Cover Shot (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery Book 5) (24 page)

34.

Winning at losing

N
o matter what happened in the rest of my day, nobody saw me changing my shirt in the front seat of my car.

Thankful for small favors, I stuffed my Donna Karan blouse into the garbage can outside the elevator and tapped one tangerine Kate Spade mule on the sticky floor as the elevator climbed toward the newsroom.

I needed to talk to Bob. And light a candle before I went to talk to Larry. I knew the photo was a longshot for anything other than what it had already provided, but it was all I had. With Aaron on an operating table at St. Vincent’s, it was only a matter of time before Charlie caught up. For all I knew she might not be that far behind to begin with.

I shook off the competitive itch and refocused. Tom Ellinger. Benny Shabani.

And now Aaron.

Beating Charlie was a distant fourth. Even Rick Andrews could take a flying leap today.

I dug my phone out and shot Landers a text begging for updates as the doors opened.

Bolting off the elevator, I waved hello to three people between it and Bob’s office, but I couldn’t have put faces to any one of them. The story was all I could see, because it was the only way to help anyone.

“Chief, I know I missed the meeting but I—”

I stopped when I rounded the corner into Bob’s office, Andrews and two other suits just taking seats. I got blank stares from the ones I didn’t know and a sneer from Andrews.

“Bob has another appointment just now.”

“I have an exclusive for tomorrow’s front page I need to talk to him about.” I hovered in the doorway, a heaviness in the air giving me pause.

“On what? Every TV station in town has a live feed right now about the shooting of an RPD detective this morning. Our website has nothing. How are we supposed to compete for advertising money when we missed the biggest breaking story of the year?”

“I was—”

Andrews raised a hand. “I’m not interested in excuses, Miss Clarke. And we have business to discuss. I’ll deal with you when I’m done here.”

My eyes flew to Bob, whose lips had vanished into a thin white line, his posture ramrod straight, his hands white-knuckling the arms of his chair.

Andrews and the suits turned to face my editor, and I closed my eyes, the firing squad image on the backs of my lids popping them right back open. Bob wouldn’t look at Andrews. He was looking at me. “Close the door on your way out, please.”

Andrews grinning in my peripheral, I kept my eyes locked on Bob.

I will fix this. I mouthed the words, and he shut his eyes for a long second. He wasn’t mad at me.

I wasn’t even mad at myself. I hadn’t failed Bob, and we both knew it.

But his face said he knew Andrews wouldn’t care. Arguing was pointless.

That was it.

He had resigned himself to whatever was coming.

Lucky for our readers, I don’t do resignation well.

I backed out the door and shut it, sprinting for the photo cave.

La
rry wasn’t there.

“I’m sorry, Nichelle. He called early this morning and said he wasn’t sure when he’d be in. Something about telling Bob to hold space for a cover shot tomorrow.” Lindsay offered a half-smile and turned back to her computer monitor.

“He didn’t say what he had?”

“He might have told Bob,” she said, not looking away from her screen. “You could ask him.” No, I could not.

I thanked her and stomped back to my desk. A cover shot was a rare thing these days—a photo worthy of all the available editorial space above the page one fold would have to be pretty damned special.

Flopping into my chair, I drug my laptop from my bag and flipped the screen up, opening a blank file and closing my eyes.

To hell with Rick Andrews. I’d lost to Charlie plenty of times, but not today. I hoped I had time to stick around and see the egg on his smug asshat face when he figured that out.

A Richmond Police Detective was shot on the street in broad daylight Thursday morning, and officers are combing the Carytown shopping district, searching for the gunman who wounded Detective Aaron White outside Thompson’s Coffee Shop just after 6 a.m.

“No one in this department will rest until an arrest has been made,” Detective Chris Landers said in a statement issued by the department an hour after the shooting.

The incident marks only the third time in the past two decades an RPD officer has been shot, and detectives at the scene refused to speculate on motive or name suspects.

I paused, staring at the blinking cursor. Stay out of the story. It’s Journalism 101. But today, being in the story was the only way I had more than anyone else. I clicked to Channel Four’s website and scrolled through Charlie’s write-up. All quotes from the press release, plus a couple of bystanders. Interestingly enough, she hadn’t used my name. I wondered if that was because she didn’t know the “female friend” the barista mentioned was me, or because she didn’t want to send the
Telegraph
readers. No way to tell.

Clicking back to my document, I switched tenses.

This
Richmond Telegraph
reporter was with the detective at the time of the shooting. Below is the exclusive firsthand account of what I saw.

The shot wasn’t audible from where we stood, nor did I see a gun. One moment, Detective White was talking to me, and the next he was bleeding. I grabbed Detective White and dragged him back into the coffee shop, calling for help and applying pressure to the wound as I dialed 911 from my cell phone.

I continued through the point where Aaron was loaded into the ambulance, pulling out my BlackBerry and checking for a text from Landers.

There were three.

He’s in surgery.

Ten minutes later:

It nicked an artery. They’re giving him blood by the bucketful. Damn damn damn.

My stomach turned inside out as I scrolled to the next one.

Stable. But they’re still working on him. Miller says you’re not talking. Don’t know why, but you better be ready to answer me when I get out of here.

I closed my eyes. Nice, Kyle. Let’s drag the detective with the young family into this manure pile.

Fingers shaking, I texted him back a thank you, ignoring the latter part of his message.

I wanted to ask what kind of bullet it was, but I knew there wasn’t any way they had ballistics back yet, and I also knew it didn’t matter. If the same person hadn’t shot Aaron and Stephanie Whitmire both, I’d give Alexa Reading my Rolodex and go sell shoes for a living. And I’m a lousy salesperson. Same gun, different gun: wouldn’t do anything to alter my gut feeling about who fired the shots, and I wasn’t in a position to ignore my gut.

I added Aaron’s condition to the story and popped out of my chair to check Bob’s door. Still closed. Andrews had many lousy qualities, not the least of which was his utterly shitty timing.

I sent an email to our web editor, attaching the story and marking it urgent before I picked up my BlackBerry and texted him to make sure he saw it. Four minutes passed and I got:
Do you have art?

Nothing live. Too busy trying to not let my friend die.

Stock?

Ten seconds
.

I pulled a publicity photo of Aaron from the PD’s site and emailed it to Ryan.

Up in two minutes
, came the reply.
Nice work.

Bob’s door was still closed. I hoped it was nice enough. I tapped the screen for two seconds, then opened a text to him.
Give Ryan five and check the website. Hang in there, Chief. We have your back.

I turned back to the computer. What else did I know? That might help, anyway?

Stephanie’s computer.

Aaron said they couldn’t get in. And he hadn’t wanted to compromise their case. But what if it held the key to why he was lying on an operating table?

I texted Chad and asked if he could meet me at the PD.

Before I could call Kyle, Chad texted back that he had Maynard’s cloud file loading onto a USB for me.

Jiminy. Choos.

You’re my hero. I’ll come get it, and we’ll see if we need the PD.

The answer to this whole mess was floating around the ether. If only I could manage to snatch it out of the air before anyone else got hurt.

35.

Discovery

“Y
ou’re going to need someone who knows a lot of medical jargon.” Chad handed me a thumb drive, shaking his head. “I only opened a couple of them, but I might as well have been reading Greek, and I’m not a stupid guy.”

I kissed his cheek and tucked the drive into my bag. “You are a freaking genius. Someday there will be parades in honor of your intelligence. But until then, you’ll have to take my word for it—you’re a hero.”

He patted my shoulder. “I saw your story. I’m sorry about your friend.”

“Don’t be sorry. Say a prayer and believe he’s going to be fine. Because he is.”

I refused to consider any other possibility.

He nodded and stepped into the elevator to go back upstairs, and I pulled out my BlackBerry for the forty millionth time in an hour.

Aaron was still in surgery. But no news certainly wasn’t bad news.

I sped back to the office and pulled the drive from my bag, closing my fist so tightly around it the plastic bit into my fingers as I waited for the elevator doors to open to the newsroom.

Plugging it into my computer, I grabbed the phone and dialed the NIH from memory.

“Miss Emma,” I said. “It’s Nichelle Clarke. I need your help. Do you have a computer that can screen share with me?”

“You sound serious, there, Lois Lane,” she said. “I’m not sure what screen whatever-you-said is, but I’ll help however I can.”

“I have Dr. Maynard’s files. A lot of them, anyway. But I have no idea how to read them.” I clicked open the drive and pulled a couple up for confirmation as I spoke. Yeah. Chad was right—I needed a translator.

“What kind of files?”

“Medical charts, study results.” I scrolled through and read her filenames. “Stuff I have no experience with, but it could mean everything to this case.”

“You’ve come to the right place,” she said. “I don’t have a degree, but it’s not because I haven’t done the reading.”

“You’re a rock star,” I said.

Thirty minutes later, I had Emma set up on a remote desktop app, and she was looking at Maynard’s file list.

“If this isn’t the damnedest thing,” she said. “Imagine, being able to look at someone else’s computer from hundreds of miles away.”

“Technology is awesome when it works,” I agreed. “Do you see anything we should look at?”

“See those numbers? That’s a code for an experimental treatment. It looks like several variations that are close together.”

I clicked the first file open. “And this?”

“Go down.”

I scrolled.

“It’s a study.” She moved a pointer between columns. “Patient ID numbers, codes for what type of cancer they had and the stage, and whether they were in the control group or treated with the protocol he was using. This is the result.” She hovered over a column of letters.

“What does it mean?”

“Let me see the rest of it,” she murmured, her wispy voice softer than usual.

I scrolled.

“Holy Mary,” she whispered.

“Miss Emma?”

“Cured. Every one of them.” The pointer skipped back and forth on my screen. “If they got the treatment, they got well. How? Why wouldn’t he file this?”

I sighed, Goetze and his kickbacks flashing through my thoughts. “Money.”

Emma’s voice picked up speed and tempo. “What was he doing? Go down more. I want to see the protocol.”

I obliged, stopping when she told me to and listening to her murmur to herself for half an hour. My shoulders slumped back into the chair.

Finally. Concrete evidence that Maynard had something worth killing for. This wasn’t one freak recovery. With the amount of effort that had gone into this cover-up, Felicia Lang could be dismissed.

Not this.

“I’ll be,” Miss Emma breathed finally. “It’s so simple. Such a brilliant, brilliant man.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Ions. He used negatively charged ions to attach the treatments directly to the cancer cells. Like setting a search and destroy mission inside the body. Not only did it obliterate the disease, it didn’t kill the whole system. People didn’t get sick like they do with chemo and radiation.”

“What kind of drug is it?” I scribbled, trying to make sure I got every word exactly as she said it.

“It looks like he used existing drugs. Without reading all those files, I can’t be sure, but this one is a drug that’s been in wide use for five years. It’s just a completely different delivery approach. And it worked, according to this. Why hide it? I mean, this is the medical discovery of the millennium. He’ll be in history books for generations. There’s immense pressure on doctors to discover new things and get research published.”

My fingers got a cramp getting the last of that down. “Enough pressure for someone to want to steal it?” I asked, shaking my hand.

“Possibly. Though they’d have to keep Maynard quiet. Or discredit him.”

Goetze? I’d dismissed him as a weasely suck-up who cared more about himself than his patients. But what if he’d slid under my radar? Maynard wouldn’t have tolerated less than brilliance in an assistant, and this murderer was certainly smarter than your average criminal.

“Thank you, Miss Emma,” I said. “You’re an angel.”

“Happy to help,” she chirped. “Listen, honey—I’ll do what I can to keep Dr. Maynard from getting in trouble, but you’re going to have to get me those files.”

My inner Lois didn’t like the sound of that for a number of reasons, not the least of which was Aaron lying on an operating table. “Miss Emma, I understand that, and I can’t tell you how excited I am about helping people with this research, but maybe we should keep it to ourselves for right now.”

“Why’s that?”

“If someone does want it, and we don’t know who it is yet…” I let the sentence trail off.

Silence. “Oh.” Her voice was small.

“I’m sorry. Soon.”

“Of course.” Her tone brightened. “Go get ’em, Lois.”

“Happy to.”

I hung up the phone and clicked back to the file list. What was I looking for? Not the first damned clue. But there had to be something. He’d backed this stuff up and encrypted it because he wanted it protected, not because it’s a fun way to spend a Saturday night.

I scrolled, the strings of numbers in the file names not making much more sense than they had before I talked to Emma.

I glanced at the top of the file window. One thousand, three hundred and seventeen files. Oy.

Three hours and four emergency Diet-Coke-and-glazed-eyeball breaks later, I was considering a second pass when I found three files that weren’t spreadsheets.

I selected the first and waited for my PDF reader to load.

A letter. From Alan Shannon at Evaris.

I didn’t risk breathing as I scrolled.

Pleasantries. A hello for Maynard’s assistant. So they did know each other.

I kept reading.

And found the biggest pile of horse shit ever seen outside the downs on Derby day.

Double-talk 101: I’d never met a politician or a cop who had an inch on this Shannon dude. In the same paragraph, he told Maynard “the results of seven studies with such a small sample are hardly conclusive,” then turned around and offered to pay him for the research records.

Nothing to it, but sell us the results.

So they could get rid of them. Or sell the treatment to patients who could afford to pay.

I sent it to the printer and clicked the next one open.

From the same guy, but this time proposing that Maynard work with Goetze. “Get the old team back together, better than ever.”

Sure, because Goetze was on his payroll. I wondered if Maynard knew that as I clicked print and moved to the next file.

From Maynard, to Shannon.

One sentence:
All of mankind has a right to access this protocol, regardless of race, gender…or income level.

Busted.

I clicked print, checking the date on the top left.

Two days before Maynard was murdered.

Holy. Manolos.

Days before, Aaron had Shannon in for questioning and let him go. My cops were closer to the why than I thought, whether they were looking for it or not.

Did a suit from the drug company actually kill these people? Probably not. Could he pay someone else to? Absolutely.

Murder for hire adds some edge to an already sexy story.

Whatever Charlie had, she couldn’t be close to this. I pulled up the research I’d done on Shannon after my after-hours visit to his office, then texted Chad. Maybe the bad guy had a cloud account, too.

I’ll look
, came the reply.

I shoved my chair back and stood, ready to sprint to Bob’s office, when a million things happened at once.

My BlackBerry binged. I snatched it up.

Landers.

Fingers shaking again, I clicked the message.

He’s in recovery. Doc says it looks good. His wife and the girls are here.

My knees buckled, relief pouring through me in waves as I leaned on the edge of my desk.

Thank you, God.

Thank you,
I tapped back.

Bing
. No problem. You figured it out yet? (I’m kidding.)

Getting closer. (I’m not.)

Bing
. Not getting closer? I know that feeling.

Not kidding. Keep your phone on.

Bing
. No shit?

I’ll call you when I have something concrete. Bastard isn’t getting away with this.

I grabbed the memos off the printer and squared my shoulders as I turned for Bob’s office. It had been hours. Andrews and his army of suits could go straight to hell—Bob and I had work to do.

“Nichelle!”

I stopped halfway to the door, something in Larry’s tone gluing my shoes to the tacky brown carpet.

I spun slowly, the hand holding the papers dropping to my side.

My favorite photographer looked like his long out of shape self had been for a run. Through the woods. Up a mountain.

I hurried to where he stood, red-faced and gasping. “Larry? You okay?”

He grabbed my wrist and turned, hauling me toward the photo cave. I hustled to keep up—maybe he wasn’t as out of shape as I thought.

“Larry?” I tried to tug my hand free to no avail.

He stopped inside the door to the old darkroom, motioning for the photo staff to beat it before he slammed the door and turned to me. “Just wait ’til you see what I’ve got.”