Tal decided that the preliminary groundwork for the date was going pretty well. But, apropos of which, enough about himself. He asked, "How'd you get into your field?"
"I always liked taking care of people or animals," she explained. "Somebody's pet'd get hurt, I'd be the one to try to help it. I hate seeing anybody in pain. I was going to go to med school but my mom got sick and, without a father around, I had to put that on hold--where it's been for, well, a few years."
No explanation about the missing father. But he sensed that, like him, she didn't want to discuss Dad. A common denominator among these particular members of the Four Percent Club.
She continued, looking at the nursing home door. "Why I'm doing this particularly? My mother, I guess. Her exit was pretty tough. Nobody really helped her. Except me, and I didn't know very much. The hospital she was in didn't give her any support. So after she passed I decided I'd go into the field myself. Make sure patients have a comfortable time at the end."
"It doesn't get you down?"
"Sometimes it's tougher than others. But I'm lucky. I'm not all that religious but I do think there's something there after we die."
Tal nodded but he said nothing. He'd always wanted to believe in that something, too, but religion wasn't allowed in the Simms household--nothing, that is, except the cold deity of numbers his father worshipped--and it seemed to Tal that if you don't get hooked early by some kind of spiritualism, you'll rarely get the bug. Still, people do change. He recalled that the Bensons had been atheists but apparently toward the end had come to believe differently.
Together forever...
Mac was continuing, speaking of her job at the Cardiac Support Center. "I like working with the patients. And I'm good, if I do say so myself. I stay away from the sentiment, the maudlin crap. I knock back some scotch or wine with them. Watch movies, pig out on low-fat chips and popcorn, tell some good death and dying jokes."
"No," Tal said, frowning. "Jokes?"
"You bet. Here's one: When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather...Not screaming like the passengers in the car with him."
Tal blinked then laughed hard. She was pleased he'd enjoyed it, he could tell. He said, "Hey, there's a statistician joke. Want to hear it?"
"Sure."
"Statistics show that a person gets robbed every four minutes. And, man, is he getting tired of it."
She laughed. "That really sucks."
"Best we can do." Then after a moment he added, "But Dr. Dehoeven said that CSC isn't all death and dying. There's a lot of things you do to help before and after surgery."
"Oh, sure," she said. "Didn't mean to neglect that. Exercise, diet, caregiving, getting the family involved, psychotherapy."
Silence for a moment, a silence that, he felt, was suddenly asking: What exactly was he doing here?
He said, "I have a question about the suicides. Some witnesses said they saw a woman in sunglasses and a beige baseball cap, driving a small car, at the Bensons' house just before they killed themselves. I was wondering if you know who that might be."
"Me?" she asked, frowning. "I wasn't seeing the Bensons, remember?"
"No, I mean at the Whitleys'."
"Oh." She thought for a moment. "Their daughter came by a couple of times."
"No, it wasn't her."
"They had a cleaning lady. But she drove a van. And I never saw her in a hat."
Her voice had grown weaker and Tal knew that her mood had changed quickly. Probably the subject of the Whitleys had done it--raised the issue of whether there was anything else she might've done to keep them from dying.
Silence surrounded them, as dense as the humid April air, redolent with the scent of lilac. He began to think that it was a bad idea to mix a personal matter with a professional one--especially when it involved patients who had just died. Conversation resumed but it was now different, superficial, and as if by mutual decision, they both glanced at their watches, said good-bye, then rose and headed down the same sidewalk but in different directions.
+ [?] /
SHELLEE APPEARED in the doorway of Tal's office, where the statistician and LaTour were parked. "Found something," she said in her redneck Beantown accent.
"Yeah, whatsat?" LaTour asked, looking over a pile of documents that she was handing her boss.
She leaned close to Tal and whispered, "He just gonna move in here?"
Tal smiled and said to her, "Thanks, Detective."
An eye roll was her response.
"Where'd you get all that?" LaTour asked, pointing at the papers but glancing at her chest.
"The Internet," Shellee snapped as she left. "Where else?"
"She got all that information from there?" the big cop asked, taking the stack and flipping through it.
Tal saw a chance for a bit of cop-cop jibe, now that, yeah, the ice was broken, and he nearly said to LaTour, you'd be surprised, there's a lot more online than wicked-sluts.com that you browse through in the wee hours. But then he recalled the silence when he asked about the cop's family life.
That's something else...
And he decided a reference to lonely nights at home was out of line. He kept the joke to himself.
LaTour handed the sheets to Tal. "I'm not gonna read all this crap. It's got fucking numbers in it. Gimme the bottom line."
Tal skimmed the information, much of which might have contained numbers but was still impossible for him to understand. It was mostly chemical jargon and medical formulae. But toward the end he found a summary. He frowned and read it again.
"Jesus."
"What?"
"We maybe have our perps."
"No shit."
The documents Shellee had found were from a consumer protection website devoted to medicine. They reported that the FDA was having doubts about Luminux because the drug trials showed that it had hallucinogenic properties. Several people in the trials had had psychotic episodes believed to have been caused by the drug. Others reported violent mood swings. Those with problems were a small minority of those in the trials, less than a tenth of one percent. But the reactions were so severe that the FDA was very doubtful about approving it.
But Shellee also found that the agency had approved Luminux a year ago, despite the dangers.
"Okay, got it," LaTour said. "Montrose slipped some money to somebody to get the drug approved and then kept an eye on the patients taking it, looking for anybody who had bad reactions."
The cops speculated that he'd have the patients with particularly bad reactions killed--making it look like suicide--so that no problems with Luminux ever surfaced. LaTour wondered if this was a realistic motive--until Tal found a printout that revealed that Luminux was Montrose's only moneymaker, to the tune of $38 million a year.
Their other postulate was that it had been Karen Billings--as patient relations director--who might have been the woman in the hat and sunglasses at the Bensons' and who left the tire tracks and wore the gloves at the Whitleys'. She'd spent time with them, given them overdoses, talked them into buying the suicide manual and helped them--what had Mac said? That was it: Helped them "exit."
"Some fucking patient relations," LaTour said. "Way fucking harsh." Using his favorite adjective. "Let's go see 'em."
Ignoring--with difficulty--the clutter on his desk, Tal opened the top drawer and pulled out his pistol. He started to mount it to his belt but the holster clip slipped and the weapon dropped to the floor. He winced as it hit. Grimacing, Tal bent down and retrieved then hooked it on successfully.
As he glanced up he saw LaTour watching him with a faint smile on his face. "Do me a favor. It probably won't come to it but if it does, lemme do the shooting, okay?"
+ [?] /
NURSE MCCAFFREY would be arriving soon.
No, "Mac" was her name, Robert Covey reminded himself.
He stood in front of his liquor cabinet and finally selected a nice vintage port, a 1977. He thought it would go well with the Saga b
lue cheese and shrimp he'd laid out for her, and the water crackers and nonfat dip for himself. He'd driven to the Stop & Shop that morning to pick up the groceries.
Covey arranged the food, bottle and glasses on a silver tray. Oh, napkins. Forgot the napkins. He found some under the counter and set them out on the tray, which he carried into the living room and set on the table. Next to it were some old scrapbooks he'd unearthed from the basement. He wanted to show her pictures--snapshots of his brother, now long gone, and his nieces, and his wife, of course. He also had many pictures of his son.
Oh, Randall...
Yep, he liked Mac a lot. It was scary how in minutes she saw right into him, perfectly.
It was irritating. It was good.
But one thing she couldn't see through was the lie he'd told her.
"You see him much?"
"All the time."
"When did you talk to him last?"
"The other day."
"And you've told him all about your condition?"
"You bet."
Covey called his son regularly, left messages on his phone at work and at home. But Randy never returned them. Occasionally he'd pick up, but it was always when Covey was calling from a different phone, so that the son didn't recognize the number (Covey even wondered in horror if the man bought a caller ID phone mostly to avoid his father).
In the past week he'd left two messages at his son's house. He'd never seen the place but pictured it being a beautiful high-rise somewhere in L.A., though Covey hadn't been to California in years and didn't even know if they had real high-rises there, the City of Angels being to earthquakes what trailer parks in the Midwest are to twisters.
In any case, whether his home was high-rise, low-or a hovel, his son had not returned a single call.
Why? he often wondered in despair. Why?
He looked back on his days as a young father. He'd spent much time at the office and traveling, yes, but he'd also devoted many, many hours to the boy, taking him to the Yankees games and movies, attending Randy's recitals and Little League games.
Something had happened, though, and in his twenties he drifted away. Covey had thought maybe he'd gone gay, since he'd never married, but when Randy came home for Ver's funeral he brought a beautiful young woman with him. Randy had been polite but distant and a few days afterward he'd headed back to the coast. It had been some months before they'd spoken again.
Why?
Covey now sat down on the couch, poured himself a glass of the port, slowly to avoid the sediment, and sipped it. He picked up another scrapbook and began flipping through it.
He felt sentimental. And then sad and anxious. He rose slowly from the couch, walked into the kitchen and took two of his Luminux.
In a short while the drugs kicked in and he felt better, giddy. Almost carefree.
Damn good stuff, drugs.
The book sagged in his hands. He reflected on the big question: Should he tell Randy about his illness and the impending surgery? Nurse Mac would want him to, he knew. But Covey wouldn't do that. It was cheap. He either wanted the young man to come back on his own, or not at all. He wasn't going to use sympathy as a weapon to force a reconciliation.
A glance at the clock on the stove. Mac would be here in fifteen minutes.
He decided to use the time productively and return phone calls. He confirmed his next appointment with Dr. Jenny and left a message with Charley Hanlon, a widower up the road, about going to the movies next weekend. He also made an appointment for tomorrow about some special alternative treatments the hospital had suggested he look into. "Long as it doesn't involve colonics, I'll think about it," Covey grumbled to the soft-spoken director of the program, who'd laughed and assured him that it did not.
He hung up. Despite the silky calm from the drug Covey had a moment's panic. Nothing to do with his heart, his surgery, his potential mortality, his estranged son, tomorrow's noncolonic treatment.
No, what troubled him: What if Mac didn't like blue cheese?
Covey rose and headed into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and began to forage for some other snacks.
+ [?] /
"YOU CAN'T GO IN THERE."
But in there they went.
LaTour and Tal pushed past the receptionist into the office of Daniel Montrose.
At the circular glass table sat the president of the company and the other suspect, Karen Billings.
Montrose leaned forward, eyes wide in shock. He stood up slowly. The woman, too, pushed back from the table. He was as rumpled as before; she was in a fierce crimson dress.
"You, don't move!" LaTour snapped.
The red-dress woman. She blinked, unable to keep the anger out of her face. Tal could hear the tacit rejoinder: Nobody talks to me that way.
"Why didn't you tell us about the problems with Luminux?"
The president exchanged a look with Billings.
He cleared his throat. "Problems?"
Tal dropped the downloaded material on Montrose's desk. The president scooped it up and began to read.
Montrose looked up. LaTour had told Tal to watch the man's eyes. The eyes tell if someone's lying, the homicide cop had lectured. Tal squinted and studied them. He didn't have a clue what was going on behind his expensive glasses.
LaTour said to Billings, "Can you tell me where you were on April seventh and the ninth?"
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Simple question, lady. Where were you?"
"I'm not answering any goddamn questions without our lawyer." She crossed her arms, sat back and contentedly began a staring contest with LaTour.
"Why didn't you tell us about this?" Tal nodded at the documents.
Montrose said to Billings, "The dimethylamino."
"They found out about that?" she asked.
"Yeah, we found out about it," LaTour grumbled.
Montrose turned to Tal. "What exactly did you find in the victims' blood?"
Unprepared for the question, he frowned. "Well, Luminux."
"You have the coroner's report?"
Tal pulled it out of his briefcase and put it on the table. "There."
Montrose frowned in an exaggerated way. "Actually, it doesn't say 'Luminux.'"
"The fuck you talking about? It's--"
Montrose said, "I quote: '9-fluoro, 7-chloro-1, 3-dihydro-1-methyl-5-phenyl-2H-1, 4-benzodiazepin, 5-hydroxytryptamine and N-(1-phenethyl-4-piperidyl) propionanilide citrate.'"
"Whatever," LaTour snapped, rolling his eyes. "That is Luminux. The medical examiner said so."
"That's right," Karen snapped right back. "That's the approved version of the drug."
LaTour started to say something but fell silent.
"Approved?" Tal asked uncertainly.
Montrose said, "Look at the formula for the early version."
"Early?"
"The one the FDA rejected. It's in that printout of yours."
Oh. Tal was beginning to see where this was headed and he didn't like the destination. He found the sheet in the printout and compared it to the formula in the medical examiner's report. They were the same except that the earlier version of Luminux contained another substance, dimethylamino ethyl phosphate ester.
"What's--"
"A mild antipsychotic agent known as DEP. That's what caused the problems in the first version. In combination it had a slight psychedelic effect. As soon as we took it out, the FDA approved the drug. That was a year ago. You didn't find any DEP in the bodies. The victims were taking the approved version of the drug. No DEP-enhanced Luminux was ever released to the public."
Billings muttered, "And we've never had a single incidence of suicide among the six million people worldwide taking the drug--a lot of whom are probably alive today because they were taking Luminux and didn't kill themselves."
Montrose pulled a large binder off his shelf and dropped it on his desk. "The complete study and FDA approval. No detrimental side effects. It's even safe with alcohol in
moderation."
"Though we don't recommend it," Billings snapped, just as icily as she had earlier that day.
"Why didn't you tell us before?" LaTour grumbled.
"You didn't ask. All drugs go through a trial period while we make them safe." Montrose wrote a number on a memo pad. "If you still don't believe us, this's the FDA's number. Call them."
Billings's farewell was, "You found your way in here. You can find your way out."
+ [?] /
TAL SLOUCHED IN HIS OFFICE CHAIR. LaTour was across from him with his feet up on Tal's desk again.
"Got a question," Tal asked. "You ever wear spurs?"
"Spurs? Oh, you mean like for horses? Why would I wear spurs? Or is that some kind of math nerd joke about putting my feet on your fucking desk?"
"You figure it out," Tal muttered as the cop swung his feet to the floor. "So where do we go from here? No greedy daughters, no evil drug maker. And we've pretty much humiliated ourselves in front of two harsh women. We're batting oh for two." The statistician sighed. "So where do we go from here?...Maybe they did kill themselves. Hell, sometimes life is just too much for some people."
"You don't think that, though."
"I don't feel it but I do think it and I do better thinking. When I start feeling I get into trouble."
"And the world goes round and round," LaTour said. "Shit. It time for a beer yet?"
But a beer was the last thing on Tal's mind. He stared at the glacier of paper on his desk, the printouts, the charts, the lists, the photographs, hoping that he'd spot one fact, one datum, that might help them.
Tal's phone rang. He grabbed it. "'Lo?"
"Is this Detective Simms?" a meek voice asked.
"That's right."
"I'm Bill Fendler, with Oak Creek Books in Barlow Heights. Somebody from your office called and asked to let you know if we sold any copies of Making the Final Journey: The Complete Guide to Suicide and Euthanasia."
Tal sat up. "That's right. Have you?"
"I just noticed the inventory showed one book sold in the last couple of days."
LaTour frowned. Tal held up a wait-a-minute finger.
"Can you tell me who bought it?"
"That's what I've been debating...I'm not sure it's ethical. I was thinking if you had a court order it might be better."
"We have reason to believe that somebody might be using that book to cover up a series of murders. That's why we're asking about it. Maybe it's not ethical. But I'm asking you, please, give me the name of the person who bought it."