On Borrowed Time (23 page)

She wasn’t there when I got home, and still didn’t answer her phone. I was fairly positive by that point that she was not coming back. What I didn’t know was why.

Her clothes and possessions were all still there, which was among the things that puzzled me. She knew where I was going, and that I would be out all night. If her departure was voluntary, there was no reason she would have had to leave those things behind; there would have been plenty of time to pack up her things and take them with her.

I guess that was one difference between Allie and Jen; when Jen disappeared, it was without a trace. Allie left plenty of traces. I was still thinking of her as Allie; I instinctively wasn’t buying in to the Nancy Beaumont identification.

But all of this could not be a coincidence; Craig’s investigation and Allie’s disappearance had to be connected. And the obvious conclusion, were I inclined to draw it, was that she somehow knew that Craig had learned the truth and had run away.

Except it could not be the truth. Not if I wanted to keep what was left of my sanity. I was in love with Allie, and for one of the rare times in my life, I was fine with emotion trumping logic.

At eight
A.M.
there was a knock on the door. I had been up for two hours, so it didn’t startle me, but nor did it fill me with hope. Allie had a key; she wouldn’t have to knock. But we have a doorman downstairs, so someone else would have had to have been buzzed up.

I took my gun out of the drawer and put it in my pocket, and briefly reflected that in my fear and confusion I was starting to rely on it.

“Who is it?”

“FBI.”

That instantly explained the buzzer exemption; I looked through the keyhole and saw two men. “Let me see your ID,” I said.

The larger of the two men took out something and held it to the peephole. I couldn’t read it, but it looked sort of official. Since Kentris had told me that they were involved on some level with the case, I figured it was legit and opened the door.

He still had his ID open, and they asked if they could come in. I said that they could, and they introduced themselves as Agent Emmett Luther and Agent Carlos Soriano. Luther seemed to be in charge and did most of the talking.

“You filed a statement with the New York Police Department about Philip Garber.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what we’d like to talk to you about.”

It struck me how fast my statement had made its way to federal authorities, and how fast they showed up at my door. I couldn’t imagine the bureaucracy would ordinarily move that fast, especially since this was not a matter of life and death. Philip Garber was already dead, and if the news reports were to be believed, his death was considered a tragic accident.

They’d obviously had me in their sights, and when the Garber report came in from NYPD with my name attached, it triggered this reaction and visit.

“Everything I know is in my statement,” I said.

Luther smiled without humor. “I don’t think so.”

The man annoyed me. These people were hovering over this situation and probably knew more about it than I would ever know, but I was sitting there in the dark, and they were pumping me for information.

“Where is Jennifer?” I asked. With what I had just been told about Allie, I no longer knew who or what Jennifer was, but I still needed to find out.

“The way this works is that we ask the questions,” Luther said.

“Not anymore,” I said.

“This is not the approach you want to take here,” Luther said. “It won’t end well for you.”

“That’s okay. My previous approaches haven’t worked out so well either. Time to try something new.”

“I’m going to ask you again,” Luther said. “What do you know about Garber’s death that was not in your statement?”

“Nothing. Not a thing. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think of something, out of a patriotic desire to help you guys. Maybe if you told me some of the things that you know it would jog my memory; I’ve had some memory issues lately. You’ve got my phone number in case you think of something, right?”

Luther didn’t say anything, and, after a few seconds of thinking about it, took out his own card and handed it to me. “And now you’ve got my number. I suggest you use it, before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?”

But that was another one of the questions he was not about to answer, and they just walked out.

I wasn’t going to update Kentris on everything that had happened.

For one thing, I wasn’t prepared to tell him that I had broken into the hospital annex building, since he was, after all, a cop. I also had an emotional reaction about verbalizing what Craig had discovered about Allie. It was childish, but it felt like if I said it, that in itself would give it some credibility. Besides, there was nothing Kentris could do about it either way.

What I did tell him when I called was that Allie was missing, and that I was worried.

“Any idea where she is?” he asked.

“She was watching Lassiter; that’s all I know for sure. Do I need to file a missing persons report?”

“Wouldn’t do you any good. She hasn’t been missing long enough; the local cops wouldn’t touch it yet. If they ever would.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s not like you’re married. They’d look at it like you were living together for a short time and she bailed out. Maybe she’ll come back, maybe not. But if they filed a report every time something like this happened, they wouldn’t have time to do anything else. Plus—”

I interrupted him. “She left her things behind.”

“Then that makes it more likely that they’ll take it seriously, but not much, and not yet. Especially in this case.”

“What does that mean?”

“Richard, you have some recent experience with reporting women missing. Your credibility in that particular area is not exactly through the roof, you know?”

I didn’t respond, because I knew what he was saying was true. If I reported another woman missing, one who looked identical to the pictures I had put out in the media of Jen, they would laugh at me. And they would probably be right in doing so.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll send out the report. It will have the same effect as if the local cops did it, though that is close to nothing.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I still think you’re holding back,” he said.

“Nice talking to you.”

I spent the rest of the morning trying to figure out what to do next. Whether or not Allie was who she said she was, she was probably with Sean Lassiter. Either she was part of his conspiracy, which I still found impossible to believe, or he had done something to her, since she was supposed to be following him the day she disappeared. It was Lassiter I had to go after, but I needed to think of an effective way to do that.

For the time being I called Marie Galasso on her cell phone. She answered it guardedly, and I realized she was probably at work. “Hello?”

“Marie, do you know who this is?”

“Yes.”

“Can we meet again? I need to speak with you.”

She hesitated, and then said, “Yes.”

“Same place? Five o’clock?”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t much, but it was the best conversation I had had in a while.

I drove up to Ardmore, a trip I was becoming all too familiar with. I got there at four-thirty, parked behind the school, and waited for Marie Galasso. She got there at precisely five o’clock, and got out of the car looking nervous. Everything felt the same as the last time we’d done this, except this time Allie wasn’t there. Which meant it felt entirely different.

“Hello, Marie. Thank you for coming.”

She had her own agenda. “Have you learned anything about Mr. Donovan and his wife? Was it my fault?”

“It was not your fault.” I wasn’t really lying, since I considered my overheard conversation with Allie to be the immediate reason the Donovans were killed. But I could see the relief in her face when I let her off the hook, so I was glad I had eased her mind. “But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Okay.”

“Last night … I was in the annex building.”

“I didn’t see you there,” she said.

“I know, I went in after it was closed.”

She seemed surprised. “What about the guards?”

“That’s not important,” I said. “There was almost nothing in there. The desks were clean; the offices were empty. The place looked almost deserted.”

“Really? My desk is always a mess, and that’s true of a lot of people there.”

“Were you told—”

She interrupted me as she remembered something. “Yesterday? We were all given yesterday off; they said there was a concern about some bacteria they were working with, and they needed to sterilize the place.”

Just my luck. “Oh.”

“So I guess they cleaned up,” she said. “Although it looked pretty much the same this morning.”

This was clearly a three-hour round-trip ride and meeting that was a complete waste of time, plus I was exposing Marie to more danger by having her meet with me.

“Has anything unusual happened since we talked last?’

“No,” she said, “but by Friday it won’t matter anyway.”

“Why is that?”

“That’s our last day. There’s a cocktail party Friday afternoon, and we’re going to get our bonuses. This is one time I won’t mind being unemployed; I’m glad it’s over.”

“Marie, is there anyone else I can talk to, someone you trust, who also works there? Maybe works in the other room … the lab?”

She thought for a moment. “I don’t know … maybe Dr. Costello … but I don’t know.…”

“Who is Dr. Costello?”

“He’s a surgeon. He’s not there all the time, maybe once a week, if that. I don’t really know him, other than to say hello.”

“So why should I talk to him?” I asked.

“I’m not sure that you should. But he got into an argument with Dr. Gates the other day; he was yelling pretty loud. I think he’s upset with some things that are happening there.”

“Do you know what he’s upset about?”

“No.”

“What kind of surgeon is he?”

“He’s a neurosurgeon; he operated on my cousin last year for a tumor. It was benign, thank God. She’s doing really well, just has a numb area on the side of her face, and her speech is a little bit slurred. You can hardly notice.”

“This tumor was in her brain?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Costello is a brain surgeon?”

“Yes.”

“What the hell is a brain surgeon doing in the annex building?” I asked, but Marie didn’t know the answer.

It was just possible that I did.

Sean Lassiter could not believe what he was reading.

A messenger had just delivered the package he had been waiting almost a year for, the results of the stage-two study of Amlyzine. The results that were going to make Lassiter almost unimaginably rich.

But that was not what he was reading.

What he was reading was a four-hundred-page report, the summary page of which said that Amlyzine performed barely better in the study group than a placebo did in a comparable group. What that summary page said, in so many words, was that the drug was a failure and not worth pursuing. And certainly not deserving of getting to stage three.

Lassiter dug into the backup data, poring through it quickly but thoroughly, with a practiced eye. He was hoping, even expecting, to find evidence that the summary page was some kind of bizarre accident, perhaps a mistake by some confused staffer.

But that was not what he found at all. The data supported the conclusion completely, and was perhaps even more devastating than that summary.

Amlyzine was a failure.

Lassiter was under no illusions about the drug’s powers; he knew better than anyone that it was ineffective in dealing with Alzheimer’s. But that was not what the report was supposed to show. It was supposed to be a ringing endorsement of Amlyzine’s value, so dramatic that it would send the stock in Lassiter’s company soaring.

This actual report, with the results it was reporting, was going to wipe out what little value the stock currently had. Which was to say that it would destroy him, sending him down a financial hole from which he could never dig out.

If this report were to stand, his last chance was gone.

But still, it had to somehow be a mistake. Gates was in on it; in fact, it had mostly been his idea. He was going to get rich as well; Lassiter had promised him as much. There was no way Gates would have signed off on this report.

Lassiter called Gates at the hospital, but was told he was out. He then called on his cell phone, but got no answer. He kept calling at both places, leaving the repeated message that it was urgent that Gates return the call, a matter of life and death.

Finally, at three o’clock, Gates called back, and sounded calm and unworried. “Sean, sounds like you’ve been trying to reach me.”

Lassiter was somewhat less calm. “You’re goddamn right I was trying to reach you! Have you seen this report?”

“Of course I saw it; I signed off on it. It’s unfortunate it didn’t turn out the way you had hoped.”

Lassiter was so confused and enraged that he thought he might be in some kind of parallel universe; he simply could not believe what he was hearing.

“The way I hoped? The way I hoped? Are you out of your fucking mind? You know goddamn well we had an arrangement. The drug was supposed to pass with flying goddamn colors!”

“Sean, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re obviously upset, but maybe with more research the drug can be salvaged.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Lassiter sensed that maybe Gates was talking this way for some other reason; perhaps he feared that the line was tapped. But the front of his mind was so angry that there was no room for this word of caution to reach his mouth.

“You’re not going to get away with this, Gates. I swear to God, I will tear you apart.”

“Sean, I don’t appreciate being threatened like that.”

“You are a dead man, Gates. You got that? If this isn’t fixed before it goes to the FDA, you are a dead man!”

Lassiter slammed down the phone in frustration and anger, his mind racing for a way to deal with this disaster.