BLIND TRIAL Brian Deer (best novels for beginners TXT) 📖

They’d hardly spoken since the call came through from Mr. Hoffman, after which a brief squabble ensued. Since then, they’d sat silently on Route 101 or, now, silently stared at a sign.

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AT 20:16, Theodore Hoffman pulled alongside in a maroon Chevy Camaro SS. He parked to the Sentra’s left and sat a few minutes, like a shopper who’d left home with no money. Then he cut the coupe’s engine and, without acknowledging their presence, got out, walked to the store, and peered inside. Then he glanced around the lot, approached the sedan, opened a rear door, and got in.

On the road from Garberville, Trudy planned her first question: the first question mothers ask the police. The lawyer wouldn’t drive one hundred miles for no reason, and it wasn’t as if she lacked imagination. Helen Glinski’s symptoms sounded like an immune system issue. Wilson must have altered her records.

Mr. Hoffman slid across the Sentra’s back seat and another long silence ensued. She heard shoulders rub cotton, fingers tap seat covering, shoes scrape floor, and a bump.

Then her lips shaped a word before she released it into the vehicle: subdued and toneless. “Well?”

Another rub of shirt. More shoes on floor. “Well?” Hoffman mimicked. “Well, what?”

Clouds of apprehension, brewing for hours, now erupted in a terrified rage. “So, it’s you who’s going to tell me then? Is it?”

His reply came softly, as if this meeting was routine: a board subcommittee, or budget session. “What’s it you want to know, Trudy? I can only tell you what I got. It’s not easy, but I’ll tell you what I got.”

“For one thing, I want to know what Doctorjee was doing. What on earth was the research head of a biotech in Georgia doing working as a physician in California?”

More shoes. More shirt. More fingers on seat covering. “Look now, Trudy, first thing we need here is to keep calm. Keep calm. Huh? We gotta. That’s why I drove up here. I want to meet you halfway on this. That’s my one, single, aim in all this.”

“It’s the vaccine, isn’t it? There’s something I don’t know. There’s something being kept from me. Tell me.”

The repertoire of noises from the back seat resumed. “Listen, all they were doing—as I understand it now—was minding everyone’s best interests. That’s all.”

“Best interests? Best interests? Explain that. How can that be?”

“Unconventional? Yes. Excessive? Probably. But you can’t fault Dr. Grahacharya on his professional dedication. Tough for me to admit it, but I gotta admit it, however this thing looks on the surface.”

She tried to twist round to confront the man behind her, but her body wouldn’t obey her will. “That’s plain ridiculous. You don’t fool me. What on earth was he doing out here?”

“Not trying to fool anyone, Trudy.”

“If there was something wrong with that volunteer, you’re saying there’s no physicians in the state of California, no other department at the hospital? What on earth were they doing with her? Why wasn’t she admitted to the hospital?”

She felt Hoffman’s hands grip the back of her seat. “Because, Trudy, she needed looking after. And as I understand it now, Doctorjee and Wilson were best placed to do that.”

“Nonsense. Ludicrous. To my knowledge, Doctorjee’s hardly practiced a day’s clinical medicine in his life. Skipped straight from his residency to his PhD and paper-pushing.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. But I been trying to figure this out, and nothing but this, since last night. And the way I see it, some woman on your trial gets sick with a bunch of weird shit. Right?”

“What on earth do you mean ‘weird shit’?”

“Now how’s that gonna play when it gets all over Frisco? All over America? All over the world? Your trial would be as dead as a skunk on the interstate.”

“What weird shit? What on earth are you talking about? What exactly was wrong with that woman?”

Now she heard the sound of a palm rubbing cheek. “Don’t ask me. I’m only a lawyer.”

“Well, I don’t believe she died of heart disease. It’s incredible there wasn’t an autopsy.”

“I don’t know. Doctorjee says it’s plausible.”

“What do you mean ‘plausible’?”

She felt Hoffman’s fingers drumming her headrest. “I don’t know.”

“You do know. Why else are we meeting in whatever godforsaken place this is? I demand you tell me.”

To her left, Ben’s elbows rested on the steering wheel, with both hands covering his face. Outside, the evening was moving through twilight. Nightfall was minutes away.

Now a slap on her seatback. “Alright, Trudy, I’ll tell you what I got. But you gotta come halfway to meet me here. You gotta tell me—no, you gotta promise me—you won’t go calling up Marcia again. We’ve gotta keep a grip on this thing.”

“Don’t you patronize me. Are you going to tell me what he was doing out here?”

Hoffman brushed the rear seat. “Well, least let’s keep it cool then. Huh? This isn’t easy. And remember, I’m not a scientist.”

She didn’t know for sure what words he’d choose but guessed more or less where they’d lead. On the silent drive south, the possibilities she considered had narrowed and narrowed to a point. Here was the moment when the missing child’s mother was invited to please sit down.

Trudy felt empty. Her rage was passing like Pamlico Sound after a storm. And then she felt more: the purely physical sensation that she needed a bathroom soon.

“Go on,” she said. “We’re waiting.”

“So, how do I put it?” Fingers on cotton. Shoes on flooring. “Doctorjee tells me the mechanism is still speculative. Hypothetical, if you will. But have you heard of, what is it now? Have you heard of ‘deceptive imprinting’?”

“What?”

“Deceptive imprinting.”

Trudy shivered as the words attacked her eardrums. What did she feel now? She felt horror. For the best part of an hour after they left Gennifer Heusch this idea had skirted her thinking. A scientist named Nara was among the first to propose it: that some vaccines might harbor a downside. They might “deceptively