Terminal (A Lomax & Biggs Mystery Book 5) (21 page)

Ten minutes into it, Kilcullen stormed through the door. “
Homeland Security
?” he boomed. “I understand the PC, the mayor, and the governor, but why the hell is Homeland fucking Security crawling up my butt?”

“Probably because one of these news assholes told his co-asshole that this had all the overtones of a terrorist attack,” Terry said.

“Why the hell would he say that?”

“They’re paid to talk, boss,” Terry said. “Making sense is optional. One reporter said she heard it was a Hollywood movie stunt gone wrong, so don’t be surprised if you also get a call from the Academy.”

“Got it!” Muller said.

“Got what?” Kilcullen asked.

“The live stream link just hit the Twitter feed.”

“I have no idea what the hell you just said.”

“I’ll translate,” Terry said. He put an arm around Kilcullen. “Muller just found out what channel your show is going to be on, grandpa. You want some nice hot cocoa while we watch?”

“Bite me,” Kilcullen said, shaking Terry loose. “Turn the damn thing on.”

Muller hit the link and a title card came on:

T
HE
T
RIAL
O
F
E
GAN
G
RANVILLE

Below that was a brief background on the man, the crimes he was accused of, and an invitation to the public to weigh in on the proceedings. In the bottom right-hand corner was a countdown clock. The trial was still thirty minutes away.

“If she’s got Granville,” Kilcullen said, “what the hell is she waiting for?”

“An audience,” I said. “She’s giving it time to go viral.”

“She’s also giving us time,” Terry said. “We’ve got a half hour. More than we need to check in with CSU.”

Kilcullen stayed in the truck, and Terry and I walked to the lake pit where Jessica Keating was kneeling beside two tar-covered bodies.

“How the hell did you pull those two out of the muck so fast?” Terry said. “I thought you’d be dredging this hole forever.”

“It’s not really a hole,” she said. “The tar, even in places where it’s bubbling, is maybe only about six inches deep.”

“Son of a bitch,” Terry said. “So what you’re saying is they should’ve called it the La Brea Tar Puddles.”

She laughed. “Doesn’t matter what you call it. They’re both very dead. Which is what happens when you drop people from a quarter of a mile straight up. This guy lost a leg on impact, and the other one’s head blew apart.”

“We’re going to try to catch the guys who dropped them. We’ll be in the truck if you need us.”

“It’s going to be a while,” she said. “My team is still trying to fish brains and body parts out of the soup. I won’t be able to get you positive IDs until I get them back to the lab and clean them up. Plus I understand you left me a third guy over in Culver City.”

“Yeah,” Terry said, “but like they say in the cigarette ads, that one’s got a lot less tar.”

Jessica is one of Terry’s best audiences, and I could hear her laughing as we walked back to the command post for the countdown.

CHAPTER 56

THE CLOCK ON
the screen hit zero, and a picture faded up. A narrow table, Egan Granville in an orange jumpsuit seated at one end, Amanda Dunbar on the opposite side, a 9mm Glock in front of her. She had on a white lab coat, her copper-red wig gone, the full effects of her chemo on display.

As the picture burned into my brain, the irony and the hopeless reality of my situation hit me hard. My job was to save the man responsible for my wife’s death and arrest the crusader whose dying mission was to bring him to justice.

There were no introductions. The viewing audience had more than enough time to get the backstories on the two adversaries.

“The senate confirmation hearings are over, Egan,” Dunbar said in a strong, clear voice. “This time you’re on trial for murder.”

“Trial?” Granville spat out. “Why don’t you call it what it is? A kangaroo court presided over by a cold-blooded killer who just paid to have three innocent men put to death.”

“I’m not the only cold-blooded killer in the room,” Dunbar said. “And they were far from innocent. Neither were the three others I paid to have killed.”

“So if you’re judge, jury, and executioner, why bother with this charade? Why don’t you shoot me now and get it over with?”

“Because that would make you look like a victim, Egan, and
that is one title I refuse to let you share with the women you let die or the families you let suffer because of your greed.”

“
My
greed? You created Ovamax, doctor. You made millions of dollars, and when your formulation was finally proven to be lethal I was the one who pulled the product off the market, while you walked away scot-free with millions more.”

“That’s the same story you told the Senate. Do you think they believed you?”

“We’ll know when they vote on my nomination tomorrow morning, won’t we, Dr. Dunbar?”

“How about the American people? Do you think they’ll believe you?”

Granville sneered. “With all due respect to the American people, they don’t get a vote.”

“Actually, they do. We’re streaming these proceedings live to millions, and that’s the beauty of the Internet. There’s no shortage of opinions, is there?”

“There’s no shortage of technological talent either. I’ll pay a million dollars to the first hacker who pinpoints your signal, calls the authorities and gets me out of here.”

“That’s your solution to everything, isn’t it? Buy your way out. Like when you ramrodded that Alzheimer drug through clinical trials and wound up with twenty-seven documented cases of irreversible brain damage. How much did it cost you to sweep that one under the rug? Fifty million? Sixty? What’s a human life worth these days, Egan?”

Granville sprang from his seat, and she grabbed the gun. He sat back down. “Did you ever run a company?” he bellowed.

She didn’t answer. She held the gun in one hand and a remote control in the other. She used it to slowly let the camera move in on Granville.

“Do you even have any idea what it’s like to run a major biotech enterprise like Chilton-Winslow? Do you know how many people depend on us? And I’m not just talking about the six
ty-three thousand employees who count on us to pay for the roofs over their heads, or the food on their tables, or their kids’ educations. I’m talking about the hundreds of millions of people in every corner of the planet waiting for us to come up with the next wonder drug that can make them whole again, keep them from dying, even put babies in their bellies when the good Lord Himself couldn’t do it. They all want miracles. Straw into gold. Water into wine. Day in, day out,” he said, his eyes seething with unrestrained disgust. “How many people do you think could run a company like that, Dr. Dunbar? Could you?”

The camera was tight on his face. His teeth were clenched, and his upper lip quivered.

“I didn’t think so,” he spit out, when it was clear that his question would go unanswered.

The camera pulled back out of the close up and returned to the wide shot.

“You’re right,” Amanda said softly. “A lot of people look to you to make the impossible seem possible. Doctors, patients, hospitals, governments… Chilton-Winslow research has helped lower the infant mortality rate across the entire continent of Africa by twelve percent over the past decade.”

Granville’s body relaxed.

“There’s only one major constituency we haven’t talked about,” Dunbar said. “Investors. Nobody is rooting for you harder than the people who are going to make money if you’re successful.”

“It’s a business,” Granville said, the anger returning quickly.

“Oh, I get it,” she said. “You’re in the business of making miracles. Like God.”

“I never said I was God!”

“And you’re not! Because God doesn’t have stockholders looking over His shoulder. God doesn’t have a board of directors or bottom-line responsibilities. But you do, don’t you, Egan?”

“Damn right I do. I repeat—it’s a business!”

“So if you’re trying to cure Alzheimer’s, or put babies in bel
lies, you’ve got to expect some setbacks along the way. A little brain damage here, a few cases of ovarian cancer there—it’s all part of the cost of doing business. And you’re right. I couldn’t do that job, Egan. Because when people start dying on my watch, my instinct as a scientist is to pull back, to cut my losses. That’s why I asked you to go back to the safer version of Ovamax when the new one turned out to be so deadly. And you agreed, didn’t you?”

“It shut you up.”

“And how long was the old formulation back in circulation before you realized that it wasn’t going to produce as many miracles, or make as much money?”

“Go to hell.”

“I guess that means you knew all along. You just ran the old shit through the pipeline long enough for me to believe you, and then you went back to business as usual until the FDA picked up on the mounting death toll two years later.”

“Fuck the FDA. Did they pick up on the fact that tens of thousands of women who desperately wanted children had their dream come true? The world is filled with happy, healthy, bouncing babies because of the decision I made. It’s a tragedy that some women took the risk and died, but it was their risk to take.”

“Be sure to repeat that to the LAPD homicide detective who comes here to pick you up,” Amanda said. “Ask him if he and his wife would have taken the same risk if they had all the facts that you had.”

“What LAPD homicide detective is she talking about?” Kilcullen said.

My cell phone vibrated. It was a text from Charlie Brock.

I held the coordinates up for Kilcullen to see.

He nodded. “I guess that answers my question.”

CHAPTER 57

“HERE’S THE DEAL,”
I said to Kilcullen as Muller zeroed in on the coordinates. “You are not putting their twenty out over the air so that every asshole with a scanner can race to see who gets there first to claim Granville’s million-dollar prize. Nobody gets the money, and nobody but me gets the collar. Any questions?”

“Just one,” Kilcullen said. “Which one of them are you arresting?”

“They’re in the marina,” Muller said.

“Narrow it down,” Terry said. “There are about five thousand boats in that harbor.”

“This one is tied up in Basin D, just off Admiralty Way, right next to a little spot called…are you ready for this?
Mother’s Beach
.”

“Just when you start to worry that your mass murderer may have lost her sense of humor, Amanda comes through like a comedy champ,” Terry said.

As much as I’d have liked to leave Kilcullen at the tar pits, he followed us to the car. There was no stopping him. He was the only horse Deputy Mayor Mel Berger had in this race, and I’m sure he was tagging along to keep me from beating Egan Granville to a bloody pulp.

At least he made himself useful. With a single phone call to CHP, he cleared a straight path along the 10, the 405, and the 90,
and we made the twenty-five-minute drive to Marina Del Rey in less than eight.

Guns drawn, we ran to the exact spot Charlie Brock had texted us. Terry held up a hand and pointed at a fifty-foot Bayliner with the name Amanda D painted on the stern.

We boarded, and I banged on the cabin door. “LAPD. Lose the gun, Dr. Dunbar.”

“I don’t have it,” she yelled back. “Granville has it.”

“What the fuck?” Kilcullen said. He barked into his radio. “Muller, we’re on deck. What’s going on down below?”

“She’s telling the truth, boss,” Muller said. “Granville has the gun.”

“How the hell did that happen?”

“She gave it to him. Said that she got what she came for, and she slid the gun across the table to him calm and cool as a blackjack dealer who hears ‘hit me.’”

“Is she out of her mind? She just got the son of a bitch to own up to God knows how many counts of felony murder. If any of the shit we just heard sticks, he’ll spend the next dozen lifetimes in prison. The only reason to give him the gun is if she has a death wish.”

“She’s got terminal cancer,” Terry said. “She’s dying anyway. Granville’s confession may or may not hold up, but if he shoots her in cold blood now, it’s open and shut, and she wins.”

“Muller,” I yelled. “Is the camera still rolling?”

“Hell, yeah. And my best guess is you’ve got six or seven million people glued to the action, and now that we may have an on-camera murder we’re on track to break the record that Austrian skydiver pulled when he did that twenty-four-mile free fall a couple of years ago.”

I pounded on the cabin door. “Granville,” I yelled. “This is Detective Mike Lomax, LAPD. I’m coming in. You’d be wise not to shoot me.”

I opened the door and walked down a short flight of steps.
Terry and Kilcullen were right behind me.

The scene was exactly what I’d seen on the monitor in the mobile command post, except that the cabin was much more spacious than the camera had been able to pick up. That, and the 9mm Glock was in Granville’s hand, not Amanda’s.

She looked at me, her eyes filled with compassion. “Once again, I am sorry for your loss, Detective Lomax,” she said. “After I found out who you were, I was able to go back into your wife’s medical history. If Ovamax had been pulled off the market when I gave the first warning, she’d still be alive.”

I pointed my weapon at Granville. “Put the gun down, Mr. Granville.”

“To what end, Detective?”

“I don’t know. Justice comes to mind. Whatever you did, you’re entitled to more than what Dr. Dunbar just put you through. It’s called the Sixth Amendment, Mr. Granville. You have the right to a public trial and an impartial jury.”

“Impartial?” He laughed. “I think Dr. Dunbar has successfully beaten the impartiality out of every reasonable human being on the planet. Why don’t we just skip the trial and give the public what they want. That’s why she gave me the gun, isn’t it?”

He put the barrel under his chin, and I felt my body go limp. It was Calvin Bernstein in Dr. Kraus’s office all over again. “Don’t,” I said without any of the compassion or concern that I’d had for Cal less than a week ago.