“Val wrote those letters?” Hattie said. So the culprit was right next door. She glanced over at Carver. What a detective he was.
Beed said, “Shut the fuck up.” His professional veneer was falling away fast. He looked at Carver. “I followed you into Orlando and had a talk with Mark the friendly pharmacist, told him I was your assistant. He told me about that list of medications you showed him.”
“Then I suppose Nurse Gorham checked the medical center files.”
Nurse Gorham said, “I found a spreadsheet program in the files instead of the Keller Pharmaceutical disk, and the computerized Christmas card mailing list instead of Jerome Evans’s medical history.”
“How did you find out Val wrote the murder notes?” Carver asked.
Beed gave his narrow, bean-counter smile. “Afraid I’m a better detective than you are? That’s one thing he told me under the influence of physical persuasion.”
“You tortured him,” Hattie said. “Your euphemisms won’t alter that fact.” She moved abruptly toward the door.
Beed grabbed her and she wheeled and tried to rake her fingernails across his eyes. He laughed and shoved her into the wall. Carver heard her head hit hard against it and she slid to the floor. He started to raise his cane to strike at Beed but the automatic’s barrel swung his way.
Dr. Sanchez gripped Carver’s arm, not so much to restrain him as to get him to change his mind about tangling with Beed. Hattie was lying on her back with her eyes closed. Carver was relieved to see her chest moving. She was breathing.
“She might be seriously hurt,” he said.
Nurse Gorham’s expression was bland as she walked over to Hattie and knelt beside her. She felt the pulse in her neck, lifted her eyelids and peered at her pupils, swiveled her head to examine where it had smacked the wall.
“She’ll be okay,” Nurse Gorham said in a professional tone. “Possible concussion, but that’s about all.” She smiled then and pinched Hattie’s cheek.
“Monica likes to see people hurt sometimes,” Beed said. “Gives her a tingle.”
“That’s the rumor,” Carver said.
Nurse Gorham ignored them. “When the old lady regains consciousness, she needs to be watched.”
“I hardly think so,” Beed said.
Nurse Gorham and Dr. Sanchez looked at each other, then at Carver. The doctor said, “Save us the bother of searching the house for Jerome Evans’s medication bottle, Mr. Carver. Save yourself a lot of bother.”
“You’re the only ones talking about a bottle,” Carver said.
“No,” Beed said, “before he, uh, lost the ability to converse, Val next door informed me that Hattie told him all about searching for the bottle. Your motel was being watched this morning. We figure you charged over here because Hattie called and said she’d found it. That means the bottle is here in the house, and you know where.”
“Why’s this bottle so important?” Carver asked.
“You know why, Mr. Carver,” Dr. Sanchez said.
“Hattie told me she poured what was left of her husband’s insomnia medication down the drain.”
“I don’t believe you, Mr. Carver. Neither do my associates.”
“What’s Luridus-X?” Carver asked.
“An experimental drug,” Dr. Sanchez said.
“Why tell him?” Nurse Gorham asked.
“Why not?” Beed said, smiling at Carver. He sure had a creepy smile, like a bookkeeper with secret hideous knowledge. Charles Manson’s accountant.
“He’s puzzled it out anyway,” the doctor said. “That’s why he’s here.” He clasped his narrow, feminine hands where his suit coat gaped in front and faced Carver squarely, a smugly confident man but with the human impulse to boast. “Mercury Laboratories is in the business of developing new and wonderful drugs, Mr. Carver. For this to be done with maximum effectiveness, tests have to be conducted. Solartown patients make ideal subjects. Sometimes the drugs are dispensed through the medical center pharmacy. Nurse Gorham administers the drugs secretly at the hospital, then monitors and reports results to Mercury.”
“You might thank us someday if you become gravely ill,” Nurse Gorham said.
Beed said, “Might not.” He seemed amused that she couldn’t shake her healer’s instinct, even if she was a practicing sadist.
“Solartown residents provide perfect demographics for such experimentation,” Dr. Sanchez continued. “The test subjects are all in the same age group, from the same general socioeconomic background, receive all their medical treatment at the center, and are easily available for tracking. And when the tests do occasionally go awry, a subject’s death attracts little attention in a retirement community where advanced age makes death a frequent occurrence.”
Carver had to admire such tidy logic and its implementation; Solartown patients were like custom-bred laboratory rats, only better. “Difficult to believe it all goes on under Dr. Wynn’s nose,” he said. It bothered him that Sanchez was talking so freely; it underlined that they fully intended to leave dead bodies in the house when they’d recovered the bottle. But he couldn’t resist asking questions, now that he could get answers.
“Dr. Wynn has long had a serious addiction,” Dr. Sanchez said.
“Drugs?”
“Me,” Nurse Gorham said.
Dr. Sanchez raised a hand to silence her and continued talking, calmly and in an amiable tone, as if discussing a perfectly legal and respectable enterprise. “One night after an arranged evening of drinking with Nurse Gorham and Mr. Beed, Dr. Wynn was in an inebriated state and was indiscreet. His sexual adventures with both Mr. Beed and Nurse Gorham were videotaped.”
“So he knows what’s going on and you’re blackmailing him into cooperation and silence.”
“Paying him, actually,” Dr. Sanchez corrected. “Still, Dr. Wynn understands the situation. When a Solartown test subject dies, he performs the autopsy, Nurse Gorham assisting, and signs the death certificate.”
“But Dr. Billingsly’s sure Jerome Evans died of a heart attack.”
“And so he did. Evans was the test subject for a cholesterol-dissolving drug, placed in his sedative, that unfortunately didn’t work out and produced massive blood clotting. So observation and the autopsy would reveal the cause of death to be an ordinary heart attack. Mercury has ceased researching and developing the drug.”
“And now we want what’s left of it back,” Adam Beed said.
Dr. Sanchez fixed his unwavering cold gaze on Carver. “The residue in Jerome Evans’s prescription bottle is evidence of what Florida law would consider homicide.”
“The law and Jerome Evans-if he could speak from the grave.”
“Not if he were a visionary, Mr. Carver. He’d understand that what we’re doing here in Solartown is proper, that the overall benefits far outweigh the discomfort or even deaths of a few test subjects. They don’t know it, but their last years of life are made into something beneficial and beautiful for mankind.”
“Another thing they’re doing is making Mercury Laboratories and its corporate officers wealthy.”
Beed said, “Some black clouds have more than one silver lining.”
Dr. Sanchez smiled with philosophical sadness. “Time for you to tell us where the bottle is, Mr. Carver.”
“Can’t do that,” Carver said.
“I didn’t think so.” Dr. Sanchez turned his steady gaze on Beed.
Beed shoved the automatic’s barrel hard into Carver’s chest, causing him to stumble. Carver tried to catch himself with his cane but fell back into a sitting position in an upholstered chair with wooden arms. Beed aimed the automatic at his midsection and said, “Stay still; this won’t hurt a bit.”
Nurse Gorham drew a thick roll of broad white surgical tape from her purse and approached Carver. Quickly, deftly, she began taping his forearms to the chair arms, the calf and ankle of his good leg to a chair leg. The thigh of his stiff leg was taped against a chair-arm brace, and more tape was wrapped around his waist and the chair back.