“Later,” one of the paramedics complained to Haite. “Let him rest.”
Ignoring him, the technician continued. “The machine itself is protected by a backup power supply, so once we cut the juice, it dumped its buffers to disk, and Ginny, waiting for it, grabbed the file. It took her a couple of seconds is all.”
Seconds?
Dart thought.
“After that,” Haite said, “it was all ERT. We’d lost you on the radio. We weren’t happy campers.”
“We
got
the file?”
“We got everything,” Haite confirmed. “Ginny’s a fucking genius.”
Arielle Martinson looked much smaller, much older in the CAPers interrogation room, even with her high-priced attorney sitting next to her. Dart was familiar with Bernie Wormser’s reputation, but had never faced him. Wormser had worked hard to arrange the interview elsewhere, but there they were, in a cramped, windowless room with a linoleum floor. Just the way Dart had wanted it.
Dart carried a tape recorder with him. His left arm was in a sling. He plugged the machine into a wall outlet, turned it on, and recorded the names of those present, the location, the date and time. Martinson appeared restless, Wormser, dead calm.
“As you know,” Dart addressed Martinson, “we’ve charged you with interfering in a criminal investigation, in so much as Terrance Proctor, and therefore Proctor Securities, acted as your agent. In this regard, there is also the charge of first-degree murder, for the shooting death of Walter Zeller, and attempted murder for the actions taken against myself. There are federal charges concerning the rigging of certain clinical trial results—”
“You don’t know anything,” Martinson said venomously. Wormser touched her arm lightly. She glared at her attorney, and as he attempted to speak, cut him off. “No, Bernie. I’ll dig my own grave, thank you just the same.”
“I really don’t think—” Wormser attempted.
“Quiet,” she said, silencing him, and burning his face scarlet. To Dart she said, “Have you ever dealt with a victim of sexual assault, Detective? Physical abuse? Do you have any clue what you’re dealing with here? Do you understand the trauma—the permanent damage done to a woman, and to boys as well—by such violation? Do you? Someone else’s body inside yours … the sense of helplessness … the pain … disease … Someone striking you … drooling onto you, slobbering onto you—”
“Arielle!” Wormser chastised.
“Oh, shut up!” she roared back at him.
Dart’s voice cracked as he explained, “He was shot five times, the last of which penetrated his skull just below the left eye and killed him.”
Ignoring him, she said, “What if you possessed the knowledge, the ability, to reduce sexual assault—rape—by ten percent? Spousal and child abuse by twenty percent? Sixty percent? What if you knew you had that within your grasp? And what if the government, in all its banality, had structured a set of rules so confining, so slow, so difficult to maneuver through that you came to understand it might be
decades
before you could bring this technology to market? What then? Do you sit back and wait? In this country, a woman is beaten every twelve
seconds
.” She glanced at her Rolex. “Since we’ve been sitting here, over ten women have had a fist raised to them. Would you wait decades, if you were in my shoes?”
Dart was flooded with a dozen images of Zeller. “Walter Zeller discovered your treatment of the documentation for the clinical trials. He uncovered Proctor’s tampering with the facts. Subsequent to that discovery he was pursued, his life was threatened, day and night, for over twelve months—”
Interrupting him, she said, “Who
are
you? Are you listening to what I’m telling you? Do you hear what I’m saying? So what if I altered some of the paperwork? That’s all it was—paperwork!”
“Arielle, I
have
to interrupt!” objected Wormser.
“Shut up, Bernie. You’re being paid either way.” Addressing Dart she continued, “Would I have put Laterin on the market despite less-than-perfect results? You bet I would.” Meeting eyes with him, she said, “I
will
if I get the chance. I’d rather stop fifteen, twenty, thirty percent of such beasts, than stand by and do nothing. Every
twelve
seconds, don’t forget. And would I have resorted to such means for the sake of greed? No. For the sake of
science
, Detective. For the sake of the victim. Every new generation of Laterin that we developed showed a five- to seventeen-percent improvement. But there’s no way to test it, given the
rules.
You can’t test Laterin on rats or monkeys! Who are you kidding? This is a human aberration—and in large part, a genetic
defect.
You know who should be in this room, should be here instead of me? The FDA.” She nodded. “You bet. That’s who should be in this chair. Not me. Am I guilty of trying to
do
something? You bet I am. And damn proud of it.”
“You’ll go to jail for your actions,” Dart told her. “But by cooperating now—as Mr. Wormser will tell you—special consideration will be given your case.”
“I don’t want your special consideration. How many dead women—beaten wives, raped children—equal one Walter Zeller? You tell me how to fit that into an equation. Zeller broke the law repeatedly. In the end, he committed acts of murder—”
“
You
are the murderer!” Dart shouted, regretting immediately the outburst. He collected himself, met eyes with her, and said, “You rigged the data, the results of the trials, and then tried to, and eventually did, kill the man who uncovered your deceit.
You
, not Proctor, not his shooter,
you
.”
Her mouth moved, but no words came out. Finally she whined, “This is important work.”
A silence settled over them. Martinson’s chest heaved from the stress. Dart knew he’d broken out in a sweat.
Dart said, “You can’t balance one against the other. It doesn’t work that way.” He felt himself softening. Twenty-percent fewer sex offenders? Was it possible?
She said, “You do what you have to, Detective. We all do what we feel we have to. I’ll take my chances.” She paused, glanced at the annoyed Wormser and then back to Dart. “You want to know something? Don’t forget that juries are made up of men
and
women. There’s not a jury in this country that would convict me for what I’ve done. It was Zeller that committed murder, not me. A desperate man driven by the loss of his wife. I was trying to
help
the men he killed. They
wanted
that help—that much is
documented
—which is why they participated in the trials.” She looked over at Wormser again. Martinson had spent her life in control. She edged to the front of her seat.
Dart informed the attorney, “Terry Proctor is going to testify against your client. You might want to keep that in mind.”
“Stay where you are, Arielle,” Wormser advised.
She stood up, though feebly. She ran a hand down her smooth navy blue suit and, meeting eyes with Dart, said weakly, “I was trying to help solve a serious social problem. Condemn me if you will.” She walked past him and continued out the door.
Dart did nothing to stop her.
“They called you a genius,” Dart told her. Ginny’s favorite walk was a section of the Appalachian Trail.
“Well, it shows that at least sometimes cops are right,” she teased.
It was awkward for Dart walking with his arm in a sling—he hadn’t realized how much walking depended on swinging his arms. His ankle was good enough for this hike, though it occasionally glowed with a twinge of pain. She had asked to see him, and he was in no mood to deny her.
Once on the trail, she found an overlook where an outcropping of rock faced north, and they perched there, wrapped in their winter coats, their breath fogging, Dart’s heart pounding. The afternoon sun was muted by clouds.
She said, “That was fun, what we did.” He thought that she was referring to the raid at Roxin, but he wasn’t sure.
“Yeah.”
He could tell when she was nervous by the way she chewed her lip. “Where do you stand with Abby?” she asked, not surprising him one bit. He had known what this talk would be about.
“Why?”
“I need to know.”
He wanted to ask why for a second time but thought better of it. He said, “Where do
I
stand, or where do
we
stand?”
“Is there a
we
?”
“Very much so.”
“That’s part of what I need to know,” she said.
“She’s not going back with her husband, if that’s what you’re asking. Ultimately, it was for the kids that she ever considered it—and I think she’s pretty clear that if she sacrifices herself for her kids and ends up unhappy, then that’s maybe harder on the kids than the way it is now.”
“And you?”
“This isn’t easy, you know.”
“I can make it easier,” she told him. “Michael—I’m sure you’ve heard about Michael—has asked me to move to New Hampshire with him. I’m tempted, because it offers a chance to start over. You know…. And I can do my computer work from just about anywhere—I don’t need to be in an office. It works for me. But there’s this part of me that is still holding on to us—is still thinking that we might try again—and I need to put that part away if I’m going to do this. I owe that to Michael. I can’t be leading one life and hoping for another.”
“No, that’s no good,” he said.
The wind blew across them, whistling in Dart’s ears and singing in the shrubs and treetops. The view was a vast sea of gray. Dart felt gray.
“So?” she asked.
“I don’t want to lose touch,” he answered. It was difficult for him to say, and his body ached with it.
“No.” She looked into the wind, and when she looked back at him her eyes were shiny with tears and she gave him a smile that made his heart tight and a lump form in his throat. “It’s okay,” she said, one tear escaping down her cheek.
“So much has happened,” he said.
“Yes, it has,” she agreed, looking away again.
She was a strong person, and he admired her. He wanted to reach over and touch her, to show her the compassion he felt, but he did not. He would not confuse things. It was difficult enough as it was.
“I’m sorry,” she said into the wind.
“Me too.”
They walked a little while longer, and somewhere high above a town that he didn’t recognize, she took his gloved hand in hers and did not let go. She held hands with him for the remainder of the walk, right until they reached their cars, at which point they finally released each other’s grip. She looked into his eyes and said, “We were good together.”
He nodded. He could feel the tears coming from deep within him, and he fought to hold them off.
“A good fit,” she said.
He nodded again.
She kissed him once lightly on the lips, climbed into her car, and was gone.
It seemed strange to Dart that he should know so many people in a graveyard. Patrolman Bernie Denton was buried on the west side in a family site, the victim of a gang shooting and recipient of a funeral covered on national news a few years earlier.
There were two plaques among hundreds on a long cement wall erected for those choosing cremation rather than burial. Walter Zeller’s name was there, alongside Lucky’s, though Lucky’s avoided the nickname. He wasn’t sure what he believed about an afterlife—but if there were such a thing, Zeller was in a tough place.
The sun had risen and set several dozen times since he’d walked out of the hospital a decorated cop, and yet he was still Joe Dart, confused, lonely, restless. No charges had been filed against Kowalski, and although Dart had expected him to return to the department the same man, there were subtle but discernable differences in his acerbic behavior—something had changed.
News stories had filled the screen for a while: the collapse of Roxin Laboratories, and the endless ethical debate that the news of a drug like Laterin had caused. Some were calling Dr. Arielle Martinson a saint, among them a senator from Michigan. Some others were saying her case would never reach trial—that only Proctor and Alverez would serve any time. For her part, Martinson had disappeared, fueling a bevy of rumors—one being that she had signed on with a French company that had bought several of the genetic patents through the bankruptcy court; another that she had committed suicide, following in the steps of her test subjects.
It was all too sensational for Dart. The world was changing so fast—there was no predicting anything. Today’s fear was tomorrow’s promise.
He had no flowers to leave her. He had brought her nothing. He owed her nothing—that was how he felt about it. But he stopped at the foot of her grave anyway, because he couldn’t pass it up. He needed her. He needed that connection to the woman who had birthed him, to the person, however god-awful it had been. She was down there, under the snow and grass and earth, and Dart felt grateful for that.
We are all where we belong
, he thought.
He felt his throat constrict, and he cursed her for maintaining any hold over him, any power.
How dare she!
His eyes brimmed with tears and he wanted to hate her, but he could not.
He reached down and placed his cast in the snow, leaving an unexplained print behind. He closed his eyes and he hated her briefly, but it passed.
“I forgive you,” he whispered, the tears beginning to fall. Met with an unsettling silence, and the distant sound of the Interstate’s overpass.
He stood and walked away, dragging his face against the shoulder of his coat, cursing his weakness.
He followed his own prints back through the deep snow, painfully aware that there were no other prints to follow.
It’s okay
, he thought, glancing over at the wall that bore Zeller’s name.
Abby had kept the engine running. Kept things warm. Mac slept in the backseat.
She was driving. Dart was no good with the cast.
“You all right?” she asked, reaching over and touching his face lightly, wiping away one of his tears.