Monahan 02 Artificial Intentions (25 page)

“I wish I knew, Cleve. Seriously. We are in deep shit and if we don’t get some answers pretty soon, I’m not sure we’ll recover from the potential disaster that’s waiting for us.” I was deadly serious, especially after my talk with Dr. Pritchard.

I brought Cleve up to speed on what had been going on. Told him about Tommy’s computer and the hidey-hole in the apartment. Told him about the contents of the safety deposit box. Told him about how Jay had discovered the anomalies between the files from the office and the files in Tommy’s office. Told him about the lovely Natalie Scott and her team. Gave him a very graphic description of how Belinda Moffat had shed buckets of body fluid during her crying jag. And ended by relating what Dr. Pritchard had told me that afternoon. During the course of my storytelling, our drinks had arrived, we ordered dinner, ate our meals and were now having coffee.

“Dr. Pritchard, bless his soul, is truly an amazing man. He told me that he had been a member of the team that had carried out the first successful kidney transplant in Boston in 1954. The doctor who was the head of that team, Dr. Joseph Murray, went on to win the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1990.” I was getting off track. “Anyway, to put it mildly, Dr. Pritchard is some pissed with us.”

“Can’t blame him,” Cleve said, “Assuming it’s true what he says.”

“He was pretty adamant that it was true. Kept insisting that what he had were facts, not allegations. I didn’t argue with the man. He says that his man in charge of this project, Dr. Jordan Francis is no longer with Global Devices.”

“Was he fired because of this mess?” Cleve asked.

“No, at least that’s what Pritchard says. He said that he received Dr. Francis’ resignation letter a few weeks ago and hasn’t heard from him since. The resignation letter appeared on his desk a few days after they found out about the test results.”

“What were the tests specifically for?” Cleve asked.

“They were clinical trials of the device that were carried out on a pig. They implanted the artificial kidney in the pig and our device, PISTON, the remote signaling piece, was monitored to make sure it was giving all the proper signals and data. The data that was gathered was not the data that was given to the FDA. I’m not entirely clear on how that was found out, or who discovered it, but Global Devices now have a black mark against them. Apparently, it’s not considered kosher to fake results in medical tests,” I said with just a tad of sarcasm.

“Dr. Pritchard said at first they were overjoyed that the tests had gone so well, that they were able to submit the devices for approval to the FDA. He said he was somewhat surprised, considering that they had run a bunch of these tests earlier and they had come up against several different problems every time. But suddenly, boom, everything’s a go and everybody’s happy, and the thing goes in for approval. The first Pritchard heard about this was a letter from the FDA. Addressed to Dr. Francis but it ended up on Pritchard’s desk because Dr. Francis had already resigned.”

“Did Pritchard say what Dr. Francis’s explanation of all this was?” Cleve asked.

“He told me that he hasn’t been able to talk to Dr. Francis. He’s
incommunicado
so to speak. Pritchard said that a copy of an email between Dr. Francis and Tommy was found in one of Global’s files dated a few days before Dr. Francis resigned. The email was vague but Dr. Pritchard said he was pretty certain that Tommy and Dr. Francis both knew what was going on.”

“Does he think that Tommy was involved in this? The falsifying of records?” Cleve was indignant. He was very protective of his good friend.

“He implied as much,” I told him. “The whole guilt by association. Tommy, and all of Phoenix by implication, are guilty in his mind, and hence he will not ever, ever do business with us again.”

I sipped my coffee and craved a cigarette but we were in a non-smoking restaurant.

“But this doesn’t explain how Natalie Scott knew and why no else found out,” Cleve reminded me.

“Natalie Scott is involved with this somehow. Big time. She’s responsible for research and development, and she’s responsible for whatever transpired with Global. I hardly know her, but her name is stamped all over this God awful shit-pile. Her ass is so fired,” I said.

“Who was the head of the team on this project?” Cleve asked.

“Nat Scott. This project was her baby, as everyone reminded me. She has every one of her team leaders shaking in their boots, afraid for their jobs. When she got the letter from Global, she threatened them all that if they mentioned it, they’d lose their jobs. That was a couple of weeks ago. Our dilemma is damage control. What do we do now Cleve?”

The stalker watched the restaurant, hidden in the shadows of a brick encased, arched doorway. Across the street from where the
bitch
was having dinner. Going about her life with no worries. No problems.
The
bitch
was getting in the way but the stalker would not let her stop the progress. Things that got in the way of progress were dealt with.
The stalker’s
breathing was in control now because control was what it was going to take. Control over mind and over body. Control to see the project through to the end.

chapter thirty-five

While we waited for the waiter to bring our bill, Cleve and I made a list of things that needed our focus. We agreed that he would deal with damage control with the lawyers, the regulators and the resultant press releases. I was tasked with getting in touch with the two detectives who were investigating Tommy’s murder. The more we talked, the more we were convinced that Tommy’s death was because of the Global Devices project. The detectives needed to be brought up to speed as soon as possible. It was two weeks to the day since Tommy was murdered and as far as I was concerned, there had been no progress on finding Tommy’s killer.

“I called the detectives yesterday and left a message,” I told Cleve. “I haven’t heard back from them. This case clearly isn’t their top priority. I’ll get to them first thing tomorrow.”

Which proved easier said than done. I was completely exasperated after leaving two voice messages each on the detectives’ phones the next morning. So I put the phone wizard on the case. She reported back in about fifteen minutes.

“I called over to the 20th Precinct,” Carrie told me. “No one was willing to give me any information on the whereabouts of either detective. So I called my dad, to get the phone number of his friend who plays first base on their softball team, who’s a police officer in Brooklyn. He called the 20th Precinct for me and found out that Detective Bartlett is in the hospital with back problems. She has two herniated disks. Detective Shipley has been handling their case load on her own, and is out of town, upstate, investigating a tip they got on a three year old case.” Carrie read all this information from her steno pad and when she finished she looked eagerly at me. “What else?”

“Well,” I said, duly impressed with Carrie’s information gathering talents. “Unless there’s someone else handling Tommy’s murder case, make sure that Shipley has my message to call. Say it’s urgent, okay?”

Next on my list of things to do was to track down Natalie Scott and get some answers, direct from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. The interoffice telephone directory gave me her phone number but when I dialed it there was no answer. No surprise there. She probably knew it was me calling and she was likely avoiding me. I decided to take the bull by the horns, and pay a visit to the research and development department.

The R and D folks were located on the floor below the executive offices. The area took up one quarter of the entire floor. In spite of all the natural light pouring in from the floor to ceiling windows, everything appeared dingy, dull and overloaded with paper, manuals, computers, printers, and pieces of equipment that were unrecognizable to me. Some desktops had two or three monitors sitting on them. It was a beehive of activity, but eerily quiet, the clicking of keyboards the only sound. Each person apparently had their own workstation, although it was difficult to discern the difference or dividing line between some areas. The amount of electronic equipment and paper was mind-boggling. I stood in the middle of the area and looked for a clue as to where Nat Scott might hang her hat. There was a lone, enclosed office on the far side of the floor, and I headed in that direction, sure that as a Vice President, Natalie would have an office with a door.

The door to the office was closed and outside, in an open area, a young woman sat at a secretarial desk which was pushed up against the wall to the office. Her back was to me as I approached the desk and she was bopping in her chair to the music which I could clearly hear coming out of earphones plugged into her ears. She was typing on her keyboard, keeping rhythm to the music. I walked around her desk and stood to the side, hoping she would pick me up in her peripheral vision, not wanting to startle her. She saw me and held up one index finger, the universal sign for
wait
. With a flourish of pretend drumming on the edge of her desk with her two index fingers, she finally looked up at me with a very big smile and removed the ear plugs.

“Hi,” she said, apparently genuinely pleased to see me, judging by the smile that just didn’t go away. Her short hair was jet black and cut severely, with one large mass hanging over the right side of her face. Not quite punk. She appeared to be in her late twenties.

“Hi yourself. I’m Kate Monahan.” I held out my hand and she gave me a shake.

“Jenn. Jenn Ludlow. What can we do for you today Kate?”

“I’m looking for Natalie Scott. Is this her office?”

“Yep. You got it.”

“Is she in?”

“Not sure.”

Gawd, this was going to be painful. One question, one answer, at a time.

I thought I’d try a different angle. “Do you know if Miss Scott is in the office today?”

“Not sure,” she repeated. “Door was closed when I got here and it hasn’t opened. I’m not allowed to open her door when it’s closed.” She held up her index fingers and mimicked quotes in the air. “On pain of death, the boss tells me. Not sure if she’s building something secret for NASA in there, but I’m sure not going to die finding out.” She burst out laughing.

“Well, I really need to speak to her so should I just knock on the door?”

“Not supposed to do that either,” Jenn said. “A door closed means no interruptions.” Her voice went up an octave as she tried to imitate Nat Scott. “But, if I see her, I’ll be glad to give her a message,” she offered.

“Sorry,” I told her. “I’m going to interrupt her.” I raised my hand to knock on the door and Jenn jumped out of her chair and leaned across the desk to grab my arm.

“Please,” she pleaded with me. “Don’t do it.”

Whoa, this was one weird set up, but I didn’t want to get the girl in trouble. “Then go to the ladies room, and we’ll pretend you weren’t here. I’m new enough to the company, I can honestly say I didn’t know the rule.”

“Go right ahead then,” Jenn said. “Promise though you won’t tell I was here?”

“Promise,” I assured her. She grabbed her purse and took off.

There was no response to my two loud raps on the door and when I tried the door knob, it wouldn’t turn. It turned just fine when the security guard showed up about ten minutes later with a master key. Jenn had returned from the ladies room at this point and she was not happy that we were unlocking the door.

“A closed door means no interruptions,” she told me again. “A
locked
door means don’t come within ten feet of the door, even if the fire alarm is going off.” Her eyes were wide and she seemed to be hyperventilating just a little as she told me this. Several employees in the area were standing up at their desks now, peering over the dividers and watching the action.

I took Jenn by the arm and led her a few feet away from the security guard who was standing there, like a bump on a log, just watching us. “It’s okay Jenn. You won’t get in any trouble for what I’m doing. I guarantee it,” I told her.

“No one can guarantee my job,” Jenn said. “That’s what Nat tells all of us every day.”

“Well, I can,” I told her. “Seriously. Don’t worry about it.”

“She’s right, you know.” This from the security guard who was supposed to be out of earshot. “She
is
the new President.”

Jenn looked at me, surprised. “You are?”

I nodded.

“Go ahead then. It’s all yours.” She waved me into the office with a flourish.

It ended up that Jenn was worrying for nothing. Because the office was empty. There was nothing in the office except a desk, a credenza, a two-drawer filing cabinet, a chair and a telephone. Bare, deserted, unoccupied. No trace of a human ever having inhabited the space. I stuck my head out the door and motioned to Jenn to join me. I also told the security guard that he could leave and thanked him.

Jenn stood in the center of the office with her hands on her hips and looked around. “Well, would you look at that,” she said. “The rat has finally deserted the ship.” She said this with a certain amount of pleasure in her voice.

“How long did you and Nat work together?” I asked her.

“Ha! Work
together
?
Together
?” she repeated. “Together implies a team. We were never a team, and she never let me, or most of the people in this department forget that. We worked for
her
.” Her voice was wavering just a little bit when she finished, and she turned toward the window. I could see her taking a deep breath.

She turned back around and faced me. “Kate. Can I call you Kate?” I nodded. “Good. Kate, I hope she rots in hell. There. I said it. And I mean it. She didn’t deserve to work here. And ever since she started boffing the boss, she’s been worse. Gawd, what did that man see in her?”

My thoughts exactly!

“When was the last time you saw her in the office, Jenn?”