“No. At this point, I think you’ve done your job. Thanks for the quick work.”
“Of course. There’s something else I wanted to tell you, though. Something I noticed when I was going over the records of Carolyn’s patients.”
My heart fell. “What? Is there some new kind of problem?”
“Not toxicity, no. But the response rates of some patients seem off. She has two groups of patients, right? One group gets aloxinor while the second gets retoramib, one of the other RTK inhibitors approved for lung cancer. And then they both get the additional drugs she’s hoping will combat the development of resistance.”
I was anxious for her to get to the point. “Right, that’s how I understand the study design. And?”
“Well, the response rates of the patients getting retoramib are nearly seventy percent, which is what’s been reported. But only about half the patients in the aloxinor group seem to have responded to the treatment.”
“That’s weird. Aloxinor is supposed to be even more effective than other inhibitors, isn’t it?”
“Correct. Approximately eighty percent response is what Carlson reported to the IRB when we approved the drug. And that’s similar to what Heller subsequently published.” She frowned. “I don’t know…I guess this could be a fluke of small numbers. I was going to ask Carolyn about it at some point, but given the nature of my committee’s investigation, it didn’t seem appropriate for me to discuss it with her.”
37
Carolyn wasn’t in her office, but I found her when I got to York Hospital at one forty-five, sitting in the waiting room chatting with Karen and drinking coffees in Styrofoam cups. Any resentment Karen had harbored toward her was apparently a thing of the past.
I gave Karen a kiss and took a seat next to her. “How’s the patient?” I asked Carolyn.
She shrugged. “No better, but he’s stable. They started hemodialysis as soon as I gave them the news last night. Prussian blue is on its way, should be here this afternoon.” She managed a weak smile. “At least there’s some hope now.”
“We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed,” I said. “Did Karen tell you about Carlson?”
Carolyn nodded. “Incredible. He’s in jail? Do you really think he’s behind all this?”
“We don’t know,” Karen said. “But we’re going to find out. Seeing what that bastard Orlov has to say when the AUSA—assistant US attorney—shows up will be a big step.”
“At the very least, Carlson’s guilty of more negligence and stupidity than I’m prepared to tolerate,” I said. “Whatever else happens, I’m going to demand his resignation. MTRI has suffered more than enough from his incompetence.”
I’d expected her to be pleased, given all the trouble Carlson had caused her. But she surprised me. “I guess that’s appropriate. It’s sad, though. I know he’s lost it, but he used to be a good scientist.”
“That may be true, but what he’s done now has resulted in at least one death, even if he didn’t know that would be the consequence of his actions. And after what he’s tried to do to you, I wouldn’t waste your sympathy on him. He doesn’t deserve it.”
“I know. But it’s still sad.”
I shook my head. “Sorry, I can’t share your generosity. Anyway, I want to ask you about something else. Leslie Farnsworth said that when she was reviewing your records, she noticed that the patients on aloxinor had a lower response rate than expected. Do you recall anything like that?”
Carolyn looked down for a moment, as if she was embarrassed. “I do. I don’t know why, but only about half the aloxinor patients seemed to respond to the treatment. Which is fewer responders than there should have been.”
“Did you ask Mark Heller about it?”
“No, I figured maybe it was just a sampling fluke. And to be honest, I didn’t want to talk to Mark about it. I was afraid that if I said anything, his supporters at MTRI would say that I was just trying to sabotage his tenure case.”
We were interrupted by an overweight, red-faced man, fully dressed in a black suit, tie, and long-sleeved white shirt. He was perspiring heavily, not unexpected since we were in the middle of a heat wave, with the temperature pushing ninety. “I’m AUSA Paul Markham. Is one of you Special Agent Richmond?”
Karen rose and extended her hand. “That’s me. This is Dr. Carolyn Gelman, and this is Dr. Brad Parker.”
Markham nodded absently. “Shall we proceed? Where’s the prisoner?”
“He’s in a room under guard,” Karen said. “We can go back whenever you’re ready. I wanted to update you a bit first, though. The hospital had a blood sample left from the first patient, Emily Weston. I had it tested. No surprise, it had a high level of thallium.”
“Good,” Markham said. “That directly links the suspect to Weston’s murder.”
“Indeed. And I also had his apartment searched this morning. It had been pretty well cleaned up, but they found white powder residue in a dresser drawer. Which tested out as thallium.”
“So, we’ve got the asshole nailed. Why am I even here? It sounds like you have plenty to fry the prick. Why offer him anything?”
“Yes, but there’s more going on than meets the eye,” Karen said. “Orlov’s just a hired gun. It’s worth a deal if he can give us the man in charge.”
“If you say so. All right, let’s go.”
Karen led off, and I followed Markham after her. He stopped and turned to me. “Excuse me, we’re not having a party. Agent Richmond will suffice.”
“No,” Karen said. “I want him in on this. He knows who’s who at the institute. Which means he’s the only one who can tell if what Orlov says makes sense.”
Markham shrugged ungraciously. “All right, come along. Let’s get this over with.”
Two state troopers were posted outside Orlov’s room, where he was securely manacled to the bed. His head and chest were covered with bandages and an IV was attached to his arm. When he saw us enter, he looked at Karen and pressed a button attached to the IV. “Painkillers for what you did to me, FBI lady. All the fucking dope I want.”
“Good for you,” Karen sneered. “This is assistant US attorney Markham. He can make you an offer. In exchange for information.”
Orlov looked Markham up and down. “I want witness protection. You are big enough to do that for me?”
“If you give us what we need,” Markham said. “And if what you tell us holds up. Who hired you?”
“Yuri Derkach gave me the job.”
Karen gave him a skeptical look. “The head of the Russian Mafia? Derkach hired you to come to Maine for this?”
Orlov rolled his eyes. “No, you know better than that. Derkach suggested that I take a call from a friend of his about it. So of course, I did. If Derkach suggests, it is like an order.”
“Then who’s the friend? Is he the one running the operation?” Karen asked.
“Yes. He offered very good money for me to come here with the job of messing up Carolyn Gelman’s work.”
“Are you talking about Carlson?”
Orlov gave a derisive snort. “No, I told you before. Carlson is just a dupe. The new boss said Carlson would accept me as a visiting scientist in his lab, that he sponsors many visitors. The boss sent me all the information to make an application, and it was just like he said. Carlson offered me a job, got visa for me, and here I am.”
“Then who told you what to do? Did Carlson give you operational directions?”
“No, the boss would call me with his orders. At first, it was just to sabotage Gelman’s research. That didn’t work, but the boss thought that she wasn’t going to get tenure anyway and it wouldn’t matter.”
He paused and looked over at me. “But then you came as director, and that changed things. The boss said you were supporting her. It meant I had to do more. I poisoned the first patient, and that still wasn’t enough, so then I did the second.”
“How did your boss know I was supporting Carolyn? Did Carlson tell him?”
Orlov sh
rugged. “Maybe. Carlson was one of his sources about what was going on at the institute. The boss said once that Carlson loved to gossip. Plus, the boss hacked your email. First the former director, now you.”
“So that’s how you knew that I took the pills to the pharmacy for analysis?”
Orlov nodded. “He told me to switch the poison ones back to the real thing, but I saw some were missing from the bottle. That’s when I knew I had to get rid of the two of you.”
“Was there anything else you were instructed to do?” Karen asked.
“Just a couple of side jobs. Hits on some drug dealers, one in New York, one in Boston. They had gone rogue, and the boss wanted them eliminated.”
“Was your Boston job at the Harbor Inn in Revere?” Karen said.
“How you know that?”
“I figured there was a Russian mob connection, and we have you on the motel video. Your face doesn’t show, but the body type fits. We’re just waiting for ballistics to confirm the bullets came from your gun.”
Orlov gave her what looked like an approving smile. “Very good. Now I’ve saved you the trouble.”
Karen ignored his odd expression. “So now we have you for four murders. And you’re not telling us anything we haven’t figured out already. Giving us Derkach isn’t worth shit. He’s already well known to us, but we can’t touch him in Moscow.”
AUSA Markham stepped back in. “The fact is that everything you’ve said so far is useless, except for digging yourself into a deeper hole. There’s no deal here; this is crap. A waste of my time.”
“If you want something, you need to give us the name of your boss here. The one who actually directed the operation,” Karen said.
“I don’t know his name. I only get phone calls. They are always through a voice changer, so I don’t even know what he sounds like.”
Whoever’s behind this is careful, I thought. Definitely not Carlson.
“How does he contact you?” Karen asked.
“I was given a phone that he uses to give me instructions. Money is just sent to one of my accounts in the Cayman Islands. I can give you the account information; maybe you can trace the deposits.”
“We’ll try, but I doubt it,” Karen said. “Money transfers are easy to hide with dummy corporations. What if there’s an emergency? You must have a way to contact him.”
“There’s a number I can call. I leave a coded message and he calls me back.”
“Using the phone you were given?”
Orlov nodded.
“Very well, we need the phone,” Karen said. “And the message you leave to make contact.”
“And what do I get for that?” Orlov asked.
Markham answered. “If the phone takes us to the organizer of this shit storm, you’ll get your witness protection.”
“I had the phone with me last night, so you already have it,” Orlov said. “You call the number in contacts and leave the message, ‘Sorry, lost dog.’ You will get a call back.”
38
It was almost four by the time Karen finished doing paperwork with Markham and established that Orlov’s phone was in the possession of the Maine state troopers. They had it at Troop A headquarters in Alfred, which turned out to be just north of Sanford, about forty-five minutes away. I was exhausted from the lack of sleep last night and suggested picking it up the next morning. But Karen insisted that she couldn’t rest until she had her hands on the phone, so off we went.
Happily, the troopers were efficient and had the phone waiting for us. By five o’clock, we were back in the car heading home to Drakes Island. The phone was clutched tightly in Karen’s hand.
I was fighting to stay awake and figured we might as well pick up something for dinner on the way home. But when I asked Karen what sounded good, my question was met by silence. When I looked over at her, I discovered that was because she’d fallen asleep, eyes closed and still holding the phone. It was somewhat reassuring that I wasn’t the only one feeling the effects of what had been essentially a sleepless night.
Karen woke up when we pulled into the driveway and sleepily made her way upstairs, muttering something about needing a nap before dinner. It was past Rosie’s dinner time, so I fed her and let her out in the yard. Then she followed me upstairs and we joined Karen in a nap.
It was dark when I woke up, with Karen and Rosie both asleep beside me. I figured that I’d slept for maybe two or three hours, but got a surprise when I looked at the bedside clock. Four o’clock, which had to mean that Tuesday night had become Wednesday morning and our naps had lasted something like nine hours. I guess we’d needed to make up the lost sleep.
Karen stirred when I sat up. “What time is it? Did you have dinner already?”
I smiled and stroked her hair. “Afraid we missed last night’s dinner, Sleeping Beauty. It’s four in the morning.”
She stretched, finally waking Rosie as well. “No wonder my stomach’s growling. What do we have for breakfast?”
I got up, promising to check out the breakfast possibilities. Rosie followed, her attention focused on food by the mention of breakfast. I’d started coffee, fed Rosie, and was working on scrambled eggs and bacon when Karen came down.
“Good morning, glad you could make it.”
“It is a good morning.” She held up Orlov’s phone in her right hand. “Now that we have this.”
I put breakfast on plates and took them out to the small glass table on our deck. Karen poured two mugs of coffee and followed.
“So, what’s your plan for the phone?” I asked. “Call Orlov’s boss and arrange a meeting?”
She shook her head. “Two problems. First, he’ll know it isn’t Orlov on the other end of the line. Although we could get around that by having Orlov make the call.”
“Right, I thought of that. And the second?”
“Why would he agree to a meeting? He’s stayed well hidden until now, and I don’t think he’s going to come out from behind his bush just because Orlov wants to chat.”
“You could trace the call, no?”
She looked impatient. “We already have the number. It’s a burner, of course. We could probably get a location for him, but it’s the same phone as was used to send the blackmail photos, and we already know those calls came from Boston. I don’t think any additional location info would be worth tipping our hand to get.”
“Then what? You must be able to use it somehow.”
“Yes, somehow. I’m just not sure how. Yet. But we do have some additional advantages.”
“Which are?”
She ticked them off on her fingers. “First, he doesn’t know that Orlov tried to burn us up and failed. Orlov says he told him that something needed to be done about us, but no specifics. Second, he doesn’t know that we have Orlov or that we know about the thallium. And most important, we know how he gets his information about MTRI.”
I nodded. “Courtesy of Carlson and my email. You’re thinking we can use that against him?”
“Yep. Carlson’s locked up tight; he hasn’t told his boss the news. And you haven’t put anything in email about the thallium pills or Carolyn being in the clear, right?”
“No, Carolyn’s the only one who knows about any of it.”
“Good. And I emphasized again yesterday that she shouldn’t tell anybody. She said that she hadn’t even told her husband.”
“Not told her husband? You’re kidding!”
Karen let out a small sigh. “I know. She said she didn’t talk to him about her work, he wasn’t interested. Pretty amazing.”
“Pretty sick is more like it,” I said.
She nodded. “Anyway, whoever the boss is, he thinks that Orlov is still in play, that Carolyn’s trial is suspended, and that she’ll go down in the upcoming tenure vote. And we know how to feed him disinformation.”
She smiled coldly. A smile that I recognized from past experience. It meant no good for her adversary. “Now we just need to keep him thinking everything is normal while w
e figure out what lies to tell him. And how to trap the bastard.”
“What do you think his motivation is? Whoever’s responsible for this, it seems way over the top just to block Carolyn from getting tenure. Why would anyone care enough about a tenure case to import a Russian hitman and murder trial participants?”
“I know, it seems nuts,” she said. “I suspect we’ll only know the why when we know the who.”
“Maybe. But I think knowing why could help us get to him.”
“Of course. But that doesn’t give us an answer.”
“I may have an idea. Or at least a hunch.”
“Yes?”
“Not yet.” I got up from the table. “I need to go pay a visit to the institute and take care of some of the routine stuff that’s accumulated, especially if we want everything to look normal. Let me poke around a bit and see what I can dig up.”
39
Anna virtually attacked me with a handful of papers as soon as I walked through the office door. “Thank goodness you’re here. I’m afraid some things have piled up that really need your attention.”
I accepted the papers with a raised eyebrow. “Like what?”
“You’ll see—just look through these. And deal with the urgent ones.”
I gave her a mock salute and went into my office. It happily took only twenty minutes or so to deal with the matters that Anna had deemed pressing. Most were standard forms that just needed my signature.
Then there were two requests for interim funding by faculty members who were having trouble with grant renewals. I looked at those more carefully, before finally giving my approval. In both cases, I authorized less than the amount requested, but enough for them to keep their research going long enough to submit revised applications that hopefully would be successful. I thought they had a good shot.
Finally, there was a two-day-old memo from Carlson asking for—no, demanding—an additional two hundred and fifty square feet of lab space for a new microscope facility. That one I tossed into the blue recycle bin under my desk. More lab space wasn’t something Carlson would be needing anytime soon, if ever.
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