Bliss (9 page)

Leisure World, about a half hour from Scottsdale, is an exclusive residential retirement community, built at the base of a mountain. The houses were modest in size, mostly, one story ranchers with elegant windows and immaculate landscaping.

The Meyer home was one of the largest in the community and sat just past the front entrance. Tucked in the back of the open garage, a BMW sat with a canvas cover over part of it.
Was that the car they killed Meyer in?
Lindsey parked in the drive and got out. At the house’s front door, she pressed the doorbell. Meyer’s wife had agreed to talk to her, and in fact, seemed anxious to talk to someone, anyone, about her husband.

“Mrs. Meyer?” Lindsey asked, as a woman answered.

“Yes. And you must be Lindsey Walsh? Come right in. I’m just making some coffee.”

Lindsey felt immediately at ease around Hilda Meyer. She carried a slight German accent and had a matronly appearance. Lindsey felt a little like she was at her grandmother’s house. She sat in the living room and Hilda Meyer brought coffee and cookies.

“So,” Hilda Meyer said, “what are they up to over at Imec?”

“Well I was hoping you could help
me
answer that question.”

Meyer hesitated and took a gulp of coffee. “Ms. Walsh. My husband was very secretive about all his work. He was a scientist first, husband second. But I can tell you. This thing he was working on... this Bliss thing. It disturbed him a great deal. Right up until the time of his death. When the new bosses took over, he changed. He went from being excited, to being paranoid.”

“So you know about Bliss?”

“Oh... a little. My Frederick used to say it was going to revolutionize the drug industry. Then, later, he said it was far too dangerous to market. But they pressured him to continue.”

Lindsey shifted in her seat. “Continue?”

“Continue with the trials.”

“You mean they had actual clinical trials?”

“Oh yes. But when things went haywire, they abandoned them. That’s what was disturbing my husband. He wouldn’t tell me what, but I knew it was something bad. Really bad.”

“Did he ever give any hint of what?”

“No, but some men, they came to visit and I heard them arguing. After they left, Frederick was very upset. He was talking about leaving Imec. That night, he spent hours on his computer. The next day he drove up to the Grand Canyon. Said he needed to get away for a couple of days. That was the last time I ever saw my husband alive.”

Hilda Meyer looked away and Lindsey could see tears well up in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Meyer. I know this is hard for you.”

She looked up at Lindsey. “Tell me, what’s your position in all of this?”

“I can’t really say, but I think things aren’t all they’re supposed to be at Imec.”

Hilda Meyer rose from her chair and walked to a small closet near the front door. When she came back, she held a small video recorder in her hand.

“Maybe this will help. My husband had it with him when he died. They recovered it with his body. It’s pretty badly smashed up, but there’s still film in it. I haven’t had the nerve to try and look at it. I couldn’t bear to see him.”

“Did the police look at the film?”

“No, the coroner had it in a bag with his personal effects. I don’t think the police even knew about it. They called it an open and shut case. A carjacking gone bad, they said. But I always had my doubts.”

“Do you think it’s possible someone at Imec had your husband killed, Mrs. Meyer?”

Hilda Meyer lowered her head and rubbed her hands across her legs. “Ms. Walsh, ever since that Stephen Vetter took over at Imec, my husband was a nervous wreck. He was not the same man. They were pressuring him about something. And he wouldn’t tell me. He wanted to protect me in case they threatened him. At least they couldn’t come after me for whatever it was that was so secret. So to answer your question, yes, I think someone at Imec killed him. And I think we both know who that someone is.”

*   *   *

Two hundred yards away, Stephen Vetter sat in his black Mercedes sedan, his eyes pressed against a pair of high-powered field glasses. He could see Lindsey Walsh clearly as she came out of Meyer’s house. In fact he could even make out the fine scattering of freckles on her face. But what caused Vetter to come out of his seat had more to do with what she held in her hand.
How can she have it?

She carried a small video recorder, slightly battered, but he recognized it immediately. Only the last time he saw it, it was heading over the South Rim wall of the Grand Canyon--along with its owner--Frederick Meyer.

Lindsey sat quietly on her
bed and fumbled with the video recorder Hilda Meyer had given her. Meyer’s long fall badly crushed the metal casing, but Lindsey had managed to pry open the cassette holder and now held the small tape in her hand. She had stopped at the local Wal Mart and purchased a special VHS holder that would adapt the smaller tape to her larger VHS format machine.

The first question that came to Lindsey’s mind had nothing to do with Meyer’s death. Why had Meyer considered resigning? And what, if anything, did it have to do with Bliss? It was highly unlikely that the two were unrelated. Lindsey had long ago learned to approach what others might consider “coincidence” as anything but. Taking everything else she knew into consideration, it was easier for her to believe some connection between the two events existed, than it was to believe Frederick Meyer’s luck was so bad, that a carjacker had killed him in the parking lot of one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world.

Lindsey placed the cassette in the VCR and hit the play button.

The opening shots came from several angles on the South Rim of the canyon. Mostly a straight-across view of the huge canyon walls, the kind of pictures you’d see on a postcard of Arizona. It reminded Lindsey of a well-made nature film. The next few minutes were film of Meyer walking through the woods, capturing some wildlife, a deer, a few squirrels, a bobcat off in the distance he’d managed to zoom in on. Meyer had narrated the whole thing for his wife, and Lindsey found his voice haunting, knowing it was a dead man talking. About two minutes into the film, it showed the image of a parking lot as Meyer walked from the woods. Then the film stopped abruptly. When it came back on, the tone of the film had suddenly changed. The picture was jumbled, and Lindsey could see the viewer was bouncing up and down as if the person recording it was running. Then something even more unexpected and powerful came on the screen.

The camera pointed toward the sky as a helicopter hovered overhead, and then, Meyer’s voice. “Get away from my car.”

Lindsey came off the bed and stood frozen in front of the TV.
Oh my God. He filmed the killer.

On the screen was the image of a tall, dark-haired man banging on the window of Meyer’s blue BMW. The helicopter was too far away to see well, but the image of it suddenly took up the whole screen. Meyer had apparently zoomed in on it.

Lindsey’s jaw came unhinged.
Holy shit!

There in big, bold letters on the side of the chopper: IMEC.

And looking down from the passenger seat, wearing a headset and sunglasses was the CEO, Stephen Vetter.

Then the film went black.

Hans Grovel arrived at his
office at Zern Pharmaceuticals at precisely 7:00 A.M. Swiss-time, the same as he did every morning for the past twenty years. As head of the largest drug company in the world, he found punctuality a valuable asset to one’s success. After logging onto his computer and navigating to his email, he saw he had an urgent message waiting to be opened. It was from an anonymous mailer in the U.S. and he hesitated to open it for fear it could be someone trying to taint his company’s computer with a virus. After a careful scan by the computer’s virus software, he felt confident enough to open it.

He wished he hadn’t.

Their most recently acquired spin-off, Imec was about to market Bliss. An amazing new drug that promised to be a windfall for the company and would reap profits for years while their competitors struggled to keep up.

But this information sent a shudder through his body. The thought crossed his mind that someone was playing him for a fool.

In fact... this was not possible.

It had to be a hoax!

He burst from his office and took a right down the main hallway. Several night shift employees smiled reverently as he stormed past. He went directly to the company’s data processing room hoping to catch one of the computer geeks from the night shift.

One huge data bank handled all of the company’s computer records. The clerk wheeled around as Grovel entered.

“Morning,” Grovel snapped.

“Goo–“

”I received an email this morning from an anonymous mailer. Can you tell me where it came from? I can’t trace it from my PC.”

The data clerk swallowed nervously. “We don’t have the capacity to trace anonymous mail. I can contact the server. I’m sure they can help.”

Grovel had no doubt they could help. These days when computers did everything under the sun, they kept records of everything. They could trace email through thousands of accounts in a matter of seconds.

“Do it,” he commanded. “Let me know as soon as you find out.”

Lindsey Walsh felt her body
go rigid when she heard the bloodcurdling screams and battle sounds coming from the house next door. She yanked the phone from the wall and called 911.

Bob and Melanie Booth lived there and were Imec’s newest research scientists. They’d arrived two months before Lindsey, and seemed like the perfect couple.

Maybe too perfect.

What Lindsey heard were howls, like a wounded animal coming from Melanie, then two back to back gunshots. Shots so loud and so close, they rattled the plates on Lindsey’s kitchen table.

From her window, Lindsey saw the police cars descend on the house, emergency beacons flashing. Lights came on all over Indian Springs, and Lindsey‘s curiosity prodded her to go out the door and see what was happening. She didn’t want to interfere with police business, so she snuck to the side of her house where it sat no more than 20 feet from the Booth’s. A large window on the side allowed a clear view of the interior. She hesitated.

Did Bob Booth have a gun? If so would he use it on her?

The police were pounding on the Booth’s front door with weapons drawn. Lindsey stood close to the window and looked in. Her gaze scanned the kitchen. The table was still set as if they were getting ready for dinner. Then, she looked across from the table. Her legs fell out from beneath her.

Oh my God!

Melanie Booth was sitting against a far wall near the sink, slumped forward. Her head was mostly blown away and splattered on the wallpaper behind her. Bob Booth sat across from her, a shotgun stuck in his mouth, his head also destroyed and one dimensional, with nothing behind the face as if it were a paper cut out.

Lindsey bent over and retched, gasping for breath between fits of dry-heaves. She saw the police enter, and their look conveyed as much shock as she herself felt. She ran back to her yard and into her back door. Her breath coming in ragged gasps.

What in God’s name would have made Bob Booth snap like that?

She grabbed the phone and dialed Jason’s number.

When he picked up, she was crying into the phone. “Jason, he killed her, he killed her, he kil-“

“Lindsey, what are you talking about?”

“My next door neighbor, he just killed his wife and then shot himself. Jason, something is happening here. Please believe me.”

“I do believe you. It’s just--”

“Just what?”

“I’m really sick right now. I had to come home from work early. I’ve been feeling bad ever since I left your place. I can hardly sit up.”

“What’s wrong? Oh my God, are you okay?”

“I don’t know, I went to the ER and had some blood drawn. They’re supposed to call me later.”

“Jason, is it serious?”

“I don’t know, Lindsey, I just don’t know. I gotta go. I can’t talk any more right now.”

The line went dead.

Dumfounded at Jason’s response, Lindsey just lay in bed for a while and stared at the ceiling. She couldn’t believe what he’d said. She called the one person in the entire world she thought she could depend on, and he wouldn’t talk to her. Maybe he was really too sick to talk? Jason had always been a good listener. That was one of the things Lindsey loved about him. Tonight, he just didn’t sound like himself.

Please don’t let anything be wrong with him.

Lindsey forced herself to look back out the window. A knot of people had gathered at the Booth residence, pressed eagerly against police barriers, gawking through the unshaded windows. Two more police cars and a van from the state medical examiner’s office had arrived. Lindsey just stared in disbelief. An attendant stepped out of the van and unfolded an opaque body bag.

Lindsey felt another wave of nausea.

She’d never seen the results of a shotgun blast before tonight, and she didn’t want to see it again when they carried the bodies out. Quelling her nausea with an effort of will, she turned away and bolted to the bathroom.

Two hours later, Lindsey sat on her sofa with a cup of herbal tea and had just started to calm herself from the day’s events. She was trying to purge the image of the Booth’s from her mind. A loud knock on her front door yanked her from her thoughts. Probably the police wanting to ask questions, Lindsey decided.

It surprised her to see Teresa Hagen, her neighbor and co-worker.

What surprised her even more–was how Teresa
looked.

Katherine Blair stood in her
Scottsdale villa and watched the rain clouds build up over the desert. The local weather service called for a severe thunderstorm with the chance of a flash flood warning as well.

An apt description of her life, she thought.

She dressed carefully as always when she planned to meet Stephen Vetter; she anticipated that they would go to bed. There had not been that many men in her life, and in fact, that was one of the reasons she had left Chicago.