Fool Me Once(78)
“Right. But see, what she gave us still wasn’t enough. We could leak what we had, but if we did, well, there would be time to sweep it under the rug. It was too early in the investigation to tip our hands. We needed more.”
“So Claire kept digging.”
“Yes.”
“And she found Tom Douglass.”
“Right. Except Claire said that he had nothing to do with EAC Pharmaceuticals. It was something else, something bigger.”
The light turned green. Maya eased on the accelerator. “Once Claire was killed, why didn’t you at least release what she gave you?”
“Like I said, it wasn’t really enough. But more than that, I wanted to figure out the Tom Douglass connection. Claire seemed more concerned with that than the fake drugs, frankly. So if we revealed what I knew, I worried that they would just cover it all up. I wanted to find out more.”
“So with Claire dead,” Maya said, “you got me to start digging.”
He didn’t argue the point.
“You’re something, Corey.”
“I’m manipulative, I admit.”
“That’s a polite word for what you are.”
“It’s for a just cause.”
“Right. So why are you telling me now?”
“Because someone died from the fake drugs. A three-year-old boy in India. He had a fever from an infection. They started treating him with EAC’s version of amoxicillin. It didn’t do anything. By the time the doctor switched antibiotics, it was too late. The boy went into a coma and died.”
“Horrible,” Maya said. “How did you find out about it?”
“Someone at the hospital. An anonymous physician wants to turn whistle-blower. He kept detailed charts, made audio and visual recordings, even saved some tissue samples. That, along with what Claire told me . . . It’s still not enough, Maya. The Burketts will blame the Indians running the pharmaceutical companies. They’ll hide behind expensive lawyers who know how to muddy the waters. It may wound them a little. It may cost them millions, maybe hundreds of millions. But . . .”
“You think Tom Douglass is their kryptonite.”
“I do, yeah.” There was a lilt in his voice now. “Claire thought so too.”
“You’re enjoying this,” Maya said.
“Didn’t you sometimes enjoy combat?”
She didn’t answer.
“It doesn’t mean I don’t take it seriously. But yeah, I get excited.”
Maya signaled right and made the turn. “Was that how you felt when you got my helicopter video? Excited?”
“Truth? Yes.”
They fell into silence. Maya drove. Corey fiddled with the radio. After about half an hour, they took the exit off Eisenhower Parkway. The GPS said they were less than a mile away.
“Maya?”
“Yes.”
“You’re still friends with a lot of your military pals. Shane Tessier for one.”
“You keeping tabs on me?”
“Some.”
“What’s your point, Corey?”
“Do any of them know what’s on the audio of that helicopter? I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” she snapped. Then: “No.”
He was about to ask a follow-up, but Maya stopped him with “We’re here.”
When she made the left turn onto a dirt road, her eyes started scanning the area for surveillance cameras. None present. She pulled the car to a stop a block away from JR’s Body Shop.
Corey handed her the ski mask. She shook her head. “We’ll be less obvious without them. It’s dark. We are a couple looking for our car after hours or something.”
“I need to be extra careful,” he said.
“I know.”
“I can’t be spotted.”
“You got the facial growth, you got the baseball cap. You’ll be fine. Grab the chain cutter and keep your head down.”
He looked doubtful.
“Or wait here and I’ll do it.”
She opened the car door and got out. Corey didn’t like it, but he grabbed the chain cutter and followed. They walked in silence. It was dark now, but Maya didn’t turn on the flashlight. She kept scanning her surroundings. No cameras. No security. No houses.
“Interesting,” Maya said.
“What?”
“Tom Douglass chose here to rent a storage unit.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a CubeSmart storage right down the street. A Public Storage too. They have security cameras and easy access and all that. But Tom Douglass didn’t choose there.”
“Because he’s old-school.”
“Could be,” Maya said. “Or it could be that he really didn’t want anyone to know about this. Think about it. You hacked into his credit cards. If he was paying by check or credit card at a normal storage facility center, you’d probably have found some record of it. He clearly didn’t want that.”
JR’s Body Shop was made of concrete painted the yellow of a Ticonderoga pencil. The two garage bay doors were shut. Maya could see the padlocks, even at a distance. The grass hadn’t been mowed in a long while, if ever. There were rusted car parts scattered across the property. Maya and Corey circled toward the back. A vehicle graveyard blocked their path. Maya spotted a beaten-down once-white Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera from the midnineties, the same car her dad had once owned, and for a moment, she flashed back to that day: Dad turning the corner, all of them waiting, Dad honking his horn, that crooked smile on this face, Mom hopping in the front, Claire and Maya sliding into the back. It wasn’t a flashy car, far from it, but Dad loved it, and Maya couldn’t help, stupid as it felt, looking at this Oldsmobile and wondering whether it was the exact one that had made her dad so happy on that day, how every vehicle in this pile of junk had one day been driven off the lot new and shiny, with excitement and hope and expectation, and now they lay in tatters, dying piece by piece in the back lot of an old body shop off Route 10.