by D P Lyle
“Of course.”
“I’ll give you my cell number.” I wrote it on the scrap of paper she handed me. I pulled out my iPhone to make a different call. No signal.
She looked at me. “They rarely work in here. Too much electrical stuff. Here.” She lifted a phone, placed it on the counter, picked up a chart, and headed toward one of the patient cubicles.
An answer came after the first ring. “Tortelli.”
“T-Tommy?”
“Dub. I just tried to call you at home and on your cell. Where are you?”
“I’m at the hospital. Apparently cells don’t work in here.” I gave him a quick rundown on Sammy’s attack and then asked, “What’s happening on your end?”
“Last night’s victims. Paul and Diane McCurdy. McCurdy’s business partner came by to pick up some papers and found them.”
My dream images reformed in my mind, but I pushed them away. “Give me the address. I’ll meet you there.” I scribbled the location on a piece of paper. “One other thing. Sammy says he took a bite out of the guy’s left arm. Contact the local hospitals, and see if anybody came in for treatment.”
CHAPTER 66
FRIDAY 10:08 A.M.
BY THE TIME WE ARRIVED AT MCCURDY’S HOUSE, THE FULL ZOO HAD assembled. A half dozen deputies and a perimeter of crime scene tape held nearly thirty gawkers at bay. A man stood on a red plastic bucket, filming the house. I guess the bucket gave him a better angle. A middle-aged couple handed out coffee and doughnuts like it was a church social. Two young boys wrestled on a neighbor’s lawn while a young girl danced pirouettes in the street. My fellow humans can be bewildering.
“Look at them. Where do they think they are? At a goddamn picnic?”
“People are strange,” Claire said. “Makes my job a lot more interesting.”
“I should take some of these clowns inside and show them the really gruesome stuff. Most of them would faint. I’ve seen it a hundred times, and I still get queasy.” I let out a long breath. “They don’t have a clue. They think this is a just a TV show.”
The only death most people ever see is on TV, where the corpse is pretty, at times even sexy. Hair perfect, makeup perfect, and there is always perfectly poignant background music. The fair maiden corpse appears to be asleep, as if a kiss from Prince Charming would awaken her. Real death is a different story. It’s ugly. Pale and blue and smelly and sad.
The Channel 8 truck Claire had called for came up the street and pulled to the opposite curb. She headed that way. I walked into the house. The musty odor of blood and death greeted me. In the family room I found Paul McCurdy. Draped over one arm of a recliner. Dried blood rendered his pale blue pajama bottoms and white T-shirt the color of black cherries. Blood from his head wound had cascaded to the floor and produced a dark circular stain on the carpet. A much larger stain surrounded the body of Diane McCurdy. Mr. McCurdy had died quickly, too quickly to bleed much. His wife hadn’t been so lucky.
A yellow nylon rope bound her body to a shattered wooden chair, which had toppled on its side. She and the chair appeared to float on a sanguineous sea. Sprays of spattered blood spread in every direction from her battered body and peppered the floor, the furniture, everything. Several long cast-off streaks painted the ceiling, just as I had seen at Petersen’s. She was battered to an unrecognizable mass, and a fireplace poker stood erect from the side of her chest. Kurtz seemed to have a thing for fireplace tools.
The sound of Diane McCurdy’s screams and the thud of the blows echoed in my head.
“This guy takes evil to a new level.”
I turned to see T-Tommy enter the room, Sidau Yamaguchi in tow.
“Satan himself couldn’t have dreamed this guy up,” I said. “How’d it go down?”
“He came through an open window in the dining room,” T-Tommy said. “Removed the screen, similar to Kushner’s.” He nodded toward the dead man. “One shot to the head. The bullet embedded in the wall near the sofa. Looks like a nine.”
Again, the woman’s screams rose in my head. “Mrs. McCurdy?”
“Not so lucky … as you know,” Sidau said. “Can’t be sure until Drummond does the autopsy, but my guess is that most of her injuries are premortem. I suspect the head wounds occurred after death. Too bad they weren’t first.”
I turned to T-Tommy. “I need to talk to you. Outside.”
We went through the kitchen and out into the backyard. It was large and open, trees lining the far end.
“We need to turn Dr. Hublein inside out,” I said.
“How so?”
“You know Kurtz was in some drug study of Hublein’s.” T-Tommy nodded. “So were Martin Hankins, Gregory Hay, and Robert Swenson.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Wish I was.”
“You know this how?”
“You don’t want to know.” He frowned. I went on. “Swenson’s still out there. He could be as crazy as Kurtz.” Now his jaw tightened. “They could be working together.”
“Maybe the guy who’s been calling you?”
“Possible.”
My iPhone rang. It was Wendell Volek out at NASA. He said, “You want to take a look at what I found on the video you gave me?”
CHAPTER 67
FRIDAY 10:49 A.M.
BRIAN HAD HAD A RESTLESS NIGHT. TOO WIRED TO SLEEP. TOO angry with himself for losing control of that old geezer. He had paced, crawled into bed, tossed and turned, paced, drank a half dozen beers, did hundreds of sit-ups and push-ups, but nothing worked. Finally, as the sky began to lighten, he stretched out on the sofa at the safe house, closed his eyes, and concentrated on taking long, slow breaths. One of the calming techniques Hublein had taught him. It rarely worked.
He didn’t realize that he had drifted to sleep until an electronic tone jerked him awake. Momentarily confused, he sat up. He glanced at his wrist. No watch. He’d left it on the nightstand when he fled from his apartment. The cell phone chirped again, and he picked it up from the floor, where he had tossed it.
“Hello.”
“I have what you need.”
“Now?”
“Relax,” the caller said. “Didn’t I tell you I’d have it today?”
Brian was now fully awake. “When?”
“Tonight.”
“You’re coming here?”
“No. At the institute. Say, seven thirty.”
“At Dr. Hublein’s office?”
“In the underground parking area. It’ll be quiet, no prying eyes.”
“You’ll have the drug with you?”
“Of course. Besides, it’s time we met. And tied up a few loose ends.”
“Dr. Hublein?”
“And Wexlar. After you get what you need, they’ll be yours. It’s all arranged.”
“How?”
“I’ll explain it tonight.”
“And Walker?”
“Him, too. I told you. It’s all set up.”
Pearce disconnected the call and glanced at his watch. Not much longer. He leaned back in his chair and massaged his neck.
For him, waiting was a love-hate thing. It sapped your strength, made you soft, weakened your resolve, yet required discipline, patience, self-control, the qualities that separated him from others. A few hours? No sweat. He had once squatted in a hole in the Iraqi desert for five days to take out a Republican Guard general. Sitting in this claustrophobic office was like R and R.
Besides, the end was near. Of course, he didn’t trust Smithson, didn’t trust anyone, but what choice did he have? Smithson had pulled his bacon from the fire. Otherwise he’d be an errand boy at the Pentagon. Or worse.
He did have a grudging admiration for the man, however. Neither his focus and determination nor his plotting and planning abilities could be denied. What truly amazed Pearce was Smithson’s immediate access to information. He seemed able to accumulate data in a heartbeat. His research on Kurtz, Hublein, Wexlar, each of the victims, even Dub Walker, had been exact and complete. Eve
ry inquiry Pearce sent was fulfilled within hours, if not minutes.
He knew Smithson had a doctorate in chemistry. He had also been a more or less lifer in the army. Made full colonel. Then left for civilian life and a much bigger paycheck. Now CEO of Danko-Meyer Pharmaceuticals, he was in some kind of pissing contest with Spellman Pharmaceuticals. Each trying to be the first to put out a new drug for PTSD. A huge and growing problem, which meant big bucks to whoever won the race. Hublein was tied in with Spellman’s new drug through the PTSD-SAP project. Smithson wanted to trash the study and their new drug.
Enter Harold Pearce.
After Smithson rescued him from his dead-end military career, he somehow maneuvered this job with Spellman. Pearce had no idea how he pulled that off but suspected that Smithson had a handful of his own people inside Spellman. The only thing Pearce knew for sure was that Spellman had hired him as a project security manager and had assigned him to this project. To prevent competitor espionage. To protect the secrecy of Spellman’s new drug. Talk about the fox in the henhouse. The irony was that Spellman was actually paying him a hefty salary and was totally unaware that Pearce was the enemy. Got to love Smithson’s nerve.
Once Pearce got him all the data on the trial, Smithson selected Brian Kurtz and a few other members of the study as the pigeons. Now they were only hours away from blowing the whole thing up. Once the police discovered that Hankins and Hay and Swenson and Kurtz were all on the same drug, a drug that was known to make people violent in higher doses, the shit would fly. Spellman would fall. Smithson would win the prize.
He opened the soft black pouch, removed the vial, held it up to the light, and examined its rich amber color. It looked like the others, but he knew it was different.
All twenty-five members of the study had been receiving the same dose of the drug. That’s what the protocol called for. But for the past three months, Pearce had substituted the vials designated for the four chosen subjects with ones that looked identical yet contained a triple dose of the drug. Hublein had faithfully injected these into the four men each week, just as the protocol dictated.
The swap had been easy, as had the exchange of their blood for “cleaner” samples. Ones that contained the expected concentration of the drug, not the toxic level that had run through all of them and that now ran through Brian Kurtz’s veins. Hublein, for all his smarts, didn’t have a clue.
Hankins and Hay had gone postal and gotten themselves killed by the police. Too bad, but Pearce never felt good about those two. Swenson looked better for the final stage, but he went off the reservation, and Pearce had had to terminate him. He smiled, thinking about the cops still looking for him, when he was in the ground far from where anyone would look.
Brian Kurtz had turned out to be the perfect subject.
Pearce rotated the vial back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. This final dose contained not only a massive amount of the drug, but also a hefty dose of amphetamines. Guaranteed to send Brian over the edge. Pearce had only to give him the injection, sic him on Hublein and Wexlar, drop a dime to Walker, and let the games begin.
When confronted with an enraged Brian, the two good doctors and Walker wouldn’t stand a chance. The police would ride in and do what they always did. Shoot first and plant a weapon later. Hublein’s files and Brian’s autopsy would expose the entire project, bring Hublein and Spellman down, and Smithson would make a killing. And fill Pearce’s pockets.
He could almost smell the clean ocean air of Tahiti.
CHAPTER 68
FRIDAY 11:16 A.M.
T-TOMMY AND I MADE OUR WAY THROUGH THE SECURITY checks at the Redstone Arsenal and were again escorted to NASA headquarters. We met Dr. Wendell Volek in the same conference room as before.
Volek got right to it. He tapped a couple of keystrokes on his Mac laptop and a video appeared on the large screen that covered one wall. It was the video I had seen when last here, only now cleaner and brighter. The ceiling-mounted camera angled on the ornate central stairway at the Russel Erskine. A man moved into the frame, took the stairs two at a time, and disappeared as the stairs zigged to the right. Volek let the video run a few cycles and then worked the keyboard again. Now the same man came down the stairs and moved out of frame. Again, he let it repeat half a dozen times. A few more keyboard taps and a series of still images, mostly close-ups of the man’s head, appeared. In the final one, a partial profile could be seen as the man neared the bottom of the stairs. Volek left that one up.
“Here’s the raw image. Cleaned up a bit. This frame gives us the only look at part of his face. Not great, but that’s the best we have.” The keyboard clicked under his fingers. “After a few manipulations, this is what we have.”
The picture snapped to amazing clarity. The facial features were now sharp-edged and brighter. Kurtz. No doubt. The shape of the jaw, the nose, the narrow lips. Just like the mug shots of him I had seen. I glanced at T-Tommy.
“That’s him,” T-Tommy said. “Brian Kurtz. Our primary suspect.”
“The time on the first clip, as best I can reconstruct, is five after one. Give or take a couple of minutes. He came back down about thirty minutes later. Thirty-two to be exact.” He tapped the keyboard again. “This was forty-five minutes earlier. Around twelve twenty.”
Another man, smaller, also in a jacket and cap, hurried up the stairs. Took them three at a time. Definitely not one of the residents.
“And then six minutes later.”
The same man descended the stairs and moved out of frame. He kept his head down and one hand at the side of his face, blocking the camera.
“He knew there was a security camera,” I said. “And exactly where it was.”
“Son of a bitch,” T-Tommy said. “Kurtz does have a helper.”
I looked at T-Tommy. “This guy’s connected to Hublein.”
“What do you mean?”
Time to ’fess up. “I took a look at Hublein’s lab. Claire and I. Last night.”
“That’s how you knew about the others? Hankins and Hays and Swenson?”
I nodded. “This guy … the one on the video here … he was there. At least I think it was this guy. Same size, same walk. Came in and took something from the refrigerator. Looked like a syringe filled with a yellowish liquid.”
“For Kurtz?”
“That’d be my bet.”
“Why?”
That one I didn’t have an answer for.
Volek tapped up several stills of the man’s head. None showed any of his face. “Sorry. Not a single frame gave me anything to work with.”
CHAPTER 69
FRIDAY 6:41 P.M.
“WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU GOTTEN YOURSELF INTO?”
It was Drew Miller. The call I’d been waiting for. “What do you mean?”
“This RU-1193 is heady stuff.”
I felt the hair on the back of my neck snap to attention. I looked across the table at Claire and T-Tommy. Claire had pretaped her report. She did that some nights and others went live. We had watched it just a few minutes earlier while we finished a dinner of pizza and beer on my back deck. T-Tommy was waiting for word from Judge Feigler on a search warrant for Hublein’s office. He had a team ready to move, but needed the warrant.
“Tell me.”
“It’s being studied in six centers. The one you have down there and five others. LA, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, and Boston. Twenty-five subjects in each locale. Been going on about a year. All approved by the NIH and cofunded by Spellman Pharmaceuticals.”
“I understand it’s a benzodiazepine, and the studies are on PTSD patients.”
“Exactly. It and another drug manufactured by Danko-Meyer seem promising. They’re in a race to see who gets to the market first. Whoever wins will have the first real drug for PTSD.”
“That’s worth millions.”
“Actually billions. PTSD is a big problem. And growing. Not only with Iraq vets but with people in all sorts of stressful situations.”
; “So, what’s the problem?”
“RU-1193 is a derivative of a drug studied many years ago by the US Army. It was designated RU-1186. Also for PTSD, but didn’t exactly pan out.”
I massaged one temple. “This is the part I’m not going to like, isn’t it?”
“Who said you weren’t perceptive? Both are synthetic drugs. The army began research on RU-1186 in the early 1990s. By the time the studies moved from rats to baboons, things went sideways. After several months, the baboons became hostile, territorial, ripped each other to shreds, even killed a lab worker. They shut down the project.”
“Obviously that’s not the end of the story,” I said.
“Several years ago RU-1186 went through several modifications, and the Pentagon conducted human studies on military prisoners. Using the modified drug in lower doses. The results were better. At first. The subjects showed improvement in their PTSD symptoms. Less headaches, insomnia, restlessness, depression, that sort of thing.
Apparently, five months into the study the men became extremely combative and hostile. One of them killed two others with a mop handle.”
“And?” I asked.
“Back to lab, a few more molecular tweaks, and RU-1193 was born. It faired better in animal trials and the initial human studies. Now this phase-three study is under way.”
“Are you aware of any problems at any of the other centers?”
“Such as?”
“Violent behavior.”
“Is that what you’re dealing with there?”
I gave him a quick thumbnail of the murders. He listened quietly and then said, “The major problem with both of these drugs is dosing. They tend to accumulate in the system, and when the blood levels rise, so do the side effects. One of which is violent tendencies.”
“What else?”
“Paranoia, rage, anger, headaches, insomnia, the usual.”
“So as far as you know, there’ve been no problems at any of the other centers?”