“It certainly seems that way. Shall I look into it?”
“Yes. Let me know.”
He kept his eyes on the rearview mirror after the boss ended the call. Good timing: It was only a few minutes before a blue Honda CRV passed by with the Gelman woman in the passenger seat.
He let it get ahead and followed at a safe distance, staying far enough back to avoid being seen. They headed north on US 1, so he guessed they were going to MTRI. But they passed the turnoff on Chapel Road and continued on Route 1. Maybe heading for Parker’s house on Drakes Island? But they passed Drakes Island Road, still traveling north on 1.
His pulse quickened. Where were they going? Maybe her house? Still being careful to stay well back, he used his phone to run a quick check of her address. Possible—she lived in Kennebunkport. A fancy address on Ocean Avenue.
When they turned onto Route 9, he guessed he was right and let them get ahead. Traffic was too light to keep them in sight without being spotted. Instead he drove slowly to her house.
Yes, the blue CRV was parked in the driveway.
Maybe something really was going on.
He found a place to park down the street where he could just keep the house in sight. Then he got his camera out of the back and settled in to wait.
16
Carolyn sat quietly, alone with her thoughts and with Rosie on her lap, while I drove back to Kennebunkport. I wasn’t very good at small talk under the best of circumstances, and the couple of attempts I made fell on deaf ears. Still, from the way she petted Rosie and shot occasional glances in my direction, I could tell she was glad to have us with her.
It was a few minutes after eight when I pulled into her circular driveway and stopped in front of the house. I reached over and squeezed her hand. “If anything happens, give me a call. I’m just going to go home and take care of Rosie—she needs her dinner. Don’t hesitate if you need anything.”
Her face fell. “Oh, can’t you come in? Rosie too, of course. Please, I just can’t be alone now.”
“Isn’t your husband home yet? It’s late. I’m sure he’ll be here soon if he’s not home already.”
She looked down at her hands. “He’s staying in Portland tonight. I told him what happened, but he can’t make it home.”
“I’m sorry. I know what important dinner meetings can be like. But I’m sure he’ll be home as soon as he’s free.”
If it was possible, her eyes grew even sadder. “No, the thing is, he has an early-morning meeting tomorrow. He likes to stay there overnight when that happens. He hates having to get up early to travel.”
That told me pretty much all I needed to know about her husband. With any luck, I’d never have to meet the selfish bastard. It would be hard to play nice if I did.
“Please, just come in and have a drink.” Her voice was pleading. “I’m sure I have something that’ll work for Rosie’s dinner. I can fix something for us, too, if you’d like.”
I smiled reassuringly. “Sure, I’ll be happy to. And Rosie thanks you.”
We followed her into the house, after Rosie paused briefly to relieve herself on the front lawn. Carolyn went immediately into the kitchen. “Rosie first,” she said.
Taking care of her new friend seemed to give Carolyn a sense of purpose. She filled a mixing bowl with water and offered it to Rosie, who gave Carolyn a thank-you kiss before taking an appreciative slurp. Then Carolyn opened the fridge and surveyed its contents. “There’s some cold roast chicken. Would she like that?”
“Sounds perfect.”
She pulled the chicken out and got a saucer from the dish cabinet. Handing me a knife, she said, “Why don’t you fix it for her? You know what she likes.”
It didn’t take Rosie long to figure out what was happening. By the time I got some chicken cut up, she was bouncing up and down in anticipation. When I put the plate down, she dug in with full pug gusto, snorting and slurping away.
Carolyn actually laughed. “I’m not sure I’ve ever had such an appreciative dinner guest. How about you? A drink? We’ve got pretty much everything.”
“Scotch would be great if you have some.”
She got out a bottle of single malt and poured two healthy glasses. “I don’t usually drink the hard stuff, but I think I could use it tonight. Do you want some chicken?”
Without waiting for an answer, she sliced some onto a platter and added half a loaf of French bread. I followed her out to a table on the deck, overlooking a rocky cliff leading down to the ocean.
She sat with her phone in front of her and took a large gulp of scotch. “I keep waiting for the doctor to call. I’m so scared she’s going to die.”
“All we can do is hope for the best.” I took a sip of scotch. “In the meantime, try to relax a bit.”
I put some chicken on a chunk of bread and took a bite. More to have something to do than because I felt like eating. “This tastes good,” I said. “Have some.”
Instead, she took another gulp of scotch. “Thanks, but I think more of this is what I need right now.”
Her eyes were turning glassy. I said, “Take it easy. That can hit you fast if you’re not used to it.”
She gave a half smile and drained her glass. “Wouldn’t be so bad if it knocked me out tonight. I’m going to take a pill and try to sleep. Don’t worry, just half a pill.”
I got up. “All right, no more than that, though. Have a good night. And again, if you need me, just call.”
Her face fell. “Oh no, can’t you stay?” Then she flushed. “I mean, in the guest room. It’s all made up. Please, I’d feel so much better knowing you’re here.” She looked at her phone. “Just in case anything happens.”
The invitation seemed innocent enough, but I wasn’t comfortable with a sleepover. Even putting aside the suggestion of sexual impropriety, I was director of her institute and we had to maintain a professional relationship. On the other hand, desperation was written all over her face. She’d already been abandoned by her husband. I couldn’t add to the sense of isolation she was obviously feeling.
Against my better judgment, I agreed. I had toiletries and clean clothes that I was taking to Boston in the car, so I excused myself to take Rosie out and get my things. When I came back, she showed me to a nicely furnished room on the second floor.
“I’ll be right next door; just holler if you need anything,” she said.
I waited long enough to be sure that the sounds from next door were peaceful. Then I got ready for bed and fell asleep with Rosie in her usual position, snuggled next to me. It was a bit strange, but it had been a long day and falling asleep is one of the things I’m good at. Rosie, too, so we slept soundly.
Until I was jolted awake by the feeling of a weight sinking onto the bed next to me. It took a moment for me to realize where I was. And to recognize a weeping Carolyn crawling into bed beside me.
She barely managed to speak between sobs. “She’s gone. They just called—she died an hour ago.”
I sat up in shock. “Oh no. I’m so sorry.”
I reached out to squeeze her shoulder, but she melted into my arms instead. “Just hold me,” she whimpered.
She pulled me back down onto the bed and lay with her head on my chest, sobbing in my arms as I held her. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, but I must have eventually fallen back to sleep. She was gone when the sun woke me in the morning.
I jumped out of bed and ran downstairs, frightened for her. But she was in the kitchen having coffee. To my surprise, she looked more composed than I’d seen her since yesterday, with her hair brushed and wearing a blue seersucker robe over her pajamas.
When she saw me, she got up and gave me a hug. “Good morning, and thank you. I couldn’t have made it through last night without you. I’m sorry that I was such a pain.”
I returned the hug, taking care to keep it casual. “Not at all. I’m glad I could be here when you needed someone. You’re looking much better, though. Will you be all right now?”
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She managed a faint smile. “I’ve got to hold myself together again. The kids will be home soon. Time to be a mom.”
“You’ll do it. In the meantime, I’ll get out of your hair. No need to explain me to your kids.”
She nodded. “There’s half an hour before they’ll be home. Have some coffee.”
I took the coffee upstairs while I cleaned up a bit and got my things. Ten minutes later, I was back downstairs with Rosie.
Carolyn walked us to the door. “Are you going to Boston now?”
“No, I need to go back to MTRI.” I didn’t want to say why, but I couldn’t avoid it much longer. “We’ll have to deal with Mrs. Weston’s death in the context of your clinical trial.”
“I know. We should probably stop the trial until we can figure out what happened to her.”
“Maybe… We need to think about it. Will you be going in to work? We can talk about it later.”
“Yes, I’ll be in after the kids are settled.” She opened the door and we stepped out onto the front deck. “Thank you again for last night. So much.” She threw her arms around me and held me close for a moment. Then she said, “I’ll see you later,” and disappeared back inside.
17
He knew he’d been right when Parker came out of the house and got an overnight bag from his car. They were lovers.
It would probably be a long night, but he’d done overnight stakeouts before. Many times, starting back when he was still an agent in the FSB, Russia’s successor to the KGB. He took two of his “stay-awake pills” and settled in for the night.
The shots he got of them saying goodbye the next morning were worth the wait. The woman holding him tight, pressing her body against his, wearing nothing but pajamas and a lightweight robe. As if they were teenagers who’d had sex for the first time.
He uploaded the photos to the shared folder on Dropbox and waited. It didn’t take long for the phone to buzz.
“So you were right,” the boss said. “He spent the night with her?”
“Yes. You like my photography?”
“Indeed, it may prove useful. The woman in the hospital died last night, as well.”
“Good. Do you have anything more for me?”
“Not yet. Let’s see if this takes care of it.”
He checked his watch when the boss ended the call. It had been a good night’s work, and there was still time to grab a few hours of sleep before heading to his lab at the institute.
18
I took Rosie back to the Drakes Island house. Some breakfast for her, some more coffee for me, and then a walk on the beach. I wasn’t sure what awaited me at MTRI, but I knew it wasn’t going to be a good day. Bad news travels fast, and I suspected that word of Emily Weston’s turn for the worse—if not her death—had preceded me. I could already hear Carlson yelling at me to stop the trial. But was that the right reaction to a single unexplained death? Mrs. Weston’s unfortunate illness may have been a result of drug toxicity. But it also could have been something else. And stopping the trial prematurely had its own risk—that of depriving needy patients of a potentially lifesaving treatment. Not a decision I was prepared to make lightly.
It was too early for most people to be out, so Rosie and I had the beach to ourselves. Except for a flock of sandpipers, who were busy flitting in and out of the water like little windup toys, following the waves as they reached the shore and then receded back into the Atlantic. They moved in unison, confidently following an undesignated leader.
It would be nice if I could provide that kind of leadership to MTRI. I needed to somehow deal with Mrs. Weston’s unfortunate death without letting any investigation get bogged down in the controversy that swirled around Carolyn. How to do that with a faculty dominated by Carlson and his cronies was less than straightforward.
Besides, there was something else bothering me about Mrs. Weston: her hair loss. As the nurse had said, hair loss was a common side effect of chemotherapy. But that applied to conventional chemotherapy, the kind of standard cancer treatments that killed not just cancer cells, but also many of the patient’s normal cells. That lack of specificity was what made conventional chemotherapy so toxic, with hair loss being one of the most common and visible side effects.
But the new cancer treatments were different. They targeted specific proteins in cancer cells, like the RTKs, without the broad general toxicity of conventional chemotherapy. To be sure, targeted cancer treatments still had their toxic side effects. Diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting were the most common. And many patients experienced skin problems, like rashes and dry skin. But hair loss was not a common side effect of targeted therapies. Of course, who knew what the particular combination of drugs in Carolyn’s trial might do?
I needed to do some background reading on the side effects of aloxinor and the other drugs she was using. And I wanted to find out if any of her other patients had experienced hair loss, or for that matter, anything like the respiratory complications that had killed Mrs. Weston.
As director, I could certainly pull and review the relevant patient records. But it wasn’t my job to personally investigate this sort of problem. Like any other institution, MTRI had an Institutional Review Board—an IRB—that was responsible for reviewing and monitoring clinical trials. Which raised the question, who was on the IRB?
I stopped and sat on a large rock while I pulled out my phone and Googled the MTRI IRB. The home page had a link to the membership. To my chagrin, the chair was Tom Carlson. There were two members of the community on the board, both of whom were physicians. And then five additional MTRI faculty members—three of whom I remembered as having expressed opposition to Carolyn’s promotion when I met with them last week.
There was no way that this committee would give Carolyn a fair hearing.
The MTRI faculty members on the committee, including the chair, served at my pleasure. Meaning that I could request their resignations and replace them with a more balanced group. But doing that was too heavy-handed. The resulting controversy—especially forcing Carlson out of an important administrative role—would leave the institute in flames.
Fortunately, there was another way. The time-honored ploy of academic leadership: When in doubt, create a new committee. In this case, it would be an ad hoc committee charged with investigating Emily Weston’s death and transmitting their recommendation on continuation of Carolyn’s trial directly to me. And it would have a membership that I could trust to be objective.
***
Anna looked surprised when I walked into the office at MTRI. “I thought you were going to be in Boston today.”
“Bit of a change of plans. I’ll be here for the rest of the week after all. Anything happening?”
“Just a call from Tom Carlson a bit earlier. I told him you were in Boston but that I’d let you know he wanted to reach you.”
I wasn’t surprised that Carlson was already after me. At least a call was better than having him show up unannounced.
“Could you get back to him and tell him that I’m here after all? And make an appointment for him later this morning, say eleven thirty. I have a couple of things I need to do first, but let him know that I’m anxious to speak with him as soon as I can.”
Anna looked up with a raised eyebrow. “You’re anxious to meet with Carlson?”
I smiled. “Yes. And be sure to tell him that.”
Hopefully that would hold him until I had time to set my plan in motion.
***
Leslie Farnsworth was intently focused on her computer when I knocked on her office door. She looked surprised to see me. “Dr. Parker. Back for another chat? Is there something we didn’t talk about before?”
I took a chair across from her desk and chose my words carefully. As an accomplished scientist, a member of the IRB, and the senior woman in the institute, she’d be perfect to chair my committee. Not to mention that she’d been supportive of Carolyn and dismissed Carlson as a chauvinist during our previous conversation. But chai
ring the committee I had in mind would put her in an uncomfortable political position in the institute. I had to present this in a way that would leave her knowing that I had her back.
“A problem’s come up that I’d like to get your thoughts on. Can you spare a few minutes?”
“Let me guess,” she said. “Carolyn Gelman’s patient.”
I nodded. “I take it that word’s already spread.”
She gestured toward her computer. “I was just reading an email from Carlson, calling for an emergency meeting of the IRB to investigate. He says the patient experienced severe toxicity and died in the ICU.”
I wasn’t surprised that Carlson was moving full speed ahead.
“I’m afraid that’s correct.”
Farnsworth bowed her head for a moment. “How awful. I’m surprised to see that kind of toxicity with the drugs Gelman’s using.”
“At this point, we don’t know whether the patient had a toxic reaction or not. Gelman says she’s been in the trial for quite some time without any previous problems and was in remission. But we need to look into it and consider whether it’s safe for the trial to continue.”
“Carlson’s already calling it severe drug toxicity. There’s not much doubt what he’ll recommend. And he dominates the IRB. Only I and one other member, Hank Richards, have been known to go against him. Which leaves him with a clear majority.”
I nodded. “I understand. However, this is such an emergency that I don’t want to wait for the normal IRB process. I’ve decided to appoint a small ad hoc committee to investigate it instead, charged with making a recommendation directly to me as fast as possible. I think that’ll allow us to make the most expeditious response to the situation.”
She looked up with a quizzical expression, her head tilted slightly to the right. “That’s interesting. And do you have a plan for the membership?”
I ventured a hint of a smile. I suspected that she’d already figured out where this was going. “I’m thinking of just three faculty members to conduct an expedited process. And I’m hoping that you’ll agree to serve as chair.”
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