Evan sat on the bed next to the wheelchair. He ran his hands through his son’s hair, gently massaging the scalp under the thick thatch of dark brown locks. The top of Ben’s head was the one spot he still had feeling, and he loved it when someone, especially his father, touched him there.
“I’ve got to head into the office for a while, Ben,” he said, kissing his son on the top of his head. “See you later.”
“Sure, Dad,” Ben said, grinning. “Remember, it’s my birthday tomorrow.”
“Yeah, son, I know. I’m here for you.”
He left the room, his teeth clenched and the tears ready to flow. His son, his only child, paralyzed. He fought back the tears, but they still came. His wife, knowing how he hated her to see him cry, kept her eyes on the cutting board as he walked through the kitchen to the garage door. He brushed the tears from his eyes as he backed the Audi out and shifted into first gear. He wound out the first two gears, then eased off the gas. His neighbors didn’t complain, but he knew they watched his driving with narrow eyes. He slowed at the corner stop sign, his emotions slowly coming under control.
Ben Ziegler had been the brightest light in a good marriage. Always a star athlete and top of his class in all the required subjects, Ben was touted as the one who would carve new paths in the business world. He was never without his patented smirk, a look that said he knew something no one else knew. Teachers adored him, classmates respected him, and the telephone was constantly ringing, girls giggling as they asked for him.
Until the accident.
Evan steered through the evening traffic, the Denver freeways their usual jam of vehicles. It was Wednesday, but that hardly mattered anymore. The streets were always busy; too many people, all in a rush. He glanced in the rearview mirror and looked into his own eyes. They were a delicate shade of blue, not deep or cold, but soft and understanding. His brown hair was receding slightly, but the high forehead suited him. And what hair was left was thick and wavy. He wore it slightly over his ears, but not what would be considered long. His face was chalky white from the long winter months, but a tinge of sunburn showed on his cheeks, the result of mowing the grass the day before.
A nondescript office condo appeared on the north side of the freeway and he took the off-ramp, reducing his speed and steering hard right at the first access road. The entrance to the parking lot was three short blocks down, and he pulled in, the only car in the lot. He switched off the ignition, slipped out of the car, and unlocked the door immediately under a sign displaying a couple of large photocopiers. The printing between the two pictures read Mile High Copiers. He locked the door behind him and slid behind the desk in the first office on the right. A picture of Ben in his high school jersey hung on the wall, and Evan felt the sadness again as his eyes swept over it.
An office phone with buttons for numerous lines sat on the desk, but he unlocked one of the desk drawers and lifted out a second phone. Its cord was attached to a black box about six inches square: a scrambling device. Evan dialed a longdistance number and leaned back in the soft leather chair, waiting for the voice he knew would answer.
“Are you on the secure phone?”The voice belonged to Bruce Andrews.
“Yes. What can I do for you?”
“I have a problem, Evan. One I need handled quite quickly.”
“Where can I pick up the package?”
“The Commonwealth Park Suites Hotel, in Richmond. It’s at the front desk under Brent Saunders.”
“Anything else?”
“Just that this person poses a very real threat to the direction I want our research to go. And if that happens…”
Evan’s voice was terse. “I read in the newspaper that you were scaling back on your biotech division-that your investment into brain chips was waning.”
“Don’t believe everything you read, Evan.” Andrews’s voice had gone cold. “Just get to Richmond and take care of my problem. Let me worry about getting your son out of that wheelchair.”
“You do that,” Evan said as the line went dead. He replaced the phone in its cradle, returned it to the drawer, and locked the handle. A solitary copier sat in the corner of his office: an old relic just for display. He walked across the carpet, opened the front access panel, and pulled on a colored handle. The copier’s guts slid out on a metal track. He reached in behind the array of gears and lenses and pulled on the toner tray. Inside was a package, wrapped in thick cling wrap. He set it on top of the copier and peeled open the wrapping. Inside were a passport, two credit cards, a driver’s license, and a large bundle of cash. He checked the identification, all of which displayed his picture and a different name, for expiry dates. Then he pocketed the ID and two thousand dollars. He phoned in a reservation on United Airlines from Denver to Richmond, departing Denver at 10:23 P.M. the next day, locked the outer office door, and headed home. Only for a brief moment did he wonder one thing.
What had this person done that they now had to die?
6
Albert Rousseau clicked on an icon resembling a laboratory beaker and sixteen file folders appeared on his computer monitor. He moved the cursor to one titled “MM-1076” and clicked on it. A series of chemical formulae unraveled on the screen. He scrolled through the first ten pages, right-clicked on the mouse, and sent the entire file to a Sony Micro Vault, a portable storage unit plugged into the USB port. The transfer took a few milliseconds. He slipped the drive out of the port and secured it in his front pocket. Then he deleted the file on his computer, switched off the lights in his office, and locked the door.
It was still early to be leaving the office, and the elevators were almost empty. He nodded to a couple of people he vaguely knew, exited the building, and made his way to his assigned parking spot. His freshly washed Ford Mustang gleamed in the evening light. A quick twist of the key in the ignition and he was moving.
Rousseau lightly touched his shirt pocket, reassuring himself that the evidence was still there. He had a very secure location for it at his house in his safe. No one knew about it. He’d had a contractor come in and build the safe into a place that no one would think to look. He grinned, crooked teeth showing through thin, pale lips. What a bunch of dumbasses. He had enough proof to sink the company if they didn’t play ball with him and cough up some money.
Serious money.
Not a million. Not two or three, but ten or twenty. He hadn’t decided yet. But they were going to pay. And when they did, he’d be living life large in the Caribbean or Europe. He ran his hands over his cheek, feeling the acne he’d lived with all his life. That would be gone, and his teeth would be straight and capped. He’d have all the women he’d always dreamed of. Money could perform miracles-he’d be living proof of that.
He touched the storage device again like it was a winning lottery ticket. But unlike sheer luck in a lottery, he’d worked for this. He’d noticed small things in the clinical trials for Triax-cion, errors that somehow had been overlooked by the other researchers and eventually by the FDA. He suspected someone inside the Food and Drug Administration was on the take, as the problems with the drug were too serious to be swept under some convenient carpet. No matter, he still had enough to fry the company’s top management-enough to lever a few million from the corporate coffers, then head overseas.
He pulled up in front of his town house on Cooley Avenue, a red brick building with black trim around the door and windows, and switched off the ignition. One week more and he’d be gone. No more lonely nights watching the Devils play hockey or reruns of Seinfeld on television. He had definitive proof that Triaxcion was dangerous, that it prohibited coagulants in human blood from bonding. And by searching the Internet with key words, he had clippings from six newspapers with stories of people with no history of hemophilia bleeding to death. Six deaths. And one of them, that Buchanan guy in Butte, Montana, had died just last week.