Thomas Hoover - Syndrome

"There's actually something else I was curious about. Was a patient dropped from the trials a few months back? I was wondering if you could tell me anything about that."

"What have you heard that would make you ask such a question?" Debra Connolly's face went blank, but her blue eyes registered alarm. "No one here is allowed to discuss specific cases. That would be a violation of NIH rules and highly unethical. What made you ask that question?"

Hey, why so defensive? Could it be Stone is on to something that needs more daylight?

"I did a little research on the Gerex Corporation and. ." Then she had an inspired hunch. "You know, the NIH has a Web site where they post all the clinical trials they have under way." This was actually something she knew to be true. She had used the site to look up information about possible clinical trials for Alzheimer's patients that might accept her mother. But she never could find any in the New York area that seemed to offer any hope. "So naturally, your study was there. I like to know as much as I can about what I'm getting into."

"I've been to that Web site many times. The public part doesn't include-"

"So, has a patient ever been terminated?" Ally cut her off, hoping to avoid being caught in a lie. "If so, I'd really like to know why."

"No one is allowed to discuss any details of the clinical studies." She was capping off the last vial of blood the three cylinders of red against the steel.

"I think I'm going to have a talk with Dr. Van de Vliet before I go any further with this program," Ally said feeling her temper and her warning instincts both ratchet up. "I feel like I'm being stonewalled."

"You're free to think what you like." Debra Connolly had turned and was brusquely heading for the doorway when it was blocked by another blonde, this one in her late fifties, who was standing in the threshold and brandishing a black automatic pistol. Her eyes were wild. The security guard from the entrance and the nurse from the front desk upstairs were both cowering behind her.

"Where's Kristen?" she demanded. "Where's my daughter? I know she's alive, goddam you. I've come to take her home."

Wednesday, April 8

11:03a.m.

"Who are you and how did you get in here?" Debra Connolly demanded backing away from the door and quickly settling her steel tray onto a table. Ally got the instant impression that Deb knew exactly who she was.

The woman's hair was an ash blond tint above dark roots and was clipped short in a curt style. Her troubled face had stress lines, and her heavy makeup reminded Ally of a younger Sylvia Miles or perhaps a particularly intense real estate agent, except that real estate agents don't charge in on you brandishing a Beretta.

"It's all been a lie," the woman declared her cigarette-fogged voice shrill. If she recognized Debra, it wasn't apparent.

Ellen hit a button on the desk and spoke into the intercom. "Dr. Vee, could you please come to your office immediately. It's an emergency. There's someone here who-"

"You're damned right it's an emergency," the woman barked at her.

"Hadn't you better give me the gun?" Debra asked, holding out her hand and stepping toward her.

The woman turned and trained the pistol on her. "Just back off, sister. And keep out of this. I know you work for him but you're just a flunky."

"Then could you at least keep your voice down," Debra Connolly said, her composure hard as ice. The jab had bounced right off. Underneath the beauty pageant exterior she was all steel and sinew. "There are patients upstairs. . "

The hapless security man who'd been trailing behind the woman had gone over to the positive-pressure door of the laboratory and was desperately banging on the glass and waving for Dr. Van de Vliet. A moment later, he strode out, still wearing his white lab jacket.

"You," the woman hissed, turning to meet him. "You're the one who has her. You and that bastard Bartlett."

"Madam, I must ask you to leave," he said warily as he came up to her. "Immediately." He glanced down at the pistol. "Otherwise I'll have to call the police."

Although he was giving the impression that the woman was just an anonymous annoyance, Ally was sure she caught a glimmer of recognition, and a patina of poorly disguised panic, in his eyes.

"I want to see Kristen, damn you. I want to know what you've done with her. To her. You and that bastard Winston Bartlett who got her into-"

"Kristen?" He seemed puzzled. Then he appeared to remember. "There was a patient here briefly a while back, who I believe was named-"

"Kristen Starr. That's right, you fucker. And you damned well do remember her. And me. She's my daughter. Where is she?"

My God , Ally thought, could she mean that Kristen Starr, the one who had an interview show on cable. The world around this institute just keeps getting smaller.

Ally had actually done an interior-design project for Kristen

Starr back when she was first getting up to speed at CitiSpace. It was one of her first jobs. At that time Kristen had just signed a two-year contract with E! and she wanted to renovate her co-op in Chelsea. But then just as the job was completed, she sold the place and moved to a brownstone in the West Village, or so she'd said. Ally didn't know why she had done it or where precisely she had moved to, but she got the impression some very rich new sugar daddy was setting her up and he wanted the privacy of a town house.

Could it be that Kristen was the mysterious missing patient Stone was trying to locate and interview? Ally hadn't seen her on TV for a while, so maybe she had moved on to other things.

"I really don't know where she is now," Van de Vliet said. "She became emotionally unstable in the middle of her treatment. It's a rarity but it has happened. She checked out. After that, I don't-"

"That's a damned lie," the woman declared. "I know it now. That's what your receptionists have been telling everybody. It sounded a little like her at first, but now I realize it's preposterous. She didn't just up and run off. You're keeping her somewhere. Where is she? Where's my only child?"

"Wherever she is, I can assure you she's most assuredly not here ," Van de Vliet intoned smoothly, even as his eyes struggled to stay calm. "Would that she were. She wanted … a procedure done and I think we were having some success. But then she became traumatized for some reason best known to her and insisted on leaving. No one is forced to complete the regimen here against their will. As best I recall, someone said she went to a spa in New Mexico."

"I know that's what your flunkies have been telling me over the phone. That she went to New Mexico to hide out. But now I know everybody lied to me. For the last three years she's been sleeping with that bastard Winston Bartlett, but now his office won't even return my phone calls. You all think you're so smart, but I could smuggle a gun past your guards. In my bra!" Her eyes had acquired a further kind of wildness now as she awkwardly began opening her purse, hanging from a shoulder strap, with her left hand while still holding the pistol in her right. "And I got a letter from her just this morning. The postmark is New York City. So-"

"What-" Van de Vliet's eyes began to blink rapidly.

"She's not in New Mexico now. If she ever was." The woman waved a small tan envelope at him. There was large, loopy writing on the outside.

"Could. . could I see that?" He started to reach for it, but she waved the black Beretta at him and shoved the letter back into her purse.

"No you can't. What you can do is tell me where the hell you're keeping her. Now ."

"Before we proceed any further, that gun really isn't necessary," Van de Vliet said as he reached and deftly seized her wrist. He was quick, and his quickness seemed to spook her, because just as he turned the pistol away, it discharged.