"Well, Doctor, I'm a little confused. You see, I have in front of me a notarized letter, copies of which I have just put in the mail to you and Dr. Zimmermann. It is a letter from Mr. Ian Toole stating categorically that in none of his investigations on your behalf did he find any contamination in any product dispensed at the Omnicenter."
"What? " Kate's incredulity was almost instantly replaced by a numbing fear. "That's not true, " she said weakly. "Shall I read you the letter?"
"You bought him off."
"I beg your pardon."
"I gave you the courtesy of reporting this to your comapny instead of going to the FDA, and you bought off my chemist."
"Dr. Bennett, I would caution you against carelessly tossing accusations about, " Paquette said. "The statement in front of me is, as I have said, notarized."
"We'll see about that, " she said with little force. The vitamins she had sent to Toole were all she had. In a corner of her mind, she wondered if Arlen Paquette knew that. "I would like to confirm my company's sincere desire to correct any shortcomings in its products, and to thank you for allowing us to investigate the situation at your hospital." Paquette sounded as if he was reading the statement from a card. "You may think this is the end of things, Dr. Paquette, " Kate said, "but you don't know me. Please be prepared to hear from the FDA."
"We each must do what we must do, Doctor."
Kate had begun to seethe. "Furthermore, you had better hope that whatever you paid Ian Toole was enough, because that man is going to be made to visit a certain hospital bed to see first hand the woman he may be helping to kill." She slammed the receiver to its cradle. + Seated in his suite at the Ritz, Arlen Paquette hung up gently. He was shaking.
You don't know me. Paquette snorted at the irony of Kate Bennett's words, splashed some scotch over two ice cubes, drank it before it had begun to chill, and then set the glass down on the photographs of the woman he had just helped nail to a cross of incompetence, mental imbalance, and dishonesty. Cyrus Redding had decreed that she be discredited, and discredited she would be. Kate Bennett had only herself and a few shaky allies. Cyrus Redding had an unlimited supply of Norton Reeses, Winfield Samuelses, Ian Tooles, and, yes, Arlen Paquettes. He glanced down at the pad where he had written the words he had rehearsed and then used when talking to the woman, and he wondered if he could have come off so self-assured in a face-to-face confrontation. Doubtful, he acknowledged. Extremely doubtful. Their conversation had lasted just a few minutes, with all of the surprises coming from his end. Yet here he was, soaked with sweat and still trembling. He'd take a dozen in-person encounters with Norton Reese over the one phone call he had just finished. Water. That was it, he needed some water. No more goddamn scotch. He snatched his empty glass from the coffee table. Beneath it was one of the five-by-seven blowups of Kate Bennett, this one of her bundled in a sweatsuit, scarf, and watch cap, jogging with her dog along a snowbanked road. Paquette turned and unsteadily made his way to the bathroom. "You bastard, " he said to the thin, drawn face staring at him from the mirror. "You weak little fucking bastard."
He hurled the glass with all his strength, shattering it and the mirror.
Then he dropped to his knees amidst the shards and, clutching the ornate toilet, retched until he felt his insides were tearing in two. "Don't you see, Bill? Someone at Redding Pharmaceuticals, maybe this… this Paquette, bought off Ian Toole. Damn, I knew I was right not to trust them. I knew it. I knew it." Kate, still breathless from her run across the snowy street and up three flights of stairs, screamed at herself to calm down. William Zimmermann, as relaxed as Kate was intense, rose from behind his desk and crossed to the automatic coffee maker on a low table by his office door. His knee-length clinic coat was perfectly creased and spotless, his demeanor as immaculate as his dress. "How about a few deep breaths and a cup of coffee?"
"Coffee's about the last thing I need in my state, thanks, but I will try the deep breaths. Vacation. Can you believe it? One day the man is at his little spectrophotometer running tests, and the next he's off on vacation and nobody knows when he'll be back. Now if that isn't a payoff, I don't know what is. Next thing you know, Ian Toole's name will be on a lab door somewhere in Redding Pharmaceuticals."
"The deep breaths? " Zimmermann asked, returning to his desk. "Oh, yes.
I'm sorry, Bill. But you don't blame me, do you?"
"No, I don't blame you." He paused, obviously searching for words.
"Kate, " he said finally, "I want to be as tactful as possible in what I have to ask, and if I'm not, please excuse me, but…"
"Go on."
"Well, since you brought the subject up at our dinner the other night, I feel I must ask. Just how badly do you have it in for the pharmaceutical industry?"
The question startled her. Then she understood. "What you're saying is that without Ian Toole, it becomes a matter of my word against theirs.
Is that it?"
"If I'm out of line, Kate, I'm sorry. But remember, there is a lot at stake here-for me and my clinic, and as far as I know, this whole matter was between you and your Mr. Toole. I mean I called in the report because it was our facility, but the hard data are strictly…"
"Wait, " Kate interrupted excitedly. "There is someone else. I just remembered."
"Who?"
"Her name's Millicent. She's Toole's assistant, and I remember him telling me she was put out about having to work late on the stuff I sent him."
"Do you have a last name?"
"No, but how many Millicents can there be at the State Toxicology Lab?"
She was already reaching for the phone and her address book.
"You don't know me, Dr. Paquette, " she murmured as she dialed. "Oh, no, you don't know me at all."
The call lasted less than a minute. "Millicent Hall is no longer in the employ of the state lab, " Kate said as she hung up, her expression and tone an equal mix of embarrassment, dejection, and anger. "They wouldn't give out any further information."
This time it was Zimmermann who took a deep breath. "First the baseball player and now this, " he said. "You certainly aren't having a very easy time of it."
Kate's eyes narrowed. An emptiness began to build inside her. "You're having trouble believing me, aren't you?"
Zimmermann met her gaze and held it. "Kate, what I can say in all honesty is that at this moment I believe that you believe." He saw her about to protest, and held up his hands. "And at this moment," he added reassuringly, "that is enough. There is too much at stake for me to make any hasty moves. I shall await Redding's formal response to my report, meanwhile keeping our pharmacy on backup. No Redding generics until then. However, if there have been no further cases or further developments in, say, a week, I plan to reinstate our automated system."
"With Redding products?"
"We have a contract."
"But they…"
"Facts, Kate. We need substantiated facts."
Kate sighed and sank back in her seat, deflated. It was nearly ten and she had done nothing to prepare for the day's surgicals. "Have you started working on that list of patients who might be willing to allow me to have their medications analyzed?"
Zimmermann smiled patiently. "You can see how that might be a bit tricky to explain to a patient, can't you? " He handed her a brief list and five Omnicenter medication cards. "These belong to long-term patients of mine, who agreed to exchange them as part of what I said was a routine quality-control check."
"It is, " Kate said. "Thanks, Bill. I know this isn't easy for you and I'm grateful."
"I'll try and get you some more today."
"Thanks. You're being more than fair. I know I'm right, and sooner or later I'm going to prove it." She stood to go. "You know, " Zimmermann said, "even if you find there was a manufacturing error at Redding, you have no way of tying it in with the cases you are following."