"Archie, they shot you in the head. You need medical attention."
"I don't have time for it right now. When this is over, I'll let them poke and prod all they want. It doesn't hurt at all, you know. Just a lot of itching around the hole. That means it's healing."
"Come on, Arch. Tell me where you are. You're going to get yourself into worse trouble if you're not careful."
"I'm going to get my man, Sergeant. Deputy Two Wildcraft always gets his man."
Archie laughed quietly. She heard a Harley whapping past from Archie's end, then another. She thought of Cook's Corner, the biker hangout in the hills, but so many guys owned Harley-Davidson motorcycles now that Archie could just as well be calling from Irvine or Laguna Beach.
"You tried to be there for Julia, too, didn't you?"
"Julia? How do you know about Julia?"
"Your parents. Then Matson, from up in Willits."
"Oh, Julia," he whispered.
She heard the three light syllables of Julia's name, and the tonnage of loss behind it.
"Julia was what made me want to be a cop. That and my forkball going south."
"I had a nice talk with your mother and father. Lee and Earla Kuerner, too."
"They're all good people," he said quietly. "I'm lucky."
Rayborn heard exhaustion in his voice. "Did Julia ever talk to you, Archie, after she was gone? Like Gwen is?"
"No," Wildcraft said curtly.
"Why not?"
"Because they took her away, Sergeant. Gwen's different. They killed her, but she came right back to where she was. With me."
"The same guys, do you think, Arch? The same ones that took Julia also killed Gwen?"
"Fuck all of you."
He hung up. She tried the star-sixty-nine trick, but as usual it didn't work. She waited right there, in the warm living room of the orange grove house, for Wildcraft to call back. What a stupid thing to have said.
Three hours later she woke up. Her neck was sore from the couch and the police scanner was still turned to low.
She checked Tim then sat in the rocker, wondering how Wildcraft must feel with large pieces of his recent past blasted from his mind. Specifically, memories of what had happened on the night that left his wife dead and a bullet lodged too deep in his brain for the surgeons to take out.
Infuriated.
Frustrated.
Confused.
Helpless.
Alone.
Like he's in hell, she thought, whether or not he still remembers what hell is.
But he still hears her voice
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The next morning Merci had the coffee cup almost to her lips when she saw the lead story in the business section of the Orange County
Journaclass="underline"
SNAKES GO SOUTH AT SISTEL
Venom-based Cancer Treatment Slithers Away
Drug giant B. B. Sistel Laboratories yesterday announced an immediate end to the development of MiraVen, a snake-venom-based antitumor treatment.
Company vice president Carol Spenser said that all Sistel plans for manufacturing and marketing the treatment have been "suspended immediately," and that the OrganiVen Division of Sistel, which was responsible for bringing MiraVen to market, will be restructured. Wall Street reacted to the announcement with a huge sell-off, bringing Sistel stock down to $45 per share, off from Friday's close of $55, a loss of almost twenty percent.
Of further concern within Sistel is the fate of the 100-plus OrganiVen Division employees, and the nearly $400 million paid for OrganiVen late last year. Sistel Laboratories is based in Minneapolis and valued at close to $3 billion. Sistel holds patent, manufacturing anddistribution rights to some of the world's most effective and profitable drugs. "We'll try our best to absorb the OrganiVen Division into our work force," said Spenser. "We have a history of taking care of our own."
The much publicized cancer "cure" was based on the tissue-destroying effects of snake venom. The idea, decades old, yielded dramatic animal trial results for San Diego-based OrganiVen. OrganiVen researchers used the tumor treatment in combination with an antivenom "immunity" program that allowed cancer patients to tolerate high levels of toxicity. The tiny OrganiVen start-up company originally raised capital through a friends-and-family offering of shares sold for twenty-five cents each. When OrganiVen-founded by UCSD-based doctors- showed dramatic results in animal testing with its cancer treatment MiraVen, venture capitalists such as CEIDNA, Trident Capital and Brown Brothers invested heavily.
Pricewaterhouse Coopers, the accounting firm that released a recent survey on venture capital, put the combined venture investment in OrganiVen at $56 million. Sistel purchased OrganiVen for $400 million in cash and stock in September of last year, planning to take MiraVen through the uncertain and costly human trials necessary to bring a new drug to market. "There's some sense of disappointment over MiraVen," said Spenser.
"But there's simply no way we could see an effective human cancer treatment within the timeline necessary to insure profitability. We have shareholders to consider, and we ran into some development glitches that just weren't solvable. It's too bad." Of the total number of new human treatment drugs researched and developed each year by pharmaceutical companies, less than one percent ever find their way into production, industry sources say.
Merci read the article twice, her coffee untouched. "Archie and Gwen's company got canceled," she said.
Her father sat at the opposite end of the table, his gray hair in a storm and his eyes on the sports page. "I saw that."
"How can it be worth millions then nothing?"
"Those problems the lady talked about."
"What the hell is a four-hundred-million-dollar glitch?"
Clark looked over his glasses at her. "Ask her."
With little hope of getting through to industry captain Carol Spenser, Merci took the B. B. Sistel general number from the operator, then dialed. The receptionist put her through to Public Information. Carol Spenser's assistant answered the phone. Merci identified herself as an Orange County Sheriff's Homicide Detective and asked to speak to Ms. Spenser.
"Just a moment, Detective."
"This is Carol Spenser." She had a sweet, middle-aged voice with the distinct ring of intelligence in it.
Merci explained that one of her homicide cases involved OrganiVen investors, and she wanted to know just a little more about OrganiVen's restructuring.
"That just means we keep the people and the equipment but drop the division," said Spenser.
"But why? I saw the MiraVen video-it worked great."
"Those were animal trials, as you know, and human ones would have turned out to be much more complicated and expensive."
"What was the development glitch, Ms. Spenser?"
"Detective Rayborn, I can't tell you that. I am a vice president and the head of public information for a multinational company, and part of my job is to protect proprietary information about our company and its employees. We're under no legal obligation to reveal that kind of information unless we're under subpoena in a United States court. Some of that information we are not required to disclose under any circumstances. To do so would be like you giving out details of an investigation."
"I understand. But I've got a murder case to close."
"Well, certainly, our decision to restructure a division here at Sistel can't have had anything to do with a murder? I mean, we just made the announcement yesterday, and your case must have begun before then. Correct?"
"A week ago. The victim was an OrganiVen start-up investor named Gwen Wildcraft. She and her husband made two million dollar when you bought the company last September."
"And?"
And, Merci thought: her husband, shot in the attack and perhaps suspect, now suffering brain damage, said that a huge man he believe to be connected somehow to that investment met with his wife in bar and may have had something to do with the killing.