“Why don’t you tell me what happened to Denny,” he said in a quiet voice.
Lena traded looks with Rhodes, who sat on the couch and reached inside his pocket for his pad and pen.
“Denny was murdered,” she said. “His house, ransacked.”
“Did you find anything?”
“A file.”
“What was in it?”
“Transcripts from interviews for his book. We haven’t had a chance to read it yet.”
“Why not?”
“Fontaine’s dead, too.”
It hung there. The weight of the moment pressing down on them. West sat back in his chair and gazed out the window. His face had turned as gray as his hair.
“Then I guess I’m next,” he whispered.
“You’re a police commissioner. A former U.S. senator. We can provide as many uniformed officers as you want or need.”
West shook his head. “The chief’s in bed with the district attorney. The district attorney’s in bed with anyone who’ll write a check. You’re forgetting that I know the players. One of them can afford to write a lot of checks.”
“You mean Dean Tremell.”
West nodded. “How close are you to putting a case against him together?”
“We’ve identified the girl. We know why she was murdered, but don’t have much detail.”
“Denny was a good reporter. Very thorough. His notes will probably carry you over the hump.”
“We hope so,” Lena said.
“Is there any way we could talk after you’ve read them. All of a sudden I’m not feeling very well.”
“You were that close?”
“Jennifer’s son died after using the medication,” he said. “She came here to find out why. She met Tremell through his son. I don’t really know the details. Denny had all that. But it sounded like she sat in on one of the kid’s focus groups and got noticed. The old man has a weakness for good-looking women and fell for her. She played along until she gathered enough information to confront Fontaine. From what Denny said, she had Tremell wrapped around her finger. Once she convinced the doctor to talk, she showed up at my office. She didn’t have much faith in the system, so she went to Ramira the same day. She was smart. Denny was her insurance policy.”
His voice died off. His eyes were still fixed on the hills outside the window. Still fixed on the memory.
“We’ll talk after we’ve read Denny’s transcripts,” Lena said.
“I appreciate the courtesy. But there’s one thing you need to know before you go.”
“What’s that?”
“I spoke with Denny last night. I was trying to convince him that we needed help. A friend of mine works for the FBI over in Westwood. It seemed like the right move.”
“What did Denny say?”
“The same thing he’s been saying all along. He needs more information. It’s not time yet.”
“What information?”
“He wanted to confirm something, then turn over everything to you.”
“Confirm what?”
“The name of the man who murdered Jennifer.”
“Denny had a name?”
West turned and finally looked her way. Their eyes met.
“Nathan G. Cava,” he said.
42
Nathan G. Cava was thirty years old, stood five feet ten inches off the ground, and weighed one hundred and eighty-seven pounds. He had blue eyes and blond hair-cropped short but not buzzed-and a tan complexion. From the width of his neck, he looked rugged. From the slope of his shoulders, more than just sturdy. Unfortunately, the information was ten years old. Everything after that read like a blank sheet of paper. Another black hole.
It was 7:00 a.m., Thursday morning, five days before Christmas. They had spent the night working out of the captain’s office with Barrera and Sanchez. Rhodes had a call into his contact over at the DMV and was sitting at his desk on the floor. Barrera was waiting on his friends in Washington, but hadn’t heard back and was snoozing in his chair. In another three hours, they would lose Sanchez because he was still locked into testifying in court.
Lena took a sip of coffee, comparing her notes with the interviews Ramira had conducted. Any doubt about the track they were on was completely gone now. The motive for the murders, ultra clear.
Joseph Fontaine had supervised the clinical trials for Formula D. The problem was that he had a financial interest in the outcome. According to Fontaine, both he and Tremell knew that the drug was dangerous before they won FDA approval and launched the advertising campaign. Jennifer Bloom had used her body to get close to Tremell and proved more than convincing. When she put the pieces together and ended the affair, she confronted Fontaine and threatened to expose the doctor with what she knew. Fontaine realized that he would be ruined either way and decided to talk. It seemed clear to Lena as she read his interview that Fontaine was looking for a deal somewhere down the road. That he thought he would be better off if it looked like he was cooperating and felt some degree of remorse for the things he had done.
But it would have been an upward climb for the wealthy pediatrician. Had he survived, the rock he was pushing never would have made it to the top of the hill.
Fontaine had run more than one clinical trial, yet only presented the FDA with the results from a single study that turned out positive. Everything real had been buried. Articles were written and published in medical journals that amounted to pure fiction. Key members of the FDA motivated by politics and religion were paid off with cash and the withdrawal of a new morning-after pill that Anders Dahl Pharmaceuticals had been developing. Fontaine admitted that he had lied for the money. And that Tremell knew that he was selling poison, but thought that he could fix the formula while he raked in even more cash. Kids were dying, but that didn’t seem to matter. From what Lena could tell, Tremell had been more concerned about his investor’s expectations that the new drug would be delivered on time.
She turned back to her notes. A few hours ago Rhodes had pulled an article published yesterday in The Times. Apparently, Tremell was at odds with several board members from his company over his annual bonus. The board had already agreed to give Tremell seventy-five million dollars for a job well done. According to the newspaper, Tremell thought he deserved a hundred million.
Lena tried to imagine what it must have been like when Tremell learned that Jennifer Bloom had played him for a fool. That it had been Tremell himself who gave her the goods. That she had seduced the old man and won him over until she could prove that he had killed her son.
The woman who cast spells.
The words had been resurrected. Flushed with new meaning and an overwhelming power that burned clean and true.
They had their hands on the motive. But Lena knew that they still didn’t have a case.
She gazed across the table, letting the reality soak in. Sanchez was sorting through the ATM and surveillance pictures of the witness. As he spread them out, Lena eyed the photos and noted the leather jacket and Dodger cap. The dark circles under the kid’s eyes and the wasted expression on his face. Avadar hadn’t checked in yesterday from the bank. That could only mean that their witness hadn’t made another try with Bloom’s ATM card. That he was still missing. Still lost-or maybe worse.
“You need to call the coroner’s office,” she said.
Sanchez looked up. “You think he’s dead?”
“You need to make the call,” she said. “Get them copies of these pictures and ask them to go through the list of ODs they’ve picked up over the last three days.”
Sanchez agreed. Before he could say anything more, Rhodes burst into the room.
“Anyone here ever heard of Vinny Bing, the Cadillac King?”
Barrera shrugged. Lena shook her head.
“He’s got a show on cable,” Sanchez said. “It sucks.”
“Well, he just called and said he’s got Cava’s Hummer.”
Lena spotted the Hummer from a block away. It was hard to miss because it was parked in front of the dealership’s showroom door. But even worse, two guys were outside setting up movie lights.