Research Triangle

Research Triangle

Guns, Drugs, Children

A

Jack Richmond Conspiracy Thriller

by

Jon Batson

Midnight Whistler Publishers – since 1979

Copyright © 2009 by Jon Batson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Second Edition

Smashwords

ISBN 9781452436098

Midnight Whistler

http://www.TheRealJonBatson.com

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Table of Contents

Research Triangle

About The Author

Also By Jon Batson

What They’re Saying About Jon Batson

Research Triangle

On April 16, 2007, 23-year-old Seung-Hui Cho went on a shooting spree at Virginia Tech, killing 32 students before killing himself. Investigators reported that a prescription for a depression drug was found among his belongings. That is not fiction. Those events really happened.

The following story is fiction. These events did not actually happen.

Big Pharma Lecture

The lecture room was filled with businessmen. Suits were the dominant uniform, not lab coats or doctor's smocks. It was not a talk for medicos or psychiatrists, nor for the makers or purveyors of prescription drugs. This was a talk for investors. The topic was not remedies and cures, it was dollars and cents.

Ladies and gentlemen, the speaker began.

In the next to the last row, high in the cheap seats, I was trying to look inconspicuous. I had come camouflaged as a student, in jeans and oversized sweater, not realizing that there were no students in attendance. I would not pass for an investor or representative of some foreign interest seeking to grab a piece of the American pie, the fastest growing pharmaceutical boom in the history of the known universe. That's why I sat alone in the nose-bleed section.

If they knew that Jack Richmond, investigative novelist and radical newsletter publisher, was in the crowd – well, they wouldn't so much be in awe as very angry and probably violent.

How many drug-induced rampages will the public endure before they suspect prescribed medications as a cause?

Dr. R. J. Sweeting stood at the podium in a gray suit, white shirt and deep red tie. His gray, thinning hair and Van Dyke beard screamed out Psychiatrist! He would put on narrow, wire-rimmed glasses to look at his notes and take them off to address the audience.

How much carnage will the public tolerate before they insist a drug be taken off the market?

In the back, someone coughed. No heads turned to see who coughed. The silence that followed was a warning to the offending party not to cough again.

Can stronger medications be put on the market without public outcry arising? And how much outcry will it take before the FDA is forced to remove them from the market completely?

There was a stirring in the audience. A few low mumbles could be heard. The speaker looked pleased at the uneasy response. He stood smiling in a pale pool of light in the center of the stage, as if nothing else on Earth was as important as that circle of light.

He took in a long breath, furrowed his eyebrows and continued:

Or will the drugs have to be reformulated, at the cost of billions of dollars for additional research and taking many years before the products can come to market again? Or will the product never come to market again under that name? Will 'Marketing' have to create another name for the product, one the public doesn't recognize, one without a bad opinion attached?

The mumbling increased. They didn't like that idea more than the others they didn't like. Doctor Sweeting waited patiently for the rumble to die down.

Those and other questions will be answered by the study I am proposing.

The lecture auditorium was designed for 300, but today, barely 70 were present. From the collection of airport and private limousines, hired Town Cars and luxury vehicles in the parking lot, I assumed it was an out-of-town crowd and very high level. Big Pharma meant big business. I had long ago given up the idea that medications were about health; it was about money – all about money. With the money came power and with the combination of money and power, properly used, came control. Ultimately, I had concluded, it was all about control.

When the tires blow on an Explorer SUV, the victims sue Ford. When a woman burns herself on a cup of hot coffee, she sues the restaurant chain. But when a student who has stopped taking his anti-psychotic medication against doctor's orders goes berserk and kills a dozen of his classmates, no one sues the pharmaceutical company; there is no liability.

Several of men in suits who had been sitting back in their seats now sat forward. This was what they wanted to hear.

Nor should there be. After all, people drive into trees or each other on a regular basis, yet cars are not banned. People drown, yet swimming is not illegal. People choke on jumbo shrimp, yet they are still being served in our finest restaurants.

Agreeable grunts were heard; heads nodded. The soft glow from the stage showed a wave of agreement going through the audience.

In fact, it takes a student going on a rampage now and then to bring to light things that should have been taken care of long before. Gun control becomes an issue only after someone gets shot. Security is brought up to proper levels only after a lack of security has become an issue.

Doctor Sweeting was beginning to pick up speed and volume, now. He was clearly getting to the part he liked best.

A day of mourning is a good cleanser. People have a chance to speak with a professional. Medications can be prescribed that should have been present all along. After each violent eruption in our school system, the number of prescriptions in that part of the country skyrockets.

He was almost gleeful, sending a hand soaring aloft and watching it ascend, following the imaginary trail extending from the hand into the air, up to the high ceiling and beyond. Then, without lowering his hand, he dropped his eyes to the rows of intent businessmen.

Until usage is universal.

He let that settle on the audience, slowly dropping his hand, turning, picking up his notes, shuffling them and putting them back on the podium without a glance. He leaned on the podium with both hands, sinking his head into his shoulders.

The screening of every pregnant woman and new mother, of every student from kindergarten to college level, of every soldier in every branch of service and of every civil servant within the government will ensure that no disorder will go untreated, providing an automatic and unending stream of product consumption unequaled in history.

An excited murmur now ran through the crowd, receiving this news like ground-floor investors in a new dot com.

Science fiction writers for decades have foreseen a world in which the entire population is medicated. Those days, gentlemen, ladies, are not far away. Thank you.

The assembled throng erupted into deafening applause. I slipped out before anyone could turn around and see me. They would have seen in an instant that I didn't belong as I was the only one without a suit and tie.

In actual fact, I didn't own a suit or a tie. I didn't need one when I went to school in Durham, didn't need one when I was a budding author in New York and didn't need one now, as a small publisher of a radical newsletter in Hillsborough.

Look Both Ways! had a growing subscription base and was reprinted in private blogs and activist sites. I was a man on a mission; I didn't need a tie. What I needed was a way into the other building, the one in back.

I had heard from locals about a building with no title or sign, on a road with no name, inside Research Triangle Park, that collection of companies among the trees between Raleigh and Durham. It was said there was some pretty secret experiments going on there; security was high, though no one knew exactly what took place. Apparently, even the workers didn't know what went on outside of their immediate areas. I had to get inside to see. If it was just a better mousetrap being built, I would promise not to tell. But if it was what I thought, what Doctor Sweeting alluded to, I was going to blow the lid off.

Already, I knew from my previous research, kids in foster homes were being used as guinea pigs for the pharmaceutical industry, taking a bad home-life situation to nightmarish proportions. If the ongoing screening and subsequent drugging of students and young mothers continued unchecked, every man, woman and child would eventually be on drugs. To have everyone using your product for life is the goal of every manufacturer, but to have government mandated screening of women and children, military and civilians alike just to sell pills is downright insidious.

The basic concept had already been exposed in fiction, not only my own, but popular fiction. In the cult film Crimson Spectacular, the villain infected the entire society with a disease virus for which he controlled the cure. The cure had to be administrated daily, or irreversible deterioration of health ensued resulting in death. Anyone not going along with the program was simply refused the daily antidote. Problem solved. The entire population would then be under control. It was all about control.

You can have money and power and also have control, I had often told coffee shop friends over espresso back in New York's bistros. But if you don't have the control, you can lose the money and power. If you have control, money and power are assured.

There was nothing wrong with money, or power, or control, depending on how you got it and how you used it. What I was seeing was pure evil in the acquisition and application of control. I felt I was close to discovering proof of the conspiracy, the one that had us all in it's grip. My heart was beating out a rumba!

I crept down the stairs to the back exit, looking for a way into the nearly impregnable building in back. The door slammed behind me with a final sound. I was committed now. Or ought to be, I thought.

The building I had just left was gray concrete blocks in back, as was the rear building, plain and ominous. There were no windows on either wall; they didn't want people looking in – or out. I looked up and counted four stories – a large building for the area. Most were one or two stories, sometimes three; four was rare.

Across the small stretch of grass that separated the two buildings, was a single walkway ending in a wide, concrete patio devoid of the expected patio furniture. The only thing in evidence was a tall receptacle for spent cigarettes; this was the smoking zone. The door by the concrete slab had a deadbolt, but someone had set it to keep the door open rather than locked.

The door swung freely open to my touch, so I ducked inside, my heart pounding inside my chest. This was forbidden ground. If caught, I would be in trouble, big time! If they twigged who I was, I would be in even more trouble. That's why I had left my wallet at home. If caught, I would simply say I came for the lecture and got lost. That was the plan. It was a half-baked plan, but a plan nevertheless.

Plain, metal stairs, painted green, went up to the right. The only door on that floor was locked, so I started up the stairs. I found it was the same on every floor, though there was a metal ladder next to the fourth floor door. I climbed the ladder to find a crawlspace, not tall enough for standing but enough to allow me to crouch through. It was dark and musty, but there were sounds below and enough light filtering through the ceiling cracks to send ghostly shoots of white into the dusty air. I took a deep breath and crawled up into the darkness.

The Monitoring Room

It took a moment for my eyes adjust to the lack of light in the crawlspace. The floor was actually the ceiling of the floor below and the widest parts looked like they would not support my weight. I would have to stick to the rafters.

The musty smell of things long dead pervaded, reminding me of grandmother's attic. The dust tickled my nose and gritty things bit into my palms as I crawled along as quietly as possible toward the open ventilation grate. The light from the fourth floor room danced in the suspended dust, announcing activity down in the central spaces of the great building. I repositioned myself to get a clear view of the activity below.

The room was the size of a gymnasium and must have been twenty feet to the floor from where I lay looking down through a ventilation grate. My first impression was that of NASA's control center. I imagined someone saying, Houston, this is Apollo, as I looked down on the rows of computer stations, each with an operator wearing an ear-piece. Giant screens lined the front and side walls. The only sounds were a low murmur of whispered statistics, shuffling papers, stocking feet on tile and the occasional squeak of a chair in need of a shot of oil.

I brought out a small digital voice recorder, wishing I had thought to bring a video camera as well. Sound recordings would have to do.

The screens located on every wall showed that vitals were being tracked: heartbeat, respiration, adrenalin levels, temperature and a series of readouts that were totally foreign to me. As I watched, pondering what these new screens showed, the readouts spiked. Buzzers went off, lights flashed and beepers beeped. All the bells and whistlers went off at once. I jumped, nearly losing balance, hoping no one below had heard. I turned on the recorder and steadied myself for the task at hand.

Below, everyone came alive – tapes rolled, phones were raised to ears, orders shouted. Coffee cups were put down and speakers were turned up. Everyone was on-point now.

On the main screen, a long shot of a campus showed students and professors running, screaming. Shots were fired; several bodies dropped in the quad. On the smaller side screens, vitals showed increased activity. The superimposed title on the main screen said W. V. U.

Students were running for their lives as more shots were fired. Armed guards sprang into action, pinning the shooter down on the roof of the small building. A flurry of gunfire sent everyone within view running for cover as the vitals spiked, red-lining. Remotely controlled cameras turned to focus on the roof of the building where the shooter huddled with his rifle.

The people at the monitors were transfixed, each fulfilling his assigned task. At the rear of the room a man in a white coat paced back and forth giving commands into a headset microphone. He punctuated his commands with forceful hand motions nobody saw; their backs were to him, but they knew the motions were there.

Several smaller screens showed other angles of the scene, other camera positions. On the wall to the left, a body count was being tabulated. 12 changed to 14 then to 16 as another body dropped, and another.

Sirens grew in volume as an order was yelled across the room to a tech who made a note of the time. When the first police car pulled up, another note of the time was made. Two officers got out of the prowler, guns drawn. One pointed to the top of the building as the student peered over the edge at the arriving police. The vital signs on the monitor screens spiked again. Another officer reached into the trunk of the car and brought out a rifle with a scope. He listened for a moment to his headset, then took aim and fired.

The running continued below but the shots from the rooftop ceased. Screams of panic were replaced with cries of grief. The officer looked up from his rifle, speaking into his headset. Four officers were dispatched to the building to make their way to the roof.

The vitals displayed on the side screens spiked for a moment, then went level, producing a monotone hum from each. The people in front of the computer screens watched in awe. For a moment, there was no sound, no movement: a tableau, seemingly in shock, as if the room were a bounced ball, having reached its apex, hanging for a moment motionless in the air before beginning its descent.

Then the people in the room erupted into a cheer. Senior staff in white coats congratulated each other and technicians gave each other high-fives. It was like fans after winning the big game; the