Ogrodnik Interior 2.0c (33 page)

He read the terse summary:

“Pepita, the 53ers are responsible for the Estoban girl. The shooter was Simon Feragas. He’s just a boy, sixteen years old. As part of his initiation, they planned a drive-by on a known BSJ hang out. The girl was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He committed the information to memory. Responded with “OK” and deleted the message. His reply told Santiago that he received the message and that payment was on its way. He walked from the café to a public mailbox half a block down the street. The envelope he pulled from inside his jacket would have no trace evidence on it. He only handled it, and the money inside, with latex gloves, and he used tap water to seal the envelope. He had to be careful. He’d never know if a recruit on the other end was compromised but he had to assume at some point one
of them would be. If the gangs ever caught him, he’d be a dead man; if the authorities ever caught him, it would likely end up the same way. Gang snitches don’t last long in prison.

Elliot walked down the hospital hallway toward Rivka’s room thinking about the days past when he saw a familiar face walking out of her room.

“Angela! How’s our friend doing this morning?”

“She seems to be in good spirits. The doctors tell her that her surgery was a success, and she should be going home in a few days.”

“Excellent. Do you think she’s up to a visit from me?”

“She’s already bored and itching to get out of here, so the answer is yes. I think she’d love a visit from her boss.”

“In that case, I’ll barge in and fill her with shop talk. It’s good to see you, Ang,” he said as he moved past her toward the room.

“Knock knock,” Elliot announced as he walked into her room.

“Elliot! Come on in.”

“How are you?”

“Not bad considering I now have more metal in my leg than the Terminator. It’ll be hell going through airport security from now on.“

“You’re looking pretty chipper for someone who’s been kidnapped and shot.”

“I’m just thankful it’s all over,” said Rivka as the smile on her face seemed to fade for a moment.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d stop in and see how my best employee is feeling.”

“I’m your only employee. At least you could have brought me a poutine. You know what I had for breakfast this morning?”

“No, what?”

“I don’t know either, but it was served in a bowl, it was pasty, and it was grey. And it tasted worse than it looked.”

“It was probably healthy, though.”

“I asked the orderly if they were trying to get my solder content up, so the steel in my leg would heal faster. “

“Ha-ha. You must be feeling better because you’re starting to whine again.”

“Actually I’m feeling 100% better today; of course, it could be the morphine drip.”

“Riv, I know there are gaps in the story for you. Are you up to hearing the unabridged version?”

“Well, now that you mention it. You explained a lot to me in the truck, but there are still some points that don’t line up for me.”

“Fire when ready. That’s why I’m here.”

“You told me about Biovonix and that they were trying to cover up some failed Isotin tests, but did you ever learn what they were trying to cover up?”

“Yes. Jennifer emailed me the last piece of the puzzle when we were driving over to the airport to meet Banik. I will never be able to prove everything because the people involved are no longer with us, but I have a theory that everything fits nicely into.”

“Speak, oh wise one.”

“It all started eight years ago with a failed pre-clinical test while the university was executing the in-vivo tests for Isotin. An intern noticed that some mice started failing memory tests, so she filed a failed test report and verbally informed the clinical trials manager. Two days after talking to the manager, the intern, Carrie Leblanc, died in a boating accident. That same night, the entire test facility at McGill was burned to the ground. Testing was then moved to another ARO so testing could continue, which it did.

“We know that all tests must be executed successfully to move the drug to the next stage of approval, but in this case, the failed test was never re-tested because it should never have been tested in the first place. The intern had made an error and performed memory tests on a colony of mice that didn’t need it. By killing the intern and burning the facility to the ground, Eastern Security, or Biovonix, thought they had purged the test process of any evidence of the failed tests. But we now know that the failed test report was never processed. It was supposedly burned in the fire, but in this case, it survived in a storage area in another room.

“Now we fast forward four years. The new test facility was up and running at McGill and Sarah was working there as the head of records administration. She had some free time, so she started scanning all the water damaged documents that were left over in storage from the fire. She happened upon the intern’s failed test report and began asking questions. Her first point of questioning would have been an email to the Isotin clinical trials manager from Biovonix to see if the report was still relevant. The clinical trials manager, who was dirty and part of the conspiracy, told Banik and Yilmaz about Sarah’s discovery, and she was dealt with in the subway.

“Sarah also sent Dad an email asking if he had ever heard of Isotin and if it was ever approved. It was innocent enough; it was just a question, one of many that she would have sent him over the years. Dad and Sarah both worked in the medical field, and they often talked shop together. And this is where I start theorizing.

“Biovonix discovered the email sent to Dad but decided to sit tight and not do anything. They knew that if Sarah and my father were both killed, there would be too many questions, so they waited and watched. Remember, she died the afternoon after sending the email, so our lives were now turned upside down, and her innocent email question was long forgotten. The following year, Dad put the in-law suite up for rent, and Banik saw an opportunity to plant Anne Simmons in the house. This provided Biovonix insurance in case my father remembered the Isotin question and started poking around.

“Last month Dad was reading the financials in the newspaper and happened across an article about a new wonder drug called Isotin. This rang a bell, and he looked back in his email to find Sarah’s old email. That raised suspicions that her death might not have been an accident. He started poking around and came to the conclusion that something was odd about the drug but didn't know exactly what. He had been recently diagnosed with brain cancer and felt he was running out of time, so in desperation, he confronted Alex Banik to see if he could shake something loose. A week later, Dad was killed on the mountain.

“Whoa, cowboy. Did you just say that Anne Simmons was spying on your dad? Where does she fit into all this?”

“Oh, yeah. You’re going to love this part. Do you remember Mr. Jablanski?” Elliot thought about what he was going to tell Rivka and smiled.

“Yes, the turd who was looking for his wife.”

“That’s him. Well, as it turns out, Anne Simmons is Jablanski’s Nikki. She was in a bad situation, probably living with Jablanski. They had a daughter together, Nikki wanted out of the life, and Jablanski wouldn’t allow it. So she took off with the teenaged daughter, moved to Montreal and assumed a new name, Anne Simmons. She knew Jablanski would pursue her, so she needed a new identity and some cosmetic work to hide some identifying characteristics.”

Rivka thought back to the picture that Jablanski had sent her. “Like the tattoo on her neck and some dental work.”

“Exactly, but it takes money to change an identity, get surgery, and raise a daughter, so she called upon her well-to-do half-brother, Alex Banik, to help.”

“Shut the front door. This is getting good.”

“Banik helps her and, at some point later, he needs something in return from Anne. Isotin approval is getting close now, and Banik is still anxious about the old man. So Banik got Anne to respond to Dad's request to rent the basement suite so she could keep an eye on him.”

“How did you figure out that Anne was a phony?”

“I sensed she was hiding something from the beginning, but I made the Jablanski connection when she came out of the shower with her hair wet and combed straight back. Her resemblance to the photo Jablanski sent hit me like a thunderclap. That’s when it all fell into place; the birthmark on her neck that was, in fact, the scarring left over from removing the butterfly tattoo; she was completely comfortable walking around in front of me with no clothes on as if she’d done it many times before; and the teenaged waitress at the inn who addressed me as Mr. Forsman when I had only been introduced to her as Elliot. Anne wouldn’t have discussed me with a waitress at a countryside inn; the girl had to be her daughter. It became so obvious. Anne Simmons was the woman Jablanski was looking for.“

“When she came out of the shower? Walking around naked? Did I miss something? Elliot, you dog, were you doing some undercover work while I was out of action?”

“I was involved in a short relationship. Completely innocent, nothing more.”

“Pumping your suspect for information. I like that.”

“Do you really have to bring it down to that level? “

“Okay, continue, Maven. Tell me, how did you tie the Banik angle into this?”

“The seeds were planted early. When you found the coffee shop stills of Kulas and Ogrodnik, I asked myself why they staked out my father for only two days. Two days is not long enough to establish a pattern. It was because they weren’t establishing a pattern. They already knew the pattern; Anne had fed it to them. They used the first day to establish a timeline to see my father start his walk and drive up to the Lookout to determine if they would get there in time. They used the second day to execute their plan. But I wasn’t thinking it involved Anne at this point; it was just a loose thread I kept track of. It wasn’t until I made the Jablanski connection that I connected her to Banik. I thought about the teeth on the young girl in the family picture in Banik's office and their similarity to the teeth in the Jablanski family photo. And when I put her names together, it all started making sense—Anne, Anika, and Nikki, all derivatives of the same name.”

“Well done. Getting back to Biovonix and Isotin. What was the big secret they were trying to hide? I’m sure that drug tests fail all the time.”

“They do, but this case was different. Biovonix and their financiers had spent billions on the Isotin program for good reason. There were many more billions to be made. Banik’s approach was revolutionary and would usher in a new era of pharmaceuticals. When the failed test report was filed, Banik quickly realized that there was a major flaw in the treatment, but the flaw only manifested itself in the offspring of the treatment recipients and, even then, not until the offspring reached puberty.”

“How did the treatment work?”

“I’m no oncologist, but this is the way I understand it. The body combats disease and bacteria with a type of white blood cell called a T-cell. The T-cells are pre-programmed to find and destroy very specific types of diseased cells based on proteins that exist on the cell exterior. Once an attack is identified by the T-cell, the body will ramp up the creation of the same type of T-cells to thwart the attack. In the case of most cancers, there are two failures: the cancer cells do not trigger a strong response from the T-cells, and growth rate of the diseased cells quickly outstrips the ability of the lazy T-cells to deal with the cancerous cells.

“Biovonix developed a method to identify and extract the appropriate T-cells from the body, the ones that are already programmed to fight the cancer cells. They grow their numbers in vitro, outside the body, and at the same time, they are also genetically modified using Isotin to be more aggressive. Once the laboratory T-cells are grown to adequate numbers, they are re-introduced into the host patient, and the T-cells attack the cancer from within. There is no surgery, no radiation, and no side effects. From the body's perspective, the cancer is no more than a nasty flu bug.”

“That’s the way Biovonix thought it would work, but the human body is a complex machine. Biovonix already knew that the new aggressive T-cells are passed on to offspring and considered it an added bonus. Not only does Isotin cure the patient, but their children would also inherit the T-cells that prevent that type of cancer.

“The issue with the treatment is that the aggressive T-cells started killing more than just cancer cells. The failed pre-clinical tests revealed that some brain cells that are only created during puberty have a very similar protein expression as the cancer cells in question. These brain cells are responsible for behaviors like sexual awakening and social growth and also cognitive, and memory functions. The reason that the original patient is not affected is because those cells already exist in the body when treatment is introduced and, through a mechanism that isn’t quite understood, the new aggressive T-cells do not consider them a threat. However, when the children of treatment patients reach puberty, the inherited T-cells attack and kill the newly forming brain cells and leave behind an adolescent who will never pass the threshold into adulthood and will exhibit Alzheimer-like symptoms, explaining the mice which could not navigate the maze.

“It would have meant they had to go back to the drawing board and start over. But when Banik and the test manager realized that the failed memory tests were not even supposed to have been executed, they saw a way out. By eliminating anyone involved, which at this point was only the intern Carrie, and destroying the report, they could get away with it. To ensure they destroyed all evidence of the report, they torched the building and everything in it. They knew this meant that all the recently executed tests would have to be re-run at a new facility, but they’d make sure that only the tests in the approved test plan would be executed. Once they got past the pre-clinical testing and started human trials, the issue would never be discovered. The human gestation to puberty cycle is much too long ever to manifest itself in human trials.”