“You make it sound like headache and nausea,” Sean said, acidic. “His bones crumbled away to nothing and he died in agony. Yeah, I’ll say he suffered ‘certain side effects.’ What was different about him?”
She flicked her eyes between the two of us. “Basically, he wasn’t Caucasian,” she said. “Dr. Lee was a second-generation American, but his grandparents were Korean.”
I felt my eyebrows arch. “Storax developed a drug that will work only on white people?” I said, not bothering to hide my disgust. “I’m not surprised they’ve been going to all this trouble to cover it up.”
Terry flushed. “It wasn’t intentional!” she said through clenched teeth. “It’s a genetic thing—I don’t understand all the technical details. But I do know that our research scientists are working round the clock to come up with a solution. In the meantime, it’s not something we want to shout about.”
“Yes, but it’s something your company will do almost anything to deny,” I said. “No wonder they didn’t want a top orthopedic surgeon sticking his nose in.”
“Top surgeon, huh?” Terry threw back at me with a toss of her head. “From what I hear, he’s a drunk who can’t keep his hands off underage girls.”
“So they didn’t tell you about the dirty tricks campaign they’ve been running against my father?” I said, keeping my voice mild even though I could feel the rage building like a low-level background hum. “They didn’t tell you about the threats they made to my mother—what they’d do to her—if he didn’t cooperate?”
Terry glared back at me, but wisely held her tongue. She had more self-control than I did.
“So, you knew that Jeremy Lee’s premature death was as a direct result of the Storax treatment,” Sean said, stepping in, “but still Storax didn’t suspend the drug or wait to put it out until the scientists had come up with the answer?”
She had the grace to look a little ashamed. “There are millions of dollars at stake,” she muttered. “Hundreds of millions. Osteoporosis is a major problem and it’s only going to get worse. The drug works brilliantly—”
“Yeah, on some patients. But it kills others,” I put in. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Do you think I don’t know that?” she said quietly. “Why do you think I got in touch with Mrs. Lee? I told her she should sue—that the company could afford it. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her outright what had happened, but I dropped hints that she should look closely at what was happening to his bones. I don’t know if she followed that advice or not.”
“She did—she got in touch with my father,” I said stonily. “He answered a cry for help from an old friend and, because he might have been getting close to the truth, your people administered a fatal dose of morphine to Jeremy, doctored his hospital records, and pushed all the blame firmly onto my father—whose reputation they then started to systematically trash.”
“That can’t possibly be true,” Terry said, but there was a shaken note to her voice that hadn’t been there before. “The people I work for are not murderers!”
She turned away, hands to her face, brow creased.
“Miranda Lee didn’t kill herself,” I said softly, certain of it. “They fed her with pills and booze and stood over her until she was unconscious, so she couldn’t make any attempt to save herself.”
“You don’t know that,” Terry said, her voice a shocked whisper. “She missed her husband. She was lonely, depressed. I could tell that from her e-mails—”
“We went to see her the day before she died,” Sean said, cutting her off. “She wasn’t suicidal then.”
Terry had no response for that. Sean regarded her with a calm stare. “If you’ve got such a social conscience, Terry, why are you working for an organization that only cares about the bottom line, and to hell with who gets hurt, or dies, in the process?”
She pulled a face. “You make them sound like they’re selling to junkies on street corners,” she said. “The products Storax manufacture save countless lives.”
“And that counterbalances the odd ‘mistake’ like Jeremy Lee?” he said, his cynicism uppermost. “Enough that you sleep at night?”
“Yes, I sleep at night,” Terry said firmly, meeting his gaze. “Do you?”
CHAPTER 29
“So, Terry O’Loughlin has agreed to help you,” Parker said, his voice scratchy over the long-distance mobile phone line. Even so, the skeptical note in his voice came over loud and clear. “What makes you think you can trust her?”
“Basically,” I said quietly, “because we don’t have a choice.” I was standing on the open-plan landing overlooking Terry O’Loughlin’s living room, keeping an eye on her as she sat on the huge leather sofa below me. She had her feet curled up underneath her, watching a football game with the fixed concentration of someone who’s not taking in what’s happening on the screen. I couldn’t really blame her for that.
It was nearly 7:00 P.M. Central, which made it an hour later in New York—well outside office hours. Parker had still answered his mobile phone almost on the first ring.
“All we have at the moment is my father’s word against the Boston hospital on what was in Jeremy Lee’s original medical records,” I went on. “We need proof of what the Storax treatment does to people of his ethnicity—and the fact that they knew that and didn’t put out any general warnings, or withdraw the treatment. And for that we have to get inside Storax ourselves. We can’t rely on outsiders—or insiders, for that matter. We need firsthand knowledge.”
“And she’s agreed to take you in,” Parker said flatly. “Just like that.”
I sighed and passed a weary hand across my eyes. “The place is a fortress, Parker,” I said. “Short of aerial bombardment and a small army, how else are we going to get in there?”
His silence spoke louder than his words. Eventually, he said, “I’d be happier if you’d wait and let me tackle it from this end. I’m working my way up the chain of command and the FBI are trying to locate Collingwood and Vonda Blaylock. The more they look into what Collingwood’s been up to, the more they find.”
“But they haven’t arrested them?”
“Not yet,” Parker said, adding quickly, “but they will, Charlie. You can take that to the bank. And when they do, they can’t help but follow the trail right back to Storax. This whole thing will be blown wide open.”
“Yeah, by which time Storax will have shredded any evidence that they had a hand in Jeremy Lee’s death—or Miranda’s supposed suicide—or that they knew about the side effects of the treatment. My father will never clear his name.”
“But you’ll be able to come out of hiding.”
“It’s not enough,” I said. “Not nearly enough.”
Down in the living room, the TV announcers went into a frenzy as something exciting happened in the game, which promptly broke for ads. The black-and-white cat jumped up onto the sofa and tried to climb onto Terry’s lap. She stroked its head absently.
“Where are you now?” Parker asked in my ear.
“Still at the house,” I said, being careful not to use Terry’s name to alert her. The last thing I wanted was Terry taking undue interest in who I was talking to, or what I was saying. As long as she didn’t try to make any calls herself while she thought I wasn’t looking. “Sean’s gone to retrieve my parents from the hotel and bring them back here.”
“Is that wise?”
“Probably not,” I said, “but we don’t particularly want to leave her to her own devices, and it’s easier to keep an eye on everybody if we’re all together.”
“Yeah, it’s a tough one,” Parker said. “Just trust me when I say I’m doing everything I can to work it out at this end.”