Ogrodnik Interior 2.0c (15 page)

“Good plan. Dad thought there was something unusual in the way that Biovonix was testing Isotin. That’s where I’m starting. “

“What’s your plan?“ asked Rivka.

“Pharmaceutical companies use CROs to perform most of their clinical human trials. Before they get to that stage, either the pharma company will perform pre-clinical testing on mice, or they send it to whatever university they are affiliated with. I’m going to start at the beginning and see where that takes me.”

Elliot was dropping Rivka off when he felt a bee in his pocket. He waited for the second buzz before pulling out his phone.

“Elliot speaking.”

“Elliot, Joanie Mack here. Since I don’t see your car parked, I thought I’d better call to tell you there are two fire trucks parked in front of your house, and it’s not a courtesy call.”

“Is there a fire?”

“There was a fire. The firemen seem relatively relaxed right now, but you no longer have a front porch.”

“On my way. Thanks, Joanie,” he replied. When he looked up, he saw Rivka staring at him like a startled lemur.

“Apparently, there was a fire at my house. It sounds like it’s under control now, but I’ve got to go.”

“Call me when you get there.”

When Elliot arrived at his house, the fire trucks were still out front. The lights were no longer rotating, and he could see firemen re-winding hose, so he relaxed a bit. Making his way through a throng of onlookers, he approached the fighter who looked as if he were in charge and introduced himself.

“I’m the owner of the house,” Elliot said. “What can you tell me?”

“You
must be Elliot Forsman. I’m Captain Ferras,” he said extending his hand. “We received an anonymous call that flames were coming from the front of the house. By the time we got here, the porch was pretty much gone.”

Elliot stared at the house shaking
his head slowly in disbelief.
He wondered for a moment if the fire was just a coincidence.
No
, he thought,
there’s no such thing as coincidences
.

“Is it safe to go in?”

“The structure of the house is fine, but the front entrance and porch will need to be replaced. There’s also collateral water damage to the front hallway, the living room, and the basement underneath. Luckily, for you, the smoke stayed on the outside. You
can go in, but you won’t be able to live here until it’s cleaned up. ”

“I don’t understand. What happened?”

“It was arson. No doubt about it,” said the captain as he walked over to the passenger side door of his emergency vehicle and pulled out a plastic bag. “We found this container on the lawn. The fire was started on the outside of the house, around the door and frame. The metal door and surrounding brick won’t burn easily, so it took a while for the porch floor and then overhead structure to catch and burn. You’re lucky, though. It looks like the house itself fared well.”

“I don’t feel lucky.”

“Mr. Forsman, I don’t know what you do for a living or if you’re in trouble, but I’d say that someone is sending you a message. “

“What makes you say that?” Elliot replied as he turned to face the captain.

“This was not a random act of vandalism. Whoever did this knew what they were doing. They could have easily burned the house down. It would have been much simpler to throw the accelerant into the house, but instead it was strategically spread over the bricks and metal front door
—
the two areas that would not burn well. In essence, the manner in which the accelerant was deployed delayed the burn process and gave us the time to put the fire out before the entire house was gone.”

“The front door was locked, so he couldn’t have thrown the gas container inside,” replied Elliot playing devil’s advocate.

“The door was unlocked, Mr. Forsman. I tried it myself, and just for the record, the accelerant was not gas. It was toluene.”

That’s odd
, thought Elliot. He always locked the doors.

“Toluene? Isn’t that a solvent?”

“Yes. It’s used mostly as an industrial solvent or as a gasoline additive for extra performance. We don’t see it used often as an accelerant because it’s just not as common as gasoline. But because it burns so much hotter than gasoline, it could have advantages for those who know how to use it. People who handle and use accelerants on a regular basis would develop an affinity for a given product. These people would prefer to always use the same accelerant as they would get accustomed to the product and be able to take advantage of its unique characteristics.”

“What type of professions work with fire?”

“Firemen, of course, certain armed forces units, specialized insurance investigators and the like.”

“Thanks for the info, Captain,” replied Elliot as he started toward the house.

“Captain, one more question. Have you ever experienced other arson jobs using toluene?“

“Yes, I have. Let me think,” he said as he squinted. “The last time I saw this was quite a while ago, maybe eight or nine years, when the Waller Building at McGill University was torched. There was no mistaking the intent there. By the time we responded, the entire building was gone.”

Elliot remembered the event well. The Waller Building was where McGill University conducted their pre-clinical drug trials. They had lost everything, years of tissue cultures, genetically modified mice, as well as months of data from their ongoing trials. Essentially, the entire pre-clinical program was put on hold for over a year while they found a new home and started up the practice again. Elliot could not ignore the circumstances of the fire and its connection to pharmaceuticals. He did not believe in coincidences but could not fathom how a fire eight years ago could be connected to the recent happenings and his father’s death.

The captain had been right. The entrance way was in shambles. The door was still on but was badly scorched. Entering the house was worse. The antique mirror that usually greeted him when he came home was staring up at him from the floor in a thousand pieces. The entire area reeked and reminded him of the wet, sooty smell of a campfire after a rain storm.

The inside walls beside and above the door were gone. Likely, the end result of an axe in its search of unseen flame. He could hear the water still dripping from somewhere down into the basement.

Elliot surveyed the damage and thought about the why
. It was clearly a warning. From Biovonix? The police? The mysterious big man? Could be any of them, or all of them
. There wasn’t much he could accomplish that night; he decided to grab a few items and stay at his father’s until the house was fixed.

He went upstairs and filled an overnight bag with enough clothes to get him through the next few days and then down to the kitchen to get his laptop. He stood in the kitchen entrance without entering. He sensed, rather than knew, that something was amiss. Like the disoriented feeling one gets when a piece of furniture has been moved but you are unable to identify what it was. This was not how he had left the kitchen this morning, but given that there was a fire, maybe the firemen were in the kitchen. When he panned his view to the far right, he saw that instead of the vigilant face of his laptop screen keeping watch over the kitchen, there were four photographs on the table in its place. The photo on the left was a close-up of himself walking on the sidewalk in front of JFK. The next one was of Rivka with a bag of groceries under one arm unlocking the front door of her house. The third was another close-up, this time of his son as he was descending the steps of what looked like a university building. Across Jake's photo was a scrawl in red marker that said, "Final notice." The fourth photo
was face down. He turned it over to see a photo of his father walking up the street from his house. He could tell by the level of snow melt and size of the snow banks that it was a recent spring photo, probably only days before he was killed.

Elliot swept the photos off the table, arched his neck back and closed his eyes. A swell of rage swept through
him as thoughts of violence ran through his mind. He thought of his gun upstairs and Banik sitting in his grand office with a smug look on his face. He thought about a confrontation with Yilmaz, his fists and feet doing all the talking and Yilmaz forced to listen. He thought about how good it would feel to strike back, to hurt them in the same way that they had hurt him.

But, as the rage ebbed his thoughts of retribution faded with it. He bent forward and placed his hands on the table, his shoulders slumped and neck drooped forward. The rage now gone, replaced by the stark realization of the situation he was in.

Elliot’s heart was racing, so he sat down at the table to calm himself and take it all in. Whoever had started the fire must have been in the house first. There was no note, but the message was clear. He and the two people closest to him had been under surveillance, just as his father was in his last days. Someone else had already determined his father’s future, and now they were threatening to make the same decisions for Elliot, Rivka, and Jake.

He took stock of where he was in the investigation and what he should do next. His standing theory was that his father was killed because of information he stumbled upon regarding Biovonix and the drug Isotin. Banik was likely behind the murder, but he had no proof of that nor was he likely to get any. Banik hired a small army of mercenaries in Eastern Security that enforced the law, his law. He also had the police in his back pocket for when the mercenaries needed support. Banik’s miracle drug, which will be worth billions to Banik and his investors, was only days from getting approval. People had been killed for far less. He came to the conclusion that if Banik had himself or Rivka murdered, it would eventually lead to questions and connections to his father’s murder. Once the press made that connection, it would only be a matter of time before Biovonix would come under scrutiny. That was why he and Rivka were still alive. He also concluded that as soon as Yilmaz determined that their investigation was getting too close or that Elliot would not give up the chase, Eastern would have no choice but to eliminate the JFK threat.

He couldn’t go to the police for obvious reasons. He could take his story to the press, but he didn’t have anything for them. There was no proof; there was only conjecture, speculation, and unfounded theories. No newspaper would touch a story like this without proof. Men like Banik would eat the paper alive if they went to press without any backing.

He stared blankly at the aquarium as he peeled through the events of the past days. He’d made remarkable headway into the case in just five days, but every time he thought he was about to get close, to catch a break, he was shut down. Someone was manipulating events. Someone was pulling strings, and Elliot was just one of the puppets. He imagined a stage with Elliot and Rivka puppets being chased by police puppets with thug puppets lying in wait for them. Off to the side of the stage were the crumpled forms of his father and Frank, their strings clipped and
jointed bodies motionless. Orchestrating the entire stage overhead was Alex Banik.

As he mulled over his situation, he noticed there was no sucker fish on the aquarium glass. He walked over to see where it might have been hiding and noticed something at the bottom of the tank. He saw the lifeless body of the sucker fish lying at the bottom of the tank, skewered with a toothpick.

Elliot cracked a beer and sat back down at the table to assess his situation. Up until now, he’d been gung-ho to find his father’s killer and bring him to justice. This was more than he anticipated. He weighed his options and asked himself what he had to gain by going through with the investigation and what he had to lose. The more he thought about it, the more one sided the equation became in his mind.

His father was dead, and his killer should be made accountable. Ever since the day in the grocery store with his mother, he imagined himself as the firebrand of justice, a shining sword in the night, slashing through the dark shadows where crime lived. For the first time, he thought it was an infantile dream. He was not the noble knight he imagined himself to be. There was no such thing. He was just a man with a fantasy. No, more like a man with a delusion. The crime novel heroes he fashioned his dreams after did not exist: his life, a charade.

This insight slammed into his head like an uppercut, and he realized he was hopelessly out of his league. He had jumped head first into a situation that he couldn’t manage and had dragged those he cared about in with him.

The other side of the ledger already had his father and Frank on it and now threatened to add himself, his partner, and his son. The decision was obvious. He would shut it down. He would stop the investigation, forget about Biovonix, about Les RD Boys, the big man and turn his back on Banik, Yilmaz, and his thugs. He’d wave the proverbial white flag and surrender. He didn’t like the idea of slinking back to his little practice with his tail between his legs, but the alternative was not an option.

Now that he’d made the decision, he felt tiny in his chair, insignificant and foolish. He felt the burden of duty shift from his shoulders down into his chest. It settled in close to his heart and next to his soul, where it hung like a dead animal.

Elliot didn’t want to think about the future of JFK. He might even fold the company while he was at it. There was always school to fall back on. Even that was optional. He no longer needed money. Between his father’s savings and life insurance, he would never need to work again. He picked up the photos and stuffed them into his overnight bag and then paused when he saw the case files he had left on the counter two days ago. Whoever came for the laptop either didn’t want these or didn’t see them. Without thinking about it, he stuffed them into the open bag and left.