Terminal (A Lomax & Biggs Mystery Book 5) (16 page)

There were stacks of books that ran the length of one entire wall. We started on opposite ends.

“You’ve got to admire a killer who’s read
The Art Of War
,” Terry said, holding up a dog-eared copy of Sun Tzu’s classic. “Plus the mind-fucking prose of Nietzsche, John Locke, Carl Jung, and the ever-enlightening Ayn Rand. What have you got over there?”

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “This weirdo has the entire collection of Nancy Drew mysteries.”

Terry’s head snapped around. “Son of a—” As soon as he saw the shit-eating grin on my face, he stopped. But it was too late. I’d nailed him. It was a rare moment.

His lovable ugly mug lit up, and he beamed. “Good one, grass
hopper. Mr. Miyagi so proud.”

“Step over here, sensei,” I said. “I think I found what Nancy would refer to as a couple of real nifty clues.”

There was a pile of Chilton-Winslow annual reports that dated back five years and a manila envelope thick with Internet printouts on Ovamax. In an ideal world, I’d have liked them to be front-page stories by Pulitzer-winning investigative reporters from the
LA Times
, but most of them were the rants of bloggers, conspiracy theorists, and Big Pharma haters.

I didn’t care. As far as I was concerned, the source didn’t matter. The verdict was unanimous. Ovamax caused ovarian cancer, and the greedy bitch behind it all was Dr. Amanda Dunbar.

Then we rifled through the pages of the annual reports, which had been highlighted for our convenience. The unconscionable sales and profit numbers had been underlined in black.

“Bingo,” Terry said as we turned to a two-page photo spread of all the people who had helped catapult the company to success. Three of the faces had been X’d out in red. Carolyn Butler, Kristian Kraus, and Wade Yancy.

“Who do you think is next on their list?” Terry asked.

“I don’t know, but let’s start with Amanda Dunbar,” I said. “It’s time I met the woman who killed my wife.”

CHAPTER 40

THE IRON GATE
to Amanda Dunbar’s Tuscan-style fortress clicked open, and Terry and I drove slowly up the winding driveway of one of the most well-guarded homes in Bel Air Crest, one of LA’s most exclusive private communities.

Security cameras tracked us all the way, and a pair of gleaming-coated Dobermans stood under the portico watching our every move as we waited for a two-legged sentry to give us the green light to get out of our car.

“I have a feeling Dr. Dunbar may already suspect someone is out to kill her,” Terry said.

A tall Asian man stepped out of the house, checked our IDs, and then silently escorted us to a sparsely furnished chrome-and-glass office, where Dunbar was waiting for us.

She was about forty, smaller than I expected—five feet at best, with a taut, trim body, capped by a thatch of copper hair in a no-nonsense pixie cut.

“This is about the Kristian Kraus shooting,” she said. It was not a question.

“Yes, ma’am,” Terry said.

“By now you realize he’s not the only one,” she said. “You’ve connected him to Wade Yancy and Carolyn Butler, or you wouldn’t be here. If you came to warn me that I’m in the cross-hairs, thank you, but I’m way ahead of you.”

“Do you have any idea who might want to kill you?” Terry asked.

“Detective, there are a lot of people who lost loved ones because of Chilton-Winslow’s greed. They despise the company and everyone connected to Ovamax. I’m high on their list, and I’ve got the hate mail to prove it.”

“Can we see them?” Terry said.

She opened a desk drawer and pulled out a thick folder. “This is all the snail mail plus printouts of the emails I’ve gotten so far. Some of them are just rants, and some are so poignant, they can bring you to tears. But don’t plan on arresting anyone, because none of them are out-and-out death threats—unless you count the dead mackerel that came wrapped in a copy of
L’Italo-Americano
.”

Terry took the folder and thumbed through it. “I thought they’d be anonymous, but most of them are signed. Did you respond?”

“And say what? ‘I’m sorry for your loss, but it’s not my fault. I’m innocent.’”

“If you’re so innocent,” Terry said, “why are you getting dead fish?”

“I was the head of the R&D team that developed the new formulation. The early test results were spectacular. The new Ovamax cost less to make and it resulted in more pregnancies. Yancy and his team jumped all over it. They pumped hundreds of millions into marketing, teaming up with the best fertility docs in the business. The profits broke all company records, and top prescribers like Kraus got paid a fortune in what is affectionately known as
royalties
.”

“It looks like you were pretty well compensated yourself,” Terry said.

“I was, but two years into the gold rush I got some alarming new test results. Some of our patients developed ovarian cancer. Yancy immediately said there was no concrete proof that it was connected to us, and Carolyn Butler, our chief counsel, backed
him up. She had our legal department bury disclaimers in all our printed material that she guaranteed would make us bulletproof. Then the docs were instructed not to administer Ovamax until the patient—and her spouse—signed ironclad liability waivers.”

I remembered Joanie signing. I balked, but Kraus assured us it was a mere formality. “Just a bunch of lawyers covering their asses,” he said. I signed.

“Money was pouring in, and nobody wanted to kill the golden goose,” Dunbar said, “but the death toll kept going up. These women were in the prime of their lives, and the number of Ova-max patients getting sick and dying was six hundred percent greater than women not on the drug. I finally went to Granville and told him to either pull it off the market, or I’d blow the whistle.

“He agreed. They did a production run on the original formulation for a few weeks—long enough for me to believe it was done. Then they quietly went back to the deadlier, more profitable version. It was another two years before the FDA picked up on the rising number of deaths. Just before the whole thing hit the fan, Chilton offered me a deal. They would pull the product from the market and pay me a shitload of money if I resigned and signed a contract never to go public with the truth. So I took the fall.”

“You took the fall and the money,” I said.

“And I’ve got millions that I won’t live to spend,” she said.

“Meaning what?” I said.

“Meaning I had my own infertility problems, so I went to see Kristian Kraus, and he put me on Ovamax. I thought it was the original formulation, but by the time I realized they had all been lying, I had Stage III ovarian cancer.” She removed her wig and stared at me defiantly.

“Do you know Charlie Brock? ” I asked.

She glared at me. “Never heard of him.”

“Peter Thatcher?”

“No.”

“Bruce Bower?”

“No.”

“Cal Bernstein?”

“Him I heard of. He made the eleven o’clock news for shooting Kristian Kraus. I didn’t know him, but I’m guessing he was another dissatisfied Ovamax customer. There are a lot of them out there.”

“Besides yourself,” I said, “who else do you think is on their hit list?”

She held up her hand. “That’s it, detectives. No more questions. You may give a rat’s ass who’s next, but leave me out of it.”

She pressed a red button on her electronic alert bracelet. “If you want my opinion, here it is—the two of you are in way over your heads. You may know a thing or two about how to catch a killer, but you know nothing about the politics of Big Pharma, and even less about Granville and his medical Mafia. They would poison their own mothers to make a buck.”

Our Asian escort and his two canine companions appeared in seconds.

“I know more than you think, Dr. Dunbar,” I said as Terry and I walked toward the door. “My wife was one of the women they poisoned.”

CHAPTER 41

DRIVING HOME I
realized that Diana hadn’t called me all day. Totally understandable. After the shabby way I treated her the night before, I deserved to be ignored. Of course, I hadn’t called her either, but not because I was pissed. I’d behaved like a jerk, and it was easier to avoid her than to attempt to undo the damage over the phone.

I was ready to face the music when I saw Red Ryder parked in my driveway. That’s what my father calls his 1949 Willys pickup truck. He’s got more than fifty movie rental cars and trucks in his stable, and since the painstakingly restored, fire engine red Willys was Sophie’s favorite, it was easy to figure out why that was the one he drove to our house.

Sophie’s biggest ally was here to plead her case. It was all I could do to keep from making a U-turn and finding the nearest bar.

Big Jim was waiting for me in the living room, nursing a beer. “Where are Sophie and Diana?” I asked.

“They went out for pizza with Angel. It’s just you and me till they get back. Would you like something to drink? There’s beer in the fridge.”

I sat down. “I’ll pass. What I
would
like is an explanation. Why am I being ambushed?”

“What do you mean ambushed?”

“You’re waiting for me in
my
house, offering me
my
beer, and you’ve eliminated all possible witnesses. I don’t know what you call it, but I’m calling it an ambush. What are you doing here?”

“What the hell do you
think
I’m doing here?”

“Meddling in my life. Prying into things that are none of your business. Sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. It’s the same shit you’ve done to me ever since I was a kid, but this time around I have two words for you—back off.”

“I’m not meddling,” said the man who has no problem inflicting his opinion on people whether they ask for it or not. “Consider this an intervention.”

“News flash, Dad—I know you’re convinced that you’ve been put here on earth to help us mere mortals cope, but I don’t want your help.”

“That’s what an intervention
is
, Mike. It’s when you reach out to people in need when they’re too dumb to ask for help on their own. Now, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. When was the last time you saw a doctor?”

That blindsided me. I’d seen more than my fair share of doctors in the past four days, but I thought I’d done a good job of keeping it on the down low.
What did Big Jim know?

“What are you talking about?” I sputtered out. “What kind of a doctor?”

“A proctologist to help you get your head out of your ass, damn it! Sophie needs you. I thought you loved her. How in God’s name can you let them take her away to China for the next twelve years? You may have to fight Jeremy for custody, but why the hell would you walk away from that little girl without putting up a fight?”

I stood up.

“Don’t you walk out on me,” he barked.

“My house, Jimbo. One of us will be walking out, and it won’t be me.”

I went to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of Blue Moon, and took
a calming swig. Big Jim had simply said the word
doctor
, and I went full-blown paranoid on him. It wasn’t until he followed up with his lame proctologist joke that I realized he didn’t know anything about my medical issues.

And that’s the way it was going to stay until I had something concrete to share with him.

I went back to the living room, eased back into my chair, and took another hit on the beer. “Did Diana put you up to this?” I asked.

“That’s not her style, and you know it,” he said. “But I do happen to know that you came down pretty hard on her last night when she suggested that the two of you adopt Sophie. Angel caught her crying outside while the rest of us were eating dinner. Diana didn’t give up much, but it was pretty clear to Angel what went on between the two of you.”

“So Angel told you, and you decided to do what you do best, and fix my relationship with Diana.”

“Give me a break, Mike. I’m not trying to fix anything. I’m only trying to help. What can I do?”

“You want to help?” I snapped. “Then why don’t you do the one thing I’ve asked you to do and back the fuck off!”

“Back off? Jesus, Mike, we have a crisis on our hands. Sophie’s mother has been locked up by one of the most repressive governments on the planet, and her father, who’s been MIA most of her life and probably couldn’t pick her out of a lineup, may try to lay claim to her. The kid is scared to go to sleep because she’s afraid she’ll wake up in fucking China, and you want me to back off?”

“So you
did
hear me,” I said. “Thanks for the intervention, Dad. Now take your beer and hit the road. This is my problem. Mine and Diana’s.”

“You’re not going to listen to Diana any more than you’ll listen to me,” he said, getting out of his chair. “I knew that before I came over, but I figured there’s still one person who can talk sense to you.”

“And who might that be?”

He took an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Joanie.”

I looked at Joanie’s familiar handwriting on the outside of the envelope. There was no question who it was from. “Where… where did you get this?”

“Joanie gave it to me a month before she died.”

“That’s impossible. She wrote nine letters. I have them all.”

“She
gave
you nine letters, Mike. But she wrote a few more and gave them to me to give to you on special occasions. I haven’t read any of them. I just know when I’m supposed to deliver them.”

“And what special occasion is this?”

“Joanie was hoping that one day you’d get remarried, and your new wife would be pregnant, and you’d finally be about to have that baby she wasn’t able to give you.”

“This isn’t that,” I said.

“So shoot the messenger. As far as I’m concerned, whether you like it or not, you’re on the cusp of fatherhood, and you’re not sure which way to go. I figure maybe Joanie can help you make up your mind.”

He walked out of the room and left the house. I sat there, unable to stand, a letter from my dead wife in my trembling hand.

CHAPTER 42

DIANA AND SOPHIE
didn’t get back till after nine. I yelled hello as they came through the door and got one hello back. Diana. I went into the kitchen where she was getting the coffee ready for the morning.