intention of firing him. But he’d seen in Pennell’s face that the man had felt humiliated by their conversation, and even though he was earning far more with Bruxton Pharmaceuticals than he could anywhere else, he was likely weighing his alternatives, wondering if the job was worth it.
All men become addicted to their income level, acquiring habits and tastes they are loath to give up. But Pennell was so important to Bruxton that he didn’t feel he could rely solely on that to keep him in line.
He reached for his cell phone and activated the sliding glass panel that separated him from the front. Then he called a number in D.C.
“Eli . . . Zane Bruxton. Sorry to call you at home, but I need a favor. Wednesday, when your committee is considering whether to give FDA approval to that engineered blood vessel from Histogen, I’d like the decision put off so the company can gather more data on its performance . . . No, no. You’re not listening, Eli. I don’t want you to disapprove the application. Just delay it a while, say . . . for two months. Then we’ll see. That’s right. So how’s the missus? . . . I’m glad to hear it. And Marjorie, she doing all right in medical school? . . . Well, everybody there is bright. They can’t all be at the top of the class. But I’m sure she’ll make you proud.”
Bruxton hung up and reflected on what he’d done.
Pennell had been hired after the Vasostasin-fueled explosive increase in the price of Bruxton Pharmaceuticals stock. He had therefore missed that boat. From the firm Bruxton employed to keep tabs on certain key people in his organization, he’d learned that Pennell was holding a heavy position in Histogen and stood to make a killing when their stock increased in price, as it surely would after it gained FDA approval for its artificial vessel. And this just wasn’t a good time for Pennell to start feeling independent. As Bruxton put his phone away and lowered the window separating him from his driver, Boone, the pain once more demanded his attention.
HENRY PENNELL SAT staring at his computer screen, but not seeing it. When he’d signed on with Bruxton, he’d been convinced he could produce the technological advance that was called for. Now, after six months on the project, he wasn’t sure anyone could do it.
With Bruxton in his face like that, threatening him, he’d had to put up a confident front. But now, alone with his doubts, he began to fear for his future. If Bruxton fired him, what would he do? Go back to academics? With his lousy reputation as a teacher? Not likely. Sure, maybe he could catch on at some half-assed community college making a third-world salary to teach students who didn’t have a clue. But a job at a real school? Pee-wee Herman had a better chance of being appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. And there was no way he’d get a recommendation from Bruxton for another industry slot.
All that made it absolutely imperative that the feds okay the Histogen vessel for clinical trials. Then he could unload his stock and live happily ever after, and Bruxton could go screw himself. Otherwise, he’d have to think harder about Micky Hardaway’s proposal: a fat finder’s fee and a lifetime job at Calgene. And all he had to do was deliver the protocol for the way Bruxton was coupling sugars to the parent protein for Vasostasin. A little corporate espionage.
It wasn’t something he wanted to do . . . and wouldn’t do, unless he was backed into a corner. Then, Bruxton would have only himself to blame.
8
“SO YOU BELIEVE this fellow recognized you at the gas station, and in trying to get away, ran the light at the intersection?”
“That’s correct,” Susan said.
They were talking to Detective Jack N
ewsom of the Fraud and Document section of the Dallas police department. In looking down the list of the department’s various offices, that had seemed the likeliest place to start. And so far, Newsom’s actions hadn’t indicated otherwise.
About a half hour after they’d gone through Palmer Garnette’s wallet, they’d put it, along with an anonymous note explaining where it had been found, in a padded envelope addressed to the traffic investigative division. They’d then dropped the envelope off at a branch post office a few minutes before closing. Susan believed that if the Dallas police were any good, the fact it wouldn’t arrive for a day or two shouldn’t create a significant problem in looking into the case she and Holly would present to them.
After mailing the wallet, the two women discovered that all the Fraud and Document detectives had gone home for the day. Since both Susan and Holly had planned on an overnight stay in Dallas, this delay created no hardship.
Detective Newsom had sandy hair and bore more than a passing resemblance to the TV reporter Ted Koppel. He stared briefly at his coffee mug, which declared that he was the “Best Dad in the World,” then looked up. “I have to tell you, this is a new one.”
“When will you be going to the clinic?” Holly asked. “I don’t know about you, Susan, but I’d like to go along.”
Newsom raised both hands, palms out, as if fending off an attacker. “Whoa . . . it doesn’t work like that. I’ve got a lot of background checking to do before I talk to anyone over there.”
“How long will that take?” Holly asked. “We can only stay for another few hours.”
“I suggest you just go on home. It could be a few days before I let them know they’re being investigated.”
“Will you keep us informed?”
“Give me a call day after tomorrow. I’ll bring you up to date.”
After Susan and Holly left, Newsom pulled the phone over and set about making a few calls to Memphis and Jackson to see if he should file the information they’d given him in the drawer with the alien abduction cases.
The Lethal Helix Page 6