Susan and I pulled onto Harrison Street, down the road from Morristown High School.
Tom had a soccer game at 4:00pm against Madison High School. We found a spot to park that
required just a short walk up to the school on Early Street.
It was 3:45pm and Susan was pissed about something. Even though I had picked her up
fifteen minutes earlier, just what was bugging her was still a mystery to me. She asked me to be
quiet during the ride over, so I'd been batting that around my head since. Susan slept in late that
morning, but she almost never slept past 7am and usually was out running by 6:45am. Tom
hadn't needed her help in the morning for the past year, getting, instead, a ride from a senior boy, Paul Wheeler, who lived up the street.
I tried to get out the door by 7:40am in the mornings, so this gave Susan plenty of time to
get her run in. I was surprised to find her still in bed when my alarm rang at 6:50. After shaving
and showering, I shook her upon coming back into the bedroom to get dressed.
“Do you feel sick?”
“I'm fine! I don't feel like a run this morning, that's all,” she snapped back at me.
Not used to getting dressed in the dark, I missed a button on my shirt. Luckily, Melanie
caught this before I saw any patients this morning.
Tom left the house at 7:20 each morning and didn't even notice that his mother was still
asleep. He probably thought that she was still running.
This was a big game for Tom's team - they were ranked the #1 team in Morris County
heading into the fall – which recently lost to Madison in the Morris County Tournament finals.
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They had already beaten Madison in early September but they got stung in overtime in the
tournament.
Tom blamed the loss on the referees and was torked for over a week. It got kind of old,
but you can't force a teenager to be happy. Not that we hadn't tried a million times.
This game tonight was a make-up game from mid October since that game was cancelled
due to a bomb threat at the high school. Everything at the school was cancelled for 24 hours.
They never found a bomb, though that didn't stop the two high schools from pointing fingers at
each other. Tom had several friends from Madison High, yet we didn't think they'd been friends
the past few weeks.
We couldn't wait for the season to end and for everybody to calm back down. We loved
the fact that Tom played just one sport. Some of his friends played two or three such that the
parents never got a break.
I tried to make a joke to Susan about the uptightness of all involved parties surrounding
this game today, when Susan told me to be quiet. What was wrong with trying to lighten up the
moment? The funnyman, though, wasn't any closer to understanding what was wrong with Susan
despite running the past 24 hours around in my head over and over again.
I pulled between two minivans and turned off the car. Susan got out without saying
anything. When she noticed that I was still in the car, she opened her side door again to inquire.
“What the hell are you doing? Let's go!”
Susan was clearly trying to keep her voice down , especially since there was no telling
which friend might over hear her. We were not that far from the school, but it didn't matter how
quiet she was being, I got it. Susan's scrunched up face alone told me how steaming mad she
was. Against my better instincts, I felt like putting up a fight, though, and I looked up at my wife.
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“You go ahead. I don't feel like being around you right now. I'm going to dictate today's
notes. I'll just be a few minutes.”
“Huh…You don't feel like being with me…that's just great. Take your damn time!”
Susan slammed the door, then walked off.
I reached in my bag and pulled out my voice recorder, a tape recorder that was nearly
nine years old. The digital ones looked cool, but there really wasn't the need to dump my steady
eddy quite yet. The recorder needed new batteries so I took a minute to make the change with the
fresh batteries I had thrown into my work bag just before leaving the office that afternoon.
The car was shut off….keys were in my pocket.
“Tuesday, November 5th,” I announced into the recorder. “Patient Ralph Roddick…”
The back passenger door whipped open and I promptly felt a cold metal blade against my
throat. I flinched to my right in hopes that I could see anything but the knife was too tight against my adam's apple.
The voice recorder fell to the floor.
“Look…here's my wallet…take it!”
I reached to the center console where my wallet was sitting and lifted it up.
My throat was starting to sting…whoever was behind me ignored the wallet.
“If you listen to this man, carefully you will not get hurt,” a male voice with an accent
stated very deliberately.
The front passenger door opened calmly and another male climbed in next to me.
“You are Nick Johnson, yes?”
“Uh-huh.”
Only the man's legs were visible. He was wearing black slacks with Italian looking
shoes.
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“I am Oleg. You currently serve on the Zyptorin study committee?”
“Uh-huh.”
My stomach was starting to seize up, but I was too scared that my head might flinch and
slice my throat.
“Please, can you loosen the knife, sir? You can have whatever you want!”
The man spoke to the knife holder in a foreign language and the knife was removed.
While taking a deep breath, I looked over at the man in the front seat, not daring to look
behind me.
My front seat mate had dark slicked back hair, eyes that looked Eastern European, a
small gap in his upper two front teeth, and was wearing a tan button down shirt with no tie.
“Susan is a fine woman and your son Tom is a pretty solid soccer goalie. You should be
very proud,” the man stated.
I shrunk my eyes, then shook my head in confusion.
“What?” I asked exasperatedly.
“Nick? Look at me. You are going to tell us the official study results and media release
date. Do you understand?”
“Who are you?” I asked continually in my head.
I simply nodded, not saying anything. The man reached for his shirt pocket and pulled
out a device that looked like a small video camera. After working with it, he opened the viewer
screen in front of me.
“The last drug study physician thought he could out smart us, so he didn't follow the
instructions. If you tell the police or do anything other than what we have told you…you will end
up like the last doctor and his wife.”
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There in front of me was a picture of two people tied to chairs. The woman on the left
had tape over her mouth and she was thrashing around trying to break free. Her right eye was
smashed in, while the left side of the male's head was very bloodied.
My front passenger mate pressed the play button and the male in the video began to
speak.
“I am Dr. Harold Linder. I didn't follow simple instructions. Now my family is paying
for it.”
Dr, Harold Linder was crying and I could barely understand his words. The doctor was
wearing a blue bathrobe. He looked over at a woman about his age, who was yelling something
inaudible because of the tape on her mouth. I was guessing that was his wife – she was wearing a
plain night gown - and they were both sitting in their kitchen. The two victims were in front of a
dining set that looked out through a bay window.
A man looking a lot like my front passenger mate emerged behind the doctor and placed
tape over the doctor's mouth. Next, he yanked the doctor's hand up, held his arm from moving,
and out came a huge knife. The man had black gloves on. As the doctor was now screaming, he
began fighting the man with the big knife by trying to free his hand, but it was not helping him.
The time on the video screen was 2:27am.
In less than five seconds, the left pinky was cut off and the Doctor looked to pass out
from the pain. His head slumped into his chest. The man with the knife held up the pinky, yelling
out,
“It didn't have to be this way, Doctor. You screw with me, you get a whole lot more
screwing back!”
The man dropped the finger onto the tile floor.
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Mrs. Linder was really thrashing around in her chair now and knocked herself over in the
chair. The man picked Mrs. Linder up from the ground, punching her in the face, twice.
My front passenger mate started speaking.
“Now, you and Susan don't want to end up like this, do you? We got the information
from Dr. Linder anyway, but he chose the very hard way by not following our instructions. Just
tell us the official study result and the media announcement date. Anything other than that, and
you and Susan end up like the Linders. Got it?”
My front passenger mate was an inch or two from my left ear - I could feel his breath as
he spoke to me.
The male behind me said something in his foreign language to my front passenger mate
and started laughing through his nose. They exchanged a few thoughts, though it sure seemed like
the conversation was less than pleasant.
“Okay, I got it!” I said firmly.
Holding out my hands as if to show nothing but obedience to these men, I just wanted
them to leave my car.
“We will be in touch, Nick. Remember, don't get tricky on us. No one knows about this
but us, alright?”
“Alright…no need for anybody to get hurt here.”
“Good. Have a great time at the game.”
With that, the two men left the car and I whipped around to see where they were going.
The two men were around the same height, except the man who held the knife against me had a
pony tail and was wearing blue jeans. Neither of them looked back toward my vehicle before
disappearing onto Early Street.
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I pulled the rear mirror down and frantically tried to see the condition of my neck. It was
really stinging, but there was only a small dollop of blood at the top of my adam's apple. The cut
didn't look too bad, mildly worse than a shaving cut. I was lucky.
I had a few napkins in the inside console and dabbed my neck gently to stop the bleeding.
My hands were shaking while I did my best to place a napkin piece on top of the cut in hopes that
the bleeding would stop in a few minutes. It was a few minute walk to the soccer fields, anyway
I sat in the driver's seat for a while, probably for a minute or so, trying to deal with the
image of the Linders in my head. What did they do wrong and why didn't they understand the
danger?
There were eleven other committee members, why didn't these thugs target them? I knew
the least of anybody on the committee. The questions were flying through my head so fast that I
couldn't keep track.
Picking up my voice recorder from the floor, which was still taping, I shut it off and
dropped it into my bag.
It wasn't clear to me if my front passenger mate told me when we were going to meet
again - I couldn't seem to recall exactly what he said or didn't say because the past few minutes
were a blur - but the voice recorder likely taped the whole conversation so I would make sure to
listen to this later.
The car clock got my attention. 3:59pm.
“Wait,” I said aloud. “You might not know when the trial results are released to the
press... Crap! What if they didn't believe me if I told them I didn't know?
The press release was established in conjunction with the pharmaceutical company. The
more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that I wouldn't have such information. This
worry was especially reasonable given that all signs of the trial up to this point were quite bad for Timothy Gilbert
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Distal Pharmaceutical, and the company may decide to delay the news release beyond the
committee's knowledge.
I slammed my head against the head rest.
“Nick, what have you gotten yourself into? Damnit! How are you going to keep this from
Susan? How are you going to go to this dang game and act like nothing happened?”
Only a few minutes into this development, this whole deal was already eating away at my
insides.
I got out of the car and locked it. I looked around to see if anybody we knew witnessed
these thugs in my car. That would be bad for me and, quite possibly, them. It occurred to me that
the Oleg gang took quite a risk in choosing to invade my car since Susan could have returned to
the car at any time, but they had to have been aware of that risk, right?
“You should have locked the car when Susan left, you idiot!” I said quietly to myself.
I realized that it didn't do me any good to focus on how these thugs found me, because
the fact was, they did and I needed to move forward.
I started walking toward the stadium, hoping that no one we knew bumped into me. The
bloodied napkin piece on my neck looked pretty stupid, especially at this time of day.
Why did these two thugs want this information anyway? I supposed they could play the
stock of Distal Pharmaceuticals if they had the timing and content of the trial result press release.
But how much money could these two guys have between them? Something didn't seem right,
here…cutting off that poor doctor's finger then probably killing both him and his wife…all for a
few thousand dollars, maybe.
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I realized that searching on the web for news of the Linder deaths would be a good start
given the possibility that these people could still be alive. Maybe the video Oleg showed me was
staged? Though this was not likely, I knew I had to get smart about all of this.
The game had already started by the time I found Susan. The napkin piece was removed
from my neck just before my entering the stands.
Susan leaned over and gave me a kiss on my cheek.
“We'll talk later, sweetie,” she tells me.
“Hey, talking is promising. Can't wait,” I responded.
I checked my neck casually with my index finger, noting that the bleeding seemed to
have stopped.
When I got nervous I scratched my left thumb nail with the nail of my right thumb, a
habit that Susan found really annoying, and I had the scratching going on strong while trying my
best to focus on the game.
Susan put her left hand over my two hands.
“Something wrong, Nick?”
“No, hon, I'm fine. Just watching the game.”
No team had scored yet. Tom looked to take up so much more of the net space, having
grown two more inches since late last spring. He had let in just eight goals all season, one of
which was given up to Madison during the tournament.
Suddenly, Johnny Milken, our right winger, took a run up the right side with the ball and
crossed a beauty into the penalty box where Max Stanford was waiting to head the ball into the
Madison net, a real beauty. Morristown led 1-0 and Madison's goalie never had a chance.
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While Susan and I embraced in a celebratory hug, she leaned in with a kiss. Whatever
had her so peeved at me apparently was gone and I thought I may never find out just what ticked
her off so much, but I'd learned not to press…just let it flow right on by.
“Hey Nick, how'd you bruise your neck?” the voice behind me rang out.
I turned around to find Peter Hansen's wife Cheryl, mother of Charlie who was best
friends with Tom. Charlie was a fullback on the Morristown squad. Peter and his wife Cheryl
played cards with Susan and me two, maybe three times a year – he was a good guy and one of
my better friends.
We last played cards in August at their house where Susan and Cheryl got into it, sort of.
There was no yelling, no real acknowledgement that there was a problem, but they both knew it,
so they fumed. Cheryl was pressing Susan over her decision not to return to the corporate world
for a while, maybe never. Charlie's wife could be pushy and, when she intimated that Susan was
throwing her life away all to care for her highly functioning, adult brother, she crossed the line.
This, of course, happened right before the start of the soccer season. While we usually sat quite
near the Hansens during the games, not this fall. In fact, I had only briefly shared a few “Hey
bud” moments with Peter the whole season.
“What?” I asked Cheryl. Peter was sitting next to Cheryl, though not at all focused on our
conversation.
“On the right side of your neck…it's a little bruised.”
I reached back and realized that it did smart. The guy in the back seat came around the
right side of my neck to place the knife on my throat. He must have applied a lot of pressure but I
hadn't picked up on the pain up to now. It actually didn't hurt unless I pressed on it.
“I got mugged on the way over here?”
I laughed while a said this and Cheryl got the joke, Susan didn't find it so funny, though.
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“Let me see that, Nick,” Susan stated.
She pushed my head to the side, taking a look for herself.
“That's weird. Really, you don't remember how you got this?”
“I stood up into a door knob in my closet over the weekend. I was looking for something
on the floor, but I had no idea it left a bruise.”
This was the first of many lies to come.
Susan held my arm. “It's a sign that you're getting older, dear.”
I looked at her like I couldn't believe she just said that, so I decided that I'd had enough
of the game – a walk sounded really good.
“I'm gonna get some fresh air,” I told my wife.
I weaved through the people in front of me and walked around the stands.
“Hey Nick! Wait up!”
Turning around, I saw Dick Tesser chasing after me, nearly kneeing a woman in the first
row of the stands in the head as he stumbled down to the field. Dick's son Ryan played forward
for the team.
Dick was on the unfortunate end of a car accident twelve or so years ago that practically
crushed his right leg. His leg required a year-long rehab, and Dick still walks with a noticeable
limp today. That man should never climb the stands at games but he always does. It was like he
had something to prove to everybody. Finally finding the field, Dick waved at me.
What did he want? I didn't want to talk with him right then! I wanted to just crawl up in a
hole and ignore the world. The more I talked with people going forward, the more lies would fly
out of my mouth, creating an increasingly miserable situation for me.
“How's it going?”
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Dick walked up to me and shook my hand. Dick was an insurance agent, a pretty good
one at that, only not my insurance agent. There was no particular reason, he just wasn't.
“Fine, Dick.”
I started walking but he annoyingly kept up.
“Susan told me last week that you're working on some drug trial.”
Dick's words felt like they were stabbing me in the stomach.
“It's no big deal…long boring meetings, that's all.”
The trial actually was growing more depressing each week. Even with the different
dosages given to the remaining 10% of patients, Zyptorin was proving to be no more than 10%
more effective than Balentor. The trial had a few more months to go, but the writing was on the
wall, and Distal Pharmaceuticals was not going to like it, nor would its shareholders.
Dave Clark was still pretty much too pompous for his own good, especially after a few
months together on the Committee. I was still not clear why he asked me to be on the Committee,
and now, of course, I sure as hell wished that he hadn't.
“Well, she said it's a big artery drug, sorry I can't remember its name, but everybody
wants to avoid a heart attack, you know?”
What was I, an idiot? He didn't need to tell me that. People were always discussing
health issues with me outside of the office. I had my limits, and, tonight, I was simply tapped out.
“Of course, Dick….I just can't talk about the trial. Sorry. I know you're interested.”
Dick put his arm around me, which always made me queasy when a guy did that.
“Uh, Nick? Jill and I are separating. We told Ryan last night.”
I looked at him and tried to put on my compassionate face. Something like having a knife
against my throat had made my whole face real numb, so this was difficult.
“Oh, Dick, I'm really sorry…anything Susan and I can do…”
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Dick looked down at the ground and kicked at the grass.
“Ryan's taking it real hard. I wasn't sure he was going to show up for tonight's game.”
I looked over at the field, pointing at his son.
“He looks good out there,” I stated.
Dick smiled and I could tell he appreciated me telling him that.
“This team deserves to win this stupid game,” he said.
“Here, here.” I tried to crack a smile but it was too painful.
Dick and I spent a lot of time together during our sons' cub scout years – late ni