Shadow of Eden (17 page)

Marty exploded. “What?”

“Rhonda Fowler, eighteen years old. Came in six months ago. A colleague took care of her. Same story right down to the MRI. And she died.” Steve finished with a heavy, futile feeling, in his chest.

“Well, shit. This thing’s just popping up everywhere. Why Eden?”

“Well, they both took Eden.”

“And?”

“It’s administered through the nose.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s the only one I can think of.”

“Tenuous.”

Steve began to pace in the corridor. “Marty, we did clinical studies on Eden for years. Shirley was on one of our studies and could have been on it for up to four years. Perhaps that might have something to do with this disease.”

“Well, if there’s a long latency period . . .” Marty mused, “but how does that explain the Captain?”

“Something a nurse just said. Maybe he was taking someone else’s prescription, you know, so the airline couldn’t find out about it and all.”

“That’s a thought,” Marty admitted.

“Airline pilots aren’t allowed to take prescription medications without prior authorization. I doubt United would allow its pilots to take Eden.”

“So, maybe he got it on the sly.”

“That’d make the case stronger.”

“But, Steve,” Marty logically pointed out, “It’s the biggest selling prescription medicine in the world. This is likely just a statistical probability, you know, two young females. It’s the demographic most likely to take it.”

Steve sighed, “You’re right, of course. I can think of a million objections, but I’m at a diagnostic impasse. If our Captain didn’t take Eden, then, obviously, that’s not it.”

“Well, I’ll check with his wife and see what she says.”

Steve’s thoughts returned to the days when he and his partner, Julia Weisgaard, first started working with Eden, then known as TP-1023. Trident Pharmaceuticals had been an infant start-up company, but its scientists were confident they had a blockbuster weight-reducing drug on their hands. It incorporated a novel mechanism that proved amazingly effective in causing genetically obese mice and rats to achieve a normal body weight without caloric restriction or special diets.

He had become enamored with the concept of a hormone acting in the brain that taught the body to shed weight. Although the initial research patients had to inject the drug like an insulin shot, it worked amazingly well. Patients who weighed up to three hundred fifty pounds slimmed down to a lean figure without any detectable risk to their health. In fact, their blood pressure and cholesterol frequently normalized even without medication.

And as long as they took TP-1023, the weight stayed off. They also felt better, healthier and happier than they ever had in their lives. Word got out about this miraculous drug, swamping Trident with publicity. Its Chairman, Vicktor Morloch, became a media darling, appearing on the morning television talk shows and on countless covers of news and lifestyle magazines.

Interest soared for the new miracle drug still in clinical testing. With each succeeding research trial, patients flooded their office desperate to get into the study. After an attempted break in, Steve and Julia had to hire a security guard to patrol the office at night. The public’s craving for a truly effortless weight loss drug was far deeper than Steve ever imagined.

As the trial results began coming in, Trident’s confidence proved justified. The drug, now formulated as a nasal spray and branded ‘Eden,’ was approved by the FDA in a remarkably short time under its fast track status program.

Initial demand proved insatiable. At first, supply was limited, making the street price skyrocket. Patients sold the inhalers on eBay at ten times the pharmacy price. Someone even hijacked a truck carrying Eden, fatally shooting the driver. In a slick public relations move, Vicktor Morloch paid a million dollars to the driver’s widow and posted a million dollar reward for the arrest and conviction of the killer. It was never claimed.

Supply eventually caught up with demand and Eden broke all previous records for a drug launch, higher even than Viagra and Prozac. Within a year it had surpassed sales for any drug in history.

Even with—or despite—all the hype, Eden fully lived up to its reputation as a miracle drug. Massively obese people gradually lost their weight and looked perfectly normal. Eden’s early ads had an endless array of slender people standing in their old pants and recounting their amazing size improvements and life changes. The cosmetic surgery crowd, of course, had immediately picked it up. Many others, only slightly overweight, and those just paranoid about their weight also used it. In a real sense, fat had been conquered by the daily use of the nasal spray.

The medical journals quickly filled with the health benefits of reducing obesity with Eden. Attendant ills related to increased weight all showed improvements or disappeared entirely. Scientific articles quantified reduction in diabetes, cholesterol, and hypertension in patients slimmed down on Eden. Stroke and heart attack rates had dropped and colon cancer showed its first ever decline, all ascribed to Eden. Trident had quickly begun testing Eden for these other health benefits and the FDA, based on those trial results, had subsequently approved several new indications. It all served to drive more even sales. Steve still had several trials involving Eden and its apparent successor—a new drug called Paradise—ongoing at his office.

After all his experience, Steve could not fathom how Eden could cause a major fault in the brain. Was that a blind spot that explained why it had taken him so long to implicate Eden? He had seen so much good from it and he knew it so intimately, yet, one of his early patients was dying, possibly from the Eden he had originally given her.

Chapter 35

C
losing his black bag after another long day of office patients, Steve readied himself to go home. His cell phone rang and he slipped it out of his back pocket. “Dr. James.”

Dr. Walker’s voice greeted him. “Steve, are you sitting down?”

“Yeah,” Steve answered even though he was walking out his private entrance on the way to the elevator.

“I spoke to Captain Palmer’s wife and she said he never took Eden.”

Steve sighed. As much as he wanted to find the cause, he also wanted it to be something isolated, restricted in its potential for harm. “So it can’t be Eden.”

“I thought so, too, but she happened to mention it to their daughter. Get this. His daughter’s been giving part of her prescription to her dad for some eighteen months, now.”

Steve punched the elevator button. “So it might be Eden after all.”

“Apparently he wanted to take it for his flight physical and liked it so much he kept on taking it. His wife never knew, although I’m told she appreciated her trimmer, more energetic husband.”

“And my guess is,” Steve said, “the pilots’ board or whoever does not allow Eden.”

“Correct. I checked to make sure. Since it’s a short protein chain, they have no easy way to test for it. Captain Palmer apparently knew that, too, and probably figured he could take it without getting busted.”

Steve voiced his nagging thought. “But if everybody takes Eden, how come there aren’t more cases?”

“Right.” They fell silent.

Marty spoke first. “I wonder if there aren’t more, but since they’ve not been aiming large jets at the ground they didn’t get the same attention. Also with isolated cases, it is very hard to detect a trend.”

“And with a long latency period, cases might just now start cropping up,” Steve added. “Shirley first took the drug four or five years ago.”

“But the Captain took his only eighteen months ago, which tells me there may be different susceptibilities to this, Lord knows why. But if it is Eden, there’s got to be others. I bet if we look under the surface we’d find more.”

“Okay. How? Call the CDC?”

“I don’t think that would help. Isolating our specific parameters would entail a record-by-record search. But . . .” he paused, “I might be able to do something from here.”

Chapter 36

I
t was a beautiful November night at Lake Tahoe as Ari Brown stood on the balcony of his vacation home. He turned up his coat collar against the chill as he gazed at the moonlit pine trees; their spiked tops a jagged outline against the blue-black sky. Brown, a young looking forty-seven, had a medium build with a slight paunch that weekend workouts didn’t remedy. His trim goatee suited his slightly graying temples and hazel eyes. He leaned on the banister and breathed the fresh air that sifted through the rough Sierra mountain peaks.

Tall, rough-hewn wooden posts supported the rear and balcony of his house as it jutted out from the hillside, allowing a commanding view of the lake. On quiet nights, the trickle of water in a brook below filtered up through the trees. The front of the two-story house opened onto a circular gravel driveway that threaded through the dense forest down to the access road.

Kirk Mallis, clad in a black Nomex body suit, sat in a mountaineering sling strung up high in a tree with a clear view of the balcony and into the windowed back of the house. Through his powerful night vision binoculars, he watched Janice Brown open and then close the balcony arcadia door and join her husband. She handed him a cup of coffee in a large mug and slipped an arm around his waist snuggling against him. Brown smiled at his wife and pulled her in close.

Mallis spoke softly into his collar microphone. “Family scene on the balcony.”

His earpiece whispered Doug’s reply. “I have visual.” Per plan, Doug watched the side and front of the cabin while Joe watched the dirt road approach. No fuck-ups, Mallis thought as he mentally reviewed his plan. He shifted in his sling as he fought his innate restlessness.

The couple went back inside and, as Mallis watched, they re-joined their daughter, Samantha in front of the TV. Sam, at ten, had light blonde hair and her dad’s hazel, nearly green eyes. They sat together on the couch as they watched a movie. Afterwards, Sam kissed her mom and dad before walking upstairs to her room. She looked cute in her flannel nightgown and bunny slippers.

Ari and Janice lay on the couch in front of a dying fire, holding each other and talking. If you only hadn’t inquired into things you shouldn’t have, thought Mallis, then we wouldn’t be here.

After the call from Morloch, Mallis and his team had investigated Dr. Brown, bugging his office and searching his records and hospital progress notes. From their findings, it was apparent the recent call from Dr. Tobias hadn’t completely assuaged Brown’s suspicions and he had continued to pursue his investigations into Eden. Mallis concluded they had to intervene.

Discovering Dr. Brown’s plans for the weekend, Mallis had dispatched Doug and Joe to prepare the cabin for tonight’s operation. After Dr. Brown and his family had left San Francisco, Mallis had removed all the incriminating documents and computer data from Brown’s office, hospital, and house. This clean up would be quick and neat with the loose ends tied up after tonight.

The living room illumination gradually faded as the fire burned to embers. Brown pulled his wife to her feet and they, too, climbed the stairs. Mallis’s watch-hands glowed twelve thirty-three. He had another hour to wait, maybe more.

At one-thirty, Mallis seeing no lights or movement from the house decided to move. “Descending. Three minutes to rendezvous.”

“Roger.”

Mallis traded his binoculars for his night vision goggles and methodically lowered himself to the ground. There, his rope and sling-seat slid easily into his black backpack. He walked towards the front door of the cabin where he met Doug. They each had the same brand and model of hiking boots that Dr. Brown wore, so the dirt impressions would match.

Mallis carefully pulled on a pair of latex gloves and then from his backpack slid out a Ziploc bag containing a 9 mm Ruger. It was Brown’s and until last night, it had been carefully locked in the top drawer of his home bureau along with the ammo. Mallis pulled the pistol out of the bag. “It’s time,” he said, his Prussian blue eyes narrowing. “No fuck-ups.”

Doug pulled out a key, copied from a spare kept inside the cabin, slid it into the recently lubricated cabin door lock and silently turned it. They entered, locking the door behind. They pulled off their boots and placed them into their packs, walking in their Thorlo socks. Earplugs came out next and slung around their necks by their string. Doug silently slipped up the stairs using a laser pointer to identify the previously mapped squeaky boards for Mallis to avoid.