“It was meant to look that way. That’s what they said. But it was definitely murder. Ligature strangulation.” Helen instinctively put her hand over her throat. “They wanted my fingerprints and everything. I really think the sons of bitches have me down for a suspect.”
He reached into the fridge and took out two cans of Budweiser, then remembered that it wasn’t beer Helen had asked for, but coffee. He was going to make fresh coffee for them both.
“They fingerprinted you right here?” she said. “Just like that?”
“No. They wanted me to go with them, all the way over to Commerce. I told them if they wanted my prints, they could send someone out here. They said they’d do just that. I don’t think they liked me too much.”
Helen sat down on the sofa. The news of Novak’s death seemed to have shaken her, more than Ford had thought it would. After all, it wasn’t as if she knew him. She had only met him once. But then again, Ford thought, as a trauma surgeon maybe it was different for him. In his line of work meeting people who were about to die was an everyday occurrence. And besides, he had Sunny to worry about.
“Did they … Did they say anything else?” she asked. “Was there a breakin? Was anything stolen?”
“I didn’t ask. But I don’t think so. I mean, who ever heard of a thief going to that kind of trouble? What would be the point?”
For a while neither of them spoke. He’d been hoping that she would say something, suggest something. She knew about Novak. Maybe his death meant something. But all she could do was sit there on his sofa, her hands pressed together between her knees, going over the same obvious questions. But then, what more could she do? What more could anyone do?
It was already nighttime outside. Over the yard the sky was a dark rectangle of streetlight on smog. Ford felt as if the darkness were gathering around him, congealing, pressing in on him until there was nothing left but to lie down and surrender. He was so tired. He wanted to sleep, to sleep the night through and wake up to find that nothing had changed after all, that the last two weeks had never happened. He wanted his old life back: his job, his team, his purpose, above all, his daughter. Yet it was his old life that seemed now like the dream, a structure built on sand. And he knew that if he did lie down to sleep, it would be a new, darker life that he would wake up to.
Helen reached over and turned on a light.
“Did you tell them about the apartment?” she said.
“The apartment?”
“At Haverford Avenue. Where you and Novak were supposed to meet.”
“No, I…” Ford thought for a moment. “No. I guess I just assumed they knew about it. They knew about the meeting, so—”
“But they found Novak at his house, right? In the mountains.”
“That’s right. I’m sure they … Yes, in Topanga Canyon. That’s what they told me. Hey, we could go there,” he said.
He stood up.
Helen frowned. “Novak’s apartment? Why?”
“Because the police may not know it exists. And maybe someone there can tell us something. Maybe … It’s a long shot, but maybe Novak had a girlfriend there or something. She might know what he wanted to talk about.”
Ford took the wallet from his discarded jacket and checked inside. The slip of paper was still there: Novak 9pm 15500 Haverford Ave Apt 12 Code—XA 3747. He held it up between two fingers.
Helen looked at him. There was an intensity in her gaze. In her dark, dilated pupils he saw both exhilaration and fear. Just as on their first date, at the seafood place on Ocean Boulevard, he sensed a complexity, an inner world of impulses and desires that her outward behavior rarely more than hinted at.
Lights went on in the house opposite. From the other side of the fence came the sound of a door opening, the friendly bark of a dog.
“Okay, let’s go there tomorrow morning,” Helen said. “Maybe Novak—”
“Let’s go now. Why wait?”
Ford grabbed his jacket.
“Marcus, we can’t … You’re in no state to—”
“Helen, maybe the police don’t know about the apartment yet, but they’re bound to find out. The morning could be too late. You coming?”
“Marcus, wait.”
She came over and took hold of him by the arm.
“Marcus.”
She reached up and touched his unshaven face. She felt for him, pitied him; he could sense it. But he didn’t want to be pitied. He wanted to do something.
“Marcus, you go over there looking like … like this, and you’re gonna scare the hell out of people. At least get cleaned up, take a shower. We have to do this right, or else we could…”
She put her arms around him and held him for a moment. Or else we could end up like Novak, was that what she was going to say? And it came to him, even through the exhaustion and fear, what a step this was for her, what she was prepared to risk for him.
“Okay,” he said, letting her slip the jacket off his shoulders. “Okay. A shower. And coffee.”
They took her car, a red BMW convertible. They went west on Santa Monica Boulevard, then followed the Coast Highway north. She drove, Ford sitting in silence beside her, sheltering his eyes from the glare of the oncoming traffic. He tried not to think about Sunny, about her lying there at the Willowbrook, fighting for her life. It made him want to turn the car around and go back right away, just to hold her hand, to let her know that he was there. The thought that she might wake up and find him gone was unbearable. But as Gloria had told him, he had to be stronger than that. He had to find a way to stop what was happening—just in case Dr. Lee and the Code Blue team couldn’t. He rolled down the window and breathed deep the salt air. A stiff wind was driving line after line of breakers up the beach, throwing foam into the air.
“Helen, I know you think…”
Helen turned to look at him.
“What?”
Ford kept his eyes on the road.
“Suppose, just suppose, a pharmaceutical company came up with a new generation antibiotic. Like the synthetic DNA drug you told me about. Omega.”
Helen pursed her lips. Ford could sense her stifling a sigh.
“Could there be any reason why they wouldn’t come out with it? File patents, start production? Any reason at all?”
Helen didn’t answer at once. She reached for the dash and hit a button on the airconditioning, then another.
“In theory,” she said when she was done. “Sure.”
“In theory?”
“I mean there could be circumstances in which you might delay an announcement, but Marcus, at Helical—”
“What sort of circumstances?”
This time she did sigh.
“Well, first of all the company would have to be pretty confident that nobody else was going to beat them to it. Otherwise it would be suicide. But, assuming that was the case, then commercial considerations might come into play.”
“Like what, Helen?”
Helen checked the mirror. A big truck was coming up behind them. She began to accelerate.
“It’s like this. A drug takes between eight and ten years to develop, typically. Including trials and everything, that translates into an upfront cost of maybe three hundred to four hundred million dollars, sometimes more. When you’re making that kind of investment, you want the maximum market impact for the longest possible time.”
“But a patent gives you a fourteen-year monopoly, right?”
“Sure. But by the time you get through the Food and Drug Administration, do the marketing, fend off half a dozen bogus lawsuits for patent infringements, the most you’re likely to end up with is eleven years. After that all your competitors can make the same product—they call them generics—except that they haven’t got all your development costs to pay off. So they can undercut you, take away your whole market.”
“Just what sort of market are we talking about here, Helen? I mean, what would it be worth? Roughly.”
“Well, let’s see. Among antibioti
cs, Ciproxin’s the number one seller at the moment. That’s one of Bayer’s products. Generates about one and a half billion dollars in sales.”
“You mean every year? One and a half billion dollars every year?”
“Roughly. Of course antibiotics is a very crowded part of the market, because the underlying biotechnology is mostly pretty old. I shouldn’t think Cipro’s total market share is much more than three and a half percent—four percent at the very most.”
Ford tried to do the math in his head. It meant that the total size of the antibiotics market was nearly forty billion dollars per year. How much of that market could a new-generation drug expect to take? One percent? Ten percent? Twenty? Until now it had never occurred to Ford to think about the money. He’d always thought about medication in terms of problems and solutions—medical problems, scientific answers. He thought about Omega the same way, in terms of what it could do for a patient, what it could do to save a human life. Sure, he knew that drug companies liked to push their products, that doctors in general practice tended to rely on them too heavily, but that was different somehow. You could put it down to laziness or ignorance or even simple overenthusiasm. But the way Helen was talking, he began to sense something more threatening. Once again he felt himself passing through the shadow of a world of high stakes and hidden purposes, where he was a stranger.
“But I still don’t see why you wouldn’t want to file your patent as soon as possible. I mean, why wait?”
“Like I said, Marcus, you probably wouldn’t.”
“But there could be circumstances. You said—”
“Okay, yes. We’re talking antibiotics. Okay. You could take the view … I mean, it’s a fact that the market for new antibiotics is getting hungrier every day. This resistance problem has been on the increase for years, and … well, as we know, the old drugs are getting less and less effective. Remember, you’ve got your patent for a fixed period only. After that, everybody can make it.”
“So … you’re saying you might decide to stay out of the market until…”
“Until Cipro, Augmentin, Rocephin—as many of the market leaders as possible—become unreliable. It would be a very risky strategy. And I sure as hell wouldn’t recommend it. But, in the end, it might pay off.”
Ford turned to face her, bracing himself against the dash.
“So the rumors about Omega could have been true. Helical could have—”
“No, Marcus, not Helical. They were a young company. They needed a breakthrough. It was a matter of survival for them. There’s no way—”
“But they could have sold their research to somebody else, a bigger company. Maybe they sold out, made a deal in secret or something. Maybe they didn’t want to wait for a surge in the share price to get rich.”
They were heading inland now, climbing through parkland towards the hilltops of Pacific Palisades.
“We’re almost there,” Helen said, checking her watch. It was coming up to ten o’clock.
They found 15500 on the northernmost section of Haverford Avenue, a secluded stretch of road that looped around a line of Scotch pines and cedars. The building was a condo development, four floors high with tall windows and a distinctive white-and-gray stone facade, suggesting a marriage between the classical and the modern. It looked classy, even by the standards of the area.
“Hey, wait a second,” said Helen, squinting up through the windshield as she cut the engine. “I know this place. It’s a Fred Johnson. Won a whole stack of awards.”
“A Fred who?”
“Johnson. He’s pretty big. I saw it in a magazine. Built to six times earthquake standards or something.” The place looked at least half empty. Some of the windows had an X of duct tape over them. “Marcus, these apartments start at … must be three quarters of a million. Are you sure you got the number right?”
“He said it was a new building. This has to be it.” Ford unbuckled his seat belt. “Listen, you wait here, okay?”
“Marcus, I didn’t mean—”
“I know. But one trespass charge is enough. At least I’ve got an invitation.”
Helen sighed.
“Okay,” she said. “But … just watch yourself, will you?”
Ford got out. The street was empty, silent but for the stirring of the trees. A carpet of pine needles deadened his footsteps as he crossed over and headed for the entrance at the corner of the building.
The security cameras were already in place, one on the front of the building, another just inside the glass doorway, looking out. There was no way of knowing whether they were working or not. Ford cupped a hand against the glass and stared into the lobby. There were stacks of tiles leaning against one wall, a pile of heavy-duty paper bags, a spool of electrical cable. Opposite the elevator was another camera. A faint yellow light shone down from above the stairwell, illuminating the bottom steps.
The keypad was to the left of the door, next to a set of buzzers numbered one to twelve. It was just as Novak had said. Ford reached into his wallet for the entry code, holding the scrap of paper towards the streetlight behind him.
He was about to tap in the numbers when he heard a car approaching. Ford took a couple of steps back into the shadows. It was a Jaguar, black. It slowed down to a walking pace as it coasted past the building—a thump of loud music suddenly audible—then sped away towards Sunset. Ford stepped out again into the light, glancing back at Helen in the BMW. The polished glass of the windshield hid her face.
A faint click told him that the code had been recognized. Ford pushed open the door and stepped inside. Magically, a light went on over his head. The camera stared down at him expectantly, as if he were some exotic insect under a glass. He could see his tiny distorted reflection in the lens. He went quickly to the elevator and pressed the call button, aware now of the adrenaline pumping through his system. What was he going to say if he found the police waiting for him? Keeping an appointment with a dead man wasn’t an easy thing to explain. They’d question him, maybe take him in if they didn’t like the answers, take him away from Sunny. He stepped away from the elevator. The stairs would be better. He climbed slowly, treading softly, looking up above him for any sign of movement. As he reached each new floor invisible sensors picked up his presence, turning on banks of discreetly recessed lights.
The hallways were marble. Marble on the floors, marble on the walls, with some kind of pink stone inlaid in a Roman-style pattern. The grainy hardwood double doors were six feet wide, with heavy bronze fittings, promising something grander on the other side than regular two-bedroom apartments. Ford listened for voices, for music, the sound of a television, but there was nothing. Novak had planned on a very private meeting.
Apartment 12 was on the top floor, opposite a single window that looked out over the treetops towards the black ocean. On the horizon the lights of ships fluttered and winked like drowning stars. There came the muffled clunk of a car door, hurried footsteps on the road. From under the canopy of swaying branches the hood of the red BMW was visible, but no patrol cars, no people. The street was still deserted.
Suddenly the hall lights cut out again. Ford turned and edged his way back towards the apartment. From somewhere below him came a faint mechanical hum, a tiny vibration—another automated system, probably. The building bristled with technology, only most of it wasn’t working yet, or wasn’t working right. That was why Novak had given him the entry code. The only odd thing was why he should want to meet here at all.
Ford was sure the doors would be locked. The whole building seemed empty, barely ready for occupation. He took a firm hold of one of the handles and turned it.
The door wasn’t locked.
Ford raised a hand to knock, but something made him hesitate. There was no light coming from inside, no sound except the wind whistling over the roof. Was the building so new they hadn’t even fitted the locks? He ran a finger up the side of the door. Around the catch the wood was cracked and splintered. Forced entry. Maybe whoever killed
Novak had come looking for him here first, found him gone, moved on. Ford pushed back the door and stepped inside.
It had to be the biggest apartment in the building. A split-level penthouse, the main room gave onto a broad balcony overlooking landscaped gardens and was crowned with a domed skylight twenty-five feet overhead. It had to be worth millions, design awards or not. But Helen was right: it didn’t square with the awkward, badly dressed man they had met at the NIH conference. It didn’t square with anything they knew about Novak. But then, neither had his death.
There was no furniture except for a single office chair on casters. Next to it, on the ground, lay an answering machine, an empty bottle of scotch whisky and a couple of plastic cups. The red eye of the machine winked slowly on and off. Someone had left a message.
Ford crouched down, searching for the replay button. But it was too dark. He needed light. He stood up again, was about to head for the door. Froze.
There was someone else in the apartment.
He could hear movement, hear a metal drawer open, the rustle of papers. It came from a passageway leading off the main room. And now he could just make out a faint yellow light thrown across the polished wooden floor.
He edged back towards the phone. He had to call the police. But could he do it and not be overheard? Helen had a phone in her car. He could make a run for it. But then the police might be too late—too late for him, too late for Sunny. He picked up the whisky bottle and walked slowly towards the source of the light.
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