Rock Harbor Series - 03 - Into the Deep

  “I think I’ll look just the same.”

  Salome appeared in the doorway. “I could use your help, Cassie.”

  Cassie wanted to tell Salome she’d be right there, but her lips refused to form any words. Lights danced in a gathering darkness that clouded her eyes. “I don’t feel too well,” she muttered. The strength ran out of her legs, and she tried to prop herself up with the chair.

  “Catch her!” Salome shouted.

  Bree parked in front of the Suomi Café. She’d avoided coming here since Samson had gone missing. Molly’s sad face would threaten her composure, but she decided to chance it this morning. Mason came out of the bank and waved at her. She waited for him to join her by the door to the Suomi.

  “You find something?” she asked eagerly.

  Her hope dimmed as he shook his head. “Sorry.” he asked.

  “How about Phil’s murder?”

  “The researchers are squeaky clean, except for one count of breaking a restraining order during a divorce proceeding—Yancy threatened his ex and her boyfriend with a gun—and another one for reckless driving. That would be Chito. No help there.”

  Before Bree could answer, the ambulance screamed by, followed by Cassie’s car. Bree caught a glimpse of Kade’s face, white and strained, as he crouched over the steering wheel. The car barreled down the street, then turned onto Rock River Road toward the hospital.

  “I suppose I’d better go see what all that’s about,” Mason said. “You want to come along?”

  “Yeah, that’s Cassie’s car.” Bree maintained an appearance of calm she didn’t feel. She hoped Cassie was all right.

  Bree hopped into the passenger seat. Mason drove to the hospital and turned his car into the parking lot. Cassie’s car sat crossways at the emergency-room entrance. Bree jogged up the sidewalk toward the doors.

  Bree paused inside while Mason went to the reception desk. Two nurses were running down the hall, the rubber soles of their shoes squeaking on the tile floor. They disappeared into the examining room. Kade came out moments later. His gaze lingered on Bree’s face, and the slow smile that lifted his lips made her feel she was riding the Magnum roller coaster at Cedar Point, but the smile did nothing to brighten the shadow in his eyes. Whatever was wrong was very serious.

  He reached her side and took her arm, steering her toward the waiting room. “How did you happen to get here?”

  Mason answered for her. “We saw you speed by the Suomi. What’s going on?”

  “Cassie got sick while I was at the lab. The way the doctors are acting, it looks serious.” Kade released Bree’s arm and sat in a chair. The lines around his eyes were etched and strained.

  Bree had been so cold to Cassie the last time they’d been together. What if she died before they got to be real sisters? “Is she going to be all right?”

  Kade hugged her. “She collapsed pretty suddenly. I’ve been praying for her.”

  “Could someone have tried to harm her?” Bree wanted to know.

  Kade shook his head. “I don’t see how. Cassie took me on a tour before she got sick. There doesn’t seem to be anything dangerous on site.”

  “What are they doing out there?” Bree had been wanting to know that for weeks. She knew they were working on finding a new drug, but that was all.

  “She didn’t say exactly, but they’re growing plants.”

  “We already knew that much.”

  “You know how pharmaceutical companies are. They’re paranoid about someone else getting a drug out first.” Mason stood and stretched. “We’ll find out all about it sooner or later.”

  “What if it’s something dangerous? We know nothing about the process or any side effects to the community. Maybe what she was working on caused her to collapse. Did you see the lab itself?” Bree asked.

  “No, just the growing area. She let me inspect the wastewater system too. It’s not causing any problems with the fish.”

  Salome came down the hall. Her long dark hair was in disarray, and worry shadowed her eyes.

  Bree stepped to meet her. “How is she? Can I see her?”

  Salome bit her trembling lips. “The doctor thinks she’ll be all right, though he asked me for her next of kin . . .” She stopped as her voice broke.

  That would be Bree and their dad. The thought was like a blow to her gut.

  “Any idea what’s wrong with her?” Mason asked.

  “The doctor says it looks like an overdose of something and asked what medicines she’s taking. She takes a beta blocker for her migraines and a pill for her asthma. The beta blocker she buys through a mail-order pharmacy. I picked up her asthma refill a couple days ago. They’re running tests on her now.”

  “What kinds of tests?” Mason wanted to know.

  “Toxicology, I think. Though I can’t imagine Cassie taking more than she should. She is very level-headed and careful to take her medicines exactly as prescribed.”

  First Phil Taylor was shot, and now Cassie lay dangerously ill. Bree told herself it was likely a coincidence, but unease mixed with her worry.

  They sat silently in the waiting room for nearly an hour before Dr. Richmond came out. He’d only been in town a month, having taken Dr. Max Parker’s place. The bags around the doctor’s eyes made him look older than his forty years. Bree wondered if he’d slept last night.

  “Looks like there was a mix-up at the pharmacy,” he said. “She was supposed to be taking theophylline for asthma, but somehow the pharmacy filled propranolol, which she was already taking. When she doubled it up, it slowed her heart.”

  “How could a mix-up like that happen?” Mason asked. He uncapped his pen and dug out his notepad.

  Dr. Richmond gave a weary sigh and sat in the chair beside Bree. “I have no idea. There are fail-safes to keep this from happening, but some studies say that medical error is the cause of death in a full third of cases.”

  “She’s not going to die!” Bree held out her hand to the doctor.

  “She’s holding her own, but the asthma has complicated things,” Dr. Richmond said.

  Salome put her hands to her face. “This is crazy,” she whispered. “I picked up part of that refill a few weeks ago, but the pharmacy was short on pills, and I just picked up the rest a few days ago. She can’t die.”

  Bree went to her and put her arm around her. Salome’s shoulders stiffened, then she turned and buried her face in Bree’s shoulder.

  Bree held her tight and looked at the doctor. “Explain to me what happens at the pharmacy.”

  Dr. Richmond shrugged. “I called Terry to see what could have happened. He’s as puzzled as we are. According to the computer, the refill was right, but the written prescription is for theophylline. This was the second time it had been refilled, and the last one under that number was for theophylline. Somehow between the first refill and the second, the drug listed in the computer changed. Even that partial refill Salome mentioned was for the right drug.”

  “How could that happen?” Mason wanted to know.

  “Beats me. Terry is checking his paper copies to see if he can get to the bottom of it.”

  “I think I’ll stop at the pharmacy and see what he’s found out,” Mason said.

  “You think the mix-up could be related to Phil Taylor’s murder?” Bree asked.

  Everyone turned to look at Bree, and she saw dawning horror on Salome’s face. “The phone threat,” Salome whispered.

  Bree looked at her. “You picked up the prescription. Did you notice anything strange at the pharmacy?”

  Salome chewed on her lip. “Not really strange. I browsed through the aisles for some Tylenol and shampoo, then picked up the prescription.”

  “Was Terry behind the counter?”

  Salome shook her head. “He got called to the front of the store, and the technician gave me the prescription.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know. She was blond, midtwenties.”

  “Deanna Chester. She’s good. Nothing
else out of the ordinary?”

  “There was a big argument right in front of the pharmacy. Deanna had to ask them to leave.”

  “A fight? What kind of fight?”

  “Lola and Ian. It embarrassed me to see them argue like that in public, but I’m not their mother. I could have crawled under the counter when Deanna asked them to leave.”

  “Lola’s got to be ten years older than him,” Bree observed.

  Salome shrugged. “Live and let live.”

  Bree made a mental note to ask Deanna about the incident. “Deanna gave you the prescription and didn’t ask any questions?”

  “She started to ask me something, then Ian and Lola started going at it, and she just handed it over and took my money.”

  “I wonder if she noticed the discrepancy then got sidetracked. We’ll have to check that out.”

  “Enough talk,” said Dr. Richmond, rising. “I need to get back to my patient.” The doctor glanced at Bree. “She wants to talk to Bree, so come along.”

  Bree and Kade exchanged a look. The connection that seemed almost spiritual at times between her and Kade had not gone away. She smiled at him, and he winked. For some stupid reason, she felt like crying.

  She dragged her gaze from his face and hurried after the doctor. “She wants to see me?”

  “So she says.” He stopped at the door to her room. “But keep it short, and don’t upset her.”

  Cassie lay on the white sheets with her eyes closed. Her complexion was pasty, but she seemed to be breathing easily. Skirting the tubes attached to the young woman, Bree went to her bedside. Before she could say anything, Cassie opened her eyes.

  “You came,” she whispered. “You’ve got to help me, Bree.”

  “What can I do for you? You need something from home?”

  “I’m scared. The person called again and said I’d have to pay the consequences.”

  Bree tensed. “You think the caller had something to do with your getting sick? The doctor said it was a pharmacy error.”

  “I don’t know.” Cassie struggled to sit up. “He called again just before I got sick. What if he switched my medicine?”

  “Do you have any idea who the caller could be?”

  “Jackson Pharmaceutical wants our formula.”

  Bree felt in over her head. “Jackson Pharmaceutical?”

  Cassie gestured toward the table. “Could I have some water?”

  Bree held the cup and straw to her lips, and Cassie took a sip. “Thanks. Jackson is our biggest rival. They’re trying to bring our drug out first, and they want to slow us down.”

  “Tell me about Jackson Pharmaceutical and this formula.”

  “They are working with the same protein we are, but we’re further ahead. At least we were before Phil died.” She sighed.

  “How do you know this?”

  Cassie coughed. “We have someone on our payroll inside Jackson. They are just beginning the process. We’ll have ours patented in a few more months if we can move forward. Theirs is years away.”

  “You’ve worked hard,” Bree observed. “Are you sure it’s going be effective?”

  Cassie nodded. “It has to be.”

  “Who else is working on the project?”

  “Why don’t you go out to the lab tomorrow and talk to all of the employees? Begin to dig into what’s going on.”

  This was her sister. She had to help her. What if someone was really trying to hurt her? Samson was depending on her too. She had to try to help them both.

  “I wish we had Samson. He might be able to scent whether there have been any intruders. We need to keep the lab as secure as possible,” Cassie said.

  Bree rubbed her forehead. “Mason has resources I don’t have. We’ll have to let him help us.”

  “I don’t want him there.”

  “Then I’m not coming out either.” Bree crossed her arms over her chest. “I have a child to raise and a dog to find. Mason is better equipped to deal with this kind of thing than I am. I don’t want anything to happen to you, but I can’t do it alone.”

  “Okay.”

  “One other question now, about Salome. You said she picked up your prescription. Did you happen to look at the name of the drug?”

  Cassie shook her head. “Didn’t even occur to me. It was a refill—I’ve been taking this drug for ages. No big deal.”

  Except it had turned into a huge deal.

  An older building on the corner had been razed to make way for the new drugstore, and its squat facade looked out of place amid the Victorian buildings that lined the downtown. Tourists crowded the store, buying bug spray and other camping essentials. Bree pushed her way through the aisle. She spied Mason’s bulky form.

  “You talk to Terry yet?” she asked when she reached him.

  “He’s not back from lunch. Deanna said he was due any time.”

  “I want to talk to her anyway. Salome mentioned that fight, and I want to know more.” Bree motioned to Deanna, who waved, then spoke to a coworker before exiting the pharmacy booth to join them.

  “I’m so sorry about what happened to Cassie,” Deanna said. She glanced from Bree to Mason as if wondering which one would accuse her first.

  “Salome said there was an altercation in front of the pharmacy counter yesterday just as you were about to ask her something. Do you remember what you were going to ask her?”

  “Just the standard line about whether she had any questions about the medication,” Deanna said. She bit her lip. “I wish I’d caught this.”

  “You had no way of knowing,” Mason said.

  She sagged at the sheriff’s words. Relief lit her blue eyes. “I . . . I wondered if I was going to be charged,” she admitted.

  “Could we see the written script?”

  “I have it right here.” Terry Alexander came up behind them.

  He’d been the pharmacist for as long as Bree had lived in Rock Harbor. A genial man in his thirties, he parted his hair just above his ear and swept the wispy strands over the center bald spot. He held out a paper.

  Mason scanned it, then handed it back to Terry. “Can you decipher it? It looks like it says theophylline.”

  “It does,” Terry said grimly. “But that’s not what the computer says. I don’t understand how this could happen. We carefully check every prescription when it’s loaded into the computer.”

  “Tell us how it works,” Bree suggested. “If I dropped a prescription off and said I’d pick it up later, how would it be processed?”

  “Either Deanna or I would input it into the computer along with the other prescriptions. We’d double-check to make sure it was put in properly. Then the computer would spit out the prescription and one of us would fill it. We check it against the paper script the first time to make sure it’s right.” Terry held out a computer printout. “This says we put it in right, and it was refilled once as theophylline. But that’s not what the computer says now, and that’s not what was refilled this time.”

  “So it’s just checked against the written script the first time it’s filled? If I get a refill, you don’t recheck?”

  “That’s right.”

  Mason frowned as he read the printout. “So what you’re suggesting is that somehow between when you put this prescription in the computer and filled it once and when it was filled the second time, it somehow changed to another medicine? That makes no sense. A computer glitch of some kind?”

  “I’ve never heard of a computer glitch like that,” Terry said. “I know it sounds crazy, but I don’t know how it happened. What’s even crazier is that the first part of the second refill was right—the partial Salome picked up a couple of weeks ago. It’s just this remainder that was wrong.”

  “What about cybercrime?” Mason asked. “Could someone have gotten into the computer and altered the prescription?”

  Bree wanted to shake her head. It sounded like something out of a novel or a movie. How would a tiny burg like Rock Harbor attract someone with that kin
d of computer savvy? This wasn’t New York. “There has to be another explanation,” she said.

  Terry shook his head. “I’m telling you, there’s no other way this could have happened. I think Mason is on to something.” He waved the paper at Mason as if to emphasize the point.

  “Is there any way we can find out for sure if someone cracked into the computer? And don’t you have some kind of—what’s it called—firewall?”

  “Sure, we have a firewall, but a determined cracker can get past most anything.”

  “I read about some cybercrime detection company in Detroit,” Mason said. “I think I have their information back at the office. I’ll contact them. In the meantime, can you print out any logs you might have, Terry?”

  “Sure, but I’m no computer expert. I probably won’t know where to look to find the ones that might help us.”

  The import of what was happening began to sink into Bree’s consciousness. If someone deliberately altered Cassie’s prescription, then it had been a murder attempt.

  13

  The man and woman moved through the dark house. Their flash-lights pushed back the inky blackness only a few feet. Carpet muffled the sound of their footsteps, though there was no one in the house to hear. The dog lay snoring in the front room after being fed drug-laced hamburger.

  She knelt by the desk and began to riffle through it while her partner searched the filing cabinet. They had to find it. They worked quietly; only occasional grunts from the man by the filing cabinet and the sound of metal drawers sliding disturbed the almost eerie silence.

  She slammed the final drawer shut, frustration making her careless. “It’s not here. We’re going to have to search the whole house.”

  “What if the other woman comes in?” he asked.

  “She’s been conveniently delayed by our friend.”

  They started in Cassie’s bedroom.

  The aroma of the tea mingled with the scent from the potted roses lining the patio. It was good to be home, though she’d only made it as far as the living room sofa before deciding to sit outside. Bree had brought her home, then gone out to search for Samson.