Come Home: a novel Part 31

"I can explain it all, but you have to meet me. Tell me where and when, tomorrow."

"I can't. I have work."

"I'll meet you there. How about noon, for lunch?"

"No, the only time I'm free is in the morning. I'll message you a place to meet me, on Facebook." Nina tensed as Martin got closer, panting and puffing, his T-shirt dark with perspiration. "Go now. I'll tell Martin I cried because I twisted my ankle."

"Wait, what time in the morning should I meet you?"

"Ten o'clock. I'll say I have a doctor's appointment."

You do, Jill thought, but didn't say.

It was until she was back in the car that she remembered: Rahul.

Chapter Forty-eight.

A thunderstorm broke on the way home, the rain pounding on the roof of the car, and Jill struggled to hear on the cell phone. "Padma, are you there?"

"Yes, h.e.l.lo?"

"I'm so sorry, but I have to cancel our appointment tomorrow morning." Jill cringed. She hated doctors who canceled, and now she was one. "I'm so sorry. Can you meet me later in the day? How about noon tomorrow?"

"I can do that."

"Good, let's make it then. I'll have the bloodwork. How is Rahul?" Jill switched lanes, keeping an eye on the rearview. Behind her was a FedEx truck, and the traffic was heavy, moving fast despite the fact that visibility was poor, the sky prematurely dark, and everything grayed out with rain.

"About the same. He's sleeping now."

"Fever?"

"Yes, but low."

"Eating and drinking?"

"Still not so great."

Jill made a mental note. "Okay, hang in. See you at noon. Again, my apologies."

"Good-bye," Padma said, hanging up.

Jill fed the car gas and checked the rearview, but the truck behind her had moved, showing a gray sedan. She pressed END, then M, to call and check on Megan, who would be home from practice by now, probably foraging in the refrigerator. Jill kept her eye on the road while the call connected, then said, "Hi, honey!"

"Hey, Mom, I was just about to call you."

"What's up?"

"I'm not home, I'm at Courtney's. We have to do our scene tomorrow, and we're almost ready, but I need to stay over one more night."

Jill groaned. "No. Megan, it's too much. It's an imposition on Carol."

"I knew you'd say that, and she's right here. She wants to talk to you."

"Good, put her on." Jill heard a shuffling on the other end of the line. "Carol, that you? Don't you need a break?"

"No, not at all." Carol sounded bright and cheery. "How have you been?"

"Fine, busy, and thanks for letting my daughter take up residence."

"Not at all. She's a dream, you know that. Let her stay here tonight. They're working so hard, you'd be proud of them, making costumes and all."

Jill felt so guilty. "But you're even doing the driving."

"You've done your share, plenty of times before. Don't worry about a thing, I swear. I'll be out of town next week, and you can be the chauffeur then."

"Okay, thanks." Jill felt grateful. "You're a saint."

"Aren't we all? Take care, and here's Megan. See you." There was a pause, and Megan came back on the line. "Okay, Mom?"

"Okay, honey. Don't forget to thank her for everything, and get some sleep tonight, okay?"

"I will. Love you."

"Love you and miss you, too. Bye-bye." Jill pressed END and set the phone aside, spotting the gray sedan, still behind her. Its driver was a shadow of a man, and the sedan stayed to her left, on her b.u.mper.

She accelerated, and a minute later, so did he. She didn't like to drive fast when it was raining, so she decelerated. So did he. She switched to the slow lane and let her speed decrease to fifty miles an hour. So did he, which set her heart thudding. She hit the gas and picked up her phone, in case she had to call 911.

Suddenly a sign came up for the service area, and the gray sedan split off, taking the ramp leaving the highway. Still, Jill didn't let off the gas, her hand holding the phone, and she sped all the way home in the storm.

Chapter Forty-nine.

It was dark by the time Jill got home, and she let Beef out in the backyard and lingered at the door. She scanned the privacy fence for anything suspicious, but there was nothing, and Beef was acting normal, burying his muzzle in the wet gra.s.s. Mist wreathed the air, which smelled musty and thick, and steam curled from the pool. It had stormed here, too, leaving the night sky oddly bright in patches, with particles of light hidden in the dark clouds, like vermiculate in potting soil.

Jill stood in the doorway, and her silhouette stretched across the lawn, a human taffy pulled out of shape, taut enough to be dangerously brittle. Sam hadn't called her, and she thought about calling him, but she still couldn't tell him what he wanted to hear. Her head was swimming since her meeting with Nina. Beef trotted out of the gloom, his movement fluid as a daisy-cutter, even at his age. Jill opened her hand at her side, and he slipped his head under her palm, which was their secret routine. His skull felt furry and damp, and she scratched behind his ears, where there was a knot.

Suddenly her phone started to ring, and she reached for her pocket and slid out her new BlackBerry. The screen showed KATIE FEEHAN, and Jill picked up. "Hi, girl."

"What happened with Nina?" Katie asked, nervous. "Are you okay? Why didn't you call?"

"I had to talk to a patient, and the rain was bad all the way home, so I stayed off the phone." Jill was about to start the story about Nina when the boys started yelling on the other end of the line, at Katie's house. "What's going on over there?"

"Fight Club at the Feehans'. The two little ones are overtired, and they both want to be on the computer at the same time. It's not pretty."

"Uh-oh." Jill remembered when her house was full of girls, fighting over eye makeup and borrowed sweaters. She never thought she'd miss those days, but she did.

"G.o.d, these kids," Katie moaned, exasperated. The background noise surged, and the boys yelled louder. "I'm trying to let them work it out themselves. How long does sibling rivalry last? Oh, right."

Jill smiled. "Katie, if it's a bad time, I can call back."

"No, I'm dying to hear, and I got a Facebook message from Nina, saying to meet her at the Starbucks on 60 Weehawk Avenue at ten o'clock tomorrow. I'll email it to you, so you have the address. Hold on, Jill. Boys, take turns!" Katie covered the receiver, m.u.f.fling her voice. "Jamie, let him use it, then you can get back on. Log out. Log out right now, okay, honey?"

"You have your hands full."

"Tell me about it. They use the same computer, so one has to log out before the other gets on, but Tommy isn't being patient. Hold on a minute." Katie covered the receiver again. "Tommy, give him a second. You know he's not that good with the mouse yet."

Jill imagined the two tow-headed Feehan boys, pushing each other out of the way, in front of the kitchen computer. She knew the log-in, log-out system because they used it at work, for the Epic program. The docs and nurses shared the computers in the examining rooms, and each had his own user account, with a separate pa.s.sword. Jill's was Megan0112, because January 12 was Megan's birthday.

"Hold on, Jill. Tommy, he's logging out, right now. Tommy, he's littler than you are!"

Jill's mind raced ahead. She didn't know why she hadn't thought of it, earlier. She had searched William's laptop before, and it had been clean, suspiciously so. Back then, she'd thought he had only one ident.i.ty, but now she knew he had another ident.i.ty. She wondered if there was also a user account for Neil Straub, set up in the same laptop.

"Okay, Jill, I'm back. Whew! I'd buy each kid a computer, but a week later, they'll be obsolete. I mean the computers, not the kids."

"Let me ask you something." Jill felt newly energized. "Do you have different user accounts in that computer, one for each boy?"

"Yes, three for the kids, plus Mike and I each have an account. So we have five user accounts."

"In the same computer?"

"Yes. Mike also has his own laptop for work, but I use the kitchen computer all the time, like for Facebook. You saw. It was logged in for my account, and it has all my settings."

Jill didn't care about the settings. "When the computer reboots, does it show all the user names? And then you choose yours and log in as yourself?"

"Yes, sure."

"Ours don't do that, at work. The screen is blank, and we log in with a pa.s.sword."

"It depends on the software, I'm sure. The interface. They all work the same way, it's just a question of what you're shown on the screen at start-up."

"I see, so it's just programmed differently." Jill had rebooted William's laptop when she got it home from Abby's, but hadn't seen any choices of user accounts. "Katie, who set up those user accounts for you?"

"I did."

"You?"

"Sure, it's easy. I'm the administrator. Who better?"

Jill smiled, with admiration. Never underestimate the power of a mother. "Let me ask you this. Could you hide those user accounts, do you think?"

"You mean so they wouldn't show up on the start-up screen? Sure, if I wanted to. I could probably set it to show only a few of the names, or just the boys."

"And if you can hide them, can you find them?"

"Sure. Why?"

"I'm thinking of William's laptop. If he had a secret ident.i.ty in life, couldn't he also have one on his laptop?"

"He could," Katie answered, catching on. "If he has a secret user account as Neil Straub, I can tell you how to find it on his laptop."

"Really?"

Katie snorted. "Did you forget, I'm the Queen of Farmville?"

Half an hour later, Beef curled up on his bed, and Jill was sitting down at the kitchen island in front of William's laptop, next to a cup of hot coffee and a print out of Katie's instructions. She got busy, and after one more phone call to the Queen of Farmville, Jill was ready to reboot the laptop and see if William had a second user account, for Neil Straub.

She turned off the computer, hit RESTART, and waited, and the screen came to life, first with the Microsoft logo, then a dizzying array of spinning numbers, like a slot machine. They finally stopped, the screensaver went black, and the screen read, Pa.s.sWORD.

Jill felt a frisson of excitement, as well as fear. She remembered that all of William's pa.s.swords were a combination of exotic cars and his birthday, because he always said he wanted an exotic for his birthday. His go-to shopping pa.s.sword was P9110701, for a Porsche 911 and his July 1 birthday, so she plugged that in. The message came up, Pa.s.sWORD INVALID. Jill knew he used JAGXKE0701 for their joint bank account, so she plugged that in, but the message came up, Pa.s.sWORD INVALID, again. Next she tried MB6000701, for the top-of-the-line Mercedes-Benz he coveted, but it came up Pa.s.sWORD INVALID, too.

Then she remembered the exotic that he always called his holy grail, and what he'd always said about the car: I want to be buried in an Aston Martin DB9.

Jill typed in AMDB90701 and hit ENTER. Instantly, the screen changed to the default screensaver, an idyllic sky and gra.s.sy hill, Microsoft heaven. Her heart beat faster as she moved the mouse, clicked, and read the screen: WELCOME, NEIL!.

Chapter Fifty.

Jill clicked on the list of William's Microsoft Word files, and the first two were RESEARCH and NOTES, created the same date, September 9, three years ago. She clicked RESEARCH and almost fell off her chair. The file contained hundreds of files, each with a drug name, in alphabetical order: Abata, Akasin, Aormil, Aritil, Aresta, Aromytec, all the way to Zertax. She recognized many of the drugs, and they all treated different maladies: headaches, hypertension, gout, bipolar depression, skin cancer, psoriasis, nausea, aplastic anemia. There was no logical link between them that she could see.

She clicked on the first file, for Abata, which she knew treated asthma in children. The subfile was a PDF of the drug circular, with prescribing information for physicians and a description: "Abata is a hydrochloride salt of quinapril, the ethyl ester of a non-sulfhydryl..." She looked through the rest of the Abata file. One subfile was labeled PRESS, and she clicked on it, revealing a list of newspapers and blogs, next to dates and links. She clicked on the first link and it opened to an article in The Oregonian, dated June 3, some eight years ago: Moise Yakowicz, 6, of Portland, almost died today at the Young Pioneers picnic, as a result of anaphylactic shock, which his parents claim was attributed to Abata. The drug, manufactured by Pharmcen ...

Jill thought a minute. Abata was made by Pharmcen, where Nina worked. She didn't know if it was coincidence, but it didn't feel like one. She navigated out of the article and clicked the next, which was from the Bucks County Courier Post, in Pennsylvania: Today was a tragic day for the family of Paulina Ma, 10, whose memorial service was held at Kaybock's Funeral Home, in the driving rain. Ma died last week, the result of anaphylactic shock that her mother claims was caused by Abata, a drug marketed by Pharmcen ...

Jill went to the next drug file, Akasin, and it followed the same pattern: the prescribing information for physicians, then articles about the drug and its side effects, from sources all over the Internet. She clicked the next three, for Aormil, Aritil, and Aresta, and discovered a common thread. All five drugs were manufactured by Pharmcen.

She minimized the Word doc.u.ment, went to the web, and clicked BOOKMARKS. The list stretched the length of the screen, again, it was entirely drug names, starting with Abata. It looked as if William was making himself an expert in the adverse side effects of Pharmcen drugs, and she put that together with the fact that he was in a relationship with Nina, who worked in Pharmacovigilance at Pharmcen, a department that collected complaints about the adverse side effects of Pharmcen drugs.

Jill sensed she was getting close to the bottom of his scheme. Drug manufacturers had a legal duty to collect complaints about the adverse reactions of their drugs and report them to the FDA if the reactions were serious, life-threatening, or unexpected. The complaints could come from anybody, most came from doctors. Pembey Family probably over-reported because of Sheryl and her lawsuit phobia, and Jill's old pediatric group was more typical, in that they didn't report as often. They couldn't always be sure if the drug had caused the adverse reaction, and it took time to fill out the paperwork, even electronically.

Jill logged out of the Internet and back to START, looking for an email server. She spotted the email account and opened to the Inbox, only to discover the oddest emails ever. The list of senders and recipients were all the same: Neil Straub, and the subject lines were all drug names. It was easy to see what was happening; William had been emailing himself about various drugs. Jill scanned the dates the emails were received, and the email stopped the day before William died, on Monday, and she opened it.

The subject line was Memoril, and she knew she'd heard about that drug somewhere, then she remembered. It had been in the waiting room at work, when she'd run into Elaine Fitzmartin and her mother, Mary.