Previously:
"Damon, Fell is dead. He was killed in a car jacking last summer."
"Wha... What?" I ask, stunned.
Feeling the anger begin to course through my veins, I slam down the phone. "Damn it!" I yell. I think I'm finally on the cusp of figuring this out and now one of the key players is dead.
"Damon, what is it? What's wrong?" Elena asks.
"Stefan just told me that Dr. Fell was killed last summer," I utter, dropping to the bed to sit down a moment.
"It seems to me that there has to be someone else then? Who is Jordan working for?" Elena queries.
"I just don't know Elena. A good friend of mine, Dr. Forbes, is a Pathologist. I don't want to put her at risk by calling her. They don't know about you. You could call her and ask her to stay late at the hospital so we can meet with her. I have some questions, maybe there were other issues related to this drug? I only saw the liver damage but maybe there are other untoward side effects? For example, what if some patients are having some cardiac related problems?"
"What's the number?" Elena asks.
Marshal Saltzman:
Matt and I walk into the administrative office at Chicago Memorial. There's a woman probably in her forties, sitting at the reception desk.
After a cursory glance at the woman's name tag, "Hello, Andie. I'm Marshall Saltzman from the U.S. Marshall's office and this is my deputy, Matt Donovan. We'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Oh, sure.. How can I help you?" she says nervously.
Matt takes the picture of Jordan and the unknown man out of his pocket and hands it to her. "Do you know who the guy on the right is?" he asks her.
"Yes. His name's Fell. He was a pathologist. He worked here for awhile before leaving to work for a pharmaceutical company. I think he still did a little free lance work here when we were short staffed. I only remember him because he died last summer."
Exchanging a look with Matt, I continue, "Is there anyone in the pathology department who might know something about this guy?"
She glances at the clock before turning her eyes back to mine.
"It's after six o'clock. It's a bit late to catch anyone. However, if you go down to the morgue, there's an old guy who has been around there since the dark ages," she replies.
"Thank you for your help." Matt says as we step out of the office.
Damon:
Elena and I sneak into the back entrance to the hospital. We wind our way through the back corridors and hallways before finally arriving at the pathology department.
"Caroline?"
"Oh my gosh, Damon," she squeals then wraps her arms around me for a hug.
After patting her back a for a few moments, I step back, smiling, "Caroline, this is my friend, Elena. Elena, Caroline. Elena is trying to help me prove my innocence. I loaned you something once, Care. I need them back."
"Ah yes, I know what you're talking about. Let's take a look at those lab slides," she says.
After we look at several slides, I turn to Caroline, "Half of the people in the study group were indigents. There were no follow ups or baseline labs taken before drug therapy. How do we know they didn't come into the study with bad livers?"
"Look, Damon. The one on the right is one of the samples you sent me. It shows a lot of portal inflammation loaded with eosinophils. Notice the bile accumulation. It's classic for.."
"Drug induced hepatitis." I reply
"Well, I'm impressed," she says smiling. "Now look at this," she says after replacing the slide under the microscope."
Bending over, I look into the microscope again. This time the tissue looks markedly different, healthier.
"According to the labels, this is a slice from the same liver," Caroline remarks.
"It looks normal," I reply.
"See this tiny area of bile duct proliferation? It's called Von Meyenburg's Complex. It occurs in only two percent of the population. But get this, it's in every one of the five tissue samples you sent," she says, smiling.
Raising my eyes to meet hers, "That's impossible."
"It's possible because they're all from the same liver."
"Damon, that means they were falsifying data," Elena says clearly interested in what we've discovered.
Marshal Saltzman:
Matt and I arrive at the morgue.
"Yeah, just where I wanted to hang out before dinner," Matt utters sarcastically.
"Are you Mr. Truman?" I ask.
"Yes," he replies.
"I'm Marshal Saltzman and this is Deputy Matt Donovan. We're here to find out if you know anything about a pathologist named Logan Fell. I understand he was on staff here before leaving to work for Biometric Pharmaceutical?"
"He's dead."
"We heard. What we want to know is if he knew or had any contact with Dr. Damon Salvatore while he worked here? Were they friends, acquaintances? Did they pal around together?" I ask calmly.
"I.. I haven't talked to or seen Dr. Salvatore since he went to jail," he says anxiously.
"That's not what I asked you, Mr. Truman. I wanted to know if Dr. Salvatore knew Dr. Fell."
"I wouldn't know. If you'll excuse me, I have work to do," he replies clearly on edge.
Stopping him, I say firmly, "I think you're being less than truthful with us, Mr. Truman."
Damon:
Glancing up from the reports I'm reading, I notice as Caroline starts to pack up the evidence.
Turning my full attention first to Elena and then to Caroline, "They'd be home free if I hadn't been leaning on them to account for the livers I was seeing. And I wouldn't have seen the livers if I hadn't told the guys on my service to call me when they had patients who were bleeding excessively during surgery."
"This is big money. One guy standing in the way, it's easy to get rid of him and his wife. Why Fell?" Caroline ponders aloud.
"Why not? He's one of the original patent holders. All someone had to do was replace the samples I sent with healthy ones then issue the path reports on the healthy stuff. They probably thought it was a piece of cake."
I stare at the report for moments. Shaking my head, I turn to Caroline, "When did you say that Fell died?"
"Last summer, sometime in July, I think. Why?"
"A good quarter of the samples Fell approved were signed after he died."
Elena steps over to look at the reports with Fell's signature on reports from August, September and October.
"Someone had to have forged his name," she says.
"Could it be a another pathologist working Biometric?" Caroline asks.
"They wouldn't have had access. They would need someone on the inside, here at the hospital," I answer, overwhelmed by the complexity of this.
Elena picks up a Biometric Pharmaceutical flyer that Caroline had laying on her table. "Where did you get this Caroline?" she asks, clearly onto something.
"My friend Selena gave it to me. Her boss is the featured speaker for an event they're having."
"Look Damon. Isn't this your friend?" Elena says pointing him out to me.
After closing my eyes for a moment, I take a deep breath then turn to face Elena. I lace her fingers with mine and begin pulling her to the doorway.
"Thank you for your help, Caroline. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it."
"Where are you two going?" she asks.
"To see an old buddy of mine."
This has reached 100 reviews. Thank you so much everyone. Please check out my new story 'Breathe'. I'd love to hear what you think about it. Big thanks to Eva for her invaluable assistance. For your DE reading pleasure, please check out 'Chance of Rain' by Florencia7. No one writes DE like she does. 'A Wonderful Lie' by Short on Words. Also my friend Morvamp just commenced a new story, 'Claiming Hearts and Spaces'. 'Hunters and Prey' by Cry Benihime is pretty darn intriguing too. Have a wonderful day everyone.