novel will be published next year. I’ll be dealing with that and his backlist for years.”
“I get that. But no one appointed you as his private detective.”
“True, and it was a mistake to hire that firm in D.C. and get so involved.”
“But it’s done. So what’s next?”
“We’re going to D.C.”
11.
They left the Lowell in a cab headed for Penn Station, not LaGuardia. Their two seats on the flight would go unoccupied. Instead, they took the Acela Express and three hours later rolled into Washington’s Union Station where they hopped in a cab for the long haul to Dulles. Near the airport, they walked into the unmarked building just after 1:00 p.m. and Lindsey Wheat was waiting. Elaine Shelby joined them and they gathered in a conference room and kept things polite. Less than three weeks earlier, Bruce had stormed out of the building with Nick in tow.
Bruce handed over a document and said, “This is your termination letter, which I did not sign.”
“Excellent,” Lindsey said with a generous smile. “Nice to keep you as a client.”
“Maybe. We need some help, and of course you have been paid in full.”
“Indeed we have.”
“One rather significant condition. You do not ‘infiltrate’ or organize any other scheme to collect information without first notifying me. This is not negotiable.”
Lindsey looked at Elaine, then looked at Bruce. “We don’t usually make this concession because it can handcuff us later. You see, Bruce, we don’t always know exactly where the truth might take us. We have to be flexible and we often are forced to adapt on the fly.”
“You also get people hurt. Brittany being one. Three years ago you came within minutes of getting Mercer hurt, or worse. You make me this promise or I’m leaving. Again.”
Elaine said, “Okay, okay. You have our word.”
Everyone took a deep breath, then Bruce plowed on. “We have met the informant, and the informant has confirmed everything we suspected about Nelson, about Grattin, and about its use of Flaxacill, or E3. Nelson’s math was close—about two hundred million a year for the past twenty years. They desperately want to stop the publication of Pulse, and they murdered Nelson. And Brittany Bolton.”
Lindsey nodded along as if this was what she expected. “Okay, tell us the story.”
12.
When he finished, Elaine said, “You insist on referring to the informant as ‘the informant.’ Meaning that you don’t want to reveal his or her gender. But if he was a man, you’d have no problem referring to him simply as he. Therefore, the informant is obviously a woman.” She smiled at Lindsey who smiled back. Aren’t we smart.
Noelle was thinking the same.
Bruce said, “Okay, it’s a woman, and she’s Ken Reed’s former executive assistant who’s now his third wife. She knows a lot. But because she’s married to the guy, she is not willing to blow the whistle. She is also scared. You cannot reveal her identity until I say so.”
Noelle said, “She thinks there’s an urgency here. The company could simply stop using the drug and no one would ever know the difference.”
“You didn’t hire us to bust the company. You hired us to find Nelson’s killer, right?” Lindsey asked.
“Right.”
Elaine said, “The question is: Does one lead to the other? We can’t answer that, but we do have a very rough plan, one we put together before the, uh, termination.”
Bruce asked, “You wanna share it with us?”
“It involves going to the FBI,” Lindsey said.
Elaine said, “We have contacts in high places within the Bureau, and if we can convince them of an epic Medicare fraud, we think they’ll take it and run, especially with a factual background as unique as this.”
“They’ll love it,” Lindsey said. “I need to make three phone calls.”
Elaine glanced at her watch and said, “I’m starving. Have you had lunch?”