Big Sick Heart: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (21 page)

“That’s wonderful,” Dr. K said. “I know your
church has been very active in my country for many years. You’ve done many
excellent things, particularly in the Delhi area, where I came from a hundred
years ago.” She had a full, round face, with puffy cheeks and a wide mouth
highlighted by bright red lipstick. Her jet-black hair was pinned back neatly.
Her luminous eyes were almost black, too, accented by long, fluid brows. She
was wearing a white lab coat. With each phrase she spoke, her long fingers,
adorned with false nails the same shade as her lipstick, fluttered. I counted
at least ten rings on the two hands.

“Dr. K,” I said, “we know you’re very busy, so let
me try not to waste any of your time.”

“No, that’s quite all right,” she said. “I assume
this has to do with that murder?” She gestured for us to sit on two nearby
stools.

“Yes, it does. We’re trying to understand whether
the Henley Pharmaceuticals deal has any relationship to the crime.”

“I’m not sure what you mean, Detective,” Dr. K
said, looking puzzled.

“You know Senator Weston, is that correct?”

“Yes, that is true. I have met her once or twice,
in social circumstances. But I am not aware of the ‘deal’ you refer to.”

I said, “You didn’t know Henley is considering
building a facility here?”

“Oh, yes, I had heard that the company might build
here or somewhere else in this part of the country. Yes, I had heard that.”

“But that’s all you know about that possibility?”

“That is all I know. It would give me great
pleasure, of course, if there were a Henley facility here. I would have much
easier access to the kinds of resources that would be of great benefit to my
research. In addition, it might make it less necessary for me to travel back
East so often, which, I must tell you, I would welcome.”

“Can you help us understand your relationship with
Henley, Dr. K?”

“Yes, of course. I was completing my doctorate at
IIT—”

“IIT?” I said.

“Indian Institute of Technology. I’m sorry. It is
my alma mater. During my final year there, I became acquainted with several
representatives from Henley, who had read a number of the articles I had
written. They were very interested in the work I was doing. They recruited me
to their headquarters in New Jersey, where I worked happily for some years.”

“And how did you come to Central Montana State?”

“I was very content there, in New Jersey. My
husband was with me, and my parents, as well. But I wanted to get into
academia, and Central Montana was kind enough to offer me a very attractive
deal.”

“I imagine with your credentials you could have
gone to a number of more prestigious universities.”

“Yes, Detective, I think that is true. But Central
Montana created a position for my husband and is giving me a salary that
enabled me to bring my parents along, as well.”

“What is your relationship with Henley now? Did
you leave on good terms with them?”

“Yes, I would not have left them if it meant I
could not continue my work, and Henley has been extremely generous to me. They
have purchased the equipment I use now, and I have full access to the
scientists I was working with when I lived in New Jersey.”

“Dr. K, do you have any problems fitting in here
in the Biology Department?”

“You mean because I am Indian?”

“No, I’m sorry, I meant because you have less
teaching to do and get other perks?”

Dr. K paused, her face clouding. “Let me tell you
a little about my background. I was born in a cardboard shack in a shanty slum
of Delhi. My mother gave birth to eleven children, of which six survived the
first year. My father was a janitor for the Indian National Railways. He
cleaned the toilets for tracks 6 and 7. My mother took me and my brothers and
sisters with her to the garbage dumps, where we scavenged for waste paper,
iron-scrap, and glass pieces, which we sold that night for a few rupees.

“In addition, we gathered food that had been discarded.
We brushed off the maggots and worms and flies and ate it as we worked. If
there was any left over, we brought it home to eat when my father returned from
his job. There were no toilets for us to use, but that was not a problem
because we worked in a garbage dump.

“Every morning, the trucks lined up for more than
a mile, waiting to unload the new garbage. The boys would climb up onto these
trucks, hoping to find some valuable items before the truck dumped its
contents. Sometimes, the boys would slip and get stuck in the garbage, then be
crushed when the garbage was emptied. That is how I lost my brother Haroon.
That name, by the way, means
hope.

“Do you see this?” she said, pulling back the
sleeve of her lab coat. Her forearm was covered with ragged scars, each some
three inches long. I couldn’t tell what had made them. “I got this from two
dogs that were more hungry than I was.

“When I was ten years old, a nun from a Catholic
mission in Delhi selected me to attend her church school. I had never attended
school before. She gave me a uniform. I sat with other young girls in chairs at
desks in a clean room with a blackboard up front and maps of the world on the
walls. There was a bathroom with flush toilets. We had books and pencils, and
there was a computer in the classroom. I had never heard of a computer.

“I learned to read and write in Hindi, then in
English. I had food to eat. When I returned to my family in the afternoon, my
belly was not rumbling from hunger, as were those of my siblings. This nun enabled
me to attend a university in Delhi. I studied and was admitted to the graduate
school at ITT, which is the most prestigious university in India. And I came to
the United States.

“I have two goals that drive me in this life. The
first is to ensure that my parents, my siblings, my husband, and my son do not
go to bed hungry. Ever. My second goal, Detectives, is to unlock the promise of
stem cells.” She looked at each of us in turn. “I am absolutely convinced stem
cells will enable us, one day, to eliminate the terrible diseases such as
Parkinson’s and MS that devastate the lives of so many, many people around the
world. And—I know this sounds vain, and I ask you to forgive me—I am absolutely
certain I will play an important role in unlocking the key to stem cells.

“So, you ask me whether I have any problems
fitting in here with my colleagues in the Biology Department. I am, of course,
aware that some of my colleagues are envious of my working conditions—my light
teaching load, my graduate students, my equipment, my salary. But to be
perfectly frank with you, Detectives, I take no interest in such petty things.
God has given me certain aptitudes. I do not know why. And God has given me
some years here in this life. I do not know how many. I can only believe that
my purpose is high, and that the proper thing for me to do is to work
diligently to accomplish that purpose.

“I wish none of my colleagues ill; several of them
I like very much and consider my friends. I am glad to know them and work with
them. But they are not why I am here. In this life, I exist to fulfill my two
goals. And that I intend to do.”

“Dr. K, we want to thank you very much for
spending the time with us this morning.”

“It was my pleasure, Detective Seagate. And a
pleasure meeting you, too, Detective Miner. I hope I have answered your
questions satisfactorily, and I invite you to get in touch with me again if you
wish to talk further.”

“Thank you, we’ll do that,” I said as Ryan and I
rose and left the lab. When we got back to the cruiser, a light dusting of snow
had covered it. Ryan swept the snow off the windshield and back window as I
fired the engine and put on the defroster and the rear-window defogger.

We waited a minute for the car to warm up. I said,
“Her story about growing up in Delhi, you buy it?”

“I’ve seen it. Those scars on her arm? Packs of
dogs roamed through those shanty towns and the garbage dumps. Those wounds were
never treated. They didn’t have access to doctors. They didn’t even have
bandages or clean water. I’ve seen kids dying from infections they got from
feral dogs and rats.”

“What’d you make of the story about her
involvement with Henley?”

“I think she was telling the truth. She didn’t try
to cover anything up. She basically said, yeah, I make better money because I’m
smarter than the others and I work harder. I didn’t hear anything made me think
she’s involved in something dirty with Henley.”

“But it’s no coincidence Henley’s looking at
Rawlings to build a facility, right?”

“No, it’s no coincidence. Henley’s priming the
pump by financing the university through equipment and placing her here. She’s
part of Henley, it’s as simple as that. I wouldn’t be surprised if the company
builds here, then relocates some of her old team out here to make it more
convenient for Dr. K.”

“You think the company’s paying her under the
table?”

Ryan said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s
violating some university policy in doing more ‘consulting’ than she’s allowed
to. But since she negotiated her own patent royalties out in the open, I bet
she negotiated her own consulting rules, too.”

“You got a crush on Dr. K?”

Ryan laughed. “Not at all. But the way her
experiences have shaped her, it all fits together. You and me, we’ve never seen
poverty like Delhi in this country. We’ve never had to compete with wild
animals for our meals. It makes sense the most important thing for her is to
make sure she and her whole family are fed. Then, the commitment to her
research, that comes from her experience with the nun. Education saved her—and
her whole family. She sees this stem-cell thing as her mission, her way of
giving back.”

“You have a very pleasant view of the world, young
man.”

“You know, Karen, when people think of LDS missions,
they think it’s two guys in white shirts and black ties, riding bicycles,
knocking on doors, being a pain in the ass. But when I was in Delhi, I worked
for a while in a clinic, where I saw stuff even worse than Dr. K talked about.
Kids dying of diarrhea that could have been cured for ten cents a day. And I
did some teaching. I know my church just reached down, grabbed a whole bunch of
kids, and pulled them right out of that sewer. When I was at BYU I met students
from Bangladesh, Indonesia, all over Africa. They wouldn’t have made it out of
those slums. Some of them wouldn’t be alive.”

*  *  *

I picked up the phone and
punched in the four numbers for Robin in the lab.

“Sorry, Karen, not yet. I’ll let you know as soon
as I’ve got it.”

“Okay, thanks, Robin.”

An aide walked in and, dropping an interoffice
envelope on my desk, said, “One more set of financials for Dolores Weston.” I
thanked her and opened the envelope.

“What is it?” Ryan said.

“Give me a minute here.” I could feel myself
smiling. A couple minutes later, I said, “Ryan, can you get me the stock price
on Henley Pharmaceuticals on August 20 of this year?”

“Let me see,” he said, turning to his computer. A
few moments later, he said, “Okay, got it.”

“Listen to this,” I said, arranging the papers on
my desk. “On August 21 of last year, Dolores Weston received from Henley
Pharmaceuticals an option to buy five thousand shares of their stock.”

“Why are they giving her stock options?”

“It’s listed as ‘consulting services.’”

“What’s she doing for Henley, except helping them
get tax breaks for setting up shop in Rawlings?”

“Here’s the good part: the stock options are dated
August 10, eleven days earlier, with a share price of forty-eight bucks. So
that’s … how much is that for five thousand shares?”

Ryan used the calculator on his computer. “That’s
two hundred and forty thou,” Ryan said. “Not bad for a consulting fee.”

“But what did you say the stock price was on
August 10?”

Ryan looked down at his pad. “Thirty-seven fifty.”

“Times five thousand?”

Ryan said, “One hundred and eighty-seven and a
half.”

“Okay, here’s what they’ve done. On August 21, the
company gave her stock options worth two-forty. But they back-dated them to
August 10, when they were worth only one eighty-seven and a half.”

“Is that legal?”

“According to Sarbanes-Oxley, you have to value
the options at the current price.”

“So if you give them on August 21, you have to use
the August 21 price?” he said.

“That’s right. What they’re doing, in effect, is
giving her almost a quarter million of value but calling it only one
eighty-seven on their records.”

“Why’re they doing it that way?”

“It’s an old accounting trick they use to make
their expenses look small. Companies give their executives a big salary through
back-dated stock options. They date the stock options for some time in the past
when the price was low, so when the executives get the options they’re already
ahead of the game.”

Ryan said, “And since the companies can easily
track the history of their own share price, they can manipulate the date
however much they want to make the options worth a little more or a lot more.”

“Exactly. But Sarbanes-Oxley requires that the
company date the options honestly to make the company balance sheet accurate.
If the company is really paying the executive, say, ten million in options, the
law doesn’t let the company call it eight million. That kind of fiddling can
understate the company’s real expenses and make it look more profitable than it
really is.”

“Which is just another way to take advantage of
shareholders, who are paying retail for a company that’s less profitable than it
looks,” Ryan said.

“That’s it,” I said.

“Time for another trip to the Senator’s great
room?”

“No, I think it’s time to have her come in here
and make a statement. I want to get her out of her element.”