Kenga’s condo was dark as Jennifer pulled up in front. She switched off the car ignition and fingered the keys for a minute, wondering if she really wanted to know what was on the dead woman’s computer. What if these crazy suspicions she had were true? What then? If Veritas was killing its employees to keep them quiet, what could she do about it? And if they were, wouldn’t that put her next in the line of fire?
Jennifer sucked in a couple of deep breaths. What were the chances her suspicions would play out? Marginal to nil. She found Kenga’s key and held it tight between her thumb and index finger. As she exited the car, she glanced furtively up and down the street. Parked cars, a couple walking hand-in-hand, lights on in most of the houses. Nothing sinister. She walked quickly to the front door and let herself in. The cat poked his head out, saw it was her, and came over to rub against her leg.
“Oh, you poor thing,” she said, crouching and gently stroking the animal.“Your master isn’t coming home. You’re a nice cat- someone will want you.”
She straightened and walked directly to the bedroom Kenga had converted to a home office. She approached the desk and stopped. The computer was not as she had left it. Every time she left the office or shut down her home computer, she centered the mouse on the pad and laid a pen across the mouse pad at a forty-five-degree angle. It was a quirk of hers, but now she was glad she had done it. The pen was not on the mouse pad but beside it, on the desk. Someone had been in the house since her last visit on Wednesday.
She turned her attention to Kenga’s house. Was the intruder still somewhere inside? The house suddenly seemed darker, more sinister. She snapped on lights as she moved from room to room, checking the closets and under beds. A broom shifted when she yanked the door to the utility closet open, and she let out a short scream. She replaced the broom, feeling silly. The back door to the house was locked, all windows were closed, and the basement, which was unfinished, was empty. She returned to the small office, still on edge but confident no one else was in the house.
She powered up the computer and searched for the file with the Triaxcion data in it. Nothing. It was gone. She closed her eyes and let herself drift. One reason Jennifer Pearce was such a valuable researcher was her ability to envision chemical reactions without using paper or a computer screen. It was like playing a game of chess in her mind, without moving any of the pieces. She scrolled down slowly, line by line, her mind computing the formula, adjusting the molecules as the drug would once inside a human body. Finally, her brain overloaded and refused to store any more information. She squeezed her eyelids even tighter and let herself drift.
Triaxcion targeted testosterone, of that she was sure. It prohibited the conversion of the male hormone to dihydrotestosterone, enlarging the hair follicles in the subcutaneous layer of skin. This in turn kept the hair follicle intact and producing new growth. But, in her opinion, the chemical reaction inside the body would not be limited to the conversion process. This process involved the liver, as what she was looking at required the medicine to be broken down by liver enzymes. Furthermore, the dihydrotestosterone, once metabolized, immediately bound to albumin. But what would happen to the small percentage of DHT left unbound and wandering about the body? She wasn’t sure.
She was preparing to sign off when she remembered the file she had found embedded in the Triaxcion file. What was the name? She used her memory to replay opening the file. Slowly, the letters came into focus and she saw the name. Gordon Buchanan, Butte, Montana. She signed on to the Internet and keyed in a search for Butte Montana Buchanan. There were thousands of hits, but only one found all three keywords. There was an article in the Montana Standard with the name Buchanan, and she went to the paper’s Web site and opened it.
BUTTE-Tragedy struck the Twin Pines Sawmill on April 20, 2005, when Billy Buchanan died of injuries incurred while cutting a firebreak with a chain saw. According to witnesses, Buchanan was cutting a stump when the saw kicked back and sliced into his leg. Medically trained mill staff were on the scene and attended to Buchanan, but were unable to stop the bleeding. A helicopter, only minutes from the gorge where the accident occurred, rushed Buchanan to the hospital but he died en route.
The victim’s brother, Gordon Buchanan, is the owner of Twin Pines, and one of the primary employers in the Butte area. He was unavailable for comment.
The article went on to give some history on both brothers and their contributions to the local economy. Both men were apparently highly respected by everyone they interviewed. Gordon was painted as a highly successful businessman with strong ties to the community through his philanthropic gestures. Jennifer sent the page to Kenga’s printer and sat back in the chair.
From all appearances, someone had signed on to Kenga’s computer within the last twenty-four hours. But that was highly improbable. Kenga’s family was in Transylvania, and none of the other staff at Veritas had a key to her house-at least none that Jennifer knew about. And surely Kenga would have mentioned it if she had given another person a key. Two people both showing up at the same time and neither knowing the other had a key would be heart attack material. But considering that the Triaxcion file was missing, it didn’t take her Ph.D. to figure out who had been in the house.
Someone from Veritas.
But why? What in that file was so damaging to Veritas that they would break in and remove it from Kenga’s computer? Triaxcion was an FDA-approved drug, which meant the medication had passed Phase III trials and met regulatory standards. The chemical formula, which Veritas kept under lock and key, was patented and couldn’t be replicated by any of the generics. So even if another company managed to steal the formula, they couldn’t bring it to market without making substantial changes or fighting Veritas in a court of law. No, that angle didn’t make any sense.
She lifted the papers off the printer and reread the article on Billy Buchanan’s death. What was the connection? Had Triaxcion somehow contributed to Buchanan’s death? And how did Kenga figure into all this? She wasn’t involved with Triaxcion other than as an employee of the company manufacturing it. Which meant that Kenga would have access to the Veritas mainframe. And with a little ingenuity, she could probably download everything Veritas had on Triaxcion and pass it along to a third party.
Gordon Buchanan.
She glanced again at the address. Butte, Montana. If she remembered her geography classes, Montana was one of the northern states, tucked up against Canada. Maybe visiting Gordon Buchanan was the thing to do. If there was a connection between Kenga and Buchanan, maybe she could figure out what, if anything, was going on.
Crazy thinking again. She shook her head at the total absurdity of it all. Her imagination was taking over, controlling her cognitive thoughts. She was wide awake and lucid, but thinking of taking a cross-country flight to talk to a man who’d probably look at her like she had two heads. Gordon Buchanan had probably never heard of Veritas or Triaxcion. He was a sawmill owner whose brother had recently died in a tragic accident. There was nothing to connect Gordon Buchanan to Veritas.
Except the fact that Buchanan’s name had shown up on Kenga’s home computer. How was that possible? It was highly unlikely that Kenga had just picked a name at random and stored it in a secure file. Gordon Buchanan’s name was stored on her system for a reason. And now Kenga was dead, killed when her driver missed a curve on a windy road through the St. Lucia rain forest. And the driver had survived. How did that happen? The driver would have been at the wheel, struggling to regain control of his vehicle. If he had enough time to jump out of the car, he had enough time to react to the curve and keep from crashing into the ravine. No, something was wrong. When a car went over a cliff, everyone went over, not just the passenger. And add in that this passenger had a classified chemical process worth hundreds of millions of dollars to her employer on her computer, and the waters were getting very murky indeed.
Jennifer stared at the mouse and the pen. Someone had visited Kenga’s house inside the last twenty-four hours and removed a solitary file from her computer. As much as she kept telling herself that this was simply her imagination, the evidence was pointing a different direction. It was pointing to Veritas. And right now, the way to find out if there was any basis to this insane line of thinking was to meet with Gordon Buchanan.
As she switched off the computer and replaced the mouse and pen on the pad, she made a decision. This weekend was open-nothing pressing at the office, no friends to visit.
She was going to Butte.