House on Fire

41

Maggie Benson was killed by someone working for Kimball Pharma, I suspected, maybe because they thought she was threatening to uncover some kind of corporate wrongdoing. Maybe they knew she had broken into the file room in Conrad’s home study. Probably they assumed she’d found something explosive. If it wasn’t Fritz Heston himself who did it, it was someone else connected with the company who killed her, because of what she’d found.

They did it to protect Conrad Kimball. So I wanted to find whoever killed Maggie, and in the process, I vowed, I was going to take this company down by whatever means possible.

It was already personal. Now it bordered on obsession. Sukie had fired me, but I was unfiring myself.

Everything started with Phoenicia Health Sciences, the company that did the addiction study and then buried it. I had to get into Phoenicia somehow. And Gabe had given me an idea.

On the Phoenicia website was a link that read, Volunteer for a study. I clicked it, and it took me to a page with a very long list of human clinical trials that you could volunteer for. All for different drugs. They wanted people with high LDL cholesterol or Parkinson’s disease. Or smokers. People with major depressive disorder. That sort of thing. But some asked just for healthy volunteers between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five.

What caught my eye was the compensation. They were offering five and six thousand dollars, even over eight thousand dollars in some cases. The higher-paid ones were longer studies — you had to live in a corporate facility, basically, for several weeks or even months. There was probably some area within the company’s headquarters where they had pastel colors on the wall and offices that had been turned into bedrooms where they could watch you on video. I couldn’t imagine wanting to do that. But I guess the money was pretty good.

And you could feel good about doing it too. There was a lot of pretty language. “When you take part in paid clinical trials,” it read in big type, “you are helping to advance the human journey to new discoveries that will vastly improve lives worldwide for decades to come.”

Maybe some people did it for altruistic reasons. Most did it for money.

I thought about what Gabe had said about human guinea pigs. I did some Googling. These were people whose entire job was being a medical drug research subject. They did study after study; they lived in hospitals and office suites converted into sort-of bedrooms and had their blood pressure measured and their blood drawn and endured colonoscopies and bronchoscopies and all that sort of thing. It was a full-time job, and it paid okay.

I just wanted to find a study that required one or more overnight stays at Phoenicia headquarters and required healthy volunteers.

I found one that was studying “brain changes and people’s responses to painful stimuli,” where you got three MRIs. No thanks. I found one study for a drug that required two overnight stays. It didn’t say what the drug was, but I filled out the online form and clicked Submit.

Meanwhile, Dorothy was doing a deep dive on Phoenicia. After considerable searching, she discovered that the company’s CFO was on vacation, in Costa Rica. “At least, according to his Facebook page. Man, people are so indiscreet on social media.”

“Excellent. What’s their accounting firm?”

“They use Deloitte.” That was one of the big four accounting companies. “Anything else?”

“Do you have the name of the CFO’s admin?”

She nodded. “I’ll send it to you right now.”

She drifted out of my office, and a minute later a box popped up on my computer screen with a name and phone number. I called it.

When Jennifer Talalay, the CFO’s admin, answered, I said, “Jen? This is Tom Rogin over at Deloitte, and we’ve got a problem I was hoping you could take care of.”

“Problem?”

“Yeah, and I really don’t want to bother Bob in Costa Rica.”

“Sure, tell me what I can do.” She was reassured by the fact that I knew her name and that I knew Bob Newell’s vacation plans. She had no reason to wonder whether I really was an accountant.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “The city assessor is saying that your square footage for personnel is three thousand square feet more than what we’ve stated. This puts us in a different tax bracket, which we don’t want.”

She chuckled. “No, sir.”

“So we’re pushing back, and to that end, I’m going to need a set of building plans or drawings ASAP for the audit.”

“Drawings?”

“Bob said if anyone can find the plans, it’s you.”

She asked for an email address. I gave her the fake one, at DeloitteUS.com, that Dorothy had set up for me. It would auto-forward to me. I don’t even think DeloitteUS.com was a real domain name, but five minutes later she had emailed me the building plans for Phoenicia’s world headquarters.

Then my phone rang again.

“Mr. Heller? This is Catherine from Phoenicia Health Sciences. You’re interested in participating in a clinical trial?”

“Yes, that’s right.” I settled back in my chair.

The woman’s voice over the phone was businesslike but friendly. She had a great Boston accent. “This is a clinical trial that requires taking an investigational drug or a placebo.”

“Okay.”

“Mr. Heller, this study will involve a blood draw or an IV as well as an ultrasound and an overnight stay.”

“I understand.”

She then asked me a series of questions — race, ethnicity, height and weight, blood pressure, did I smoke, how many alcoholic drinks did I have per week... Did I know where Phoenicia was located. The study, she told me, started next Wednesday. That was too far off.

“There’s nothing sooner?”

“That’s when this study begins. Why, is that—”

“I know I probably should have gotten to this earlier, but my week off started yesterday, and I wanted to make some money as soon as I can. I was hoping to get into a study tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Not possible?”

She hummed to herself, loudly tapped at keys. “We actually have a cancellation in a study that begins in three days. I guess the volunteer took sick. This study requires a healthy donor. You’re not a smoker, are you?”

“No.”

“Does that work?”

“I think I can make it work,” I said, smiling. I thanked her and hung up.

There was a knock at my office door, and Gabe entered. He was wearing his black leather jacket. I said, “Hey.”

“Hey, Uncle Nick, can I borrow a car?”

“You already heard from your grandfather?”

He nodded. “I’m going to drive out there tomorrow morning. I got the day off from the record shop.”

I thought a moment. “Not the Defender. I need it. Plus, like I said, you don’t want it on the Mass. Turnpike. It’s loud.”

“That’s okay.”

“You can take my Toyota. But be careful.”

“Cool. I will. Not a scratch.”

I was only a little worried about my car, but I let it go, because my intercom was buzzing again.

“Nick, it’s Patty Lenehan.”

I picked right up. “Patty?”

Her voice was raspy. “Nick, I’m so sorry, but I really need you back here.”

“Everything okay?”

“I can’t — I just can’t — it’s Brendan. He’s angry all the time, and he’s taking it out on me. He’s been breaking things, and he refuses to do anything I ask him to do. He says he hates me. I just can’t get to him. He needs you. I need you.”

I hung up and tossed Gabe, my other surrogate son, the keys to the Toyota.