She ended the call with a laugh.

Ken cursed and looked out a window just as three black SUVs pulled alongside his airplane, each with those pesky blue lights flashing on their dashboards.

CHAPTER TEN

    THE STORM

1.

The first week of June brought the first serious heat to the island, and with the longer days summer finally arrived. Ten months after Leo, the cleanup was over and the days were filled with the comforting sounds of electric saws, automatic hammers, diesel engines, and the yells and shouts of busy workers. Crews worked long hours, even double shifts, to repair and renovate cottages, restaurants, shopping centers, churches, and many inland homes. Most of the small beachside hotels and motels were open for business, but the larger ones with hundreds of rooms and far more damage were still months from reopening. The beaches had been picked clean and the eroded inlets had been rebuilt by tons of relocated sand. Most of the private boardwalks had been rebuilt and two new city-owned piers jutted deep into the water and attracted the usual assortment of lonely fishermen.

June also brought back Nick Sutton, fresh from his studies at Wake Forest and with a shiny new degree in English lit but no prospects of permanent employment. Not that he was trying. His plan, if it could be called that, was to spend the summer the same way he’d spent the prior three, housesitting for his grandparents while selling a few books, reading even more, and all the while hanging out at the beach and working on his tan. When pressed, especially by Bruce, who liked the kid but was worried about his initiative, Nick had vague ideas about an MFA degree where he could get a grant and write for two years while continuing to enjoy the college life. He had even more vague ideas about writing his first novel.

And he was quick to remind Bruce that he, of all people, had no business giving career advice. Bruce had been twenty-three years old and still classified as a junior at Auburn when he finally walked away.

Nick spent hours each day consumed with the details of the ever-evolving plots and dramas that began with the death of his old friend Nelson Kerr. He read everything online and kept all the stories in neat and indexed research files. He kept every video of every news report. He scoured the Internet for any snippet of news, recorded everything, and had become in the past six months a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge about the case.

Each morning at Bay Books, around ten, when he was supposed to punch the clock and get busy at the front counter, he barged into Bruce’s office with the latest news. After a full report, he usually said something like “And you made it all happen, Bruce. This is all you, man.”

Bruce demurred and argued that he had nothing to do with Danielle Noddin, the informant, coming forward. He had nothing to do with the capture of Karen Sharbonnet, the details of which had yet to be made public.

Nick would argue: “Okay, what about tracking down the miracle drug and busting Grattin? If you hadn’t had the balls to hire that firm at Dulles, we would’ve never known. Grattin would still be pumping the old folks with E3 and ripping off the taxpayers.”

They bantered and argued every morning, and Bruce didn’t mind at all. Getting the daily update from Nick saved him the time and trouble. And, before long, Nick let it slip that he was probably going to write a book about the entire episode. However, as of now the story had no ending.

By mid-June, eleven senior executives of Grattin had been indicted, arrested, and dragged to court for their initial appearances. Four were still in jail under exorbitant bonds. Several dozen executives and managers of related companies were under investigation. The case so far had proved to be a bonanza for the Houston legal profession.

Ken Reed was locked away in protective custody, deemed an extreme flight risk, and denied bond. Three of his airplanes had been grounded. His handsome yacht was docked at a Coast Guard lot. His fleet of fancy cars had been hauled in. Dane was living in their Houston home, which had been left alone, for the moment, but three other houses were chained and padlocked. At least six offshore bank accounts had been frozen.

In what appeared to be overkill, the FBI arrested some five dozen Grattin nurses, pharmacists, managers, and even orderlies for dispensing vitamin E3. Most were expected to point fingers at their bosses and escape with fines. Cable news legal experts speculated that the government was grandstanding a bit, flexing its muscle to draw attention to the enormity of the fraud.

Grattin itself was forced into involuntary bankruptcy, and an emergency receiver was appointed to protect its forty thousand patients. The company was far from bankrupt, as the receiver, a Houston law firm now on the clock at $100,000 a month, soon learned. Grattin was flush with cash and had almost no debt. To stay in the game, the receiver convinced the bankruptcy court that it was needed to run the company, which appeared to be a fair argument, according to cable news legal experts. All the bosses were either in jail or out on bond.

Vitamin E3 was immediately removed from circulation. Regulators in fifteen states, suddenly awakened, watched intently, along with a gaggle of journalists, the FBI, the FDA, and who knew how many other government agencies, as the number of deaths among the severely demented spiked in Grattin facilities. Clear proof, agreed the cable news legal experts, that the drug worked. If not for its horrible side effects, what was the problem?

Undaunted by the bankruptcy, and in a frenzy at the smell of fresh blood, the tort lawyers attacked with a vengeance and were soon bellowing from billboards and early morning TV. Class actions sprang up overnight in a dozen states. Cable news legal experts, throwing darts, estimated as many as two hundred thousand potential plaintiffs.