The Evil That Men Do Read online

  “It’s about Lucy, but she may be okay.”

  “Is this bad news or good news?”

  “I’m not sure. Do you remember the message she left?”

  “How could I forget? I spent a couple of hours on the phone looking for the Covenant Apartments and David Balfour.”

  “Dagny, have you ever read Robert Louis Stevenson?”

  “Charles, for Chrissake! Can we talk about my reading habits another time?”

  “No, seriously. There’s a point here.”

  “Okay, let’s see. I once read Treasure Island.”

  “I see,” said Charles evenly. “Did you ever happen to read Kidnapped?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But wait. I think my parents rented the video for me when I was a teenager, still living in Turkey. I remember the Turkish subtitles.”

  “Keep remembering, love. What was it about?”

  “A boy on a ship. The boy was cute, I remember that.”

  “Can you remember his name, Dagny?”

  “Sure it was David…oh no, it couldn’t be.”

  “His name is David Balfour,” filled in Charles, “and the ship is the Covenant.”

  Chapter 17

  I broke the silence with a moan. My worst fears were realized. Nausea gripped my stomach and a zincky corrosiveness rose to my throat, leaving me speechless. Charles was speaking my name and asking if I was okay.

  I got my tongue back. “I’m okay. It’s a shock to know my client’s been abducted by people who kill so readily.”

  “I’m sorry. I wish I’d seen the connection sooner. The names churned around in my head until I saw a billboard that advertised Cutty Sark scotch. The schooner in the picture jogged my memory and it all came clear at once. Terribly clever of Lucy, don’t you think?”

  “Very clever,” I agreed weakly. I tried to imagine the course of events. Lucy must have been snatched sometime between Thursday night, when I last spoke with her, and Sunday, the day she called the Worthingtons. They probably forced her to call to forestall suspicion at her absence. Most likely she was killed immediately. With the body well hidden, the killers would have days for their trail to cool.

  “Are you there, Dagny? Say something, love.”

  “I’m here. I’m just wondering if Lucy’s even alive now.”

  “Why let her call if they planned on killing her? Why not just do it?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe they wanted to buy time to fake another suicide. Imagine the newspaper headline: Student despondent over friends’ suicides takes own life.”

  “She may be alive, Dagny. They don’t know we know about these murders. They think they’ve got away with it. They may not want to risk killing again. Maybe they’re just trying to scare Lucy, or keep her out of the way for other reasons. I think there’s hope. How can I help?”

  “Several things. Try to convince your boss that there’s been a murder, and try to get Peters to do the same.”

  “Right. I’ll have another go at the coroner.”

  “It’d help if we knew the connection between the Nandrolex and the anesthetic effect. Maybe you could give Jeanette Briggs a call and see if she’s had any more thoughts.”

  “I’ll ring her up right away. Good idea.”

  “And one more thing. I’ve been planning to visit Wellex. If I can convince them that one of their drugs is being abused, they might help. I wish I knew someone there.”

  “The lab here uses some of their products. There must be a sales person. Maybe I can get you a name. What’ll you do now?”

  I briefed Charles on what I’d learned from Melanie and told him of my appointment with Gribith. I decided on the spur of the moment that I’d drive straight through to L.A. and stay the night. I needed time to think, and the drive would provide it. I gave Charles the number of Hilda’s “modeling studio”—I had a standing invitation to crash there when need be. I promised I’d call around ten the next morning.

  The westering sun was a bloodshot eye behind a misty veil of clouds, toward which I was now driving. I met U.S. 101 where it runs past the Santa Maria raceway and turned south. I had nearly three hours of cruising and cogitating ahead of me. I sped past Santa Barbara, barely noticing my temporary hometown. At Oxnard my head was again achy from sorting facts and weighing probabilities, and dejection covered me in a dark mantle, for the knots that tied up the riddle of the mysterious murders refused to unravel.

  There are two routes from Oxnard to Los Angeles: one inland, the other along the Pacific coast. I opted for Route 1, putting the ocean on my right, and the coastal range on my left. I lowered the passenger side window to admit the ocean’s flavor. The sights and scents of the water were soothing, and by the time I reached Interstate 10 in Santa Monica, my head had cleared once more and my despair had abated. I needed to focus on my interview with Professor Gribith. All I could do for Lucy was to try to learn more about the events and people that constituted this terrible mystery.

  I was at the western terminus of Interstate 10, less than a mile from the Pacific Ocean. From here, amazingly enough, you could drive straight through to Jacksonville, Florida, without a traffic signal, stop sign or dangerous intersection. I had little desire to visit Florida, however. Though my home is in North Carolina, when summer comes I prefer the Pacific to the Atlantic, and the variable breezes of California’s west coast to the steady, sodden sunshine of the South.

  I stayed on the I10 a mere two miles, quitting the freeway at Bundy Drive, a street name that became nationally known during the murder trial of O.J. Simpson. I took Bundy to Montana Avenue and followed that street to where it abuts a V.A. Hospital. Hilda’s modeling studio is actually a twelve-unit apartment house with a recreation room serving as the studio. The “models” work and sometimes live in the units, coming down to the studio to re-enact several times every day the charade that they are models and not girls for hire.

  Hilda is an intelligent, warmly wonderful woman who believes in the value of a dollar, and takes friendship to be the most serious relationship a person can enter into. I have known her since my college days at UCLA. There are always one or two vacant apartments and my earlier call to Hilda had gotten me one in the back of the building where it was least likely to be noisy.

  I arrived as dusk was giving way to darkness. The modeling business was in hiatus, it being too late for the day-timers, and too early for the evening clientele. One model held down the fort, leaning on her elbows behind the rec-room bar, naked from the waist up. Hilda wore a flowered muumuu and was ensconced in an overstuffed, oversized easy chair in an inconspicuous corner of the room. She’s always sincerely happy to see me, and I her.

  “Come sit by me and give me your news. Pull that chair over. How are you getting along? Are you whipping that disease? How is your brother? You don’t need to go out. I put a bottle of white pinot and some pasta salad in the fridge for you.”

  “You’re a dear, Hilda.” I bent down to kiss her cheek “I’ll just be here for one night and I have to leave early. Thanks for letting me stay.”

  “You have to pay with news, darling, so start talking. Begin with your health.”

  We chatted amiably for an hour. When business revved up, and one too many men leered in my direction, I said my goodnight. I took a short stroll to enjoy some fresh, salt-tinged air before retiring. I longed to jog on the grassy center divider of San Vicente Boulevard, about a quarter mile away. I could run to the ocean and back, about three miles, but only a crazy or suicidal woman jogs alone in the dark. Anyway, I didn’t have my running gear.

  I found my unit stocked with wine and food as promised. Hilda had even remembered to leave a corkscrew. Better still, she’d found an old gym bag of mine that I used to keep at the apartments. The contents were freshly washed. Now I could run in the morning.

  I removed the cork from the bottle and the plastic wrap from the pasta, and that took care of dinner preparations. I retrieved the laptop. Though it was only nine hours ago that I was bringing my files
up to date, I had lots more to add. I sipped and chewed and typed for an hour and a half. I made a few tentative notes on questions for Professor Gribith. I stripped, showered, and crawled into bed naked. I set the alarm clock for 6:30.

  My internal alarm beat the clock by ten minutes, as it so often does. It was still dark out, but by the time I dressed and walked over to San Vicente, it would be light enough and safe enough to run.

  I was amazed at the number of people already out jogging. They mostly knew each other, an informal San Vicente grassy-median jogging club. I got mostly smiles from runners going the opposite way. A big fellow came up from behind and ran next to me for a moment, matching my pace.

  “Can I hit on you?” he asked pleasantly, breathing no harder than if he was sitting on a park bench.

  “I guess you have already,” I replied, trying to control my breathing.

  “I’m not the pushy type. If it feels right, call me.”

  He handed me a business card—interesting line—and pulled ahead effortlessly. “What’s your name?” he called over his shoulder. I half-smiled and shook my head. He held up his watch and pointed to it. I understood. If I called him, I’d be the one he met at 6:45. He probably names his girl friends Miss Seven Thirty or Mrs. (why not) Quarter After Eight. His name was Leon and he was employed by the St. Louis Rams football team. I wonder if he hit as hard in the stadium as on the jogging path. He was a smooth dude, and attractive if you go for the thick-necked Nordic type.

  No matter what they say, most women don’t mind being hit on if it’s done tastefully and sincerely. It took my mind off business, briefly, and I was better off for it. I picked up the pace a bit in a fanciful pursuit of Leon, but despite my additional efforts he slowly pulled away. At Ocean Avenue I did an 180o and began the grueling uphill part of the run. I broke a sweat and pushed myself hard. My legs and lungs felt good. I was in the “zone,” where physical exercise fills my whole being, and my mind enters a meditative state. By the end of the run the tension of the previous day had relinquished its grip.

  Back in the room, I showered and put on yesterday’s clothes. UCLA was only a mile away as the crow flies, but on the traffic-laden streets of west L.A. the trip may take twenty minutes. The sprawling campus is a labyrinth of roads and cul-de-sacs, none of which permit parking. Tow trucks respond to illegally parked cars faster than ambulances to heart attacks. People joke that UCLA has three passions: football, basketball, and parking.

  At a kiosk I exchanged three dollars for a parking token and a one-day parking permit to be attached to the inside of my windshield. I declined a map of the campus. “Follow the blue lines, please,” instructed the attendant.

  As a student I rarely parked on campus, preferring bus transportation. I was surprised to find that I needed to follow the colored line painted on the pavement to avoid confusion at forks in the road. This might be a good method for helping freshmen find their classrooms. Blue for Math, red for History, yellow for English, green for Biology.

  The blue line took me to the entrance of a parking deck, access to which was barred by an orange and white striped gate. Outside the driver’s window was a box with a slot and a weatherworn sign that said, “Deposit token to lift gate.” I did so and the gate rose out of my way. Inside, unoccupied stalls were numerous since it was early in the day.

  I’d left myself some extra time. I was meandering in the general direction of central campus, remembering my college days, when an idea struck me. UCLA had a business library, and I had time to visit it.

  The business library was wholly contained in the much larger University Research Library. It was nearly empty when I got there, most students preferring to work late and sleep late. I asked the librarian for help finding information about Wellex Pharmaceuticals. She tapped away on her computer for about a minute. A printer came to life and spewed out a page, which she tore off and handed to me along with a guide to the library.

  I sat down at a table and looked over the printout. A History of the American Pharmaceutical Industry was one of several references that caught my eye. It turned out to be a government publication available only on microfilm. My helpful librarian found it for me and came out from behind her counter to show me how to operate the reader. The entire work fit onto a spool of microfilm slightly larger than a roll of Kodacolor. I unraveled the first few inches of film and held it up to the light. It contained dozens of pages, each compressed to the size of a Lilliputian postage stamp.

  I threaded the spool in the reader as instructed and forwarded the film to the first page, which contained a table of contents. The material on Wellex began on page 193. I fast forwarded to that page and began reading. Wellex had been founded in the early 1960s by Richard Maas, a brilliant young biochemist, and financier Gerald Wolfe, a scion of the Wolfe family.

  I knew about the Wolfe family. They had adopted Santa Barbara as their hometown after World War II, and owned at least two large estates. Gerald was a prominent member and generous benefactor of the community.

  The company’s initial successes had been in products for blood testing. Blood is full of stuff I’ve never heard of. Clotting factors, lipids of all kinds, proteins with unpronounceable names, bodies, and antibodies. Doctors like to know how much of what is in the blood, and those measurements require the use of other complex substances, some of which Wellex invented and manufactured.

  By the late sixties, Wellex had focused on the synthesis of bio-chemicals ordinarily found in nature. These drugs became the financial mainstays of the company when the blood products business became too competitive. They were used for treating symptoms ranging from nausea and diarrhea to insomnia and impotence, and included some blockbusters—products that are practically household names.

  A list of drug patents owned by Wellex was given at the end of the article, along with a synopsis of the principal effects of each of the drugs. Nandrolex was on the list, the only mention of that drug in the article. The synopsis didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. I had begun to rewind the spool when I thought I saw some intriguing letters at the top of my field of vision. I refocused the machine and searched for them deliberately: anesth is what had flashed subliminally in my mind. I found the word. Wellex had patented a drug in 1964 that they had called Welnarkothal. It was an anesthetic.

  Chapter 18

  It was nearly nine-thirty. I needed to call Charles and head over to Professor Gribith’s office. I could return later and read the patents. I jotted down the patent numbers. Heck, I could probably get the patent info off the Internet from the comfort of my home or office.

  I descended in an elevator with half its light bulbs burnt out. Graffiti had been washed off, reapplied, rescrubbed away. Writers intent on permanence, leastwise until the next paint job, scratched their messages into the paint. Most of it was of a prurient nature, but the science nerds had gotten in their licks: “186,000 mps—it’s THE law,” proved that someone was thinking about something other than sex.

  Downstairs near the door I got a strong cellular signal. I put through my call to Charles’s office. He answered on the first ring. I told him what I had learned. “Give me those patent numbers,” he said. “I’ll have Jeanette Briggs look into them. You won’t have time, anyway. You have a 2:00 appointment with a Dr. Maas at Wellex, over on Yorktown Avenue. That’s spelled M-a-a-s, Richard. He’s the—”

  “Vice president in charge of research and one of the founders,” I finished.

  “Ah, you have been doing your homework.”

  “I got lucky. Anything from Lucy?”

  “Nil. Incidentally, you’ll have to pass through a metal detector at Wellex. They keep tight security because of the daft blokes that try to break in and liberate their animals. You’ll have to stow your heat.”

  “‘Stow my heat’? Surely English gentlemen are taught not to speak American movie slang.”

  “I heard Humphrey Bogart say it once in a film. I’ve waited ten years for the right moment to say it myself, an
d I wasn’t about to give it up on behalf of English gentlemen,” he said, with pretended grumpiness.

  “Seriously, thanks for the warning. I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”

  Outside the library, sunlight was streaming between the buildings and trees, casting sharp, black shadows. There was a refreshment stand near the library with a few sparsely populated benches in front of it. I had time for a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin. I reviewed my notes on Wellex, sipping coffee and breaking off pieces of muffin to stuff in my mouth. Behind some jacaranda trees, the rear entrance of Haines Hall was a one-minute walk away. At five to ten I washed the last of the muffin down with the last of the coffee and went to keep my appointment.

  Professor Gribith’s office was in the northeast corner of the second floor of the two-story building. The door was open. Behind a desk just to the right inside the doorway, a woman was working intently on a computer. She was middle-aged, thin, and her long, dark hair was tied back. She turned to face me, removing a pair of glasses with heavy plastic frames and thick lenses that had created excavation sites on either side of her nose.

  “You must be Anna.” I said.

  “And you’re Miss Jamison, right?” she replied pleasantly. “I’ll tell Bill you’re here.”

  She disappeared into an inner office for a moment, then reappeared and motioned to me. As I approached the inner sanctum, she slipped past me and returned to her desk. Professor William Gribith met me in the doorway. “I’m Bill Gribith,” he said, extending his hand.

  We shook hands. “I’m Dagny Jamison, Dr. Gribith. Thank you for seeing me.”

  “Let’s sit over there,” he said, nodding toward a couple of padded wooden chairs, “and please call me Bill. We’re much less formal than you might think.”

  I knew that, having been a student at UCLA. It wasn’t unusual even for undergraduates to address certain professors by their given name. Older people outside academia still imagine a distinguished professor as wearing a suit, maybe a frumpy suit, but a suit nonetheless. This stereotype would also peg him as portly, balding, soft-handed, myopic, and short. That image is sometimes correct. Julius Akrich fit it well. But the lanky figure before me wore shorts, sandals and a T-shirt. Bill Gribith had a firm handshake; his palms were callused. He had a full head of wavy, gray-streaked hair, and clear, penetrating, gray eyes that looked me up and down. His ring fingers were unadorned. I’d bet half his female students wanted to go out with him.