While Justice Sleeps(61)
“Yes—yes, ma’am.” Sitting in the rear of the taxi, she felt gratitude lodge in her chest like a boulder.
“Rita—” Her throat tightened with words she’d forgotten how to say to this almost forgotten version of her mother. “Thank you.” The hot whisper seared her throat. “Momma.”
“It’s okay, baby.”
Watching the woman in her office cling futilely to control, the Chief lifted the receiver. “Was there something you needed, Avery?”
Avery forced herself to focus on the reason for her call. “Umm, when you’ve finished your meeting with my mother, I’d like to talk with you about my position at the Court.”
“Your leave is not negotiable.” The Chief examined the woman squirming in her seat, and her voice softened. “I appreciate how difficult and complicated this has made your life, but my hands are tied.”
“Chief, I didn’t accept a bribe, and I didn’t shoot Mrs. Lewis.”
“I believe you. So, perhaps, does Agent Lee.”
“But Major Vance doesn’t.”
“No, he doesn’t believe you, but until he has more evidence, I’ll hold them off.” She hesitated. “Watch your step, Avery. They are.”
“Yes, Chief. And, Chief—”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t ask her to come. I swear.”
“Of that I have no doubt.” She thought of the slender young woman asked to bear such heavy burdens. Then she recalled Avery’s confrontation with powerful men bent on destroying her reputation. Perhaps Howard understood more than she realized. Still, she had the Court to consider. With regret, she told Avery, “I’ll be in touch. It’s probably best if I contact you from now on.”
Avery heard the reproach and remorse, her fingers twisting at the hem of her skirt. “I understand.” She was on her own.
TWENTY-FOUR
In an empty office on the twenty-third floor of the Lowry Kihneman building, Avery stared at a computer screen. On her way to the offices she had first stopped at the hospital to check in on Justice Wynn. Like before, he lay silently in his room, connected to a battery of monitors, IVs, and machines. Avery expected him to sit up and angrily demand his release from the infernal bed, but the silence endured. She sat at his bedside for half an hour, alternately listening to the rhythmic noises of machinery and asking him questions, to which she received no replies. Then, after returning home to retrieve the pages she’d printed from Justice Wynn’s computer, she’d headed to the offices of Lowry Kihneman.
For the last several hours, Avery’s time had been spent plugging in multiple permutations of key words, to no avail. Paper was piled up along the credenza, each stack correlated to a company listed in his binder—her attempt to re-create the files from his safe. Justice Wynn hadn’t chosen those companies at random. She’d already skimmed them for references to rivers and squares and the word Ani.
Look to the East. Look to the river. In between. She leaned forward, rubbing at her forehead, muttering. She’d already eliminated the East River in New York, although several of the companies had bases in Manhattan. “Ani. An Indian name. A company? The East? India? China?” Then she recalled the email addresses and nearly cursed. “Damn it. It’s in the email.” Turning, she grabbed sheets she’d printed from his computer. On top of the pile was the email exchange with TigrisLost. How could she have missed something so obvious? “He meant the Tigris River. The Middle East.”
She pulled the stacks that corresponded to the companies. “Okay, Justice Wynn. I’m looking at the Tigris River and the companies. Genei Bioservices is based in Beijing. Remar Pharmaceuticals and Hygeia are Indian. Remar is in Hyderabad, and Hygeia is in Mumbai. Advar, based in Bangalore. Nothing from the Middle East.”
She paused. Advar. Having pored over dozens of briefs on the company that would merge with GenWorks, Avery could recite the entire corporate bio by heart. Justice Wynn would have known that. She shifted some of the files to one side. For now, she’d focus on the new guys.
Genei Bioservices had a thin résumé, but an interesting corporate management team. At least two of their members had testified on GenWorks’ behalf during the lower court proceedings. One was a Nobel laureate and the other a MacArthur genius. Both, she recalled, had argued that GenWorks sat on the cusp of revolutionizing treatment of genetic diseases like Huntington’s and Parkinson’s. Stopping the merger, they’d asserted, would be akin to killing off Jonas Salk.
A quick scan of Remar Pharmaceuticals, an India-based company, revealed that its lead funder was none other than Nigel Cooper of GenWorks. Remar dealt in the dicey research domain of stem cells and cloning. As an American company, GenWorks faced prohibitions on the use of stem cell lines. “Mr. Cooper sends his money overseas and does his biotech research offshore,” Avery murmured. “He doesn’t even try to hide it,” she realized. “No wonder President Stokes hates him.”
The Chinese firms—Qian Ku and Shen Fu—benefited from copious state funding and tight controls on information. The slimness of Justice Wynn’s files matched her own research. Putting the scarce pages aside, she turned to the next company on the list.
“What have you got for me, Hygeia?” Downloaded pages recited dry details of founding and acquisition for this short-lived venture into high-end research. The lab geniuses at Hygeia had specialized in a specific chromosomal objective: chromosome consortium. For the first time, Avery regretted not having added biology to her list of temporary majors.