Fatal Care (35 page)

“No, no!” Joanna interrupted again. “You’re missing the point. Maybe the virus is involved in
all
these patients.”

“But we can’t prove that,” Lori argued.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Joanna said, and turned to Dennis Green. “Do we have the electron microscopic results on the other two patients with cancer?”

“I haven’t seen them,” Green answered.

“So we don’t know whether there are viral particles present in the other two patients with cancer, do we?”

“There’s one way to find out.” Green reached for the phone and punched in numbers. He spoke briefly and then waited for a response.

Joanna began pacing the floor of the laboratory, thinking about viruses and cancers and the relationship between the two. And how could viral particles be related to a lipolytic enzyme that seemed to cause cancer?

Green put the phone down. “I’ll be a son of a bitch. All three tumors contained the same viral particles.”

“Jesus,” Lori hissed softly. “How did that virus get into these patients?”

“Take a guess,” Joanna said.

Lori thought hard, her brow furrowed. “Well, we know it couldn’t have been in the enzyme preparations the patients received.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because we didn’t detect any virus in the enzyme preparations we received from Bio-Med.”

Joanna smiled, then asked, “Are you sure the enzyme preparations they sent us to test are the same ones they gave to the patients?”

Lori still couldn’t make the connection. “Why would viral particles be mixed in with the lipolytic enzyme?”

“I don’t know,” Joanna said. “But I think I know somebody who does.”

Joanna reached for her personal phone book and flipped pages until she came to Nancy Tanaka’s number.

Sara puffed on her cigarette and stared into space. “They’re on to me. They know who I am, and they’re looking for me.”

“Do you know that for sure?” David Westmoreland asked.

Sara nodded firmly. “There was a cop waiting behind the postal boxes where I pick up my mail. He was checking IDs.”

“So?”

“So a blonde who resembled me walked in, and the cop jumped all over her. Then a plainclothes cop ran in with his gun drawn. They treated her like she was armed and dangerous.” Sara puffed again on her cigarette. “
Shit
! They were looking for me. It was just pure luck I wasn’t wearing my blond wig.”

“Did they ask you for your ID?”

“No,” Sara said. “I slipped out of the place during all the commotion.”

Westmoreland gave her a hard look. “And you’re certain you weren’t followed here?”

“Positive,” she assured him. “I drove around for two hours, off and on the freeway and down back streets. There was nobody following me.”

“Good,” Westmoreland said, but he still wasn’t convinced. A real pro could have tailed her, and she would have had no idea he was there.

“What should I do?”

“Play it cool,” he advised her. “That way you won’t make more mistakes.”

“The mistakes are happening because you’re giving me too many hits too fast,” Sara complained. “If you and your client don’t allow me enough time to prepare, the hits aren’t always going to come off perfect.”

“You were given plenty of money to make those hits look good,” Westmoreland said, an edge to his voice. “You didn’t have any trouble taking those big bucks, did you?”

“The money was fine,” Sara said. “It’s just these damn rush jobs. I’ve made mistakes by hurrying things.”

Damn right you have
, Westmoreland wanted to say, but he held his tongue. He pushed himself up from the corner booth at Club West. “I’m going to get a beer. You want anything?”

“No, thanks.”

Westmoreland walked over to the front window and cracked the venetian blinds to look out. Traffic was moving nicely, and there were no cars parked nearby. Across the street a truck was delivering produce to a Chinese restaurant. And next to the restaurant was a newsstand with two people browsing through magazines. An old man and a kid. No cops there, Westmoreland decided.

He went behind the bar and opened a bottle of imported beer. Carefully he poured the beer into a mug, thinking about the predicament Sara Ann Moore had placed them both in. Somehow they had ID’d her. And they damn well knew she was a hitter. Otherwise the cops wouldn’t have come at the blonde with their guns drawn. They had her made, and it was only a matter of time before they tracked her down. And she could lead them right back to him.

“I think I will have that beer,” Sara called over.

“Coming up,” Westmoreland said lightly, but his mind was still working on the problem at hand. He knew the cops were close to Sara, but he didn’t know how close. They didn’t have her home address yet, because if they did, they would have picked her up there. The cops only had her postal box number. But now that they had her name, the chase would be a straight line and they would quickly zero in on her. She had just a few days left.

Westmoreland brought the beers to their booth and sat across from her. He studied her face briefly. She looked scared and tired, like prey about to be captured. He knew how he would handle her—and all the rest of this mess. “You’ve got to get out of town,” he told her.

“I know,” Sara said. “When should I leave?”

“Soon,” he said. “Within thirty-six hours.”

“That’s not much time.”

“You’ve got to get while the getting’s good.”

Sara began organizing things in her mind. Leave the car and the condominium as is and catch a plane out. Make the reservations at a ticket office and pay in cash. Don’t go home tonight. Stay at a motel. Only that airline ticket would cost a lot. She had no credit cards and only a hundred in cash. “Do you think I should chance going to my safety deposit box?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You’re right,” Sara said, nodding. “It’s just that I’m a little short on cash.”

“Me, too,” Westmoreland lied. “I just paid off a big gambling debt.”

“I think I’ll take a chance and go back to my condominium after I leave here.” Sara lit another cigarette off the cigarette she was smoking. Her hands were no longer shaking. “I have to grab a few personal things and download stuff off my computer.”

“It’ll be risky.”

“I’ve got to do it,” Sara told him. “The information in my computer is very important to me. And I’ve also got some cash stashed away up there.”

“Be very careful,” Westmoreland warned. “Call the front desk and talk with your doorman before you go there.”

“That’s my plan.”

“And grab only what you absolutely need and get out.”

Sara sighed deeply. “I wish I had more cash I could get to. I’m going to be on the move for a while, and that costs.”

Westmoreland slowly twirled his beer mug between his palms, studying the foam as it rose. “I know somebody who’s willing to pay really big bucks for a quick hit.”

“Jesus!” Sara blurted out. “Not another rush job.”

“I’m talking really, really large bucks.”

Sara fixed her eyes on Westmoreland. “How much would I get?”

“Your end would be forty thousand.”

Sara whistled softly and repeated, “Forty thousand.”

“And that’s a lot of traveling money.”

“Who’s the hit?”

“Joanna Blalock.”

Sara shook her head. “If we hit her, half the world will come looking for us.”

“Not if she just disappears.”

“Has the hit already been planned?”

Westmoreland nodded. “For tomorrow night. You could do it and be on your way with forty large in your purse.”

Sara considered the proposition carefully, weighing the pros and cons of a quick hit. Things could go wrong without appropriate planning and usually did. But the forty thousand was irresistible.

“Well?” Westmoreland pressed.

“I need to know the details before I can give you an answer.”

Westmoreland gave her an icy stare. “If I tell you about it, you’re committed.”

Sara hesitated, still unsure what to do. The money was great, but so was the risk. Killing Joanna Blalock could set off a firestorm of trouble. Again she thought about the forty thousand dollars. With that kind of money, she could avoid the firestorm. Finally she said, “Okay, I’m in.”

“Good,” Westmoreland said approvingly. “Here’s how it will work. We know where Blalock lives and where she parks her car at home. It’s an outdoor parking space at the north end of the condominium complex. When she gets out of her car, you pop her. Two to the head. Make sure you use your silencer.”

“And how does she disappear?”

“My friend Scottie and his cement truck will be close by. Blalock will be put in a body bag and taken to a place where she’ll be covered up in wet cement.” Westmoreland ran an index finger across his throat and smiled humorlessly. “She disappears and she’s never found.”

“And I walk away with forty grand?”

“Right,” Westmoreland said. “Let me call Scottie and tell him it’s a go.”

As Sara watched him walk to the phone, she considered the things she had to do back at her condominium. The most important task was to download her computer and retrieve all the information on her stock portfolio. Once she did that, she was safe. The accounts were all untraceable because everything was bought in her mother’s name using her mother’s Social Security number.

Sara sighed sadly as she thought about her mother, who was withering away with Alzheimer’s disease and for whom Sara was conservator. The poor woman couldn’t even recognize her daughter anymore. A picture of her mother flashed into Sara’s mind. She pushed it aside and went back to tallying money. There was a half-million in stocks and another fifty thousand in cash, including the fee for the upcoming hit. Not a fortune, but enough to get by on until she inherited her mother’s estate. And that wouldn’t be long now. Maybe it was time to get out of the hit business while—as David had said—the getting was good.

David returned to the booth and handed Sara a slip of paper. “Everything is set. Here’s the location where you meet Scottie tomorrow at six p.m.”

“You sure he’s reliable?”

“Absolutely,” Westmoreland said. “And he’s the best cement man we’ve got.”

Sara shuddered. “I don’t want to see any of this cement business.”

“Oh, you’ll be long gone by then,” David reassured her.

It was early evening when Joanna arrived at the large, busy shopping mall on the west side of the San Fernando Valley. The ground level was crowded with shoppers who were there for the semiannual red-letter sale. Moviegoers—mainly teenagers—were lined up for the horror show at the mall’s theater.

Joanna waded through the crowd until she spotted Nancy Tanaka standing outside Nordstrom. She waved and strolled over. “Thanks for meeting me here on such short notice,” Joanna said.

“I’m glad you called,” Nancy told her. “It gave me a chance to get away from Bio-Med for a while.”

Joanna detected the unhappiness in the technician’s voice. “I thought things would go better for you now that Alex Mirren is no longer there.”

“If anything, it’s gotten worse,” Nancy said. “I think they now consider me persona non grata.”

Two screaming children dashed by, followed by two more who were screaming even louder.

“Let’s get away from this noise.”

Joanna took Nancy’s arm and guided her into the giant department store. They strolled down an aisle that was lined with ladies leatherware. “Tell me more about this persona non grata business,” Joanna inquired. “Have they said something to you?”

Nancy shook her head. “It’s not what they say, it’s what they’ve done. I’ve now been taken off all projects dealing with the enzyme preparation. They’ve even taken my laboratory data books away.”

“Without explanation?”

“Oh, they say the projects are nearly completed, but that’s not true. That’s a bunch of bull.”

Nancy stopped and picked up an expensive lizard-skin purse. She studied it closely and then made a face at its three-hundred-dollar price tag. “And on top of everything else,” she said, “they’re giving me not so subtle hints that I soon may be let go.”

“Oh, goodness,” Joanna lamented, feeling bad for the attractive technician. “This may well be my fault. My investigation may have cost you your job.”

“Not really,” Nancy said, putting the expensive purse back on the shelf. “I think the handwriting was on the wall when Alex Mirren died. You see, I worked almost exclusively with him.”

“They could have found you another position.”

“Well, they apparently chose not to.”

Joanna thought for a moment and then asked, “Would you be interested in a position at Memorial?”

“In microbiology?”

“Yes.”

“I’d love it,” Nancy said sincerely. “But I hear they’ve got a waiting list a mile long.”

“I know a few shortcuts.”

Nancy smiled. “I’d be indebted to you forever.”

“No,” Joanna told her. “That would just make us even.”

They walked on, passing the cosmetic counters where women were lined up to try a new brand of lipstick. To their right was the perfume area with clerks dressed in sharp white coats. A lovely fragrance filled the air.

“I want to ask you a few more questions,” Joanna said in a low voice.

“Fire away.”

“Did you know that Alex Mirren worked with fetuses?”

Nancy jerked her head around. “Human?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus,” Nancy hissed under her breath. “I never saw it.”

“Can you think of anybody or any experiment that used human fetuses?”

Nancy shook her head emphatically. “Not even animal fetuses.”

“Could they have worked on fetuses in the back room in the hot zone lab?” Joanna asked. “You know, where they have the small surgical table?”

“I guess,” Nancy said with uncertainty. “But I never saw any evidence of it.”

“But you were rarely in the back room. Right?”

“Almost never.”

Another blank wall
, Joanna thought. But Mirren was working with human fetuses—she was sure of that. And she knew that the abortions were done during the day and that the fetuses had to be handed over within six hours. Six hours. That meant the fetuses had to be delivered to Bio-Med during the day or early evening. “Did you ever see any unusual deliveries? For example, things packed in ice and rushed in?”