Devil's Plaything - Matt Richtel [98]
“Except the part where you fried brains.”
“You’ll have to prove that and, in seeking to do so, invoke all kinds of risk.”
“I intend to.”
“Dammit!”
Her outburst could power a windmill. I step backwards.
“I take care of Newton. You take care of your grandmother. Maybe there’s someone else special in your life. They are all that matter now.”
“If you felt that way, why bother contacting me in the first place?”
She starts walking to the door. Without looking at me, she says: “I accomplished what I wanted, and with your help. This thing has been shut down.”
“You won’t help me expose this?”
“I’ve resigned from Biogen. I’m moving on.”
I catch up with Adrianna and I take her arm and spin her around.
“Where have you been for the last few days?”
She looks down.
“I went somewhere safe.”
“Without Newton? Where?”
She shrugs. “I have a friend with a houseboat. No big deal.”
I look her in the eye.
“What did they give you?”
“What?”
“You have morphine eyes. Dilaudid eyes.” Powerful sedatives. “Did they kidnap you? That’s what I think.”
“What? No.”
I can see it now. Adrianna was working at the imaging clinic—the one that fronted as a dental office and disappeared. She was working at cross-purposes to the bad guys, maybe trying to thwart them. One day, Grandma was visiting the clinic and she saw the strongman drug Adrianna. He wore a blue surgical mask to hide his identity—the Man in Blue.
The Man in Blue strangled Adrianna.
“Did he drug you, try to smother you? Did my grandmother witness that?”
“No. No. No.”
Her eyes betray less certitude.
“They held you somewhere,” I continue. “Did they threaten your life? Or Newton? What did they want from you—just your silence?”
“Please leave. Please.”
“Someone broke into your office. They violated your world. Is a tough, smart scientist going to shrug, forget about the whole thing, and settle in for a nap?”
She stands mute.
I pull from my pocket the piece of paper I got from Pete Laramer. I thrust it in front of her.
“What is this?” I demand.
“I’m begging you to let this go. It’s over.”
“Not for my grandmother.”
“It is. She’ll recover. She’ll get back to her baseline.”
“So you say.”
She pulls open her door.
“Nathaniel, can I ask you a question?”
“Fuck you.”
“Don’t you have anyone?”
“What?”
“Don’t you have anyone that is more important to you than this story? Don’t you have anyone who needs you more than you need to pursue some nuanced gray area of truth to write a few blog posts about?”
“Like I said.”
“What?”
“Fuck you.”
Chapter 55
I sprint down the stairs. Trying to purge rage. Outside, I pick up a blue plastic recycling bin left on the corner and slam it against the apartment building.
I use Chuck’s father’s phone to place a round of calls to local hospitals. I find what I’m looking for at California Pacific Medical Center. Pete Laramer is in the intensive care unit.
The ICU was the place in medical school I felt the most conflicted. From the standpoint of providing actual medical care, it was the service where I felt most like an auto mechanic. The job was to follow the book to the letter and keep the patient intact. Get precisely the right level of motor oil into the engine and hope it kept whirring.
But the ICU also was an opportunity to connect with the family members in the waiting room, anxious for any morsel of information. It was my first experience with service journalism; as a doctor-to-be, I understood the esoteric vernacular of anatomy and triage and could communicate it to the distraught families. I felt more powerful with my words than hitching up the bag of oil.
In the hallway, I see Kristina, Pete’s wife and my old flame. She sits in a chair, shoulders back, looking as elegant as I remember and, at least at a distance, less distraught than I’d expect.
When I get close, her chin lifts with surprise and the muscles tense in her neck. But her eyebrows don’t arch. The frozen, wrinkleless visage of Botox.
“Nathaniel?”
“Hi, Kristina.”
“Are you here visiting someone