Liquid Fear (14 page)

The Eshelman School of Pharmacy was one of UNC’s education and research wings, part of a complex that had grown over the years to connect the university with Memorial Hospital.

Mark had taken a few classes there to augment his business degree, because even as a teen he’d understood where the money of the future would be flowing. That was where he’d met Alexis, who was already working on her doctorate.

Now, entering the brick building, he saw how little the building had changed—the same uncomfortable benches, waxy potted plants, and somber portraits of past benefactors. That stood in stark contrast to how much he’d changed in the interim. He’d worked so hard to showcase his maturity to Alexis that he wondered if that was when he’d first become an actor and his life a role scripted by others.

He knocked on Dr. Ayanadi’s lab door, even though he’d called ahead to make the appointment. The doctor opened the door, smiling and extending a brown hand. His jet-black hair was cut in a bowl shape, and his thick glasses were held in place by hairy ears. “Mark Morgan, my successful pupil.”

“I only got a C, remember?”

“Yes, yes, but you’ve gone on to bigger things. Most of my C students are pushing lunch carts in the hospital.”

“I married well,” Mark said.

“That you did. And how is Dr. Morgan?”

I wish I knew.
“She’s busy with the bioethics council. You know how much she hates politics, but somebody’s got to fight for what’s right.”

Ayanadi nodded. “But you didn’t come here for a philosophical discussion. You sound worried.”

Mark glanced around the small lab. Most major research was conducted off campus, in the RTP, but tenured faculty like Ayanadi were given personal-sized labs, mostly to support journal publication and justify grant requests. Ayanadi, though, had a modern electron microscope and gleaming gear that Mark didn’t recognize, which clashed with the chipped counters and 1950s-era sink.

“What do you know about Sebastian Briggs?”

Ayanadi’s dark eyes narrowed. “We don’t like to speak of him around here. That could have been bad for all of us.”

“It might be bad for all of us now.”

“Mark, I appreciate CRO’s contributions to our research, but we always must keep the business and the personal separate. We can be friends but a researcher avoids the appearance of favoritism.”

“I’m not here for CRO. I’m here for my wife.”

Ayanadi glanced wistfully at the papers and computer near his microscope, as if he’d rather be lost in routine. He sighed and said, “As you know, Briggs was something of a maverick. Early on, his flamboyance was…tolerated, because he brought in grants and published a few significant articles at a young age.”

“I’ve read the records,” Mark said. “I need to know what’s under them, the stuff that got cut out.”

“Even now, we must avoid that. Surely your wife told you more than I could.”

“She doesn’t remember. It seems like nobody remembers. It’s either the biggest case of collective amnesia since the Holocaust or somebody’s hiding something.”

Ayanadi moved around Mark and closed the door. “Very well. I will tell you the rumors, but I must warn you, I have no evidence to support any of this, and you know how much that repels me as a scientist.”

“I promise, Doctor, I won’t dispute any of your conclusions. I have some of my own that nobody would believe.”

“Briggs received doctorates in both psychology and neurobiology. We don’t get many of the softer sciences in this building.”

“Softer skulls” is what you mean. The touchy-feely doesn’t go well with the numbers racket.
“He was running experiments.”

“You’ve seen the records. He used student volunteers, and while it’s not unusual to use students in the early trials of drug testing, Briggs apparently conducted what one might call a ‘bait and switch.’”

“Pretending he was testing one drug on paper while he was actually running something else?”

“Yes. Hardly uncommon, sadly, in the history of therapeutic drugs. Our branch has been just as complicit in some of the horrors of modern psychiatry, such as insulin shock therapy and the designer drugs of the fifties and sixties. And it’s likely Briggs would have gotten away with it if not for Susan Sharpe. But I imagine your wife has told you about her?”

Mark was about to nod out of habit but realized he would get more information by acting ignorant. He’d never heard of Susan Sharpe. “She doesn’t like to talk about that.”

“We still aren’t sure what happened, but we’ve pieced together a trial with six participants. Your wife, of course, was both a participant and Briggs’s graduate assistant. Though who knows whether her participation was voluntary.”

“Yeah,” Mark said. “That was a traumatic experience, and I think she blocked it out.”

Ayanadi nodded. “Briggs was testing fear response, one of the favorite subjects of psychologists. On paper, he was conducting a simple maze experiment, similar to the Stanford Prison Experiment in which volunteers divided into the roles of guards and prisoners. They soon socialized and adapted to those roles, so much so that guards turned violent and the prisoners had trouble adjusting back to their regular lives.”

“In other words, the make-believe became real.”

“Yes, and whatever happened out there with Briggs must have been terrible.”

“Out there? The records said the trials were conducted here in the pharmacy school.”

Ayanadi’s face pinched in anguish. “Yes, that’s what the papers say. There was a big hush-hush, so much at stake, lawsuits and funding. The dean and chancellor thought it best to have it appear as a tragic accident. Susan Sharpe’s body was found at the foot of the stairs in the basement, suffering multiple contusions.”

Mark wondered why his wife never mentioned the incident, but he also couldn’t accept she had any part in it. “I don’t understand.”

“Whatever Briggs did to those volunteers, somehow Susan Sharpe was beaten to death as a result.”

“No,” Mark said, reluctant to believe the nation’s oldest university had skeletons in its closet. But he of all people should know that the most polished veneer could hide the most alarming atrocities. CRO bent ethical rules as a standard operating procedure.

“No charges filed,” Ayanadi said. “That would have been disastrous to all involved. The university police handled the investigation, the Board of Trustees negotiated in closed session, and a football booster funded the confidential settlement with the Sharpe family. The official report said she died here from a fall down the stairs. A tragic accident.”

Mark had seen photographs of domestic-violence victims, people who had taken a pounding yet walked away. He couldn’t picture the amount of blows it would take to kill someone.

He now remembered reading about the incident in the
Daily Tar Heel
. With a student population of 26,000 people, a death was unusual but quickly swept past in the bustle of rock bands, politics, frat parties, and sports.

“Susan Sharpe,” Mark said. “She was a student?”

Ayanadi cocked a bushy eyebrow. “They were all students, except Briggs, who had recently earned his doctorate and was teaching part-time. Briggs couldn’t stay on, of course. He didn’t help himself with his refusal to cooperate. And his personality didn’t lend itself to the support of allies.”

“If these trials were going on in the building, how did he manage to keep it secret?”

“No. His research here was innocuous, camouflage for the real work he was conducting in the Research Triangle. He never divulged the real location.”

“Surely the cops found the lab?” Despite CRO’s involvement, Mark had never heard a mention of the tragedy within the corporation. No surprise there.

“As I said, this was hush-hush. No one looked because no one wanted to see.”

Mark did a quick calculation in his head. That would have been nearly two years before he met Alexis. And, despite her generally positive demeanor, at times a shadow crossed her face as if doom had skirted past without her fully recognizing it. Like most young married couples, they’d been more interested in their future together than the mistakes and secrets of their individual pasts.

“These other…subjects. What happened to them?”

The professor shook his head. “I don’t recall all the names, but I distinctly remember Wendy Leng, because she later joined our art faculty.”

Wendy. Lex’s friend. And they never mentioned the trials…

Wendy had married a man named Roland, who had been in school with the two of them. He and Alexis had attended the wedding, where Roland had gotten embarrassingly drunk and made a fool of himself. Mark wondered who else among his wife’s friends had been involved, and how much that friendship was built around a shared secret.

“One last question, Doctor. Was CRO backing Briggs at the time?”

Dr. Ayanadi stared at the periodic chart on the wall, as if he could rearrange the elements and structure the world into something good, whole, and sane. “CRO has always been a generous benefactor of our program, Mark. A relationship we all hope to continue.”

Mark tapped the counter on his way to the door. “No one looks because no one wants to see, right?”

Kleingarten held the little orange bottle of pills about six inches out of Anita Molkesky’s reach. The hunger in her eyes was unmistakable. He’d handled his share of drugged-out hookers, and when the need sunk in its teeth, they would do anything for a fix.

Anything.

This Briggs guy was on to something.

“You know you need it, honey,” he said.

“I need it,” she murmured.

She was sitting on the bed like she knew her way around it. She looked a little rougher than she had in the waffle house, just before he’d crashed the car into it. Briggs had called the collision a “trigger” and said it would kick in the necessary adrenalin to juice her brain. Kleingarten had cut him off before Briggs launched into a lecture, but he understood the basic idea. He knew plenty about drugs and hookers.

The only thing he couldn’t understand was why Briggs had gone for the Slant when this gooey candy on the hoof was available. Sure, she’d had some work done, and those melons were inflated by at least two letter sizes, but she looked like she was primed for partying.

He’d picked her up outside the hospital after her appointment with just a few well-chosen words. He’d use them again if he had to.

“Okay, Daddy will fix you up, but I just need you to do one thing for me, okay?”

She nodded. One thing was easy.

Kleingarten looked around the motel room. It was a lot like the one in Cincinnati where he’d killed that hooker while Roland Doyle was in sand land—cheap paneling, a chipped dresser, a single lamppost, and an EZ chair that, despite its obvious age, had no ass print in the seat. Nobody came to motel rooms to sit around in chairs.

He pulled the digital tape recorder from his pocket. He thought about playing with her a little, but the doc had said the recording was an important part of the job. In fact, it pretty much
was
the job. The rest was bonus.

“Are you going to hurt me?” she asked, her tone flat, like she couldn’t care less one way or another.

“Maybe,” he said, with equal ambivalence. She was taking the fun out of it.

He held the recorder out and hit the button so the red light came on. It was a basic Sony model, but solid, and it would record for a week if he needed it to. He didn’t think he’d need it.

“Here’s what you say, Anita. You say, ‘Wendy, I’m in the Monkey House.’”

“But I’m not in the Monkey House. I’m in a motel room.”

He wondered if she’d been hitting other stuff besides Briggs’s happy pills. Maybe a barbiturate or oxy. He didn’t know how the Halcyon would react with other drugs, but he figured it wasn’t his problem.

“Take two. Say ‘Wendy, I’m in the Monkey House,’ only say it like you’re scared. Like in a panic.”

“I was an actress.”

“Yeah, I bet. Weren’t you with George Clooney in that, whatsit, the
Ocean’s Fifteen
?”

“No, but I met him once.”

One thing about human nature, you gave somebody a chance to brag and they forgot all about their problems for a second. Kleingarten shook the bottle to bring her back around.

“Wendy, I’m in the Monkey House.”

She closed her eyes, maybe channeling Marilyn Monroe. “Wendy, I’m in the Monkey House.”

“Not bad, but a little more energy. You sound like you’re getting your nails done.” Kleingarten cut the recording so he wouldn’t have to edit too much later. “Picture the scene. This crazy guy has you locked away in a filthy, dark factory, and he’s trying to put you in a cage. But”—Kleingarten acted out the next part, grunting as he spoke—“you kick him in the nuts and run. You get to his little office and there’s a cell phone, right on the desk, like he wanted you to use it. You got no choice. You pick it up and call your only friend in the world—”

“I got lots of friends.” Her nostrils flared a little.

“Yeah, I know, but nobody else who
understands
. You know you’ve got less than a minute, tops, and how could you explain it all to anyone else?”

She nodded. “Yeah, in that case, it would be Wendy.”

Kleingarten hit the “Record” button. “So you pick up the phone, punch in her number and—”

“I don’t know her number. Not off the top of my head. I’d have to dig around in my purse. Unless it was my cell phone, then her number would be stored in it.”

“Okay, goddamn it, let’s say it’s
your
phone on the desk. You pick it up and get through and she answers and you go…” He pointed the recorder toward her face as the cue.

“Wendy, I’m in the Monkey House.”

“Hey, not bad, a little passion, a little fear, a little drama. What movies did you say you were in?”

“Nothing you probably heard of.
Tommy Salami, Patti Cake Patti Cake
, and
Cherry Paradise
.”

She’d named them with a perverse kind of pride. Kleingarten had heard of them, and had seen one, and now he knew why she looked familiar. “You did a lot of movies with food in them.”

“Yeah.” She gave him a glassy-eyed smile.

Kleingarten was angry now. He usually didn’t get too worked up over a job, even an enjoyable one, but she’d just shot down one of his little fantasies of how this would play out.

After remembering the disgusting things she’d done with those guys in that video—guys of every color in the rainbow—he wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole. And that was a fucking shame.

“Can I have my pill now?” she asked.

He moved the hand with the vial behind his back. “Okay, now pretend he’s got you again, and you go, ‘Help me, hurry, we’re in the old factory where we killed Susan.’ Except rush the words all together.”

She started and then forgot the line.

“Here, let me help you,” he said, grabbing her wavy blonde hair and yanking.

“
Ow
.”

“Help me, hurry, we’re in the factory where we killed Susan.” He was getting impatient, and that scared her a little.

“Help me, hurry, we’re in the factory where we killed Susan.”

He clicked the recorder off. That was an Oscar performance. Briggs would be pleased. “Okay, honey, it’s a wrap.”

Kleingarten slid the recorder in his pocket and shook out one of the green pills. He gave it to her and she tossed it in her mouth without looking at it. He figured she put a lot of things in there without looking.

The dose seemed to hit pretty quickly, because she looked around as if realizing she wasn’t in the hospital or her apartment. “What were you making me say?” she asked.

He shook the vial. “These pills. They really help you forget, huh?”

“Forget what?”

“That movie we were talking about.”

“Yeah,” she said. “A movie. Did I get the part?”

“Sure. Didn’t you get the script?”

“No. What happens next?”

“A little reunion. And then you commit suicide.”