Page 110 of I’ll Be Watching You

“Which suggests that she doesn’t remember that he confessed to murder.”

That was a good point. “I don’t have a good read on the woman,” I admitted. “We should definitely talk to her again. Tomorrow? It’s a little late right now.”

“I’m good with that,” Jack said.

Tess said, “Mildred is a very successful businesswoman. She and her husband have bought and sold many small companies and are worth tens of millions of dollars. Obviously, I don’t have all her financials, but what I can get publicly supports this.”

“So, you think she’s involved,” I said, flipping back from a woman going senile to a woman being deliberately deceptive.

“I don’t know,” Tess said.

Gabriel spoke up. “Perhaps she knew, but now doesn’t remember all the details. Alzheimer’s doesn’t have a set timeline. Some people, it comes on quickly, but others can take years before it becomes debilitating.”

“So,” I said, “she could have been party to murder and now doesn’t remember any of it? I didn’t get the sense that she was that senile.”

“Just putting it out there,” Gabriel said.

Tess said, “I’m following the money like Nico suggested. Mildred is worth a small fortune.”

Nico grinned, and Cal high-fived him. “That’s my motto too,” Cal said.

“When innocent people start dying, I don’t see how so many people will go along with it,” Jack said.

Nate grunted. “People suck.”

“Hey, that’s my line,” I said.

“Zachary Ames has an unblemished record,” Tess said. “I lean that he was completely uninvolved.”

“I agree,” I said.

“You think everyone is guilty,” Tess countered.

“Yeah and while I think Tim was holding back on us this afternoon, he was scared, and he seemed genuine when he said his uncle didn’t know anything.”

Jack nodded. “The guy lied, but I think he knew who we were. He was hedging.”

“Probably to make himself seem more innocent,” I muttered.

Jack nodded. “I think Tim knew that Stockman was at least partly responsible for Klein’s murder, or he was willfully ignorant of the fact. When we told him that Liz Swanson had been murdered, I don’t think he immediately made the connection that his actions—telling Stockman who requested Novak’s files—resulted in her death.”

“He knows it now,” I muttered.

“There must have been something specific in that file that freaked them out,” Luisa said. “They couldn’t risk it getting out, but even if Liz had found it, getting that information up the chain of command, investigated, whatever, would have taken weeks. Neurovantix is set to be approved next week. I don’t know that she could have stopped it even if she made that connection.”

“It was an unknown,” I said. “And they might have been thinking, why now? Why when there’s only a week left before we get all this money?”

Nico asked, “Who’s on the board of Neurovantix?”

“It’s a small division of a huge company,” Tess said.

“But the division would have a director,” Nico said. “And often when there’s a new drug developed and going to market, a company will sell off the division for a good amount, using the success as indicators of future earnings. For example, if this drug makes Neurovantix 200 million a year, they can sell the division for a billion dollars, which is five years of earnings. They get the influx in cash, and the new buyer gets the future profits of a drug that has already gone through the expensive research and approval process.”

“It also helps shield both companies from liability,” Gabriel said.

“How the hell does that happen?” I asked.

“The original company doesn’t own Neurovantix anymore,” Gabriel explained. “That means anyone who wants to sue has to go after the new owners first. It goes through the courts, and that can take years. The new company will argue they’re not liable because they didn’t develop the drug—they just market it. Then the victims will turn around and sue the original company, which can take even more time. And the original company might claim they’re not responsible either, since they’re no longer manufacturing or profiting from the drug. If the lawyers see enough money in it, they’ll file a class action, which drags on for three to seven years. In the end, the people who suffered might get a modest settlement, while the lawyers walk away with a third of the total. It’s a slow, messy system that rarely delivers real justice.”