Doubt (Caroline Auden Book 1) (22 page)

“I just picked up your voice mail. This is most disturbing,” Louis said. “How are you doing?”

Caroline struggled for half a second to recall what he was talking about. She’d called Louis on her drive into the office, after she’d fled the man on the bus. Now she hoped her voice mail hadn’t too obviously held the blinding fear she’d felt as she’d described what had happened to her.

“I’m okay,” she said, even though it wasn’t really true. She donned the headset and set out to wander the firm’s halls. She needed to walk. She needed to settle her nerves.

At the late hour, only a handful of other lawyers occupied the offices ringing the windows of the firm. The rest of the offices were dark except for the ambient light from the neighboring buildings, seen like dark shadows up against the night sky.

“Much as it pains me to say it, I’m afraid we cannot hunt for Dr. Wong,” Louis said in her ear. “It’s too dangerous. I won’t jeopardize your safety. Not for this case. Not for any case.” His voice held a note of finality.

Caroline said nothing. He was right. Things had gotten too hot. Way too hot.

But what about the case? Some part of her mind still protested. They’d be forfeiting any chance of winning if they relinquished the search for the missing scientist. What about all those people? What about Amy and Liam?

As if anticipating her worries, Louis said, “I know I said we couldn’t prevail without Dr. Wong, but that isn’t true. We can have the other scientists testify about the Heller article. We’ll make sure they read it before the next hearing. We’ll fashion questions to elicit the answers we need to win this thing.”

Caroline stayed silent. Her life was an exercise in forcing herself to live boldly despite her fears. She knew she worried. Sometimes excessively. Maybe almost always excessively, she amended. But this time her fears were well-founded.

“Besides,” Louis continued, “Dr. Wong may yet show up of her own accord. She has subpoenas waiting for her at every known location she’s ever frequented. You’ve left messages and sent e-mails to her last contacts.”

“I could also see if she has a personal e-mail account,” Caroline said, slowing her steps.

“Good idea. In the meanwhile, keep working on those witness notes,” Louis said, taking it as a given that she’d given up the hunt. “Without Dr. Wong, we’re going to need to push Dr. Ambrose to extrapolate from his studies on rats. We must get him focused on the similarities between rat and human mitochondria.”

“I’m on it,” Caroline said. Louis’s directions made sense. Drafting witness notes. Conducting mock examinations. These activities were well within the purview of what she’d expected to be doing when she’d stepped into this office two weeks ago. She’d come to Hale Stern to practice law, not become a bounty hunter.

“Good,” said Louis. Then he cleared his throat. “I want to extend my deepest apologies that your first case has turned out to be so harrowing,” he said.

Caroline didn’t know what to say. He was consoling her?

“No, I’m sorry,” she said. “I wanted to impress you—”

“I am impressed,” Louis said. “Finding that article, handling that argument . . . those were remarkable feats. Please rest assured that I am duly impressed with you. I look forward to our next—hopefully far more mundane—case together.”

Caroline stopped before Louis’s newest acquisition. Picasso’s portrait of his girlfriend Dora Maar. Abstracted and shattered, the face read more like a mask. Caroline knew that as Picasso had soured on his girlfriends, he’d pulled apart their faces. No less violent than
Guernica
, Dora Maar’s features were splayed across a canvas. Poor Dora had no podium from which to answer her ex-lover’s ridicule, his almost comical dissection of her face. She was lost to history while the artist was and would always be . . . Picasso.

At Caroline’s silence, Louis continued. “I’m stuck in New York. The time difference will make conversation difficult. But please, feel free to call me. Any time.”

Caroline thanked her boss and hung up.

In the silence, the shattered face of Dora Maar looked back at her suspiciously.

“What are you looking at?” Caroline muttered at the image.

“I heard all that,” came a voice from behind her.

Caroline turned to find Eddie leaning up against the door frame. He wore a cornflower-blue shirt rolled up to his elbows. His dark skin looked like satin.

“Eavesdropping?” she asked, quirking a smile at him to soften the accusation.

“You’ve been pacing right outside my office,” Eddie said. “I was just working late on those witness examination notes you asked me to start when I got back.”

“So, what do you think?” Caroline asked him. She turned back to the portrait on the wall, her eyes unseeing now as she became preoccupied with the question before her.

Eddie came to stand next to her. Together, they stood silently, facing the portrait.

When Eddie’s triceps brushed against her shoulder, Caroline could feel the warmth of his skin even through his shirt. She knew he could feel her back, and that they were both enjoying the quiet proximity of each other. In the island peace conjured by the two of them standing side by side, she told Eddie all about Kennedy, about what had happened on the airport shuttle, and about the crossroads she now faced.

“Is it insane to keep looking for Dr. Wong?” Caroline asked, almost to herself. “These people . . . they probably killed Dr. Heller. They’re seriously dangerous. I’d have to be crazy to keep looking for Dr. Wong, right?”

She wasn’t sure whether she wanted him to agree.

“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “I can imagine someone going after a key witness like Dr. Wong, but lawyers are replaceable—we’re like cockroaches, kill one of us and another will turn up to take his place.” He smiled in an obvious effort to lighten the dour mood.

Caroline didn’t answer. It sounded reasonable. It even echoed what Louis had said. But the churning in her gut said she still wasn’t buying it.

“Do you think we can win without Dr. Wong?” she asked.

Eddie crossed his arms. “I’m a betting man. I’m always willing to take an across-the-board at the races. Big gambles mean big wins. But I don’t like our odds without Dr. Wong.”

Caroline considered her options. Louis would accept whatever decision she made. He’d given her permission to be prudent. To opt out of the hunt. But could she do so, knowing that they’d likely lose? That Amy might lose Liam? That Jasper might be left with nothing but memories of his brother? And that Louis, despite his professed understanding, would view her as the associate who’d lost the case?

“I think we need Dr. Wong, too,” Caroline said finally.

Eddie turned to face her. His pitch-black eyes held a defiant twinkle.

“So then, are we going to keep looking for Dr. Anne Wong?” he asked.

The word
yes
leaped to Caroline’s mouth, but she didn’t give it voice. She examined her motives for continuing what had to be a foolhardy—if not downright dangerous—endeavor. Was she so desperate for Louis’s approval? No, that wasn’t it. The need to keep going had become something else. A chance to do some good. An opportunity to right the scales, maybe a little, away from the things she’d done that had caused so much harm. If she could help Amy and Jasper and Liam, she couldn’t be that bad a person. Right? The question hung in her mind.

“Let’s see if we can figure out where Dr. Wong went,” Caroline said, her voice full of sudden resolve. The complex mess of reasons why didn’t matter. Boiled down, those reasons amounted to a simple imperative: she just had to keep going.

“Good,” Eddie said. “What clues do we have? What do we know about Dr. Wong?”

“Come on, I’ll show you,” Caroline said, leading Eddie toward her office.

“What is that?” Eddie asked from over Caroline’s shoulder. His attention was trained on the screen of her laptop.

“Franklin Heller’s secret FTP site,” Caroline said. “It’s where I found the article. In addition to the article and the backup data, there was also a letter to Yvonne. I’ve been meaning to look at it.”

She pulled up the document and read the one line hovering in the middle of the white screen:

I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. Love always, F.

“Weird,” Eddie said. “It’s like he knew he was gonna kick the bucket.”

“He probably did,” Caroline said. Although Dr. Heller had known what might happen, he’d been powerless to stop it. How horrific, she reflected. How horrible his last moments must have been, knowing all of his fears had been realized. Caroline studied the words of the scientist’s final missive to his wife another moment before closing the document.

“But this isn’t helping us figure out where Dr. Wong ran off to,” she said.

“How do you know she ran?” Eddie asked. “How do you know she’s not dead?”

“She definitely ran. She told her boyfriend she was leaving town and didn’t know if or when she’d be back. As for whether she’s dead, I guess we don’t know for sure that she’s alive. But I think she’d try really hard not to die. She’s got a kid . . .” Caroline trailed off.

“What is it?” Eddie asked.

“She has a five-year-old son with asthma. He’s on this experimental drug protocol to control it. It’s called Telexo.”

Caroline pivoted around until she faced Eddie.

“The drug manufacturer,” Eddie said, his eyes widening.

“Exactly. Maybe they’ve got a genetic engineering division? Or the same parent company as Med-Gen?” Caroline turned back toward the laptop and entered a search for the name of the company that made Telexo. Annie’s son, Nolan, needed Telexo to prevent his asthma attacks. A threat to his Telexo supply could have prompted Dr. Wong to run from the article she’d helped to author. That had to be it. That’s why Dr. Heller’s office was so orderly. No need for ransacking. Just a scientist with access who’d purged the computer of all information before she bailed.

Caroline tapped her foot with impatience while the page loaded on the screen.

When it finally appeared, she breathed out with disappointment. The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Gruezet owned the drug company that manufactured Telexo. There was no link to Med-Gen.

“Damn,” Eddie breathed from behind her.

Not ready to give up, Caroline hunted for some other connection between Telexo and Med-Gen. She navigated to Med-Gen’s website and began sifting through the corporate governance documents and quarterly reports and press releases. When those yielded nothing interesting, she tried Wikipedia.

She found a short summary of the long, sad history of Med-Gen. Founded in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1967, Med-Gen’s predecessor had a good run making plastic bags for bread companies until 1973, when the oil crisis had choked off its petroleum supply. After standing at the precipice of bankruptcy, the company had received an infusion of venture capital and reinvented itself as a biotech company. Unfortunately, its early products experienced little success. Its asthma medication failed in clinical trials. Its diabetes treatments caused unpleasant heart palpitations and were soon supplanted by better products from other companies. Med-Gen’s recent transition to creating genetically modified seeds had provided much-needed hope for Med-Gen’s management. And its investors.

Caroline ran a search of investment advisors’ evaluations of Med-Gen.

Almost immediately, she found an article bearing the headline “Med-Gen’s One-Trick Pony.”

“Check this out,” Caroline said. “Med-Gen’s stock got downgraded last year in light of the company’s lack of diversified product offerings.” She pivoted around to face Eddie again. “Translation—they’re too dependent on SuperSoy for their revenues.”

“Fine, so they have a motive to suppress the science that could sink SuperSoy.” Eddie scanned the screen. “But there’s still no link to Annie Wong.”

“We’ve got one more clue.” Caroline’s fingers danced across the keyboard until she’d pulled up the video message. “Dr. Wong sent this to her boyfriend about a week after she left town. It’s possible she shot the video wherever she’s hiding out. But don’t get your hopes up. There’s not much to see. I’ve already watched it about a hundred times.”

To prove her point, Caroline played the message.

Annie Wong stood in the half light between dusk and darkness. A wind stirred her jet-black hair. Even in the dim light, her face looked tired.

“I’m sorry, Henrik,” she began, her voice tinny on Caroline’s speakers, “but you’ve got to stop calling me. I don’t blame you for not understanding. I barely do myself.” The words were spoken quickly, as if she were afraid to stop her momentum. But then she paused. “Even if it doesn’t seem like it right now, please know that I really do love you. I hope you can move on.”

“Wait.” Eddie pointed at the screen. “Right before the message ends, there’s a flash.”

“I know. I saw it. I think she was standing near a highway,” Caroline said.

“Maybe so. Play it again,” Eddie said.

Caroline obliged. Yes, there it was. A flash right before Dr. Wong had hit “Stop.”

“That doesn’t look like headlights to me,” Eddie said. “It’s too fast.”

“I’ll slow it down.” Caroline configured the video feed to respond to the speed at which she tapped the space key. “I’m going to play it frame by frame,” she said, tapping the bar. Dr. Wong’s face moved in exaggerated slowness, the sound of her voice dragging and distorted. Six frames from the end, the light appeared. Right over Dr. Wong’s left shoulder.