Natural Causes (46 page)

Not three feet below the sill, running the length of the building, was the tattered slate roof of some sort of porch on the fourth floor. The slight pitch of the roof was, to all intents, negligible. Matt opened the window and carefully stepped outside. Forcing himself not to look down, he eased his way along, peering into the other rooms on the fifth floor until he saw one that was empty. The window, like the one in room 512, was not latched. Moments later he was standing in the deserted hall once again.

“So much for that mystery,” he muttered.

It was possible that his discovery, coupled with Sarah’s protestations, would be enough to get her discharged. But Matt knew that it was in her best interests to spend at least this one day someplace safe. And this was hardly the day he wanted to be worrying about her. He still had few answers to the mystery of the Ayurvedic Herbal Weight Loss System. But at least now, he had the questions. And he had a short list of those he felt could fill in the blanks—beginning with hospital comptroller Colin Smith.

He closed the door behind the yellow ribbons and hurried down the hall.

S
ARAH, YOU’RE SURE
P
ARIS TOLD YOU ABOUT THE
McGrath Foundation?” Matt asked.

“I’m positive. He’s known about a possible grant from the foundation for a year or more. He told me that himself. He said he was counting on the money to help get MCB out of the hole. In fact, I think Colin Smith mentioned it, too. If that much money is coming in, it seems to me the chief financial officer’s got to know about it. Maybe he and Glenn and Peter are in it together somehow. Maybe he’s skimming off the top before the hospital gets its share.”

“I’ll ask him. He’s
numero uno
on my list for today.”

“Matt, please listen to me. I’m fine and I can take care of myself. I don’t want to get shipped off to the damn nut ward. Besides, Peter’s in all of this right up to his righteous, self-centered eyebrows, and I want to help nail him.”

It was nearly nine-thirty in the morning. Sarah had just been notified that transportation—and security—were on their way to transfer her from the surgical intensive care unit to the locked psychiatric ward on Underwood Six.

“Sarah, I know this isn’t what you want,” Matt said, “but the truth is, you’ve been through hell. You’re just a couple of hours off a ventilator, and I’ve never seen you look so tired. If you don’t go to the psych service freely, Goldschmidt’s going to have you committed. As long as he believes you tried to commit suicide, he doesn’t really have much choice. And there’s something else we shouldn’t forget. Since we both know you didn’t try to commit suicide, we also know that someone out there tried to kill you.”

“Correction,” Sarah said, her voice still quite hoarse. “Someone out there tried to make it look like
I
killed myself
. That’s what administering that venom to Annalee was all about, Matt. Don’t you see? It had to look like I attempted suicide because I was guilty of causing those other DIC cases as well as trying to create one in her. Killing me in any other way would have said just the opposite. We’re hitting somebody’s raw nerve. Maybe Peter, maybe Glenn, maybe this Dr. Singh. Maybe some combination of those. I don’t know. But we’re getting close to the truth. Trying to set me up was a very desperate move. We’ve got to get to the bottom of this before whoever did it tries something else. I can help, Matt. Really I can.”

“I know. But please, there isn’t anything I can do. I hate the idea of your being on a locked ward as much as you do. But for the next day we’ve got to go along with it. Even if we could somehow get you discharged, which we can’t, I’d be worried about you every minute we weren’t together. I talked to Rosa and Eli before I went to your apartment to get your things. We’re going to be working like hell to find out who’s behind all this. And today we’ve got a lot of moving around to do. Hang in there for just this one day. Then I promise we’ll do whatever we have to to get you sprung.”

The brief meeting with Blankenship had been fruitful. Matt had shared the details of his encounter with Jeremy Mallon, and Mallon’s belief that Peter Ettinger and
Glenn Paris were somehow connected through the McGrath Foundation and the Ayurvedic Weight Loss System.

Blankenship knew the McGrath Foundation was based in New York City and that the heads of the philanthropic organization had made initial contact with Glenn Paris and Colin Smith some four or five years before. He had never seen the application Paris had submitted to the agency, nor the actual terms of the grant. But he did know that millions of dollars were involved. He took on the job of trying to locate and penetrate the foundation. He also would arrange for the car he had promised Rosa.

The epidemiologist, playing her cards close to the vest as always, would say very little of where she was going, or even whom she was after, other than that she was still not at all certain of his whereabouts.

The strategy they decided upon for Matt was to speak with Colin Smith, then Peter Ettinger, and finally Glenn Paris. Smith seemed to Blankenship the likeliest of the three to crack. If he did, they could play one off against another. And of course, Matt added, if that approach did not work, there was always good old Plan B—some sort of spontaneous frontal attack.

“Transport’s here,” the charge nurse called over.

Matt pulled the curtain closed and waited outside it while Sarah changed into the jeans and sweatshirt he had brought from her apartment.

“Okay, I’m ready as I’ll ever be,” she said.

The security guard kept a respectful, perhaps embarrassed, distance as the transportation worker pushed his wheelchair to Sarah’s bedside.

“The visitors’ hours on Underwood Six are six to eight in the evening,” Matt said. “I checked.”

“That’s it? Just two hours?”

Matt took her hand in his.

“It takes younger men days to accomplish what us
older, more experienced guys can do in two hours,” he said. “Just be strong, okay?”

Reluctantly Sarah slid off the bed and into the wheelchair.

“Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine,” she said. “As long as you don’t let them keep me more than a day. Besides, the cuisine on the psych ward is world famous. They serve soup to nuts.” She pointed toward the SICU exit. “Home, Jeeves.”

The locked ward on Underwood Six was newly painted and furnished. Each room contained two single beds. The exception was the room next to the nurses’ station, which had no furniture at all except for uncovered mattresses on the floor and walls that made it literally a padded cell. Sarah had been on the ward for two hours before she noticed that the heavy screens were on the inside of the windows and the inside door handles were not there at all.

Except for a brief physical exam by a male psych resident, who used his stethoscope, penlight, and ophthalmoscope, but seemed loath to touch any part of her body with his hands, she was left pretty much alone. The second bed in her room was, for the moment at least, unassigned. For a time, she lay on her bed trying to read an obstetrics journal; then, failing at that, a Sue Grafton mystery. Finally, when she could not even concentrate on
Good Housekeeping
, she wandered out of the room and joined the eight or nine people who were hanging out in the lounge.

“Group in fifteen minutes, everybody,” a woman called out in a cheerful singsong. “Right here in the lounge. Attendance mandatory.”

Sarah gazed absently out of one of the windows. She was on the side of the building facing the MCB campus. Streaming through the pane, free of any breeze, the autumn sun felt hot enough to bake bread. Far below, to one end of the broad, grassy mall, workmen were completing
construction of a temporary grandstand—perhaps ten tiers high, with a platform and podium at the top. Loudspeakers were mounted on poles to either side of the stands. Sarah was wondering about the setup when she looked across the campus. The Chilton Building, on the side farthest away from Underwood, was the site of intense activity.

It was Friday, the twenty-eighth
, she suddenly realized. Demolition Day minus one. The huge old eyesore had been boarded up for as long as Sarah had been at MCB, the grass around it noticeably less well maintained than the rest of the mall. Tomorrow, in just a few spectacular seconds, the decaying structure would cease to exist. The view of the extravaganza from Underwood Six would be astounding—perhaps the one real perk of being a patient on the locked ward!

Resting on the window ledge was a scratched, ancient pair of binoculars, whose optics turned out to be surprisingly good. The Chilton Building was cordoned off by two concentric rings of blue sawhorses. Huge canvas dust shields had been strung together and draped over the nearby parking garages. A small group of men in shining metal hard hats were talking and gesturing up at the condemned structure. But most of the workmen seemed to be packing up their gear. Apparently, the preparation of the building and the laying of charges was complete. Sarah wondered if any of the officials from the McGrath Foundation would be at the next morning’s festivities. Just then she noticed a white panel truck pull away from the deserted side of the building. Slowly and unobtrusively it eased through a small opening in the barriers and headed off. Through the binocs, it was not difficult to make out the bright red block lettering on the truck:
HURON PHARMACEUTICALS
. The printing was repeated, in smaller letters, across the truck’s rear doors.

The name struck a chord of some sort … 
but why?

“Okay,
group
, everybody,” the singsong voice announced.
. “Attendance mandatory. No excuses. Let’s get going.”

Huron Pharmaceuticals
, Sarah mulled as she took the seat that seemed the least conspicuous. Where in the hell had she run into that before?
Where?

“Okay, everyone,” the group leader said to the twenty or so patients on the locked ward. “We’ve got two new people with us today, so I think it’s appropriate to go around the group for first-name introductions. I’m Cecily, one of the group facilitators on Underwood Six.”

“Marvin,” the worn-out looking black man next to her said. “Lynn.”

“I’m Nancy. Don’t ever call me Nan.”

“Pete …”

Peter!
Sarah did not hear any of the succeeding names and had to be prompted to say hers when her turn came. She had suddenly remembered why Huron Pharmaceuticals had seemed so familiar.

“Ours are standard, FDA-approved multivitamins, manufactured for us by Huron Pharmaceuticals.”

Peter Ettinger had spoken those words at his deposition. Sarah was absolutely certain of it. She heard them now in his voice and in her mind’s eye saw his smug expression as he delivered them. First the McGrath Foundation and now Huron Pharmaceuticals. Two direct connections between Peter Ettinger, the Ayurvedic Herbal Weight Loss System, and the Medical Center of Boston.

Coincidence?

Sarah’s fists clenched tightly in her lap.

No fucking way!
she thought.

“Very well, Sarah,” Cecily said. “If you don’t want to share today, we all certainly understand. But I also must tell you that we frown on profanity during group.…”

I
T WAS NEARING NOON.
T
RAFFIC SOUTHBOUND ON THE
central artery, leading out of the city, was light. Nevertheless, Matt was well aware of the vindictive nature of Boston drivers, and stayed in the middle lane, intent on offending no one. Colin Smith was out of the hospital for the remainder of the day, his secretary reported. An avid sailor, he spent every Friday afternoon from mid-April to early November aboard his boat. However, she added, a meeting had run late, and he had left the office not twenty minutes ago. If Matt’s business with him was important, he might try calling the South Boston Yacht Club.

Instead of calling, Matt had decided to show up at the dock unannounced. He knew the way, having been there several times during his Red Sox years. And Colin Smith, very much the CPA, seemed like someone who might not do well with surprises.

Before calling Smith, Matt had stopped by Eli Blankenship’s office. The medical chief had tried New York information in an attempt to reach the McGrath Foundation. They were not surprised that there was no such listing. The foundation had undoubtedly been established
some years before, with no purpose other than to prepare for the laundering of the huge profits projected from the sales of the Ayurvedic Herbal Weight Loss System. Whoever had set up the operation had remarkable foresight, as well as keen insight into weight-conscious, do-it-the-easy-way America. Properly marketed, a no-diet slimming product with or without any proven effectiveness was a virtual gold mine. And the Ayurvedic Herbal Weight Loss System was not only well marketed, but actually seemed to work.

The way Matt saw it, the herbal product had been introduced and possibly developed at MCB by the mysterious Indian Ayurvedic physician, Pramod Singh. About four and a half years ago, the powder was tested by Singh, and quite successfully so, on at least three people—Alethea Worthington, Constanza Hidalgo, and Lisa Summer. There were probably more test subjects, but fortunately, none of the others had become pregnant and gone into labor.

Eventually Singh joined forces with Peter Ettinger, and then with a marketing agency that had an understanding of the power of infomercial television. King Midas himself could not have done a more efficient job of turning their herbs and protein into gold. A portion of the profits from the sale of the product was now finding its way into the coffers of the hospital, perhaps in payment for the early work done there. Some other monies were at work fostering the establishment of Xanadu and Ettinger’s holistic healing empire.

But the rest?

According to Jeremy Mallon’s operatives, the sums funneled to Xanadu and the Medical Center of Boston were still only fractions of what the marketing blitz was actually generating. It was quite possible that Colin Smith did not have the whole picture of what was going on. But he had to know something.