28
Jennifer Pearce glanced at the clock. It was after ten Tuesday evening, and she wasn’t expecting anyone. There was a second knock on the front door, and she walked through her living room to the foyer. She stuck one eye up to the peephole. It was dark out, but she recognized Gordon Buchanan’s face in the shadows. She opened the door, feeling bewildered.
“Hello, Gordon,” she said, moving aside so he could enter. “Now, this is a surprise. Never in a million years would I have expected you to be standing on my doorstep.”
He gave her a grin of sorts. “If this isn’t okay, I’ll leave and call you tomorrow.”
“No, no, come on in,” she said, closing the door behind him. She waved at the front room. “Have a seat. You want some coffee or tea or something?”
“Water would be nice,” he said, sitting on the love seat next to the baby grand. “What a beautiful piano.”
“Thanks. You play?” Jennifer asked as she disappeared into the kitchen. She reappeared a half minute later with two glasses of water.
“No. Always wanted to start but never found the time. Wish I had.”
She handed him the water. “So what brings a logger to Richmond? No trees left in Montana?”
He laughed. Her easygoing nature had taken any edge off the situation. “I’ve done a lot of thinking since Saturday. In fact, I’ve done more than just think. I took a trip to St. Lucia and had a look about.”
“Kenga?” she asked, sitting on the sofa a few feet distant, facing him.
Gordon nodded. “I know a few people on the island, and I got one of them to pull the police file. He drove me to the crash site, and I had a look around.” He sipped his water. “I’m not a forensic investigator, but if I had to guess, I’d say that the car Kenga was in when she went over the cliff was pushed.” He explained to her the series of switchbacks and tight corners at and close to the crash scene, and the gash he had noticed in the tree. “Another week and that evidence will be covered over with moss and lichens.”
“So whoever murdered her is going to get away with it,” she said bitterly.
He shrugged. “I doubt if the Lucian police will do anything, if that’s what you mean. But maybe there’s something we can do.”
She tilted her head slightly and looked at the man, this time staring into his eyes and seeing inside him. She saw pain and anger tempered with patience and cunning. And she saw an inner strength. Buchanan had lost his brother, and he saw Veritas as the responsible party. Instead of sitting back and complaining, he was going on the offensive. Her type of guy.
“What would that be?” she asked.
Gordon held up the water glass. “This isn’t cutting it,” he said. “If that offer for coffee is still on, I’ll try some.”
“Sure,” she said. “Come on in the kitchen.”
They talked about her new house, Gordon complimenting her on the wooden plank flooring, which she disliked, and asking why anyone would have a white kitchen, which she liked.
As the coffee perked, he asked about restaurants, the Richmond theater scene, and what driving was like in the city. When they were each settled in at the kitchen table with a hot, fresh mug of coffee, he took some time to explain things to her.
“I suspected right from minute one that the antibalding drug had altered Billy’s body chemistry somehow. Both of us have suffered cuts over the years, it’s just part of working with saws, and he’d never had a problem with his blood clotting before. Things like that don’t just change overnight.
“The only variable was Triaxcion. So I went to a local law firm and had them dig into what legal avenues were open to us. What we found pointed to the possibility that Veritas could be responsible for Billy’s death.”
“What did you find?” Jennifer asked, cupping her coffee mug, the warmth comfortable on her palms.
“There are a few other people out there who have had a family member die and have retained legal counsel. All of them are looking at possible tort suits against Veritas.”
“But none have been filed yet. Why is that?”
“No definitive proof. My lawyer pushed pretty hard but couldn’t get any sort of positive response from Veritas. In fact, they were adamant that if we filed, they would defend Triaxcion to the Supreme Court if necessary. My lawyer, Christine, advised me that Veritas could wear me down financially, destroy me unless there was some sort of massive tort action taken against them. And that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.”
“So it would have been David against Goliath, except this David would have been overrun with lawyers.”
He nodded. “I’m not one to run from a fight, but I’m not one to start a scrap that I don’t stand a chance of winning. So as the picture began to come into focus and I realized the legal route wasn’t going to work, I changed my approach.”
“You talked Kenga into getting you information on Veritas,” she said.
He hesitated. Then he swallowed. “In one way, I suppose I’m responsible for her death. But I never thought Veritas would go to such lengths to protect themselves.”
Jennifer shook her head vigorously. “You are not responsible for her death,” she said. “If the company discovered she was passing privileged information to a third party, they should have fired her and had her charged criminally. Killing her was not a normal reaction.”
“I would never have asked her if I’d known this would happen,” Gordon said, his eyes wet. “She was a nice kid.”
“How did you meet her?” Jennifer asked.
“Her parents are still in Romania, and her dad has a Web site he uses to post family stuff on. When I was searching the Web, looking for hits on Veritas, the search engine found a hit on his site. He mentioned his daughter was in America working for Veritas Pharmaceutical. I used the information on the Web site to locate her, talked to her a few times, then offered her money to get what she could on Triaxcion.” His eyes teared up again. “Christ, I never thought they’d kill her.”
Jennifer moved across to the love seat and sat beside him, her hands on his arm. “It’s okay, Gordon. What happened isn’t your fault.” They sat in silence for a minute or two.
“Thanks,” he said. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and continued. “I had an inside source with Kenga, but I wanted more. So I hired a private investigator to dig into Veritas. Among other things, he found some questionable accounting practices.”
“Veritas is in trouble financially?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. But they’ve stretched themselves pretty thin. Haldion was their first FDA recall, and the tort suits drained a lot of money out of the corporate coffers. Triaxcion was looking like it was going to follow suit, and that’s probably why they decided to defend it so vigorously. Stop the bleeding before it starts. A successful tort suit could have cost them in excess of five hundred million dollars. That’s money Veritas doesn’t have right now.”
“What about the new drugs in the pipeline?” Jennifer asked. “Veritas is close to getting FDA approval on three new chemicals.”
“One for reducing blood pressure, one an antiviral, the other for cholesterol. But not one of the three is there yet. From what I saw, they’re stuck in Phase III trials.”
“But if any one of those drugs is approved, the money will be flowing again. These aren’t orphan drugs we’re talking about here.”
Gordon looked confused. “What are orphan drugs?”
“Sometimes a major pharmaceutical company will develop a drug that works against a serious affliction that only affects a few people. Without the numbers to generate the sales once the drug is FDA approved and on the market, there’s no upside to manufacturing it other than some R amp;D credits. Orphan drugs are very much a goodwill gesture by the company.”
“No, they are certainly not orphan drugs.”
“What else did your PI uncover?” she asked.
“Another dead Veritas employee. Albert Rousseau. He died back in late April when his gas stove exploded.”
