Checking my e-mail, I found that PTPharmaceuticals hadn’t sent the data on their studies regarding Calydrole’s side effects, but they had finally e-mailed the results of their probe into the lot number and explained that “there is no evidence that this lot exists, but it is only two digits off from a shipment that is produced in Hyderabad, India.” There were no class-action lawsuits against them for this drug.
Thinking aloud, Ralph said, “Pat, if you were going to come up with a fake lot number, don’t you think you’d make it close to a legitimate one? That way it’d be easier to slip into the supply chain.”
“Quite possibly, yes.”
“Maybe by analyzing the locations in India where similar lot numbers are produced, we can zero in on the facility that’s producing the ones in question.”
“I like the way you think.”
“I’ve been working with you for a decade. ’Bout time you took note of that.”
“Funny how it just occurred to me.”
“Uh-huh.”
Lien-hua didn’t have a cell, but I phoned her room to tell her to have the two new team members look into the location of the facilities that produced closely related, legitimate lot numbers from India, specifically that plant in Hyderabad.
FALCON brought up forty-two homes for Ralph and me to check out — isolated residences in the area north of DC that fit the geoprofile.
I couldn’t imagine we’d have time to look into that many. We needed a way to cut the number in half — at least.
“Call Doehring,” Ralph suggested. “Have him check the home owners and see if any red flags come up. Also, maybe run vehicle registrations from the residents of those addresses.”
“Good. And let’s focus on the homes with the easiest access to the highway, as Lien-hua suggested.”
After a few phone calls and a little calculating, we were able to decrease the number of likely homes to twenty, which was at least manageable.
Going door-to-door asking questions was old-school and tedious, but more often than not that’s how cases are untangled. One question, one person at a time.
And besides, it felt good to be doing something tangible to eliminate possibilities rather than just looking at the case from one side of a computer screen.
With traffic, I figured visiting the homes might take two or three hours.
Unless, of course, we found Basque at one of the houses first.
43
As Tessa was walking to her car, she saw Aiden approaching her and she couldn’t help but feel an immediate swallow of nervousness. She wanted to talk to him, of course she did — but since she still had nothing to share about her graduation talk, she had no idea what to say.
“So”—he was smiling in that totally disarming, melting way—“any ideas?”
“Ideas?”
“About the speech.”
“Oh. Right… No. Not really.”
“I was thinking about it. Maybe you should tell people to be true to themselves, you know, follow their hearts, pursue their dreams. That sort of thing.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little clichéd?” The words just came out and she wished right away she could have taken them back.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I just…” She remembered a discussion she’d had with Patrick last year. “Aren’t there times when you need to be true to something bigger than yourself?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, let’s say pedophiles. They follow their hearts, they definitely pursue their dreams. I don’t know for sure, but I’ll bet if you asked them they’d say they’re being true to themselves, that they were born the way they are.”
“You mean like gay people are?”
What? Where did that come from?
“I’m not saying gay people are or aren’t born that way.”
“But pedophiles are?”
“I’m just saying that they would claim to just naturally be attracted to—”
“Kids.”
Okay, this conversation was definitely not one she’d been expecting to have. “Yeah. To kids.”
He looked at her a little strangely and she could only guess it was because she’d sort of refuted what he’d suggested by bringing up pedophiles pursuing their dreams.
Oh, that was just stellar, Tessa. That’s really going to move things along with this guy!
“Um…” she began, “I was just… that was a bad example.”
He was quiet. “Well, I guess you might need to go in a little different direction then.”
“No, no, no. I think you might have it. Dreams. You know, pursuing your dreams, telling people to pursue their dreams.”
Yeah, right. That is so lame.
“Okay.”
She bit her lip.
Say something!
But she didn’t. She couldn’t think of any way to climb out of this.
“Let me know, okay?” Aiden said. “If you want to catch up, throw some ideas around.”
His words were spoken respectfully enough, but his body language was all wrong. Everything about his tone of voice and his posture said, “This whole offering-to-help-you thing was probably not such a good idea, now that I think about it.”
“Yeah,” she replied feebly. “Okay. I’ll let you know.”
And, of course, after all that, he said nothing about prom.
Pedophiles pursuing their dreams?! What is wrong with you!
He left, and the officer who was supposed to follow her home watched her from his supposedly undercover car nearby.
She strode toward him and he opened his window. “Enough already!” she shouted. “I’m fine!”
Okay, maybe not the best way to talk to a cop, but thankfully he let it pass and didn’t hassle her. Maybe Patrick had warned him about her. Who knows.
Who cares.
She got into her car and took off to see Lien-hua.
Let the cop follow if he wanted to, whatever.
Pedophiles? Really?!
She let out a deep breath, and then smacked the steering wheel.
Truthfully, though, despite how annoyed she was by what she’d said to Aiden, she was having a hard time discounting it. And it wasn’t just pedophiles, after all. She’d talked with Patrick about this stuff before: serial killers follow their hearts, rapists pursue their dreams, the Nazis were true to themselves.
So there you go.
People left to themselves without restraint.
Becoming monsters.
Okay, here’s a great speech: The Three Ultimate Keys to Success. (1) Don’t pursue your dreams; (2) stop following your heart; and (3) be careful not to be true to yourself. And, oh, yeah, P.S. — All is meaningless.
The most antigraduation speech in the history of graduation speeches.
That would go over brilliantly.
44
Ralph and I had been knocking on doors for nearly two hours and hadn’t found anything that might lead us closer to Basque. Now we were leaving the last house that looked like a candidate in the hot zone north of DC, and both of us were feeling a little frustrated.
He hated battling rush-hour traffic, so he went to the passenger side, tossed me the keys, and told me, “You drive. My gift is patience.”
“Your gift is patience?”
“Yeah. I just haven’t gotten around to opening it yet. Take the wheel.”
In the car again, I said, “So, you ready to head east? The hot zone out past Andrews?”
“Hmm… What about retracing Basque’s route? The one he drove the other night on the way to the water treatment plant?”