Third Strike

CHAPTER 28

Terry O’Loughlin lived in a large house that showed both modern and Spanish influences, in the quiet, well-to-do suburb of West University Place. It was an area of wide leafy streets, triple-car garages and lawn sprinklers, just inside the 610 Loop, an inner ring road that circled the skyscraper heart of Houston.

We drove past slowly, while I made a bit of a show of holding up the map and pointing at signposts, just in case the neighbors were nosy. I had a sudden abrupt sense of déjà vu—of cruising past Miranda Lee’s house and of what had been lurking inside. The O’Loughlin house, too, was quiet and dark.

“Look’s like there’s nobody home yet,” Sean murmured. I heard the slightest catch in his voice and knew he, also, was thinking of Miranda.

“Hey, he has a Porsche lifestyle to support,” I pointed out. “That probably means long hours—even for a corporate lawyer.”

Sean considered this, nodding his acceptance. “Plus, he lives alone, so there’s nobody to rush home to.”

“So, do we broach him on the doorstep, or let him get inside?” I asked.

Sean shook his head. “Neither, I think,” he said. “A GT3 is a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of motorcar over here. There’s no way you’d leave it on the driveway.” He nodded at the attached garage. “There’ll be an electric opener on the garage door. He may never need to get out of the car outside the house. And once he’s inside there’s no guarantee he’ll open up to us. Particularly if he’s feeling jumpy after what’s happened.”

“So … are you suggesting we break in and wait for him to turn up?”

“That would be my choice,” Sean agreed.

“What about the alarm system? A house like that is bound to have one.”

He gave me an offended look. “Do I look like an amateur?” he said. “Besides, most people get lazy about setting the alarm. Particularly,” he added, leaning forwards and pointing towards a gray shadow that had suddenly appeared in one of the front windows, “when they have house cats.”

The gray shape solidified into a large white cat, who’d jumped onto the windowsill and sat up to wash its own chest with an exaggerated nodding motion, one forepaw dangling.

We left the Camry parked on the main road, near a church, which we hoped would excuse its presence, and walked back to the house. The place was still in darkness when we arrived and Sean quickly led the way past the garage towards the rear. We walked confidently, like we had every right to be there.

The back door had a solid bottom half, complete with cat flap, and a series of small panes of glass at the top. Sean slipped his pocketknife out and, while I kept a nervous watch, sliced through the putty holding the nearest piece of glass to the lock. In moments, he was reaching inside.

Despite his confidence over the lack of alarm, I still held my breath while he turned the key left on the inside like he was removing the fuse from a booby-trapped device. The lock disengaged smoothly and the door clicked open without any fuss. I listened for the shrill beeping that usually means you’ve got thirty seconds to enter your disarm code, but there was nothing.

We stepped through into a small tiled hallway—over the doormat, just in case—and Sean threw me a quick, if rather smug, smile which I pretended not to see. I’d taken the SIG off my hip as soon as we’d got inside. Sean’s Glock was already in his hand, though I hadn’t even seen him reach for it. The handling of a gun came so naturally to Sean that it just seemed a part of him.

The hallway had a utility room off of it, with a locked door that presumably led to the garage. We moved on, into a large modern kitchen in glossy white, its surfaces wiped down and clear of clutter. There was an automatic water bowl on the floor. The only noise came from the constant trickle that flowed into it, the shunt of the refrigerator, and the distant hum of an air-conditioning unit.

As we stood there, letting the silences of the house settle around us, we heard a thump. The white cat we’d seen washing itself in the front window came stalking arrogantly into the kitchen and sat down in the center of the tiled floor to fix us with an accusing stare. I swear its unblinking eyes shifted from us to the huge double doors of the fridge and back again, pointedly.

“Feeding time, huh?” Sean murmured. “No chance, pal. Go and catch something.”

As if understanding perfectly, the cat’s tail lashed twice. It got up abruptly and trotted out again, giving a last annoyed flick just as it disappeared through the doorway.

Enough illumination from the street filtered in through the front of the house to light our path. We followed the cat out of the kitchen, past an open-plan dining room with a glass-topped table supported on what appeared to be two blocks of marble. Huge ornate lamps were placed at either end. The table had only one place mat set on it.

Past the dining room was the living room with its big front window, which was where we’d seen the cat from the street. Just as we drew level with the doorway, the lights in the living room clicked on, nearly giving the pair of us a heart attack.

I hit the wall, bringing the SIG up instantly to cover the vestibule. Light from the living room spilled starkly into it, showing it to be empty apart from another cat, a tabby with a startlingly white bib and paws, sitting on a side table near the huge front door. The cat regarded me with disdain.

On the other side of the doorway, Sean had swung the Glock round to cover the living room. I glanced across at him.

“Clear,” he said tightly. “Lights must be on a timer.”

“Oh yeah, one of those scare-the-burglars-to-death timers.”

“We’re not burgling.”

“Mm,” I said. “Try telling that to the local cops if we get caught.”

“Well,” Sean said, “I wasn’t planning on it … .”

Aware we could be seen easily from the street through the uncurtained windows, I peered quickly into the living room without entering. Thick rugs, white leather corner sofa, bigscreen TV in an open cabinet with what looked to me like top-end hi-fi. To one side of the TV were half a dozen bottles of various spirits. Most of them were full, or very nearly.

In front of the sofa, three or four different remotes were scattered across the glass-topped coffee table, which was a scaled-down version of the one in the dining room. On the shelf underneath were a couple of magazines about American football and what looked like a travel brochure for Tanzania.

“Real bachelor pad,” I said quietly.

Sean raised his eyebrows and jerked his head upwards. We climbed the open-tread stairs out of the vestibule carefully, to avoid the creaks. The landing was also open-plan, with a gallery that looked down over a balcony into the living area. Everywhere was white. Another cat—dark gray this time—streaked past us on the landing and bolted for the stairs, a long sly blur in the gloom.

How many damn cats does this guy have?

Before we had a chance to go nosing into the upstairs rooms, we heard the sound of a powerful engine revving slightly as it changed gear for the turn into the driveway. The motor dropped back to a throaty idle, but the sound grew louder and more echoing, which could only mean the garage door was rising.

“Utility room?” I said. We needed to grab O’Loughlin as soon as he came into the house, without giving him chance to run, counterattack, or call for help. The ute was the most sheltered spot, unseen from the street. And just about roomy enough to take him down physically, if it came to that.

Sean nodded. He was already moving for the stairs, stealth discarded in favor of speed. As we reached the utility room, we saw a thin stream of light coming in from under the door leading to the garage. There was the clank of a motorized mechanism moving slowly through its operation, and then the sounds of the street were muffled again.

Sean and I braced ourselves on either side of the door. I slotted the SIG back into its holster, making sure my jacket slid free over the butt, just in case. Sean watched me and lifted a brow.

We need him to trust us, don’t we?

Yeah, but not that much.

The Glock stayed firmly in his hand.

The Porshe’s engine had already shut off and we heard the plip of a car alarm being set. O’Loughlin might leave his house alarm deactivated, but he wasn’t too careless with his toys, then.

Footsteps. A key fumbling into the lock, rattling the handle a little. The door opened, bringing a rush of warmer air with it into the coolness of the house interior.

Even as the figure stepped into range between me and Sean, I registered something was off. O’Loughlin was shorter than I was expecting, slightly built, shoulder-length hair, curves, soft voice.

“Hey, guys—mama’s home!”

Terry O’Loughlin’s a woman. This stupidly obvious fact hit me at just about the same time that something warned Terry she had more than cats in her house. The briefcase and papers she’d been carrying spilled from her suddenly nerveless hands, hit the floor and scattered. The woman’s automatic flight reflex had her wheeling back for the door to the garage, for the safety of her car, but Sean had already moved behind her and shouldered it shut.

The noise the door made as it slammed seemed to jolt her out of stasis. Realizing she couldn’t go back, she gave a strangled cry and tried to bolt for the kitchen instead.

I grabbed her arms as she scrambled to get past me. She couldn’t break my grip but she fought anyway, panic lending her strength. It was a short-term loan and the payments were steep. She struggled on for a few moments, exhausting herself in the process, then went limp. I relaxed my hold on her just a little, enough so we could talk to her.

“That’s better,” Sean said soothingly. The Glock was out of sight. “We’re not here to hurt you, Terry. We just want to—”

“The hell you’re not!” Terry said fiercely, surging forwards to lash out with her right foot, aiming for his groin.

Sean had the fastest reactions of anyone I’ve ever known. He managed to twist slightly and took the bulk of the blow on his hip, but it was still enough to make him stagger back, doubled over.

I yanked Terry round and shoved her up against the wall by the garage door, and I admit I wasn’t too gentle about it. She cursed the pair of us with colorful defiance.

“Sean!” I said, over my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

For a moment there was no reply. Then he said in a thickened voice, “Yeah, give me a minute. Christ Jesus, she’s got a kick like a bloody mule.”

Terry gave a slightly hysterical laugh and I shook her roughly.

“For God’s sake, Terry, we didn’t come for this!” I snapped. “Don’t make me finish what you’ve started.”

There must have been something in my voice that got through, because she stopped struggling and went quiet under my hands apart from a slight tremble, almost a vibration. It could have been anger, or fear, or a mix of the two.

I realized I’d been holding on to her hard enough for the pain to stop her breath, and I relaxed my grip on her arms a little. The release made her gulp in air like a surfacing swimmer.

“I’m going to let go of you now and step back,” I said. “But you make any sudden moves, Terry, and I swear I’ll put you on the deck and you’ll stay there. Do you understand me?”

She swallowed and nodded, as much as she was able to with her face against the wall.

I let go and moved back quickly enough to put me out of range, skimming a quick glance across at Sean as I did so. He was propped against the door frame to the kitchen, bent forwards with one hand braced on his thigh.

Terry straightened and turned carefully, a little jerky, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to get a good look at us, although I certainly wanted to get a good look at her. She stood taut as wire, still with that slight quiver, as though her brain was trying to override her body’s natural instinct to run and was having to fight to do so. There were two of us, we’d invaded her home and, in her eyes at least, had attacked her, but she was holding. I felt a sneaking admiration for her guts, if nothing else.

“What do you want?” she asked in a small voice.

“We’re here because of Miranda Lee,” I said. “You sent her an e-mail a couple of days ago, warning her to be careful, but you were too late. She’s dead.”

“I know. I just heard today,” Terry said, and there was no disguising the wobble in her voice. “What do you want with me?”

“It wasn’t suicide,” I said bluntly. “We think she was killed and we think you might know why.”

She stiffened. “Killed? But—” She broke off, bit her lip. “That makes no sense. She OD’ed.”

“But you must have thought Miranda was in danger, or why send her a warning?” I said.

She swallowed, took a moment to smooth down the jacket of her suit. I was no expert, but it looked like a very expensive suit. Dark cloth that draped well and hadn’t creased even after a long day at the office and a minor fracas with intruders. Good cut and it … suited her.

“How—” she began, and stopped. Started again, her eyebrow coolly raised this time. “How do you know I sent her anything?”

“Because she told me—a few hours before she was killed,” I said. “Were you just trying to scare her? Because, if so, it worked.”

Terry flushed. “Of course I wasn’t.” She flicked her gaze towards Sean, who was watching her with a brooding stare. Her head came up and she met my eyes steadily. “I’d heard she was relying on a guy—some Brit doctor she’d called in—to be an expert witness. But reports were coming in that he was unreliable. It was my opinion that using him would ruin the chances of her lawsuit being successful … .”

Her voice trailed away and her gaze sharpened on me. “You’re his daughter, aren’t you?’ she said, almost accusing, like I’d tried to trick her. “I read about you. They said you’d—”

“Stick to the point, Terry,” I cut in.

She swallowed. “I didn’t know Mrs. Lee—at all, really. We never met. Never even spoke on the phone. Just e-mails. But I … liked her. I felt sorry for her.”

“You’re a lawyer,” Sean said flatly.

Sensing insult, a hint of color lit her cheeks. “So?”

“I thought corporate lawyers had their emotions surgically removed during training.”

She pulled a face that contained a rueful anger. “Not all of us,” she said. Now it wasn’t under strain, her voice had a gentle Texas drawl with a wisp of smoke going on underneath it. If she’d been less smart she would have been called pretty, but there was an intense intelligence clear behind her eyes that dared you to demean what she’d made of herself by reducing her worth to such terms.

Into this silent standoff, the white cat that had confronted us in the kitchen appeared, twining through her legs and looking up at her face imploringly. When she glanced down, the cat made an openmouthed mute plea, whiskers quivering with the effort it put into making no noise whatsoever.

Terry stared down at it for a moment, unseeingly. Then she bent and swept the animal up into her arms, heedless of stray hairs. The cat squirmed until it had both front paws draped over her shoulder and began to purr loudly. She kissed the top of its head, which made it drop a gear and purr even harder.

“I need to feed my guys,” she said roughly, hefting the cat. “You going to stop me from doing that?”

Sean merely straightened and invited her towards the kitchen with the inclined head and regal bow of a maître d’. Terry, aware of being mocked, glared at him and marched past with her head high and her spine very straight. I saw her glance at the back door, just once, as we passed, but she didn’t try to run. I think she probably realized that she’d taken Sean by surprise once and that wasn’t going to happen again.

As soon as she switched on the kitchen lights and dropped the white cat onto the floor, another three of its furry friends appeared, muttering at Terry and bickering among themselves.

“So,” Sean prompted, “you felt sorry for Miranda and you decided to help her. Why?”

“Her husband was dying,” Terry said, but she was hedging. “Isn’t that reason enough?”

“You work for a drug company,” Sean said. “The chances are that, even with the best will in the world, lots of your customers are either dying themselves, or they have friends or relatives who are. What was special about her?”

Terry was spooning some foul-smelling, gelatinous, vaguely meaty product out of a can into two double bowls.

“Because it shouldn’t have happened,” she said at last, banging the last of the cat food off the spoon more fiercely than she needed to. “He should never have died.”

“So why did he?”

She lifted the bowls off the counter and turned to face us, pausing a moment. The feline tangle around her ankles became a frantic melee at the delay. The fourth cat, a black-and-white, stood up on its hind feet and dug its claws into Terry’s leg at the knee by way of retribution, pulling a thread in her trousers. She shook the cat loose absently, without annoyance, and put the bowls down. Four heads dived in.

“I could be fired for discussing any of this with you,” she said at last, almost with a sigh. “I signed a confidentiality agreement.”

“You could be killed if you don’t,” Sean said bluntly. “Storax don’t seem to like loose ends.”

“Jeremy Lee died because he medicated himself with a drug for osteoporosis, produced by my company—the company I work for,” she amended. “The technical side of it is not my area, but from what I understand, the treatment’s still being tested on a very carefully controlled group of patients. Dr. Lee fell outside that group and he suffered certain … side effects.”

“You make it sound like headache and nausea,” Sean said, acidic. “His bones crumbled away to nothing and he died in agony. Yeah, I’ll say he suffered ‘certain side effects.’ What was different about him?”

She flicked her eyes between the two of us. “Basically, he wasn’t Caucasian,” she said. “Dr. Lee was a second-generation American, but his grandparents were Korean.”

I felt my eyebrows arch. “Storax developed a drug that will work only on white people?” I said, not bothering to hide my disgust. “I’m not surprised they’ve been going to all this trouble to cover it up.”

Terry flushed. “It wasn’t intentional!” she said through clenched teeth. “It’s a genetic thing—I don’t understand all the technical details. But I do know that our research scientists are working round the clock to come up with a solution. In the meantime, it’s not something we want to shout about.”

“Yes, but it’s something your company will do almost anything to deny,” I said. “No wonder they didn’t want a top orthopedic surgeon sticking his nose in.”

“Top surgeon, huh?” Terry threw back at me with a toss of her head. “From what I hear, he’s a drunk who can’t keep his hands off underage girls.”

“So they didn’t tell you about the dirty tricks campaign they’ve been running against my father?” I said, keeping my voice mild even though I could feel the rage building like a low-level background hum. “They didn’t tell you about the threats they made to my mother—what they’d do to her—if he didn’t cooperate?”

Terry glared back at me, but wisely held her tongue. She had more self-control than I did.

“So, you knew that Jeremy Lee’s premature death was as a direct result of the Storax treatment,” Sean said, stepping in, “but still Storax didn’t suspend the drug or wait to put it out until the scientists had come up with the answer?”

She had the grace to look a little ashamed. “There are millions of dollars at stake,” she muttered. “Hundreds of millions. Osteoporosis is a major problem and it’s only going to get worse. The drug works brilliantly—”

“Yeah, on some patients. But it kills others,” I put in. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Do you think I don’t know that?” she said quietly. “Why do you think I got in touch with Mrs. Lee? I told her she should sue—that the company could afford it. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her outright what had happened, but I dropped hints that she should look closely at what was happening to his bones. I don’t know if she followed that advice or not.”

“She did—she got in touch with my father,” I said stonily. “He answered a cry for help from an old friend and, because he might have been getting close to the truth, your people administered a fatal dose of morphine to Jeremy, doctored his hospital records, and pushed all the blame firmly onto my father—whose reputation they then started to systematically trash.”

“That can’t possibly be true,” Terry said, but there was a shaken note to her voice that hadn’t been there before. “The people I work for are not murderers!”

She turned away, hands to her face, brow creased.

“Miranda Lee didn’t kill herself,” I said softly, certain of it. “They fed her with pills and booze and stood over her until she was unconscious, so she couldn’t make any attempt to save herself.”

“You don’t know that,” Terry said, her voice a shocked whisper. “She missed her husband. She was lonely, depressed. I could tell that from her e-mails—”

“We went to see her the day before she died,” Sean said, cutting her off. “She wasn’t suicidal then.”

Terry had no response for that. Sean regarded her with a calm stare. “If you’ve got such a social conscience, Terry, why are you working for an organization that only cares about the bottom line, and to hell with who gets hurt, or dies, in the process?”

She pulled a face. “You make them sound like they’re selling to junkies on street corners,” she said. “The products Storax manufacture save countless lives.”

“And that counterbalances the odd ‘mistake’ like Jeremy Lee?” he said, his cynicism uppermost. “Enough that you sleep at night?”

“Yes, I sleep at night,” Terry said firmly, meeting his gaze. “Do you?”