The Suicide Effect (5 page)

“Good.” Marcy stood to leave. “It will be different when JB takes over, but I’m trying to stay optimistic.”

“Will you have to lay people off?”

“Most likely.”

“What about my position?”

“I think you’re safe. Thanks for being upfront with me.”

“Sure.”

Marcy gave her a small wave and left the room. Sula heaved a sigh of relief, shut down her computer, and followed her out.

Rudker pulled his short-trip suitcase from the walk-in closet and set it on the bed. Packing had become a precise operation, no more complicated than preparing a familiar meal. Two white, long-sleeved shirts, a light-blue short sleeved one, the charcoal Brooks Brothers suit, casual black slacks, underclothes, and the bathroom kit that he never unpacked. Cell phone, laptop, and financial reports were already in his shoulder bag. Traveling suited his restless personality, but the timing of this trip annoyed him. He wanted to tie up the loose ends of the Nexapra data as quickly as possible, but he couldn’t miss this board meeting. Talking with the other scientists on the Nexapra project and locating the paper files would have to wait until he returned in few days.

“Don’t forget your medication,” Tara chirped as she came up behind him. “I won’t.” Rudker turned and kissed his young, beautiful wife. He never tired of looking at her perfect face. Wide-set cobalt eyes, small upturned nose, full sensuous lips with scattering of freckles that he wanted to lick every time he saw them. She was a work of art.

They had met at a fundraiser for a local charity called Food for Lane County. She was a hostess and he was a main donor. In essence, that summed up their relationship. Tara was a good natured soul. In addition to feeding the hungry, she put up with his mood swings and sometimes distant personality without much complaint. Unlike his first wife, Maribel, Tara never said no to sex. She was good for him, and Rudker needed her in a way he had never needed anyone before. The thought made him pull away.

“How long will you be gone?” She looked worried.

“Just a few days. Are you okay?”

“Of course. Call me when you know.”

“Always.” Rudker kissed her again, picked up his bags, and headed downstairs to wait for the car service.

Entering the Eugene airport always gave him a chuckle. If he was searching for someone, it would take about six minutes to cover the entire building. Checking in also took about that long. It was worlds apart from the San Francisco airport he’d flown in and out of for the ten years he’d worked at Amgen. He’d started at the biotech company as a product manager and worked his way up to vice-president. Toward the end, he’d been traveling ten days out of every month.

At 8:15 in the evening, the airport was practically deserted. One person was in the line in front of him and a young woman paced nearby, talking on a cell phone. The guy at the counter was trying to check his bags and had some malfunction with his ticket. To distract himself, Rudker mentally reviewed his presentation to the board.

While he was checking in, the girl on the phone began to cry, then to beg the person on the other end to come pick her up. Rudker turned and stared. She was young, probably still a teenager, and her jet black hair was short and spiky. She also had silver rings in both eyebrows. Rudker didn’t understand how any of that was supposed to be attractive.

“Please,” she cried over and over. The clerk handed him his boarding pass, which he tucked into his jacket pocket. He dug out his wallet, walked over to the girl, and handed her thirty dollars. “Call a cab.”

Feeling grateful he had not had to raise a daughter, Rudker walked away before she could react. After a few seconds he heard her call out, “Thanks.” He passed through the inspection area without having his body searched and considered that an immediate payback.

Two and a half hours later, he moved through the Seattle airport with equal efficiency. At midnight it was also nearly empty. He took a cab downtown to Cavanaugh’s on Fifth Avenue and checked in. He had swallowed two melatonin tablets on the way, so five minutes after lying down, he was out and slept like the dead for five hours.

Chapter 6

Wednesday, April 14th, 6 a.m

The call from the concierge jolted him awake. Rudker splashed cold water on his face, then spent forty minutes on the treadmill in the third-floor gym before showering. Until he’d hit forty, his nervous energy had kept him lean. Now he had to work at it. He dressed in the charcoal suit, choosing a striped silver and light-blue tie. Pharma people on the west coast were slightly more casual than their counterparts in the east coast corridor. He’d been on a panel at a pharma marketing conference in Edison, New Jersey, and every guy in the room had been wearing campaign colors: dark blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. The women, fortunately, made some livelier choices.

Nervous excitement kept him from having breakfast, but he downed his usual assortment of supplements: vitamins B, C, and E, zinc, kelp, calcium, and DHEA. Prevention was the key. He’d read the side-effect profile of too many pharmaceuticals to leave his health in the hands of drugs. Except for the Zyprexa and an occasional migraine pill, he steered clear of chemicals.

The company sent a car for him at 7:15, and Rudker arrived at the Stewart Street headquarters with thirty-five minutes to kill. Not wanting to look eager, he circled the entire campus on foot, ignoring the dark sky that threatened rain. With twenty minutes left, he headed up to the executive suite. He stopped at Gerald Akron’s office, but the secretary told him the CEO was in a meeting. A meeting before the meeting? That seemed odd, perhaps even ominous. No, it could be anything, he told himself.

He found a reading nook on the west side of the executive suite and tried to concentrate on the two reports he’d prepared, but his mind kept surging forward to the board meeting. He imagined the announcement, saw them reach out, one by one, to shake his hand. A board member! Rudker’s heart pulsed in his fingertips. Abruptly, he pushed out of the chair and began to walk the hallway again. After what seemed like an eternity, the clock said 8:20. It was time.

Rudker entered the boardroom at the end of the hall and immediately sensed something was wrong. The group didn’t exactly go quiet, but they all glanced up at him as they wrapped up hushed conversations. John Harvick, the chairman, walked over and welcomed him with a handshake. Rudker felt a little better. He had to stop being so paranoid. Right. If he could do that, he wouldn’t need the Zyprexa.

He took a seat near the door on the opposite end of the table from where the chairman sat. The room was surprisingly small and had no windows. Meeting rooms were always like that. Architects rarely wasted prime window real estate on anything but offices. He hated the confined feel.

Harvick called the meeting to order. Rudker surveyed the people seated around the long mahogany table. Gerald Akron, Art Baldwin, Harvey Kohl, Jane Kranston, Richard Mullins, and Jim Estes. The “super seven” had control over a company that pulled in $14 billion a year in revenue. They had control over his future.

“Let’s get a quick update on the merger,” Harvick said, looking at Akron, JB’s chief executive officer.

“Firing on all cylinders,” Akron reported. The heavy bald man stood to deliver the rest of his brief: “The SEC wants us to sell two of our cardiovascular products, both with sales under $80 million. Genzar wants the pair. We’ve identified twelve middle management positions and five R&D staff that can be eliminated during the merger. And plans are in motion to move Prolabs’ R&D operation to Seattle. The only holdup is the final approval to build a new factory in Eugene.”

“Anything we can do to push that?” Harvick looked at Rudker.

Rudker was ready. “I’ve got an insider on the city council and all we need to do is wait for their vote. I have a friend on the environmental committee too. So I expect quick approval of our plan to recreate the wetlands. We should know in a week or two.”

Kranston and Kohl laughed. Rudker gave Kranston a look.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s the idea of recreating wetlands. It’s like promising to put up a new ghetto.”

Rudker relaxed a bit. “Eugene is a little odd that way. Nothing but weeds and ducks and a few scrubby trees out there in that acreage, but folks want to preserve it. The town also has ten percent unemployment. This factory will be built.”

“Excellent.” There was a long pause before Harvick continued. “Karl, I know you’re anxious to know our decision and we won’t keep you waiting any longer. We think it’s premature to offer you a position on the board, but we promise to reconsider the idea after you’ve had six months under your belt as chief operating officer.”

The air left his lungs as if being vacuumed. Rudker fought the panic. Fought the desire to shove his fist into Harvick’s face. He clenched and unclenched his hands in his lap several times before responding. “I’ve got twenty-five years in the business under my belt.”

“We know that, Karl. But never at a company that does more than a billion a year. Give it a little time.”

Stunned by their decision, he considered withdrawing his company from the merger. He had other offers. Yet he sat there, silent. Time was the problem. Prolabs was too close to financial collapse to start over with a new deal.

Finally Rudker nodded. “It won’t take long to show you what I can do.”

The voices in the room faded away and all he heard was the one in his head.
Second man and no board seat. Nice lateral move.
Rage and shame burned in his veins.

“Anything to update on Nexapra?” Now Kohl was asking questions.

Rudker pulled in a fresh supply of oxygen through his nose and spoke slowly. “We’ve started recruiting for Phase III clinical trials. The FDA has given us an okay for the protocol. We’re projecting a late-2011 approval date.” He sounded so calm.

“Excellent.” Kohl turned his next question to Akron, and Rudker’s mind flipped back to his humiliation. How could he have been so wrong about the board member decision? Did they know about Prolabs’ financial mess? Were they toying with him?

He could feel his power position slipping away. Now it all rested on Nexapra. He had to push it through approval and to the top of the charts. He couldn’t let anything get in his way.

Chapter 7

Sula tried calling Dr. Warner in the research building while her computer booted up. After three rings, a recording of Warner’s voice asked her to leave a message. The head of R&D did not mention that she would be out of the office. Sula called Steve Peterson and he reported that Dr. Warner had not come in yet.

“She usually comes in by now though, right?”

“By 7:30, usually.”

Sula checked her watch, even though she knew it was 7:55. “She didn’t call?”

“Not yet.”

“Have you called her cell phone?”

“I tried it once and left her a message.”

“I’m going to call her home number.”

“Let me know what you find out.”

Warner’s home voice-mail picked up after four rings. Her message was pleasant but brief:
You’ve reached Diane Warner. Leave a message if you like.
Distressed, Sula hung up. Where the hell was she? The doctor’s absence was starting to scare her. Sula hit redial, waited for the answering machine, then left her name and number and asked Warner to please call.

She dialed Steve Peterson’s extension and he picked up right away, as if he’d been waiting. “This is Sula. Dr. Warner doesn’t answer her phone at home.”

“This is very unusual. Have you talked with anyone in human resources yet?

“No, but I will.”

“Keep me posted.”

Peterson’s concern fueled her own sense of alarm. Worst-case scenarios played in her mind. Warner was lying dead on her kitchen floor, a gaping knife wound in her chest from a home invasion robbery. Or maybe she was at the morgue, victim of a hit and run accident. Or in the hospital in a coma, but with no identification, so the nurses didn’t know who to call. Did Warner have a family?

By the time Sula reached the HR department on the third floor, her pulse raced and anxiety clutched at her heart like a boney hand. She forced herself to slow down, to breathe from her stomach before she entered the suite. Marcy’s assistant, Serena, was in the outer office behind a curved half wall. The young woman greeted her with cheerful chatter.

Sula could not be distracted. “Sorry to be abrupt, Serena, but I must see Marcy right away.”

“She’s in a meeting with a lawyer.” Serena lowered her voice. “There’s something big going on, and I think it involves Sergio.”

“I have a greater concern. Diane Warner hasn’t shown up for work in two days, and she hasn’t notified Steve Peterson either time. Has she called either you or Marcy?

“No.” Serena’s eyes went wide. “Do you think she quit?”

“Maybe. I need you to look up her home address for me.”

“Are you going there?”

“I feel compelled to do something.”

Serena rolled her chair in front of her computer and made a few mouse clicks. “It’s 2862 Spring Boulevard. Are you going now? Should I tell Marcy when she gets out of her meeting?” The girl, fresh out of high school, sparked with the energy of a new drama.

“Yes and yes. Please call North McKenzie hospital while I’m gone.”

“What do I say?”

“Just ask if they have a patient named Diane Warner. If they do, find out whatever you can.”

“I’ll do it now.”

Sula thanked her and hurried from the building.

Driving up Spring Boulevard, Sula barely noticed the half-million dollar homes. A dark thought kept circling in her brain. What if Rudker had made Warner disappear? It was such a huge leap that she kept pushing the idea away. Her family’s trauma had left her with a tendency to
catastrophize
and blaming Rudker seemed like a classic example of that response.

First, there was no reason yet to assume Warner had disappeared. She might be home sick in bed and not answering the phone. Second, even if Warner was gone—for whatever reason—it didn’t mean Rudker had anything
directly
to do with it. He may have driven the woman from her job with intimidation or threats, but that was life in the corporate world. Dr. Warner seemed able to take care of herself.