Bad Medicine (33 page)

"That," she said, turning away again, "I'll explain when I'm ready."

"Why?" he demanded. "Why are you doing this to me?"

That stopped her all over again. "Because I want to know why Peg Ryan died, and not you or Winnie or the fucking state police are going to keep me from doing it."

It was a lovely speech. Molly knew just what kind of good it would do, so she ended it by walking out the front door.

Originally she'd wanted to go in and check a couple of things on the files she had. She couldn't now. She couldn't walk back into that building at all until she heard from Winnie. So she got in her car, set it on autopilot, and ran.

For a long time, Molly just drove. She hit Highway 40 and went west, skating along Forest Park and past the Gold Coast of suburbs that housed St. Louis's rich and famous. Clayton, Ladue, Town and Country. She passed the massive hospital complexes that crouched at Grand and at Kingshighway, at Ballas and at Woods Mill Road, high-tech temples to the gods of medicine and corporate cupidity.

She swept out past the newest communities created by white flight all the way to the Missouri River and past, out toward the country, where darkness finally ruled, where the wind battered at her and the blues on her radio competed with the traffic. For a long time, she just drove, outdistancing her problems and her questions and just relishing the feeling of flight. Just challenging herself by sweeping off the highway onto back roads that twisted along among the hills beyond the river.

Molly wasn't sure how long she drove. She really didn't pay close attention to clocks anymore, unless she was at work. She just knew that she finally had no idea where she was, and that it was completely black out, the night stars hazy with humidity and the moon a thick yellow crescent over the hills in the distance. She just knew that it was pretty quiet, except for the insects in the trees and the lazy birdcall and the hum of traffic on the highways.

Molly pulled off the road in the parking lot of a roadside vegetable stand at the top of a hill and turned off the car.

She was getting too old for this stuff. It was just too damn exhausting to keep fighting against the tide.

Maybe she should just let them have their way this time. Just ignore the case and the people and the medical examiner Molly had trusted. Maybe it didn't matter after all. It wasn't as if Molly still believed in justice, or thought she was making the streets safer or cleaner or healthier. Just like anybody else in the system, she knew perfectly well that on a good day she did no more than stick her finger in the dike.

Who really cared, in the end, why five lawyers committed suicide? Who would benefit from her continued persistence, anyway? Joseph Ryan? Hell, he'd forget within a week he'd ever met Molly. Pearl's mother? Molly was sure Mrs. Johnson would be soothed by the realization that her daughter had had a reason to kill herself after all. Molly? Not when she'd have to stay wading in the pool of suicide for another few weeks of summer.

God, she wanted to quit. She wanted to drive back home in peace and sit in her backyard and listen to the sound of water chuckling over stones in her garden. She wanted to feel safe and untroubled and content to putter in her garden.

She couldn't. She'd told Kevin the truth. After forty-something years, she didn't have much to speak for her. What she did have was the knowledge that she didn't quit, at least when it meant something to somebody else. She couldn't now.

In the end, she started the car and headed back to the city. She went home, took care of her dog, and sat down at her kitchen table with her work notebook, the glossy pamphlet she'd received from the Argon sales rep, and a large cup of coffee. Because the more she thought about those bright, pretty blue pills, the more uncomfortable she became. And the more uncomfortable she became, the more she wanted answers. She just had to figure how to go about getting them.

* * *

"You're not official anymore," the tech at the tox lab informed Molly the next morning when she called.

"I know," Molly assured her. "A small matter of paranoia in the mayor's office. It wouldn't stop you from checking a couple of things for me, though, would it?"

Silence. Molly almost held her breath.

"Like what?"

"One drug, that's all I ask. Nothing hard. And only on three of the victims. I found out for sure that two of the others had it. Please?"

"What drug?"

"Synapsapine. It's an experimental antidepressant."

"Oh, yeah. I remember. We damn near had to walk to the FDA to find out what it was. You think all of those suicidal lawyers were on it?"

Magnum started chewing on Molly's running shoe while her foot was still in it. She didn't even notice. "Maybe."

Another silence, this one shorter. "It's sure something to think about, isn't it?"

Molly struggled hard to stay calm. Without this information, she had nothing. With a negative answer, she was back at square one. She had such a feeling about this, though. Such a terrible hope that she was right, just because she wasn't sure she could leave it back at simple suicide. "What do you say?"

"What's that noise?" the tech asked instead, hearing what Molly had been listening to since she'd stumbled hack downstairs earlier. "You having construction done?"

"Ignore it," Molly suggested. "I am."

Actually, she'd been trying to train Magnum to respond to it by growling. So far, he'd only managed to roll on his back and wag his tail.

"What is it?" the tech asked.

Molly sighed. "The doorbell. Voices. Pounding on my door. The vultures have begun to circle."

"You have lawyers surrounding your house?"

Molly actually laughed. "Worse. Newspeople. Magnum," she commanded. "Sic. Sic."

Magnum growled at her shoe and fell over. Molly had also been telling him that if a tall black woman in cornrows showed up at the door, to pee on her shoes. She figured she wouldn't have better luck with that, either.

"So," she said again. "What do you say?"

"I'm intrigued. Which ones are verified as having taken it?"

"Pearl Johnson and Mary Margaret Ryan."

"And Peter VanAck," the tech said, her voice coming to life. "I remember that, because I was the one who looked it up when we found it."

Molly looked out to where the breeze was skittering through a wind chime. "Really."

"Yeah, really." Even the tech was beginning to sound excited. "Tell you what. How 'bout I think about it over a particle spectrograph and call you back?"

"I'll name my firstborn after you."

"I won't hold my breath."

* * *

By two o'clock, Molly had received more answers that led to more questions. She had reached all five families again and two of the private doctors, who had made it a point to inform Molly that as they were on the staffs of several of the prominent county hospitals, they would never have deigned to send their patients to a city facility like Grace for any treatment, experimental or otherwise. Especially to the psych unit of Grace, which was renowned for taking in the indigent and chronic abusers.

Molly had also found out that in the entire metro area, Grace was the only hospital involved in Transcend trials. Not only that, but where only two of the lawyers had invested in gambling, at least four of the five had invested in Argon.

Not a slam-dunk, by any means, but inconsistency upon inconsistency, with the two big questions still to be answered. If they hadn't received the medication from official sources, how had they? And if they did all have the medication on board, what relationship did that have to the fact that they'd all committed suicide?

Molly needed to talk this out with somebody. Put her facts in some kind of order and weigh their logic. After all, the way Molly usually did detective work was with a stethoscope and a percussion hammer. Even when she was in charge at a crime scene, the only thing she was responsible for was making sure nothing disappeared or changed en route to the morgue. She wasn't supposed to solve the damn thing.

She'd planned to head in to work early to talk to the people in charge of the study, which meant she didn't have much more time to talk. She had possibilities skating around in her head and answers that seemed just out of reach. And she had Peg Ryan's daykeeper to go back through again after she got home tonight. She had an aching head, ribs, and shins, and company at the front door who wouldn't let her out as far as Sam's. She did the only other thing she could think of.

* * *

"I didn't mean for this to get to be a habit, Saint Molly."

Molly closed her eyes and leaned her head on her hand. "You're the only one I can talk to about this, Frank."

"Why does that make me nervous?"

"Shut up and listen." Resettling the phone, she dragged over the pad of paper she'd been filling up since last night. "What if we were right after all? What if it isn't Pearl's gambling contacts that's the issue here?"

"I don't think we said that at all. I think
you
said that, I said I quit, but you didn't seem to hear me."

"Just bear with me a minute. I need to talk out what I found."

"And you're talking it out with me because nobody will listen to you down at the ME's office."

"Yes."

"Because they put you on leave."

"You could say that."

"Which means you shouldn't be doing this."

Molly deliberately turned toward her backyard, where her flowers spread like an impressionist painting in the bright sunlight. A couple of finches were dipping at her feeder, and the waterfall was sparkling. Molly could almost imagine she could hear it over the sporadic banging and ringing at the other end of the house.

She could do this. She had to do this. She didn't know how to stop anymore.

"I was out on the road all yesterday afternoon and on the phone all morning," she told Frank. "And I found a few things out."

"Which you're going to tell me whether I want to know or not."

"I asked everyone, Frank," she said. "Each family, people the victims worked with, anybody I could think of. The only two people who talked at all about the riverboat gambling situation were Pearl and Peter VanAck. Now, if the other three didn't know anything about it, why would a crooked gambler want them dead?"

"Maybe they knew about it but didn't tell their families."

"I thought of that. But there's one guy, Harry McGivers, who evidently told everybody every bit of good news he ever got. He couldn't keep his mouth shut. He never said a word."

"So you think it's something else."

"Well, I looked for something else to link them all together. I mean, I don't think the MAC; is systematically killing off its members for abusing lunch rules or anything, and not one of the suicide notes mentioned any kind of pact among the five. And that was all we had."

"Until now."

"Stop patronizing me, Frank. I've shared two very memorable evenings with men who like to hurt women. That means something."

"It means you're really pissed off."

It took Molly a second to answer. "Yes," she admitted. "I guess it does."

"What did you find out?"

"Transcend."

"What?"

"Transcend, generic name synapsapine. It's the newest, brightest rising star in the world of psychopharmaceuticals. Still on trial, which means nobody outside the program should have it."

Molly couldn't have sworn, but she thought Frank's voice might have begun to sound just a little more chastened. "And somebody did?"

"At least three somebodies. Pearl, Peg, and Peter. I have the tox lab checking on the other two, just in case. I also found out that at least four of the group invested in the company that makes the drug."

"The tox lab over whom you hold no authority anymore."

"The tox lab who hates an unanswered question even more than I do. Are you listening to me?"

"How long will the toxicology screen take?"

"Depends on their work load. I'm going to go into work at the hospital today so I can talk to the people running the trial program." She'd tried to call Gene as a way to shortcut the situation, but he was just getting back from some out-of-town conference, and wasn't expected until later.

"So you've made the quantum leap from gambling to pharmaceuticals as cause of death?"

"It makes sense, don't you think?"

"No. You said Peg had a lot of weird stuff in her system that night. And I'm still not convinced your Mr. McGivers would have shared information that's this explosive. I think your logic leap leaves a lot to be desired, Saint Molly."

"It's not a logic leap, Frank. It's a... feeling."

"A feeling." He sounded as if she'd said a message from aliens.

She sighed, knowing that she wouldn't have needed to explain her feelings to Sasha or Lorenzo or even Lance Frost. Wishing there were some way she didn't have to explain them to Frank. "I'm a hell of a trauma nurse, Frank."

"A good self-opinion is healthy, Mol."

"A good trauma nurse learns to trust her instincts. Usually, that's all you have time for. By the time you get the real story about why a patient's shown up at your door, he's been dead ten minutes. After all this time, I can smell when something's wrong before it actually goes wrong."