“We reasoned that identifying her would be by far the best way to neutralize whatever threat she presented,” Sean continued, sounding perfectly reasonable.
“And afterward?”
Sean met his gaze straight and level. “We left Ms. Blaylock relatively unharmed.” He always was a better liar than me, too.
“But you’re telling us you had no idea of where she was going, or what she was doing?” Parker asked at that point, deflecting whatever doubts Collingwood might have been about to express. “Do your people normally inform you if they’re traveling overseas, for instance? Are they flagged at Immigration?”
“No—o,” Collingwood said slowly, sounding like he was drawing the word out to give himself time to think. “They’re not obliged to tell us. It was only after she disappeared that we ran checks and found she’d bought a plane ticket to the UK.”
So, he’d known Vondie had left the country long before I’d told him about my mother, I realized. And knowing we knew meant the rules of the game shifted slightly, that now he had nothing to lose by giving us a little more. Collingwood reached for the buff folder again and leafed through it, still careful not to let us get a look at the contents.
“Here you go—she flies into Manchester, England, just over a week ago. After that, we lose her. She just drops right off the grid. According to the Brits, she hasn’t used any of her credit cards or even switched on her cell phone since she landed. She missed her return flight, didn’t turn up at work when she was due. I don’t mind telling you that we’re seriously concerned for her safety.”
“Was she traveling alone?” I asked, trying to keep any inflection out of my voice.
Collingwood ducked his head again, then made a little side-to-side movement, which I took to mean yes/no/maybe.
“She booked and paid for the flight herself, but we pulled the manifest,” he said cautiously, opening his case for that piece of paperwork and handing it over. I took it without comment, leafed through the pages. It came as no surprise to find Don Kaminski on there as well, but I let my eyes drop past his name without a waver, sedately read all the way to the end and put the sheaf down onto the table.
When I looked up I found Collingwood had been watching me closely. But if the disappointed twitch in the side of his face was anything to go by, I hadn’t shown him what he’d been hoping to see.
Where his left hand hung over the arm of the chair his fingers performed an unconscious little dance, rubbing the pad of his thumb across his fingertips, back and forth like he was checking the viscosity of oil, or asking for a bribe. I wondered if he was even aware he was doing it.
“Okay, people—cards on the table time,” he said at last, tiredly. “We believe Agent Blaylock has been working with a guy called Don Kaminski, but I’m sure this information comes as no surprise to any of you—seeing as how you initially sent around a mug shot of Kaminski at the same time as that picture.” He nodded to the blowup of Vondie and allowed himself a wry smile. “I’m assuming from the fact that you stopped asking about him, that means you ID’d him pretty fast. Am I right?”
Parker inclined his head a fraction, a faint encouraging smile on his lips. It was the first movement he’d made since he sat down again. On either side of him, Sean and I were doing our best impersonations of the sphinx at Giza.
Collingwood gave a snort of frustration at our lack of a more emphatic response.
“Look, I know the business you’re in is pretty tight-knit, cliquey, so if you identified Kaminski and the outfit he works for, you’ll already know about his current contract and you’ll understand our, ah, interest?”
If Kaminski was working for the Boston hospital, I couldn’t for the life of me work out how someone like Collingwood might be involved, but I had a feeling if we played this right, we might just be about to find out.
I tried not to hold my breath, tried to force my muscles not to tense. Parker, with heroic restraint, merely gave a polite, almost bored nod, as though this was all information we were well aware of and he wished Collingwood would cut to the chase.
“So, what exactly is your interest, Mr. Collingwood?” he said, his face deceptively placid.
Judging by his weary expression, Collingwood took Parker’s question as awkwardness rather than ignorance. He gave a gusty sigh. “Storax Pharmaceutical, of course.”
Storax.
The name couldn’t have hit me any harder if it had been plastered all over the front of the taxi that had tried to run me down.
Storax. The company that manufactured the drug Jeremy Lee had been taking before he died—with or without his knowledge. The company that had obligingly sent two of their people up to Boston allegedly to assist in his treatment. Where had they been, I wondered, when the good doctor had been administered his fatal overdose?
My father had been convinced that it was the hospital who’d been covering up some kind of clinical error, but now Collingwood had shed a whole new light on the situation. The question was, what should we do about it?
“And why exactly is one of the lesser-known government agencies interested in Storax?” It was Sean who asked the question, which was just as well—I wasn’t capable of speech. I was amazed that Sean could sound so calm in the face of the information Collingwood had just dropped, apparently unwittingly, into our laps.
Collingwood’s eyes narrowed, as if he realized he’d said more than he should, and I could see his mind backtracking, trying to work out what advantage we might gain from it. After a moment he seemed to come to the conclusion that he had nothing to lose by saying more.
“Storax Pharmaceutical contracts with the U.S. government to produce certain, ah, vaccines. Anything more than that is classified information,” Collingwood said, ducking his head again like a boxer expecting to dodge blows. “But let me just say that we keep an eye on their other activities. A very close eye. Storax is just about to be granted worldwide licenses for this new bone drug of theirs, based largely on the success of clinical trials to date. If there’s a problem and they’re covering it up, we need to know and we need to know fast.”
“If Storax holds government contracts, surely you have some authority to go in and do some kind of audit,” I said.
He gave a sad little shake of his head at my naïveté. “Storax is a global corporation,” he said. “A multibillion-dollar enterprise. Heck, they probably have more people on the payroll just to lobby for them in Washington than our agency has on its entire payroll, period. We can’t fight that unless we have an ironclad case. They’ll shut us down in a heartbeat. And that brings me to your father, Miss Fox. Where is he, by the way?”
“Somewhere safe,” Parker said, jumping in before I had the chance to answer, even if I’d had the inclination to do so. “What is it you want with him?”
“If Storax is falsifying any of its research, I’m sure you can appreciate the implications for the national security of this country, Mr. Armstrong,” Collingwood said heavily. “If Richard Foxcroft has any evidence to support his claims that Dr. Lee was given that overdose as some kind of cover-up, we need to talk to him.”
“Why should we trust you?” I said flatly. “If Storax is behind what’s been going on, they’ve fought dirty so far and it’s damn near ruined him. Don’t you think he’s had enough?”
“We need to know what he knows,” Collingwood said, stubborn. “I don’t suppose I need to remind you how, ah, difficult we could make life for your father if he doesn’t cooperate?”