Then he had sat back and waited for the “natural, inexplicable catastrophe” that followed.
Mattie and her husband…dead.
The parents who had given birth to Mattie…dead.
Relatives who had doted on her…either dead or so impaired that they wished for that sweet release.
He had not been concerned by the furor that followed as public health officials conducted autopsies and tests, failing again and again to ascertain the source of the deadly contaminant. It was the perfect crime, revenge was sweet and he was free to return to his former profession in England whenever he desired.
Hadden looked down again at the unexpected headline in the newspaper. It screamed out at him in the silence of the room, and his fury heightened.
Mysterious Winslow Deaths Suspected Homicides
His perfect crime unearthed by a lowly, inauspicious laboratory technician who was being feted at his expense.
No, he would not allow it!
He would see to it that this woman did not profit from the blow she had dealt him. He was good at that.
He searched the article again, his gaze finally coming to rest on the technician’s name.
Oh, yes.
Her name was Natalie Patterson.
Chapter Three
“I don’t believe it.”
Brady sat at his desk in a squad room functioning at full tilt around him. He was deaf to the shuffle of handcuffed prisoners being moved across the room with mumbled protests, the loud conversation at the desk behind him, the droning hum of fans intended to circulate air that never seemed cool enough on a hot summer day and the burst of laughter from the doorway at a joke not meant for tender ears. Unbuttoning his shirt collar and loosening his tie, he stared down at the report faxed to him that morning. He repeated, “I don’t believe it.”
Stansky looked up from the paperwork on his desk, which abutted Brady’s. He said, “Okay, I’ll bite. What don’t you believe?”
“Did you read this fax that came in this morning from Manderling Pharmaceuticals?”
“Did it have my name on it?”
“No.”
“Then I didn’t read it.”
“It’s in reply to the fax I sent them about the Winslow case.”
Stansky’s fair face twisted and he groaned. “Dammit, Brady, that Winslow case is all I’ve heard about for the past week. We do have other cases, you know.”
“Yeah, sure, but only this one has Wilthauer breathing down our necks.”
Stansky opened his mouth as if to reply but then shut it abruptly, and Brady’s gaze narrowed.
“Say it.”
Stansky shook his head. “Say what?”
“What you were going to say.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“Say it, Joe. You know you will, sooner or later.”
Stansky paused a moment longer, then leaned across his desk to reply in a softer voice, “Look, I know Wilthauer is on our backs about this one, but I never saw you so wrapped up in a case before.” He paused again, then added, “That little CDC chick wouldn’t have anything to do with it, would she?”
“Little CDC chick?” Brady forced a surprised expression that he was sure wouldn’t fool anyone, especially Joe Stansky. The truth was, that “little chick” had a lot to do with his interest in the Winslow case. After his conversation with Captain Wilthauer, he’d called in a favor from an old buddy in the Atlanta PD. What he’d learned hadn’t confirmed his thinking.
In the first place, Miss Natalie Patterson wasn’t a “fresh from the university know-it-all” as he had thought. She was actually twenty-four years old. She’d had a brush with the radical scene in college, but she had graduated with honors and seemed to have put the past behind her. She had several years’ experience in the field, making her qualifications quite adequate for her job at the CDC. Her work at the CDC was more than adequate, too, if he were to believe the evaluations written by her supervisor, Dr. George Minter, a tough old cookie who seemed to have taken a “special interest” in her. It did not escape his notice, however, that Minter was the same man who’d named her the U.S. expert on Candoxine and recommended she be sent to NYC to supervise the testing of the liver samples.
He didn’t know why learning about her personal association with a fellow worker at the CDC, Charles Randolph, bothered him. Randolph was highly regarded at that agency. It was rumored he had a thing for her and wasn’t the type to give up. That was understandable, Brady supposed.
He’d had to face the fact that there was nothing negative in Miss Natalie Patterson’s background. The only question that remained was if she was really an expert on Candoxine. As far as he could see, the answer was that she was the best the CDC had to offer.
And…it was damned hard to admit that he had been wrong.
Stansky interrupted Brady’s thoughts to say, “That’s right, that CDC chick. You know damned well who I’m talking about.”
“Oh, you mean the CDC woman you agreed was a ‘hot little number?’”
Stansky sneered. “Right. That one. You know, the same woman who tested the Winslow barbecue food this week and discovered traces of Candoxine in the lemonade.”
“After both our lab and the Health Department lab tests failed to reveal any contaminants.”
“So she found Candoxine when our labs couldn’t. So what?”
“So you should’ve been at the Health Department lab the day the specimens were confirmed. You would’ve thought she’d won the Nobel Prize the way those doctors acted.”
Stansky retorted, “Your reaction to Natalie Patterson is unreasonable, Brady, and you know it. I don’t know why she strikes a sour note in your mind, but did it ever occur to you why those doctors may have made such a fuss over her discovery? Dr. Gregory wanted her to be temporarily assigned to his lab so the heat would be off them when the press came calling, and he didn’t want her objecting. That was pretty smart of him, if you ask me.”
Brady did not respond and Stansky said, “Just forget it, will you? What does that fax say?”
“Nothing—except that Natalie Patterson probably solved the case for us, too.”
“Give me that fax!”
Stansky read the fax, then looked up. “Maybe this Patterson cookie does deserve the Nobel Prize. I’d say this is pretty cut-and-dried. This guy Dr. Hadden Moore met Mattie Winslow in the States when he was sent here by Manderling. If everything this fax reports is true, it all went south from there.
