Page 12 of The Beachside Cafe 2
Cameron was the one who answered. “Alex is a brilliant scientist I know who has his own laboratory, despite being very young. I’ve consulted him many times in the past and have done so for this job, too. He knows labs and what things look like in pictures like this. Clearly they are manufacturing vials of clear liquid. Some kind of drug. My friend says they may be using human subjects for their trials.”
“That’s about as illegal as it gets,” John said, his voice expressing his disgust.
“Yep.” Lou agreed with his partner, laying the photos back down. He returned to his desk and lifted the lid on his laptop. “Let me tap in the name here and see what we come up with.”
Jaymee watched anxiously as Lou tapped on his keyboard. After about five long, silent minutes, while John looked through the rest of the papers Cameron handed him, Lou turned the laptop toward the two of them, making sure it was turned enough for John to see as well. He scooted his rolling chair around so he was next to Jaymee and could also see the screen.
“That the man?” He pointed to the front face picture of a man that looked just like the one in the picture with Doug.
Jaymee nodded. “That’s the guy. That’s Martin Granger.”
“Check this out,” Lou clicked on the picture and it became smaller, revealing more information about the person in the photo. In fact, there was an entire paragraph about him. “So this Martin Granger guy was working for IDL up until two years ago when there was some evidence he had been stealing trade secrets from the company and selling them for a high profit. Nothing he sold was harmful, thank God, but if he had continued on, he might have turned to the dark side, so to speak.
“That’s awful,” Jaymee said. “They’re performing trials on human subjects, for goodness sake.”
“Who don’t even know what’s going on or happening to them,” Cameron added, shaking his head.
“So that’s the connection between these two men,” Jaymee said. “That might be the connection between Doug and everyone on the list. It’s IDL. That’s the connection.”
“Did you know your husband was dealing in pharmaceuticals?” John asked.
“He wasn’t. Not that I know of.”
“Do you have the names of the other six victims?” Lou asked, turning the laptop back to him.
“Right here.” Jaymee pulled the hand-written list from her pocket of first names and last name initials. She handed it to him.
“Good, good.” When he said the words and began to type on the laptop, Jaymee was reminded of Alex and smiled. It took about fifteen minutes but Jaymee wasn’t bored. She watched as the man began writing down information, her hopes skyrocketing.
Finally, he turned the paper to them and tapped it with his pen. “These are the people I found working for IDL that have the same first name and last initial. Looks like there’s one for every name on that list.”
Jaymee was covered in chills when she picked up the paper and ran her eyes down the list. She read it out loud for the benefit of Cameron and John.
“Martin Granger. Brian O’Rourke. Carmine Russo. Dylan Lianetti. Daniel Coulter. Amanda Dinklage.”
She looked over the paper at Cameron. “They all work for IDL. Did you find any other documents about IDL on Doug’s computer?”
Cameron shook his head. “I wasn’t looking for information about IDL on there. He’d have to be pretty stupid to leave stuff like that where it can be seen.”
“Well, we saw the photos and videos, didn’t we? We have to go back and look.”
“You two let us know what else you find. We’ll conduct our own investigation on our end. If we come up with anything about IDL that’s pertinent, we’ll get right with you.”
“Sounds good, thanks, John.” Cameron stood up, holding out his hand. The two men shook.
Taking his cue, Jaymee stood up. She turned to Lou, bending at the waist to shake his hand. She and Cameron switched up shaking hands with the detectives and left in a hurry. Jaymee was anxious to see if there was anything on Doug’s computer about IDL.
As they went down the steps in front of the police station, Cameron glanced in her direction, a sly look on his face.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“Oh, I was just wondering how your divorce is going.”
Jaymee laughed. “I made an appointment with a lawyer Monday morning. I thought I’d give myself a little more time to think about it and make sure it’s something I want to do. I’ve made up my mind, there’s just that 1% chance I should wait and get his side of the story. But the more I find out about him, the less I think I’m going to stay married to him. It’s going to hurt Cheyenne but Doug isn’t the man I thought he was or the man I need him to be. I need honesty. And frankly, so does Cheyenne.”
“You can’t be more right.”
“And besides that, he’s disappeared. No trace of him anywhere. No violence that we can see, nothing but a half-empty vial of a paralyzing drug left behind. If he was taken from our home, surely he would have fought back.”
