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

next? Was Sumiko in danger? Who else might they murder for their vaccine? Would they murder Doc Mayr if she didn’t “come on board”? After that, would they murder him too?

The car’s springs sagged as Doctorjee heaved beside him. “Could I say, I think you have shown the greatest maturity? I’m greatly impressed, yes I am.”

Ben reversed the car and opened the windows. He smelled tangerine and lavender cologne.

“We should think perhaps of finding you new challenges, new horizons, when we return to Atlanta. I am sure marketing has its fascinations under Philip Crampton. But there’s so much of a more challenging nature. I predict an opening in regulatory affairs.”

Ben hit the turn signal and swung onto State. Regulatory affairs. Marketing. Murder. He felt like someone had stuck a knife in his chest and the handle still protruded, drenched in blood. He passed the Chevron station, the Regency Inn, a Chinese restaurant, and a bank. He passed a Rite Aid drug store and a Starbucks coffee shop. Then he realized he was driving the wrong way.

He turned sharp right into a Safeway’s lot, spun the car in a circle, and signaled left.

He’d call 911, just as soon as he could. But when? Right now, or soon? Hoffman was in on it. He had to be in on it. He was an accessory to this thing—this murder. This man he’d respected, trusted, known forever. Could anyone give an answer for this?

He felt dizzy, on the edge, like a high-wire clown spooked by a downward glance. Should he abandon the car, escape through the supermarket, call the cops, and turn everyone in?

Or should he return to the Bottle Shop and collect more evidence? There was something to be said for that.

He leaned on the steering wheel and waited on a stoplight. He felt outrage, nausea, disgust.

Sweat gathered on his forehead. His shirt stuck to his back. He shivered. His pulse raced. He was scared.

But then… Something else… He felt something different… He felt something tug… What was that?

What was it he felt? What was it? No, impossible. What was it? Curiosity?

What?

No, it wasn’t that. It wasn’t curiosity. He felt more than curiosity. A lot more.

What he felt was… No, crazy… What he felt was… Don’t think it… At that moment, what he felt was… a thrill.

He felt like some pervert in a pedophile ring. Disgust and desire. Evil and beauty. An outcast and belonging. At once. In that hot, dense night, with danger every whichway, he felt agonizingly, deliciously, whole.

His right sneaker shifted from brake to gas. The car turned.

But where did it come from?

He knew to resist it… the way a chick resists the air when it falls from its nest—and can fly. He could swoop, he could soar, he could do what he liked. He could prove himself any way he wanted. He felt like he’d stepped into the path of his own ghost; slid his feet into ready-worn shoes. This feeling was so wrong, and yet felt so right. What was it? This desire. This hunger.

He stretched damp shoulders, left arm through the window. A clenched fist punched at the night.

Brake. Turn signal. Gas. Brake. Gas.

He wondered what his father would do.

Forty-four

THE PARKING lot was black, the Bottle Shop closed, its windows glowing weakly from Miller Lite and Snapple cabinets buried somewhere deep in the back. As the Camaro turned in from Talmage Road, its LED halo beams swept the old girl’s scalp as bright as a camera flash. Her hair was thin, all strays and tangles, the skin beneath a day past dead.

“Trudy,” Hoffman said. “Now, we’re all cool and calm. I’m hoping we can stay that way.”

She hadn’t yet noticed the kid wasn’t alone. He must have found Dr. Dickhead in the restaurant. But as the coupe edged forward to park alongside the Sentra—not four yards apart, both facing the curb—its two doors opened, and she noticed.

“Him,” she gasped. “He’s here? He’s here? That murderer? What on earth’s going on?”

Hoffman hadn’t revealed Doctorjee’s presence in Ukiah but had made a little progress on the background. The old girl’s body might be falling to pieces, but her powers of deduction were just fine. She’d pressed and pressed over the heart failure angle until the remedy for Helen Glinski was obvious.

The EVP pulled his briefcase from the trunk of the Camaro and heaved into the back of the Sentra. Ben came the other way—tie loose, hands in pockets—and slid behind the wheel. Neither spoke.

The interior light died, and they sat in darkness until a vehicle passed behind them on Talmage. Outside, a dog barked from somewhere near the airstrip while, inside, the odor of tangerine and lavender brewed with cigarettes and piss.

The Sentra rocked as the EVP shifted, giving notice of his intention to speak. “Trudy…”

“Don’t you say anything. Don’t you speak to me.” She scrunched her shoulders in the pillows.

“But I have to speak to you. I most eminently have to speak to you.” His tone sounded warm, even friendly. “We need to talk, scientist to scientist.”

“Scientist to scientist? You’re no scientist. You’re a criminal. You murdered that woman and destroyed our trial. The only explaining for you is to the police.”

He shifted again. “Now, let’s be sensible. Please. At least hear what I must tell you. And I did not murder Ms. Glinski. I provided a compassionate medical service.”

“Compassionate? Service? How can you say such things?”

“Perhaps I could explain?”

“You’re a lunatic, a psychopath. And I think there’s more. The Ramirez boy. I checked his file.”

“Ramirez? Oh, no, no. That young man received placebo, exactly as the unblinding indicated. He never received one molecule of your vaccine.”

“You can’t fool me. I saw your writing.”

“We did have that SPIRE study to satisfy, if you recall. A pure red herring, I assure you. Ramirez was nothing to do with our issue here. You see, we do need to address these misperceptions.”

“So you killed him too?”

“Of course not. What kind of monster do you think I am? There’s