Fatal Cure

by Robin Cook

  Laurie had planned to take the sample directly up to toxicology on the fifth floor, but a glance at her watch changed her mind. She was aware that John DeVries was one of the most compulsive people she knew, and one of the ways he manifested his compulsive-ness was to stop whatever he was doing at exactly noon, and take his old-fashioned lunch box with a thermos mounted in its vaulted top to OCME’s sad excuse of a lunchroom on the second floor. The room was windowless, with cement-block walls. All that was in the room were a bank of vending machines filled with unhealthy food, plastic-topped tubular steel tables, and plastic chairs. Although Laurie could have stopped to say hello, she was reluctant to interrupt his lunch. It was also true that the room depressed her. Instead she went directly up to her office so as not to waste time. As punctual as John was about getting to the lunchroom at noon, he was just as punctual about returning to work at twelve-thirty, and Laurie planned to take the sample to him then.

  25

  MARCH 26, 2010

  FRIDAY, 12:15 p.m.

  Louie was in seventh heaven. He’d not had such fun for a good decade. From the moment Brennan had suggested they kidnap Laurie Montgomery’s kid to the moment he’d just slid into his favorite booth of his restaurant, he’d been totally engrossed in planning the operation. The kidnapping idea had been pure genius, and Louie gave Brennan full credit. First, it was a great way to kick the woman in the teeth for having been instrumental in putting Paulie in the slammer for more than a decade. Louie hadn’t heard that story and had been surprised by it. He’d also been surprised by Paulie’s prohibition of killing the woman. But in many respects, this was going to be better in that she’d suffer more. In Louie’s mind, when a person got killed, they didn’t suffer at all.

  Second and foremost, the kidnapping would surely take the pesky woman’s attention away from investigating Satoshi, which would be to everybody’s relief.

  And third, it could result in serious pocket change. Louie’s last kidnapping, more than fifteen years ago, had netted for the Vaccarro group more than ten million dollars, making Louie eager to try another go-round. Unfortunately, Paulie wasn’t of the same mind, and despite the success, nixed another. In Paulie’s estimation, from hearing some horror stories, kidnappings were just too dangerous despite the potentially big payoff.

  Louie shook his head and laughed. There was a certain irony about the fact that he was now about to mount his second kidnapping, partially based on retribution for Paulie, who had kept him from doing a repeat years earlier. This time he knew it wouldn’t bring in quite the same money. The first one had been a Wall Street type whose net worth hovered around a hundred million. This time, the principals were a couple of salaried doctors, and he knew he couldn’t count on more than a million or so, but worrying about that was premature and even secondary. The reason for taking the kid was to get Laurie Stapleton out of the picture.

  “Hey, Benito!” Louie yelled at the top of his lungs, causing his own ears to ring. No one had come out of the kitchen, and Louie didn’t know how long he had for lunch, since he was counting on getting a call any minute from Brennan. At that moment Brennan, Carlo, and two younger guys who had been working for Louie for close to four years, Duane Mackenzie and Tommaso Deluca, along with Hisayuki Ishii’s two lieutenants, were sitting in a stolen white Dodge van outside Dr. Laurie Montgomery-Stapleton’s house on 106th, waiting for their victim to appear.

  Over the previous hour Brennan had more than fulfilled his promise to glean information about Laurie from the Net. Carlo had made himself useful by obtaining the stolen vehicle, which they planned to dump. All was ready for the snatch.

  In response to Louie’s sudden yell, which had rattled some of the glasses hanging over the bar, Benito came crashing out of the swinging door leading into the kitchen. He was full of apology, explaining that he’d heard nothing of Louie’s arrival, as he usually did.

  “I had no idea you were here, boss. Believe me!”

  Louie reached out and gently laid fingers on Benito’s forearm. He was, after all, in a gracious mood the way everything was going. “It’s okay,” he said, trying to calm the overexcited man. “It’s okay,” he repeated, before asking what was for lunch.

  “Your favorite!” Benito said with alacrity, glad to have something on hand to make amends. “Penne Bolognese with fresh ground Parmesan.”

  Louie watched Benito retreat into the kitchen. Still thinking about the upcoming kidnapping, he’d come up with yet another one of its benefits. With Hisayuki’s acquiescence and participation, he felt more certain that the oyabun would have no reason to suspect that Louie had any complicity in the disappearance and murder of Susumu and Yoshiaki.

  Suddenly the phone at Louie’s elbow jangled. Louie grabbed it as his heart skipped a beat. It was Brennan, as he expected.

  26

  MARCH 26, 2010

  FRIDAY, 12:18 p.m.

  There’s a young woman coming out of the doctor’s house right this second,” Brennan blurted, sounding frantic. “She’s carrying a kid in one hand and a stroller in the other. Do you think it’s the kid we want or what?”

  Louie felt his confidence falter. “Calm down!” he ordered sharply. All the talk he’d had with Brennan over the last hour about remaining calm and detached had apparently gone out the window. Louie had expected more from Brennan. Brennan obviously had allowed himself to get so wound up, he was not thinking clearly.

  “How the hell are we going to be sure it’s the right kid?” Brennan whined with a touch of desperation.

  “You’ll never be completely sure,” Louie said, “but you can be pretty darn close to being sure. As a starter, do mother and child look alike?”

  “No, the kid’s white and the nanny’s black.”

  “Well, I’d say that’s pretty definitive.”

  “She’s stuffing the kid into the stroller. She acts a little like she’s impatient. You know what I’m saying? And the kid is bawling.”

  “That’s not our worry. Now, is she ready to leave?”

  “I’d say so,” Brennan said. “Yes, they are! They’re pushing off, heading for the park, just like you’d hoped.”

  “Sounds like it is going to be almost too easy,” Louie said. Before he’d left them in front of Laurie’s building, Louie had expressed the hope that the nanny would take JJ to Central Park, as that section of the park was never as crowded as it was to the south, and usually rather deserted. Also, there were forested hills, which would provide near-perfect locations for a snatch.

  With his hand motioning for Carlo to follow the stroller toward Central Park West, Brennan continued the phone conversation with Louie as if he wanted Louie to stay on the line and make all the decisions. But Louie, whether he sensed Brennan’s intention or not, said, “Okay, you’re on your own, and good luck. And also remember what I said earlier. Don’t do anything silly. Use your head. Don’t take any risks. There’s no need, as there is always tomorrow, even if we lose some of the benefits of doing the kidnapping. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “I hear you,” Brennan assured.

  “Let me hear from you when you have the child,” Louie said before disconnecting.

  Brennan flipped his phone shut and slipped it into his jacket pocket. “Don’t get too close to make it look like we’re following!” he said to Carlo, who was driving.

  “I know what I’m freaking doing,” Carlo snapped back. He wasn’t happy at having to take orders from Brennan, especially with other people in the van. It had been a sudden, psychologically painful reversal of the status quo.

  “Slow down and stop!” Brennan ordered, oblivious to Carlo’s wounded ego. Ahead, the nanny was held up at the corner, waiting for the light to change on Central Park West. Just across the street, the park’s pedestrian entrance was bounded by walls of dark-red sandstone blocks. There were a few buds on the otherwise leafless trees. There was also some yellow forsythia in bloom.

  The van waited thirty yards from the corner for the light to change.
Carlo was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. In the middle seats were Chong Yong and Riki Watanabe. Although they could speak passing English, they remained silent. In the far backseats sat Duane Mackenzie and Tommaso Deluca. They, too, were silent, intimidated by the two massively muscled men sitting in front of them.

  “All right,” Brennan said. “Let’s review the plan now that we know for certain the woman and the kid are going into the park. Everyone except for Carlo will get out at the corner and follow them in, but not as a group. I’ll go ahead, and you people string out behind me like we’re all on our own. And make sure you’ve got your masks.”

  Brennan twisted in his seat so as to look at the people in the back as he talked. “It will be up to me to decide if it is a go or not, understand? I mean, the snatch might happen as soon as we’re in the park, or later, or not at all, depending on what the nanny does. Worst case, she might be meeting up with someone. If that happens, we’ll delay. Meanwhile, Carlo will be in the van nearby with the motor running. Once we have the kid, I want all of us to get into the van and get the hell out of here. Any questions?”

  “What are we to do?” Riki asked.

  “Good question,” Brennan said without sarcasm after a slight pause. It had been Louie who’d ordered who was going to participate. Brennan had had the same question but chose not to ask Louie, fearing Louie might not think him capable of being in charge if the answer was obvious. “You’re to be there in case something unexpected happens and we need more people,” Brennan said, at least making a stab at an answer.

  “The light is changing,” Carlo called out.

  Brennan turned back to face forward. “All right,” he said commandingly. “Let’s do it!” He leaped from the car, impatient to get the operation under way. As he watched the attractive black woman hustle into the park, he felt this was his opportunity to prove himself to Louie.

  27

  MARCH 26, 2010

  FRIDAY, 12:33 p.m.

  When Laurie got back to her office with the wine cork-sized en bloc tissue sample, she put it on her desk in full view so as not to delay getting it to John. Meanwhile, she fell back to examining the toxicology slides. Although she was now confident that Kenji had been murdered with a toxic agent, she still felt obliged to make sure there was no pathology in the brain to explain the seizure. After all, whatever toxin had killed him could also have been responsible for stimulating an existing pathological lesion, rather than causing the seizure inherently. It wasn’t a serious issue, but it might influence her search for the toxin if she did find something. Besides, she wanted to be both complete and accurate for what she thought was going to be a triumphal presentation to Lou and Jack, and anyone else who might like to listen.

  While she methodically searched the slides, she was able to multitask by trying to come up with what the specific toxin might have been. She assumed it was a neurotoxin, as she’d decided earlier, of which there were many different kinds in snakes, scorpions, aquatic mollusks, and even certain fish. With that thought in mind, she turned away from the brain slides temporarily to go online to review neurotoxins. Because she’d come to assume her two cases were people of Japanese ancestry, the one toxin that jumped into her mind was tetrodotoxin, possibly the most infamous toxin in Japan, since it was associated with multiple episodes of illnesses and deaths in unlucky sushi and sashimi lovers. The toxin came from bacteria associated with a number of creatures, including a particular puffer fish whose flesh was considered a delicacy in Japan. The problem was that the flesh could contain tetrodotoxin at particular times of the year, whereas it is usually confined to the fish’s viscera, such as its liver and skin.

  Laurie focused her search on tetrodotoxin, with the idea of seeing if it could cause convulsions when administered parenterally, meaning by injection. As she skimmed several of the articles, refreshing her general knowledge of tetrodotoxin, she recalled that it was a useful compound and was used rather extensively in medical research and even in clinical medicine. In clinical medicine it was used to treat cardiac arrhythmia and also as a pain reliever in extreme situations, such as in cases of terminal cancer and debilitating migraines. She thought this was an important issue in that it meant the drug was commercially manufactured, hence readily available. There were many other neurotoxins that were quite exotic and extremely difficult to obtain.

  “Yes!” Laurie suddenly said, and snapped her fingers as she read that tetrodotoxin could, when injected, cause convulsions, which wasn’t the case with the other classes of neurotoxins. Continuing on in the same article, she also was reminded of tetrodotoxin’s impressive toxicity: Two hundred-thousandths of an ounce could kill a one-hundred-and-seventy-pound person. Laurie whistled at such a figure, realizing tetrodotoxin was one hundred times more poisonous than potassium cyanide.

  While marveling over tetrodotoxin’s lethality, Laurie’s eyes wandered over to the institutional clock hanging on the wall over her file cabinet. It was nearly one p.m. Knowing John DeVries would surely be back to toxicology, she grabbed the sample bottle and headed to the elevator.

  When Laurie walked into John’s bright, spacious windowed corner office, which contrasted so sharply from his previous windowless cubbyhole, she could certainly understand how it could improve one’s mood. John was just donning a fresh white lab coat as she appeared at the door. His secretary had yet to return from her lunch.

  For a moment Laurie just stood there, transfixed by the man’s metamorphosis. He was still tall and thin but no longer gaunt, and his former academic pallor had been replaced with a brush of color across his cheeks, making him look ten years younger.

  “Ah, Miss Laurie,” he said, catching sight of her. “I’m afraid there’s been no change from this morning: no toxins or poisons or drugs.”

  “Did you run another sample?”

  “Well, no,” John admitted. “Not yet. We’ve been busy with a number of overdoses from last night.”

  “Well, I have some news that I’ll clue you in on,” Laurie said, dropping her voice in a playful fashion. “But you’re not to tell anyone else until I have my mini-press conference later this afternoon.”

  “I promise,” John said.

  Laurie went on to tell John about her discovery from the security tapes that her case represented a robbery and that she had reason to believe he’d been murdered in the process with a toxin delivered with some sort of air gun. As she expected, John was immediately intrigued.

  “You got all this from security tapes?” he asked. He was impressed.

  “I did,” Laurie said. “With a dollop of inference. By the way, do you recall a famous assassination that happened in London involving a Bulgarian diplomat? He was killed by a toxin that was shot into him by a pellet gun hidden in an umbrella.”

  “Absolutely,” John said. “It was ricin. Are you suspecting your case was a copycat?”

  Laurie nodded. She was impressed not only that John remembered the case but that he’d also remembered the specific agent involved. “I believe it was a copycat, to a degree.”

  “Are you then suggesting we should be looking for ricin?”

  “No, I don’t think ricin was involved, because the victim convulsed, and ricin does not cause seizures. But from watching security tapes, I know one of two perpetrators was carrying an umbrella. Because the subway station was so crowded, I wasn’t able to actually see the umbrella used, but after the attack, when the victim was lying on the concrete, one of the attackers appeared to partially open the umbrella and cock it to get it to fully close. My sense is that the umbrella was some kind of air gun like the one involved in the case in London.”

  “What about an entrance wound?”

  “Good question,” Laurie commended. “I found one today when I redid the external exam. I’m embarrassed to tell you why I didn’t find it yesterday. There’s a small entrance wound on the back of the victim’s leg at the juncture of the leg and the gluteal mass.” Laurie held up her sample. “And this is an en bloc exci
sion of the track, which seemed to be about an inch long.”

  “Perfect,” John responded. He reached out for the bottle, held it up, and glanced in at its contents. “If the agent was not ricin, do you have any idea at all what it could have been?”

  “Actually, I do,” Laurie said. “I think it might have been tetrodotoxin.”

  John stopped looking in at the tissue sample and switched his attention to Laurie. “Do you have any specific reason to suspect tetrodotoxin?”

  “First, I think whatever was used would have had to have been a neurotoxin,” Laurie said. “Whatever it was, it definitely caused a convulsion. It was a short convulsion but a real one, both because it was seen by the nine-one-one caller and because I saw it on the security tape. Tetrodotoxin is known to be able to cause seizures when it is injected internally. This afternoon when I looked into neurotoxins, I didn’t notice any others associated with convulsions. Second of all, the stuff is manufactured on a regular basis, so it’s available. And third of all, and this is the least scientific, but I believe my patient is Japanese, and Japanese have a long history with the toxin, thanks to puffer fish.”

  “Sounds promising,” John agreed with a laugh. “All except the last part.”

  “Now for the ninety-nine-dollar question,” Laurie said. “When can we run it?”

  “Why am I not surprised,” John said, humorously throwing up his hands in mock despair. “I suppose you want it ASAP, like tomorrow, as if you are the only ME in this organization and we are sitting around up here, twiddling our fingers.”