Adverse Events, page 9
“Get me printouts of those messages, and give Dr. Zhou a copy of that first data file Gibson sent,” he told Conner, standing up. “Let’s see if she can tell us what went wrong.”
An hour later, Johnson sat across from Aaron Newhouse and Bruce Castleman in one of the police station’s interrogation rooms. He slid the printouts across the table and watched as Newhouse scanned the pages. He took off his glasses and rubbed his hand over his face.
“So, did she?”
Newhouse looked tired. His defiance from the day before had melted into something closer to resignation.
“Did she what, detective?”
“Rat you out to the FDA.”
Newhouse snorted. “No, obviously not.”
“And why is that?”
Castleman held up his hand. “You don’t have to answer that.”
Johnson fixed his eyes on Newhouse’s face. The doctor stared back through narrowed lids. It looked like he was trying to decide whether to take his lawyer’s hint to keep his mouth shut.
“Because I persuaded her not to,” he said, his voice flat, matter-of-fact.
The hair at the back of Johnson’s neck stood on end. Was that a confession?
“Aaron, as your lawyer, I’m advising you not to say anything else,” Castleman said. Clearly, he thought it sounded like a confession, too.
“I know what you’re thinking, detective,” Newhouse said with a scornful glance at his attorney. “But I didn’t do anything to Emily. We talked. That’s all. I persuaded her she had as much to lose as I did and that our best bet was to figure out what went wrong and fix it.”
“Seems like you already tried that, and it didn’t work.”
“It will work!” Newhouse banged a clenched fist against the tabletop. “We just need more time. We will figure this out.”
“We who?”
Newhouse glared at him. “I will figure it out.”
“Not from in here, you won’t,” Johnson said, crossing his arms and leaning over his elbows on the table. “What happened to Emily Gibson?”
“I told you I didn’t do anything to her.” A hard edge of anger punctuated his words. “I have no idea what happened to her.”
“But it sure was convenient for her to go missing, just before she could have done the most damage to your pet project.”
Newhouse flushed crimson and jumped to his feet, chest heaving. Johnson eyed him warily and eased out of his chair, keeping his hand on its back as he rose to his feet. If Newhouse charged him, he would use it like a lion tamer. Castleman just gaped at his client, too surprised to intervene.
“This is not some pet project!” Newhouse screeched. “This is my life’s work. And I will not let it fail!”
The air in the small room crackled with intensity. It reminded Johnson of being outside in a thunderstorm, just before lightning ripped open the sky. Castleman finally broke the silence.
“Aaron, please, sit down.” He patted Newhouse’s chair as if he were talking to a child. “This isn’t helping.”
Newhouse took several ragged breaths as he struggled to wrestle himself under control. He passed his hand over his face again. Johnson eyed him warily until he slowly lowered himself back into his chair.
“I didn’t do anything to Emily Gibson, detective. Her absence hurts me more than anyone else.”
Except maybe Emily, Johnson thought.
He spent the next hour in the chief’s office.
“It’s not enough to charge him with murder,” Lugar said after they’d reviewed all the evidence. “If she’d gone missing from her apartment, maybe. But the DA will never be able to make a case for murder when there’s still strong evidence that she drowned. I know the timing is suspicious as hell. But I’ve seen stranger coincidences.”
Johnson sat back in his chair and laced his fingers together behind his head. He blew out a breath in frustration. He knew Lugar was right. But he wanted Newhouse to pay for what he’d done to Kate and what he’d mostly likely done to his researcher, even if they couldn’t prove it.
“Are the techs done with the computers?” Lugar asked.
“They’re still working on them. I’m going to have them review Emily Gibson’s computer again, too, now that we know there may be another set of emails to look for.”
Lugar nodded.
“What did the doc who reviewed the data say?”
“She confirmed the vaccine doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. I didn’t ask her to explain the science behind what went wrong. Since Newhouse admitted there was a problem, I didn’t think we needed the details.”
“Humph. I probably wouldn’t understand it even if you had. We’ll let the folks at UTMB explain all that. No doubt they’re conferring with their lawyers and their media consultants as we speak.”
Johnson recalled the hard set of Dr. Zhou’s mouth when he told her what they’d found. If all the hospital administrators were half as disgusted as she looked, Aaron Newhouse needn’t expect any support from his former colleagues. He’d dragged the hospital’s name through the mud, a stain that would dirty everyone associated with the institution. Newhouse’s scandal was personal for all of them.
“Speaking of the media…” Johnson let his words trail off to give his boss a chance to follow his train of thought.
Lugar raised an eyebrow.
“Kate Bennett had this information until Newhouse attacked her and stole it. Seems only fair to give her an exclusive on the story.”
“That seems like playing favorites to me.”
“Come on! She got a concussion chasing down this information. I think she earned it.”
Lugar shook his head. “I’m pretty sure she brought that whole thing on herself. But I’m happy to curry a little favor with the local press.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll start putting together a news conference for tomorrow morning.”
He rose to go but only made it halfway to the door when Lugar called him back.
“Reporters can be allies, but they’re not our friends. Don’t lose sight of that.”
“Yes, sir.”
With the chief’s caution still ringing in his ears, Johnson walked down the hall to his office. He waited until he’d shut the door behind him to pull his cellphone out of his pocket. He stared at Kate’s name on his favorites list. Lugar would probably tell him to erase it. But that wouldn’t do any good. He had the number memorized.
He touched her name lightly with his finger and lifted the phone to his ear.
“How’s my favorite reporter?”
Vaccine hoax
Developer admits Ebola shot a failure after police find evidence of doctored data | By Kate Bennett
The Ebola vaccine developed by Dr. Aaron Newhouse is a fraud, police revealed Friday. Investigators looking for clues about Newhouse’s missing researcher found evidence of the fraud on computers seized from his lab at the University of Texas Medical Branch.
Hospital administrators confirmed the discovery.
“We are profoundly shocked and disappointed,” UTMB President Stephen Phillips told the Gazette late Friday. “We have no idea how this happened, but we are cooperating with the police in their investigation.”
Researcher Emily Gibson disappeared late Sunday. Police initially thought she’d drowned during a late-night swim on the West End. But her boyfriend found her apartment ransacked on Monday, leading to suspicions of foul play.
Det. Peter Johnson is leading the investigation into Gibson’s disappearance.
“We still don’t have any evidence that points to what might have happened to Miss Gibson,” Johnson said. “But we are exploring every possibility, including her connection to the vaccine.”
Emails discovered on Newhouse’s personal laptop showed Gibson discovered a problem with the vaccine and alerted her boss about six weeks ago, Johnson said. When they couldn’t quickly figure out the problem, Gibson urged Newhouse to make the information public. Newhouse refused.
The doctor’s attorney, Bruce Castleman, insisted his client is innocent of any involvement in Gibson’s disappearance.
“He is as mystified as everyone else, and just as disappointed,” Castleman said. “Dr. Newhouse believes the problem with the vaccine can be fixed. That would be much easier with Emily Gibson’s help than without it.”
Castleman declined to comment further on problems with the vaccine, although he said Newhouse sincerely believes the vaccine will eventually produce the long-term benefits he initially promised.
“It’s absurd to think he would try to pull one over on the entire medical community,” Castleman said. “As soon as the FDA began looking at the data, they would have discovered something was wrong. My client simply hoped he could fix the problem himself before anyone else found out. Obviously, in hindsight, that was a grave error of judgment. But that doesn’t make him guilty of anything worse.”
Officials with the FDA could not be reached for comment.
Newhouse remains jailed on assault charges stemming from an unrelated incident.
Chapter 9
After he’d talked to Kate on Friday night, Johnson sent the tech team home for a good night’s rest. Now that they had a thread to pull, he wanted them all at full strength the next morning. The adrenaline high he’d been riding since Kate called him from Newhouse’s office had finally run out. He’d fallen into bed almost as soon as he got home and slept for a dreamless 10 hours.
Wispy clouds clung to the horizon as he drove up Seawall Boulevard the next morning. The damp, predawn chill rolled through his open window, making him shiver. He didn’t normally take the long way to the station, but today he needed a little extra calm before walking into the media storm.
His phone started buzzing shortly before 6 a.m. with numbers from New York, Washington, Atlanta, and Houston. It seemed like every reporter in the country wanted to pump him for information on the Newhouse case. He’d texted them all the same reply: “News conference at 10 a.m.”
He counted five satellite trucks in front of the station as he pulled into the back parking lot. Inside, the building was nearly deserted. But from the conference room where they’d set up the computers seized Thursday, Johnson could hear a faint humming. It took him a few moments, standing in the doorway, to locate the source. In the far corner of the room, Dylan Conner sat hunched over a laptop. He was humming along to whatever he was streaming through his earbuds. Johnson chuckled. As he watched, Conner broke into a rousing chorus, jumping up and clutching an invisible microphone to his lips and pointing at a crowd only he could see. He ended the song with a flourish, hands raised to accept the adoration of his imaginary fans.
Johnson clapped loud enough to break through the young officer’s soundtrack. Conner’s cheeks turned bright pink, but he grinned sheepishly.
“Sorry, boss,” he said, pulling out one earbud. “I got a little carried away.”
“Looked like a rousing performance,” Johnson said with a laugh. “You’ll have to invite me to your next show. What are you doing here so early?”
“Well, I couldn’t stop thinking about that email account we found on Newhouse’s computer. And that got me thinking about Emily Gibson. We didn’t look for secret accounts when we went over her computer before. But if he had a private way to communicate, what are the odds she did, too? So I thought I’d get a jump on the search.”
“Good man. Let me know if you find anything.” Conner could be a little rough around the edges, but what he lacked in experience, he made up for with enthusiasm. Johnson smiled as he walked the rest of the way to his office, humming the chorus to Conner’s song.
He spent the next hour going over his notes and typing up his statement. The chief wanted to review it before the news conference. He was almost done when his phone buzzed with a text message.
Can I bring you a coffee? You’re probably going to need a little extra caffeine today!
He smiled, first at her unusual thoughtfulness and then at what Sam Lugar would say if he caught him accepting gifts from an “ally” he was supposed to keep at arm’s length.
Thanks, but I’ll be tied up in meetings until the presser. You’ll be there?
Not even gonna dignify that ridiculous question with an answer. I’ll be the one heckling from the front row.
Johnson laughed. He could picture her making faces at him, trying to break his concentration.
“Something funny, detective?”
Johnson jumped as Sam Lugar’s stern bass boomed from the doorway.
“Nothing in particular, sir. I’m almost done with this statement. I’ll bring it down to you in five minutes.”
“I’ve already had half a dozen calls from UTMB this morning. President Phillips will be here, along with the head of the epidemiology department. I told them we’d let them have their say after you’re done talking about the investigation.”
“Are they taking questions?”
“I told them I thought they should, unless they want to spend the rest of the day taking follow-up calls.”
Johnson nodded.
“Five minutes,” Lugar said, holding out his hand with his fingers spread wide as he walked out the door.
Three minutes later, Johnson hit print and headed down the hall to pick up the copies on his way to Lugar’s office. He was scanning the pages as he emerged from the workroom and almost collided with Dylan Conner. The pink that had tinged his cheeks when Johnson caught him singing had spread over his entire face. His wide bright eyes and parted lips made him look like a little boy who’s just discovered a hidden stash of Christmas presents.
“What is it, Conner?”
“You won’t believe it,” he said, excitement making him a little breathless. “You just have to see it.”
Johnson’s heart jolted as though he’d taken Kate up on her coffee offer and downed three shots of espresso in one gulp. He followed Conner back to the conference room. The younger officer gestured for Johnson to take the chair in front of Emily Gibson’s laptop. Conner rolled another one over from a neighboring table and perched on the edge.
“So, I was looking for a hidden email account, and I was digging through her cached files. Most people think you can erase them, but you have to try pretty hard to delete all traces.”
“Conner!” Johnson barked, anticipation sparking an eruption of frustration. “I’m supposed to be in the chief’s office right now. Give me the history later. What did you find?”
Conner pursed his lips in disappointment but reached around to tap on the laptop’s track pad. A browser window swept into view.
“Chat messages between Newhouse and Gibson. He threatened her, boss. Said if she told anyone about what she’d discovered about the vaccine, he would kill her.”
For a moment, the only thing Johnson could hear was the blood whooshing through his ears. He leaned over the keyboard and clicked on a thread that started about two weeks before Gibson disappeared.
EG: We can’t keep this up. They’re going to figure out something’s wrong.
AN: We’ll solve the problem before then.
EG: We won’t. We need more time.
AN: We can stall.
EG: I won’t keep lying for you. It’s totally unnecessary. These kinds of setbacks happen all the time. Most people just admit it and go back to the drawing board.
AN: I’m not going to admit defeat.
EG: If you keep trying to hide this, it will blow up in your face.
AN: If you say anything, it will blow up more than your face.
The messages stopped for about a week and then picked back up just a few days before the announcement about the FDA trial approval.
AN: I’ve been watching you cozy up to the team from the FDA. If you know what’s good for you, keep your mouth shut.
EG: What’s that supposed to mean?
AN: I will not let you ruin everything I’ve worked so hard to build.
EG: I’ve worked hard on this, too. And I will not have my career ruined by your pride.
AN: You will regret it if you say anything. I’m not joking. If you value your life, you’ll keep this to yourself.
EG: Is that a threat?
AN: I promise you I will not let you do this to me. Save your career. Save your life. Keep your mouth shut.
A few days after that, Emily Gibson disappeared.
All the pieces to the puzzle that had been milling around in Johnson’s mind for days clicked into place. He looked up at Conner with a grim satisfaction.
“Good job with this. You may have just figured out what happened to Emily Gibson.”
Kate frowned as she pulled her phone out of her back pocket for a third time to check the clock. The news conference should have started ten minutes ago. The annoyed buzzing of the other reporters filled the room. They assumed Johnson kept them waiting because he didn’t respect their time. But punctuality was part of his law-loving nature. He wouldn’t be late unless he had a reason.
She pulled her pen out of the spiral at the top of her notebook and began filling the top sheet with swirling doodles while her mind wandered through the possibilities. Maybe the UTMB administrators were still trying to perfect their statement. Or maybe the IT team had found new evidence. She hadn’t expected to learn anything new today, since Johnson had given her the exclusive the night before. But maybe today was about to get a lot more interesting than she expected.
“Hey, Bennett!” one of the TV reporters called from across the room. “You seem to have a direct line to the detective working this case. Could you give him a call and tell him to hurry it up?”
He grinned as a snicker rippled over the crowd.
“Maybe he’s giving you time to get your head out of your—” Kate cut her insult short when the door at the far end of the room swung open and the media liaison for the District Attorney’s office strode to the microphone.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, folks,” she said. “We’ve had an unexpected development in the case this morning. I can’t tell you anything more than that at the moment. But I do apologize for the delay. And if you stick around, I think I can guarantee it will be worth your while.”
