by Gary Coffin
“We know that all tests must be executed successfully to move the drug to the next stage of approval, but in this case, the failed test was never re-tested because it should never have been tested in the first place. The intern had made an error and performed memory tests on a colony of mice that didn’t need it. By killing the intern and burning the facility to the ground, Eastern Security, or Biovonix, thought they had purged the test process of any evidence of the failed tests. But we now know that the failed test report was never processed. It was supposedly burned in the fire, but in this case, it survived in a storage area in another room.
“Now we fast forward four years. The new test facility was up and running at McGill and Sarah was working there as the head of records administration. She had some free time, so she started scanning all the water damaged documents that were left over in storage from the fire. She happened upon the intern’s failed test report and began asking questions. Her first point of questioning would have been an email to the Isotin clinical trials manager from Biovonix to see if the report was still relevant. The clinical trials manager, who was dirty and part of the conspiracy, told Banik and Yilmaz about Sarah’s discovery, and she was dealt with in the subway.
“Sarah also sent Dad an email asking if he had ever heard of Isotin and if it was ever approved. It was innocent enough; it was just a question, one of many that she would have sent him over the years. Dad and Sarah both worked in the medical field, and they often talked shop together. And this is where I start theorizing.
“Biovonix discovered the email sent to Dad but decided to sit tight and not do anything. They knew that if Sarah and my father were both killed, there would be too many questions, so they waited and watched. Remember, she died the afternoon after sending the email, so our lives were now turned upside down, and her innocent email question was long forgotten. The following year, Dad put the in-law suite up for rent, and Banik saw an opportunity to plant Anne Simmons in the house. This provided Biovonix insurance in case my father remembered the Isotin question and started poking around.
“Last month Dad was reading the financials in the newspaper and happened across an article about a new wonder drug called Isotin. This rang a bell, and he looked back in his email to find Sarah’s old email. That raised suspicions that her death might not have been an accident. He started poking around and came to the conclusion that something was odd about the drug but didn't know exactly what. He had been recently diagnosed with brain cancer and felt he was running out of time, so in desperation, he confronted Alex Banik to see if he could shake something loose. A week later, Dad was killed on the mountain.
“Whoa, cowboy. Did you just say that Anne Simmons was spying on your dad? Where does she fit into all this?”
“Oh, yeah. You’re going to love this part. Do you remember Mr. Jablanski?” Elliot thought about what he was going to tell Rivka and smiled.
“Yes, the turd who was looking for his wife.”
“That’s him. Well, as it turns out, Anne Simmons is Jablanski’s Nikki. She was in a bad situation, probably living with Jablanski. They had a daughter together, Nikki wanted out of the life, and Jablanski wouldn’t allow it. So she took off with the teenaged daughter, moved to Montreal and assumed a new name, Anne Simmons. She knew Jablanski would pursue her, so she needed a new identity and some cosmetic work to hide some identifying characteristics.”
Rivka thought back to the picture that Jablanski had sent her. “Like the tattoo on her neck and some dental work.”
“Exactly, but it takes money to change an identity, get surgery, and raise a daughter, so she called upon her well-to-do half-brother, Alex Banik, to help.”
“Shut the front door. This is getting good.”
“Banik helps her and, at some point later, he needs something in return from Anne. Isotin approval is getting close now, and Banik is still anxious about the old man. So Banik got Anne to respond to Dad's request to rent the basement suite so she could keep an eye on him.”
“How did you figure out that Anne was a phony?”
“I sensed she was hiding something from the beginning, but I made the Jablanski connection when she came out of the shower with her hair wet and combed straight back. Her resemblance to the photo Jablanski sent hit me like a thunderclap. That’s when it all fell into place; the birthmark on her neck that was, in fact, the scarring left over from removing the butterfly tattoo; she was completely comfortable walking around in front of me with no clothes on as if she’d done it many times before; and the teenaged waitress at the inn who addressed me as Mr. Forsman when I had only been introduced to her as Elliot. Anne wouldn’t have discussed me with a waitress at a countryside inn; the girl had to be her daughter. It became so obvious. Anne Simmons was the woman Jablanski was looking for.“
“When she came out of the shower? Walking around naked? Did I miss something? Elliot, you dog, were you doing some undercover work while I was out of action?”
“I was involved in a short relationship. Completely innocent, nothing more.”
“Pumping your suspect for information. I like that.”
“Do you really have to bring it down to that level? “
“Okay, continue, Maven. Tell me, how did you tie the Banik angle into this?”
“The seeds were planted early. When you found the coffee shop stills of Kulas and Ogrodnik, I asked myself why they staked out my father for only two days. Two days is not long enough to establish a pattern. It was because they weren’t establishing a pattern. They already knew the pattern; Anne had fed it to them. They used the first day to establish a timeline to see my father start his walk and drive up to the Lookout to determine if they would get there in time. They used the second day to execute their plan. But I wasn’t thinking it involved Anne at this point; it was just a loose thread I kept track of. It wasn’t until I made the Jablanski connection that I connected her to Banik. I thought about the teeth on the young girl in the family picture in Banik's office and their similarity to the teeth in the Jablanski family photo. And when I put her names together, it all started making sense—Anne, Anika, and Nikki, all derivatives of the same name.”
“Well done. Getting back to Biovonix and Isotin. What was the big secret they were trying to hide? I’m sure that drug tests fail all the time.”
“They do, but this case was different. Biovonix and their financiers had spent billions on the Isotin program for good reason. There were many more billions to be made. Banik’s approach was revolutionary and would usher in a new era of pharmaceuticals. When the failed test report was filed, Banik quickly realized that there was a major flaw in the treatment, but the flaw only manifested itself in the offspring of the treatment recipients and, even then, not until the offspring reached puberty.”
“How did the treatment work?”
“I’m no oncologist, but this is the way I understand it. The body combats disease and bacteria with a type of white blood cell called a T-cell. The T-cells are pre-programmed to find and destroy very specific types of diseased cells based on proteins that exist on the cell exterior. Once an attack is identified by the T-cell, the body will ramp up the creation of the same type of T-cells to thwart the attack. In the case of most cancers, there are two failures: the cancer cells do not trigger a strong response from the T-cells, and growth rate of the diseased cells quickly outstrips the ability of the lazy T-cells to deal with the cancerous cells.
“Biovonix developed a method to identify and extract the appropriate T-cells from the body, the ones that are already programmed to fight the cancer cells. They grow their numbers in vitro, outside the body, and at the same time, they are also genetically modified using Isotin to be more aggressive. Once the laboratory T-cells are grown to adequate numbers, they are re-introduced into the host patient, and the T-cells attack the cancer from within. There is no surgery, no radiation, and no side effects. From the body's perspective, the cancer is no more than a nasty flu bug.”
“That’s the way
Biovonix thought it would work, but the human body is a complex machine. Biovonix already knew that the new aggressive T-cells are passed on to offspring and considered it an added bonus. Not only does Isotin cure the patient, but their children would also inherit the T-cells that prevent that type of cancer.
“The issue with the treatment is that the aggressive T-cells started killing more than just cancer cells. The failed pre-clinical tests revealed that some brain cells that are only created during puberty have a very similar protein expression as the cancer cells in question. These brain cells are responsible for behaviors like sexual awakening and social growth and also cognitive, and memory functions. The reason that the original patient is not affected is because those cells already exist in the body when treatment is introduced and, through a mechanism that isn’t quite understood, the new aggressive T-cells do not consider them a threat. However, when the children of treatment patients reach puberty, the inherited T-cells attack and kill the newly forming brain cells and leave behind an adolescent who will never pass the threshold into adulthood and will exhibit Alzheimer-like symptoms, explaining the mice which could not navigate the maze.
“It would have meant they had to go back to the drawing board and start over. But when Banik and the test manager realized that the failed memory tests were not even supposed to have been executed, they saw a way out. By eliminating anyone involved, which at this point was only the intern Carrie, and destroying the report, they could get away with it. To ensure they destroyed all evidence of the report, they torched the building and everything in it. They knew this meant that all the recently executed tests would have to be re-run at a new facility, but they’d make sure that only the tests in the approved test plan would be executed. Once they got past the pre-clinical testing and started human trials, the issue would never be discovered. The human gestation to puberty cycle is much too long ever to manifest itself in human trials.”
“Whoa. So Biovonix made a conscious decision to push this through knowing full well that their treatment would result in hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of ticking time bombs waiting to go off when the children of the treatment patients reached puberty?”
“Exactly; the investors would have long since taken their money and run.“
Rivka lay in her bed with a big grin on her face as she thought about the case and how it had unfolded.
Elliot checked to see if there was anyone coming and quietly closed the door.
“Riv, we should talk about Ogrodnik. This is your story to tell. What’s your plan?”
“I’m going to wait until I’m out of here, so I can research Ogrodnik. We don’t even know his real name. I’ll go through Hochelaga records and find out everything I can about him before I contact the force.”
“So you’ll go through the force and not directly to the press?”
“Yes, I’m still one of them at some level, and I feel I owe them that much. The force will want to manage the PR on something this big. There’s also the box of hair snippets at Amyot’s country house. Although I
want the force involved, I do not want that asshole to get one shred of credit for this. I’ll work out a deal with them before I tell them anything.”
“Your sister will be relieved.”
Rivka said nothing, but Elliot could clearly see the well of tears in her eyes.
Elliot’s phone chirped, so he stepped out into the hallway to answer.
“Elliot speaking.”
“Hey, stretch, Randy here.”
“Randolph, what’s up?”
“I heard a rumor that you were injured, so I thought I’d check in on you.”
“No rumor. I did get a little dinged up, but I’m fine now.“
“Glad to hear it. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have an ulterior motive for calling.”
“And what would that be?”
“I’m looking at the staffing sheet for next fall, and if you’re not coming back, I’d prefer to start the replacement process for a new criminology professor sooner rather than later.“
Elliot said nothing and let his thoughts wander back to the kid on the trigger side of the gun that killed his mother thirty years ago. He remembered the dice tattoo on his forearm, and he thought back to the previous week when he parked underneath the Ville Marie Expressway. In his mind’s eye, he saw the layers of graffiti on the cement stanchions. Every new generation of youth would overlay their own brand of graffiti laying claim to the asphalt plain under the expressway. He remembered looking at the vestiges of one of the old layers, now only partially visible and faded almost beyond recognition, but there was no mistaking the angular edge of a pair of dice. He thought about those corner store robbers from so long ago and how they represented two very different cultures of skateboarders, each from different sides of the track but meeting on common ground, and he wondered if the area under the expressway might be that common ground.
He thought about the uncanny similarity of the garnet ring with the gold border on the shooter and the burgundy color transcript with gold border on Banik's wall from the defunct Westmount Boys School and wondered if they were the same.
He thought about the cold case file of his mother’s death sitting in a storeroom somewhere and when the last time was when anyone looked at it.
“Elliot, you still there?”
“Sorry. Sorry, Randy, I zoned out for a minute.”
“Well, do you think you’ll be back next fall?”
“No. No, I don’t think so, Randy. I’ve got things to do.”
“Things to do? You’re leaving it at that? What, are you going to Nepal to find yourself? What do you have planned?”
“Justice for killers, Randy. Justice for Killers.”
“Elliot, I thought I’d give you a couple of days to heal before we talked.”
“I appreciate it. Come on in, Yves.”
“So how are you feeling?”
“All things considered, not too bad,” he said as he rotated his left shoulder gingerly.
“We have some unfinished business to discuss.”
“I’ve been expecting you. Did you get the report I sent you about how Biovonix covered up those failed tests and murdered at least three people while doing so?”
“I got it. It proved to be an interesting read, to say the least. The department has forwarded your Biovonix findings to Health Canada and the FDA. Suffice to say Isotin will not be getting approval anytime soon, and we’ve created a task force to investigate everyone still working there. I still have questions that weren’t addressed in your report, though.”
“Where do you want to start?”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
“Much of the story you already know.“
“Okay. Why don’t you tell me about Eastern Security.”
“They were the security company that Biovonix used.”
“Four nights ago, their office compound was burned to the ground and with it, four bodies. Preliminary autopsy reports tell me that these men were murdered with extreme prejudice as the saying goes: definitely, a professional job.”
“And you think I did it?”
“No, I don’t think you did it, but I think you might know who did.”
“Yves, a man like Enver Yilmaz would have many enemies.”
“What about the Biovonix bunker? Eight bodies in the building and two more on the grounds. The four bodies on the roof indicate they were shot from above. We haven’t figured that out yet. We found the weapon, though—a Russian silenced AS Val sniper rifle, a very specialized piece of weaponry. We also found evidence of a stun grenade used in the data center. It has all the earmarks of a well-coordinated military operation. Do you know anything about that?”
“Do you think I did that too?”
“No, but again, I think you might know who did.”
“As I said, Yilmaz would have many enemies.”
“I guess I’m wasting my time to ask about the man in the wo
ods who had his hand chopped off.”
“I guess so.”
“Elliot, you need to understand the gravity of the situation you’re in. The only reason you’re not in custody is because I’m vouching for you. The Brass are concerned there is a vigilante military unit at work here. Two officers, one the goddamn chief of police, AND an entire security company have been wiped out. This is not Fallujah or Beirut; this is Montreal! This type of thing does not happen in Canada. The force will not rest until they’ve uncovered every stone and have the truth. There are a dozen bodies that need explaining. If you know something, it’ll go better for you if you come clean now.”
Elliot said nothing for a moment while formulating his thoughts.
“Yves, let’s take a look at what we have,” Elliot said turning to face the detective directly.
“On one hand, we have, right here in our beautiful, safe city, a company who hired a squad of mercenaries to assassinate innocent civilians led by a known psychopath with a resume of wartime atrocities as long as my arm.”
“On the other side of the coin, we have the police, and we discover that the organization we appointed to protect us was, in fact, working for the other side. They manipulated murder investigations and may have even aided and abetted in those murders. My guess is that if you dig into the financials of Chief Doyle, Durocher, and Duval, you’ll find evidence of corruption and bribery. I’m sure that the force doesn’t want their dirty laundry aired in public.”
“I’m sure they don’t, but the police did not kill anyone from Eastern Security. There are people, powerful people, who are worried because these deaths have not been explained yet,” countered Yves.
“Let me offer my point of view. We all believe that Doyle and Durocher were killed by Yilmaz and his band of bad guys, so the question is: who killed Yilmaz and his mercenaries? The authorities are not worried that these mercenaries were killed; they’re worried because they don’t know who killed them. The mercenaries got what they deserved; the police should be grateful; a huge headache has been eliminated for them. They’re worried because they can’t explain all the bodies. They’re worried because they will look incompetent when this all comes out in the press. Yves, this is not a public safety problem; it’s a political ass covering exercise. It’s about incompetent executives who fucked up and now they’re afraid that the public will catch wind of the truth, and they’ll lose their jobs.”