leaving early. She often closed the copier office when he was out on sales calls or enjoying a midweek round of golf. Traffic was light for a Thursday afternoon, but he figured that was probably because he was an hour ahead of the peak hours for commuters heading home. He pulled into his driveway and killed the engine. His wife’s van was parked on her side of the drive, the side that allowed her to load Ben’s wheelchair in through the sliding doors. He pocketed his keys and entered the house, a slight gust of cool air exiting through the open door. It was strange, he thought, for his wife to have the air conditioner turned up that high. It wasn’t that warm out today. He took a few steps into the house and stopped. Something was wrong. He had felt this before, many times. He felt the presence of death.
Ziegler moved quietly through the living room and down the hall to the master bedroom, where a fully loaded Glock 17 rested under some shirts in his drawer. The door was open and he slid into the room, every sense on high alert. He moved quickly to the bank of drawers and eased open the third one from the top. He slid his hand under the shirts and felt for the gun.
It was gone.
He turned and ran from the room, down the hall to Ben’s room. He had no weapon save his skill at hand-to- hand combat, but he had to see that his son was okay. Ben’s door was closed, and he opened it slowly, not knowing what he would find. As the door swung back, his son’s wheelchair came into view. Ben was facing away from him, and all Evan could see was the back of his son’s head. He glanced about, then crept quietly across the room. He reached the wheelchair and turned it slightly so he could see his son. And then, despite all his years dealing with violent death, he vomited.
Ben’s neck was cut wide open from one side to the other; the knife had cut so deep that it exposed the boy’s spinal cord. His shirt and pants were caked with blood, just starting to dry. His eyes were wide open and locked in a horrified stare; suggesting that his mind had known he was going to die but his body had been unable to defend against his attacker. Evan wiped the vomit from the edges of his mouth, his face contorted in rage. He turned back to the door, his stomach heaving again at the sight of his wife, nailed to the wall behind the door, her chest and stomach sliced open, her vital organs hanging from the cavities. In the doorway stood a man. He had a silenced gun aimed at Ziegler’s head.
“Too bad about your family,” the man said. “Your wife put up quite the fight, but your son just sat there. Never moved a muscle.”
Evan rushed the man, his mind a blur of red. He felt the first bullet hit his chest but kept moving. The second slug tore into his neck and snapped his head back. He tried to push with his feet, but all momentum was gone. He crashed to the carpet, twitching as he bled to death. The man with the gun appeared above him, looking down as one would inspect a stepped-on bug that was still moving.
“Why didn’t you kill her, Evan?” he asked. “What was it about Jennifer Pearce that was so different? All you had to do was kill her and we wouldn’t have made this trip out to visit you and your family.” He unscrewed the silencer from the gun and pocketed it. He slipped the gun into a shoulder holster and stood still, watching Evan die.
Evan’s eyes slowly closed, his killer’s face the last earthly image recorded in his memory. And he had a strange thought as he died. That he had seen that face on television recently.
49
They found a room at the Fairfield Inn on I-64 despite the problem with not wishing to use a credit card. It had a lot to do with Gordon offering five thousand dollars in cash as a deposit. The manager tucked it away in the safe and gave them a big smile every time they entered the lobby. What the hell, some people just didn’t like credit cards.
Friday, September 16. Jennifer had missed Thursday without calling in to let them know she was okay. And now Friday. Her staff was going to be panicked at her disappearance. But what were her options? Call the office and let Bruce Andrews know she was alive so he could try and kill her again? Not a very smart idea. And with the information they’d garnered from their quick trip to the library Thursday afternoon, she and Gordon had amassed more evidence that pointed to Bruce Andrews as the guilty party.
The financial picture at Veritas was not what Andrews was painting. The company was in trouble. Millions of dollars in everyday expenses from almost every department with a research arm were being shifted over to R amp;D. The resulting tax credits totaled hundreds of millions of dollars. Even with the extra income the company was enjoying from the extended patents on metabolite-synthesizing drugs, the veil was slowly coming up on the fraud. Expenditures were through the roof. Despite the termination of the brain chip department, it still drew enormous amounts of the company’s cash reserves, something that puzzled both Jennifer and Gordon.
And there was no way the CEO of the company did not know what was happening. It was at his directive that the departments were realigning their finances to divert the expenses to R amp;D. Andrews was the conductor, his team leaders the unwitting orchestra. With the exception of Jennifer Pearce, who, for her tenacity, was now in fear for her life.
“Is there anything in either Kenga’s or Albert’s files that could point to them having been murdered?” Jennifer asked. Gordon had spent a considerable amount of time going over the two personnel files they had printed out on the library LaserJet twenty-four hours earlier.
He sat back in the chair and rubbed his eyes. “Nothing. These files are a total dead end.”
“That’s not a big surprise,” she said. “If there is any concrete proof that Andrews had them killed, it’s probably tucked away in some secure file we’ll never find.”
“Probably,” Gordon said. He flipped through a couple of pages on the small round table in the corner of the hotel room. “You know, the amount of money Veritas earns and spends is almost unfathomable. Income and expenses are all listed in the hundreds of millions of dollars. These figures are obscene.”
She rolled over on the bed, onto her stomach. “It’s big business. Huge, in fact. Hell, AstraZeneca pumped close to five hundred million into promoting Nexium. And that was just in its first year on the market. Once the market is established, the money keeps pouring in until the patent expires. And keep in mind that despite all the money they’re putting into it, Nexium is a dog.”
A puzzled expression crossed Gordon’s face. “Why year after year? Don’t the people taking these drugs ever get healthy?”
Jennifer laughed. “You’re missing the big picture, Gordon,” she said. “The major pharmaceutical companies aren’t looking for a cure. Their objective is to come up with a pill that treats the symptoms. If they actually cured the disease, that would eliminate an entire segment of the market. It’s sort of like Firestone bringing a tire to market that gets a million miles before the rubber on the treads wears out. Never going to happen.”
“So you’re not looking for a cure to anything, just a patch.”
She nodded. “It’s a little different with Alzheimer’s because it’s a disease that affects an aging population. Our client base has a high natural attrition rate, so if we come up with something that blocks the tangles and plaques in the brain that cause Alzheimer’s, we will still have a huge clientele needing the drug. And that’s despite many of our clients passing on from old age or diseases related to the aging process. Alzheimer’s is one disease where finding a cure is still a win-win for the company. That’s one of the reasons I chose to specialize in it.”
“So you could look for a cure, not just a pill.”
“Exactly.” She grinned. “I guess I’m just a do-gooder at heart.”
He rose and walked over to the bed and lay beside her. She cuddled into his side and they lay quietly for a few minutes. The television was on but muted. When the newscaster switched to a story covering the outbreak of the unknown virus, she hit the mute button so she could hear the report. The talking head was on location in Washington, D.C., and the outline of the White House was prominent in the backdrop.
“Yesterday afternoon the president met with J. D. Rothery, Under Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and head of the special task force assigned to combat this terrorist threat. Since May, there have been reported incidents of the virus appearing in Austin, San Diego, Miami, and Boston. Numerous radical groups have purported to be in possession of the killer virus, but to date the task force has not confirmed any of the claims to be legitimate. But to say that the president is taking this seriously is an understatement. The task force is an amalgamation of many talents. The full resources of the FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Administration are
