Robin Cook - Host

“Thank God you did. But how did you know to come storming in here?”

“That was easy. When I got to the front door, I could see someone busted in.”

“That asshole was about to rape me!” Lynn said angrily, fighting back more tears. “You were in the nick of time.”

“Do you have any idea who he is?”

“I don’t! I couldn’t see his face under that mask. But I can tell you one thing that might not be a surprise. He had a goddamned Russian accent.”

“Why would that not surprise me?” Michael asked. He was confused.

“Wait till I tell you why he came in here and scared the hell out of me. But first let’s get the fuck out of here in case he or any of his buddies come back. I imagine he is pretty pissed at you for interrupting his fantasy, the prick. He was going to make me give him a blow job.”

“We are not going to call the police?”

“Hell no!” Lynn said. “This is all a lot bigger than a breaking-and-entering or even rape. I have a lot to tell you, but first, let me get my clothes. Come with me! I don’t want to be alone. And bring the gun.”

Lynn rushed back to the master bath, where she’d left her things, and dressed rapidly.

Michael followed close behind. He kept hold of the gun dangling at his side. “If we don’t report this, we might be considered accessories after the fact,” he said. “I just want you to know. And this gun might be hot.”

“At this point I couldn’t care less,” Lynn said. Then, as she slipped on her shoes, she added: “Did you see Carl’s poor cat in the club chair?”

“No, why?”

“The bastard shot the cat for no reason,” Lynn said. “He killed the poor thing!”

“Probably to intimidate you.”

“Well, it worked. The guy’s a narcissistic sociopath, loud and clear, that much I can tell you. He bragged about how many people he has killed.”

“Should I call a taxi?”

“No! I don’t want to wait around for a cab. We’ll take Carl’s Cherokee. I’ll get it back here in a day or so. But before we leave I want to put the study back together and get the poor cat out of the house. There shouldn’t be any evidence of a struggle. And what about the front door?”

“What do you mean?”

“How bad is it? Will it close?”

“It’s off one of its hinges and the jamb is split near the striker plate,” Michael said, “but I think we can get it to close.”

“It just has to look okay,” Lynn said.

“Wait a sec,” Michael added. For the first time he noticed Lynn’s lip laceration and the welt on her cheek. “He hurt you, the bastard. Let me see!”

Lynn waved him off. “It’s nothing. Let’s clean up the place and get the hell out of here!”

Wednesday, April 8, 12:37 A.M.

Michael and Lynn lost little time getting out of the house. Dealing with the study had been easy. They picked up the broken glass, doctored the bullet hole in the print so that it wasn’t visible except up close, and righted the frame on the wall. After a short discussion, they put Pep in a double trash bag with the idea of finding a garbage can or a Dumpster to get rid of it. Lynn was squeamish about the choice but couldn’t think of anything else in the press of time. The front door had been more of a challenge, but with Lynn pulling from the inside and Michael pushing from the outside, they got it back into its jamb and secure. It was literally wedged into place. Lynn had to use the back door to get out. They met up at the garage.

With Lynn feeling shaky from her ordeal, she was happy to take Michael up on his offer to drive. Several blocks away at a construction site, they found a convenient Dumpster. At the last minute the gun and the broken silencer went into the trash bag with the cat. They were relieved to have gotten rid of it all.

As soon as they started north, Lynn filled him in on what had happened. “The goon threatened to kill me,” she said to begin, trying to keep herself calm. Merely thinking about the episode got her heart racing all over again. She twisted in her seat to be able to look directly at Michael. The headlights of the oncoming traffic shining through the windshield played across his face. “Actually, he threatened to kill us both.”

Michael shot her a surprised look. “He said my name?”

“He didn’t say your name. To be exact he said, ‘You and your friend have pissed off a lot of people in high places.’”

“He actually said ‘people in high places’?”

“Those were his exact words. He said we, ‘will kill you and your friend if you don’t leave the investigation of Carl’s case to the hospital authorities and go back to being full-time medical students.’ Well, maybe those weren’t his exact words, but pretty damn close.”

“And he said ‘we,’ not ‘I,’ when he was talking about killing us?”

“Absolutely.”

“Terms like ‘people in high places’ and the pronoun ‘we’ make this sound more and more like a fucking major conspiracy.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Lynn said. “We’ve stumbled onto a hornets’ nest. And my tête-à-tête with the goon got worse. He threatened killing my mother and my sisters if we went to the police. He even knew their names and where they were. That takes resources and connections.”

“Did he include me at that point?”

“Yes! Your family, too!” Lynn shook her head in disbelief that this was all happening. She turned around and faced forward in her seat. They were nearing the commercial center of historic Charleston. Lynn looked at the revelers, surprised at how many there were despite the hour. She wished her life were so simple.

“So that’s why you didn’t want to call the police?”

“Partially. The other reason is that uncovering whatever this conspiracy is all about certainly is a hell of a lot more important than nabbing this single shit-ass psychopath. The idea of ‘people in high places’ being involved blows me away. Something major is in the works, and I think it concerns Sidereal Pharmaceuticals with its Russian connection, and you know how I feel about pharmaceutical companies.”

“I know you are not a fan,” Michael said.

“That’s putting it mildly, whereas I actually hate them,” Lynn said with enough venom to cause Michael to glance over at her.

“Brang it on, woman! Wow! You’re big-time wound up about the drug business. What’s the beef?”

“Where to start?” Lynn said. She sighed and looked back at Michael. “I know we agree on the basics from conversations we’ve had in the past, like the pharmaceutical industry’s hypocrisy. They want people to think their motivation is for the public good when they are, in fact, poster boys for capitalism run amok.”

“You mean how they justify their out-of-the-ballpark prices supposedly because of how much money they have to spend on research.”

“You got it!” Lynn said with disgust. “The reality is that they spend more money on advertising prescription drugs directly to the public than they spend on research. And that doesn’t even include the money they spend on lobbyists and politicians.”

“We agree on all that,” Michael said. “But I’m sensing a lot more emotion here on your part.”

“Did I ever tell you that my father died because he couldn’t afford the medication that would have kept him alive?”

“No, you haven’t,” Michael said, taken aback. Michael knew that Lynn, like him, was never completely open about her childhood, but, considering all their discussions about medical care, he was surprised she had never shared this information about her father’s death.

“That’s right!” Lynn snapped, staring out through the windshield. “To stay alive he had to take the drug for the rest of his life, and it costs almost a half million dollars a year. It’s obscene.”