Deadly Science

by Ken Brigham

  “Yes,” Rook said. “Please go on.”

  “Dr. Karpov is an associate professor of psychiatry at the university, as you told me, the department headed by Cyrus Bartalak. She received her medical degree from Green College, Oxford where she completed her residency and fellowship in neurology. Shortly after completing her training there, she was recruited to the university here by the previous chairman of the department of psychiatry, apparently a distinguished member of the faculty for many years. When Bartalak became chair, he replaced most of the faculty whom he inherited, except for Dr. Karpov. Dr. Karpov is married to one, Shane Hadley, a former Rhodes Scholar, whom she met when they were both students at Oxford. When the couple moved to Nashville, Mr. Hadley joined the Metropolitan Police Force as a detective and over the next few years achieved a considerable local reputation for his intrepid work on several murder cases. He is something of a mythical figure still among members of the police force, where he is sometimes remembered as Sherlock Shane.”

  “I think I remember reading about him in the newspaper some time ago,” Rook said. “Wasn’t there an accident of some kind?”

  “Correct. Several years ago, Mr. Hadley sustained a gunshot injury to his spine that left him paralyzed from the waist down. He took a disability retirement from the police force at that time. He has been confined to a wheelchair since then. The couple lives in a big apartment in one of the renovated warehouses that sit between Printers Alley and Third Avenue. Mr. Hadley is only rarely seen in public.”

  “They live in Printers Alley?” Rook queried. “That’s unusual. And potentially interesting. Wonder if they had any contact with Bonz Bagley. The alley is a pretty small world. But go on. What about Dr. Karpov’s professional activities?”

  “She works in Bartalak’s lab with the professor’s wife, Beth. Both of them are involved in the clinical testing of this new drug. It doesn’t appear that Dr. Karpov has any connection with the business side of the drug’s development. Bartalak seems to keep those cards very close to his vest. However, Karpov is responsible for much of the clinical part of the drug study. Beth Bartalak apparently handles the data. She’s a biostatistician.”

  “Yes,” Rook said. “I knew that much. Any gossip about the Bartalak lab? Academic types are usually inveterate gossipers and my friend Syd Shelling said there was what he discreetly described as tension between Karpov and the Bartalaks. Did you find out any more about that?”

  “Not really,” Petrillo answered. “As you say, the fact that Karpov and Bartalak’s wife are not fond of each other is common knowledge among the university faculty, but the speculated reasons for that run the gamut from jealously of the chairman’s attention to what some believe to be a differences in how they approach their work.”

  “Differences?” Rook asked. “What differences?”

  “Well, apparently Dr. Karpov is a meticulous investigator for whom scientific integrity is paramount. There’s a vague notion of some faculty that the Bartalak’s are much more concerned about appearances. The chairman is a consummate salesman and old school academics are always suspicious of people like him.”

  “Hubris, I think I called it,” Rook replied.

  “None of my sources used that word, but some certainly implied it.”

  Rook got up from his chair, walked to the window and peered for a moment through the telescope aimed at the cityscape to the northeast.

  Without turning around, he said, “So, Dom, it seems unlikely that Dr. Karpov would know anything about Bartalak’s business operation, but she might know something about the drug study that would help us. We need some kind of inside information that threatens the value of Bartalak’s startup company before we can spring the trap, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, Mitchell, that’s right. Why don’t you follow through on trying to meet with Dr. Karpov, feel her out, so to speak…?”

  “Judging from her picture on the university web site, feeling her out might not be an unpleasant task,” Rook said.

  “Try to stay focused on the job at hand, Mitchell,” Petrillo smiled.

  “Oh, I’ll do that alright,” Rook answered. “So I’ll contact her again and try to set up a meeting.”

  “Great,” Petrillo answered. “I’ve written down her work and home phone numbers and her home address in the alley for you. I walked by there, incidentally. It’s an interesting spot, a balcony on the second floor trimmed with New Orleans style wrought iron. It’s almost directly opposite where Bonz’s Booze and Music used to be.”

  Rook hadn’t been in Printers Alley in many years, but he vaguely recalled some less than memorable forays there as an undergraduate at the university when he and his friends were in a slumming mood. Rook would not have wanted to live there and was surprised that it would appeal to a high powered academic type like this Katya Karpov woman. Interesting.

  It was just past noon when Shane was surprised by the sound of the garage door below rumbling open. He wondered why Katya had come home so early. After a few minutes, the elevator opened and Katya entered the room. Her Gucci briefcase was slung over her shoulder and she was lugging an obviously heavy cardboard box with the words medical supplies, handle with care stamped on it in large red letters. She set the box on the bar, dropped her briefcase and walked over to kiss Shane.

  “Ah,” Shane said. “The provisions have arrived.”

  His ration of Lincoln College sherry was delivered at regular intervals to Katya’s lab at the university disguised as medical supplies the reasons for which Shane did not know and had not asked about. He assumed it had something to do with the logistics of importing spirits from a foreign country. KiKi was indeed a resourceful woman, a quality from which Shane benefitted in many ways.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of such an early arrival home?” Shane asked.

  “Two reasons,” KiKi replied. “Or maybe three. The wine was delivered and I thought it best to get it home promptly. And I wanted to spend the afternoon enlisting your help in writing my letter to the dean.”

  “The fateful scientific misconduct letter, I assume,” Shane said, then. “And reason number three?”

  “A very strong desire to spend the afternoon with my gorgeous husband,” she answered smiling broadly and walking over to kiss him again.

  “I prefer to assume that you haven’t given the reasons in order of their priority, my love,” Shane said.

  “A reasonable assumption,” she answered.

  He wheeled himself over to the bar and began opening the box containing his cherished sherry.

  “Let me uncrate the wine,” he said, “and perhaps sample a bit of it to make sure this lot is of its usual quality, and then I’ll tell you what I’ve been able to learn about the lawyer, Mitchell Rook.”

  “Great,” she replied. “I’ve been wondering about that.”

  Katya sat on the sofa and watched Shane remove the bottles from the carton and place them lovingly in the rack beside the bar. He put the empty box on the floor and reached for the leather case, removing one of his prized Oxford glasses. He held the glass up to the light and studied it admiringly.

  “Will you join me?” he asked, as he always did, expecting that his near teetotaling wife would graciously decline the offer.

  To his surprise, his usually teetotalling wife answered, “Yes, I believe I will.”

  Shane removed another of the glasses from its red satin nest in the leather case, opened one of the newly-arrived bottles and poured some into each of the glasses. He held both glasses in one hand, grasping them carefully by their bases, a maneuver that he had mastered in order to leave a hand free for maneuvering the wheelchair, rolled over to KiKi and handed her a glass.

  “To truth and the certain fate of the bad guys,” Shane said, holding his glass out to clink against hers.

  They both sipped at the wine and then looked at each other for a moment. She reached for his hand and held it, an especially tender gesture that she knew Shane valued.

  “Mitchell Ro
ok,” he finally began, “is the majority partner in the law firm of Rook, Lipchitz and Associates. He attended the university here as an undergraduate, obtained his law degree from Yale and worked for a short time with the justice department in Washington. He then came back to Nashville and joined with an old friend, Marvin Lipchitz, who was a blue blood Nashvillian with connections in the business community, to found the firm which bears their names. Their firm is now the major group dealing in business law in the city with offices occupying two floors in what is commonly referred to as the Batman Building just down the way.”

  “What about Rook himself?”

  “Yes, well, Mitchell Rook is apparently a brilliant if somewhat idiosyncratic attorney whose services are valued by the city’s highest rollers in the business world. From what I’m able to determine from the Internet, he is especially valued for his integrity, honesty and fairness. He’s received multiple awards and commendations from the legal and business communities. He is even a recipient of the Governor’s Award for Integrity in Business, an apparently rarely granted and highly coveted citation.”

  “Jesus,” KiKi responded. “Sounds like the guy walks on water.”

  “Quite likely, my love, from the information I have, but I was unable to verify that specific fact.”

  She smiled. She deeply admired whatever there was in her husband’s makeup that caused him to maintain a sense of humor in his approach to life, no matter how serious or challenging the situation. He was an extraordinary man. Her need for Shane was not because she wasn’t fully capable of caring for herself. It was that he brought a different dimension to her life, expanded the boundaries.

  “So, my love,” Shane continued, “My advice would be to talk to the gentleman and see what he’s up to. I don’t see how it could hurt and it might even be interesting.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by the ringing telephone, their landline. They often ignored that phone, but for some reason, KiKi got up, walked over to the bar where the phone sat and lifted the receiver.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hello,” a male voice that she didn’t recognize responded, “I’m trying to reach a Dr. Katya Karpov.”

  Although the man who called the Bartalak lab and asked for Dr. Karpov had not identified himself, Beth thought that she recognized the voice of the lawyer, Mitchell Rook. Rook spoke with the barest hint of a southern accent and his voice had an unusual low rasping quality that Beth had noticed in the meetings of the Renaptix investors; she was certain that it was he who had called. When she told the caller that Dr. Karpov was not there, he just thanked her and hung up. Beth wondered what possible reason there could be for Rook to want to contact Katya and she was troubled by that.

  Beth had decided to go into the medical center for a specific reason that was unrelated to her work in the lab. She hadn’t intended to go to the lab at all, but rather to go directly over to the Institute of the Neurological Sciences. However, distracted by her thoughts about the task she had set for herself, Beth had taken her habitual route from the parking garage to the fifth-floor lab. Upon entering the lab, she discovered to her relief that Katya was not there and when the phone rang, she answered it. She had accidentally discovered the troubling fact that Mitchell Rook was trying to contact Katya.

  Beth left the lab and ventured over to the Institute for the Neurological Sciences. Her goal was to find the schedule for the Sunday morning meetings of the group who called themselves, Beth thought pretentiously, the Brain Trust. She knew that the group of neuroscientists met periodically, allegedly to discuss research in the field, and that Katya regularly attended the meetings.

  The fact that Katya had continued meeting with the group after Cy took over the chair of the psychiatry department had been a matter of some friction between Cy and Katya. Katya was the only member of the psychiatry department who was invited to attend the meetings. Cy felt that institutes which crossed departmental lines were organizational anomalies that threatened the traditional university power structure and he also disliked the institute director for reasons that went beyond his professional position. Cy especially disliked the neurological institute because he saw it as in direct competition with his own department. The friction over this matter between him and Katya was exaggerated by the fact that she was a neurologist, not a psychiatrist, and it was well-known that neurologists and other practitioners of the harder sciences generally considered psychiatric research to be lacking adequate scientific rigor. Although Katya did not necessarily share that view, Cy didn’t like her fraternizing with those people.

  The so-called Brain Trust met in the neurological institute’s large cherry-paneled conference room, located at the geographic and intellectual epicenter of the institute beside the director’s office in a newly renovated north wing of the sprawling maze of buildings that housed the medical center. Beth found her way there and scanned the meeting schedule that was posted on the conference room door. She noted the next date for the meeting of the Brain Trust at eight AM on a Sunday. She took a note pad and pen from her pocket and wrote down the date and time in large dark block letters underlined twice and followed by three exclamation points.

  Beth thought about going by Cy’s office just to say hi, but decided against it and made her way back to the parking garage. She felt good as she drove out of the garage and headed south on West End Avenue toward her refuge in Belle Meade, the verdant and insular enclave of the well to do.

  The pathologist, Sydney Shelling, had successfully avoided getting involved in university politics throughout his long career, although accomplishing that had become increasingly difficult as the institution had evolved in recent years. Shelling was closing in on sixty. He had spent his entire professional life at the medical center, as a student, pathology resident and then as a faculty member for the last couple of decades. Even at this stage of his career, he was still an associate professor, but he was okay with that. Promotion to the rank of professor had come to require the kind of political maneuvering that didn’t interest him. He enjoyed his work and just wanted to be left alone to do his job.

  So, Shelling was genuinely troubled by the ethical dilemma in which he found himself. He had always valued honesty and integrity in his work. Those qualities made him realize that he had to do something with the information that he had come by in the course of doing his job that could be important to the welfare of innocent people. However, revealing the results of the Bagley autopsy to Cy Bartalak, the Principal Investigator of the study of the drug that may well have damaged Mr. Bagley’s brain, would, Shelling feared, precipitate events that would drag him into a political morass that would almost certainly turn out badly for everyone involved. And, although the coroner had provided Shelling with a copy of the final autopsy report, that was technically confidential information; sharing it with anyone would be a breach of confidence.

  Shelling tried to rationalize the situation by telling himself that Bartalak would almost surely get a copy of the report on his own; the PI of a clinical study would usually obtain such information on any subject who died during the course of a clinical study regardless of the apparent cause of death. But, Shelling also felt that Bartalak should have the information immediately. If the drug was toxic, innocent people could be harmed by any delay in recognizing that; Shelling felt an ethical imperative to do something.

  After agonizing over his situation for some time, the pathologist decided on a compromise. He would deliver a copy of the autopsy report to Cy Bartalak anonymously. He would take the report to Bartalak’s office during lunchtime when he knew that Cy would be attending a regular administrative meeting with the dean and when Bartalak’s secretary was likely to be away from her desk.

  Shelling tucked the folder containing the report under his arm and made his way to the suite of offices belonging to the psychiatry department chairman. Shelling scanned the office through the glass door, confirming that it was vacant. He then entered, slid the folder under the closed door to Bartal
ak’s office, and immediately returned to the comfort and familiarity of his laboratory, convinced that he had done the best that he could do without risking his own job security and peace of mind. But he still didn’t feel good about it.

  Had Beth yielded to the urge to drop by Cy’s office as she was leaving the medical center, she would have discovered her husband puzzling over the coroner’s report of the autopsy performed on the body of Bonz Bagley that he found in an unmarked folder on the floor inside his office door upon returning from his regular noon meeting with the dean. He wondered who might have left the report there and why it was left so mysteriously without any clue as to who had left it. His attention was fixed especially on the part of the report that read, “…some vacuolization and unusual cellular inclusions in the right hippocampus, likely the result of exposure to a chemical toxin…”

  Chapter 24

  As Mitchell Rook walked from the Batman Building up Third Avenue toward Printers Alley, he reflected on his brief conversation with Katya Karpov. It was he who suggested that he come to Dr. Karpov’s Printers Alley home at the end of his workday. The reason he gave her was that his office was nearby and he didn’t want to inconvenience her in any way. The real reason for wanting to meet at her apartment was that in his experience people were likely to be more forthcoming with information in a setting where they felt comfortable and so he wanted to have a conversation with Dr. Karpov on her own turf. Somewhat to his surprise, she had readily agreed. She had informed him that her husband would also be present, Rook thought possibly to make it clear to him that they would not be alone. It would not be surprising if the lovely doctor was accustomed to establishing the rules of engagement with strange men who seemed to be a little too curious.

  Rook also reflected on the contents of the conference call that Cy Bartalak had hastily arranged with the three Renaptix investors that afternoon. Bartalak had arranged the call to inform them of the decision of the DSMB to terminate the phase I-II studies based on the exciting preliminary results that indicated possible efficacy of the drug in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Bartalak would proceed immediately to identify either a venture capital firm which would provide round two financing of Renaptix enabling them to proceed with phase III definitive studies or a Big Pharma partner, or both. Successful completion of either of those deals would dramatically increase the value of the three original investments. “Gentlemen,” Cy had intoned, “you may be participating in a major pharmaceutical discovery that will give hope to millions of people for whom hope had been abandoned.” Rook also contemplated the meaning of the word hubris.