The Last Lie

by Dana Killion

  I noted a few other websites referencing civil suits and out of court settlements, adding a few notes to check into the details.

  I stood and paced the small room. The claims in these cases were against disclosed ingredients that individually were not harmful, however the dosing or the combination of ingredients was at issue. I needed an analysis of the product. An independent analysis. I grabbed my phone, made a quick phone call, then headed toward my garage, Lane’s confiscated bottles of VTF with me in a bag.

  Thirty minutes later I walked into a nondescript building just west of the Roosevelt and Damen intersection, in an area known as the Illinois Medical District. The neighborhood housed a concentration of facilities for research, education, and government services such as the VA. The medical examiner’s office was here, as was the FBI regional office.

  A guy I knew from my legal days ran a small private testing lab. They were expensive and specialized in cases involving chemical analysis, therefore, as an ASA, it was a source used only on rare occasion. Given the second death, CPD would be running the energy drinks through their lab but I wasn’t willing to chance the backlog. After all, Michael had made it clear I was on my own.

  A small bald man met me in the lobby. He was thin and wiry with skin the color of burnt caramel and a smile that lived permanently on his face.

  “Henry, it’s good to see you,” I said, extending a hand.

  “I gotta say, I was surprised to get your call this morning. Didn’t you leave law and order behind?”

  “I’m here on a personal matter. In other words, I’m the one footing the bill,” I laughed.

  “Okay, friends and family discount it is. Come on back.” He smiled and tilted his head toward the far corner.

  We walked down a narrow hall and through double doors that opened into a small but well-lit room lined with cabinets and nonporous surfaces. Interior glass windows showed a portion of the lab in the next room where technicians in masks and goggles fiddled with complicated looking microscopes. I knew from previous visits that the space was a maze of rooms each dedicated to different types of testing. Including state of the art spectroscopy equipment, gas chromatography, etc., the lab held a massive amount of technology only a fraction of which I could even pronounce.

  “I see that business is booming.”

  “Yep, the bad guys keep getting more creative every day. We’re doing a lot of work on synthetic drugs. Bath salts, N-bomb, crap that can kill ya fast. You outta see the junk that’s coming out of China. We get one formulation figured out, and before you know it, they got new stuff in the pipeline. I gotta admire the chemists, but these things are nasty. And even young kids can buy them at their neighborhood convenience store.”

  He leaned against a center island. “What do you have for me?”

  I opened the bag and pulled out several bottles of VTF from the stash in Lane’s fridge. I’d given half to Lassiter and kept the remainder for myself. “I need an analysis of the contents of these drinks.”

  Henry picked up a bottle, scanned the ingredient list. “Okay,” he said. “Are you looking for something particular? Or is this about verifying ingredients?”

  I brought him up to speed quickly on my suspicions. “Basically, I want to know if there’s anything in these drinks that shouldn’t be there. Bacteria, contaminants, toxins. Or if the concentration of the ingredients is usually high. I want to know if there is any reason for these drinks to make people ill.”

  He scrunched his nose and held a bottle up the light. “We’ll start with deformulation and see where that takes us. That’s essentially the process of separating the individual components chemically. If we need to go deeper after we’ve got this stuff mapped out, that can be your call. No sense spending the bucks if you don’t need to.”

  I agreed.

  “What’s your time frame?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “You and everyone else. I don’t know why I bother to ask.” He laughed. “Good thing I like you.”

  He called over a technician standing at one of the computer stations. “I need a rush on these. Deformulation. Get started logging them and I’ll be over in a minute to give you the details.”

  The tech smiled, loaded the bottles into a bin, and carried them to back to his desk.

  “The product has a lot number and a use by date,” Henry said. “I know you know this, but testing will only reflect the individual bottles that you brought in. It’s a moment in time.”

  “I understand. It’s all I’ve got to start with.”

  23

  I was standing on the porch of Cavanaugh’s three-flat. It was unlikely the man wanted to see me again, but so much had happened since our conversation yesterday there seemed no other option. He was an insider. He could corroborate Olivia’s information.

  Had it only been twenty-four hours? I pressed the doorbell, twice, no response. I reached into my bag for a business card and a pen.

  “Can I help you?” a voice behind me said. Cavanaugh stood at the bottom of the stairs, his arms laden with grocery bags. A wool knit cap was pulled down over his ears and a thick down parka sheltered him from the weather.

  “Oh, it’s you again. Unless you’re here, to tell me you put Bowman away, I think we’ve covered everything.” He stomped the snow off of his boots as he reached the top, then set down his purchases to pull keys from the front pocket of his jeans.

  “Mr. Cavanaugh, I know you want justice for your daughter. Let me help. I don’t know why she died, but I assure you, I’m doing everything in my power to find out.”

  “And why would you do that?” he asked, with the flatness of a man who’d been disappointed repeatedly.

  “Because I don’t want my sister to be next.”

  He turned to me, keys in his hand, confusion spreading across his face. “She’s sick too?”

  “Yes. She’s been in the hospital since Friday night. That’s when she collapsed. She’s experiencing arrhythmia. Her doctors can’t find a cause.”

  “She drank that stuff?” I saw that he’d stiffened. Just hearing about VTF seemed to make him rigid with anger.

  I nodded. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s another death being investigated. A young man died yesterday morning.” I paused. “CPD is finally taking this seriously, but I don’t know if it’s fast enough for my sister. Please, I need your help.”

  He shook his head, unlocked the door, and motioned me inside. Shopping bags in hand, he disappeared to the back while I was drawn once again to the photos of Kelly. Every clichéd phrase of a life cut short came to mind. Somehow there seemed nothing more eloquent one could say.

  I heard footsteps and turned.

  “What do you want to know?”

  I took off my coat, and we settled once again into the armchairs flanking the fireplace. I asked Cavanaugh if I could record our conversation. He agreed.

  “I understand that over the last year there’ve been some significant demands on production at VTF. Can you speak to me about how that affected your process, your operations?”

  The chronology of events was important but so was keeping Cavanaugh focused on less emotional issues.

  “It’s been a slow build over the last few years, nothing we couldn't handle, but about a year ago, everything got crazy. Bowman was working with some PR firm and they scored a few big stories. Before you knew it, everybody wanted the stuff.

  “Of course, Bowman, being a sales guy, didn’t really think about whether or not we could produce the stuff. Hell, he didn’t even give me a heads up. If I’d had a couple months’ notice, it was something I could’ve dealt with. But instead, I find out when I get an extra 50,000 units on order. And that was just the first two weeks.” He leaned forward and shook his head.

  “I added a crew for third shift, but before long we had problems getting raw materials. I pulled in every favor I had with my vendors but they were handcuffed too. Other clients, their own production issues, the usual. Bowman didn’t car
e, we needed the goods. Things snowballed. We were delivering late. Retailers were bitching. I did everything I could, but without the cushion, without the planning, I just couldn’t make it happen.”

  Cavanaugh ran a hand over the scruff of his beard and stared off, his face riddled with disappointment.

  “Is that when things started getting tense, between you and Seth I mean?” I was keeping Kelly out of the conversation for now, I needed Cavanaugh’s mind on the business.

  “He blamed me. Expected me to pull a rabbit out of my ass. Hell, maybe I should’ve just put colored water in the damn bottles and called it a day. I’m not sure Bowman ever cared.”

  “Cared about filling orders? Or cared about his product?”

  “His priority was looking good. Being the big man in front of the news. He likes the celebrity of success. Wants to control the illusion of VTF as this breakthrough force. Operations, that was always somebody else’s job. Apparently, I was supposed to read minds.”

  “Was this happening right before you were fired?”

  His face went dark, but he nodded. “This is what I was dealing with when Kelly died.”

  I set aside the reference to his daughter’s death for the moment wanting to keep focused on the business. I was getting a clear picture of conditions as VTF, but also of Cavanaugh’s state of mind. The disarray I’d seen at the plant told me that conditions hadn’t changed much.

  “I imagine that kind of growth took a lot of money,” I said.

  “Look, I don’t know anything about the money side of this. Other than my key vendor stopped shipping me. He said we were sixty days behind for the fourth time in a year and he wasn’t going to ship another order until we paid up. And going forward, he would no longer extend terms.”

  “I assume this is something you discussed with Seth.”

  “Bowman didn’t want to hear about money, unless they were sales numbers. I submitted the invoices to the bookkeeper, as I always did, but she couldn’t authorize the payment when the account was dry.

  “We were screwed if we didn’t pay this vendor. They supplied three of our core ingredients. Don’t pay them, they don’t ship. Then I gotta shut down the line. I had a lot of families depending that paycheck. I was desperate, so I went around Bowman. Called his partner. I explained the situation and next thing you know, my vendor’s all paid up.”

  “Tell me about the partner. Is this someone active in the business?” I asked, thinking again about Aaron Nadell.

  “He doesn’t come to the plant. From what I hear, he focuses on the money side, more of a financial advisor who has to be consulted on the big stuff. Keeps Bowman in line financially. I had to send him monthly reports on inventory and production output. But aside from an email or two, we only had the one conversation.”

  “Can I ask this investor’s name?”

  “A guy named Aaron Nadell. Supposed to be some investment guy with a shitload of money whose only job is to make more. I hear he’s been invested in the business for years but only gets involved when he has to.”

  Something else Seth hadn’t mentioned when he’d had the opportunity. Was this just Seth’s ego and privacy issues or was I over-thinking? It was as if everything I was learning about my friend was through a back door.

  “Mr. Cavanaugh, I have a question I need to ask that’s uncomfortable.”

  He looked at me and crossed his arms. “You want to know if I had anything to do with the product being messed up. If I flipped out and accidentally poison my own kid?”

  “It’s very clear that you loved your daughter dearly,” I said, softly. “But you’ve also been under tremendous stress. I can understand how a mistake could have been made.”

  I felt like a shit for asking and hoped that my voice showed the compassion I felt. I needed him to believe that I wasn’t one more person piling on to the pain and the guilt and anguish he felt.

  “Is that what Bowman says? That people died because I fucked something up?” Cavanaugh’s voice was riddled with hate again and he sat back in the chair, glaring.

  “If he’s said that, he hasn’t said it to me. I simply wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t consider all the logical options.”

  He leaned forward putting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. I stayed quiet granting him the moment of respect until he looked up.

  “You think that question doesn’t haunt me? That I don’t lie awake night after night running through everything that could’ve gone wrong in production? You think I don't wonder if I had a role in killing my own daughter?”

  His eyes were filled with an anguish I hadn’t seen since my mother had died. He had the hollow emptiness that I remember seeing in my father, an emptiness I recognized even as a 15-year-old girl.

  “The answer is no. But I imagine I’ll spend the rest of my life asking that same question.”

  24

  I felt like a schmuck. I’d left Cavanaugh alone with his pain, having opened his wounds all over again. I couldn’t begin to imagine how he’d move on with his life. Seeing the ravages of his daughter’s death, it was impossible not to think of my father. The years of emptiness, isolation, and grief. He’d moved through life as if by remote control having lost the ability to feel joy again.

  Cavanaugh’s torment brought me a tiny bit closer to understanding what my father might have felt after my mother’s death. Grief, despair, endless feelings of guilt as he played back conversations and events in his mind searching for explanations. What had he done that had driven her away? What could he have done that would have prevented her from seeking solace in another man’s bed? What could he have done that would’ve prevented her from being in that car that night?

  At the time, I hadn’t been mature enough to understand the dance that plays out in a marriage or to see my parents as individuals with their own needs, but the answer likely was there was nothing he could’ve done. Nothing, because it was never about him. Just as my husband had played out his emotional void elsewhere rather than dealing with it, so had my mother.

  My heart ached for Cavanaugh and my heart ached all over again for my father. Suddenly the world seemed such a lonely place. My thoughts went to Michael and a pang of regret hit me. But regret for what? He’d sent me a text last night that I hadn’t replied to. I hadn’t trusted myself to respond so I’d said nothing, but that wouldn’t hold for long.

  I pulled my car into the garage near Link-Media and headed over to the office. After being attacked in the alley behind the building earlier in the year, I happily paid the monthly fee for a parking space that included security, even when it meant a wind-blown three-block walk.

  Borkowski came barreling at me as soon as I entered the room. “Kellner, my office. Now.”

  I tossed my coat and bag on my desk and trundled after him once again being treated like a 14-year-old kid. What now?

  I closed the door behind me and took a seat. This had been Erik’s office and although none of his personal touches remained, his ghost still hovered around the edges. I was probably imagining it, but could smell his cologne.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Borkowski said, not bothering to sit.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I asked you to stay away from working on anything having to do with your love life, but do you listen? No, you’re out gallivanting around town trying to get into Bowman’s shit when I assigned Martinez.”

  I opened my mouth to object but Borkowski shot me down.

  “Save it. Martinez called VTF for an interview and was told you’d been there several times. Do you have any idea how idiotic shit like that makes us look?”

  “For the record, I’m not romantically involved with Seth Bowman. Never have been,” I shot back, annoyed with the insinuation. “Two, why in the hell has it taken Martinez nearly a week to pick up the phone. He had what, three hundred words posted the day after the shooting, and nothing since? That’s what makes us look idiotic.”

  “Where’s your piece on Janelle
Platt?” he fired back. “Where’s our goddamn approval for the tech upgrade? You know, the work you’re supposed to be doing.”

  Borkowski sighed and flopped into his chair.

  “Stop making me look like an ass,” he said, this time without the edge in his voice. “When you go off on one of your hunting expeditions, ignoring me and leaving me out of the loop, you’re undermining my authority. The rest of the staff sees it. Before you know it, they’re all going rogue and I’m worthless.”

  He was right. I’d been so wrapped up in Lane’s illness and VTF, that I wasn’t thinking about the position I’d put him in. It was exactly the type of thing we’d both been worried about, confusing the staff. I just hadn’t thought I’d be the biggest offender.

  “You’re right,” I said, humbled by his words. “I should have communicated with you. I’m consumed with worry about my sister’s health and I can’t help but think there’s a connection with what’s happened at VTF.”

  “All the more reason for you to stay out of it and let someone with a clearer head cover this.”

  Properly chastised, I returned to my office, left yet another pleading message for Ramelli inquiring about the budget approval, then opened my file on Janelle Platt. I had a few details to confirm but provided I could work some phone magic, I’d have the piece in decent shape by end of day. I made myself a cup of tea, closed the door to my office, and banged it out. It wasn’t the deep dive that I liked to do, but showed where Janelle Platt’s administration would likely direct its focus if she were to be elected. There would be many more opportunities between now and February.

  I emailed the piece over to Borkowski for review, knowing he’d get back to me with feedback within the next hour or two and want it posted for the morning blitz. But I could do all of that from home. I was exhausted after getting so little sleep last night and needed some alone time to process the thoughts jumbled in my mind.