Death of a Cure Read online

  I downloaded a couple of representative Form 990s from some charities that I knew by name. Reading a few of them left me even more certain that any analysis based solely on their tax return was going to be worth very little. The financial statements were similar to the ones that I saw in commercial financial reporting. As I have admitted, I am no financial expert, but Ron made me look at a lot of the stuff the family owned and did his best to explain it. There were some significant differences between the not-for-profit reporting and the commercial reporting I was more familiar with that I needed to learn about.

  The other area about VHAs that interested me was how they funded research to find a cure for their disease. Almost universally, the mechanism was the award of a financial grant. The word grant was not new to me. Before coming to work at the CID Society, Ron was an academic M.D. involved in neurology research. His labs lived and died on grants. The grant was their lifeline, their oxygen supply. Applying and re-applying for grant money was a big part of his life. Schmoozing the organizations that had the grant money for award was his second life. On a couple of occasions, when he was coming up short on grant money, our family would become an impromptu grantor keeping some lab on life support. Ron always checked with me before using our money and acted like he needed my permission. I never gave it a second thought, did not need to know the details, and always trusted his judgment that it was money well spent for some good cause. We had more than we could spend by several orders of magnitude. It also assuaged my guilt about my personal philanthropic void — cheap at twice the price.

  When I made my final exit off the Internet autobahn, I was surprised to see how late it was. My last thought before climbing into the rack was how glad I was that I wasn’t an accountant. I had a nightmare about being trapped in a room with guys wearing green eyeshades. Did they still need to wear those things while sitting in front of a computer?

  POST-IT-NOTE DNA

  The guard looked at me, his eyes narrowing. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull. Don’t take me for an idiot,” his voice as menacing as he could make it. His partner, noticing the exchange moved over next to him to add some stare and glare power without needing to know why.

  “And I don’t know what you are talking about,” I replied while letting indignation creep into my voice. I had set the guard up. His help might be needed and one way to quickly get him on my side was for him to embarrass himself and owe me a little — I didn’t have time to build the trust so it had to be stolen. Approaching the guard desk at the CID Society headquarters, I had mumbled to him that Dr. Briggs was expecting me.

  “Dr. Briggs is dead,” he said forcefully with a tone that implied that he knew it, everyone knew it, I knew it, and it wasn’t a matter to joke about; or worse, part of some perverse subterfuge to sneak into the building.

  “I don’t need you to tell me that my own brother is dead,” I rifled back with a preplanned response, pretending not to notice his partner and drilling my unblinking eyes right back into his.

  “Your brother? I thought you said Dr. Briggs was expecting you.”

  “I said I was Dr. Briggs, and they were expecting me,” I lied with a deadpan.

  “Oh, man. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’m kind of messed up about Ron, I mean our Dr. Briggs here. I’m sorry you lost your brother, man. I liked him a lot — we all did. He stopped and talked to us all the time. I guess I’m kind of touchy. The last thing I wanted to do today was offend Ron’s brother.”

  He tried to get all of this out as quickly as possible, his words all running together. He wanted to put the offense that he felt responsible for behind us. His nametag read Wm. French, and he looked about fifty.

  “Hey, it’s not a problem. I understand. It’s been a shock to everyone he knew,” matching his pace, letting him off the hook. I lightened up, letting him know that it was an understandable error and more importantly his outburst was based on his genuine feelings for Ron.

  “Ron is going to be missed by all the guys here. Whenever one of us had a medical issue, we could ask him about it. You know, is my doctor telling me everything? He told me this. What should I ask him? Especially if it was about one of our kids. A lot of the brainiacs that come through here don’t give us the time of day. We know they look down on us. Ron always cared,” he finished and looked away briefly.

  “Would you mind if I came back some other time and we talked?” I asked. “I’d like to know more about Ron’s life here and his friends. I have been away more than I wanted to, and I feel like I need to know more about his life here.”

  He lit up immediately with a huge smile. “Absolutely, I’m here everyday until 6 PM!” He paused and then said, “Hey, I remember you now!”

  “Did we meet before? Do you go by Bill?”

  “It’s Will. No, I don’t think we met face-to-face, but Ron talked about you. Man, he was proud of you. The stories he would tell us! His little brother, the Marine daredevil doctor!”

  There was a title I had not heard before. I told him to call me Tom and that I would look for him sometime the next few days. He said he looked forward to it and confirmed it with a strong handshake. Compadres.

  I headed off to the elevator with a new friend and feeling like a little more of a heel than normal. After I crossed Will off of my suspect list, I would apologize.

  I exited the elevator and had the receptionist call Suzie Ling, Ron’s administrative assistant. Suzie and I had spoken literally several hundred times. She had been the conduit between fast-moving brothers. She knew our birthdays, our likes, and dislikes, the state of our romantic involvements, and lots of other things that would have bothered me if I had not come to know just how great a gal she was. We had met at Ron’s during dinner parties on three or four occasions.

  We walked toward each other. This was her turf, and we were around her coworkers. I had planned to keep my greeting reserved so she wouldn’t have to answer gossipy questions. She had other plans, and I found myself on the receiving end of a big hug, as big a hug as a five-foot tall lady can give (which in Suzie’s case turned out to be pretty big), and then she pulled me down and kissed me on the cheek. She obviously didn’t care about what anyone else might think. I should have known better.

  “I’m so glad you’re here!” she said with a genuine smile.

  “Thanks — it’s great to see you,” I replied.

  “Let’s go talk.” She set off down a hallway with me in tow.

  We walked into a typical office setting. At least what I thought an upscale office should look like. I didn’t spend a lot of time in them. A sea of cubicles opened up before me with private, hard-walled offices lining the perimeter and having windows to the outside world. There were squared-off columns holding up the ceiling that held calendars, clocks, and fire extinguishers.

  The office had recently undergone a remodel that Ron had told me about. Suzie and I had joked about it on the phone. The big laugh among the worker-bees was management’s efforts to make the environment more open with the big-dogs becoming accessible to everyone. The private offices had been built with a glass wall allowing everyone in cubicle-land to look into them. Paragons of virtue and responsibility sitting stoically at their desks locked in battle with CID. Each tableau a photo op.

  Of course, the cubicles still had regular dividers pretty much keeping their occupants from seeing into the offices except when walking somewhere. It certainly allowed the higher-ups to keep tabs on the underlings as they went back and forth, clocking the length of their breaks. Ron had told me that a guest had walked into one of the glass walls, it had broken, and he was seriously cut in several places. Supposedly, and solely due to the accident, the walls were to be etched with some artwork that would alert the unsuspecting to the dangerous, transparent barrier. I wondered how much they had paid the interior designer for his nouveaux look into management/subordinate interaction combined with his lack of basic common sense. Several of the glass walls had been decorated in the interim with “stic
ky notes,” little yellow squares seemingly suspended in air as a warning to unsuspecting pedestrians. Some of the goldfish had arranged their little yellow squares in patterns anticipating the upcoming adornment. Some of the glass walls sported a single yellow square, the insecure occupant bowing to safety without exposing him or her to artistic ridicule.

  We passed by two dozen offices with the last ten or so having nameplates that ended in Ph.D. or M.D. Must have been the research team that reported to Ron. His office was the last one in that group. I involuntarily held my breath and followed Suzie inside.

  My first thought was how was it that with all of my trips to New York, I had never been to Ron’s office before? He had never been to my only and rarely used office at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. But then again, had he tried, someone would have shot him before he got there. I had not had that obstacle and therefore no excuse.

  I looked around. I looked for signs of his inhabitation. He had spent enough time here. The room was larger than the others passed along the way. It was about twelve by eighteen with a single desk, a small conference table, and guest chairs that we dropped ourselves into.

  “I’m going to pack up Ron’s personal things. I just haven’t had the heart to do it yet, and I’ve been using the excuse that you should get a chance to see it like he kept it. I’ll get everything to you soon. I promise.”

  “I know you will,” I answered back.

  I looked around the room. Ron had stuff everywhere. Unlike his apartment, his work life was cluttered. The conference table would only convene a group of professional organizers acting out an intervention. Little stacks of paper, piles of magazines, mail opened and unopened, paper reports partially read, staff submissions for scientific journals awaiting his commentary, sticky notes attached to walls and his computer monitor, and a hundred other tasks that had revolved around the head of the Research and Clinical Trials Department were littered about. Perched precariously on a paper pile on the bureau running down one sidewall was a recently arrived gift basket with the empty note holder still inserted — the note gone and certainly awash with all of the other office detritus. Ron could have found it. He could have recited it without finding it.

  The last thing I looked at, the object I made myself look at, the reason I had come, was the window. A desk lamp, too large for the desk but one that would have provided the light that Ron would have demanded no matter the decorating faux pas, blocked part of my view of the window. I stood up and walked next to the desk toward the window. It was tall. It was a slider. It lifted vertically, the bottom half sliding up behind the top.

  “He always kept that window open. Even in the winter, it always had at least a crack. He liked the city noise coming in and said he needed the air.” Suzie talked to me while looking at the floor, looking at the desk, looking anywhere but the window.

  I looked closely at the window. You could see about five inches above the lower half in the casement sides the holes where some hardware had been removed. It was obvious that there had been some restraining device that would keep anyone from opening the window more than the width of your hand. Ron would not have given a second thought to taking this out. The fasteners would have made a metallic “plink” as they sailed unceremoniously into the trashcan.

  Turning to Suzie, “I know he worked late. Would the window have been open then?”

  “Yes, especially at night. Ron liked the cooler evening breeze.”

  “The sill is too high for him to have accidentally fallen through it.” I had said it. She nodded. No accident. He traveled out the window purposefully, but on whose purpose? Suzie had not contemplated murder. She was uncomfortable but showed no fear about being here, about being in the office.

  “When did you hear about Ron’s death?” I asked.

  “Not until the next morning. When I got here, there were police up and down the hall. They asked me some questions. About his schedule the day before, you know, his last day. I was so upset that I really don’t remember much. When they left, they locked the door and put that yellow tape across it. For the first time I was happy to be stuffed in my cubicle. I didn’t want to stare at the yellow tape all day.”

  Her voice was labored, and her eyes were filling up. I turned my back pretending to study the window again so she could have a little privacy.

  After a few more moments of studying the window, I walked across the room and sat at Ron’s desk. His view into cubicle land was uninspiring. I understood the need for the open window. A little input into an otherwise stuffy sanctum. Some background noise was a desired intrusion. Looking back from the window to the glass wall, I could see that Ron’s particular brand of ‘sticky note’ art preventing guest laceration was a diagonal array of multi-colored squares formed into the familiar double helix of a DNA molecule fragment. It looked like two or three base-pairs had come adrift and found their way to the floor.

  Genetics. The focus of his life’s work memorialized by 3M.

  TOSSED

  Suzie left me alone in Ron’s office sitting at his desk and not really knowing what to do next. In this office, in any office, I am a stranger. I was in an investigation mode and struggling with my lack of detective skills and an anger that would not go away.

  I needed an outlet. I needed a way to use the frustration bubbling inside. Some people talk about closure and how a funeral provided that for the family and loved ones. A funeral would do nothing for me; a waste of my time and not the way I wanted to remember my only brother. Until I was convinced otherwise, Ron had a killer. I looked forward to our meeting. Closure, yeah, I’d get closure.

  I found the on/off switch on Ron’s office computer and powered it up. Taking a chance, I entered the same password he used on his home computer. No surprise, the boot process continued. I was sure that Ron’s office computer was only password protected because some network administrator required it. There was no place in my brother’s world where someone would snoop or steal. Why have a password? Even the locks on his condo door had been installed by the previous owner. I think that Ron had forgotten that the locks were there. Convincing him to use a password on his home machine because it had financial information stored on the hard drive had been difficult. He relented, but only to make me happy. I made him change it each time I came to New York — a brother-enforced security protocol later synchronized with his office computer allowing for the memorization of only one password.

  Clicking on his email program icon caused his in-box and mail directory structure to be displayed. His mail directories were the antithesis of his office. There were highly organized layers of file folders neatly identifying the collections of email stored within. The volume of email was amazingly large. He must get 1,000 emails for each one I get, and most of mine are spam. His email software was a part of a larger suite of programs that also managed his calendar, tasks, and contacts — a complete life manager for the busy executive. It made me itch. Hunting around a little I eventually found what I was looking for. OK, I cheated by actually using the “Help” menu and getting the promised help. I pulled down the “file” menu and scrolled down. Selecting “export” opened a dialog box and told the program to copy everything, calendar, contacts, email, task lists, notes, and it made a backup for transmission in the format that I hoped would do something for me later — not that I would bet my life on that. Anyway, I stored this file on his desktop and then emailed it to my personal account for retrieval later at the condo. I thought about sending it to Ron’s personal email account and not mine, knowing that a record of the transmission would be on the society’s mail server. I did not want to raise any flags and an email from his office email account to his personal account might seem innocuous. Office workers by and large have no idea that once an email is written and sent, copies of it tenaciously float around the info-space. Finding and getting rid of all of them is just about impossible. Just ask the multitude of greedy business execs indicted by their shareholders and prison-enabled by their email ghosts. I dis
counted the effectiveness of this subterfuge as the email would be time-stamped, a time and date when I had been in his office, not to mention a time and date well after he had died. Eventually, if anyone cared, it would be discovered that I sent it. Also, I did not want to cause problems for Suzie. This way no one would suspect that she had his password and had sent it using his computer. Better to keep the attention off of her and fingers pointed at me.

  Looking at the folder names on his hard-drive was not much help as they were shortened to the point of being cryptic. There were also links to shared drives on the network. I was already pushing the envelope snooping around the data on his computer; reaching beyond that to his organization’s network would be a greater infraction. As I considered whether or not this really bothered me, a shrill female voice spoke sharply from the doorway.

  “Who are you? What are you doing in here?” she demanded.

  Looking up, I saw a tall, angular woman about fifty years old. I was drawn to her hair. It was several shades of mouse burger brown with bright red streaks, cut short on the sides but with some longer lengths on top sticking up from front to back like you would see on the top of a rooster. She had both hands on her hips bent at the wrist with the backs of her hands making actual contact. She was bent slightly forward at the waist, glaring at me and waiting for an immediate response. Chicken woman in full rage.

  Keeping my face neutral, I leaned back in the chair and crossed my arms. Waiting long enough to intentionally add some more heat to her internal pressure cooker, I finally replied, “I’m an official guest.”