NICK’S FUNERAL TOOK PLACE THAT SATURDAY morning at St. Athanasius Greek Orthodox Church in Arlington, Massachusetts. René was numb with grief.
Hundreds of people had turned out, drawn from the greater medical and health-care community. She recognized several faces and joined Alice Gordon and staffers from Broadview, Morningside, and other nursing homes. In the front pews sat Nick’s wife of thirty years, Thalia, their two sons, and their grandchildren. He was always showing René his photos of them. Now they looked lost in disbelief that he was gone.
From her aisle seat at the rear of the church she watched the mourners file in, recognizing several of the trial PIs and MGH people. She also spotted GEM Tech executives and scientists. Gavin Moy, in dark glasses, and some associates seated themselves in a pew ahead of her. Jordan Carr was with them. As he passed by, he stopped and gave her a squeeze of condolence on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, then filed in beside Moy. René nodded and wept quietly.
In a short time, the vast interior of the church filled up, dozens of people standing ten-deep in the rear and pressing down the outer aisles under the stained-glass windows.
The official story was that Nick had lost his balance—a combination of precarious footing, strong winds, and possibly vertigo. Rumor had it that Nick had been given to dizzy spells—and at the high elevation in early morning light he might have had a destabilizing experience for one fatal second. Park authorities had reported snow flurries during the night and early morning winds with gusts up to fifty miles an hour.
All throughout the service, René was distracted by a small filament of uneasiness glowing in her gut. Every so often it would flare up, but she would close her eyes and will it away.
Later, at the grave, where the priest in his robe and headpiece pronounced the final benediction, her eyes floated over the large crowd of mourners and came to rest on the entourage of GEM Tech people standing in close file
around Gavin Moy—various executives, marketing people, physicians, lawyers, officials from the FDA, and other power brokers.
Jordan Carr acknowledged her with a nod and a flat smile. Their collective somberness was appropriate, but it still could not dispel that little hot-wire sensation spoken earlier by one of the nurses in a whisper:
How convenient was Nick’s death.
JACK HAD LEFT SEVERAL MESSAGES ON René Ballard’s cell phone and had nearly given up on her when she returned the call on Tuesday. She had taken some personal days following the death of a friend, she said.
Because it was a bright, warm day, Jack suggested they meet at Fins, a seaside bistro in Portsmouth. René was waiting for him at a table on the deck under an umbrella. Behind her, the Atlantic spread out gloriously, the sun dancing off the surface as if covered with diamond dust. Jack ordered a sparkling water and under the table he slipped his briefcase with printouts of some of the material he had found online. When René removed her sunglasses, her eyes were red and tired-looking, her face drawn.
“I’m sorry about your friend.”
She nodded. “It just shouldn’t have happened. He was such a good person.” Her mouth began to quiver and she shook her head. “Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about.”
The waiter arrived with Jack’s drink.
René took a sip of her wine. “So, what did you want to show me?”
She looked up at him, and for a brief moment he felt himself taken in by her eyes. The hard blue crystals were softened by her tears. He felt a warm rush in his chest and wanted to put his arms around her. But he pushed away those thoughts. “They’re gobbledygook to me,” he said, and laid before her what he had printed from the journal archives.
René looked at them. “I found some of these myself when I first heard about you.”
Jack lay his finger on the authors’ line. “That’s my biological mother. Her maiden name was Sarkisian. Koryan is from my adoptive uncle.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “What?”
“But it’s not so grand a coincidence when you put it together. Homer’s Island is one of the only places on the Northeast where these creatures ever show up, and she had rented the place specifically for that reason. She was a biochemist, and from what I gather … Well, you tell me.”
While Jack sipped his water, René silently scanned the pages of the articles,
occasionally nodding and humming recognition to herself. After a few minutes, she looked up. “This is incredible,” she began. “But I think your mother helped identify the biochemical structure of the toxin. Her name is listed first, which is protocol for principal investigators. And this one a year later links it to its neurological effects on cognition and memory.”
“Which is why the last one she coauthored talks about lab mice and maze problems.”
“Yes, which means … I don’t believe this … not only did she help identify the biochemical structure of the compound, but I think your mother discovered the neurological benefits of the toxin.”
“You mean the Alzheimer’s drug?”
“Yes.” She looked up at Jack in dismay. “You’re sure this is your mother?”
“How many biologists from MIT named N. A. Sarkisian do you think there were?”
René nodded. “Then she must have known Nick Mavros.”
“Nick Mavros?”
“My friend who just died.” She reached into her handbag and pulled out the obituary from the
Boston Globe.
The headline read “MGH Neurologist Falls to His Death in Utah.” “He was chief PI of the Memorine trials,” she said in dismay. “He also did the imaging work on you when they brought you into MGH. This is unbelievable.”
Jack stared at the photo of Dr. Nicholas Mavros. “He came to visit me at Greendale.”
“He did?”
Jack felt a hole open up in his gut.
“Just one more question, if you don’t mind.”
“One of those standard memory test questions.”
“He came to ask about my mother.” Jack stared at the obit photograph, then pulled up his briefcase and rifled through the papers until he found the photograph he had discovered in the old albums boxed in the cellar of his rented house. “Son of a bitch.” He turned the photograph so René could see it.
“That’s Nick,” she said.
Shot in front of an auto parts store, the photo was of a younger, leaner Nick Mavros with long, black, shoulder-length hair, smiling at the camera, his arm around the shoulder of Jack’s mother, who grinned happily, her head tilted toward Nick Mavros. They both wore white lab smocks. And they looked so together.
“They must have been in the same research group as grad students.”
Jack’s eyes were stuck on the image of Mavros. “He asked me twice if I remembered her.”
“One of those standard memory test questions.”
“What was your mother’s maiden name?”
But they already knew that from Dr. Heller’s tests days earlier. Then Jack thought of something and fingered through the packet of articles until he found what he was looking for:
“He even wrote about it with her,” he said and showed her the abstract.
Sarkisian N. A., Mavros N. T., et, al. 1971. Neurotoxic activity on the sensory nerves from toxin of the deadly Solakandji tropical jellyfish
Chiropsalmus quadrigatus Mason. Chem Pharm Bull 17:
1086—8, 1971.
“My God, I found the abstract for this same article, except I didn’t know she was your mother.” Then she picked up another article and scanned the pages. “Listen. ‘Proteinaceous toxin from the nematocysts of C.
quadrigatus
found effective in facilitating attentional abilities and acquisition, storage and retrieval of information, and to attenuate the impairment of cognitive functions associated with age and age-related pathologies in mice.’”
“Translating as what?”
“That they were moving down the pipeline toward Memorine.” She looked at the other articles and abstracts he had printed up. “Nick’s name appears only on this one, but she’s on all these. The last with her name on it is from March 1975.”
“Because she died in August that same year.” Jack was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “He was testing me.”
“Testing you?”
Jack could still see the shift in the man’s face. “I think he wanted to know how far back I could remember. Like early childhood. Like the night she disappeared.”
René’s eyes seemed to veil over. “Jack, what are you trying to tell me?”
“That he may have known something about her disappearance. That he may have been the visitor to the cottage that night. That maybe he’s the figure in those flashbacks. That maybe he killed her.”
René’s head recoiled as if Jack had punched her. “That’s outrageous.” Her voice was scathing. “Nick was a wonderful and compassionate man.” Suddenly
her face began to crumble. “How dare you say such things? He just died, for God’s sake.”
“He knew her and never said anything. He never said, ‘I remember your mother.’”
“Maybe he didn’t know she was your mother. You have a different name.”
“Then why did he ask her maiden name? Heller had already established that. He wasn’t there to check for brain damage. He wanted to hear it from me. Son of a bitch! I had a weird feeling about him the moment he showed up. He probably wanted to know if I remembered him from that night.”
“Why would he want to kill her?”
“I don’t know. I know nothing about him and practically nothing about her, except that they knew each other. And he wanted to know if I remembered her. You put it together.”
“That’s absolutely insane.”
“Then tell me why he was pussyfooting around, why he didn’t say he had been friends with her.” And he held up the photo.
“I don’t know why. But he’s dead, and I don’t want to hear his name slandered, okay?” Her eyes blazed at him through her tears. She looked down at the photograph. “Besides, it’s been thirty years, for God’s sake. There’s no way to know what happened that night.”
“Yes, there is.”
For a moment she stared blankly at him.
“It could take me back to that night.”
“Christ! We’ve already been through this. I’m not stealing any Memorine. Period.”
He expected that, of course. And she was probably right. The stuff can’t be fine-tuned. It’s unpredictable in its effects. It may not even work. But as he sat there under her angry glare, it crossed his mind that deep down where the sun didn’t shine maybe René didn’t want him to remember what he saw that night—and who was under that rain slicker.
“This is the last I’m going to say about it, but I think you’re stuck on a foolish and sick idea just to satisfy some neurotic obsession.”
Jack said nothing, just nodded as the syllables seeped in one by one. “Maybe so.” Then he looked out at the sea, and into the reflective light of the sun, feeling possibilities dance before his eyes.
“By the way,” he said as they got up to leave. “What kind of a car did Nick Mavros drive?”
“Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“Some kind of SUV … I think a Ford.”
“What color?”
“Black.”
JACK HAD NOT BEEN BACK TO Greendale for nearly two months. So when he showed up that Wednesday morning, he was welcomed like a famous alumnus returning to campus. Aides and administrative staff flocked around him and in tears Marcy Falco threw her arms around him. Jack had been one of her “witchcraft” successes.
“I just wanted to stop in to say hello and thank you for all you did for me.” He had brought a large bouquet of flowers for the ward and a five-pound box of chocolate for Marcy. He said that he wanted to see how some of the residents were doing. He had heard that a few were progressing well in the trials.
Marcy took him upstairs to the ward, where it was morning rounds, and patients were getting their meds.
“How’s Joe McNamara?”
“Up to his own tricks,” Marcy said. “He won’t take his meds. Connie’s coming along now.” She led him into Joe’s room, where Joe was sitting up in his bed. He had apparently slipped and injured his hip.
“Hey, old-timer, remember me?”
Joe looked at him, his face straining in confusion to place Jack.
“Joe, you remember Jack,” Marcy said.
Still Joe scowled as he rummaged in his brain for recognition.
“In any event, Connie will be by in a moment,” Marcy said. “I’ll leave you two to catch up.”
When she left, Jack whispered into Joe’s ear. “Father O’Connor.”
Joe’s mouth dropped opened as recognition swept across his brain. “Oh, Father, Father, forgive me.”
“How’ve you been, my son?” Jack asked.
Joe was beaming. “Pretty good, Father, pretty good, but I hurt my hip, you know.” And he pulled up the blanket to show a huge black-and-blue bruise along his flank. “It looks worse than it feels, though.”
Jack could hear a wad of phlegm in Joe’s throat. “Well, that’s a blessing.”
Just then Connie came in with a small tray with juice and a cup of meds. “Look who’s here,” she chortled, as she placed the tray on the table. Joe said nothing but studied the contents of the pill cups.
Jack pulled Connie aside. “I hear Joe’s not being very cooperative.”
She lowered her voice as Joe stared at the orange juice. “He likes the blue pills, but the white one he spits out.”
“How come?”
“He claims they make him dull.” And she made a what-are-you-going-to-do face.
“What’s the blue?”
“His Alzheimer’s drug.”
“And the white?”
“Zyprexa.”
“Of course.” Then Jack lowered his voice. “Maybe if just the two of us are alone, I can get him to cooperate.”
Connie thought that over. “Whatever.” Then she moved to the bed. And in a loud, clear voice she reserved for the elderly patients, she said, “Joe, you’re gonna do Jack a favor and take your meds like a good guy, okay?”
Joe looked at her but didn’t answer. Then he picked up the cup with the square blue pill and gulped it down with orange juice. Connie watched from the doorway. Nurses were supposed to witness patients’ taking their meds so they could mark the charts.
“Joe, it’s me, Father O’Connor.”
Joe looked up and his eyes saucered.
Jack held up the cup of Zyprexa. “You’re going to make me proud, okay? You’re going to be a good lad and take your pills for me.” Jack did all he could not to lapse into a Barry Fitzgerald brogue. He laid his hand on Joe’s shoulder, glaring at him with a sanctimonious smile. “Come on now, lad.” And Jack raised the cup with the single pill to Joe’s lips.
Joe opened up, Jack poured it in, then raised the orange juice to his lips. And Joe swallowed.
At the doorway, Connie grinned and flashed a thumbs-up. When she left, Jack sat at the corner of the bed. His eye fell on the suction bottle with the hose connecting to the wall.
“I don’t like her. She makes me take that crud. They just put me to sleep. I like the blue ones better. They’re kinda fun.”
“How’s that?”
Joe’s thin dry lips cracked into a wry grin. “They bring me back to some good times.” And he gave Jack a naughty wink.
Jack checked his watch. Marcy would be back in moments. “Joe, did I tell you the story about the new nun at her first confession?”
“Uh-uh,” Joe said, looking up at him with an eager face.
“Well, there was this new nun, and she tells the priest that she has a terrible secret. The priest then tells her that her secret is safe in the sanctity of the confessional. So, she says, ‘Forgive me, Father, but I never wear panties under my habit.’ The priest chuckles and says, ‘That’s not so serious, Sister Katherine. Say five Hail Marys, five Our Fathers, and do five cartwheels on your way to the altar.’”
Jack waited a moment until he was sure Joe got the joke. Not getting a reaction, Jack began to explain, when it all clicked in Joe’s brain, and he started to laugh. Jack took Joe’s hand and laughed along with Joe, which made him laugh even more, until Joe started coughing. In a moment, Joe got locked into a coughing jag and Jack shot out of the room. Connie was just rolling by with her cart. “I think Joe needs to be suctioned,” he said. And hearing Joe trying to catch his breath, Connie rushed inside the room.
The moment was Jack’s, and his awareness was crackling. He had less than two seconds as everybody else in the room was distracted—Marcy at the other side of the dayroom with another resident, the aides with their backs to him. And the cart sat right there, drawer open, folders of patients’ meds all in a row—Joe McNamara’s gaping at him. And inside of it the card of blue pills in shrink-wrap windows.
Connie never locked the cart when she ducked into the rooms. Officially, she was supposed to, since it was a fundamental regulation in the nursing home that medication carts be locked when the nurses were out of view of them. But in all the weeks that Jack had spent on the ward he almost never saw the nurses lock the carts, unless they had to leave the area for a length of time—but never for a fast dip into a patient’s room. And why bother, since everybody on this ward was mentally out of it?
In a flash, Jack’s hand shot into the folder, and a moment later a card of thirty Memorine tabs was inside his shirt. He ducked his head into Joe’s room and said good-bye. Joe had caught his breath and waved. “Good-bye, Father. And thanks for stopping by.”
“Any time, m’lad, and God bless.”
Half an hour later, Jack was home.
It would take them another day to realize that a card of thirty was missing.
And nobody would connect the absence to Jack. Even if they did, it would be too late to stop him. He looked at the card of pills.
And the son of a bitch also had a black SUV. He’d been tailing him for weeks. He knew Jack was on to him. He knew, and now he was dead and had taken it with him.