Робин Кук: Charlatans

“Yes, ma’am,” Keyon said. Without another word the two men filed out, and they could be heard tramping down the stairs.

“All right,” Ava said. She sat down in her usual chair. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Fine by me,” Noah snapped. “What the hell is going on?”

“Calm down,” Ava said. “Keep in mind all this rigmarole has been caused by you and no one else.”

Noah laughed mockingly. “I hardly think that’s the case,” he said. As his mind had continued to clear, his irritation had mounted; so did his fears. “Before we talk of anything else, I want to know if your NSC friends had anything to do with the murder in Lubbock that’s been haunting me.”

“I don’t know anything about any murder,” Ava said. “Whose murder?”

“I had hired a private investigator who I’d found on the Internet. Her name was Roberta Hinkle. The night after I’d hired her, she was killed in her own home, supposedly by the disgruntled lover of one of her clients. Her investigative specialty was domestic issues.”

“Why on earth did you hire a domestic-issue private investigator?” Ava asked.

“I didn’t know it was her specialty,” Noah said irritably. “Her website didn’t suggest it. I hired her to do a background check.”

“Was this background check on me?” Ava asked.

“Yes,” Noah said. It was time for the truth, and he expected her to instantly become indignant, but to his surprise she didn’t.

“I don’t know anything about any murder,” Ava repeated calmly, “but I can tell you this: A private investigator nosing around in my personal business at this particular point in time would have made my employers at NSC very nervous and unhappy, to say the very least.”

“Are you suggesting the NSC was involved?” Noah said. He was horrified at the implications, as it would mean he, too, was indirectly responsible for the woman’s death.

“Certainly not directly,” Ava said. “The NSC would never do anything illegal. But what ABC Security might do, that’s another question. Do you remember Blackwater, the security company that was active in Iraq during the Iraq War?”

“I think so,” Noah said. He had no idea where Ava was going.

“I believe ABC Security is a similar organization, but I don’t know for sure. What I do know is that this is a highly sensitive period of time for the NSC, and the last thing they would want is for my credibility to be questioned in any way. Currently, I am the key NSC lobbyist dealing with quite a few congressmen and senators who are on the fence about amending or repealing the Dietary Supplement Health Education Act of 1994.

“Remember that article that was coming out in The Annals of Internal Medicine that presented a large study that was critical of the nutritional-supplement industry? We talked about it in my kitchen.”

“I think so,” Noah said.

“It had a big impact and caused a sizable number of legislators to express reservations about DSHEA, and I’m the only person who has been able to get them to reverse course. Ergo, it is a super-critical time for the NSC to make sure the FDA stays out of the picture as far as any regulation of the industry is concerned. It’s the reason I’ve had to spend so much time in Washington. I’m the point person to do damage control.”

Noah stared at Ava as his drugged mind wrestled with what he was hearing and began to connect the dots, lending support to his worst fears. Maybe there was some hidden reason to question the depth or quality of Ava’s anesthesia training, which the NSC knew about and did not want to be exposed. It was also the reason he’d hired Roberta Hinkle.

As if reading Noah’s mind, Ava lifted her legs off her ottoman and moved herself forward to sit on it, bringing her closer to Noah. She leaned toward him and lowered her voice, presumably to keep the men on the floor below from hearing. “Before I tell you what I plan to tell you, I want to ask what the private investigator found that made you suddenly fly the hell off to Lubbock?”

Noah felt himself stiffen. They had reached a critical juncture, a crossroads, a moment of truth. Although he felt nervous about Keyon and George being in the house, emphasizing her home-court advantage, he thought it was time to fish or cut bait, whatever the consequences.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 17, 11:15 P.M.

Noah debated how to start. He girded himself for what was to come as he settled on presenting the information in the order he had learned it. “I had told Ms. Hinkle you had graduated from the Coronado High School in Lubbock in 2000, so she started there,” he said. “Unexpectedly, she found that there had not been an Ava London in the Coronado High School for the last fifty years.”

Noah paused, watching Ava and her reaction, which he’d expected would be a mixture of anger and defensiveness as she had been caught in a blatant lie. Instead, she just nodded as if she expected what Noah had said and took it in stride.

“The private investigator decided on her own to look for Ava London at high schools in the Lubbock area,” Noah said, watching Ava’s lack of response with continued disbelief. It seemed that she never ceased to surprise him. Here was yet another layer of the onion. He went on: “And after considerable searching Ms. Hinkle was successful. She found an Ava London who’d attended Brownfield High School in a small town of the same name about forty miles southeast of Lubbock.”

Ava nodded again. “Is that all?” she questioned, in response to Noah’s second pause.

“No, it’s not all,” Noah said. “Ava London was in the class of 2000, but she didn’t graduate. Ava London committed suicide on a Friday night, April fourteenth, 2000. It was almost a year to the day from her father’s suicide carried out with the same gun in the same room. After the event, it was thought that Ava London had been harassed on social media following her father’s death and urged and browbeaten to emulate her father. It seems as if it was an early case of cyberbullying.”

“She was a very capable private investigator,” Ava said with little or no emotion.

“Ms. Hinkle didn’t tell me all those details,” Noah said. “I read several issues of the Brownfield Gazette that were published after the event. It was big news in Brownfield.”

“And I’m sure there must be more tidbits the private investigator discovered,” Ava said almost mockingly.

“There were,” Noah said. “She found out that there was a Gail Shafter in the same class as Ava London. I had told Ms. Hinkle that was your Facebook user name.”

“Very interesting,” Ava said with a semi-smile. “What else?”

“That’s it,” Noah said. “Ms. Hinkle was planning on moving her investigation to the Brazos University Medical Center yesterday, but before she could do so, she was murdered in her home. What worries and horrifies me is that it wasn’t a coincidence that it happened when it did.”

“I’m afraid I have to agree with you,” Ava said, suddenly becoming serious. “The timing is just too coincidental.”

Noah shuddered and stared at Ava. Here was yet another surprise. To his utter dismay, she was agreeing with his worst fears that he had played an indirect role in Roberta Hinkle’s death. “Who are you?” Noah asked existentially.

“I’m Ava London,” Ava said without a moment’s hesitation, regaining her aplomb. “I have so completely become Ava London that occasionally I forget that I wasn’t always she. As an example, I often truly believe my father committed suicide. It’s like what you were suggesting one night when we were talking about how people on social media can get confused with what is true and what they have made up to make their lives look and sound better.”