Authors: Margaret Fenton
At least I thought it was Jimmy. In the
twilight it sure looked like his truck. I hit the interstate bypass at
sixty-five miles an hour, then accelerated to seventy-five. The truck matched
my speed, easily. The cloverleaf of the I-65 junction was two exits away, and I
opted to take it north. The truck followed me. I sped up again, this time to
ninety. The truck’s speed kept pace.
Now I was sure it was Jimmy. He hung
back, not making any attempt to run me off the road or overtake my car. I
needed a safe place to go, now, before he did whatever he was planning. But where?
The Birmingham Police Department was in the middle of downtown. I didn’t want
to risk getting off the highway, where I could get stopped by a traffic light,
giving Jimmy a chance to get out of his truck and come after me. So the city
streets were out. I weaved in and out of cars, one eye on my rearview mirror.
This was getting dangerous. I was overdriving my headlights and it was getting
darker. I slowed back down to seventy-five. So did he.
I took one hand off the wheel and took
my cell phone out of its pocket in my purse. Should I call 911? What would
Jimmy do when the police showed up? Would their arrival, lights flashing, force
him to make his move? He might even disappear. And then what would I say to the
cops?
Where the hell was a state trooper when
you needed one? I zipped between two cars and crossed three lanes of traffic,
but Jimmy didn’t back off. We were coming up on Malfunction Junction. In an
instant I decided to take I-20 eastbound, and from there to where it
intersected again with I-459. Maybe Jimmy would figure out that I was onto him
— leading him around in a great big circle — and go away.
Still clutching my cell, I got into the
right lane to exit and merged into heavy oncoming traffic, cutting off an
eighteen-wheeler. The driver honked two long blasts. Jimmy was still behind me,
three car lengths back. The convention center flashed by in a blur, and the
skyscrapers of downtown towered on my right. I wondered how many people were in
those buildings, maybe even watching the traffic go by, with no idea that one
of the tiny cars was in trouble. I passed the exit to the airport and stayed on
I-20, passing through suburbs east of the city. My speed was a steady eighty
miles an hour, yet Jimmy made no move to overtake me.
As I made the wide turn to get back on
the bypass, my cell phone rang, sending another shot of adrenaline pumping
through my body. Grant’s home number was on the screen.
“That guy is following me again.” My
words came out on top of each other.
“What? Where are you?”
“Near Liberty Park.”
“I’m calling 911.”
“No, don’t. He hasn’t done anything
yet.”
“Come here. Come here right now. If he
follows you, we’ll call the cops.”
That actually wasn’t such a bad plan.
Grant lived close to an exit. “Okay.”
I sped to the Galleria exit, taking the
flyover to where it hit Highway 150. I had to make it through three traffic
lights before the entrance to Grant’s apartment complex. The first was green,
and I sped through it. So did Jimmy. The next turned yellow as I approached and
I floored it through that one. So did Jimmy.
I could see the last light up ahead. It
was red. I barely slowed at the intersection, wheels clipping the curb in front
of a gas station on the corner. I climbed the long drive and went through the
brick signs that flanked the entrance to the apartments. Jimmy was still three
car lengths behind me.
He stayed behind me as I entered the
cluster of buildings. I spotted Grant, standing in front of his building
waiting for me, and parked as close to him as I could. He met me as I put the
car in park and got out.
“Where is he?”
“In a black pickup. There.” In the
orange glow of the streetlights, I could see his bushy profile as he cruised
between the rows of cars.
“Let’s get inside,” Grant said, taking
my arm.
We climbed the stairs two at a time.
Inside, he locked the door with the deadbolt as I peeked through the mini
blinds at the lot. Jimmy had parked one row away from my Honda, keeping his
eyes on it. I was breathing hard.
Behind me, Grant called 911. He reported
there was a man who had been stalking his girlfriend in the parking lot of his
apartment. He described the truck and the man inside, then thanked the person
on the other end of the line and hung up.
We waited, both peeking out the window,
until a white Chevrolet SUV with
hoover police department
in gold and blue on the side entered
the lot. It idled behind Jimmy’s truck for a minute before a uniformed officer
got out. He tapped Jimmy’s window with his flashlight and spoke with him.
Jimmy’s headlights came on and he eased out of the space and toward the exit.
The police SUV followed.
I collapsed onto the leather sofa.
“Thanks.”
“You need a drink.”
“Amen. Have you got any wine?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve got some beer.”
“That’ll work.” While he was in the
kitchen, I picked up my keys and my purse from where I’d dropped them near the
front door.
“Where’re you going?”
“I need to get something out of my car.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so. I’ll get it.
Here.” He crossed the room with a sweating cold Killian’s and traded me the
beer for my keys. “You’re staying right here. What do you need?”
“There’s a folder on the passenger seat.
A plain manila folder with some photocopied newspaper articles in it.”
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
Grant returned with the folder Kirk had
given to me at the library. “This it?”
“Yep, thanks.”
I curled my feet under me and sipped on
the beer. Grant got his own Killian’s and a laptop and joined me in the living
room, stretching his bare feet out in front of his oversized chair. With the
click-click-click of his typing in the background, I browsed the articles.
They were in chronological order. The
first was a small article, dated five years ago, from the Local News section.
RESPECTED LOCAL PHYSICIAN RETIRES, the title read. It was just a fluff piece
announcing that after twenty-seven years of service to the Birmingham area, Dr.
Walter Baxter, a specialist in internal medicine, was selling his practice. It
quoted several patients he had treated over the years, telling how much he
meant to them, blah, blah, blah. No pictures. I put it aside.
The next article had run in the fall,
two years ago. DOCTOR EXPERIMENTS WITH RESEARCH SIDE OF MEDICINE. A brief
article about the incorporation of BaxMed, owned by former Birmingham physician
Dr. Walter Baxter. He was quoted about the exciting promise of medicines for
the future, stating that new and more effective drugs were being developed
every day. How he’d gained a greater interest in the research side of medicine
since his retirement. His son, the article mentioned, was about to complete his
graduate degree in pharmacology. Dr. Baxter hoped to have him on board soon.
The story delved a little into the fact that Dr. Baxter was seeking sponsors
for his company’s research. Nothing new there.
Next was Joey Renzi’s four-part series
that Kirk had mentioned. The pieces were paper-clipped together. The first one
ran on the nineteenth of June. Birmingham had thrived for decades as an
industrial steel city, but like other urban areas was moving toward a more
modern, service-based economy with an emphasis on health care. The article
talked about the university’s role in the change.
All this was interesting, but not very
helpful. I skimmed the rest of the article, and, not seeing anything about
BaxMed, put it aside. The following Sunday, June twenty-sixth, Joey had
profiled a company called Field Genetics. Nothing about BaxMed there, either.
The next article was dated July third,
the same day Kirk’s story naming me as Michael’s social worker appeared in the
paper. No wonder I’d forgotten it. It was all about BaxMed. Complete with a
color picture of a smiling old man standing next to a plaque-style sign affixed
to a yellow brick wall. He was tall and thin, dressed in a lab coat and a neat
shirt and tie. He had a full head of gray hair, and his tanned face was deeply
lined. The caption read, “Dr. Walter Baxter is one of Birmingham’s pioneers in
the pharmaceutical industry.”
The first paragraph reiterated what I
already knew about BaxMed’s founding. There was no mention of Trey. The next outlined
what the company was working on. They planned to specialize in
psychopharmaceutical drug research for mental health disorders. BaxMed was
optimistic about the trials of their new medicine for attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder, currently being tested under the name Focanix. Early
results held hope that it had fewer side effects for its users. The company was
also in the early stages of testing a new drug, named Alerox, for patients
suffering from narcolepsy and cataplexy.
A grey sidebar box defined the
disorders, ADHD being a disorder first visible in childhood whose symptoms
included distractibility and hyperactivity. Like I didn’t know what that was.
It seemed like half the kids I took into custody had it.
Narcolepsy was a sleep disorder, characterized
by excessive sleepiness during the day, uncontrollable falling asleep, and in
some cases, cataplexy, a sudden loss of muscle control, especially when in
extreme emotional states.
I said, “Huh,” and threw the stack of
articles onto the couch beside me.
Grant looked up from whatever he was
working on and asked, “What is all that stuff?”
“Just some articles I thought might help
me understand this case better.”
“And did they?”
“No, not really. Can I use your
computer? I want to look something up on the Internet.”
“Here,” he said, passing me the thin
laptop. It was smaller than a hardcover book. “Use this one.”
“You have a wireless network set up in
your apartment?”
He gave me a half-embarrassed grin.
“Yeah. You want another beer?”
“Sure.”
Grant went to the kitchen, returning
with two more Killian’s. I thanked him, balanced the computer on my knees, and
pulled up a search engine.
First, I entered “BaxMed.” Got a
one-page Web site that wasn’t much more than the electronic version of what I’d
just read in the article. I thought for a minute, then entered “ADHD.” I got
over sixty million hits. No time for that.
I skimmed the BaxMed article again and
typed “Focanix.” I got a few hits, nothing that I didn’t already know. I typed
in “Alerox” and got the same result.
Grant was watching me hit the keys with
a soft look on his face. I caught his expression out of the corner of my eye
and asked, “What?”
“You look sexy when you type.”
I laughed. “God, you are such a geek.”
He smiled.
I back-browsed to the search engine
again and entered “Narcolepsy.” Fewer hits, only about four million. I scrolled
the list for a minute and finally clicked on a fact sheet at
narcolepticsupport.com.
The site gave an overview of the
disorder. I clicked on a menu box under “treatment.” It listed several drugs
used to treat narcolepsy. One was also an ADHD medication, Ritalin. So it made
sense that BaxMed was working on the two disorders together. It seemed they
overlapped. Maybe one of the two meds they were researching could be used to treat
both conditions. A newer medication, Xyrem, was on the market for narcolepsy
too, I read. Its active component was —
Holy cow. Gama hydroxybutyrate. GHB.
So far, despite some public concern for
the safety of the drug, it had shown enormous promise. Especially in treating
the cataplexy part of narcolepsy. I read the rest of the site so fast my head
started to spin. I put the laptop next to me without closing it.
I got up and paced the room. The pieces
to this puzzle were flying together so fast I could hardly think.
Grant watched me wearing out his carpet
and finally asked, “You okay?”
“Fine, fine. I think I may have figured
out why Michael died. And who killed him.”
Grant peeled himself off the chair and
picked up the laptop. The BaxMed articles were underneath it. He put the
computer down on the couch and studied the photocopies.
“BaxMed? You don’t think the Baxters are
involved, do you?”
I stopped pacing. “Yeah, why?”
“Because they’re my clients.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Your clients? Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I’ve worked with Dr. Baxter ever
since I opened the shop. Remember I said I used to work for an insurance
company? I used to install and maintain billing software in doctors’ offices.
When I decided to hang out my shingle, I contacted all the doctors I had worked
for and told them to call me if they needed anything. Dr. Baxter called the
next week and hired me to put in the PCs for his new research firm. What do the
Baxters have to do with your dead client?”
I started pacing again, ignoring his question.
“Can you look at his computer system?”