Chain of Evidence (29 page)

To Dart, this felt a little bit like entering a prison.

The elevator panel operated only after Richard swiped his credit-card-sized security pass through the reader. He and Dart changed elevator cars on the third level, after passing through another security station and entering the lab building. A series of air locks gained them access to the second set of elevators and offices and labs beyond.

The need for an escort became quickly apparent—hallways and doors lacked identification, except for a cryptic band of bricked colors, reminding Dart of nautical flags. On foot, they crossed a skybridge connecting the elevator bank to the third floor of the lab building, high above what Richard called the “terrarium”—a small enclosed courtyard complete with a running fountain and a living lily pond. Offices looked out onto the courtyard. “The security is somewhat ominous, I know,” Richard apologized, “but recombinant genetics is not to be taken lightly. The security has much less to do with the integrity of our ideas than it does with the preservation of environmental continuity.”

“That’s certainly reassuring,” Dart said.

Richard attempted what passed for a smile. “Yes, well, we wouldn’t want anything getting away from us,” Richard explained.

“No,” Dart agreed, “we wouldn’t.” After another ten yards, Dart said, “Expensive facility,” exploring with a compliment.

“When we started up, biotechs were the darlings of Wall Street. The board wanted to make a statement with the facility—and I think they have.”

“Definitely,” Dart agreed.

“We’ve had enormous success with our arthritis drug—Artharest, is its commercial name,” he announced. “And big things are expected of our prostate drug—an anticancer gene therapy drug.”

They arrived at a door marked with a red flag, two blues and another red. Richard used his ID card to gain them access and showed Dart inside a generous conference room. The table, a series of thick slabs of black granite on a chrome frame, had down its center three flat conferencing microphones that looked more like ashtrays. The chairs were black leather slung between polished steel and braided wire. A large abstract mural of polished pink stone and blue glass occupied most of the far wall. A set of floor-to-ceiling white laminate cabinets occupied the far end of the room, presumably housing audiovisual equipment.

Richard seated him, asked if he could bring him something to drink, and when Dart declined, retreated through a door that made a sound as if locking behind him. Four excruciatingly long minutes later, the door opened and a tall, slightly heavy, middle-aged woman with dull dark hair wearing a conservative gray suit and cream blouse entered, graceful and poised. She carried a large black leather briefcase with her that she parked in the chair next to the one into which she lowered herself. She wore cream tights and black shoes with low heels.

She had never been pretty, though always smart, Dart decided, before she spoke a word. “Welcome to Roxin,” she said, like a tour guide, allowing the heel of her shoe to flap off her foot.

“It’s quite the place,” Dart said. “You don’t see it from the road.”

“No. Only from the river, and only then if you’re looking. It’s remarkable for its privacy.”

“I’m told that your time is extremely valuable, so I’ll get right to it,” he said.

“That’s kind of you, Detective.”

“I need to confirm some names with you … men involved in a test you’re conducting …”

“A clinical trial?” she corrected. “Which one?”

Dart felt out of his element. Dr. Arielle Martinson was Roxin’s director of research and development and CEO. It surprised him that he had gained access to the top on his first try—not at all what he had expected. Typically he had to stair-step his way up the corporate ladder.

“I have the names here,” he said, passing her a sheet from his notebook. The small, wrinkled piece of notepaper suddenly seemed unprofessional to him. He felt half-tempted to apologize for it.

Martinson was a woman with a formidable presence, commanding a great deal of space around her, the kind of person in whom he immediately sensed both leadership and integrity. The two articles he had gleaned from the
Wall Street Journal
and the
New York Times
cast her as a woman pioneer in a predominantly male field, the recipient of dozens of prestigious awards including a three-hundred-thousand-dollar MacArthur while at Michigan, where she had worked as part of the Human Genome Project. Her specialty was hormonal gene therapy. The
Journal
had speculated that Roxin was on the verge of a gene therapy treatment for menopausal side effects, with a market projection of eight hundred million dollars annually.

She had a nervous habit of tugging her short-cropped dark hair down past her right ear and fiddling with it. She kept herself nearly in profile to him, shielding the practice as best as possible, as if she was aware of it but could not control herself. This, from a woman who seemed, by all measurable appearances, in total control.

She accepted the notepaper, read the names from it, and made a phone call, reciting the names into the receiver for the benefit of someone named Angelica. “I see,” she said, thanking the woman before hanging up. She half turned to not quite face Dart and, looking at him out of the side of her eyes, said, “Yes, they are listed with us, though I’m afraid that’s all I can share with you at this time.”

Dart was amazed by her frankness. He had expected the runaround. “They are,” he repeated, not quite knowing where to go, having prepared for a battle.

“Yes.”

He thought, considering alternatives. He felt certain from her preemptive statement that she would not discuss the nature of the trial. “Are you aware that all three men are deceased?” He paused, “Suicides?”

The news clearly had an effect, though she contained her surprise well. “Clinical trials are conducted in the blind, Detective. Are you aware of that? As the creator of the drug, we can either hire an independent or remain with an in-house team for our stage-two efficacy trials. Either way, these trials are conducted in the blind; that is, though we’re made aware of the names of the participants, and occasionally have a role in selecting those individuals, we are not informed as to who is receiving the actual drug and, in stage three, to whom the placebo is administered, if, in fact, placebo testing is involved.”

“I see,” Dart said, again feeling out of his element. “Would you be willing to discuss the
nature
of this particular trial?” he inquired.

“Your mention of suicide troubles me, obviously,” she said. “And all that I can tell you is that were the suicides in
any way
linked to the trial, we most certainly would have been notified. I can assure you of that. Guidelines are quite rigid in that regard.”

“So you’re saying these three suicides are
unrelated?
” he asked incredulously.

“Can you prove otherwise?” she asked, voicing concern, not anger.

He decided to drop the bomb. “We’re not entirely sure they
were
suicides, Dr. Martinson.”

She turned as gray as her suit, and her hand became busy with the lock of hair. “Sabotage?” she asked. “Are you saying that someone is attempting to sabotage my clinical trials?”

“If the suicides
were
connected to the trials,” he asked, “what then?”

She smirked, not liking that thought one bit. She shook her head, offering him a better view of her neck, her hair whipping out of the way and briefly revealing what looked like a wide scar just below her ear. Her hand returned there quickly, and turning her head away, she said, “If our drug is made to appear to cause severe depression or other psychological side effects, I can assure you that the trials would be immediately halted and we would take a serious look at the causal relationship. But let me say, too, that one of the
benefits
of gene therapy is the specific targeting of the medication, and therefore the lessening of many side effects associated with other groups of medications. As to how it would affect us—well, it would devastate us, of course. We don’t think highly of killing our test subjects, Detective. And let me just say that these drugs see
rigorous
testing prior to human trials, and I certainly would not expect severe psychological disorders to go unnoticed and therefore untreated.”

“You’d catch it first,” he said.

“You bet we would,” she answered.

“So someone could hurt your company if they were to imply an association between your trial and these suicides?”

“This kind of sabotage could ruin us.” She appeared nervous then, irritable and anxious to be done with Dart. She said, “To be perfectly honest, Detective, the idea of this is frightening, and I’d like to get right on it. Again,” she said strongly, “I think if there were any such connection to be made, I most certainly would have heard about it, but if you’d excuse me—”

“I need to know what’s going on,” he said bluntly.

“I understand,” she said.

“I may be able to help you,” he offered.

“Yes.” She attempted a smile, but it failed. She was too shaken.

“One last question,” Dart said. He felt invasive with these questions. Here was Martinson, having been told that someone was trying to sabotage her company, and he, Dart, continued to pry into every dirty corner. “Is Proctor Securities—your security firm—ever involved in these trials in any way? Do they ever have access to these trials or to the trial results?”

“I should say not!” She flushed a bright crimson. “They police our parking lots for God’s sake. They help us with corporate espionage from at home
and
abroad.” Her eyes went wide and she snapped, “Where the hell are
they
when we need them?” He could see her making a mental note about this. She pulled herself together and said, “This is a highly competitive field, Detective, with tens—
hundreds
—of millions of dollars at stake. If one product fails, another may be in position to take its place. Terry Proctor is supposed to stay on top of that kind of thing. Protect our interests.” She tried another smile, this one more effective. “Can we continue this another time?”

Dart nodded. She spun her head around as she stood and Dart stole a look at her neck.

Definitely a scar. A knife wound. And by the look of it, a nasty one.

CHAPTER 31

Dart didn’t want to return to 11 Hamilton Court because the house was being kept under surveillance on the hope that Wallace Sparco—
Walter Zeller
—might be apprehended. But it was Zeller’s own teachings that leaned Dart toward going back and reexamining its contents. That house remained the only physical link to the visitor at the Payne suicide.
Always return to the crime scene
, Zeller had taught him.

“Usually I hate being on call,” Samantha Richardson said, flirting with Dart as she unlocked the door to the photo lab. Bragg’s assistant and photographer wore blue jeans and a red flannel top that looked suspiciously like pajamas. At eleven-thirty at night, anything was possible—people showed up in the strangest clothes. Dart was hardly sleeping, between the night tour and day calls, like the one at Roxin Laboratories. He felt a wreck, and looked it too.

At night, the tiny basement forensics lab smelled no better than during the daytime, thanks to the photographic processor in the adjacent room. Richardson pulled a pair of chairs in front of the computer monitor, and Dart joined her.

“For initial viewing, we downsize the images for higher resolution,” she explained. The ERT team had shot digitized images, not photographs. Richardson prepared Dart for what he would see. “Shooting in relative darkness, as they did, the lighting, as you can imagine, is off. The camera sees things much as your night-vision goggles. One of the nice things, however, is that we can ask the computer to compensate and correct the lighting deficiencies. Fill in color. Enhance. And often the images get surprisingly close to a well-lighted, even daylight, look. That’s what we’ll do,” she told him. “We’ll start with the degraded image and enhance. We can always get back to the original.”

The first image, a shot of the sitting room with the recliner and television, appeared on the screen. At first, a difficult green and white, a black bar moved slowly down the screen, and as if lifting a shade, the room was suddenly in full color. The technology amazed Dart. “You’ll like this,” she said, typing furiously and then grabbing the computer’s mouse. The floor of the room suddenly tilted, and the image became fully three-dimensional, as if Dart were on a ladder looking down.

“What the hell?” Dart asked.

“The digital cameras are stereo-optic—another advantage. The computer uses algorithms to create the three-D effect.” She rotated the room, so that Dart was looking from a different direction, but the left of the screen was blank. She explained, “The computer cannot fill that which the camera never saw.” She pointed to the blank side of the frame and said, “This is where the photographer was standing while taking the shot.”

Dart gushed with enthusiasm over the technology, which Richardson clearly appreciated. She complained, “Only the Staties can afford the cameras, but maybe one of these days …”

Frame by frame, Richardson walked Dart through the house and through the evidence. The ability to manipulate the point of view afforded Dart the opportunity to see the rooms from many angles. He studied each carefully, occasionally requesting an enlargement of a particular area, something the computer could render in seconds. Room by room, he sought out any physical evidence that might provide insight into where to look for Walter Zeller, aka Wallace Sparco.

“
The killer is inside them.
” Zeller’s words continued to haunt him. As much as Dart believed Zeller was the killer, the only convincing physical evidence that he possessed connected the resident of 11 Hamilton Court to Payne’s suicide. Everything else remained circumstantial. And though he now believed that Zeller was Sparco, it didn’t necessarily mean that Sparco/Zeller had actually killed Payne. Perhaps, as Zeller wanted Dart to believe, it was the Roxin drug that connected all the suicides, and Martinson and her company were in fact the ones to blame. No matter, 11 Hamilton Court seemed to offer Dart the main hope of finding answers and its resident. If he could only locate Zeller….