Each report came with photographs of the corpse in situ. She tried not to look at those. But the rebellious primitive that lived in the back of every human brain was drawn to what the forebrain deemed too dark for civilized consideration, and the eye sometimes turned traitor.
Although technically the law required an autopsy in the event of suicide, most jurisdictions allowed the medical examiner or the coroner, whichever title applied, some leeway in cases where he or she determined there was no doubt the deceased had self-destructed. Death by cop, which was a form of suicide, would always be followed by an autopsy as well as by a media frenzy and possibly a trial. By contrast, in the case of someone with a history of depression, who made previous attempts at suicide, blood tests would be conducted to detect drugs, and the corpse would be subjected to a thorough visual inspection for signs of violence unrelated to the cause of death; but in the absence of any indications of homicide, dissection and examination of internal organs wouldn’t routinely occur.
When Jane sampled files from two large cities—New York and Los Angeles—she made three discoveries of interest.
First, the number of cases in which the suicide appeared to have been a well-adjusted member of the community, mentally stable, physically sound, with an intact family, prospering in his work, was higher even than the national statistics indicated. The phenomenon was so striking, medical examiners and deputy coroners who conducted basic or extensive autopsies often remarked on it in their reports.
Second, in New York, the state attorney general in concert with the district attorney of New York City had approved new guidelines for medical examiners that not only allowed but encouraged a much higher percentage of suicide cases to be closed with only a visual examination of the body and the usual toxicology tests. They cited budgetary constraints and a lack of sufficient personnel. These new guidelines so disturbed some examiners that they made reference to them in their reports, in terms meant to insulate themselves from possible claims of dereliction in days to come.
Third, in California, some medical examiners were disturbed that the state attorney general had the previous year cited budget shortfalls and personnel shortages when issuing an advisory—not mere guidelines, as in New York—coupled with a warning of funding cuts to any city or county in which the coroner’s office continued at its discretion to conduct full autopsies in “cases not involving clear evidence of or reasonable suspicion of murder, second-degree murder, or manslaughter.” The reason given for curtailing autopsies in certain cases was the desire to focus in a more complete and timely manner on the rising number of homicides committed by drug-gang members and terrorists. Some coroners referenced the advisory in their reports or attached it complete, to protect themselves.
The growth in the number of government employees in recent years seemed to belie the claimed personnel shortages.
Any authority to whom Jane dared turn with this suspicion would brand her with the word paranoid as surely as Hester Prynne, in Hawthorne’s novel, had been made to wear the scarlet letter.
Yet she could not help but suspect that the attorneys general in the nation’s two largest states were engaged in the suppression of evidence related to the surge in suicides among people who were unlikely candidates for self-destruction.
At whose direction were they so engaged? How much might they know about the reason for this recent plague?
If a private-sector biotech company and the government were involved in a project that sent suicide rates soaring, what might be their purpose?
Were the suicides an unexpected side effect…or perhaps an intended consequence of whatever they were doing?
The chill that stippled her skin with gooseflesh didn’t pass, but worked its way deeper into her.
She went to the bathroom, where the motel provided a mug, foil packets of instant coffee, and a cheap appliance to boil water. She stirred up a full mug with two packets. She paced the room, drinking the brew as hot as she could tolerate, but the chill was stubborn.
4
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JANE HAD NOT YET found a brain dissection in the autopsy files. She was keen to discover a reference to some unnatural structure in the gray matter of a suicide.
When the coffee hardly warmed her, however, she decided to take a break from the medical-examiner reports and see what had been provided regarding the do-gooder, David James Michael. He sat on both the board of the Gernsback Institute, which produced the annual What If Conference, and the Seedling Fund, where he had served with a wealthy man, T. Quinn Eubanks, who was one of the suicides.
The report on David Michael appeared so complete that Jimmy Radburn would have deserved a prime position in the Hackers Hall of Fame if there had been one.
David Michael, forty-four, was the sole heir to a fortune made generations earlier in railroads, swelled by investments in oil, real estate, and everything else that provided a high return during the past century. Although he had inherited his wealth, he proved a first-rate steward of it, funding a venture-capital firm to back high-technology startups. His eye for new firms with big prospects was so sharp that eighty percent of the time he picked winners.
Three years earlier, he’d moved from Virginia hunt country to an estate in Palo Alto, to be near the many Silicon Valley companies in which he had an interest.
There were photographs of him. David might have come from starched and pinstriped stock, but he favored a free-spirit style. His blond hair appeared to have been shorn haphazardly and combed with nothing but his fingers, though Jane recognized the work of a five-hundred-dollar-per-cut hairdresser. He was known for attending important business meetings in sneakers and jeans, his shirttail untucked, but in several photos he wore different watches that were said to be from his collection of expensive timepieces that ranged in price from fifty thousand to eighty thousand dollars each.
In numerous publications, he had been cited for his generous philanthropy, his commitment to all kinds of public-spirited causes, from the San Francisco Symphony to wetland preservation, and he had made no secret of his progressive politics.
Jane knew his type. Everything he said and did for public consumption was carefully crafted. Everyone admired a young rebel billionaire who appeared distressed by his wealth and dispensed sums that seemed to risk impoverishing him. In fact, what he gave away amounted to one percent of his fortune. What parts of his public persona were genuine, if any, would be known only to him, his wife, and his image consultant—and possibly not to his wife.
Among the companies that thrived with his venture capital were Shenneck Technology and more recently, to a greater extent, Far Horizons. Shenneck and David Michael were partners in Far Horizons.
If she hadn’t found the locus of the conspiracy, she had found one nexus: Bertold Shenneck, David James Michael, and Far Horizons.
The problem would be getting close enough to either man to get him in a nutcracker grip and encourage dialogue. The billionaire would have layers of security, bodyguards of the highest caliber.
And though Shenneck had far less wealth than his primary investor, if they were in fact involved in this conspiracy through Far Horizons, he possessed information that would severely damage or destroy both men. Therefore, he would be insulated from everything but the most considered and stealthy approach.
At the end of Jimmy’s report, Jane discovered what might prove to be a back door to Shenneck. The last item consisted of only one sentence with inadequate details: Bertold Shenneck appears to have a deeply concealed interest in a Dark Web operation that might or might not be a weird brothel.
She knew what she needed to do next.
It would be dangerous.
As if that mattered. Everything was dangerous these days. Just driving to work in Philadelphia could be a death ticket.
5
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