Deadly Science

by Ken Brigham

  A soft feminine voice with a distinctly British accent answered the call, “Rook and Lipchitz, how may I help you?”

  “Yes,” Shelling said, “This is Dr. Shelling at the university. I’m returning a call from Mitchell Rook.”

  “Certainly, sir,” the soft voice with the incongruous accent responded. “Let me connect you to his office.”

  Shelling remembered his old college classmate as not only one of the smartest people he had known but also as a stickler for details. Shelling imagined that Rook had deliberately chosen the receptionist for the quality of her voice and for the accent that projected an elegant perception of the firm to the caller. First impressions and all that.

  After three rings, another pleasant female voice answered, “Mitchell Rook’s office.”

  “This is Sydney Shelling,” he responded. “I’m returning Mitchell Rook’s call.”

  “One moment, please,” she said. “Let me see if he’s in.”

  No doubt her script was designed to give Rook cover if he didn’t want to take the call.

  “Syd,” Rook answered, “thanks for returning my call. How have you been?”

  They didn’t speak often, but when they did, there was the pleasant anamnestic response typical of longstanding friendships. Although they had not been close recently, they had a lot of mutual respect and affection that had persisted over the years since they were undergraduate classmates.

  “I’m fine, Mitchell, “Shelling responded. “And you? Still thriving in world of the big dogs?”

  “Running as fast as I can,” Rook answered.

  “So what did you call about, Mitchell? Your message sounded like you wanted some information.”

  “Yes, yes,” Rook said, “I’m working with a startup company out of the university and doing some due diligence. Thought you might be able to help me out.”

  “Sure,” Shelling replied, “I’ll do what I can. Shoot.”

  “This company is developing a new drug for Alzheimer’s disease,” Rook said. “The chair of your department of psychiatry, a Dr. Bartalak, is the company’s founder and apparently inventor of the drug.”

  Rook paused for a moment to see if Shelling would respond. When he didn’t, Rook continued.

  “I wanted to get some more information about his team. I know that Bartalak’s wife, Beth, a biostatistician, is working on this project. Is there anyone else involved that you know of?”

  There was another pregnant pause before Shelling responded, “Why are you asking me, Mitchell? If you’re representing the company, you must know who the principals are.”

  “Yes, of course, Syd,” Rook answered. “But I thought you might have some inside scoop that would give me a better idea of who I’m dealing with. Just between you and me, I have some doubts about this Bartalak fellow. I’m not sure he’s always dealing from the top of the deck.”

  Yet another pause. Shelling trusted his old friend, but the guy was a lawyer after all, so Shelling felt that he should be careful about what he said. He had a lot of information but really didn’t know what it all meant and certainly didn’t want to say anything that would be a breach of confidence or that would reflect negatively on the university. He also knew that if he was responsible for calling Cy Bartalak’s integrity into question, there would almost certainly be serious personal repercussions. Shelling was an honest man who did his job conscientiously and well. He was perfectly happy to leave the larger issues, no matter how important they were, to the very well-paid administrators whose job it was to manage the complexities of a large institution with a lot of moving parts.

  Rook continued, “Bartalak mentioned a neurologist, a woman who’s apparently involved in the clinical studies.”

  “Sure,” Shelling said, “that’s Katya Karpov. She’s brilliant.”

  “Interesting. Bartalak also spoke of the neurologist’s brilliance, but for some reason never told me her name. Interesting.”

  “Not terribly surprising,” Shelling answered. “He might choose to keep her at arm’s length from his business dealings. There seems to be some tension between the two of them.”

  “Tension?” Rook answered.

  Shelling was not prepared to say anything more about that. He had planted the seed, and he had not told Rook anything that wasn’t common knowledge among the faculty. If his old friend was as curious and creative as Shelling suspected, planting the seed would suffice.

  “Yes. I’m not sure what all the reasons are, but that’s my impression.”

  “What about Bartalak?”

  “Big academic star,” Shelling said. “Favorite of the dean. He brings in buckets of money to the institution. Highly thought of in the larger psychiatric community.”

  “Does he lie and cheat?”

  “Not that I know of,” Shelling responded, smiling to himself at his friend’s candor.

  That was true. He had serious suspicions but he didn’t have any proof and didn’t really want to go there.

  Mitchell Rook was getting the message. He knew Syd Shelling pretty well, and Rook’s skills at extracting information from people included an ability to read between the lines of a conversation. He was getting the message. Cy Bartalak was a crook and this Karpov woman might be the key to establishing that fact.

  “Thanks, Syd,” Rook said. “You’ve been a great help. I really do appreciate it. Let’s do lunch sometime.”

  “Great idea,” Shelling responded. “Give me a ring when you have some free time.”

  “Will do.”

  The universally broken promise of old friends who had grown apart.

  After ending the call, Mitchell Rook brought up the university web site on his computer and clicked on medical faculty. That section of the web site gave short bios and some personal information on members of the faculty along with headshots of most of them. Katya Karpov, MD, was a gorgeous blond neurologist with haunting green eyes who was an associate professor of psychiatry. Her specialty was chronic diseases of the brain. Although the site gave little personal information about the faculty, there were email addresses for most of them.

  Rook clicked on Katya Karpov’s email address and typed:

  Dr. Karpov;

  My name is Mitchell Rook and I am a business attorney in the city. I am doing some work with a startup company and have reason to believe that you may have information that would help me with the necessary due diligence. I would like to talk with you at your convenience. This inquiry should be kept in strictest confidence at this time and any information you might provide would also be strictly confidential. Please either respond to this email or phone me to arrange a time and place for us to meet.

  Thank you in advance.

  Mitchell

  Mitchell Rook, Esq

  Rook, Lipchitz, and Associates LLC

  333 Commerce Street, Nashville

  Tel: 615-434-6262

  Rook would discuss this with Dom Petrillo before actually meeting with Dr. Karpov, assuming she responded. But at least the initial contact had been made, hopefully with enough care that Dr. Karpov would keep the request confidential.

  “I had an interesting conversation with Syd Shelling, today,” Katya said.

  She had delayed starting this conversation with Shane until they were comfortably ensconced at their favorite table overlooking the river at the back of their favorite restaurant. The restaurant, Mere Bulle, was in one of the elegantly restored warehouse buildings that fronted the block of Second Avenue between Church Street and Broadway. The rear of the building was on First Avenue that ran along the Cumberland River. The tables by the windows at the back of the room had a nice view of the river toward the east. The restaurant was allegedly named by the owners in honor of a favorite grandmother who was inordinately fond of the bubbly well into her ninth decade.

  For a long time after his injury, Shane had been reluctant to go out to dinner or for any other reason if he could avoid it. But lately, he had become more accustomed to the complicated logistics and was
also less self-conscious in public. It was no longer rare for the beautiful blond neurologist to be seen wheeling the handsome paraplegic former detective along Second Avenue. And their favorite table at their favorite restaurant was always made available to them.

  “Tell me about it, KiKi, my love,” Shane responded.

  Shane knew that Syd Shelling was one of a vanishingly few members of the medical faculty whom Katya respected and whose advice she valued. Shane remembered meeting him at the only departmental event hosted by the Bartalaks that Katya had ever convinced him to attend. He recalled the elaborate picnic on the back lawn of the Bartalaks’ Jackson Boulevard manse. There was a big tent set up near the tennis courts. Katya introduced Shane to the pathologist, and he and Shane had a brief and amiable conversation accompanied by the thump-thump of tennis balls colliding with Beth Bartalak’s impressive forehand groundstroke. He remembered watching Beth demolish one of the junior faculty, sprinting about the court and relentlessly pounding shot after shot beyond the reach of the hapless assistant professor who was probably at least ten years her junior. Shane had known scenes like that as a youth but they were not fond memories.

  Shane sipped occasionally at a glass of chardonnay. Katya, as was her habit on such occasions, drank San Pellegrino, her wine glass frequently replenished from the large green bottle nestled in an ice bucket on a stand beside the table. She would finish the bottle before the evening was over. Katya believed that careful attention to adequate hydration was largely responsible for the quality of her skin and hair that had changed little since she was a teenager. She drank a lot of water.

  “I wanted his advice about this thing with Beth Bartalak,” Katya continued. “I really don’t like the woman and thought I needed an objective professional opinion about what more I should do, if anything.”

  “Makes good sense,” Shane responded. “And?”

  Katya took a long swallow of the cold water.

  “Well,” she said. “Apart from disapproving of my getting the data from Beth’s computer, he pretty much agreed with me that I don’t really have a choice at this point. However, Syd also feared the consequences for me professionally. He said something like, ‘Cy may ruin you if he can, and the dean is likely to take his side.’ He pointed out what I already knew, that I’m much more expendable than Cy Bartalak. But he basically thought that I had to lodge a formal complaint even though all hell would probably break loose if I did.”

  “Hmm,” Shane responded. “So, KiKi, my love, are you going to do it?”

  “This is really hard, Shane,” she said. “The consequences for me will also be consequences for you, for us.”

  Shane reached across the table, took her hand, and looked into the lovely green eyes that always took away his breath. He felt how deeply he loved this woman who had made his life worthwhile at a time when without her, he would probably have thrown in the towel.

  “KiKi,” he said. “I can’t imagine any consequences that would change how I feel about you. Surely you know that.”

  She looked away from him toward the river view and was quiet for a few minutes. When she turned back toward him, her eyes were wet.

  “There was something else, Shane,” she said. “An odd coincidence that probably makes my decision final. Syd was looking at some brain sections sent to him by the coroner. Although he didn’t identify the person, I am virtually certain that they were from Bonz Bagley’s autopsy.”

  “Hardy Seltzer told me that the coroner was going to have a university pathologist review Bonz’s autopsy specimens, so that’s possible,” Shane said. “What did Syd say about them?”

  “Well,” she replied, “he’s not sure, but he thinks the brain sections show evidence of what is very likely to be toxic effects of a chemical, possibly a drug.”

  “And Bonz was a subject in the study of Cy’s drug,” Shane replied. “You told me that earlier.”

  “That’s right. And I’m sure that the data I got from Beth’s computer, the evidence that she is cheating, were the results from Bonz’s six-month follow-up studies.”

  “Are you telling me that you think this drug is toxic? What about Bonz’s earlier studies? Or studies from the other subjects?”

  “Bonz was subject number one and is the only one so far who’d been on the drug for six months,” Katya answered. “His first three months results showed marked improvement. And some of the other subjects are also showing early improvement. I don’t have any reason to doubt the accuracy of those earlier results. But, if I’m putting this together correctly, the drug works in the short run, but when taken for as long as six months, it may cause severe damage to the brain.”

  “So the evidence for that is only from Bonz’s autopsy, and since he’s dead, there is no way to find out anything more about how the drug affected him.”

  “That’s right. And the fact that the shots to his head demolished most of his brain means that we don’t even know how extensive the effects were in him. Who knows what havoc that drug is capable of wreaking?”

  “How sure can you be that this was an effect of the drug?”

  “Not certain,” Katya answered. “But coupled with the functional and biochemical studies, the real six-month data that I got from Beth’s computer, it certainly looks that way. You’re the detective. Convince me that there’s another explanation. I wished to God that was true.”

  “I wish I could think of another explanation, KiKi, my love,” he answered. “But if there is one, it’s not obvious to me.”

  Shane drank a swallow of the wine and rotated the glass between his hands for a moment, then continued, “Drug works in the short run but kills in the long run. The short-run/long-run problem we talked about earlier. The drug is one of the bad guys.”

  “You’re still working with that detective Seltzer on this?” Katya asked.

  “Unofficially, yes.”

  “Will you have access to the coroner’s final report on Bonz’s autopsy? All I have is the conversation with Syd, and that’s at least technically confidential. In fact, he probably shouldn’t have shown me the slides, probably wouldn’t have if he had any idea that there was a connection with anything I was doing.”

  “I’m sure Hardy Seltzer will get a copy of the report as part of his investigation. He may give me a copy if I ask him for it. Should I do that?”

  “Yes,” Katya replied. “This is going to be a dogfight, and I’ll need all the ammunition I can get.”

  “Done, my love,” Shane replied.

  Shane thought that if he were ever forced into a dogfight, the last dog he would want to confront would be KiKi when she knew she was on the side of what was right. He smiled at her. She rose from her seat, walked around the table, and stood beside him, placing her hand on his shoulder.

  She said, “I love you, Shane.”

  He looked up at her and she kissed him the familiar soft, warm kiss that once saved his life. She stood by him for a moment, gazing out the window with her hand still resting on his shoulder.

  Katya returned to her chair, flashed her electric smile, picked up a menu and said, “Let’s order dinner. I’m starving.”

  Chapter 20

  The mayor’s call to the chief of police followed close on the heels of Rory Holcomb’s call to the mayor. Rory had the mayor’s ear not because of any particular affection for him on the mayor’s part, but because the mayor occupied that high office largely as a consequence of Rory’s generous support of his election campaign. But Rory Holcomb’s largesse was never bestowed without conditions. As far as Rory was concerned, his support of the mayor’s campaign was a calculated business risk that had paid off. He had bought access and influence and did not hesitate to use it.

  What Holcomb was up in arms about was what he thought was the effect of the unsolved murder of Bonz Bagley on business in the alley. Holcomb depended on rent from the buildings he owned there for the majority of his working capital. Most of the club owners who rented the spaces were operating on a very slim margin
, and most of the leases were short term. So, Holcomb’s source of working capital was subject to even short term fluctuations in the clubs’ business.

  There had been a notable downturn in alley activity since Bagley’s murder there. Rory thought that if the murder was solved, presuming that the killer was taken out of circulation and so could not possibly be a threat any longer, the tide would turn and alley business would be back to its less than robust but acceptably profitable level. So he leaned heavily on the mayor, told him to get his ass and whatever other asses were necessary in gear, and arrest somebody, for God’s sake. How hard could it be to solve a murder done with a totally unique weapon in broad daylight in the middle of the city, the safety and security of which was the mayor’s primary responsibility? Do your goddam job! Rory told him and slammed down the phone.

  As soon as he finished with the call from Holcomb, the mayor called the chief of police. Without revealing what had prompted the call, the mayor essentially repeated Rory’s tirade with some fewer obscenities, but not many. The chief assured him that they were making rapid progress on the investigation and that he was confident they would arrest the prime suspect very soon. The mayor responded to the effect that such an eventuality should happen sooner rather than later and that the security of the chief’s current position could well be related to the outcome of this case and the timing of its solution. That is essentially what he said, although he didn’t use those words exactly.

  Consistent with the often observed effects of the earth’s gravitational field on human excrement, the chief once again summoned the assistant chief, Hardy Seltzer’s immediate supervisor. to his office. The chief had watched Seltzer work for a long time and had observed that the detective did not respond well to being yelled at. He advised the assistant chief not to yell at the detective, but to make it clear to him that the time had come to act. The chief was focused on results more than process, focused at that moment with laser-like intensity on arresting someone for the Bagley murder who was at least a plausible perpetrator of the crime. It appeared to him that the only choice they had was Jody Dakota.