by Emery Hayes
“And to family,” Nicole pressed. “Isn’t that the Esparza creed—contribute to the advancement of the family position?”
“It’s a reasonable expectation,” Esparza said.
“And you’re never too young to do your part.” She heard the challenge in her voice, and Esparza responded to it.
“You don’t understand because you have no base of reference.”
Nicole smiled into his insult. “The American caste system.” She sat back. “I’m one of the forty-seven percent.” Middle class.
He acknowledged her reality with a nod.
“And your position, Doctor?”
“Now or tomorrow?” he asked.
The smugness in his tone squirmed under Nicole’s skin. She drew a breath to clear the irritation from her voice.
“Your contribution is that big? It will make a significant change in your family’s standing? You will leave your mark on the world?”
He leaned forward, his fingers slipping from the edge of the table. His hands settled in his lap. His gaze became sharp, capable of puncturing a hole through stone. “Few people,” he insisted, “will have done more.”
Nicole felt his intensity. It escaped from his pores. It was suffocating. She drew a breath and eased her body back in the chair, and she smiled to indulge him.
“So you’re right up there with Einstein and Ford?”
“My place is certain.”
“And Beatrice?” She gentled her voice around the girl’s name. “What was her contribution?”
“It would have been huge,” he assured her. “But we will never know it now.”
The last word fell like a coin down a wishing well, tumbling and flashing until swallowed by the darkness. She let the silence stretch until she was sure he felt the possibility of an endless drop.
“How did you replicate this cell outside the laboratory?” she asked.
His breath hit his teeth, a sudden, choppy stream of air. Only then did she realize he’d been holding it. “That is not public knowledge,” he said.
“Beatrice was involved in that, wasn’t she?”
“She was helpful.”
“Helpful?” Nicole chided. “She was more than that. She was it. Walking, talking proof that your discovery worked, or didn’t.”
“You’re suggesting I used my daughter as a test subject, but that’s not possible.”
“Because she didn’t have cancer?”
“Because it is against the rules, of medicine and of common decency.”
“You don’t play by the rules, Dr. Esparza. Rules frustrate you.” Joaquin had described a sudden transcendence: Esparza had been ruing his limitations one day, boasting about his achievements the next. No middle ground. No time balanced on the edge of possibility. “You cheated the system, didn’t you, Dr. Esparza?”
He opened his hands in offering. “Think what you will,” he invited.
“Your daughter was proof of your cheating.”
He didn’t comment. No swift denial. No flicker of offense in his expression. He stared beyond Nicole’s shoulder and studied the wall.
“What function did she perform for you, Dr. Esparza? What contribution did she make to your discovery? Because she did something, gave something—along with her life—to Nueva Vida.”
“She did, and she will be publicly honored for it. Everyone will know my daughter’s name. I will make sure of it.”
“I don’t think Beatrice would like that.” Nicole leaned forward and tapped her pencil against the table. “You see, I’ve learned a lot about Beatrice in the past”—she gazed at the clock on the wall, just over Esparza’s left shoulder—“eleven hours, and one thing everyone seems to agree on, you included, is that Beatrice didn’t care about glory. She cared about people.”
“I do as well.”
“But not everyone will benefit from your work,” Nicole posed. “With one company holding a monopoly on … this super cell … it will go only to those who can afford it. True?”
“At first.”
“Beatrice hated you for that.”
“She did not hate me. We disagreed.”
“What is the exact nature of your discovery, Dr. Esparza?”
He shook his head. “That will come to light at the right time.”
“How did Beatrice become involved in it?”
“Curiosity,” he said. “She would not leave me alone about it. She wanted to be a part of it,” he insisted.
“So you let her?”
“Eventually, yes.”
“In what capacity?” Circuitous questioning. The verbal equivalent of the battering ram. If she asked enough times, he would eventually say more than he wanted to. She waited and watched his shoulders give a little, his wrists weaken so that his hands fell away from the table and into his lap.
“She made the ultimate sacrifice,” he said. “Like you said, she died for it.”
“You’re lying.”
“That’s an occupational hazard,” Esparza pointed out. “The police always think people are lying. You also believe there’s nobility in the pursuit of justice, but I doubt you recognize there’s also futility.”
“Something went wrong with the proofing, didn’t it, Dr. Esparza?” He blinked and drew in a breath that bottled in his septum with a delicate purl. “Yeah, we know about that,” Nicole confirmed. “Your round table. But it didn’t go as planned, and Beatrice was upset. She called her mom, crying. She asked her to come pick her up. Not you. Your wife, but definitely not you.”
“Beatrice loved me.”
“Your wife told me she went looking for Beatrice and that she called you.” Nicole leaned forward. “Seven times.”
The doctor remained silent.
“She was frantic.”
“She had no reason to be,” he returned smoothly.
“You can say that? Even now?”
“Someone murdered Beatrice. My cure did not kill her.”
“I think it did. But we’ll know for sure when we take a look at your lab and your notes, when the autopsy on Beatrice’s body is complete. So why don’t you just tell us, Dr. Esparza? What was Beatrice’s involvement with your super cell? What did you do to her? Kill her or cure her?”
“The world will see the contribution was worth the personal sacrifice.”
“You confessed to killing your daughter. We can subpoena the information.”
The tension in his features eased. His lips turned upward just slightly. Smug, but he probably didn’t think so. He lifted a hand and tapped the side of his head. “The information you seek—it’s all up here. How do you subpoena that?”
“You must have it written down somewhere.”
“You may or may not think so.”
“Who did you sell it to, Dr. Esparza?”
“You speak of it as a done deal.”
“It’s not?”
He shook his head. “Have you heard the term silent auction?”
“There’s a bidding war going on?”
“It takes only the interest of one of the Big Six to draw the interest of the others.”
“They got a whiff of the wind,” Nicole said. “They knew change was coming. That it could destroy their companies if they weren’t a part of it.” She folded her hands on the table and looked him in the eye. “That placed you, and your family, in a very powerful yet very dangerous position.”
“Montgomery had it worse.” He ran his fingers along the edge of the table, watched them. “His home was broken into many times, his lab even more. He was followed, ‘invited’ to clandestine meetings—attendance mandatory, of course. His life was threatened daily. He collected the notes that detailed his demise and mailed them to a former student. He died two days later. A witness said he walked fully clothed—topcoat and trench boots—into Lake Ontario.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I took precautions.” He looked up and smiled at her. His lips were weak and trembled. “I made it known. Do you know what a
Chinese puzzle box is? You must slide the tiles in a specific pattern in order to unlock the deepest recesses of the box. That is where I stored my knowledge.” He tapped his head again.
“Then why is Beatrice dead?”
“I trusted, for the wrong reasons.”
“Did someone try to get to you through your daughter?”
“No, Sheriff. My daughter wasn’t for sale.”
Lars entered the room then. He stood behind Nicole’s chair and stared down at Dr. Esparza.
“You talk of your daughter as a saint.”
“I loved her.”
“You nailed her to the cross,” Lars corrected.
The words caused a ripple of unease to move across the doctor’s face, but he said nothing. Lars walked around the table and sat down on the edge of it, close enough to Esparza to really make him feel small.
“The chairlift operator remembers you, Dr. Esparza. He confirms your participation in the moonlight run.”
“I didn’t lie about it.”
“Well, you did, didn’t you? You were on the mountain thirty minutes tops. One run. Up the lift, then down the mountain. That stood out with the lift operator because he saw less of you last night than any other night. Your usual? Four runs. So where were you the rest of the time?”
The doctor leaned into the little space between them and opened his mouth to speak, but Lars raised a hand.
“And your wife lied about it too. She was covering for you. Why?”
Lars pulled a notebook from his shirt pocket and leaned back to catch the overhead light. He read his notes, then lowered the book. “You had an alibi. You both did. And convenient, too, that it was each other. But your wife flushed hers, and in doing so, yours as well.
“You went to the moonlight run, but you were done by nine o’clock. And that leaves a lot of empty time on the clock. In fact, that gives you opportunity.” Lars stuck him with his eyes. “Where were you?”
Esparza didn’t answer.
“Let’s move on to another lie, then,” Lars suggested.
Nicole agreed. “Augmentin. We did a little research, Dr. Esparza, and found out two very helpful pieces of information. First, oncology frequently prescribes the medication. It’s used for skin sores and lesions, such as a patient would develop during a course of chemotherapy. Did you forget about that?”
“I haven’t had much use for the medication,” Esparza returned, but Nicole could see fissures in his stoic facial expression.
“Second, children often outgrow their allergic reaction to penicillin.”
“And some children who react to penicillin don’t to Augmentin,” Lars continued.
“Why did Beatrice need the Augmentin? At a dose”—Nicole clarified—“that is within normal parameters for a child cancer patient?”
“Did you ask my wife?” Esparza suggested. “She cares for the children when they’re sick.”
Esparza’s muscles were pulled so tight that his back wasn’t touching the chair.
Nicole leveled her gaze on Dr. Esparza. “The moonlight run skirts Lake Maria. It brought you close to where we found your daughter. Were you there, Dr. Esparza? Did you watch your daughter take her last breath? Do you know who killed her?”
“No.” The admission released a set of slowly tracking tears.
“Why did you confess? Who are you trying to protect?”
His lips trembled then, and his chin wrinkled with an attempt to maintain some control.
“I don’t know.”
15
Benjamin carried two cell phones this trip, his personal and one that all the players in the game could call. The auction was digital, and no one was certain who was participating. They could only guess. As the auctioneer, Benjamin knew them all. He had a personal favorite, and it wasn’t the woman paying him three million dollars for inside consideration. He wasn’t new to this. Geneva Sanders would gladly slice him down the middle and leave him for dead, so she had paid up front, the full monty. And Benjamin, being the superior planner and with a lust for sweet revenge, had made an annotation to his will before leaving Atlanta. He had named Nicole beneficiary to that bundle of money should something happen to him. And he had left specific instructions so that she would know exactly how the money had been garnered, the when and where. It would forever be tied to the death of their son.
It was fortuitous that Blue Mesa had its very own turbine farm. There was something about wind that set his sails. The sheer force of it, probably. The ability to harness it, certainly. Few people could. Not without the help of canvas or fuselage. And he had paid well for the right information. Benjamin was the kind of guy who liked to make an exit. An exclamation point, that’s what he was. Only this time, it would act as a sword as he cut Nicole’s world to ribbons.
The phone rang again, and Geneva Sanders’s name scrolled across the screen. Benjamin continued to ignore it. All work and no play was never his way. Now that was an epitaph. He’d have to remember that.
There was a knock at his car window then, and this startled Benjamin. He’d always been an avid daydreamer. It was his escape but also his place of greatest creativity.
He jerked his head back and turned toward the sound of rapping knuckles. He’d had the engine turned off for more than a few minutes, and the cold air was collecting on the glass. Still, he could make out the face and uniform of a Toole County sheriff’s deputy. Benjamin turned the key just enough to roll down the window.
“Problem, sir?”
“Check-engine light,” Benjamin said. “It’s a rental, so no telling what kind of miles were put on it. Thought I’d let it rest a bit.”
“There are better places for it,” the officer recommended. Behind him, the blades of the turbines spun, and the air was choppy and rocked both the officer and the SUV.
“I don’t know a lot about cars,” Benjamin said. “Do you think it’d make it back to the hotel?” Benjamin named the resort he was staying at, and he had the parking tag hanging from the rearview mirror as proof.
“That’s just another few miles,” the officer said. “Unless you’re out of oil or radiator fluid, you should be good to go.”
“Topped off this morning,” Benjamin assured him.
Another gust of wind swept through the fields and blasted them.
“That’s some wind farm you have there.”
“Yeah, but not without its trouble,” the officer said.
“Oh?” Benjamin returned. “I don’t like the sound of that.” Though really his heart was doing cartwheels just thinking about what he could do with just a pocketful of that power.
“Turn the engine,” the officer suggested, and Benjamin did. They both peered at the dash, waiting for a red warning light that wasn’t going to show.
“Guess she’s ready to go,” Benjamin said.
The officer nodded. He gave Benjamin a considering look. “I’ll follow you,” he said. “A mile or so, to make sure you’re good.”
Benjamin expressed his appreciation. Window closed and back on the road, he laughed at the sweet irony as he led one of Nicole’s finest away from the scene of what would be their son’s untimely death.
* * *
They gave Esparza a moment to compose himself. They gave him a bottle of water and a box of tissue and space. But they had their limits. They wanted a viable conversation with the doctor, and they needed him responsive. Inside five minutes, Nicole was back in her chair, not rubbing knees with Esparza but close.
“Your wife called you last night,” Nicole began.
“Yes, much later in the evening.”
“Did she know Beatrice was dead?”
“She knew something terrible had happened.”
“Because Beatrice had called her?”
“Yes. And because Beatrice was hysterical. My daughter was at times unreasonable. Theatrical, even, but she was never hysterical.”
“And what did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t believe that
.”
His gaze distant, he crossed his arms and leaned back against the chair. “My wife called me seven times. Beatrice and Joaquin ordered cable and brewed hot chocolate in the coffeemaker. My sweet little ones have colds. My discovery, it will change the world.”
His voice was an even monotone, no pitch but distant. The doctor was slipping away.
“What is that?” Lars asked. “Are you recapping events, or are you reciting your lines?”
Esparza didn’t answer. Nicole watched his body vibrate as a tremor ran through him.
The man had lost his daughter and possibly his career. And he’d had a hand in their demise, Nicole was sure of it.
She needed to pull him back and reached for the large envelope on the table. She opened the flap and let Beatrice’s cell phone slide out onto the table. It had been processed for fingerprints, and a backup had been made of all the data. The techs were at work tracing numbers, looking for image matches in the cyber world of Beatrice’s extensive photo gallery. One image in particular. Nicole held the phone in her hand and pushed a few buttons, then turned the screen so that the doctor could see it.
“Who is this man, Dr. Esparza?”
The photo was the one of Beatrice snuggled up to the side of a man her father’s age. She was smiling. The man’s hand curved around Beatrice’s side, resting in the innocuous dip at her waist.
“A colleague,” he replied.
“He a touchy-feely kind of guy?” she asked.
“He’s a doctor and handles himself with decorum.”
Nicole turned the phone so that Lars could see the photo. He shook his head and eyed the doctor.
“I have a daughter myself. She’s fifteen. And that picture makes me uncomfortable.” He jerked his chin toward the phone. “Who is he? A name this time.”
“Why? This photo was taken at a family gathering. We were celebrating Bea’s graduation from junior high. That has nothing to do with my work.”
“Then you won’t mind telling us his name,” Nicole pushed.
“He a close friend?” Lars asked. “You said family gathering, and Beatrice’s graduation from eighth grade is certainly an important moment but not a real ticket seller.”
“He is close, yes.”