All throughout the service, René was distracted by a small filament of uneasiness glowing in her gut. Every so often it would flare up, but she would close her eyes and will it away.
Later, at the grave, where the priest in his robe and headpiece pronounced the final benediction, her eyes floated over the large crowd of mourners and came to rest on the entourage of GEM Tech people standing in close file around Gavin Moy—various executives, marketing people, physicians, lawyers, officials from the FDA, and other power brokers.
Jordan Carr acknowledged her with a nod and a flat smile. Their collective somberness was appropriate, but it still could not dispel that little hot-wire sensation spoken earlier by one of the nurses in a whisper: How convenient was Nick’s death.
79
JACK HAD LEFT SEVERAL MESSAGES ON René Ballard’s cell phone and had nearly given up on her when she returned the call on Tuesday. She had taken some personal days following the death of a friend, she said.
Because it was a bright, warm day, Jack suggested they meet at Fins, a seaside bistro in Portsmouth. René was waiting for him at a table on the deck under an umbrella. Behind her, the Atlantic spread out gloriously, the sun dancing off the surface as if covered with diamond dust. Jack ordered a sparkling water and under the table he slipped his briefcase with printouts of some of the material he had found online. When René removed her sunglasses, her eyes were red and tired-looking, her face drawn.
“I’m sorry about your friend.”
She nodded. “It just shouldn’t have happened. He was such a good person.” Her mouth began to quiver and she shook her head. “Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about.”
The waiter arrived with Jack’s drink.
René took a sip of her wine. “So, what did you want to show me?”
She looked up at him, and for a brief moment he felt himself taken in by her eyes. The hard blue crystals were softened by her tears. He felt a warm rush in his chest and wanted to put his arms around her. But he pushed away those thoughts. “They’re gobbledygook to me,” he said, and laid before her what he had printed from the journal archives.
René looked at them. “I found some of these myself when I first heard about you.”
Jack lay his finger on the authors’ line. “That’s my biological mother. Her maiden name was Sarkisian. Koryan is from my adoptive uncle.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “What?”
“But it’s not so grand a coincidence when you put it together. Homer’s Island is one of the only places on the Northeast where these creatures ever show up, and she had rented the place specifically for that reason. She was a biochemist, and from what I gather … Well, you tell me.”
While Jack sipped his water, René silently scanned the pages of the articles, occasionally nodding and humming recognition to herself. After a few minutes, she looked up. “This is incredible,” she began. “But I think your mother helped identify the biochemical structure of the toxin. Her name is listed first, which is protocol for principal investigators. And this one a year later links it to its neurological effects on cognition and memory.”
“Which is why the last one she coauthored talks about lab mice and maze problems.”
“Yes, which means … I don’t believe this … not only did she help identify the biochemical structure of the compound, but I think your mother discovered the neurological benefits of the toxin.”
“You mean the Alzheimer’s drug?”
“Yes.” She looked up at Jack in dismay. “You’re sure this is your mother?”
“How many biologists from MIT named N. A. Sarkisian do you think there were?”
René nodded. “Then she must have known Nick Mavros.”
“Nick Mavros?”
“My friend who just died.” She reached into her handbag and pulled out the obituary from the Boston Globe. The headline read “MGH Neurologist Falls to His Death in Utah.” “He was chief PI of the Memorine trials,” she said in dismay. “He also did the imaging work on you when they brought you into MGH. This is unbelievable.”
Jack stared at the photo of Dr. Nicholas Mavros. “He came to visit me at Greendale.”
“He did?”
Jack felt a hole open up in his gut.
“Just one more question, if you don’t mind.”
“One of those standard memory test questions.”
“He came to ask about my mother.” Jack stared at the obit photograph, then pulled up his briefcase and rifled through the papers until he found the photograph he had discovered in the old albums boxed in the cellar of his rented house. “Son of a bitch.” He turned the photograph so René could see it.
“That’s Nick,” she said.
Shot in front of an auto parts store, the photo was of a younger, leaner Nick Mavros with long, black, shoulder-length hair, smiling at the camera, his arm around the shoulder of Jack’s mother, who grinned happily, her head tilted toward Nick Mavros. They both wore white lab smocks. And they looked so together.
“They must have been in the same research group as grad students.”
Jack’s eyes were stuck on the image of Mavros. “He asked me twice if I remembered her.”
“One of those standard memory test questions.”
“What was your mother’s maiden name?”
But they already knew that from Dr. Heller’s tests days earlier. Then Jack thought of something and fingered through the packet of articles until he found what he was looking for:
“He even wrote about it with her,” he said and showed her the abstract.
Sarkisian N. A., Mavros N. T., et, al. 1971. Neurotoxic activity on the sensory nerves from toxin of the deadly Solakandji tropical jellyfish Chiropsalmus quadrigatus Mason. Chem Pharm Bull 17: 1086—8, 1971.
“My God, I found the abstract for this same article, except I didn’t know she was your mother.” Then she picked up another article and scanned the pages. “Listen. ‘Proteinaceous toxin from the nematocysts of C. quadrigatus found effective in facilitating attentional abilities and acquisition, storage and retrieval of information, and to attenuate the impairment of cognitive functions associated with age and age-related pathologies in mice.’”
“Translating as what?”
“That they were moving down the pipeline toward Memorine.” She looked at the other articles and abstracts he had printed up. “Nick’s name appears only on this one, but she’s on all these. The last with her name on it is from March 1975.”
“Because she died in August that same year.” Jack was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “He was testing me.”
“Testing you?”
Jack could still see the shift in the man’s face. “I think he wanted to know how far back I could remember. Like early childhood. Like the night she disappeared.”
René’s eyes seemed to veil over. “Jack, what are you trying to tell me?”
“That he may have known something about her disappearance. That he may have been the visitor to the cottage that night. That maybe he’s the figure in those flashbacks. That maybe he killed her.”
René’s head recoiled as if Jack had punched her. “That’s outrageous.” Her voice was scathing. “Nick was a wonderful and compassionate man.” Suddenly her face began to crumble. “How dare you say such things? He just died, for God’s sake.”
“He knew her and never said anything. He never said, ‘I remember your mother.’”
“Maybe he didn’t know she was your mother. You have a different name.”