“We got him,” Train said.
“Venable?”
“Looks that way. Several large payments were made over the last month to Salvage.”
“And you can tie them to Venable?”
“Not yet, but they’re from a government account. The account has some blinds on it, so it’s gonna take a little time to unwind it all, but it’s a safe bet that Senator Venable is holding the strings at the other end.”
“Good. Looks like we’re getting somewhere finally. Torbert’ll be pissed.”
“I know. Warms your heart, doesn’t it? But that’s not all, partner. We got more.”
“I’m listening.”
“We pulled a history on the account that was directing cash Salvage’s way, and guess who’s also been getting paid off?”
Cassian thought for a moment. “Gimme a hint.”
“He’s in your neck of the woods.”
“Ah.” Cassian smiled to himself. “Dr. Mayer, I presume.”
“Give the man a prize. So you’ve actually got some work to do down there.”
“Looks that way, doesn’t it. I’ll let you know what happens as soon as I talk to him. And if you get anything else, let me know, okay?”
“Will do. And Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“Say hello to this asshole for me, okay?”
“Will do.”
z
Cassian hung up the phone and stepped out of the room. He turned back toward the reception desk, but there was no one standing duty. He was tempted to storm down to Mayer’s of
fice and begin demanding explanations, but there was no way of knowing whether he was there or whether he was off in a private room with a patient. For a moment Jack supposed he would simply have to wait, but then he had another idea.
He ducked down the hallway that led to the stairs he’d taken to the basement when they’d found Willie Murphy’s body. The buzz of the generators and HVAC grew steadily louder as he descended into the dark cavern of the basement. He followed the concrete hallway around the maze until he came to the room that Murphy had used as a makeshift office.
The crime scene tape was still strung across the doorway, though now three days after the body had been removed there was no one standing guard. The place was a mess. Fingerprint dust covered every surface, and the furniture was askew, but the chair in which Murphy had spent his final painful moment was still pulled back from the desk. Jack went over and sat down.
From this vantage, he had a sense of the view of the world that Willie Murphy had experienced for much of the past three decades. It was dark and narrow, and yet somehow warm and safe. On the far wall, several pictures of mountains and landscapes inexpertly ripped from magazines over the years were hung carefully in order. In a corner, hidden from the view from the doorway, was an ancient rocking horse that looked as though it had been restored with love. Cassian looked over at the battered guitar case and remembered Sydney’s description of the beautiful music the man had been able to produce without any formal training. It was all such a waste, he thought.
On the desk there were some sheets of paper and pencils, as well as a few tools, but nothing that gave Cassian any insight into what had happened to the man. He opened the drawers of the desk one by one; most of them were filled with more tools and nails and screws and all of the accoutrements necessary to a life as a handyman. He was about to close the last drawer when a slip of paper tucked deep in the back of it caught his attention. He gave a tug, and although it seemed caught in the joints at the back of the drawer, after a moment it came free.
He held it up and examined it. It was a large envelope, the kind one might use for business correspondence. There was nothing written on it, but at the bottom he could feel something rattling and shifting like pebbles. He opened the envelope and looked in.
At first he couldn’t tell what he was looking at, so he reached his hand in and grabbed a handful of the contents, pulling them out and spreading them on the desk. They were pills. Most of them were large and green with the marking “X-286” on them, but there were others of different shapes, colors, and sizes. “What the fuck?” he muttered to himself.
“They’re medications,” came a voice from the door.
Cassian looked up and saw Mayer.
“I knew you were here, and when you weren’t in the waiting room I figured you probably came down here to poke around. I hope you don’t mind that I followed you.” He looked tired, and there was an air of resignation about him.
“Medications for what?” Cassian asked, skipping the pleasantries.
“It depends on which ones you’re asking about. The green ones are psychoactives to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. From the look of it, some of the other ones are earlier versions of the same medication, and others ...I don’t really know. I would have to go back through our records.”
“What are they doing in Willie Murphy’s desk?”
“He was taking them. Actually, the green ones seemed to be having a remarkably positive effect. He was much more comfortable in his skin over the last year, and he started to make real progress in gaining back much of the time he’d lost. Ironic, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“That what’s going on here—what was helping to make him better—also got him killed.”
Cassian put the pills back into the envelope. “You wanna tell me about the money?”
Mayer scoffed. “That’s what bothers me the most. When this all comes out, people are going to assume that this was all about the money. It wasn’t, you know? The money was irrelevant; I suspect when you add it all up, the payments that went to me will seem remarkably paltry.”
“What’s it about, then?”
“It’s about the future. It’s about protecting this country, and the world. It’s about healing people.”
“I’m gonna need a little more of an explanation.”
Mayer leaned against the doorjamb. “Perhaps I should call my lawyer.”
Jack took out his gun and placed it on the desk next to the envelope. “If you think you can get out of here, be my guest.” He glared at the older man. “I don’t give a shit about you, Doc. And I don’t care about my career anymore, so you should take that into consideration. Given what we’ve found so far, eventually we’re gonna find out the who, where, when, whats. I want to know about the
why.
”
“Put your gun away, Detective, I’m not calling my lawyer, I just thought that was what I was supposed to say. Isn’t that what people in my position are supposed to say?”
“You watch too much TV.”
“Probably, but there’s not much to do all the way out here.” The doctor sighed and walked into the room, taking a seat across the desk from Cassian. “Believe it or not, I’m glad you’re
here. It will be a relief to be done with this all.”
“So tell me.”
He shook his head. “I don’t even know where to begin. Perhaps I should start by trying to explain to you that we never meant any harm...”
T
HE STREETS OF
G
EORGETOWN
were quiet, and the trees that lined the lanes sheltered the nineteenth-century colonial town
houses, shrouding them in privilege and secrecy. This was one of the nation’s power centers, where the political elites held their private cocktail parties for friends and adversaries alike, and where gentlemen’s agreements consummated over drinks in quiet parlors had ramifications throughout the world.
Train and Cassian stood on the brick walkway leading to the front door of one of the largest townhouses in the neighborhood, waiting. The door opened, and a butler peered at them through the crack. “May I help you?”
“Is he in?” Train asked, holding up his badge. “Tell him Detectives Train and Cassian are here. We’ve spoken before, and we need to see him again.”
“Is he expecting you?”
“No, but he’ll want to see us. Trust me.”
The butler opened the door and ushered them into the entryway. “Please wait here while I see if he’s receiving guests.” He disappeared down a hallway, and neither Train nor Cassian spoke while he was gone. It took only a moment or two before the man returned. “He’s in his study. This way.” They followed him down the hall. “May I get you gentlemen anything?” He was clearly accustomed to helping his employer entertain.
“No thank you,” Train said.
They came to a large dark beveled wood door. “Very well, then. He’s in here,” the butler said. “Please let me know if you need anything.” He opened the door and extended his arm in invitation, then retreated back down the hallway.
“Come in, gentlemen, come in,” came a voice from beyond the door.
z
Train felt numb as he walked through the door. It all fit, and yet none of it made any sense. In some ways, he dreaded whatever explanation he would find.
Irskin Elliot sat in a comfortable leather club chair at the far end of the room. A heavy book rested on his knee, illuminated by a small brass standing lamp next to his chair. “Come in, please,” he repeated. He carefully folded a silk bookmark into his volume and set it onto the small end table next to his chair. “I enjoy reading philosophy these days. Perhaps it’s so I can reconcile myself to my own impending demise. Speaking of which.” He punched a button on an intercom unit on the table. “Matthew, will you please bring me two of my heart pills?”
“Two, sir?” came the reply.
“Thank you, Matthew.” Elliot shrugged his shoulders at the de
tectives. “Without my medicine, I’ve no doubt I’d have been in the ground decades ago. As it is, the doctors won’t guarantee any amount of time. Now, gentlemen, what can I do for you?”
Train heard his own voice. “We’ve fleshed out some of the information in connection with the deaths of Elizabeth Creay and Lydia Chapin, as well as those of Willie Murphy and Leighton Creay. We wanted to run some theories by you, and get your take.”
Elliot shook his head. “I just don’t know what to make of any of this, but I’m happy to provide whatever help I can. The notion that Lydia was behind all this, that she might have had something to do with the murder of her own daughter . . . it’s all so unbelievable.”
“It is,” Train agreed. “Although Mrs. Chapin claimed that she had nothing to do with Elizabeth’s death. In fact, while she admitted killing her ex-son-in-law because she believed that he killed her daughter, and because he was blackmailing her over the custody of her granddaughter, she denied any involvement in her daughter’s death.”
“Interesting. Did you believe her?”
“We’re starting to. We ran some checks on the finances of the corrupt private detective who killed Mrs. Chapin, and he was receiving payments from a blind government account. Interestingly, that account was also making payments to Dr. Aldus Mayer, the head of the Institute.”
Elliot scratched his chin. “So you’re thinking that Venable controls the account, and your theories about him are panning out?”
“That was the direction we were going in. But then we dug a little deeper, and found that there was no way that Venable could have controlled the account—it was attached to the executive branch, not to Congress.”
“That would certainly make it difficult for him, though not impossible. He’s a very powerful man.”
“Yes, he is,” Train admitted. He held his breath. “As are you.”
Elliot looked long at Train before replying. “I’m a mere government functionary, I assure you.”
“Oh, I think you’re too modest, Mr. Elliot.” Train walked over and sat in a chair across from Elliot. “I have to be honest, when we talked at Elizabeth Creay’s funeral, I had very little idea what the Department of Health and Human Services was responsible for. It turns out that it’s much larger than I thought. It controls almost the entire medical profession, including the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, Medicaid and Medicare, as well as research into bioterrorism, and the Centers for Disease Control.”
“You’ve been doing your homework,” Elliot said with a smile and a nod. “Very good for you.”
“Thank you.” Train was silent for a few moments, gauging Elliot’s reaction before continuing. “You mentioned to me when we met that you worked for the Chapins’ company when you were younger. Would you mind telling me in what division?”
Elliot smiled. “Oh, come now, Detective. I’m sure you’ve done enough digging to discover that already. Otherwise I find it hard to believe you’d be here.”
“Consolidated Pharmaceuticals,” Train replied, answering his own question. “According to the company’s records, you were an executive vice president there in the late 1950s and ’60s.”
Elliot nodded. “Excellent,” he said.
“You would have been involved in the experiments that were going on at the Institute, and when you were elected governor of Virginia, you had the power to clean the place up and destroy all the records.”
Elliot shook his head. “Involved? No. I was aware of the experiments, but I opposed them. That’s why I shut them down when I became governor.” He gave Train an oddly amused smile. “So tell me, what’s your theory now, Detective?”
“It looks to us like the government started a wide program of illegal medical testing on patients up at the Institute—at your direction, we think—once you became Secretary of Health and Human Services. You commented to us before on the amount of autonomy you have in your position. We traced the payments to Dr. Mayer a few years back, when you took your job. It also looks like Leighton Creay had nothing to do with his exwife’s death. He was just trying to take advantage of her murder to blackmail Lydia Chapin. She killed him for it.”
Elliot leaned his head back into his chair. “It’s an interesting theory, but it will be very difficult to prove.”
Train shook his head. “Dr. Mayer is cooperating. He’ll do some time, but he’s working with the prosecutors to get the full story.”
Just then, there was a knock at the door, and the butler appeared with a tray containing a glass of water and two pills. “Thank you, Matthew,” Elliot said politely. The butler perched the tray on the table next to him and retreated, closing the door behind him.
Once the butler was gone, Train continued. “You had the power to begin medical testing programs again. You had the ability to control the information; you had the ability to direct the resources and cover them up; you had the money. You also knew Lydia Creay, and had worked at Consolidated Pharmaceuticals, and had the connections to direct the production of experimental drugs. The only thing we can’t figure out is your motivation. As near as we can tell, you never took any payoffs.”