Bad Medicine (32 page)

"Why would five friends all commit suicide within a few weeks of each other?"

"Are you sure it was suicide?"

Molly laughed. "That's the only thing I am sure of. I've spent the day wading around in the detritus, and I can guarantee you that what we have is mass suicide. Or serial suicide, I guess. Mass events all happen at once. Serial events happen with time elapsing in between each event. That's what I have, a serial suicidist."

"You're tired."

"I don't understand it. There wasn't any kind of note to connect the acts, any indication to families. Most of the families didn't even know that these folks met regularly for lunch. Why are they all dead?"

Sam lit a second cigarette with the first. "Who knows? Maybe they all studied Sylvia Plath over lunch."

Molly laughed again. This time she meant it. "You want your tea or mine?"

"Don't be absurd. You should nap."

"I should get my laundry done and my kitchen cleaned up. My new houseguest turned it into excelsior while I was gone."

Taking a second to sweep up the majority of the ticker tape from her floor, Molly crouched in the far corner of the kitchen and opened the liquor cabinet. It was usually dusty during the summer. Molly pulled out a bottle of Stoli and closed the door again. "How's Myra?"

"She sends her love. We walked to the sunroom yesterday. Who was that nice young man here yesterday?"

Molly poured out the tea and harrumphed. "That was
not
a nice man. You remember the lawyer who sued me?"

"Him? With that beautiful little girl with the big eyes and good manners?"

"I know. Who'd believe it? I guess the wolves who raised him respected manners, too."

When she uncapped the bottle to sweeten Sam's tea, Molly caught a whiff of the alcohol. A whisper. A temptation. She was so tired and sore, and it was such a good muscle relaxant. She wanted to be a good hostess. It wouldn't be that much, and Sam would be here.

With deliberate motions, she recapped the bottle, put it away, and served Sam his tea. Then, instead of giving herself a chance to sit and rethink her actions, she scooped up the basket of clothes that had been waiting for the wash.

"Sit," Sam commanded. "And tell me why this
gonif
lawyer would dare darken your doorstep."

Molly smiled on her way by to the washroom. "I have to work tomorrow, and my lab coat is full of dog hair and Betadine. And there's nothing to tell about the lawyer. He knew one of the victims. That's all."

"Are you going to call your work?"

"Nah. Let 'em call me again."

She was tossing clothes in the washer, rummaging through pockets to clean them out so she didn't re-sterilize needles and melt rubber tourniquets. Whatever she found she tossed in a basket on the dryer, which she then brought back to the communal basket at work where all supplies inadvertently carried home in lab coat pockets were collected.

"I wanted it to be something other than suicide," she said, almost to herself as the old man sipped from her mother's good Sevres china in her kitchen.

"Another way's better?" he asked. "Dead is dead."

Molly smiled to herself as she tossed a handful of Band-Aids into the pile. "The guilt's easier to carry when it's not suicide."

She pulled out a glossy pamphlet and tossed it on top of the rest of the stuff until she could lob it into the trash.

"I'm sure there's a wonderful saying for this," Sam said to no one in particular. "But I've been forbidden. Your dog is now being terrorized by a squirrel."

"It'll teach him to be humble."

Molly's eyes kept drifting back to the cover of the glossy pamphlet. To the bright, pretty blue pills the nurse was holding in her palm, to the perfectly-pressed and smiling patient who graced the cover beneath the scrolled lettering proclaiming the newest innovation in medicine.

Bright blue pills.

Pretty blue.

Why did that trigger something at the back of her memory?

The other day, she thought. Allan and his duck, both in need of a little relief. The drug salesman from Argon had passed out pamphlets with his promises.

No, it was something else. Molly wouldn't forget, because those pills were such an unusual color, even for the paint box of colors pills came in these days. She'd held them herself, and it hadn't been to give to Allan, because he'd been handed off to psych for evaluation before treatment.

Blue. Blue.

Molly forgot the lab coat. She forgot to put the soap into the water before she closed the lid. Her eyes were on the pamphlet she'd been carrying around for days, and the pills she kept seeing someplace besides on paper.

Oh, shit. Of course. She'd seen them scattered on a dresser like bright beads from a broken necklace.

She'd scooped them up in her hand along with the other, more easily recognizable meds, to take away for analysis.

She'd held them in a plastic bag and wondered what they were.

Now she knew. They were Transcend. Generic name, synapsapine.

They were an experimental drug that was in limited trial.

Something was wrong about that. Something that said an experimental personality enhancer didn't mix with a casual lunch group.

Jesus, Molly thought, not breathing. Could this mean something?

"Molly? Are you deaf now, too?"

Molly startled at the impatience in Sam's voice. Then she realized why. The phone must have been ringing, because he was holding it out to her, his expression at once concerned and irritated.

Molly jumped to get it. "Yes."

"Molly, it's Kevin. Can you come down?"

"I was there all morning, and it's now my dinnertime. Listen, Kevin, I think I may have something."

There was a sigh. "I need to talk to you, Molly."

"So, talk. But first, I have to tell you something. I want to go back through the files again—"

"You can't."

"What do you mean I can't?"

"As of three o'clock this afternoon, you're not working here anymore."

Chapter 16

"You shouldn't be down here," Kevin protested.

"You told me to come down," Molly retorted, leaning over his desk. "Right before you told me I'd been fired."

Kevin had some trouble facing her with the answer. "The official term is unpaid leave. And I said we'd discuss it later."

Molly made a show of checking her watch. "It is later. Now, talk. I have some tox levels I need to check."

For the first time since she'd known him, Kevin pulled rank. Getting to his considerable feet, he leaned right back over her. "No. Not today. After this has all blown over."

Molly glared at him. "After
what
has blown over?"

He sighed and straightened. "Then you didn't see the five o'clock news."

Molly felt that old familiar tug of impending disaster. "I was in rush hour traffic. Why?"

"City hall's a little nervous right now."

"I can imagine."

"They don't feel they can stand any bad press."

Which meant that the mayor had caught wind of the scope of the gambling investigation. "I make a lousy sacrificial goat, Kevin," she warned her supervisor. "I never stay quiet. Besides, all I have to do is go to Winnie."

Kevin was beginning to look really uncomfortable. "Winnie was the one who told me. You're on unpaid leave as of now until we can clear up the missing file situation, and... uh, the press settles down a little about what happened the other night."

Molly was almost breathless with fury. "I was mugged," she said very quietly.

Kevin couldn't even look at her this time. "There seems to be a question about whether there was alcohol on your breath."

That did it. Molly straightened with whatever dignity she had left. "I see," she said, struggling to keep her voice even. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate the support of this office, Kevin. I really can't."

Before she thought about what she was doing to the rest of her part-time career, she swung out of the office and marched over to Winnie's.

"Molly, this is just temporary..." She heard behind her. She ignored that, too.

Winnie's door was closed, but then Winnie's door was always closed. Molly didn't bother to knock. She just pushed her way in, figuring she had nothing left to lose.

Winnie wasn't home.

"Where is she?" Molly yelled without turning around.

"Finishing up at court. Go home! We'll talk later."

Molly ignored him again. She was not leaving this office without having her say. If Winnie didn't have the courage to face her, Molly guessed she'd just get a note instead.

Molly hadn't spent much time in Winnie's office.

Nobody had. The rule was inviolate. Winnie didn't even bother to lock her door, so sure was she that nobody would break the rule that her space was off-limits.

The room itself reflected her. Sparsely decorated with no-comfort furniture and a wall full of very fierce-looking African masks that all seemed to face the visitor's chair across the desk from Winnie's. Winnie wasn't into African art. She just used the masks to keep problems at a physical distance. It worked. Molly's abiding memory of being dressed down was the image of grotesque expressions and sinister gaping voids where eyes should have been.

Winnie's desk was functional and spotless, not a file out of place, not even a notepad visible anywhere convenient. Figuring she didn't have a whole lot to lose, Molly went for the drawers, breaking inviolate rule number two. Nobody went in Winnie's desk.

Molly found out why on her second drawer.

She'd just been looking for paper. Just something to leave a furious note on to the effect that if Winnie didn't have the balls to protect one of her staff, maybe she didn't deserve the job after all. Molly was that upset.

She passed upset at a gallop when she saw what was in the left-hand drawer of Winnie's desk.

"Oh, no."

White typewriter paper, as carefully folded as a love letter. As carefully printed. Tucked beneath a couple of pressed carnations right on top of the stationery and writing supplies that filled the rest of the drawer in neat, tidy compartments.

Pearl's suicide note.

"You shouldn't be in there!" Kevin yelled from across the hall. "You know that!"

Molly knew that now. She felt numb. Betrayed all over again. Deserted. She didn't know what to do or what to think. Could somebody have planted this here? Could Winnie really have had it here all this time while Molly was being pummeled by the press and city hall? Had she had it hidden away in that drawer when she'd been screaming at Molly about responsibility and accountability?

Molly scooped out the letter. She found a piece of paper beneath it and wrote two words.
Call Me.
Then she arranged it on the pressboard desktop right in front of Winnie's chair with the carnations on top. The letter, she took with her.

"Here," she said to Kevin as she handed it over. "I found this after all. It's Pearl's. You can't ask any questions about it because I don't work here anymore. Keep it someplace safe."

Kevin hadn't even begun to react before Molly was out the door and down the stairs. He reacted then, pounding after her.

"What the hell's this all about?" he demanded from the top of the stairs.

"I told you," she said. "I don't work here anymore."

"You won't if you don't answer me!" he yelled.

Molly turned at the bottom of the stairs, suddenly so tired she could hardly stand up. "Okay," she said, leaning against the banister so she could see him better. "I'll give you this for free. I found out the mayor's being investigated in the gambling contract, which is why we're getting this heat. I also found out that at least two of those suicide victims had a drug in them that isn't even on the market yet, so we may have something else tying those five suicides together. Whether you like it or not, I'm going to find out what's going on."

"What about this?" he asked, lifting the square of paper Molly knew by heart.