Free Vaccine Nation by David Lender

at it all afternoon. I sent the team out for dinner. Figured it would give us a chance to talk confidentially. They’ll be back in an hour or so and we can hit it again for as long as we need to.” Stiles sat down and waited for Madsen to take a chair. “I’ve got four firms involved,” Stiles continued. “Two are people we usually use for due diligence, the other two are more specialized for this kind of work. Altogether we’ve got 120 on the street already. And another fifty or sixty we can put our hands on pretty quickly tomorrow morning if we need them.” Stiles paused for a reaction.
    “What’s all this?” Madsen said, pointing at the whiteboards, then at the map.
    “Two major approaches. The experienced guys said we should operate under two assumptions: first, she has the data, and second, she doesn’t. Assuming she has the data, we try to figure out where she would go with it and what she would do with it.”
    “And?” Madsen said.
    “We assume she’ll take the data to somebody who can interpret it. Or go to the media. Or go public with it herself on the Internet. Or go to the cops.”
    “The cops? I told you she’s on the run. They think she killed a cop at her apartment.”
    Stiles squinted like he did when the numbers didn’t add up. “Our guys turned up that the cop had his throat slit and a knife jammed into his heart. They don’t buy that a one hundred-pound woman could pull that off, even if she had the nerve. And theycan’t figure out what her motive would’ve been. Our guys’ contacts with the NYPD said all that cop went over there for was to pick up her laptop, so they could check out her files. They found her laptop in the apartment.”
    “So?”
    “So they figure most likely she didn’t kill the guy. After she thinks about it a while, she realizes she’s got nothing to lose by turning herself in to the cops.”
    Madsen tried not to show any reaction, but a wave of discomfort ran up to his chest from his stomach. “How do we stop that from happening?”
    Madsen knew that Stiles was no dummy, understood Madsen didn’t want that information in the public domain. Stiles said, “We’re working on it. We’ve already tossed Maguire’s office. Didn’t find anything controversial in his files or on his computer hard drive he might have given her, but our techs are still running down the hard drive. We already got the records on his office phone from our internal computer and found fifteen calls back and forth from the woman over a three-week period. We’re running his cell phone now, but that will take longer.”
    “That’s a lot of calls.”
    “Yes. One of our guys came up with the idea to paint it that those two were having an affair, that it went bad and somehow she was involved in his murder. Feed that to the cops.”
    Madsen rolled his eyes. “A little thin, isn’t it?”
    “You never know. They say if we leak it to the press, and she hears that, it’ll help keep her from going to the cops.”
    “Okay, next?”
    “So back to our first assumption, that she has the data. Our guys don’t see any way we could stop her from going to the media, or blasting it out on the Internet, so we’re not wasting resourceson that. But we’re trying to figure out who she might go to for help in interpreting it.”
    “Any preliminary ideas?”
    “We know that Maguire and John McCloskey were friends. And the woman knows McCloskey. He’s at the top of our list.”
    McCloskey. That fucking prick who turned on KellerDorne. “You find out where he lives?”
    “Here in the city. Found him in the phone book.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Yes, another possibility if she has the data. She goes to Washington.”
    Madsen nodded. Of course, the hearings. “Take it directly to someone on the committee.”
    “Exactly. That’s what we put most of our resources on. She either has to drive, fly or take the bus or train. We already figured out she doesn’t have a car, so unless she borrows