BLIND TRIAL by Brian Deer (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📗

fudges, here and there. So what? What’s not given a polish for presentation? He personally knew the guy who faked the InderoMab data. Half the patients didn’t exist. But it still got its license and it still saved lives. There was nothing like that with WernerVac.

AT THE satin-frosted doors, he pushed the chrome handles, and rolled himself into reception. Inside, he found the youth with the fancy French name, laughing across the counter with Ardelia.

“Dr. Wilson, sir.”

“Ha. What is it?” He scooted toward his office.

“Dr. Mayr wants a word, if possible. In consultation suite 7. And I think maybe it might be kind of urgent.”

Wilson changed direction to follow the boy and his insufferable squeaking sneakers.

“Yes, my honeysuckle? And what service may I provide you this morning?”

Beside Trudy’s hand lay printouts from the database. Beside them: two forms from SPIRE. “What on earth’s been going on?” She spoke in a whisper. “And please keep your voice down. Just explain.”

She twisted the forms and beckoned him to look. He ignored them and picked up the printouts. “So, what are we playing here? Wheel of Fortune or Weakest Link?”

“Not those. These. What do you say about these?”

“What about them?”

“Look.”

“I’m looking. Yeah, I’m looking. SPIRE crap. Nothing to do with me.”

“Frank.”

“What?”

“Look at them. Look at the signatures.”

Wilson read the names aloud. “Peter Ginski. No, Peter Glinski. And Gabriella Ramirez. Fine Castilian name, I imagine. Are you recording this?”

“We haven’t got to that.”

“Well, when you have, I’m out of here and calling my lawyer. I’ve done nothing here.”

“Frank, look at the Gs. The Gs. In Glinski and Gabriella. Look at the Gs.”

“Yeah. Gs. So what?”

“The size of them.”

“Yup.”

“And the cross-strokes.”

“They’re sure Gs alright.”

“And the ls.”

“Yup. They’re ls. I guess they can spell their own names.”

“And the way the Gs and the ls are joined to the other characters. The way they’re joined.”

Wilson stared at the forms. There was no point arguing. The statistically unthinkable had occurred.

The first signature—Peter Glinski—was smoother, more fluid, while Gabriella Ramirez was more stilted. The first was in ballpoint; the second, felt-tip. But, printed off and laid together, side-by-side on the desk, you couldn’t doubt what she’d found. The ls were one thing. But the Gs were the giveaway. The fool couldn’t hold himself back. The Gs were cross-stroked with sociopathic bold diagonals which seen together exposed their provenance as shared.

Bottom left to top right. Southwest to northeast. No denying the same person signed both.

“Yeah? So what? I mean, ha.”

“What on earth do you mean by that, ha?”

“I mean, you want to see my writing? Got plenty to look at. Don’t you go shitting on my porch, Trudy Mayr.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean you better take this up with your boss.”

“And you let this happen? You let Dr. Grahacharya do this?”

“Dunno what you’re talking about. All I know’s we’re doing a job of work here. One thing that happens is a protocol telling us we gotta mail out a bunch of reply crap to our people for the SPIRE folks back east, for Christ’s sake. Never seen so much bullshit.”

“That ‘bullshit,’ as you call it, was government funded. Participation in the SPIRE study was part of a one-hundred-thousand-dollar line item on our budget.”

“Yeah, well budgets is budgets.” His voice began to rise. “But let me tell you about the real world, shall I? If we don’t put everything into that damn database, all filled-in nice and dandy, with who’s gone away, what time of day, what they were wearing when they crossed the county line, then those damn people down the corridor here come banging on my door wanting to know if we mailed them forms to fill in, called them, met up with them for brunch at Denny’s.”

“This is outrageous. And please keep your voice down, will you?”

“Let me tell you, I got better things to do than figure out why some guy doesn’t show for an appointment. I got too many who do.”

“So, what you’re saying’s, you couldn’t be bothered to chase these folks up, so Doctorjee mailed the forms to SPIRE himself?”

One smart lady. So quick on the uptake. “I never said that. Who said that? I never said that. That guy standing next to you’s my witness. I never said that. Call FDA. Call the Inspector General. Phone’s on the table. Go on, call ’em. Nobody’d notice anything till you print them off and put them together like that. Who’d ever want to do that? Nobody would do that. We got fifty thousand pages on these people. You want me to say it’s wrong? Okay, it’s wrong. Happy now?”

“It is wrong. It’s shocking.”

“Oh, and how’s life back at the convent, Doctor Mayr? Stole any patents lately?” He spun in his chair. He’d take no more of this. He wouldn’t take an ethics lecture from Trudy Mayr.

“Frank, listen to me.”

He scooted toward the door.

But, before he reached it, the handle turned.

That bitch had been listening outside.

Twenty

HE’D ALREADY tried Mr. Hoffman’s cell twice and left a “highly urgent” message on his voicemail. Now, parked in the white Sentra outside the Hyatt on Union Square, Ben called Corinna Douglas in Atlanta.

“I’m sorry,” she replied when he said what he wanted. “It’s not company policy to disclose staff deployments.”

“But I’m on this special assignment he gave me. I came up Monday to see him. Remember? He’s coming out to San Francisco. I spoke with him about it already.”

“Oh, is that you baby? Oh, pardon me, do. He caught the 11:15 Delta from Hartsfield-Jackson.”

Ben checked his Samsung: another hour in the air—if the plane was on time. Sixty minutes before hope of advice.

He wasn’t yet sure how to explain the situation. What occurred hadn’t wholly sunk in. But when the door swung open in consultation suite 7, the room became a tableau of trouble. Wilson scooted round like a Paralympic racer, Doc Mayr inflated till she looked ready to splatter the walls, and Sumiko glowed with disgust and satisfaction: a nun going down on a