The Cyclops Conspiracy (28 page)

Thinking back, the signs of the impending breakup had been painfully obvious. She’d ignored them, as always. Longer intervals between phone calls followed by less-frequent dates. Jason delivered the blow, quick and hard. His words reached inside her like hot, searing
tongs, ripping out her heart and with it the painful memory of every failed relationship she’d ever had. A tear inched down her face. She shook her head, trying to shake the pain and memories.

Bastards
, she thought.
All men are bastards
.

She inserted the key into the lock of the community mailbox and opened the tiny door. Three envelopes. Two were bills. The third was a card of some sort with her name typed on it. She opened it, read the typewritten words, and her heart soared.

Sheila,

I would like to meet you tonight to talk about our relationship. Please meet me at Maggie’s Tavern at seven.

Jason

Christine scrutinized Jason coldly. Jason’s wallet in her pocket pressed against her thigh. It was her small, leather hostage. He was not getting it back until she knew the truth. They had agreed to meet on Sunday. But her father’s coded voice message had disintegrated those plans.

“It’s a cover for something larger. It has to be,” said Jason. “It’s more than insurance fraud.”

“We already talked about this,” Christine said impatiently. Jason had agreed to meet her to discuss their past, not his obsession. “We’re here to talk about what happened between us. Stop trying to avoid it. I want answers. It ends here and now!”

They were at a table in the rear of Maggie’s Tavern, an upscale but generic eatery in the Port Warwick section of Newport News. Jason sat with a view of the entrance. After following the now-dead Winstead, Jason had left the rented Fusion in the parking lot at the Colonial. That left him without a ride. He now had two cars parked at the pharmacy. Peter had given him a ride to rent another vehicle. This one was a Saturn
SL1. Jason hadn’t seen anyone following them, but he just didn’t know anymore. Sometimes it felt as if he had a fleet of cars on his tail.

“Cut me some slack, will you? We’ll get to that.”

“Make it quick.”

He leaned over the table, closer. “I watched the DVD your father left in his files again. I’d looked at it for hours, but didn’t see anything that looked important. Then I saw it.”

Christine looked to the ceiling in disgust. When she looked at him again, she saw reflected in Jason’s eyes her own expanding frustration.
Get to the point!

“What?” she asked with a roll of her eyes.

“It happened just as Sam Fairing was leaving the Colonial. He’d finished closing up and shutting down. Then, as he was walking out the door, he grabbed an empty prescription bag from the will-call bin.”

“So?”

“It was the same dirty, crumpled bag your father left for us in his files. The one with Winstead’s name on it. You see, after Sam left the pharmacy, he drove immediately to the Lions Bridge with the empty prescription bag. Don’t you see what this means?”

“I don’t feel like playing twenty questions. Why don’t you tell me?”

“The bag was stained with red clay. The kind of clay you find over there near the bridge and the Noland Trail. Sam left the bag there. I think I know the spot, it was a depression under a dead tree. Sam was sending a signal. It’s an old spy trick—a dead drop. Sam was signaling someone about something, or he retrieved some information and left the bag as a signal that the package was received. My guess is he retrieved a package of information or money. Then he left the bag to confirm the pickup. Except your father got there and found the empty prescription bag. That’s when he got caught.”

Christine stared at him with utter contempt.

“Don’t you see? There’s a conspiracy. The last time it happened, Winstead dropped a prescription at the Colonial on September 14. On the fifteenth, Thomas died. Your father was following Fairing the
night he was killed. They found out he was on to them, and they killed him. Maybe he saw what was happening at the bridge, retrieved the bag, and whoever was supposed to find it caught him. Your father ran. He ran to the Colonial, where they caught up to him. Somewhere in all that, he was shot through the shoulder. They sutured him up, got him drunk, and made it look like he died in a car accident—”

“Enough!” Christine’s hand made a wide arc toward Jason’s face.

Jason was prepared for it. With the reflexes honed by years of training in Tae Kwon Doe, he reached up and grabbed her arm in midair, stopping it cold with a dull smack of skin on skin. Christine tried to yank her arm away. Jason held tight.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Do you understand me?” Christine seethed.

Jason held her gaze, clamping her arm in a viselike grip. He lowered it and pressed it to the tabletop. “No, it’s not enough. There’s more,” he said. “When I was looking at the DVD, I got frustrated because I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I threw a book at the mantel. A vase fell and broke. I found something inside it. It was a tiny camera and microphone. Chrissie, they bugged my house! People are following me, watching me. They’re concerned about what I know. That’s why Jasmine is so interested in me. Someone wants to know what I know. They probably heard everything we were talking about last night!”

Hearing Jasmine’s name only fueled her ire. “I don’t care! Do you hear me? You owe me answers. And I want them
right now
!”

“But you also want to get some things off your chest as well, don’t you?”

“You’re damn right I do.”

He raised his hands into the air, releasing her arm. “I need a drink.” Jason waved at the waitress and ordered a gin and tonic. When the waitress was gone, he said, “Okay. Go ahead. Tell me what you’ve waited all these years to say.”

Christine bit her lip, collecting her thoughts. Old passions and new jealousies swirled inside her. This was the conversation she’d dreamt
about. A longing that began the day Jason had dumped her. She swallowed and began. “You really crushed me, Jason. I was screwed up for a long time. No, you know what? There’s no word close to describing what you did to me. You effed me over and effed up my head for years, in ways I could never imagine one person doing to another!”

Jason looked directly into her eyes. He nodded slightly, acknowledging his guilt. He opened his mouth, but Christine cut him off. “I spent a lot of nights wondering what I did wrong,” she continued. “What did I do to deserve to be treated that way? You freakin’ disappeared! You never returned my calls. Why? Why now, after all these years, did you come back? You owe me an explanation.” As the words flowed from her, Christine could feel the pulse in her head pumping like a jackhammer.

The waitress returned with their meals and a round of drinks. A burger, coleslaw, and steak fries for him, and for Christine, a chicken caesar salad. They ate sparingly, looking everywhere but at each other. Christine focused on a couple with two small children eating and laughing together. The kids jabbered incessantly, laughing at silly faces made by their father. Mom rolled her eyes. That family was the antithesis of her life.

Jason paid no attention to his food. “Chrissie, I’m ashamed of what I did. But not for the reasons you might think. I ran away from a problem that I should’ve hit straight on. In the years since we stopped seeing—I mean since I left—I’ve been married and had a wonderful son. Now I’m divorced. Michael’s a great kid, and I can’t imagine my life without him. But not a week goes by that I don’t think about what might have been if I stayed around. In some ways, I regret it immensely.”

“Then why
did
you leave?”

“Because your father’s business depended on it.”

“
What?
So it’s Daddy’s fault?” Her voice regained its steely timbre. “You’re blaming him now that he’s gone and can’t defend himself!”

“No. I became a liability to your father. I made a mistake.”

“You’re damn right you made a mistake!”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. I made a medication error.” Jason toyed with a fork on the table. “This is hard. It’s hard to find the right words, so please don’t interrupt me until I’m done.”

Christine sensed the forced determination in his words and read it in his tense neck muscles.

“I’d been with the Colonial for about nine months. One day in May, I refilled a prescription for a nice, elderly woman named Ada Mae Renforth. She was seventy years old and taking several heart medications.

“Two days later, your father called me into his office. He said that he’d got a call from the patient’s daughter saying Ada Mae was dead, and we’d filled the prescription with the wrong medication. She said we—I mean, I—killed her mother. After that everything happened very quickly. The family hired a lawyer who sat down with your father and his lawyers. According to them, the evidence against me was overwhelming.”

His voice cracked. He cleared his throat for what seemed like the tenth time. “The whole matter went on for a month. Your father’s lawyers said that he was underinsured and when the family sued he would lose the business—”

“I remember Ada Mae. But I never heard about any of this,” said Christine.

“Your father didn’t want you to know about it. It looked like your father and I were going to be taken to court. They would sue and win a multimillion-dollar settlement. Needless to say, I was paralyzed with fear. I thought my career as a pharmacist was over before it ever really began.

“But the thing is, I remembered filling those prescriptions, and I
know
I filled them correctly, because the technician at the time had dropped Ada Mae’s pills all over the floor. We spent fifteen minutes picking them up. We tossed the dropped pills and refilled the prescription with new ones. I spent an hour making sure those pills were right. I checked and double-checked them. I remember comparing the spilled pills to the fresh ones. They were the same—round and white.

“You know, I fill hundreds of prescriptions a day. Some you don’t ever remember. Some you do, because you can associate certain events with them, like a customer yelling at you. That’s what this was like.” Jason covered his mouth with his hand. “I filled the prescription correctly.

“Your father and I met with the lawyers, and they showed us the bottle. It was the highest strength available. Blue, oblong tablets. Four times Ada Mae’s regular dose. She had renal failure. The excessive dose built up in her blood and killed her, so they said. It was the correct medication, just too much of it. I
didn’t
make that mistake. But they said I did.”

“So why didn’t you fight it?” Christine demanded.

“I was young and inexperienced. I was still trying to figure out how to be a pharmacist. I guess I questioned myself enough at the time. But the more I thought about it and recalled it over the years, the more certain I was that I’d filled it correctly.” He paused and took a large gulp of gin. His quaking hand rattled the ice in the glass.

“After I found out about the mistake, I could barely concentrate. I couldn’t sleep. I was depressed.” Jason’s eyes were beginning to glisten.

Christine had listened to his tale with a volcanic anger only barely contained. Now, her indignation found its voice. “You never confided in me, Jason. For Christ’s sake, you could’ve said something!”

“It wasn’t because of you. Your father said I couldn’t tell anyone, not even you.”

“Damn you!” Christine slapped the table with the palm of her hand. “Who cares what Dad said? Why! Why did you have to keep quiet about it? I wouldn’t have told anyone. We were in love!”
We could have worked it out!

“Calm down!” Jason demanded. “Lower your voice! I’m trying to explain!” Jason ran a hand through his hair and pushed a lungful of air at the ceiling. A few seconds later, he reached over and touched her arm. Christine leaned back and yanked it under the table. Jason shook his head in frustration. “I
did
have to keep quiet! Your father’s lawyers told him to keep the whole thing under wraps. It was a condition set by the people advising him. I continued to work my regular shifts,
petrified with every prescription I filled. He could’ve fired me. But they said that would be as good as an admission of guilt. So I worked.

“Then something unexpected happened. Suddenly, the family said they would drop the charges and promise not to sue. But there were some conditions.”

“What conditions?” she demanded.

“The woman’s family received a large payment. I don’t know how much it was. Your father would never tell me. But whatever it was, it was enough to satisfy the family and their lawyers. Your father hinted that the suits who were defending him, the lawyers and the insurance company, contributed the money. These guys were well connected and had
very
deep pockets.

“As long as I left the Colonial and never worked there again or had any contact with him or you, they’d let me and the Colonial off the hook. If I stayed or resisted in any way, they’d pursue the matter in court. Your father came to my apartment with tears in his eyes and told me about the offer. I’d explained to him that I’d filled the prescription correctly. And he truly believed me. He said he’d stand behind me and fight it in court if necessary. That’s the kind of man your father was. He was ready to put his career and his business on the line for me. I think that’s because he knew how we felt about each other. But in the end, the choice was mine.”

Christine placed her fingers near her temple. “Jason, I believe that you
think
you filled the prescription correctly—”

“
Think?
I filled it correctly!” Jason shook his head. “You think I’m imagining all this?”

“I’m just saying, if you filled it correctly, then how did the wrong pills end up in the bottle?”

“Chrissie, I don’t have all the answers. I’m telling you what I remember.”

Christine sighed. “I’m sorry.”

Jason sipped his iced tea. “Your father gave me a day to think it over. If I stayed, your father would’ve lost the business. I decided to
leave. In a weird sort of way, I kind of did it for you. Better your father kept the pharmacy and provide for you. I owed your father. He was ready to fight for me. Everything I’m doing now is my repayment to him. That’s why I need find out who killed him.”