The Last Goodbye (26 page)

“That's it? She's fine and she'll be in touch?”

“Yes.”

“You're sure?”

“Yes. Are you coming in?”

I sat back in bed.
She's fine. She'll be in touch.
Relief flooded through me, combined with desire, combined with a sudden annoyance at myself for feeling either of them.
This
, I decided,
is a test. The universe, amused that only hours ago I decided I didn't give a damn, is calling my marker.

“Jack?” It was Blu, getting impatient on the phone. “Did you hear me?”

“Yeah, sure. What was the question?”

“Are you coming in, or what?”

“Not right away,” I said. “I'm looking for somebody.”

“Who?”

“Don't worry about it,” I said. “I'll call you later this morning.”

I hung up and got dressed. In fact, I did not call that morning, because it took most of the day to find the man I needed. He wasn't at his office. He wasn't at his home. As soon as I mentioned his name to anybody who knew him, they wanted to change the subject as soon as possible. Apparently, the guy was radioactive. I had just about given up, when his secretary called my cell phone around three. She was worried about him. She was also whispering, as though she was afraid somebody was going to overhear.
What do you mean, worried?
I asked.
Worried
, she said.
That's all I want to say.
But if I went to Orme Park, I might find him there. He was a small man, brown hair, and he might be a little the worse for wear. It was the best she could do.

“Thomas? Thomas Robinson?” The man was in sweatpants, a light pullover, and hadn't shaved in a few days. He looked like hell.
At least he fits the description.
“Dr. Robinson? I was wondering if we could talk for a minute.”

The man looked up at me, indifference on his face. “Nothing's stopping you,” he said. Then he leaned forward on his park bench, scanning the grass for birds. He held in his hand a little bag of seeds, but so far, there weren't any takers. Even the birds were keeping their distance.

“Nice day,” I said, sitting down beside him. “You hang out here much?”

“Lately I do,” Robinson said. He was smallish, maybe five-eight, and slightly built. His hair was cut short and conservatively, but it was mussed, and looked like it hadn't been washed in a while. He fingered the seeds, absently scanning the park for birds.

“You're a little tough to track down,” I said. “Your secretary said you're not keeping regular office hours.”

“Not lately,” he said quietly. He turned away, as though he was willing to sit there silently as long as it took for me to go away.

“Look, I'll just get right to this. I've got some questions about Lipitran AX.”

There was a pause, and his voice lowered even further. “What are you? A lawyer?”

“How did you know?”

Robinson laughed quietly. “Because after the tragedy come the carrion birds.” He looked up into the trees. “You're wasting your time.”

“Why is that?”

“There won't be any lawsuits, not this time.”

Even though that hadn't been my intention, I decided to play along. “How can you be so sure?”

“Over what? The treatment didn't work. So what?” He looked down, twisting the top of his paper bag of seeds tightly. “So what?” he repeated quietly. “They signed waivers. Airtight. Drawn up by people like you. So see you around. There's no corpse here for you to feed on.”

I scanned his face. He looked shattered, broken down. We sat in silence for a while, until he looked up at me. “Still here?” he said. “I told you. There's no pot of gold. Go chase ambulances or something.” He looked away. “Don't mind me,” he said. “I just killed seven people.”

“Seven? I thought there were eight.”

Robinson looked up at me. He was wrecked, full of the sarcastic bile that comes with guilt. “Seven,” he said. “One lived. Lacayo's his name.” He paused thoughtfully. “Not dead, not exactly. I mean, he's not what I would call well. He's sort of mostly dead. Down at Grady Memorial, clinging to the tiny little bit of life he has left.”

“Why don't you tell me what happened?” I asked quietly.

“Yeah,” he answered. “It'll do me good to go over it all one more time.”

“I'm sorry. It's important or I wouldn't still be here.”

Robinson closed his eyes. “Lipitran AX was supposed to be the silver bullet for hepatitis C,” he said. “That would have been a great thing.” He opened his eyes, looking at me. “It's spreading like wildfire, you know.”

“So I hear.”

“Did you know we're up to E?”

“Hepatitis E? I didn't know that.”

Robinson nodded. “People keep fucking and taking drugs, is the reason why,” he said darkly.

“How dangerous is C? Sorry, I'm not an expert on it.”

“Lucky you,” Robinson said. “Hep A and B, they're the common ones. For most people, they aren't fatal. They can make your life miserable, if things get out of control, but they don't kill. D and E we're just learning about. But hep C is dangerous as hell, although a lot of people don't know it.”

“Dangerous how?”

“In about twenty percent of people infected, the carrier develops liver cancer. And that cancer is completely immune to any treatment on earth. It progresses quickly and fatally. If you get it, you are going to die.” He looked out across the park. “Having hep C is like Russian roulette. Every time you go to the doctor, you spin the chamber. You've got a one in five shot of finding out you're dying. It's highly motivational.”

“So a treatment to cure hepatitis C would be immensely profitable.”

“It would also save a lot of people's lives.”

“Listen, I'm not sure how to ask this, but how often does a meltdown like this happen?” I asked. “Where everybody—”

“Dies?” Robinson finished. “We don't do that too often. Usually we're satisfied with not helping people.” He looked out at the park. “Most of what we try doesn't work, you know.”

“I didn't, actually.”

He nodded. “Of course you don't. We don't let people know, because if we did, we couldn't get anybody to sign up for our next brilliant idea.” He looked down. “But this time not helping them wasn't enough. This time we had to kill them.” He looked over at me, confusion and anguish on his face. “They blew up,” he said. “Every orifice. Massive bleeding from the eyes, the nose, ear, everywhere. It looked like . . . Jesus, it looked like Ebola. They started coming in after the second treatment. They were screaming, bodies blowing up in agony.”

“My God.”

Robinson hacked up a gob of phlegm, then spit it onto the grass. He was past any niceties of conversation. His voice was brittle. “The science looked so good,” he said. “Perfect, right from the beginning. Put the stuff in a test tube, watch it eat hepatitis like crazy. Stick it in a mouse, it's like magic. We actually thought we could cure this stuff in a handful of treatments. That's why there weren't any primate trials. It looked so right, the FDA fast-tracked us straight to humans.” He looked up at me. “Which just goes to show you.”

“What?”

“A human being isn't a mouse.” A bird finally circled, landing about fifteen feet away. Robinson perked up, and began entreating the sparrow. “Come on, sweetie,” he said. He was cuckooing, like a child. “Come on, have a little seed.” The bird turned his head, then hopped closer. Robinson gently tossed a couple of seeds on the ground. The bird skittered forward in a flash, picked up the seeds, and flew off. Robinson followed it with his eyes until it disappeared in a flush of trees. Suddenly, he looked up at me. “Every one of them,” he said. “I told every one of them how great it was going to be.”

“They must have known there were risks.”

Robinson stared at me, anguish coming off him like waves. “For a long time we couldn't get people to go along,” he answered. “We posted signs, ran ads. Nothing.”

“Why?”

Robinson shrugged. “I-V drug abusers aren't exactly health nuts. Anyway, they don't trust the health care system. They're all convinced we'll turn them in.” He paused. “Then a few people showed up, all of a sudden. Just a few, real nervous.”

“Because they thought you were going to bust them?”

“Yeah, maybe. But it was just a twenty, twenty-five percent chance to get the cancer, see. So people had a hell of a decision to make. But I worked on them. In my scientific arrogance, I
told
them I would cure them.”

“And something went wrong.”

Robinson's face was set in stone. “You could say that.” He stood, beginning a slow amble across the grass. I followed, a couple of feet apart. After a few steps, Robinson muttered something under his breath.

“What's that?” I asked.

“My glittering career,” he said. “It's just something I say. ‘My glittering career.'” He laughed, a short burst of bitterness. “Just when you think it can't get any worse,” he said, “it does.” He stopped and looked at me. “Take a look, pal. I'm a member of the two-time losers' club.”

“Two-time?”

“Not just anybody can screw up on this level twice in a lifetime. It's like a gift. I've got a Ph.D. in fuckup.”

“What was the first one?”

Robinson stopped. “I'm not really in the mood to open a vein, so maybe you ought to come to the point. I've got some suffering to get back to.”

“I need your help.”

“Help a lawyer? Why would I do that?”

“Because I don't believe that what happened to your test happened by itself. I think you got a push.”

Robinson's eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I think there's someone influencing events. Someone behind the scenes.”

Robinson's face hardened. “Then that somebody would have to be the most unscrupulous bastard who ever walked the earth. You better have a reason for what you're saying, okay? Those people are
dead.”

“Were you aware that your company's network security had been compromised?” The blood drained from Robinson's face. “It was a massive hack,” I said. “Everything from operations to trials to email. The smallest details of Grayton Labs have been downloaded to an outside computer.”

Robinson reached out and grabbed my wrist like a vise. “Who?” he demanded. “Tell me who.”

“My client.”

“I'm going to kill him.”

“Too late, actually.”

Robinson released me. “He's dead?”

“Yes. His name is Doug Townsend.”

Robinson stared. He started trembling. “I remember him. Tall, pasty skin. He was your client?”

“That's right. So you don't need to hate him. Anyway, I'm certain he was working for someone else.”

Robinson swayed a little, disoriented. “I killed him? I killed the guy who was stealing our secrets?”

I shook my head. “He died of an overdose of fentanyl.”

Robinson looked up. “Fentanyl? Was he in the hospital?”

“He was in his apartment. He had apparently injected himself with something like a truckload of it. Nobody seems to know why.”

Robinson shook his head. “Not likely,” he said. “He practically had to be tied down to get the shots we gave him.”

“He told me he was paranoid about needles.”

“Terrified. The idea that he could pull himself together and find a vein ... maybe, if there were about twenty holes in his arm.”

“That's what I thought. But the point is that killing himself with fentanyl would have been redundant. He was going to die from Lipitran anyway.”

Robinson stared at me. “So what else do you know?”

“That Doug was a pawn. But over the last few months he had been paid quite a bit of cash. It was obviously money paid to hack your company. And I think I know who he was working for.” I paused, weighing my words. “If I'm right, it's almost certainly the same person who is behind what happened to your clinical trial.”

“Who?”

“The name that keeps running through my mind is Charles Ralston.”

Robinson swayed for a moment, as though struck with a blow. He looked up in anguish and began speaking to the sky. “You're not satisfied just destroying me,” he said. “You have to grind what's left into dust.”

“I take it you know him?”

Robinson brought his gaze down to me. “Yeah, I know him,” he answered, as though spitting out poison. “And in a world of chaos, him doing this would make perfect sense. He's already crushed me once, so this is just more of the same.”

“You've gone up against Ralston before?” Robinson nodded, the pain evident on his face. “Then there's only one question left to ask,” I said. “Will you help me?”

For the first time, Robinson's expression wasn't tinged with the acrid scent of death. He actually smiled, revealing a raptorlike joy of revenge. “To get Ralston? To do that, you can have my blood.”

Pulling Robinson out of his anger enough to make sense was like sobering up a drunk. He was deep into a binge, and he needed time to shake it off. I took him over to Trent's, a watering hole near the park where I found him. He was actually trembling a little as he sat, fingers gripping a cup of Sumatra. Whatever he had with Ralston, it went deep. All I had to do was wind him up and he went off on a barely controlled burn.

“Let's get something straight right off,” Robinson said. “Ralston's no great scientist. He loves to play that. But the truth is, he's average. His real gift is theft.”

“Explain.”

Robinson set down his cup. “I was on a research team at Emory. This was what, eighty-six? The hepatitis thing was exploding over urban centers, and I was determined to do something. I worked my ass off and got an R01 grant . . .”