“We’ve retested the enzyme preparations from Bio-Med for the third time and found nothing,” she told Joanna. “They contain no preservatives, and there’s no contamination of any kind.”
“Oh, something is there,” Joanna said, sipping coffee as she studied the blackboard. “We just haven’t found it yet.”
“Well, we’d better find it soon, because we’re running out of specimens and places to look.”
“Did you restudy the microscopic slides?”
“Until my eyes dropped out,” Lori replied. “There was nothing new. The normal tissue in their organs appears to be incredibly healthy, and the cancers look bizarre and mean as hell.”
“What about the electron microscopic studies?” Joanna asked.
“Dennis Green is checking on that now,” Lori answered. “But when you hear nothing from those people, it usually means they’ve found nothing.”
Joanna sighed wearily. “We’re not making any progress here. We’re just fumbling around in the dark.”
“Well, we’d better shed some light on something real quick, or the newspapers are going to eat us alive.”
Joanna nodded. “I just saw yesterday’s front-page article.”
“It’s not as bad as today’s editorial,” Lori went on. “They flat-out say we experimented on desperate patients without warning them of all the possible side effects. They said the public should expect more from doctors, particularly those at Memorial.”
“No doubt that was written by the colleagues of the editor who developed renal cancer.”
“No doubt.”
“And you know what the sad part is?” Joanna asked.
“What?”
“What they wrote was true.”
The phone rang. Lori picked it up and spoke briefly. Then she placed her hand over the receiver. “It’s Simon Murdock.”
Joanna groaned and reached for the phone. “Yes, Simon.”
“I may require your assistance in a somewhat delicate matter.”
“Tell me how I can help.”
“The news media is demanding we have a press conference on this cancer-causing drug,” Murdock told her. “They want details, and I want you to be there to answer the scientific questions.”
“I’d put that conference on hold for now,” Joanna advised.
“That’s easier said than done.” Murdock described the intense pressure being put on him to hold a public hearing. The pressure was coming at him from all sides. Even his own board of directors at Memorial was demanding a full and open disclosure.
Joanna listened patiently, feeling sorry for Murdock and knowing he had no way out.
A second line on Joanna’s phone began to blink. Quickly she signaled to Lori, pointing at the wall phone.
Lori hurried over and picked up the phone. She spoke for a moment and then waved to Joanna. “It’s Lieutenant Sinclair.”
Joanna covered the receiver with her hand, mentally blocking out Murdock’s voice. “Take a message,” she called over softly.
Joanna returned to her conversation with Murdock, but she kept her eyes on Lori and tried to overhear her conversation with Jake.
Lori was saying, “She’s on the other line. Can I take a message? . . . Uh-huh, uh-huh. . . . No more than six hours. . . . Uh-huh. . . . Okay. I’ll make sure she gets the message.”
Lori hung up.
Joanna turned her full attention back to Simon Murdock. “Here’s my best advice, Simon. Delay the press conference. Tell them we’re now finishing our investigation, and once that’s done we’ll be glad to meet with them and discuss our findings.”
“Given more time, do you think you can come up with an answer?” Murdock asked hopefully.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Joanna said. “But if I’m going to stand up in front of a news conference, I’ll want every bit of information at my fingertips.”
“I doubt if they will agree to a delay.”
“They will if you don’t give them any other choice.”
“I’ll get back to you later.”
Joanna put the phone down and looked over at Lori. “Well? What did Jake want?”
“He said to tell you that the fetuses were packed in ice,” Lori reported. “That was a mandatory requirement. Otherwise the fetuses were not bought.”
Joanna asked quickly, “What about the six hours?”
“The fetuses had to be delivered within six hours,” Lori said. “That, too, was mandatory.”
Joanna had other questions that only Jake could answer. Where were the fetuses delivered? Did Mirren actually pick them up from the Russian? Was there any way to show beyond a doubt that the fetuses ended up at Bio-Med? Damn, Joanna cursed to herself, now wishing she had talked to Jake.
“Why pack the fetuses in ice?” Lori asked, breaking into Joanna’s thoughts.
“They wanted fetal organs,” Joanna said, focusing her mind on the problem.
“But for what?” Lori persisted. “Fetal organs have no use.”
“Those organs are important to somebody,” Joanna assured her. “That’s why those fetuses were packed in ice and had to be delivered within six hours.”
“Maybe they wanted fetal bone marrow,” Lori suggested. “Maybe they wanted undifferentiated blood cells for some reason.”
“Then why eviscerate the fetuses and take their brains as well?”
Lori nodded. “You’ve got a point.”
“But that doesn’t bring us any closer to an answer.”
Lori wrinkled her brow, concentrating. “Do you think it’s possible that they discovered a way to transplant fetal organs into patients?”
Joanna shrugged. “Bio-Med is not involved in transplantation. That’s not what they do.” She gave the matter more thought, gauging it from a commercial standpoint. “And they don’t have the know-how or facilities to do it.”
“Maybe they’re transplanting the fetal organs into experimental animals.”
Joanna shook her head at the idea. “That has no commercial value. They wouldn’t be the least bit interested in that.”
“Why not take the easy route?” Lori asked. “You know, just ask the people at Bio-Med. Maybe there’s a simple answer.”
“They’d deny any knowledge of it,” Joanna said. “And remember, Mirren was the only one we can prove was involved with the fetuses, and he’s dead.”
“How about getting a search warrant?”
“You’re dreaming.”
The door opened, and Dennis Green walked into the forensic laboratory. “They found something interesting in the electron microscopic studies on Oliver Rhodes’s heart. I’m not sure what the hell it means, though.”
Joanna leaned forward. “Within the cardiac muscle cells?”
“Right,” Green went on. “They found viral particles scattered throughout, both in the malignant and nonmalignant cells.”
Joanna’s eyes widened. “Are they positive those are viral particles?”
“Positive.”
“Could they explain the presence of these particles?”
“Not really,” Green replied. “Somebody suggested Rhodes might have had a viral myocarditis. But that wouldn’t explain why he developed a malignancy of the heart.”
“Viruses are known to cause some cancers,” Lori said. “For example, in cats a virus causes feline leukemia.”
“But viruses have never been proved to cause cancer in man,” Green countered. “Except maybe for the Epstein-Barr virus in Burkitt’s lymphoma. And this patient surely doesn’t have a lymphoma.”
Joanna listened to the scientific exchange, but her mind was elsewhere. She was trying to concentrate on the viral particles and what their presence meant. What were those viral particles doing there? And how did they get into the cardiac muscle cells? Was it just a case of viral myocarditis? Was the finding simply a red herring that had no relationship to the malignancy?
“No,” Green was telling Lori, “they couldn’t identify the type of virus from the particles.”
“Too bad,” Lori said. “There are some viruses that are known to cause myocarditis with some frequency. Viruses like Coxsackie usually—”
“Wait a minute!” Joanna interrupted. “What makes you so certain this was a viral myocarditis?”
“I’m not certain,” Green said. “But the virus was present in the cardiac muscle cells and—”
“No, no!” Joanna interrupted again. “You’re missing the point. Maybe the virus is involved in all these patients.”
“But we can’t prove that,” Lori argued.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Joanna said, and turned to Dennis Green. “Do we have the electron microscopic results on the other two patients with cancer?”
“I haven’t seen them,” Green answered.
“So we don’t know whether there are viral particles present in the other two patients with cancer, do we?”
“There’s one way to find out.” Green reached for the phone and punched in numbers. He spoke briefly and then waited for a response.
Joanna began pacing the floor of the laboratory, thinking about viruses and cancers and the relationship between the two. And how could viral particles be related to a lipolytic enzyme that seemed to cause cancer?
Green put the phone down. “I’ll be a son of a bitch. All three tumors contained the same viral particles.”
“Jesus,” Lori hissed softly. “How did that virus get into these patients?”
“Take a guess,” Joanna said.
Lori thought hard, her brow furrowed. “Well, we know it couldn’t have been in the enzyme preparations the patients received.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because we didn’t detect any virus in the enzyme preparations we received from Bio-Med.”
Joanna smiled, then asked, “Are you sure the enzyme preparations they sent us to test are the same ones they gave to the patients?”
Lori still couldn’t make the connection. “Why would viral particles be mixed in with the lipolytic enzyme?”
“I don’t know,” Joanna said. “But I think I know somebody who does.”
Joanna reached for her personal phone book and flipped pages until she came to Nancy Tanaka’s number.
33
Sara puffed on her cigarette and stared into space. “They’re on to me. They know who I am, and they’re looking for me.”
“Do you know that for sure?” David Westmoreland asked.
Sara nodded firmly. “There was a cop waiting behind the postal boxes where I pick up my mail. He was checking IDs.”
“So?”
“So a blonde who resembled me walked in, and the cop jumped all over her. Then a plainclothes cop ran in with his gun drawn. They treated her like she was armed and dangerous.” Sara puffed again on her cigarette. “Shit! They were looking for me. It was just pure luck I wasn’t wearing my blond wig.”
“Did they ask you for your ID?”
“No,” Sara said. “I slipped out of the place during all the commotion.”
Westmoreland gave her a hard look. “And you’re certain you weren’t followed here?”
“Positive,” she assured him. “I drove around for two hours, off and on the freeway and down back streets. There was nobody following me.”
“Good,” Westmoreland said, but he still wasn’t convinced. A real pro could have tailed her, and she would have had no idea he was there.
“What should I do?”
“Play it cool,” he advised her. “That way you won’t make more mistakes.”
“The mistakes are happening because you’re giving me too many hits too fast,” Sara complained. “If you and your client don’t allow me enough time to prepare, the hits aren’t always going to come off perfect.”
“You were given plenty of money to make those hits look good,” Westmoreland said, an edge to his voice. “You didn’t have any trouble taking those big bucks, did you?”
“The money was fine,” Sara said. “It’s just these damn rush jobs. I’ve made mistakes by hurrying things.”
Damn right you have, Westmoreland wanted to say, but he held his tongue. He pushed himself up from the corner booth at Club West. “I’m going to get a beer. You want anything?”
“No, thanks.”
Westmoreland walked over to the front window and cracked the venetian blinds to look out. Traffic was moving nicely, and there were no cars parked nearby. Across the street a truck was delivering produce to a Chinese restaurant. And next to the restaurant was a newsstand with two people browsing through magazines. An old man and a kid. No cops there, Westmoreland decided.
He went behind the bar and opened a bottle of imported beer. Carefully he poured the beer into a mug, thinking about the predicament Sara Ann Moore had placed them both in. Somehow they had ID’d her. And they damn well knew she was a hitter. Otherwise the cops wouldn’t have come at the blonde with their guns drawn. They had her made, and it was only a matter of time before they tracked her down. And she could lead them right back to him.
“I think I will have that beer,” Sara called over.
“Coming up,” Westmoreland said lightly, but his mind was still working on the problem at hand. He knew the cops were close to Sara, but he didn’t know how close. They didn’t have her home address yet, because if they did, they would have picked her up there. The cops only had her postal box number. But now that they had her name, the chase would be a straight line and they would quickly zero in on her. She had just a few days left.
Westmoreland brought the beers to their booth and sat across from her. He studied her face briefly. She looked scared and tired, like prey about to be captured. He knew how he would handle her—and all the rest of this mess. “You’ve got to get out of town,” he told her.
“I know,” Sara said. “When should I leave?”
“Soon,” he said. “Within thirty-six hours.”
“That’s not much time.”
“You’ve got to get while the getting’s good.”
Sara began organizing things in her mind. Leave the car and the condominium as is and catch a plane out. Make the reservations at a ticket office and pay in cash. Don’t go home tonight. Stay at a motel. Only that airline ticket would cost a lot. She had no credit cards and only a hundred in cash. “Do you think I should chance going to my safety deposit box?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You’re right,” Sara said, nodding. “It’s just that I’m a little short on cash.”
“Me, too,” Westmoreland lied. “I just paid off a big gambling debt.”
“I think I’ll take a chance and go back to my condominium after I leave here.” Sara lit another cigarette off the cigarette she was smoking. Her hands were no longer shaking. “I have to grab a few personal things and download stuff off my computer.”
“It’ll be risky.”
“I’ve got to do it,” Sara told him. “The information in my computer is very important to me. And I’ve also got some cash stashed away up there.”
“Be very careful,” Westmoreland warned. “Call the front desk and talk with your doorman before you go there.”
“That’s my plan.”
“And grab only what you absolutely need and get out.”
Sara sighed deeply. “I wish I had more cash I could get to. I’m going to be on the move for a while, and that costs.”
Westmoreland slowly twirled his beer mug between his palms, studying the foam as it rose. “I know somebody who’s willing to pay really big bucks for a quick hit.”
“Jesus!” Sara blurted out. “Not another rush job.”
“I’m talking really, really large bucks.”
Sara fixed her eyes on Westmoreland. “How much would I get?”
“Your end would be forty thousand.”
Sara whistled softly and repeated, “Forty thousand.”
“And that’s a lot of traveling money.”
“Who’s the hit?”
“Joanna Blalock.”
Sara shook her
head. “If we hit her, half the world will come looking for us.”
“Not if she just disappears.”
“Has the hit already been planned?”
Westmoreland nodded. “For tomorrow night. You could do it and be on your way with forty large in your purse.”
Sara considered the proposition carefully, weighing the pros and cons of a quick hit. Things could go wrong without appropriate planning and usually did. But the forty thousand was irresistible.
“Well?” Westmoreland pressed.
“I need to know the details before I can give you an answer.”
Westmoreland gave her an icy stare. “If I tell you about it, you’re committed.”
Sara hesitated, still unsure what to do. The money was great, but so was the risk. Killing Joanna Blalock could set off a firestorm of trouble. Again she thought about the forty thousand dollars. With that kind of money, she could avoid the firestorm. Finally she said, “Okay, I’m in.”
“Good,” Westmoreland said approvingly. “Here’s how it will work. We know where Blalock lives and where she parks her car at home. It’s an outdoor parking space at the north end of the condominium complex. When she gets out of her car, you pop her. Two to the head. Make sure you use your silencer.”
“And how does she disappear?”
“My friend Scottie and his cement truck will be close by. Blalock will be put in a body bag and taken to a place where she’ll be covered up in wet cement.” Westmoreland ran an index finger across his throat and smiled humorlessly. “She disappears and she’s never found.”
“And I walk away with forty grand?”
“Right,” Westmoreland said. “Let me call Scottie and tell him it’s a go.”
As Sara watched him walk to the phone, she considered the things she had to do back at her condominium. The most important task was to download her computer and retrieve all the information on her stock portfolio. Once she did that, she was safe. The accounts were all untraceable because everything was bought in her mother’s name using her mother’s Social Security number.
Sara sighed sadly as she thought about her mother, who was withering away with Alzheimer’s disease and for whom Sara was conservator. The poor woman couldn’t even recognize her daughter anymore. A picture of her mother flashed into Sara’s mind. She pushed it aside and went back to tallying money. There was a half-million in stocks and another fifty thousand in cash, including the fee for the upcoming hit. Not a fortune, but enough to get by on until she inherited her mother’s estate. And that wouldn’t be long now. Maybe it was time to get out of the hit business while—as David had said—the getting was good.
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