The fifth vial

CHAPTER 22

From: Benjamin M. Callahan

To: Congressman Martin Shapiro

Re: Investigation of Mrs. Valerie Shapiro

Enclosed are the discs and still photographs associated with my three-week investigation of your wife. It is my conclusion, with a high degree of certainty, that Mrs. Shapiro is not involved in any sort of affair in the commonly understood definition of the term. During the course of my investigation, on four occasions, Mrs. Shapiro visited the home (see photo) of Alejandro Garcia, a mechanic at the Goodyear Automotive store on 13384 Veteran's Parkway in Cicero, and his wife, Jessica (see photos). Twice she stayed for over an hour, and twice she emerged with a girl about age twelve (photos). Each time they went shopping, mostly for clothes. Their relationship was a warm and loving one, and twice I heard the girl refer to her as Aunty Val. Enclosed are documents validating that Mrs. Garcia's maiden name is, in fact, Nussbaum — the same as your wife's. They have no other children. There is a great deal more investigation that could be done, but as of this report, I can say that I believe Julie Garcia is, in fact, your wife's daughter, born when your wife was sixteen and turned over for adoption to her older (by thirteen years) sister. I have been told that Attorney Clement Goring (see enclosed detail sheet) either brokered this adoption or knows who might have done so.

Clearly, there has been deception on the part of your wife, but it is not the sort you believed.

As I told you when I agreed to this investigation, I could give you one month, but no more — at least not until I return from attending to other business.

Best of luck in sorting this situation out. I hope you agree with my conclusions and that I have been of service to you.

Ben packaged the summary along with a thick envelope of photos, documents, DVDs, and a final bill, payment of which would take care of his financial problems for some time to come. Of all his recent cases, this one had the chance to be the most rewarding. An up-and-coming congressman, Martin Shapiro was married to a woman nearly half his age — bright, beautiful, educated, and very much of a political asset provided they could work out their issues. One of those issues concerned his wife at age sixteen, unwilling to terminate her pregnancy, but unable to care for a child.

Both of the Shapiros seemed like decent people, and Ben was pulling for them. Now it was time to complete his work on Lonnie Durkin. It was surprising to sense such commitment in himself after not really caring about much of anything for so long. But since his trip to Idaho, he had been unable to shuck from his mind the images of the inestimable sadness and sorrow on the faces of Karen and Ray Durkin.

He was convinced that Whitestone laboratory technicians all over the country, and in all probability the world, were unwitting accomplices in what might prove to be a consummate evil, and he both wanted and needed to know what was going on.

With Althea Satterfield fluttering about his apartment, Ben packed some warn weather clothes and set out enough cat supplies for a couple of weeks. Then, after a hug for his elderly neighbor and a final scratch for Pincus, he hurried down the stairs and into his five-year-old black Range Rover. The car was battered with half a dozen dents that were too close to his deductible to bother fixing, but despite more than a little neglect, the engine was still sound. In fact, just yesterday, the mechanic at Quickee Oil Change had pronounced the car good to go for the thousand mile drive to Fadiman, Texas.

In addition to his suitcase and a pair of twenty 'five-pound dumbbells, Ben set his Moroccan leather valise in back, packed with some new equipment, including several listening devices, a used but serviceable monocular night scope, a hundred feet of clothesline, and a new Swiss Army knife. Finally, he transferred his Smith amp; Wesson.38 Special, freshly oiled, from its velvet pouch to a shoulder holster, and set the holster under some papers in the glove compartment.

Initially, Gustafson, who had finally stopped calling him Mr. Calkhan, had been as excited and enthusiastic as he was about the findings in Cincinnati and at the Whitestone lab in Soda Springs, but over the intervening weeks, she had become considerably more cautious.

"Ben, I think we should call in the FBI," she had said during their last meeting together.

"And tell them what? We have no hard proof of anything. Chances are these Whitestone people could easily parry any thrust as feeble as ours. Then they just retool, or relocate, and restart."

"I have some friends researching this company," Gustafson had said, "and what they've found really concerns me. Whitestone is based out of London, and financially spearheaded by their laboratories and a pharmaceutical business, they may be one of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the world."

"Pharmaceuticals?"

"Mostly generics and medications that are legal in Europe and Africa, but not here — at least not yet. Ben, I think we're in over our heads."

"So?"

"So, I don't want you to get hurt."

"Believe me, I'm no hero, but folks are already getting hurt, maybe lots of them. And there'll be more and more until these people are stopped. A doctor orders a blood sugar and his patient unknowingly gets tissue-typed. It's like they're walking around with time bombs in their pockets. How many of those vials of blood — those so-called quality control tubes — are getting sent off to Fadiman, Texas, every day? How many profiles do you think are added to the database?"

Gustafson shook her head grimly.

"I'm worried, that's all," she said. "All those blood-drawing labs, that huge van, those weapons, that thug who almost killed you — these are not petty thieves."

"Hey," Ben replied, "is this the woman who put on a nurse's uniform and marched into the operating room of a hospital in Moldavia to document the illicit trade of a kidney in exchange for a job? As I recall, from the article you wrote, it was a lousy, menial job at that and, I might add, a lousy, menial job that never even materialized. I think you succeeded in getting some arrests in that one."

"One of the first cases where we actually put an organ broker and a surgeon out of business," she said somewhat wistfully, "at least for the moment."

"Professor, Google and Yahoo have more than a hundred thousand entries about you, running around in disguises, making power brokers back down from hundreds of thousands in profits, putting yourself in harm's way for people that were staring up from the bottom of the barrel. It doesn't sound as if you've ever backed down from anyone."

"I think most of the time I was too young to know any better."

"Well, you are a great power of example, and for what I'm getting paid by Organ Guard, I would brave any danger."

"Very funny. Okay, Ben, do what you have to do, but please, please be careful."

"I will."

"And speaking of getting paid."

"Yes?"

"Here's my Sunoco gas card."

Another night on the road playing detective, another budget motel — this one the Starlight in Hollis, Oklahoma. At three thirty Ben was still awake, staring into the blackness of room 118. By four thirty, he had showered, packed up, grabbed a cup of coffee from the desk clerk, and hit the road. He had always found the starkness and palette of the desert to be awesome, but never more so than this morning, with sand and sage washed by the pastels of early dawn, stretching out infinitely on either side of the highway.

He left the CD player off and the windows open, and thought of what might be awaiting him in Fadiman. Soon, he found himself reflecting on "Fred and Ed," a cartoon he had read religiously in his weekly college newspaper. In his favorite installment of the strip, slow, gangly Fred with a huge net and length of rope announces to his much smaller, sharper friend that he is going alligator hunting.

"If you catch one, what are you going to do with it?" Ed asks.

"I hadn't thought that far ahead," Fred replies.

Totally silly, totally profound.

Ben reached Fadiman just after noon. The sleepy town looked as if it might have been used as the set for Bogdanovich's classic The Last Picture Show. It was definitely more substantial than Curtisville, Florida, home of Schyler Gaines's gas station and mini-mart, but the gestalt of the two places was not dissimilar. The wooden sign on the edge of town, peeling and punctuated with more than a few bullet holes, announced that Fadiman was firmly rooted in yesterday, with hands reaching out to tomorrow. From what Ben could discern from the ride into the center of town, the main industries bridging yesterday and tomorrow were mobile home and RV sales, and self-Storage facilities. There were three of each on this side of town alone.

With a growing need for food and a bathroom, but otherwise no more of a plan than the cartoon character hunting for alligators, Ben rolled slowly down Main Street — four or five traffic lights long, and wide in the way only midwestern Main Streets were wide. He counted five taverns, all of which served food, but none of which looked as if it would be sanctioned by any health authority to do so. He wasn't really that picky about ambiance, and he certainly was no gourmet, but he had only recently gotten off Zantac and Maalox, and was enjoying an uneasy truce with his stomach. On another pass up the street he spotted a couple of restaurants he had missed — Mother Molly's and the Hungry Coyote. The choice was easy.

Molly's, done in a motif of genuine cowboy and ranch regalia, was actually larger and quainter than Ben had anticipated. Booths with red leather and dark wood were arranged around the outside, tables with red checked paper place mats in the center. About a third of the seats were occupied. Ben was beginning to feel the fatigue of his early wake-up and the long drive. Still, he debated ordering a Coors with his mushroom and cheddar steerburger before opting instead for the caffeine boost of a Coke. The beer could wait. There was work to be done.

MapQuest had taken him to Fadiman easily enough, but had failed to come up with anything like a John Hamman Highway. In the Whitestone lab in Soda Springs he felt certain he had read the name correctly. Now, he wasn't so confident. As he worked on his lunch, he imagined himself with a rope and net, watching an endless line of alligators marching past.

What now?

First things first, he decided finally, and motioned his waitress over. She was a husky, grandmotherly woman with close-cut silver hair and a calm competent demeanor that suggested things seldom got her down. Her name tag read CORA.

"Excuse me, Cora, I'm looking for John Hamman Highway. Can you help me out?"

She looked at him quizzically and then shook her head. At that moment, the other waitress working the lunch shift passed by.

"Hey, Micki," Cora said, softly enough not to disturb the customers, "John Hamman Highway. You ever heard of that?"

"I'm looking for the Whitestone Laboratory," Ben added.

"Never heard of that either," Cora said.

"Isn't John Hamman Highway the same as Lawtonville Road?" Micki asked. "They changed the name a year or so ago-member?"

"An' named it after that Lawtonville boy who got that medal for gettin' killed in Iraq. I remember."

"Exactly. Just follow Main Street west an' when it forks, take the right one. Don't know of any Whitestone Laboratory, though."

"Well, thanks," Ben said, relieved that the road existed at all. "I'll find it."

"In fact you will."

The affirmation had come from the man seated alone in the next booth. He was in his mid to late thirties, with a square jaw, widely spaced eyes, and a dense mat of curly brown hair.

"You know Whitestone Laboratory?" Ben asked, sensing from the lack of interaction between him and the waitresses that he wasn't local.

"I'm going to work there tomorrow."

"You a chemist of some sort?"

"Me?" The man laughed at the notion. "Heck no. I'm a flight attendant. Friend of mine, works with me at Southwest, makes extra money doing a private gig for Whitestone, only he can't make it this time and turned it over to me. Seth Stepanski."

Ben shook the man's hand and rated his grip at least a seven out of ten.

"Ben," he said, sensing that, unlike his fictional heroes, he would fumble if he tried to make up a name on the spot, "Ben Callahan."

Without waiting to be asked, Stepanski put a bill on his table and swung around to take the seat opposite Ben.

"You expected at Whitestone?" he asked.

"Nope," Ben said, now thinking faster, and ready to ad-lib in any way he could to keep Seth Stepanski engaged, although clearly the man was grateful for company. "I sell lab equipment, and the lab director at Whitestone contacted us about an upgrade."

"Well, I'm not sure they're open for business today," Stepanski said.

"I'm from Corsicana, south of Dallas. The drive here took a lot less than I had planned for, and I ended up getting in here last night, so I drove out there this morning to see if maybe they needed some help with the plane.

"And?"

"I never even made it close to the buildings. High fencing all the way around, barbed wire on top. Looks like a maximum-security prison without the guard towers. It's way out there in the middle of the desert. Nothing, and I mean nothing around. I could make out a bunch of buildings in the distance, but when I rang the bell at the gate and told them who I was, this woman told me I wasn't expected until tomorrow afternoon and there was no one around to take care of me today."

Ben was totally intrigued.

"So you're flying out late tomorrow?"

"No, no, Thursday morning. Apparently they have a place for me to stay tomorrow night."

"But not tonight."

"Not tonight," Stepanski echoed.

"Sounds like I may end up waiting until tomorrow, too."

"It's about a ten-mile drive each way. Maybe you should call. Not doing that was my mistake."

"I'll do it."

"If you need a motel, the Quality Inn where I'm staying is as good as any."

"Thanks," Ben said, searching for ways to expand their conversation. "Hey listen, why don't I call and see if my contact at Whitestone is there. If she's not, maybe we can go find some cowboy bar, have us a couple of beers, an' maybe play some darts."

Did I just start speaking with a twang? Ben wondered as he put a twenty on the table and headed out to the Rover, allegedly to get his cell phone and the Whitestone number. He reminded himself that while his paperback heroes might know precisely how to handle this situation, for him, every move was a swim through uncharted waters.

Seth Stepanski was anything but interesting. His hobby seemed to be watching TV and breasts in clubs, and his main goal in life seemed to be finding a replacement for a woman named Sherry, who had dropped him when he didn't come through with a proposal in a timely fashion.

They were drinking beer in a booth in a dimly lit bar named, simply, Charlie's, and were working their way into their second hour and third beer together.

"Women like to date flight attendants because they get to fly almost anywhere cheap," he said, his speech just a bit thickened.

"I can see where that might be a plus," Ben said, having realized that he needn't worry about keeping their conversation going, merely directed.

Sadly, after the initial spurt of promising information at Mother Molly's, Stepanski had dried up. He wasn't sure of the destination of his flight, and had absolutely no idea who would be aboard. He did know that wherever they were headed, he would need his passport, and that they wouldn't be staying wherever it was for more than two or three days. He also added that what he was about to be paid was equivalent to a month's salary at Southwest.

Given what Alice Gustafson had learned about Whitestone, Ben wondered if some executives might be flying back to England. He was trying to think of anything else he might ask when Stepanski's eyes widened and he gestured out the window.

"Holy shit! Look at that rig."

Ben swung around and suspected that his eyes had widened, too. Rolling slowly up the street, like a sleek, invading spaceship, was a metallic gray Winnebago Adventurer — the Winnebago Adventurer, he felt certain, as he strained to see if Vincent was at the wheel.

"Goodness," he murmured.

"Two hundred thousand, I'll bet," Stepanski exclaimed, whistling for emphasis. "Maybe more. A rolling hotel."

Right idea, Ben thought. Wrong H word.

They watched in awed silence as the impressive RV eased down Main Street headed west. Ben knew the alligator had just jumped into his net. The next move was up to him.

It took most of the afternoon and several hours away from Seth Stepanski for Ben to formulate a plan, convince himself that it was a good idea, and finally put the pieces together. He felt focused and keen, but also more than a little apprehensive. There were a thousand possibilities that could go wrong, some of which might merely mess things up, some of which might kill him.

The story he used to get free of Stepanski was a stretch, even more so when Alice Gustafson didn't answer her office phone. His alternative plan required a call to his cell phone from Althea Satterfield.

"Whatever I say, Mrs. Satterfield, you just listen," he told her slowly, having gone to the Rover on the pretext of getting a map. "Don't say a word. Not a word."

"I listen," she repeated. "I'm a very good listener, dear."

"I know you are. Okay, five minutes and you call me on the cell phone number."

"The number I have right here."

"Exactly. How's Pincus'"

"Oh, he's just fine, dear. Why just a few hours ago he — "

"Okay, Mrs. Satterfield, call me in exactly five minutes from…now." His performance, while Althea listened in Chicago and Stepanski listened across the booth, was worthy of an Oscar. In the end, the flight attendant believed that Ben's boss had contacted their Whitestone Laboratory client and arranged a business meeting for the two of them at the woman's home in Pullman Hills, ten miles to the east of Fadiman. The trick from then until Ben was ready would be to keep from being spotted by Stepanski driving around town.

"I'll register at the Quality Inn when I get back," Ben said as they split up on the street outside of Charlie's. "Save your appetite and we'll have dinner together if you'd like."

It was nearly eight when Ben stopped by the motel and picked up his new friend. Everything was in place but Ben's resolve, which seemed to be wavering from minute to minute. At a quarter of ten, with the town drifting off to sleep, they finished their Texas-sized steaks at a place called the Rodeo Grille, and headed back to the Rover through a largely empty parking lot.

"Before we call it a night," Ben said, having pumped the man for as much personal information as possible, "I have something I want to show you.

They drove north for almost twenty minutes. There was some evidence along the way that Fadiman was expanding in that direction, but it would be years, maybe decades before civilization filled in the spaces. If Stepanski was curious about their destination, five beers and a huge meal kept him from voicing it.

Finally, Ben pulled into the driveway of Budget Self-Storage, the first of such businesses he had passed on his way in from Oklahoma. The neon sign was off, the small office dark.

"What's out here?" Stepanski asked, clearly unconcerned about the man with whom he had spent much of the day.

They passed the row of corrugated steel units in the front, and went to the far end of the second row. That was where Ben pulled over.

"So, Seth," he said, "we need to talk."

"What in the hell is — "

The flight attendant stopped short when he realized that Ben was almost casually pointing a pistol at a spot between his eyes.