Heart Stopper Read online

  “But you just said it. Why didn’t Reyna defend herself?”

  “She finally told me two years ago. When she moved to New York. She was embarrassed when it was happening. She didn’t want to get physical; she couldn’t believe it was happening. Everyone seemed to think it was just a tempestuous relationship and that they were both involved.” Catherine sighed again, a deep breath out. “I understood then why she didn’t walk away at the time.”

  Catherine stopped and was silent.

  Priya leant forward. “Why?”

  Catherine shook her head. “I’ve already told you more than Rain wants anyone to know. I know I shouldn’t have, I’m not allowed to talk about her life, but I just couldn’t bear to see you both tearing yourselves apart.”

  Catherine looked at the torn grass in her hand and laid it down beside the dug up soil. Her fingers ran over the dirt and she smoothed the rift as she talked. “I’ve just lost my son, this time it is final. I am so grateful for the last few years when he let me back in to his life. And I think that time was cut short. I don’t know why it was you that I asked but I had a strong feeling if anyone could work it out you could. And now you are in danger too it seems.” She straightened up. “Whether he was killed or not, Daniel wanted us to know and to do something. Something he couldn’t do for some reason. I am as angry as you are about your suspension, but a part of me agrees with Reyna too. We have two days to figure it out. And then Reyna is going to go in and shut everything down at the Research Company. She is going to get a worldwide product advisory issued and all checks are going to be stopped until we can be certain the deaths and the heart attack have nothing to do with the equipment.”

  “Does she have the power to do that?”

  “We don’t know. But the better the case we have, the more chance she has with TechMed Devices.” Catherine glanced back at the house and smiled. “She’s in the car, looking through her papers. Any chance we can release her and all go in?”

  “She’s been sitting there all this time?” Priya asked. She grimaced and said, “I guess I wasn’t too subtle when I kicked her out yesterday.”

  Catherine got to her feet and held out a hand. Priya took it and pulled herself up.

  Catherine said, “I don’t think Valerie is Reyna’s type.”

  Priya turned and walked towards the house. “I didn’t think she was mine. Or Kathy’s,” she said, over her shoulder.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Reyna’s face was tinged with red and a sheen of moisture was layered over the wary expression on it as she looked at Priya through the open window of the car.

  Priya said, “You’re not my boss for the moment so I can say, you look silly using a Merc as an office. You can come in; I’m not going to bite.” She turned to hide her smile at Reyna’s face and added, “Not yet, anyway.”

  She could hear Reyna start to gather up the papers draped over every available surface of the interior of the rental car. Priya turned back. “Do you need a hand?”

  She took Reyna’s snort as a ‘No’ and grinned as she went back into the house.

  ∞

  Priya and Catherine were sitting at the kitchen table as Reyna carried in a cardboard box and dumped it down on the table.

  Reyna said, “Most of the important financials and the stuff I took from your office.”

  Priya said, “I was just going to go through the basics of pacemakers and the industry that you and I went through already.”

  She went through it again in detail for Catherine and drew out pictures on an A4 notepad to illustrate.

  Priya said with an apologetic tone in her voice, “My study in the field was very focused. And I didn’t get to see the whole picture at any stage. I had some…distractions when I was finishing my PhD.”

  Reyna said, “You said before that you were in the second year of your PhD when you met Valerie. So all this happened with Valerie in that year, and you still finished the PhD, what, a year or two later?”

  Priya nodded. “About a year and a half.” She saw the confusion in Reyna’s eyes and said, “Yes, my personal life had just been blown apart, but in our family that was not allowed to come before finishing what you started especially when it comes to education.”

  Reyna said, “But your seven year relationship had just come to an end, Kathy had committed suicide...”

  Priya saw Catherine glance a warning at Reyna, but Reyna was still looking at Priya in puzzlement.

  Priya closed her eyes. She said, “Yes, I had to deal with a lot of stuff. And I did. I closed off for a month and then my dad came to see me and I had to get up and finish the PhD.”

  Priya opened her eyes. Catherine had a look of understanding in her eyes, but Reyna looked angry.

  Priya said, “Reyna, considering my background, I am a screw-up. My parents were highly educated, driven, professionals. And they were Indian. And I was their only child. The fact that I wasn’t a doctor like them, or, since I’d half-heartedly followed the route and done Science, the fact that I hadn’t won the Nobel Prize in Science by the time I was 30 was a huge disappointment. Especially, as they saw it, for someone with so much potential.” She laughed. “When I switched to IT, my dad comforted himself by asking me to contact Bill Gates to see if I could get ‘in’ there on the whole Microsoft thing.”

  Reyna smiled reluctantly as Catherine laughed.

  Priya continued, “I know it seems harsh, but they were just trying to do the best for me, and trying to get me to do the best for myself. You see, I had one of the highest points you can get, in the Leaving Cert, and I could have walked on to any course. I guess I had a mini-rebellion and stuck a finger onto the list of course options, of course, these only included everything to the rational side, and it landed on Science, so that’s what I did. And I was let loose in college; my parents had left by then. I spent those years attempting to tear up every stereotype of a quiet Indian girl. I’m afraid to say I did a good job of that.”

  “Even then, you got so many degrees, didn’t that make them happy?” Reyna asked.

  “Yup, I guess. Then the job and marriage thing came up so they had something else for me to pursue. God, this is sounding bad, but it wasn’t. I just wandered around after the IT postgrad, couldn’t settle at anything. I was happy with Kathy, she was a graphic artist, and I got into painting and started doing an Art therapy course, which of course I didn’t mention to my parents. And then the PhD came up. And Valerie… I told you she knows how to get to someone. Well, with me it was the ‘you’re just so intelligent’ route. And because she’s really smart and Gerry is too, I respected her opinion, She just knew exactly what to say and I fell for it. Jeez, it was like manna from Hell. So when I knew it was just an act on her part, I think I stopped feeling intelligent, in fact, I stopped feeling human. I guess a robot version of me finished the PhD and reported to work at the clinic when it opened.”

  Turning away, Priya said, “Daniel connected the deaths and the heart attack suffered by the technicians.”

  Catherine put a hand on Reyna’s and Reyna closed her mouth.

  Catherine said, “Is it possible that someone knew about the incidents before Daniel. That someone found out that the Controller I could possibly have caused the deaths of those women and the other heart attack and covered it up?”

  Now Reyna was up and pacing.

  Priya nodded. “Let’s follow the logic. The people who could have connected the incidents in any meaningful way were Daniel and the researchers at the company, the staff at the clinic, and the unit in TechMed that dealt directly with the product. It could be anyone of them that covered up the connection.”

  Reyna stopped and turned to Priya with a shocked expression on her face. “You think Daniel could have been a part of it?”

  “How can we rule it out?”

  Catherine said, “I can’t believe that of Daniel. He was too dedicated to his work, to healing people. All his life he wanted to make a difference and he worked really hard to get where he
was.”

  Priya said gently, “He had the most to lose then, didn’t he? If this came out, there would be product recalls, investigations, charges possibly.”

  Reyna cut in. “But Daniel was killed!”

  Priya said, “We don’t know that for sure. What if he found this stuff and covered it up, then died of a heart attack.”

  Reyna and Catherine were staring at her. Their faces reflected her confusion.

  Priya said, “What do we have beyond a feeling that would point to Daniel’s death being anything but a heart attack? The fact that he was worried and had discovered that technicians had died while using his equipment. That could still point to a heart attack brought on by worry. The feeling that Catherine had that there was a woman in his bed with him. Well, maybe that was because I was in the apartment that morning. The voice I heard when I ran from the apartment.” Priya realized she had forgotten to tell them about her new hypothesis for that. “I actually meant to say the other day, but it is possible what I heard was the recorded voice saying ‘Lift opening’.” She couldn’t meet their eyes. She hurried on. “And the autopsy showed no other cause of death.”

  Then Catherine said, “I know this is from his mother, but I am convinced Daniel would not have been a part of a cover-up.”

  Reyna nodded.

  Priya remembered something. “Daniel must have received the medical records from John Landon, the guy who had the heart attack. He sent those weeks ago from Seattle. I can understand it taking a while, but they should have arrived before Daniel died.” She gestured at the mass of papers and files. “They are definitely not in there. This means either Daniel had them at the clinic, or he sent them to someone else, or he had them at home. I don’t think he’d have kept them at the clinic.”

  Reyna said firmly, “There was a cover-up. And we know without a doubt that it wasn’t Daniel that covered up the deaths and heart attack at the time they happened. He didn’t know about the problem until this year. What we don’t know is what convinced him that there wasn’t a problem the night he died. Don’t you think it is too much of a coincidence that he texts me to say that and then he dies. Just after finding out about the problem? And what happened to the medical records?”

  Priya said, “So, someone else knew about the deaths, covered them up, and either convinced Daniel to send the text or sent it themselves from his phone to put you off...? And then killed Daniel. That leaves us though with the unlikely situation that Daniel was killed in such a way that it appeared beyond a shadow of a doubt to have been a heart attack.”

  Catherine was firm. “Then that is what happened. And we have to figure out how it could have happened.”

  Priya looked doubtful. “I need to try and get an overall picture of this. The note Daniel left…” She searched through the box, and held out the Post-It and then started searching through the rest of the stack. “I need to look through Tara’s description of Liam’s attack.”

  Reyna sat back at the table.

  Priya found the handwritten sheets. Liam had had his heart attack in December while Priya had been away with her mother in India. Tara had described in detail what had happened that afternoon almost a year ago, December 13th. Priya tried not to let her mind wander to that date, only three days before the machine was silenced, but of course it ran there. Priya read the account out loud, her voice growing stronger after the first few sentences.

  The appointment had started out as a routine six-month check on Jacintha’s pacemaker at 2.15 on the afternoon of the 13th of December 2010. Liam was present as usual, sitting beside his mother. Tara described in detail the setting up of the Controller, of placing the wand over Jacintha’s chest, of hearing the beep.

  Priya continued reading. The trolley was placed as usual beside Jacintha. The controller had started the communication by sending the auto-identification sequence; the device implanted in Jacintha had in turn sent the response detailing its serial and model numbers. The controller had then sent an interrogation command that elicited Jacintha’s name and diagnosis. So far, everything was routine.

  Tara wrote how she finished the first part of the check and had started the programmer test, when there had been a knock on the door, and she had gone to answer it. She couldn’t remember if she had left the wand on Jacintha’s chest. Laura, one of the nurses, had needed the file for one of Tara’s patients. Tara had left the room for a moment. She’d been standing outside the door to the room when she had heard Jacintha scream Liam’s name. She had immediately entered the room to find Liam sliding down to the floor from what seemed like a slumped position over Jacintha’s chest. He fell first against the trolley which rolled away from Jacintha and then onto the floor. Tara had raised the alarm and performed CPR. Liam’s condition had necessitated a temporary pacemaker, as the ECG showed no spontaneous electrical activity. The printout of the results was stapled to the back of the handwritten sheet.

  Priya said, “Strange that she described the way Liam fell.”

  Priya searched out the official typed sheet that Tara had submitted after the incident. “See, she doesn’t go into those details in her official report. This is what I saw when I came back. Liam wasn’t my patient, but I checked to see what had happened. Liam seemed to have been leaning over Jacintha. And John Landon, the technician in Seattle, described leaning over the patient as well.”

  Priya stopped. She was looking at the printout of the results.

  “What?” Catherine leant forward.

  Priya said, “The printout for the check that Tara did is different. Older type, the Controller I or the Controller II before 2008. I don’t use either of them for routine checks in the clinic. They are there for my research work with the company. I only use it to communicate with pulse generators, not the implanted ones, just to test the coding.”

  Reyna asked, “Does Tara know that?”

  Priya tried to think. Tara knew the Controller I had been replaced. But the clinical room Priya used for her patient checks was also the room where she carried out the tests on the controller. They had not had time to sort out anything when Priya finally left to go to her mother. It was not a dangerous piece of equipment. The Controller I looked slightly different from the Controller II. The two versions of the Controller II looked very similar and were on identical trolleys.

  Priya said, “It is possible that Tara used the Controller II without the software patch... She had only joined the clinic a short while before that. She wouldn’t have known much about the research work.”

  Reyna asked, “Why would that be dangerous? I thought the Controller II had passed the clinical trials and had been used successfully before it was replaced?”

  Priya was up and pacing around the room. “It wouldn’t have had to go through clinical trials. There still shouldn’t have been any problems. It does the same thing. I need to see what the software patch does.”

  Catherine said, “So, Daniel asked Tara to write the description out. And then wanted to check something with you after he read it? Maybe the fact that the wrong Controller II was used by mistake?”

  Priya said, “Could be. He got the description in March, why didn’t he ask me anytime in the last few months. Unless he only wrote the note recently.” She sat back down amidst the folders. “So what changed? He would have known that Tara used the wrong Controller II since March.”

  Reyna said, “According to what Daniel found out, the problems were when the Controller I was used. So Daniel did those searches because he found out that Liam’s attack happened when the wrong Controller II was used.”

  Priya said, “But both Controllers would have been used so many times in so many clinics over the years. Why on those particular occasions did they cause fatal or near-fatal heart attacks? So far the similarities are that the people who had heart attacks were leaning over the patient and the Controller I or the Controller II without the software patch were being used.”

  Priya pulled at her sleeves in frustration. “I’m all over the place. Let�
�s get the timing straight.”

  Reyna grabbed the notepad and pen.

  Priya spoke slowly as Reyna scribbled down notes, “These attacks happened over the last 7 years since the launch. Liam’s attack happened last December. Daniel got Tara’s first report sometime shortly after that I’d say. We don’t know when he did the searches on the internet and found out about the deaths. He would know a lot more about sudden cardiac arrest. He was probably investigating that, trying to find an answer. I can see him not letting it go as an unexplained cardiac arrest though that happens. In March, he asks Tara for a more detailed description of the incident with Liam so I’m inclined to think he had done at least one of the searches by then.”

  Catherine and Reyna both nodded and Priya continued, “Daniel called John Landon in Seattle in May. We don’t know if he called other clinics around the same time. He gave me the figures on the Controller II in June before he went to New York and he seems to have searched through all the paperwork on the pacemaker and the Controller I which he what, sent to Ireland...?” She looked at Reyna who nodded. “So he makes a copy and sends it to Catherine. The postmark was 5 July so …” she looked through the calendar on the wall, July’s poster child was a rescued three-legged sheepdog searching for a home, “4th July would be a holiday, and he left what, the day after posting it, the 6th..?”

  Reyna nodded as she finished writing and showed the page to them. Catherine and Priya examined the list.

  Last 7 years – attacks

  December last year – Liam

  First report from Tara

  Internet searches

  March – Tara details, 1 search done?