Deadly Treatment (33 page)

M
alone pulled the car to a halt and looked at Scott. This had better not be some kind of trick; if you’re lying and your partner is waiting inside there…’ Malone let his threat drift, mainly because he had no idea what he would do should Vince be inside waiting.

‘I swear I’ve told you the truth, but let me go in first just in case Vince has come back. He’s a bit untrusting.’

Scott got out of the car and went to the door, automatically his hand went to his pocket in search of the room key and to his surprise he still had it;
maybe I was going to come back,
he thought. He fished out the key and to his astonishment as he grabbed the door handle he realized he didn’t need it — it was unlocked.
Vince is back,
he thought followed by, crap, how am I gonna explain Malone? He looked back at the perplexed face of Malone, took a deep breath, and went into the room.

As he watched the two men talk in the car, Elwood ducked down in his seat and called Paxton.

‘Of course I know what time it is,’ he replied to the phone. ‘I wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important. The situation has changed a little. I’ve got the kid, but Scott’s brought reinforcements. I need you to run a plate for me.’

He gave him the Ford’s license plate number and Paxton told him to hold on. The phone went quiet on the other end, and Elwood’s eyes followed Scott as he exited the car, and after a slight delay, went into the motel room. In preparation, he withdrew his pistol, checked the magazine for rounds, and loaded one in the chamber.

‘Vince?’ Scott said as he swung the door open and flicked on the light. ‘Fuck,’ he said as he froze in the doorway and surveyed the room.

Malone jumped out of the car and rushed up beside him. The first thing they both saw were the two big bullet holes in the bed; this was immediately followed by the shredded bedding on the camp bed.

‘Where’s Joshua, what have you done to him?’ Malone said pushing past Scott and heading for the bathroom.

‘Wait, he might be in there.’

‘He’d better be and he’d better not be hurt.’ Malone shouted.

‘Not Joshua…’ Scott yelled, but Malone was already across the room and darting into the bathroom.

With a hint of trepidation Malone pulled back the shower curtain and checked the bath — empty. Fuming, he raced back to Scott and grabbed him by the shirt.

‘I’ll ask you one more time, what have you done with Joshua?’

Gerard Paxton’s voice interrupted Elwood’s view of the show. ‘The car belongs to a guy named Michael Malone; he’s clean, doesn’t come up on any of our watch lists, and he’s got no record. What’s he doing with Scott? What’s going on?’

Elwood let the information sink in while once again he considered his options. Paxton was unaware of the letter and therefore unaware of Scott’s original intention to run.

‘Like I said, he’s just arrived here with Scott in his car; by the looks of things, they’re not exactly what I would call
friends
. What do you want me to do, get rid of them both?’ he asked as he picked up his gun.

‘No, not till we know exactly who this Malone guy is, and how he’s involved. Regardless of who he is, he probably doesn’t need to die. Even if Scott’s told him the full story, since you’ve got the flash drive, there’s no proof to back it up.’ He paused a beat and then said, ‘Look, it’s probably a good time for you to come back to Chicago; I’m getting some heat on some of your current activities, so another murder isn’t the best thing right now. I’ll pay you half your fee for doing half the job; I’m sure you’ll be able to finish the contract when things are a little quieter.’ Elwood could hear the hint of flippancy in his voice, but dismissed it for now. 

‘What do you want me to do with the kid?’

Paxton pondered the question for a few seconds before asking, ‘Is he Scott’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘Get rid of him.’

Elwood thought for a moment; even though he wanted to finish the job he’d contracted to do, killing the kid here now would mean unnecessary time and effort to find Scott later.

‘Dead kids in motel rooms attract too much heat, so finding the right place to dump the body is going to take a bit of time. Then of course there’s the mother to think about; who is she and what does she know? Why don’t I bring the kid back to Chicago and sort it all out there?’

Although Paxton hated being second-guessed, Elwood made sense. ‘OK, I’ll send the jet; bring him with you.’

‘I’m telling you, he was here and safe when I left; the guy must have been here; you’ve got to believe me,’ Scott pleaded

‘I don’t know what to believe right now. You told me your pal was missing, some killer was after you, and that Joshua was asleep here, but all I see is bullet holes and what looks like a struggle. How do I know you haven’t just made this whole thing up? Anyhow, whatever it is that’s happened here is way out of my league; I’m calling the cops.’

‘Wait, please,’ Scott begged, ‘There’s something I haven’t told you. I can prove it.’

M
alone had decided to go with his gut and believe Scott’s story. He drove him back to his house, and they both stood silent in the kitchen while Malone put some coffee on.

‘What’s going on?’ Taylor asked through a gaping yawn as she shuffled from the bedroom.

‘Sorry we woke you; this is Scott — he’s um… helping us find Joshua,’ Malone said apologetically.

Taylor ran her fingers through her hair in an attempt to make herself presentable to their guest, then gave up and just said ‘hello.’

Malone clanked three mugs down on the counter and filled them with coffee; as an afterthought, he put out milk and sugar for Scott to add if he wanted.

‘Are we having a party?’ It was Daniel’s turn to join the group.

‘Sorry,’ Malone said again, but was secretly pleased that Daniel was up — he needed his help.

‘That’s alright, I’m Daniel,’ he said to Scott and offered his hand.

‘Scott,’ came the reply.

‘So, what are we talking about?’ Daniel asked quite brightly for that hour of the morning.

Malone poured a coffee for Daniel and looked over at Scott; he looked considerably older than when he’d first walked into the bus terminal. By Malone’s reckoning, Scott was aging at a rate of five years an hour.

‘
Best we speed this up,
’ Malone thought, and then told Taylor and Daniel Scott’s story.

The corporate jet touched down at the Romeoville airport about an hour before dawn. Gerard Paxton had made the call that since Elwood had a young guest in tow, it would be better to avoid O’Hare; plus, it would only be a quick jaunt down the I-55 expressway to their old teaching facility that he felt would be the best place for them to regroup.

As Elwood stepped off the plane carrying the drugged and unconscious Joshua, Paxton was waiting for them in the driver’s seat of his large Bentley.

Elwood strapped Joshua into the rear leather seat and jumped in the front beside Paxton.

‘Looks like it was getting a bit busy out west,’ Paxton started.

‘Yeah, I think I gave the guys more credit than they deserved; that’s why I dragged my heels a bit at first. If they’d torched the office when they should have, they would never have met Cain, and things would have been fine. But stealing, lying, and then trying to get a million dollars from me — that was just rude.’

‘Well, looking at what they had in their hands, it could have been a lot worse,’ Paxton reflected. ‘You’ve caused a lot of issues for me, but I guess we should put it down to being better safe than sorry.’ His tone was semi-berating, but then he upped it a beat, ‘You’re telling me they thought it was the picture of you we were after?’

‘It’s worse than that; it wasn’t even me in the picture. I don’t know if that makes it braver or completely stupid for what they’ve gone through.’

‘From the way you’ve explained it in your reports, the latter would sum them up perfectly.’

‘Any more info on the Malone guy?’ Elwood asked.

‘Not really — still have no idea how he fits into all this. But I’ve got someone finding out for me.’

They drove the rest of the way in silence.

‘So this is a direct copy?’ Daniel asked turning the USB flash drive over in his hand.

‘Yes, Vince thought it would be a good idea — a sort of way to keep us safe. Fat lot of good that turned out to be.’

‘You think the guy who’s got Joshua is in one of those pictures?’ Malone’s head was skeptical, but he was willing to follow his gut.

‘Let’s have a look at him then,’ Daniel said, and they all followed him to his room.

Daniel plugged the device into the USB port and clicked open the file.

‘He’s on one of the pictures near the end,’ Scott piped up.

Daniel hovered over the thumbnail pictures, double-clicked on the one Scott pointed to, and up came the scene on the pier.

‘I’m pretty sure that’s the guy,’ Scott said as they all looked at the man in the suit.

‘So who is he?’ Taylor asked.

‘That’s the point — I’ve got no idea; and to be really honest, I didn’t get a good look at the guy as he was chasing us in his SUV, so it may not even be him, All I know is that this picture is valuable enough to kill for.’

The room went quiet.

‘The files are too big,’ a puzzled looking Daniel said breaking the silence.

‘What?’ Malone asked.

‘The files — they’re far too big for a handful of snaps. Let me just check something.’

Daniel went online and his fingers were a blur as he whizzed from website to website downloading programs as he went.

‘Come on you little bastard,’ Daniel was talking to his computer and pausing as it did its thing. ‘That’s it, honey, you can do it. Fuck,’ he swore. ‘Oops, sorry,’ he apologized, and then returned to tapping the keys and downloading programs.

‘Come on, come on….Yes, got ya.’

Suddenly, the screen was filled with information.

‘What’s all that?’ Scott asked.

‘Like I said, the files were too big to be just pictures so I guessed that they had encrypted the pixels. Whoever did it, only put on a very basic security program, and once I found out which one was used…’ he pointed to the screen. ‘Look at this stuff: e-mails, contracts, contacts, wow!’

Malone had no idea what he was going on about; he just patted Daniel on the back for a job well done.

‘Royal Raymond Rife’ was the first name Daniel called out.

‘Who’s he?’ asked Taylor. Daniel held up his hand as he read on ahead.

‘According to this, he’s a guy who discovered a cure for cancer back in the nineteen-twenties.’

‘He did what?’ came from Malone.

‘Cured cancer! He found a cancer-causing virus which he called the BX virus, and then made a machine that blasted it with radio waves — varying the frequency until he found what he called the mortal oscillatory rate — cool!’

‘Rife and Coley, it’s all true…’ Scott said.

The three of them looked at him quizzically.

‘It’s what Joshua told me, I’d forgotten until now. But he said that Anthony Cain’s dying words were — Rife and Coley, it’s all true.’

‘Coley, Coley.’ Daniel was back at the computer.

‘Coley — got it: William B. Coley. Shit, this goes back to the eighteen nineties. He was a bone surgeon who lost a patient to cancer. Anyway, this pissed him off enough to make him come up with his own cure for cancer through immunotherapy.’

‘No way!’ exclaimed Taylor.

‘I’m just reading what it says here. His research went as far back as some Egyptian physician called Imhotep. The theory is that you infect the cancer with some other disease that basically kills the cancer. In Coley’s case, it was some form of Streptococcus.

‘Sounds impossible,’ Malone interceded.

‘There’s more.’ Daniel continued, ‘John C. Hoxsey, a Quaker from Illinois way back in eighteen-forty. His favorite horse got a tumor, and since he didn’t have the heart to shoot it, he thought he’d let it die peacefully grazing out in one of his fields. Anyway, the horse munched on weeds and other herbs and the tumor went away. So Hoxsey mixed together some of the stuff the horse had been eating and came up with an internal tonic and a paste and a powder — then, apparently he went around treating cancer in other animals.’

‘What’s that got to do with humans?’ Taylor asked.

‘Wait a minute,’ Daniel said as he continued to read the article.

‘Ah — It says that Hoxsey passed the formula on to his grandson, Harry, who then applied the same stuff to humans.’

Again Daniel paused as he flicked through to another document.

‘That’s not all, in the nineteen-fifties some doctor in San Francisco called Ernst Krebs came up with the theory that cancer is a deficiency disease like scurvy and that diet was the key to the cure. Accor
ding to him, a diet lacking in nitrilosides or B17 vitamins also known as Amygdalin —basically stuff found in apricot, cherry, nectarine, and apple seeds — would give you cancer.’

‘So the old wife’s tale about an apple a day could be true,’ Taylor joked, and then went quiet as no one laughed.

‘So it seems that cancer can be cured by tonics, lotions, diet, and the radio — all sounds a bit farfetched to me,’ Malone said cynically.

‘There’s quite a lot of supporting information here,’ Daniel ventured.

‘How come we don’t know about any of this then?’ Taylor was equally skeptical.

‘I don’t know, but it says here Harry Hoxsey opened his first clinic in Dallas in the nineteen-twenties and by the fifties he had the largest privately owned cancer clinic in the States — curing thousands of people.’

‘Where are these people and cures now? We all know the best way to cure cancer is through drugs and chemo,’ Taylor asked.

‘Hold on — I’m reading as fast as I can… Shit, looks like the American Medical Association is what happened.’

The three of them stood by eagerly as Daniel summarized some of the stories for them.

‘Okay, Royal Raymond Rife set up a company called Beam Ray, manufactured fourteen machines and set about curing patients.

A guy called Dr. Morris Fishbein — he was the editor of the 
Journal of the American Medical Association
 
(JAMA) for almost 25 years — wanted to buy into the company but was turned down, so he set up one of the current investors to steal the company. Basically, a lawsuit was entered into and this stopped any real scientific investigation of the equipment.

Fishbein used his clout to shut down any further development of the machines, and Rife crumbled under the stress. He became an alcoholic and died in 1971. One of his accomplices, John Crane was put away for three years.

There’s a note here about something happening in Burlington, someone copying the set up, but it says this was destroyed.’

Scott immediately thought back to the warehouse job they’d done in Burlington.

Daniel continued to read from the screen

‘Kreb’s diet theory was sort of sustained by the small kingdom of Hunza in Asia; they used to eat two hundred times more B17 than the average American, and they had no reports of any cancer. Even though this was pretty loose supporting research, the AMA prompted the FDA to run a slur campaign on Amygdalin saying that it was toxic because it contained cyanide. Kreb was fighting an uphill battle from that point on.’