details of the nightmare as well. He listened to her so intently, and his nod was sincere as she finished.
“Someone is going to kill my dad...and my mom, I think. But they don’t believe me. Everyone just thinks I’m a kid with crazy nightmares. Well, I am a kid with crazy nightmares, but I’m still so scared!”
“Let me talk to your parents,” he told her. “They’ll listen to me, I hope.”
Adam did talk to her parents. They were in another room, but she could catch parts of the conversation.
“I don’t think my family is in danger, but I guess the most worrisome case I’ve been on is the McCarron case,” her father told Adam Harrison. “And what I have strongly suggests something more far more nefarious than money-laundering and even his illegal drug running within his company. I have pictures of McCarron himself going into the hospital the night Dr. Vargas and Dr. Anderson died in the stairwell—and it sure as hell looks like he’s carrying a gun of some kind in a holster—his jacket moved while he was walking.”
“You think McCarron forced them down the stairs?” Adam asked.
“I don’t have any solid proof. Proving anything on this...well the prosecutors need more. I think McCarron and his pharmaceutical empire are guilty in many cases of ‘accidental’ or ‘natural’ death, but I don’t know if what I have is enough. I’ve kept gathering, but not everything has gone to the police yet. Obviously, I go through what I have and try to sort the wheat from the chaff. That’s what I do.”
“But you have pictures of McCarron entering the Anderson Building—thirty minutes before Richard Anderson and Dr. Vargas were found dead next to each other on the landing at the foot of the stairs,” Adam said.
“Anderson and Vargas were found were found by one of Dr. Vargas’s associates, Dr. Henry Lawrence, and Lawrence was so upset at finding his beloved mentor that he moved the body and tried every conceivable medical maneuver to bring him back, but...Anderson was gone.”
“Yes,” Adam said. “I’ve read all the reports. Richard Anderson’s was supposedly a natural death—a heart attack at the top of the stairwell, causing him to fall all the way down. That’s what the M.E. said. And Dr. Vargas supposedly tripped on the same steps and accidentally killed himself in his haste, trying to reach Anderson to help him—so the scene made it appear. It was ‘tragic,’ everyone said, so there wasn’t much of a police investigation.”
“Here’s why I’m involved. Sally Anderson didn’t believe it. She said she’d heard her husband arguing with someone a week before his death. All he would ever say to her was there was nothing she needed to worry about. She’d hired me at that point to investigate the situation. Supposedly, Anderson was a good guy; he gave a lot to philanthropies. He was a major supporter of organ transplant research and more. Anyway, I already had him under surveillance on the day of his death. Yes, I have pictures. But I don’t have pictures of McCarron doing anything to Anderson. We did have a video that somehow magically disappeared. One of my investigators took a video of McCarron going into Anderson’s office. The video was the best possible proof. To the best of my knowledge, after I turned it over, someone managed to delete it from the prosecutor’s files. Of course, the defense said it was gone as well,” her dad told Adam.
“You and I both know,’ Adam said, “that the prosecution has worked hard on this. Another doctor and a nurse are planning to appear as witnesses for the prosecution—to swear they heard McCarron threatening Dr. Vargas. But Vargas wasn’t afraid; he dismissed McCarron’s words later, saying he was just a bunch of bluster when he didn’t get his way.”
“What I’ve dug up,” said her father, “is that it seems McCarron doesn’t think his family get a fair shot—his brother died, in need of a kidney transplant. But he hadn’t come up on the list yet. And Vargas was the best of the best at kidney transplants. By all accounts, Vargas was a straight shooter—he always followed hospital criteria and couldn’t be bought. I think that McCarron had tried just that—to bribe both Anderson and Vargas—and when it didn’t work, well... I guess he thought that anyone could be bought. We just need a bit of physical proof. We know McCarron’s criminal activities go far beyond insider trading and money-laundering. The man rules through fear. He’s