Fatal (42 page)
Authors: Michael Palmer
“He lied,” Frank said with a twinkle.
“We knowed he ’uz lyin’,” Lewis added. “He ain’t vura good at it. Thanks he is, but he ain’t. With a l’il hep from us, he tole what hap’ned ta Lyle, then he tole us whar the car key was. Wanted us ta have it in exchange fer untyin’ him.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Thought about it.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. I need him alive.”
“We may a left some marks, though.”
“Whatever it is, he deserved it. As soon as you can, find someone who’ll buy his car and use the cash to get yourselves a new truck.”
“Wer gonna. First we gotta fond Lyle’s body. We want ta bury him back ta the farm. Summabitches.”
“We’ll get down to the lake at dawn tomorrow. I’ll meet you at my uncle’s and show you the road down to the water. Lewis, I’m going back into the hospital to get some stuff to pull that tube out of your chest. I don’t think you need it anymore and I don’t want it to let in an infection.”
“Whute’er ya say. Ya gonna be sendin’ the po-lice out ta yer uncle’s place?”
“You check those knots I tied?”
“Yep. They ain’t comin’ loose no tahm soon.”
Matt opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement. The breezy night was cloudless and utterly clear. A West Virginia night.
“Maybe in a few days,” he said.
EPILOGUE
Six Months Later
THE MASSIVE HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING,
more than a million square feet, was built in the late seventies adjacent to the Dirksen Senate Office Building, on Constitution Avenue between First and Second Streets. For four days now, the august central hearing room of the Hart Building had been the scene of the first major hearing of the new, post-election Senate—an investigation into the Omnivax debacle by the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Ellen had already testified, as had Rudy and Matt and others, including Lara Bolton, the former Secretary of Health and Human Services in the former Marquand administration. For nearly six hours now, the senators, seated at draped tables beneath a massive, gray marble wall, had been taking turns questioning the star of the proceedings, Dr. Harold Sawyer, currently awaiting trial and being held without bail at the maximum security federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. And for nearly six hours, Hal had been sidestepping and evading their queries like an All-American halfback dodging second-string tacklers.
Matt, along with Ellen, and Cheri Sanderson from PAVE, had been present for Hal’s entire testimony, and his patience as well as his faith in the system was frayed to near the breaking point. With Grimes, Sutcher, and the hired killer Verne all still missing, and Larry a bloated, fish-eaten corpse, washed up on the shore of Long Lake weeks after his death, there was little in the way of substantive evidence against Hal beyond the testimonies of Matt and Ellen.
“Dr. Sawyer,” Delaware Senator Martin Wells was asking wearily, “let’s get back to your relationship with Dr. George Poulos of the Institute for Vaccine Development. In the six months prior to your arrest, precisely how many meetings—face-to-face or by phone or by e-mail—did the two of you have?”
“I would have to check my appointment book, Senator,” Hal replied, smiling earnestly, “but from my recollection, as I told Senator Worthington, it couldn’t have been more than one or two times.”
“This is really depressing,” Matt whispered. “He is just so damn slick. If I didn’t hear him admit to what he’s done, I would probably believe that he was just the unfortunate victim of hiring the wrong people.”
“Matt,” Cheri said, “I heard that he’s in the process of cutting a deal with the federal prosecutors. Is that true?”
“I’m afraid it might be. Once they realized that he was going to be tough to convict on many of the major charges against him, they started going after the bigger fish he was dealing with.”
“George Poulos, for one,” Ellen said. “I’m convinced he’s the link between the Marquand administration and Columbia Pharmaceuticals, which means he’s the one who suggested they might send someone like Vinyl Sutcher to pay me a visit.”
“Senator,” Hal was saying, “I want to cooperate, really I do, but I feel I have answered your questions regarding my relationship with Dr. Poulos as forthrightly and—”
“Oh, I’ve had enough of this,” Matt snapped. “Let’s go out for coffee. My treat.”
“Can’t,” Cheri said. “Sally’s meeting me at the office in half an hour. She’s at a meeting of the commission President Harrison has formed to look at vaccine issues, including funding for increased clinical investigation and public education, as well as debate on the whole business of parental choice. It’s a miracle what’s happening all over, and it’s all thanks to you guys.”
“Oh, pshaw,” Ellen said.
“As long as we don’t end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater,” Matt cautioned.
“Even we don’t want to do that,” Cheri said. “We just want to be listened to.”
“So, did someone say coffee?” Ellen asked.
After seeing Cheri into a cab, Matt and Ellen bundled up against the brisk February wind and walked arm in arm around to a diner on C Street. Hal’s testimony would be continuing in the morning. Federal prosecutors had asked Matt to attend as long as his uncle was testifying, but today would be Ellen’s last day at the hearings. Rudy was back at his cabin, teaching, writing, fishing when the weather permitted, and awaiting her return. She was still living in her place in Glenside, but the two of them had been seeing more and more of each other, and Ellen had mentioned something to Matt almost in passing about a trial period of living together in two places.
They sat across from each other in a booth, watching the traffic inch past, and saying little, but each aware of the bonds that would forever exist between them. Three months after she had helped to save his life, Ellen had returned to Belinda for the burial of Colin Morrissey, who rapidly became incapacitated from his neurologic disease and simply wasted away. Soon, sadly, Sara Jane Tinsley would share a similar fate.
For nearly six months now, the owners of BC&C had been besieged by attorneys, mine agencies, and government investigations. Armand Stevenson had been sent packing and was facing criminal charges. Blaine LeBlanc was gone as well, and latest estimates placed the fines and settlements in the tens of millions. Still, under new management, the operation had remained open, and recently, had even been hiring.
“So,” Ellen asked finally, “what do you think about your uncle making some sort of plea bargain?”
Matt shrugged. He was thinking about his mother and her brother’s many kindnesses to her. Since Hal’s imprisonment, Matt had spent even more time with her than before. But she was inching closer and closer to custodial care, and now as often as not called him Hal.
“He hurt a lot of people,” he said finally. “One minute I want to see him put away forever, and the next I think that he simply went crazy with all the money that was at stake. It’s really out of my hands. All I can do now is keep telling the prosecutors what I know.”
“Well, I saw him in action,” Ellen said. “I hope he gets twenty consecutive life sentences and they let him plea-bargain down to one. When are you headed back?”
“Probably tomorrow night.”
“You miss her.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I miss her,” Matt said.
Nikki had been in D.C. for one day and one night, but her responsibilities as a pathologist at Montgomery County Regional Hospital, and as the new medical examiner for Montgomery County, precluded taking much time off. After having her ankle fixed, she had taken a leave of absence from her Boston position, and had simply never gone back. Six weeks later, with the job offer from MCRH in her pocket, she had sent in her resignation, and a week after that, had flown up to Boston with Matt to pack her things.
“You want to know what she said to me when she was here?” Ellen asked. “She said that men like you don’t come along and resuscitate a girl every day, so she had decided to pay attention to that.”
“I’m paying attention, too,” he said. “She’s really been great to be around. I just have to get accustomed to . . . to having someone in my life.”
“It’s just a day at a time.”
At that moment, Matt’s cell phone began vibrating. Actually, it was Nikki’s. He had never owned one himself, but she insisted they keep in close touch when he was in the big city.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Ellen said as he pulled the phone from his pocket. “Say hello for me.”
“Hey, good afternoon, Doc,” he said. “Didn’t I just talk to you a little while ago?”
“That was then,” Nikki said. “How’s it going?”
“Hal’s performing even as we speak. There’re rumblings he’s going to cut some sort of a deal with the prosecutors.”
“Well, he can’t have his jobs back. I like them.”
“That won’t be a problem. I have mixed emotions about any plea-bargaining. One moment I think there should be some lenience because he was just crazy, and the next I don’t want him getting away with anything less than the guillotine.”
“It’ll work out the way it works out,” Nikki said.
“I suppose.”
“I know you’re in a tough spot, Matt. For what it’s worth, I think you’re handling things terrifically.”
“I think I needed to hear that.”
“I mean it. You’re a great doc and a wonderful man, and I’ll tell you that as often as you want to hear it.”
“Thanks. You’re pretty terrific yourself.”
“Say, I almost forgot the reason I called. Yes, Virginia, there is a reason. The neatest thing just happened. I was getting ready to go into the office, but I had a little time, so I took my coffee and Kathy’s mandolin out to the porch and played a few licks out toward the mountains. I have a ways to go on the thing to even be listenable, but I’m getting better.”
“That’s a gross understatement. Remember, I’ve heard you.”
“But wait, that’s not the point. While I was playing, this incredibly beautiful little bird flew down and settled on the railing right in front of me. I’ve never seen anything like it. I kept playing and playing and it didn’t move. It just sat there like it was actually listening to my music. It was small, but so red and . . . and so perfect. What do you think it was?”
Matt swallowed back a fullness in his throat and gazed across the street toward the Hart Building.
“I think,” he said, “it was a tanager. A scarlet tanager.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Often readers of my novels will write and ask me questions about how to get more information on medical topics discussed in my books.
Fatal deals with several controversial medical issues: environmental toxins and how they can affect our health, as well as the known and unknown side effects of vaccines. As a medical fiction author, it is often difficult for me to fully discuss complex medical issues in the course of a novel.
Fatal is no exception. For those readers who would like to do their own investigation into these subjects, the following sources of information may be helpful:
GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20460
This federal agency is responsible for monitoring and controlling the levels of environmental toxins that can affect health.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
1600 Clifton Road
Atlanta, GA 30333
Hotline: 800-232-2522
Tel: 404-639-3311
This federal agency is responsible for monitoring and protecting the public from disease and disability, and sets national health policies.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
5600 Fishers Lane, HFI-40
Rockville, MD 20857
Tel: 888-463-6332
This federal agency is responsible for licensing and regulating drugs, vaccines, and other medical products.
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
9000 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, MD 20892
Tel: 301-496-4000
This federal agency is responsible for scientific research into medical issues that affect human health.
National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP)
Parklawn Building, Room 8A-46
5600 Fishers Lane
Rockville, MD 20857
Tel: 800-338-2382
This federal office provides information about the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and how to file a claim for a vaccine-related injury or death.
Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS)
Tel: 800-822-7967
www.fda.gov/cber/vaers/vaers.htm
This federal office provides information on how to report a vaccine reaction, injury, or death to the government vaccine reaction reporting system.
PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS
American Academy of Environmental Medicine
7701 East Kellogg, Suite 625
Wichita, KS 67207
This organization supports physicians and educates the public about the interaction between humans and their environment. It also promotes health through prevention and treatment of environmentally triggered illnesses.
Developmental Delay Resources (DDR)
4401 East West Highway, Suite 207
Bethesda, MD 20814
This international nonprofit organization, founded in 1994, disseminates information about the causes and prevention of developmental delays in children.
Immunization Action Coalition
1573 Selby Avenue, Suite 234
St. Paul, MN 55104
Tel: 651-647-9009
This organization promotes mass vaccination to boost immunization rates and prevent infectious diseases.
National Network for Immunization Information (NNII)
66 Canal Center Plaza, Suite 600
Alexandria, VA 22314
Tel: 877-341-6644
This organization, founded in 2000, is supported by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Nurses Association. It provides the public with information about immunizations.
National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC)
421-E Church Street
Vienna, VA 22180
Tel: 1-800-909-SHOT
This nonprofit educational organization was founded in 1982 by parents of vaccine-injured children, and is dedicated to preventing vaccine injuries and deaths through public education and defending the right to informed consent to vaccination. Operates a vaccine reaction registry.
Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education (PROVE)
P.O. Box 91566
Austin, TX 78709-1566
This parent-operated organization, founded in 1997, provides information on vaccines and vaccine policies in Texas.