Prayers for the Dead (41 page)

“We live in a country that prides itself on free-market enterprise. As long as patents laws weren’t violated, I did nothing illegal in agreeing to develop a new drug.”

“Maybe not illegal, but unethical,” Oliver said.

“Was it any more unethical than Azor taking all the credit for work I did?”

Oliver looked at his notes, then at Berger. He sat back in his chair. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but Dr. Fulton — that’s Elizabeth Fulton for the records — she told us that any scientific discoveries that came from Sparks’s lab were
his
to publish. That’s just how it is in the academic world.”

Berger was miffed. “Do you want to hear my story or
not
?”

“Besides,” Oliver went on, “Sparks wasn’t screwing you up by monkeying with the computers—”

“I’m
getting
to that,” Berger responded fiercely.

“Rather slowly,” Saugust whispered under his breath.

Berger gave Saugust a hard glance, but went on. “Not wanting to be accused of academic pirating, I quit the job as liaison and handed it over to Reggie. In private… on my
own
time… I began working with Shockley on developing a competing drug to Curedon.”

“Where’d you get the money? Where’d you get the
lab
?”

“Shockley provided the money, told me he’d settle the account once we sold my drug.” Berger rubbed his cheeks. “Since I had no other source of funding, I didn’t probe. As far as the labs… I worked on my off hours and weekends at Fisher/Tyne—”

“So that’s
really
where you were the night of the murders,” Oliver butted in. “Tustin’s right around the corner from Fisher/Tyne’s labs. You weren’t at any
dinner show —
”

“I was there—”

“So tell me about the play, Doc. Better yet, whistle me a tune from the musical.”

Berger was silent.

“
Way to go, Scott!” Decker said
.

Marge shook her head. “I should have picked up on that. Tustin being so close to Fisher/Tyne
.”

“
Me, too. So this time it’s Scott. He did good
.”

“
He did good
.”

Oliver said, “Your wife wasn’t home when we called your house. Where was she?”

“She had nothing to do—”

“I’m not saying she did,” Oliver interrupted. “Where was she?”

Berger sighed. “At her sister’s house. When I heard the horrid news coming home from the lab, I realized I was going to have to explain why I was so far away from my house. I bought a copy of the
Orange County Register
, looked in the entertainment section, saw the listing for the dinner show. I stopped by and picked a couple of ticket stubs off the sidewalk. If I had told the truth… that I was at Fisher/Tyne working on a competitive drug, people would have gotten the wrong idea.”

“Or the right one—”

“I did
not
kill Azor!”

“Detective, please!” Dorman cut in.

Oliver said, “Go on, Dr. Berger.”

“I went home…” Berger sighed again. “Quickly changed into dress clothes, called up my wife, and told her to borrow something dressy from her sister. Then I had her take me to the hospital, to make it look like we were coming back from the theater. She was furious at me… having to invent this facade for me. But… she was also scared. She knew if it all came out…”

“Somebody see you at Fisher/Tyne, Doc?” Oliver asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe. There are guards there. But I don’t check in with them, as I have my own key from Shockley.” Berger dropped his head. “My work is very hush-hush.”

“So no one can verify—”

“I swear I didn’t kill anyone!” Berger was almost in tears. “Look, I’ve taken a lie-detector test. I’ll take another one. I’m telling you the truth.”

“
There goes his alibi,” Marge said
.

“
Don’t he know it,” Decker said
.

“
What do you think?
”

“
I think we need to question him extensively
.”

“Do you want me to go on?” Berger asked quietly.

Oliver nodded. “Yeah, continue your story, Doc.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Okay, it’s the truth.”

“Where was I?”

“You were working on a competing drug to Curedon.”

“Yes. Correct. And things were going very well. I was making incredibly good progress on my drug… which I named… Marasporin… which was a marriage between several known cyclosporins and Curedon. I was surprised how fast things were going. There was just one problem.”

“What?” Oliver asked.

“Reggie Decameron,” Berger said. “He was working with Fisher/Tyne on Curedon… smoothing out the bumps. Actually, he was ironing out the wrinkles faster than I could develop my drug. Shockley was alarmed at how scientifically facile Reggie was. The man, for all his perversions, was a brilliant thinker. And contrary to what I stated before, I am sorry he’s dead.”

Marge said, “He just gave us a reason for wanting Decameron out of the picture
.”

“
Yes, he did
.”

“
Stupidity or is he really innocent?
”

“
He passed the lie-detector test,” Decker pointed out
.

“
He is also an admitted liar
.”

Decker nodded, took out his notepad, wrote down Berger’s words, and underlined them
.

Berger said, “Shockley was frantic with worry. After all, he had invested money in me. Lots and lots of money, or so he told me. I, for one, suspect he had invested other people’s money in me. So who knows to whom he was beholden. He suggested a way to slow Curedon’s progress with the FDA.”

“Tamper with the data,” Oliver said. “You plugged in false data to make Curedon look bad.”

“Not
bad
, heavens no. Just… not as
good
.”

“The higher mortality rate Decameron was concerned with,” Oliver said. “He was right. It was a technical error. But one that was done on purpose.”

Averting his eyes, Berger whispered, “It was a terrible mistake on my part.”

“Not a mistake, Doctor. A felony—”

“Detective, please,” Dorman chided. “Dr. Berger has been made aware of the seriousness of his error in judgment. There’s no need to remind him.”

Berger said, “My… crime, I think, is a by-product of the computer age. One tampers with numbers in machines, one is never confronted with the direct consequences of one’s errors. I didn’t see faces, I just saw numbers.”

“
All those newfangled falderah machines,” Marge grumped. “Just suck you into sinnin
’.”

“
Talk about cheap rationalizations.” Decker rolled his eyes. “Satan goes high tech
.”

Berger continued. “Fisher/Tyne logs its computer time meticulously. All operators have to keep precise records of their machine usage. We couldn’t use the computer on Fisher/Tyne’s end because unaccounted minutes would show up on the log.”

“So you got to the computer on your end,” Oliver said. “How’d you break into Leonard’s system?”

Berger smiled ruefully. “How do you think? Leonard was in on it.”

No one spoke. Finally, Oliver said, “Leonard was in on it?”

“Yes.”

“For how much?”

“Not an even cut, but a sizable portion. Shockley arranged it all. At that point, I was already drowning in deceit. I felt I had no choice but to agree.”

“Don’t tell me,” Oliver said. “Then Leonard got greedy.”

Berger hid his face for a moment. “It does sound like a sordid story, doesn’t it?”

“Keep going, Doctor,” Saugust prompted.

Berger said, “Kenny started whining. That he had the most to lose because he was actively doing all the illegal shenanigans. And this was true. He demanded a bigger cut and made threatening noises when we balked.”

Oliver said, “He tells on you, he screws himself up.”

“Actually, Detective, we pointed that out to him.”

“And?”

“And we never got any farther in our negotiations.” Berger wiped sweat from his brow. “Because a week later, Azor was murdered. Not knowing what was going on, I kept a low profile, stopped taking calls from either of them. Then yesterday… when I found out about Kenny and Reggie…”

He wiped sweat off his brow and bald head with a handkerchief.

“This should be self-evident. I became truly terrified.”

Oliver put down his notebook. “Was Shockley the only one you dealt with at Fisher/Tyne?”

“He’s the only one I know about.” Berger paused. “Though I have no way of proving this… I always felt that Shockley was moving with Grammer’s permission.”

“You have nothing to tie Grammer to your activities?”

“No.”

Oliver consulted a moment with Saugust.

“What?” Dorman said.

Saugust said, “Would your client be willing to wear a wire to try to get something out of Shockley?”

“That wasn’t part of the deal,” Dorman said. “And since he was already offered immunity for testifying, I don’t see where that would be in Dr. Berger’s best interest.”

Oliver said, “Might be in his best interest to obtain a new identity.”

Dorman said, “What are you implying?”

Oliver said, “Just that it’s going to be hard for him to practice medicine after all this comes out.”

“Why should it come out?” Berger’s voice was panicked. “I thought I cut a deal—”

“You’re associated with three dead men, sir,” Oliver replied. “It’s bound to come out.”

The room was quiet.

“Not that I can speak for the FBI,” Oliver said, “but they might be willing to fix him up with a new set of papers so he could practice medicine without harassment.”

Dorman said, “You don’t have the power to do that.”

Oliver said, “No,
I
don’t. But the FBI does. And you know, your client is still under investigation for murder. Especially now that he doesn’t have anyone who could verify his whereabouts—”

Berger interrupted. “I had nothing to do—”

“Myron, please.” Dorman took out a pen and clicked it several times. “I’ll take the matter up with the local agents here.”

“I told you all I know,” Berger whined. “I don’t want to wear a wire.”

“Myron, we’ll talk about this later.” To Oliver, Dorman said, “Anything else?”

Oliver said, “What was Sparks doing all this time?”

“Pardon?”

“He must have been disappointed in Curedon’s mediocre results. He must have looked over the data. Are you telling me he didn’t have any idea about what was going on?”

“Azor was disturbed by the results, yes. But he had confidence in Reggie. Actually, it was Reggie who was upset. He couldn’t understand why, after riding this tremendous upswing of wonderful results, his data suddenly crashed.”

Berger spoke softly.

“The team got our readouts from Fisher/Tyne. Because the company owned the drug. But I know that a couple of times, Reggie got hold of data directly from Fisher/Tyne’s labs, before it went into their computers—”

“Before Ken Leonard got a chance to doctor it.”

“Yes. I knew Reggie was moving in fast. It was just a matter of time…”

“Yet Dr. Sparks never became suspicious.”

“Dr. Sparks had other problems to contend with — namely getting hearts. We have a severe shortage of healthy hearts. It’s gotten so bad that we’ve been reduced to repairing hearts with minor defects and recycling them for our sickest transplant patients,” Berger muttered. “That’s what happens when the government gets involved.”

Oliver asked, “What are you talking about?”

“What?”

“The government being involved,” Oliver said. “Are they hoarding hearts or something?”

Berger smiled. The first smile of the entire session. “I was speaking off the top of my head. No, the government is not hoarding hearts. What the government has done is pass
good
legislation that has done its job. Unfortunately, it’s made our jobs as cardiac surgeons a little harder.”

No one spoke.

“The helmet law,” Berger said. “Since they’ve enacted the helmet law, we don’t get the fatal head-injury motorcycle crashes. Meaning we just don’t get hearts like we used to.”

“So now we
know why Sparks was involved with the bikers and their Peoples Environment Freedom Act or whatever the heck it’s called.” Marge closed the door to Decker’s office. “Sparks wanted the law repealed so he could harvest hearts.”

Oliver sat in Decker’s desk chair, exhausted after four hours of extensive questioning. The minutiae of Berger’s activities the night of Sparks’s murder. Berger had taken them through his activities in the lab step by step, giving them a plausible time frame. In the end, they had no choice but to release him. Not enough evidence to hold him for murder.

“A doctor needs a hobby.” Oliver shook his head. “And here I thought vampires were all made up.”

“Sparks was collecting hearts, not eating them,” Marge said.

“Out of my chair, Scott.” Decker checked the clock. It was almost one
A.M.
Today was Friday and the evening would bring in the Sabbath, his family’s day of prayer, meditation, and
rest
. As far as Decker was concerned, time couldn’t pass quickly enough.

Oliver got up and parked himself in a folding chair. “When we arrested Berger, he’d blurted out the same thing to Dr. Fulton. That Sparks was obssessed with getting hearts, used to try to pick them out of dead accident victims.”

Decker remembered New Chris’s intensive-care nurse talking about Sparks and his police band radio. How the doctor had raced to accidents, ostensibly to help out the victims. Had he only been interested in seizing body parts?

“I don’t know if it’s illegal,” Decker said, “but preying on victims like that is major league creepy.” He sat down. “So now we can explain why Sparks became a weekend warrior. The main question is… is Myron Berger telling the truth?”

No one spoke.

Decker said, “Maybe after the Curedon meeting, after Decameron and Sparks parted ways in the doctors’ parking lot, Berger came up to Sparks and invited him to Tracadero’s. Then Berger jumped him in the back alley.”