Albert Rousseau clicked on an icon resembling a laboratory beaker and sixteen file folders appeared on his computer monitor. He moved the cursor to one titled “MM-1076” and clicked on it. A series of chemical formulae unraveled on the screen. He scrolled through the first ten pages, right-clicked on the mouse, and sent the entire file to a Sony Micro Vault, a portable storage unit plugged into the USB port. The transfer took a few milliseconds. He slipped the drive out of the port and secured it in his front pocket. Then he deleted the file on his computer, switched off the lights in his office, and locked the door.
It was still early to be leaving the office, and the elevators were almost empty. He nodded to a couple of people he vaguely knew, exited the building, and made his way to his assigned parking spot. His freshly washed Ford Mustang gleamed in the evening light. A quick twist of the key in the ignition and he was moving.
Rousseau lightly touched his shirt pocket, reassuring himself that the evidence was still there. He had a very secure location for it at his house in his safe. No one knew about it. He’d had a contractor come in and build the safe into a place that no one would think to look. He grinned, crooked teeth showing through thin, pale lips. What a bunch of dumbasses. He had enough proof to sink the company if they didn’t play ball with him and cough up some money.
Serious money.
Not a million. Not two or three, but ten or twenty. He hadn’t decided yet. But they were going to pay. And when they did, he’d be living life large in the Caribbean or Europe. He ran his hands over his cheek, feeling the acne he’d lived with all his life. That would be gone, and his teeth would be straight and capped. He’d have all the women he’d always dreamed of. Money could perform miracles-he’d be living proof of that.
He touched the storage device again like it was a winning lottery ticket. But unlike sheer luck in a lottery, he’d worked for this. He’d noticed small things in the clinical trials for Triax-cion, errors that somehow had been overlooked by the other researchers and eventually by the FDA. He suspected someone inside the Food and Drug Administration was on the take, as the problems with the drug were too serious to be swept under some convenient carpet. No matter, he still had enough to fry the company’s top management-enough to lever a few million from the corporate coffers, then head overseas.
He pulled up in front of his town house on Cooley Avenue, a red brick building with black trim around the door and windows, and switched off the ignition. One week more and he’d be gone. No more lonely nights watching the Devils play hockey or reruns of Seinfeld on television. He had definitive proof that Triaxcion was dangerous, that it prohibited coagulants in human blood from bonding. And by searching the Internet with key words, he had clippings from six newspapers with stories of people with no history of hemophilia bleeding to death. Six deaths. And one of them, that Buchanan guy in Butte, Montana, had died just last week.
Perfect.
Christ, he was the keeper of the key to the Holy Grail of pharmaceutical lawsuits.
He grinned again as he slid out of the Mustang and slammed
the driver’s door. Maybe he’d hit them up for twenty-five million. Recent memories are always the sharpest, and that Buchanan fellow had died at just the right time.
Such luck.