Big Sick Heart: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (15 page)

“Not if I don’t have to.”

“Don’t blame you,” Klein said. “The Maui cops are
going to arrest the doper who was on the boat.”

“They’ve got the forensics?”

“Apparently,” he said. “The harness on the
parasail was cut, and the marks match the pattern on the doper’s knife. The
threads in the knife handle match the harness, so they’re pretty confident the
case will work.”

“Can they prove Dolores Weston paid the doper to
do it?”

“I don’t think so, at least not yet.”

“So they’re gonna sweat the kid while they keep
investigating?”

“Yeah,” Klein said. “I think the strategy is to
pressure him to think a little more deeply about helping them make the case. If
he helps them, he walks on the drug possession and they cut him some slack on
the conspiracy. If he doesn’t, he’s on the hook for murder one. At least that’s
how they’re going to go at him.”

“What do they think their case is?”

“At this point, I think it’s circumstantial. The
kid used to work on the property at the Weston place here in Rawlings. All of a
sudden, he’s on a plane to work on their Maui place, with a wad of cash in his
pocket. He just shows up at the dock one day, saying Mrs. Weston wants him to
help out on the boat. The Hawaiian guys who run the boat didn’t even get a
heads up.”

“And the Hawaiian guys check out?” I said.

“That’s what I’m getting.”

“So the Maui detectives aren’t ready to arrest
Dolores Weston.”

“That’s right. They don’t have a motive yet.
Unless the kid can give them something better than he’s given them so far, they
can’t move. They’d love to get her, of course.”

“Because she’s a rich white woman?”

“That’s part of it. There’s a lot of bad feelings
about rich whites who drive up property values on the islands, but I think they
want to be able to show that none of the native boys were involved in killing
him.”

“To make it all all-Haole murder?”

“Exactly,” Klein said.

“So, just between you and me, did she do it?”

“Not sure. I don’t see her having him killed for
something obvious, like he’s fooling around.”

“Montana’s a community-property state,” I said,
“so she could divorce him and walk away with well over one point five billion,
right?”

“That’s right,” Klein said. “So she’d have to be
extremely pissed off at him. Hiring a kid to do it shows some real
premeditation, so it’s not a crime of passion. Either he’s diddling one of her
daughters or he’s trying to wreck her political career or something like that.
Whatever it is she thinks he was doing, I bet it would humiliate her big time.
But what it was? You’re the detective, you tell me,” he said, smiling.

“Yeah, I’ll go detect it,” I said.

“And when you do—if it’s a crime in this county,
you give me a call, okay?”

“You bet, Larry,” I said. “Thanks for the
conversation.”

“Always a pleasure, Karen. Keep in touch.”

Back at headquarters, I hung my coat up and walked
over to Ryan’s desk. “Something’s wrong here,” he said.

“What is it?” I said.

“Well, Carol Freeman says Lakshmi’s a superstar,
right? How come there’s not a whole bunch of articles?”

“She doesn’t list the articles?” I pulled my chair
over next to his.

“No, that’s not it. She’s got them listed. But
there’s only one or two articles a year since her PhD four years ago. And look
at what they are.” He pointed to the screen. “A couple of little articles in a
journal on science education about working with students on senior projects, an
op-ed thing about science education in the school system, stuff like that. I’m
not seeing this woman doing anything of interest to Henley Pharmaceuticals.”

“So why did the university give her a job—”

“Two jobs, according to Carol,” Ryan said.

“That’s right,” I said. “Her and her husband.”

“I don’t get it,” Ryan said. “She was doing real
science up to that point. There’s a good fifteen articles—one from her
undergrad years, all the rest from her MS years. We’re missing something here.”

“Maybe we just don’t how to read these damn
things. Hold on a second,” I said. “Let me give Carol a quick call. She’ll know
what we’re doing wrong.” I dialed Carol and hit Speaker. “Hey, it’s Karen,” I
said. “Sorry to bother you again, Carol. We’re looking at the CV of Lakshmi
Something in Biology, and she sure isn’t looking like the superstar you said
she is. She doesn’t have any good research articles in the last four years.
What are we doing wrong?”

“Let me think,” Carol said. “If it isn’t articles,
then it’s grant applications. Check that section of the vita. Look for dollar
signs and numbers with a lot of zeroes. The only thing I can think of is she’s
working on something really juicy and it isn’t ready for publication yet, you
know, like a book.”

I said, “Wouldn’t an up-and-comer like Lakshmi
work on articles first, saving the book for a little later?”

“Yeah, you’re right. Did she ever write articles?”

“There were a whole bunch before she got her PhD
four years ago.”

Carol said, “Did she have another academic job
before she came here?”

“No, she’s listed as a post-doctoral researcher at
Princeton.”

“I got it,” Carol said, excited. “If she was at
Princeton, she was working for Henley. They’re just up the road. They must have
grabbed her based on her dissertation.”

“How do we get our hands on her dissertation?” I
said.

“There’s something called Dissertation Abstracts
International. You can probably buy it online. Bet anything that dissertation
has something to do with stem-cell research, and Henley grabbed her then.”

“I owe you, Carol. Thanks a million.”

“Anytime, Karen.”

Ryan was already onto the Dissertation Abstracts
International site, downloading a copy of the dissertation. “It has to do with
research on using GDNF to foster regeneration of dopamine-producing cells for
Parkinson’s disease research.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Give me a second,” he said, reading the
introduction. “Okay, GDNF is glial derived neurotropic factor. It’s some kind
of protein.” He read another few moments. “She worked on putting it into the
part of a mouse brain to stimulate the growth of dopamine, which is the
chemical that’s missing in Parkinson’s. Just give me another minute.”

“Take your time.” I wheeled my chair back to my
desk and sat down.

“When you get Parkinson’s, your brain isn’t
producing a chemical called dopamine. She was working on putting this protein
called GDNF into the part of the brain that produces dopamine. The mice she was
working on had reduced symptoms of the disease. In other words, the cells that
make dopamine started working better.”

“So how is that of interest to Henley?”

“Not sure yet. I’m going to have to read this a
little more to try to figure that out. Wait a second. I’ve got an idea.” He
scrolled to the bibliography. “Let me see the authors she lists in her
bibliography.” He scanned the six pages of the bibliography. “There’s these
three names show up over and over: John K. Yee, Lars Swendt, Jerome
Westerberg.”

“You gonna Google them?”

“I’m already there,” he said. “John Yee, Henley
Pharmaceuticals. Lars Swendt, Henley Pharmaceuticals. Jerome Westerberg, Henley
Pharmaceuticals. That’s it.”

“Okay, great. We think she was working on GDNF
research related to Parkinson’s with scientists from Henley. How does that link
up with her job at Central Montana and Henley Pharmaceuticals maybe coming to
Rawlings?”

“Let me ask someone at BYU,” Ryan said. He hit the
keys a few times, then punched in a phone number.

“Lanahan.”

“Professor Lanahan, this is Detective Ryan Miner,
from Rawlings, Montana.”

“Ryan Miner. We had a Ryan Miner here eight or ten
years ago. Wide receiver.”

“That’s me. Class of ’03.”

“And what’d you say? You’re a detective?”

“That’s right, professor. A detective in Montana.
I was hoping I could pick your brain for a minute.”

“For an alum and a detective, you bet. What’s up?”

“We’re working on a case we think might be linked
to stem cells.”

“That murder?”

“Yes. I’m calling because of your expertise in
cell biology. We’re looking at a university biologist up here who we think
might be working on GDNF implantation for Parkinson’s research. You know what
I’m talking about?”

“Yes, I do. Go on,” the professor said.

“Any link between that subject and Henley
Pharmaceuticals in New Jersey?”

“Who are the people at Henley?”

“I’m looking at John K. Yee, Lars Swendt, and
Jerome Westerberg.”

“Yeah, I’m familiar with their work.”

“What are they doing these days?”

“They’re working on modalities for getting GDNF
targeted to the right cells in the part of the brain where the
dopamine-producing cells are dying.”

“What’s the problem they’re working on?” Ryan
said.

“There’s a number of technical problems. One is
getting the GDNF across the blood-brain barrier. That has to do with the brain
cells having a barrier to keep out large substances. It’s a protective measure
to block large viruses so the brain doesn’t get infected all the time.

“Another is to get the new cell growth to
integrate correctly with the existing neural network. Then there’s the vector
problem. Currently, the GDNF rides on deactivated viruses, but that’s
inherently risky. Plus, the host-resistance problem. The stem cells are foreign
organisms.”

“Any other problems?”

“There’s the risk of cancer. That’s the one I
think those guys are working on. We know how to put the GDNF anywhere we want
it and turn it on. The problem is we don’t know how to regulate it. If it
starts growing in the correct part of the brain but doesn’t turn off, it’s a
cancer and it can kill the host.”

“And how does this relate to stem-cell research?”

“Those three guys are working on growing stem
cells programmed to become dopamine-producers that self-regulate.”

“How do you do that?” Ryan said.

“Well, you’ve got a couple of options. Either you
engineer the cells so they can sense when there are enough other cells of the
same sort doing the job they’re supposed to do. That’s the way it works in a
normal organism. You don’t just keep producing billions of blood cells. You
produce only enough to do the job and replace the ones that die naturally. Or
you engineer the cells to be receptive to an external signal. You send in a
substance that’s like a key. When the key fits in the lock, it turns off the
cell.

“Sounds like pretty high-level stuff.”

“It’s the highest-level research going on in the
world: it’s neurology, molecular biology, chemistry, even physics, all rolled
up into the most complicated mystery we’ve every tried to unravel. I tell you,
Ryan, I am so glad to be able to witness this in my lifetime. I try not to get
carried away, but when I read what these guys are up to, it’s like they’re
getting closer and closer to discovering the nature of life itself. They’re
going to figure out the nature of life.”

“Are you worried about the ethics of it?”

“You bet I am. But as a scientist, this is without
question the most exciting thing that’s ever been done. The way I look at it,
Ryan, if I’m lucky enough to live to see today’s researchers crack this, what
we’re all going to see … I can barely talk about it. What we’re all going to
see is God Himself.”

“I never thought about it that way.”

“It’s absolutely incredible.”

Ryan said, “So the practical implications are pretty
important, right? If they can figure out how to deliver the GDNF the right way
and get it to integrate successfully, that could be the key to beating
Parkinson’s?”

“That’s what we think right now.”

“Can it be used against anything else?”

“The devil’s in the details, you know, but if we
can figure out the mechanism, there’s going to be a tremendous synergistic
effect. One by one, we’ll adapt to all the other neurological diseases.”

“You’re talking about MS, Lou Gehrig’s,
Alzheimer’s?”

“And meningitis and severed spinal cords.”

Ryan said, “So if Henley Pharmaceuticals can
patent a delivery system and a self-regulatory system, they’ll make some money,
right?”

“They’ll be measuring it in billions, plus a shelf
full of Nobel prizes, too. It will dwarf every other advance in the history of
medicine.”

“Wow. Could this explain why this researcher we’re
looking at doesn’t have a lot of research articles the last few years?”

“This is one of the big ethical issues in science
today. It’s a tremendous conflict of interest. Science relies of peer-review
publication, so other scientists can verify that the work is legitimate and
build on it. But science today is so expensive it can’t be done by independent
scientists or even by most universities without external funding. And since the
potential profits of a breakthrough technology or drug are so great, the big
pharmaceuticals are always looking to buy the next great researcher. If he’s
being financed by a pharma, they’re not going to let him tip off other
researchers until they can get the patents to protect their investment.”

“Professor, this has been great. You’ve helped me
an awful lot. I want to thank you.”

“No problem, Detective. Say, do you remember that
catch against Oregon in ’01?”

“You mean the slant out that went for 38 yards and
a TD and gave us the game?”

“That’s the one.”

“No, I don’t seem to remember that one,” Ryan
said, smiling.

The professor laughed. “Good talking to you, Ryan.
You call me back if you want to talk about stem cells—or football.”

“Will do, professor. Go, Cougars.” He hung up.

“That catch was a big deal?” I said.

“Well, not like curing disease, but it was a big
deal if you follow Cougar football,” he said.