Last shot

Chapter 74

I heard you got shot."

Bear took a turn too hard, and Tim braced against the door, almost dropping his cell phone. "Shit, Dray, I'm sorry. I just got grazed. Coupla stitches."

"For a few stitches I wouldn't have bothered staying awake worrying." Despite her tone, her voice was uneven. She blew out a shaky breath. "I figured if you were dead, Guerrera wouldn't have mentioned it so nonchalantly."

In the background Tim heard Tyler fussing. "He's not asleep?"

"Same story." She sounded exhausted. "This case goes on much longer, I'm filing for hazardous-duty pay."

"Our space between sightings is shrinking. I'd say we're closing him down."

"Yeah? How many stitches has he got?"

"He's losing some blood."

"Do tell."

As Bear flew through stoplights, not bothering to distinguish red from green, Tim described the events since the last time he'd checked in with her, shortly after Walker's sniper attempt at Beacon-Kagan had hit the news channels. Caden Burke's emergence, the shoot-out at Game, Tim's visit to his father-this alone was met with stunned silence-the visit to Morgenstein, the raid on the apartment, Tim's standoff with Walker, the trip to the hospital, and, finally, the failed interface with Dolan.

Not surprisingly, Dray zeroed in on a detail he'd long dismissed as insignificant. "Walker dumped the Camry in the airport parking lot, right?"

"We already checked, Dray. There were no other vehicles stolen out of there around that time."

"He drove away in something."

"He might've taken the bus. A cab."

"Covered in ash and reeking of trash? Maybe he wrote 'fugitive' across his forehead with a Sharpie, too?" Different tone: "No, you can't have a Scooby-Doo Band-Aid. Go back to sleep or I'm gonna put my head in the microwave. Yes, I'll send your daddy in when he gets home." Back to Tim: "Plus, why bother when you're gifted at boosting cars, which he clearly is?"

"So?"

"So check what cars were stolen in the surrounding area that night. He's not gonna swipe a car from the lot claiming he lost the ticket. They ding you for two hundred bucks. He'd have to grab something a block or two away."

The Ram screeched up to Freed's downtown high-rise. The doorman looked startled beneath his wannabe-Manhattan red cap.

Tim said, "The task force is on overload. Will you get on it?"

"Sure. Guerrera has the parking-lot ticket with the time stamped on it?"

"Yes. Thank you. Gotta run."

"Oh, and Timothy? Let's keep tonight's count to those five stitches. In you, I mean."

An elevator operator rode with them up to the penthouse floor. Freed's building was one of the crown jewels of downtown's gentrification, twenty-five floors of luxury living for Japanese businessmen, Europeans who missed real city living, and the occasional East Coast star whose career required a seasonal transplant to within limo range of the studios.

Freed answered the door in a silk kimono-looking robe that managed to be masculine but earned a behind-the-back eyebrow raise from Bear nonetheless. They crossed a marble floor to a granite table suspended from the ceiling by two centered steel cables. His copy of the confidential report had been laid out, page by page, across the surface. Post-its with notes and questions, rendered in blue ink from Freed's Montblanc, lifted from the sheets like feathers. A floating fireplace magically burned logs. Someone rustled beyond the cracked bedroom door, but despite Bear's nosy detour in that direction, the identity-and gender-of Freed's visitor remained concealed. The wall-length window looked down on the rooftop bar and lounge of The Standard hotel. The pool cast a diffuse aqua glow over the scene-monkeys slurping bright name-brand drinks and rolling around on the waterbed cabanas. A projector Supersized Casablanca onto the side of the neighboring building.

Tim nodded at the pages on the table. "Make headway?"

"You could say that. I've got X5-AAT pegged as Xedral's latest model, but I've been trying to figure out what L12-AAT is."

"It was the final model of Lentidra," Tim said, "a viral vector they pulled back after they hit problems during animal trials."

"They pulled it back, all right, but not because of that." Freed looked troubled. He sat at the end of the table and scooted his chair in. "This report is, among other things, a risk assessment. It provides a comparative cost-benefit analysis of both viral vectors." He tapped a graph. "This part shows projected profit margins for Xedral, mapped against those for Lentidra."

Bear said, "Xedral's projected profits are higher."

"Significantly higher. Initially."

"And this chart?" Tim asked.

"The tipping point. For when the risks associated with Xedral outweigh the financial benefits."

"I'm not sure I follow," Tim said. "What are these figures?"

"The effectiveness quotient. It shows Xedral to be eighty-six percent effective."

"Sounds pretty good," Bear said. "So what 'risks' are we talking about here?"

Troubled, Freed jogged his Montblanc so it tapped the table's edge. "Lentidra's effectiveness is at ninety-five."

The guard came out of his chair when Dolan stormed into his father's study. Breathing hard, Dolan threw the report on his father's desk and crossed his arms. The guard, accustomed now to the pretense of discretion, dismissed himself quickly, leaving them alone. Dean held the report in a firm hand, perusing it at arm's length. The cold still hadn't left Dolan's face; he'd sat on the porch for the past forty-five minutes, reading by the faint light cast through the parlor window. Dean set down the report without lifting the top page.

"Well?" Dean said.

"You want to tell me what that is, sir?"

"An accounting scenario."

"That's why you gave me false data for Lentidra," Dolan said. "Not because it was flawed. But because it wasn't."

"Neither vector is one hundred percent."

"I don't see the same fail rate for Lentidra."

Dean's aggravation reached critical mass. "You don't see the same healthy profit margin either."

"Xedral is less effective. But you want it anyway."

"Why do you think that is?"

Dolan's eyes pulled to the framed poster behind Dean. XEDRAL. THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED. THIRTY DAYS AT A TIME. "The boosters. You buried Lentidra because it was too effective. It achieves permanent transgene integration. There's no need for a maintenance shot every month, like Xedral requires. You don't want to cure AAT deficiency. You'd rather maintain a pipeline of sick monthly consumers."

"I don't expect you to comprehend the intricacies." And then, resigned to his disappointment: "You're not your brother."

"No. And I don't share his ethics either. We could have had Lentidra to market months ago. Saved who knows how many lives?"

"There's nothing illegal about what we've decided to do here. We own our research."

"Our research started with a grant from NIH. Taxpayer money."

Dean chuckled. "Do you know what your lab has spent since it opened?"

"A hundred and twelve million."

"Right. Of which your NIH grant was what?"

"Five hundred thousand."

"Correct. Your grant was a drop in the bucket. And you don't care where the rest comes from, do you? You don't bother to keep tabs. It could be from other people's gold teeth, melted down at Auschwitz and stockpiled in Paraguay, right? Ethics! Where do you think your operating capital comes from?"

"Investors."

"Right. Are the money managers bad people? No. Are their investors? No. They're just spoiled rotten. They've come of age in a time when a three percent dividend and four percent appreciation doesn't cut it. When stockholders see any equity that doesn't grow fifteen percent every year as a turd not even worth flushing. For better or worse, you are married to them. Those beady-eyed fund managers. Those rapacious investors. Their money, not mine, is what will turn Vector into a success. So don't you question my ethics until you can truthfully say you give a fuck how I've gotten my hands on that money for you."

"This isn't about money, or funding, or business. It's about putting people at unnecessary risk."

"Don't be such a pessimist, Dolan. These people-terminal patients facing certain death-are being offered an eighty-six percent chance at having their lives saved. If I was sitting in their chair at the roulette table, I'd take that bet. Say our worst-case estimate is right. Fourteen percent of patients have a problem. So what? They were going to die anyway. Of liver failure-a slow, horrible way to go. Until you developed Xedral. It's a godsend."

"Not when there's an alternative that provides a cure. With significantly less risk."

"An alternative that offers little incentive to this company to continue marketing and developing this and other lifesaving products. Grow up, son. This is part of doing business. We provide a service, and there are costs to providing that service. You want to…what? Bring one drug to market and not be able to fund the infrastructure to maintain it? Not to mention future R amp;D? How do you think that'll get funded? You want to cure cystic fibrosis, Dolan? How are we going to do that without resources?"

"How are you going to explain why you knowingly withheld a superior vector?"

"Come on, Dolan. For every product we run dozens of models and sims like this. And thousands more showing potential problems and risks with all of our products."

"This report from your beloved accounting department is a bigger threat than you're letting on."

"Would it be a threat if it leaked? Yes. Would that threat be inconvenient? Yes. Would it be unmanageable? No. We've provided for that."

Dolan leaned over the desk, jabbing a finger into the report. "We're launching Xedral on Monday and going wide three months after that. To three hundred thousand humans. A nine percent effectiveness difference is what? Twenty-seven thousand dead? A year. Have you really got that accounted for?"

Dean, a portrait of calm in the face of Dolan's emotionality, studied him with something like enmity.

Dolan examined his stone facade and said, "We have a responsibility to release Lentidra."

"And we will when the time is right."

"No way. I can't let you sit on it."

"You can't? What do you have? A contingency scenario? A few pieces of paper obtained through questionable legal means? You don't have any hard data, do you? Do you? You don't have a scrap of leverage, so don't you dare threaten me."

"What about Tess Jameson?"

"What about her?"

"She found this."

"Yes. And she came to me, of course, to blackmail me with it."

"To give her Lentidra."

"As if we could just circumvent trials and FDA approval and stick the thing in her son's arm. Even if we were willing to trust her, to float our product out into the world where any general practitioner in Antelope Valley could raise an eyebrow at the miracle cure of this one kid."

"So you…?" Dolan wanted to know and was afraid to know at the same time.

"So I told her I have a number of relationships in the medical community. Including the executive director of the United Network for Organ Sharing. If Tess were willing to walk away after signing a full non-disclosure regarding any and all knowledge she might have acquired as related to her involvement with Beacon-Kagan and Vector, perhaps expedited treatment could be arranged for her son."

Dolan could hear the rush of blood in his ears. "That's why she dropped Sam from the Xedral trial. To make him available for transplant. You offered her a liver."

"I tried to bring her into the fold-again. I tried to help her-again. And again she proved untrustworthy. She had a fit of conscience, backed out of our agreement, and was preparing to go public."

A fit of conscience. Tess had been placed in an impossible moral position. An illegal liver, attained for her son, at a cost of contributing to a corporate cover-up that would cost twenty-seven thousand children their lives every year. From what he knew of Tess, even her love for her son wouldn't make her participate in a scheme that would mean hundreds of thousands of children dying unnessarily. She'd thought she could go through with it, yet in the eleventh hour she couldn't. But in preparation for the liver, she'd had to sign away Sam's place in the Xedral study. She was stuck. So she'd tried to take another route-a legal route. Whistle-blow. And hope Sam could hang on until Vector was forced to release Lentidra.

Dolan's voice came weak, throaty. "So you ordered her killed."

"And what if I did?" Dean rose, speaking with pent-up force. "And what if I did? With what's at stake-the future of Vector, of Beacon-Kagan, the lives we save every day and will continue to save. You'd let one woman bring down the whole enterprise?"

"If she was right. Yes."

"Then why didn't you? You were in a position to know, Dolan. But you didn't want to. Instead you slurped at the teat all these years."

"Not anymore."

"Please. You may be naive, but you're not a fool. You're not going to walk away from Vector, from your work. You're emotional right now, sure. But you'll calm down, see the road ahead. We'll work this out."

Dolan summoned a reserve of strength he never knew he had. "No, sir, we won't. I'm leaving. Now."

"You'll be killed." Dean's eyes pulled to the guard who had reappeared at the door, and Dolan felt a coldness run through his veins. His father might have been talking about Walker Jameson, but then again he might not have. Keeping his eyes on Dean, Dolan backed up into the hall. Immediately another guard appeared, flanking him. He tried to turn toward the foyer but was blocked, the men filling the breadth of the hall.

"Get the hell out of my way!"

But they remained, maddeningly mute, eyes downturned in a meretricious display of deference. Dolan moved back toward his room, and they permitted him, matching him when he jogged, safeguarding wrong turns, guiding him, a rat through a rigged labyrinth. He burst into the game room and slammed the door behind him, locking it.

He doubled over, hands on his knees, breathing deeply to stave off a panic attack. Finally he straightened. He picked up the telephone, pressed the receiver to his ear until the dial tone started bleating. What would he say? He had no proof, no hard data.

Setting the phone down, he pushed open the door to Chase's room. On the desk the termini of numerous computer cables shaped the blank space where the laptop had been. Dean must have had it removed in the past hour while Dolan was with the deputies. Under the circumstances the computer's absence struck Dolan as vaguely grotesque, an organ ripped free of its connective tissue. Dean had been at this game too long; he could think five moves ahead. Dolan didn't stand a chance.

He stared at the faint indentation in Chase's pillow, a remnant of his brother's final night of sleep. He tried to personalize his sense of loss, but it had little to do with Chaisson. It was more a diffuse sadness that his life and their brotherhood had amounted to nothing more than this.

A series of chirps came from the closet, disrupting Dolan's thoughts. He crossed and opened the door but was greeted with silence. After about thirty seconds, the sound repeated. He sourced it to a cell phone weighing down the pocket of Chase's favored leather jacket along with a set of keys. Dolan listened to the waiting message, but it was from a woman (screechy, loquacious, inebriated) berating Chase for not calling her.

He sat on the bed, clicking through the saved numbers. A lot of initials, in case Chase's fiancee got ahold of it. He came upon an unnamed entry-22498352. A string of random digits, clearly not a phone number.

Vector's computer log-in security codes were eight digits long.

Dolan stared at the numbers, feeling his heartbeat grow louder until he sensed it pulsing at his eardrums. With renewed purpose he rose, sliding on Chase's jacket and stuffing the phone in his pocket. On his way out, he tapped the pillow, disintegrating the hollow where Chase's head last rested.

He jogged around the pool table, undid the various locks on the bulletproof window overlooking the backyard, and climbed out into the night. A guard stirred at his station near the rear gate and scanned the dark house. Dolan flattened against the second-story lattice until the guard turned back to the street. He'd require a more elaborate exit than the down-and-out he'd planned on. Honeysuckle scraping his face, he struggled his way to the next room.

The bathroom window was cracked. He clung to the lattice beside it, his body starting to shake from exertion. Supporting himself by two tenuous toeholds and one aching arm, he slid the pane open. He pulled himself through and slipped out into the hall. Timing his dodges through the halls so as to miss the patrolling security guards, he eased out one of the service entrances. Chase's G-Wagen was parked outside the garages where he'd last left it.

Dolan flew through the remote-operated rear gate, offering a middle finger to the surprised security guard.