by Mike Lawson
Before Fiona could say anything, DeMarco raised a hand to silence her. “We have two ways to go here. The hard way is we collect a lot of evidence—autopsy results, statements from scientists in Ballard’s lab, phone records, banking transactions—and we use all this evidence to get Orson Mulray … and then we get you. And you’ll do just as much time as Mulray.
“The other way we can go, and the way I prefer to go, is to give you a deal, because if you’ll testify against Mulray it will strengthen the government’s case and save everybody a lot of work. You see, it’s really Orson Mulray we want, because we know you were just his pawn in all this. But if you don’t cooperate, you go from pawn to full-blown accomplice.”
He could tell that Fiona didn’t like being called Mulray’s pawn.
“So, what’s it going to be, Fiona? Are you going to help me, or do you want to bet your life that I can’t make a case against you and Mulray now that I have people with money and political clout behind me?”
It didn’t take two seconds for Fiona to respond. “Get the hell out of here,” she said. “I haven’t done anything wrong, and you can’t prove otherwise.”
DeMarco rose from his seat. “All right. But you need to understand something. The government’s like a glacier when it goes after a crime as complicated as this one. It takes a long time to get the glacier moving, and then it moves slowly, but in the end it grinds up everything in its path. Well, I’ve got the glacier moving now, Fiona, and it’s gonna run right over you. I’ll give you a couple days to make up your mind, but after that you won’t see me again until the day I show up here with FBI agents and watch them put handcuffs on you.”
DeMarco called Emma after leaving Fiona’s building.
“Did you sell it?” Emma asked.
“I have no idea,” DeMarco said.
Fiona walked back to her home gym, mounted the stationary bike, and began to pedal.
When she read in the paper that Nelson had been killed at Wallens Ridge, she was delighted. Hell, she was ecstatic. René Lambert, Hobson, Kelly, Nelson, and Lee were all gone—meaning there was no one left to testify that she had hired them to do anything. There was that little twit Bernie, of course, and the guard he bribed to have Nelson killed at Wallens Ridge, but there had been nothing in the papers to indicate that anyone was investigating Nelson’s death. He’d died in a routine prison you-lookin’-at-me? beef. Yes, when she read that Nelson was dead, she’d thought: It’s finally over. I can get on with my life.
Then DeMarco shows up, like a bad penny that just won’t stay lost.
She knew he was lying, of course. She knew this because a) he was a lawyer and b) he worked for Congress. She couldn’t think of two more certain criteria to define a liar. But what was he lying about? It did seem plausible that a rival pharmaceutical company would be willing to spread some money around to cause Mulray Pharma problems, and it seemed plausible that a few congressmen could be paid to assist them. It was also possible that they were trying to get a body exhumed to do an autopsy. She wasn’t, however, the least bit worried about an autopsy.
The only crime she and Orson had committed to develop the Alzheimer’s drug was murdering a few people to provide timely data for Ballard’s research. Because of this, they knew it was critical that the old folks be killed in a manner in which murder could not be proven and, for that reason, they contacted a renowned pathologist in Switzerland. They paid the pathologist—through a middleman—to identify a poison that couldn’t be detected during an autopsy, and he gave them the name of the aerosol spray. That was step one. Step two came after the first person was killed with the poison, when they had two other pathologists, one a German and one an Israeli, perform independent autopsies on the corpse. They told the two pathologists that it was suspected that poison had been used to kill the person and they should perform every test known to modern science to prove this was the case. The pathologists spent a month trying and, in the end, concluded the person had died from a garden-variety heart attack. So Fiona was confident that no matter what pathologist they used—this Dr. Hayes or anyone else—they wouldn’t be able to prove that people had been poisoned.
The problem, however, was that DeMarco was right about one thing: a lot of people had taken part in developing the drug, and Fiona had never been involved in the work done at Ballard’s lab or in the clinical trials in Thailand. She had no idea if buried somewhere in all the paperwork was evidence to support the allegation that people had been killed to provide data. She just didn’t know.
The other thing DeMarco was right about was the money trail. The government, given enough time and the ability to apply pressure to various offshore banks, might be able to trace money from Mulray Pharma to people like Kelly and Nelson.
The thing was—and DeMarco had basically said this—if the government launched a massive investigation the trail wouldn’t lead directly to her. It would lead to the company—to Mulray Pharma. And if they could prove the company had done something illegal, then they would go after Orson, because he was the company. And if they had enough evidence to convict Orson, would he give her up? What a dumb question. Of course he would. He would blame everything on her. He’d say she was the one who paid Kelly and Nelson and directed all the killings. He’d claim she’d acted without his knowledge, and maybe the government would believe him. But whether the government believed him or not, he’d try his best to lay the blame on her.
Stop it! You’re letting DeMarco get inside your head. There was no way the government would ever be able to prove a crime had been committed. And if a case ever went to trial, it would be incredibly complex. It would involve things done in foreign countries where the United States had no jurisdiction; there would be impossible-to-comprehend scientific mumbo jumbo and dueling experts providing conflicting testimony about everything. And Orson’s two-hundred-person outside law firm would be throwing up roadblocks every step of the way. There was no chance in hell the government would be able to win in court, assuming it could ever indict anyone for a crime.
But then this voice—the voice that had propelled her from sexually abused trailer trash to a woman with a net worth of a billion dollars—said: Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?
Fiona began to realize that what really bothered her was that she couldn’t stand the thought of living in fear for the rest of her life. But she could see it. It’s three, four, five years in the future, and the government eventually finds something they can use to bring her and Orson down. And then she spends years engaged in legal battles—and maybe loses the war. She did not want that sword hanging over her head. She refused to have it hanging over her head. She wanted to get on with her life—and the only way to do that was to eliminate the person who posed the greatest threat, and that person was Orson Mulray. But how would she get rid of Orson, with Kelly and Nelson no longer around to help her?
And then the answer came to her. It would be risky—she would be risking everything—but it was better to take the risk now than one day wake up and find DeMarco knocking on her door again, this time accompanied by guys with badges.
55
Orson was sitting in his den, wearing a comfortable jogging suit. He was trying to read a report that one of his VPs had sent him, but was having a hard time concentrating because he had a cold. He figured he’d caught the cold because he’d been working so hard and that it would be good to stay home for a couple of days and rest.
The phone on his desk rang.
“Yes?” he said.
“Sir, there’s a woman here to see you. A Ms. West.”
After the story had come out in the Washington Post, Orson began to get a lot of hate mail, and some of the mail came from people living in countries where Lizzie Warwick had established her care centers. One was from some maniac in Uganda who claimed that one of the test subjects who died had been like a mother to him and took care of him after his real mot
her died. He said if he ever got the chance, he was going to hack Orson to death with a machete.
Orson wasn’t too worried about some machete-wielding African killing him, but decided that he really should do more to protect himself. He was a wealthy man and therefore a likely kidnapping target, and there were always dangerous poor people out there who resented people like him who were successful. So now he had a full-time, live-in bodyguard—an ex-Marine who could shoot a gun with either hand—and it was the bodyguard who had called to tell him Fiona was there.
“Let her in,” Orson said. Then he said, “Wait a minute. Search her before you let her in. You know, pat her down, check her purse, that sort of thing. She’ll go nuts and swear at you, but fuck her. Tell her you’re just doing your job and you search everyone, and you won’t let her in unless she’s searched.”
Fiona made him nervous.
“Why did you have that goon frisk me, goddamnit?” Fiona screamed as soon as she entered Orson’s den.
“He frisked you?” Orson said, acting bewildered. “I apologize. I’ll make sure that never happens again.”
She didn’t believe him; he had told that gorilla to search her. Then she took a breath, because being angry didn’t suit her purpose. “So how are you feeling? Your secretary said you were sick.”
“It’s just a cold; I’ll be fine in a day or two. And I need to get back to work, because I’m a little concerned we may not be able to keep up with demand for the product. They’re working around the clock at the plant in Thailand, but we’re going to need more capacity, and I have to decide if I want to add on to the existing plant in Bangkok or build a new facility in Africa, where labor rates are even cheaper.”
“Well, that’s terrific,” Fiona said. And she meant it. The fact that the drug was selling so well that Orson was concerned about keeping up with orders was a very good thing indeed, since Fiona owned a lot of Mulray Pharma stock. “But you need to take care of yourself. You can’t run the company if you’re sick. And you look so tense! I think you need one of my massages.”
When she and Orson had been lovers, one of the things she did to avoid having sex with him was give him massages until he fell asleep. She was an excellent amateur masseuse, and Orson knew it. This was going to be even easier than she had imagined.
“Oh, that’s all right,” Orson said, but Fiona ignored his halfhearted protest and walked behind him and placed her hands on his fat shoulders. “My God! Your muscles are so tight; they’re all knotted up.” She started to knead his shoulders with her strong fingers and said, “Now, how does that feel?”
“Good,” Orson admitted, and gave a little moan of pleasure.
“I thought so,” Fiona said, and massaged his shoulders for a couple more minutes. Then she stopped and reached into her pocket.
“Ooh, don’t stop,” Orson said.
“I’m not,” Fiona said—and she brought her right hand around to the front of his face, jammed the nozzle of the nasal spray container into his right nostril, and gave it a good squeeze.
Orson jerked his head away. “What did you do?” he asked.
“I killed you,” Fiona said.
Orson tried to stand, but just as he placed his hands on his desk to rise, he clutched his left arm and collapsed back into his chair. Fiona walked around to the front of the desk so she could see his face. She had heard somewhere that having a heart attack was like having an elephant dance on your chest, and judging by the expression on Orson’s face, it looked like there might be a whole herd dancing on him. He reached for the phone—to call his bodyguard, she assumed —but before his hand could touch the phone, she moved it a couple of inches until it was just beyond his reach. He looked at her then, his eyes begging for help, then his head fell onto the desk with a loud thump—and he died.
Fiona knew she was taking an incredible risk, because she knew Orson’s body was going to be autopsied and that the autopsy was going to be performed by one of the best pathologists in the business. But Fiona was betting her life on another pathologist, the one who had identified the poison she’d just used and who’d said that an hour after death, no autopsy would be able to detect it.
Fiona sat with Orson’s corpse for forty-five minutes, reading a travel magazine she found in his den. She was particularly interested in one article about a man who took select clients out on his two-hundred-foot yacht for cruises around the Mediterranean. The boat had a crew of six, including a Cordon Bleu chef, a masseuse, and a personal trainer, and Fiona just loved the idea of sitting on the deck all by herself, the crew waiting on her hand and foot, as the boat sailed through Grecian islands.
She checked her watch. Enough time had passed, and she rose to leave. She looked at Orson again, his big head lying on the desk blotter, a little drool seeping from his mouth, and tried to think of something appropriate to say. The only thing she could think of was: “Bon voyage.”
She opened the door to his office and said loudly, for the benefit of Orson’s bodyguard, “I’ll call you as soon as I hear from the Post’s attorneys.”
As she was leaving the house, she said to the guard, “Mr. Mulray told me to tell you that he doesn’t want to be disturbed for at least two hours. As you know, he’s sick, and he said he was going to nap on the couch in his den. And if you ever frisk me again …”
56
DeMarco rose from his bed dressed in boxer shorts and a Washington Nationals T-shirt with a hole in one armpit. He brushed his teeth, then went to the kitchen and added water and coffee to his Mr. Coffee. The coffee brewing, he walked to the front door, picked up the newspaper lying on his porch, and saw the headline: ORSON MULRAY DEAD.
“I’ll be damned,” he muttered.
He sipped his coffee as he read the article. There was no indication that the authorities found Mulray’s death suspicious. An autopsy would be performed, of course, but it appeared that Mulray had most likely died from a heart attack. The reporter noted that Orson’s mother had died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-six and that Orson was fifty-eight, but added that Orson’s father, Clayton Mulray, had lived to the ripe old age of eighty-four. The reporter said it was tragic that Mulray had died on the cusp of his company’s greatest achievement and before he could see how profoundly his new drug would benefit mankind.
The last person to see Mulray alive was his lawyer and close friend, Fiona West, and she was quoted as saying: “He’ll be remembered forever for his unwavering commitment to rid the world of one of its most terrible diseases.”
And maybe he would be remembered that way, DeMarco thought. It was hard to imagine Orson Mulray being placed in the same category with Jonas Salk, but history was quite often distorted. He sat for a moment, probing his conscience, to see if he felt guilty about having pointed Fiona at Orson Mulray like a guided missile—and concluded he didn’t feel guilty at all.
It was time to go see Nelson again.
57
Nelson kept his side of the bargain.
He gave the Arlington County prosecutor a videotaped confession, admitting everything he and Kelly had done for Fiona West and Mulray Pharma. He provided dates and places where he met with Fiona, including his first meeting with her in Afghanistan. He said the government should at least be able to verify that Fiona had been to Afghanistan, and because Fiona had used American bodyguards, some of those men could confirm that she visited the prison where Kelly and Nelson had been detained. He also told how he and Kelly had killed Phil Downing and framed Brian Kincaid, and the details he provided gave credence to his story. For example, he told how Kelly had made a wax impression of the secretary’s key, and he provided the name of the locksmith in southeast D.C. who made the key Kelly used to enter Downing’s office. He admitted that Fiona gave him and Kelly ten million dollars to assist her, and he gave the prosecutor information on all his bank accounts. Certainly, Nelson said, the government shou
ld be able to trace some of that money back to its source.
The only thing Nelson would not do was confess to murder. He said Kelly had killed everyone: Downing, seven people in Peru, four in Pakistan, and three in Africa. And DeMarco had to admit that when he met with Kelly, Kelly had said the same thing: that he was the murderer, not Nelson. Nelson did admit that he’d been in the liquor store that day to kill DeMarco.
There were a number of problems with Nelson’s testimony, however, the major one being that Fiona had always spoken to Kelly when she wanted something done. For instance, Kelly had told Nelson that Fiona wanted DeMarco killed, but Nelson never spoke directly to Fiona. The government might be able to show that Kelly and Fiona had phoned each other, but there would be no phone records linking Nelson to Fiona.
The prosecutor packed up all of Nelson’s testimony and went to see the FBI—like a cat bringing its master a dead, unappealing rat. A meeting was then held, attended by a platoon of lawyers who reached the conclusion that Nelson’s testimony against Fiona wasn’t going to be good enough. All they really had was Nelson’s word against Fiona’s. And other than Phil Downing and Bill Hobson, they couldn’t even prove that murder had occurred. The FBI wasn’t about to start digging up bodies in Thailand on a case that appeared to be going nowhere.
They finally decided the best thing to do was put a wire on Nelson, have him talk to Fiona, and see if he could get her to admit to anything that would strengthen the government’s case against her.
Nelson said he’d be happy to wear a wire.