The Sweet Dead Life (24 page)

Maybe I was.)

Casey smiled, his eyes still on the screen. "I'm not going anywhere, Jenna. I just used up my earthly flight is all."

"How do you know?" I asked. I was worried I might start crying.

Casey shrugged. "I don't. Look, all I care about right now is that Mom has slept through this whole freaking insanity. Can you imagine what she's gonna say?"

I tried to laugh, but my eyes moistened. "Stop trying to change the subject.

What if you need them again? What if I need them? What if--"

Casey's cell rang. When he answered, I could hear Lanie shouting from her end. "I saw you on the news! Was that really you? Since when have you become a stuntman?"

I decided to leave him alone then and get some sleep, too. I reminded myself that with or without boots, I was a Texas girl. I would take things as they came.

IT WAS A good thing that Amber Velasco--EMT, bartender, and maybe not so annoying angel--preferred cleavage-showing shirts, body hugging jeans, and kick-ass pointed boots. Because when she'd sashayed into the police station that same night to do a little recon, she was able to convince them not 214 to press charges for the "indoor skydiving stunt." It had certainly not been authorized by the Galleria, and the Galleria owners were extremely

pissed off. Somehow, she was able to convince them that she and Casey and I were in fact "indoor skydivers." In other words, a bunch of young idiots wandering around on the fifth floor of the Galleria looking for a place to do our stunt, when we happened to run into a bunch of crooks. And since those crooks recognized Casey and me, well, the extraordinary series of coincidences paid off.

The kicker? She was also able to finagle a copy of Renfroe's confession. It was scrawled in his own shaky handwriting, and without any prompting, apparently. The guy had a lot to get off his hairy chest. Amber appeared at our door with it just about sunrise. Mom was still asleep, thankfully. The three of us retreated to Casey's room and sat on the bed in a row, reading together as Amber flipped the pages.

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All I ever wanted was to improve memory for my patients. The FDA wasn't moving fast enough. They never do. I was on the verge of a cure for Alzheimer's! They should have jumped at the chance. How many people in this country would give everything they have not to watch someone they love waste away? But instead the government kept testing.

So, yes. I did a preliminary trial on my own. I didn't have any other choice. I'm not crazy. I was helping. Can't you see that? Sometimes there's collateral damage. I didn't mean for it to go so far. You have to believe that.

No one died at first. If someone had died,

I would have stopped,

even if I knew that I would succeed down the line. But I was working on my own and I had to keep it quiet. Secrecy wasn't that hard to maintain, because nobody on my staff questioned what I was doing, except for one person.

Holly Samuels was the X factor in my whole equation. She was the only one who mentioned the meds I seemed to be giving to patients that didn't come straight from a pharm company.

Then her husband Mike started asking around, too.

If she had minded her own business, it all would have worked out. But she didn't. I respected Holly Samuels. I trusted Holly Samuels. But I couldn't have her ruining everything.

In the first round of baseline testing,

five patients regained most

of their short-term memory when ingesting the drug I called M1. At first I was elated. But a week into that first trial, their other cognitive functions began fading. It's a common problem with memory-enhancing drugs: You gain in one spot and you lose in another. The brain is tricky that way. I don't mean any disrespect, but this is something the law enforcement community and 216

legislature will never understand.

Back to the sequence of events, as you've asked me to transcribe: As I continued testing, they began to forget more. By the

tenth trial

dose, they forgot the things most important to them, even their names. I knew I had to work harder. No good in remembering what you ate for breakfast if you can't remember your children. So I reconfigured the chemical compounds but something went wrong. One patient died. But he was 88. He had a heart condition.

Then another died. And another. And ten more after that.

I was and still am convinced I could crack the secret. I couldn't stop. I was too far in debt. I'd been a poker player since college, great at figuring the odds. It made no sense to me. Patients were dying and I was losing at cards.

I tried to make it up at blackjack and slots. No use. I'd lost the touch. But you have to understand, I was sure I'd get it back. Luck turns. Things change.

And I was trying to do something good.

Right around the same time I re-mortgaged Oak View to cover my losses, I met Manny. It wasn't a coincidence. Manny isn't just the enchilada king. He's connected. He keeps an office in the Galleria, so that should be a huge tip-off. How could the owner of a Tex-Mex restaurant afford such swank real estate?

He never told me who his partners were. I never asked. When someone can recite your bank statements verbatim, you shut the hell up. Manny trolls for people like me, people whose fortunes take a turn for the worse, so he can blackmail them. It's that simple.

But I was a special case. And there's a simple reason for that, too: My mistake was worth more to Manny and his

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partners than my success. A pill that could make people forget offered exactly what Manny wanted. I should have walked away. But we don't always do what we should. And that's when people get scared.

So when I overheard Holly Samuels on the phone with her husband, talking about dying patients and weird symptoms, I gave into fear. She'd been watching me when she thought I wasn't looking. But it wasn't that. It was that her husband was a journalist.

What would Manny's men do if they found out an employee was on to me, that her journalist husband was nosing around Oak View? Fear's a funny thing. I had never been afraid like that. My logic: if I got rid of Mike, Holly would be so grief-stricken that she wouldn't care about Oak View anymore.

So I called Mike to set up a meeting, to talk about his wife's suspicions. I made one condition: he keep our meeting a secret. I almost lost my nerve, but Manny and his boys were watching. They set it all up: the waitress and

the spill, so he'd have to take a trip to the men's room, where I was waiting with a needle. After the injection, Mike Samuels promptly forgot who he was.

I'd gotten that good at synthesizing a drug that destroyed the very thing I wanted to save. I'm not boasting. I'm being honest. Manny and his boys were proud. Ask them, if they don't kill you first.

That's the whole point. I couldn't do what Manny really wanted. I couldn't kill the guy. So I dumped him on a Grayhound bus and sent him off to LA with no ID in his wallet. If he wasn't mugged or arrested, something else would happen.

Of course, Holly came to work the next day hysterical. Mike hadn't come home. He'd left a note on the counter,

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but he wasn't answering his cell phone. What would she tell Casey and Jenna? What was she going to do?

That first day, I was sure she was manipulating me, trying to get me to confess. Fear consumed me. Of course Mike had told her about our meeting.

But as the weeks went on, I realized he hadn't. My plan was working. Holly was in no condition to be suspicious of me anymore.

You know what I didn't count on? The guilt.

I started funneling money into Holly's bank account. I didn't want her kids to starve. I'm not a bad man. One of my casino acquaintances knew how to make online transactions without leaving a trail. I never added too much.

Just enough to keep them from losing everything.

But eventually the fear came back. Holly Samuels was a smart woman. Not as smart as I am, but smart enough. She'd say something to those kids of hers. Jenna was too young, but the boy--Casey--he was sharp. What if he began to see the connections? By then the police had almost convinced her that her husband didn't want to be found.

I hated seeing her look so sad and defeated, but that's the way it had to be.

And that's the way it stayed for about four years. Time slips by faster than you think. Especially when you're looking over your shoulder, making sure you're not about to get caught. My life ceased to be my own. I was a slave to Manny and his boys. Gambling away the money they gave me on the drug I created to make their victims forget. Some life, huh? I'm a caring guy, you see. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Sometimes Holly still cried when she thought no one was looking.

Then about a year ago, Holly dropped a bomb on me. She was suddenly