Vaccine Nation (11 page)

They got to The Willard in the early afternoon. Richard checked in. The Oriental rugs were soft under Dani’s feet and deadened the sound of voices reflecting off the high ceilings and the mahogany-paneled walls. In the elevator, Dani said, “I’ll miss traveling like this. James always took me first class. The Gritti Palace in Venice, the Crillon in Paris. Growing up, Marriotts were the best we ever did.”

“I would’ve thought your dad did pretty well with the Giants.”

“In his day the pay was nothing like it is today, but he did okay. But when Mom met him, his concept of cash management was to cash his paycheck and stick the wad in his back pocket. After they got married she always controlled the purse strings, and no matter how well Dad did, Mom wasn’t one to splurge.”

Richard shrugged. “I could live without this.”

He looked like he was born to it, Dani thought. Handsome in his sports jacket, his tie still firmly in place with a perfect knot and dimple. Strong hands. She thought about that kiss on the train, had the urge to take his arm. “Yes, but it’s nice to feel pampered once in a while.”

Fifteen minutes after they got to their room, Denise Wildman arrived.

“Dani!” she said and threw her arms around her. “I can’t believe it. How awful these last days must’ve been for you. Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. In part thanks to Richard, here.” She turned to Richard. “This is Richard Blum, a new friend, who’s taken me under his wing. Richard, Denise Wildman. Denise is the national head of Vaccine Choice, the largest organization in the country
dedicated to fighting for parents’ rights to make their own choices about vaccines. She’s also active in Age of Autism.”

“One of my sons is autistic,” Denise said to Richard. Dani was always impressed with Denise’s poise and her ability to speak extemporaneously regarding her various causes. Her hands were always in motion as she spoke, exuding energy. “Vaccine Choice is sponsoring a rally tomorrow afternoon. We’re expecting twenty thousand people to show up. Right here on the National Mall, in front of the Capitol building.” She turned to Dani and said, “We have a dozen speakers, and we were even able to persuade Robert F. Kennedy, Jr to speak as well.”

“Exciting,” Dani said.

“This is a real chance to make a difference. We’ll get great media coverage. The Senate committee members will be watching our sound bites right up until the hearings begin.” She sat. “But enough about that. Let’s talk about your situation, Dani. You said I might be able to help.”

Dani pulled the flash drive out of her pocket. “David Maguire handed me this just before he was murdered.”

Denise’s eyes widened. She raised a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God, that’s right, he was murdered right in front of you.”

“It may have been why he was murdered,” Dani said. “Richard has a friend who believes it’s data points for some kind of statistical equation that can prove causality between one variable and another. And possibly over a period of months, or years to test whether the causal relationship gets stronger or weaker. But nothing is labeled, so we don’t know what it means. I was hoping you might be able to help.”

“I don’t know anything about statistics,” Denise said.

“But you know lots of people in the vaccine community, including some sympathetic drug company insiders. Maguire was
a vaccine researcher, and he was willing to participate in my upcoming documentary on autism. Let’s assume this data is a study that could show some relationship between vaccines and damaged children. Who would you ask for advice about it?”

Denise brought her hand to her chin, a little too theatrically, Dani thought. “I know a couple of people who did vaccine research years ago. They’re both retired. One of them is an active member of Vaccine Choice and I’m sure he’ll attend the rally. I think I can get in touch with him before that. Maybe he could take a look at the data.”

“Is he someone you can trust?” Richard said. “Remember, Dani’s in danger.”

“And the police are still after me,” Dani said.

“If I tell him what the data could mean, he’ll promise anything to get a look at it.”

Dani forced herself to put aside a sense of triumph.
Wait and see,
she told herself. Dani stood up. “When do you think you can contact him?”

“I’ll have to go back to my hotel and check my roster for Vaccine Choice to get his number. If I can reach him, maybe we can meet later today or this evening.”

“I’m sorry to take you away from your schedule. I’m sure you have a lot in motion before the rally.”

“Dani, if this is what you think it is, it could blow the hearings wide open, turn the vaccine debate in this country upside down.” She paused. “There’s something I’d like to discuss with you. Something you’re in a unique position to do for the movement.”

“What?”

“We’ve just had a major opportunity fall into our lap. I know an Associate Producer for
Face the Press,
and I’ve been invited
to do a one-on-one segment on the vaccine debate with Grover Madsen tomorrow morning.”

“Fantastic!”

“I’d like you to take my place on the show. We’ll have about fifteen minutes of airtime, nationally broadcast.”

Dani felt her face start to burn. “I couldn’t.”

“No one is better suited to do this than you. We’ll publicize it like crazy. Email blasts, text blasts, blog posts. It’ll triple or quadruple the audience.”

“Me?”

“Aren’t you aware of the press coverage you’ve garnered? Maguire’s murder, the policeman’s murder, and who you are, having won at Tribeca, and the fact that you’re running from the murderer, from the police? This is national news. Everybody in the movement knows you, watches your films at the Autism One/ Generation Rescue conference, follows your blog, reads your guest posts on the Age of Autism website. People can’t believe you’re a killer. They think you’re getting framed because Maguire told you or gave you something that would have an impact on these hearings.”

“I’m wanted by the police. And I’m running from a killer.”

“The press can protect you as a source.”

“How can they protect me if I’m on a national TV news program?”

“They patch video of you in by Skype on the split screen with Madsen’s feed from the studio on the other side. They do it all the time for news shows.”

“They won’t do it,” Dani said.
This is nuts.
Denise was aggressive but this was outrageous.

“You kidding? What, you think they’d rather have me instead? I told you, you’re national news. They’ll love it. They can’t
be accused of harboring a fugitive because they’ll have no idea where you are. They’re doing their job as journalists.”

“They’ll never go along with it.”

“I told you, I know the Associate Producer. She loves the idea.”

Richard said, “What did her bosses say?”

“She hasn’t pitched it yet. She wants Dani to agree first.”

Dani felt lightheaded. Then like she couldn’t breathe. “The cops will trace the IP address.”

Richard said, “I’ve got Identity Cloaker on my computer. It uses a proxy IP address. It can make them think you’re in Switzerland, anywhere we tell it to.”

“Denise, even if I wanted to, I can’t do this. I’m not like you. I can’t sit and talk off the top of my head, particularly on the air. I’ve never been on television.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“But I don’t have the facts at my command like you do.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re the most knowledgeable person on the subject of vaccines that I know. Why do you think I’m always calling you up with questions? You’ve been doing documentaries for three years and cataloging information like an encyclopedia. You know this stuff cold.”

Dani sat with her mind spinning. Denise stood up. “Think about it. I know you’ll come around. It’s for the cause.” She hugged Dani where she sat, speechless, in the chair. “I’ll call you as soon as I contact this vaccine researcher.” She extended her hand to Richard. “Nice to meet you.” She showed herself out.

“I’m glad you didn’t tell her what I do for a living,” Richard said after she left. “I imagine it would’ve taken me an hour to peel her off my face. That’s one pushy woman.”

Dani’s face felt brittle. Even just thinking about going on television made her short of breath. And to debate Grover Madsen, no less. The man wasn’t the poster child for the pharmaceutical industry for no reason. He was master of the sound bite, smooth and charming. She’d be like a high school defensive back getting picked apart by Phil Simms in his prime. She said, “I love Denise, but as you can see, she’s not afraid to lean on people.”

“Yeah, but I have to admit, she’s got a point. If you guys are interested in making a statement, facing you off against Madsen is something with real drama.”

“That may be. But Madsen would squash me like a bug.”

“How so? If what Denise says is true, that you really have the facts at your command, what are you afraid of?”

“I make documentaries, I don’t debate CEOs on TV. Some people are on-screen types, and some of us belong behind the camera.”

“Well, maybe it’s time to step out from behind the camera. You have everything on the line here, and this may be your only way to make your case.”

The man who arrived at the door of the hotel room that afternoon was minimalist in every way. Richard was downstairs in The Round Robin Bar meeting with one of his clients when he rapped timidly at the door. She opened it to find a shrunken man, two or three inches shorter than she, with sagging shoulders and an apologetic look on his face. He looked to be in his 70s.

“Miss North?”

“Yes. Walter Salisbury?”

“That’s me.”

“Please come in.”

Salisbury entered, his arms pasted to his sides, as if he were afraid to take up too much space. He skulked to a chair, turned to Dani and raised his eyebrows as if to ask if it was okay to sit.

“Please,” Dani said. He sat.
Oh man.
This was supposed to be Denise’s expert? She’d called an hour earlier and gushed about how certain she was that Salisbury could “crack the code.”
Yikes.
“Thank you for coming. I understand Denise briefed you on the data file I have?”

“Yes,” he said, surprising her, his voice now an adult baritone. “I understand it may have something to do with a research project I was involved with when I was in the industry.”

“Let’s take a look.” Dani motioned to the desk across the room, where Richard’s laptop sat, with the data file open. “Does this mean anything to you?”

Salisbury sat down at the desk and put on his glasses. He made a great scene out of polishing them. It was comical and infuriating at the same time. After a number of, “Hmms,” he said, “It’s a raw data file.” He looked up at Dani as if she were supposed to be happy with that response.

No kidding.

“Do you have any idea what the rows and columns represent?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that.”

“I’m a scientist, Miss North. I wouldn’t dream of speculating.”

What a waste of time.

Salisbury went on, “But I can tell you that the way the data is arrayed conforms to the manner in which we would have laid out a linear regression analysis in my day.” He scrolled to the right. “I count ten columns.” He scrolled down. “By the row numbers on the Excel spreadsheet, I count 35,752 observations.”

“What do you think that means?” Dani asked.

He pointed. “You see this break of about five rows in the data?”

“Yes?”

“I think it represents two groups. A test group and a control group. Both measured over ten periods.”

“So could it be a study of the effect of some drug on a group of people, or children?”

“I remind you I’m a scientist, Miss North. But, yes, that’s exactly what it looks like to me. And I was once involved in a study like this. One that the industry terminated five years ago.”

Dani felt her blood rush. “What was that?”

“I was working on vaccines. We were testing new adjuvants.” Dani knew generally what he was talking about. An adjuvant was a vaccine ingredient that stimulated an immune system reaction to the disease the vaccine protected against. Salisbury went on, “At least that was the ostensible reason for the study. Pharma International was carrying the majority of the funding, and ultimately they shut it down. We never knew why, but I was working for a small manufacturer at the time, and we didn’t have the budget to continue it, so that was it.”

Dani felt her face fall. “That’s it?”

“That’s all I can tell you right now. Except that I may have some old files at home. Mind you,” and now he lowered his voice to again be the timid man who had entered the room, “I wasn’t supposed to retain them, but I can pull them out. Maybe they can tell us something.”

Dani’s heart raced. “How fast can you get them?”

The little man shrugged. “How fast can I get across town to M Street Northwest and 34
^th
Street?”

Dani gave Salisbury one of the prepaid cell phone numbers and showed him out, promising to pay for his cab fare to his
apartment and back. She was seated on the sofa, fidgeting, when Richard arrived at the hotel room from his client meeting, smelling like cigar smoke. “You won’t believe what just happened,” she said. She told him about her meeting with Salisbury.