36
The next day, Mark
was still kicking himself over the way he behaved at lunch with
Gwen. Why had he been so coy? Why had he been so reserved in his
response to her when his reporter’s instincts screamed that she was
handing him a career-changing story?
He hadn’t expected
to feel the way he did when he saw Gwen. He’d thought about her a
million times since their split, but the vision in his head was a
faulty one—one that failed to capture how vibrant and substantial
she was. It was as though he’d been listening to nothing but
neighborhood garage bands for years and then suddenly received an
invitation to a private U2 concert. Seeing Gwen in the flesh again
immediately verified that no woman he’d been with since was in her
league.
He was so
preoccupied with this during their lunch that he couldn’t get the
right words to come out of his mouth. When he arrived in
Washington, he went to his buddy, representative Rick Mecklenberg,
in hopes of finding something juicy to write about. Mecklenberg
hadn’t delivered yet, but Gwen Maulder had just given him his first
real shot at a Pulitzer, a story capable of keeping the nation
riveted to page one. While his fame as a reporter was largely
attributable to the way he chronicled the foibles of human nature,
he always felt a bit the impostor for never having published the
really big story, the one in which people were cuffed, put in the
back of a squad car, and driven to jail. This could change
that.
But exciting as a
potential government cover-up was, he needed to proceed with the
utmost caution. Gwen seemed terribly vulnerable. She wasn’t
confiding in her husband and the FDA had removed her from her
regular duties. She’d come to him out of desperation and that could
mean that she wasn’t seeing things as clearly as she needed to see
them.
But that didn’t mean
he wasn’t going to do a little digging.
He cleared one of
his bulletin boards and mounted a very simple, handwritten pyramid
of words to its surface.
Health and Human Services
Public Health Service
Center for Disease Control
Food and Drug Administration
If Gwen were right,
two of the most prominent agencies charged with monitoring the
nation’s health and welfare were involved in an astonishing
cover-up. Exactly how high did the corruption go? A year from now,
would he be writing the classic, “Who knew what and when did they
know it?”
It was early in the
hunt, but he felt his heart beating a little faster, his blood
coursing through his veins and fermenting fresh ideas. When Gwen
had called him at the Excelsior, he’d been telling Billy Hamlin how
a reporter had to have a good memory since a random fact sometimes
helped shape a story. He recalled the Times piece on the Brooklyn woman who had created
chaos in the subway by proclaiming the end of the world. Other
stories from New York and Washington, all equally bizarre, had
resulted in his “Franchising the Full Moon” column at the
Post. The New York incidents had
occurred in May, the ones in D.C. in July, precisely corresponding
with the timeframe of Gwen’s seizure reports.
Gwen mentioned a
seizure spike in Kansas City during April. Mark asked a cub
reporter to go down to the Post’s
archives of U.S. papers and browse the Kansas
City Star for all of April. He wanted to see a copy of any
article, no matter how short, describing aberrant behavior. The
reporter subsequently left five articles on his desk. One told of a
man who tried climbing a skyscraper with suction cups. Another
described a woman who’d sat in a public park for three days
straight in order to compose operas. Perhaps due to sleep
deprivation and fatigue, the Kansas article theorized, the woman
suffered a mild heart attack and was rushed to the ER. The other
three articles were of the same ilk: people were going ape-shit for
no apparent reason.
“And if I look into
the papers of every city that Gwen has on her list,” Mark said to
the whale poster on his wall, “I’m going to find articles about
people going over the edge. I’d bet my million bucks on
it.”
He wouldn’t tell
Gwen yet about how his own data seemed to relate to the info from
BioNet and the AE files. He still didn’t have much to go
on.
But was there a
story there?
Yes
indeed.
Was there any better
indication of how overwhelmed Gwen was with recent events? With
everything going on, she’d managed to ignore the very insistent
signals of her own body—until this afternoon when the signs became
too obvious for her to ignore. Now she sat with Jack at the kitchen
table in their home at Garrett Park and tried to figure out the
best way to announce that their lives would be changing
forever.
“I’m gonna get some
wine,” Jack said, rising right after they sat down. “Would you like
some?”
“No
thanks.”
“You sure? I was
going to open a bottle of that great Merlot we just
bought.”
Gwen raised her head
and looked straight at Jack. This wasn’t exactly the way she
envisioned it, but it would have to do. “Pregnant women shouldn’t
drink, my dear.”
Jack’s mouth dropped
open comically. Gwen knew she’d keep that picture in her head for a
long time. “You mean … ?”
“Yep. Looks like the
Secret Service taught you how to aim after all.”
Jack had her in his
arms before she could move. When she stood up, he hugged her
tighter and more fervently than she ever remembered. Jack really
wanted this. That much had been obvious forever. It wasn’t until
this moment, though, that she understood how completely he wanted
this. And it wasn’t until this moment that she understood how much
she wanted him—them—to have it.
Gwen dissolved into
tears. Was Jack crying as well? It wasn’t easy to say.
The purity of the
moment dissipated all too quickly for her. Unbidden, the thoughts
of what her life would be like while she carried this child came
into her head. The seizure stats pointed with increasing clarity to
a cover-up that was linked to the commissioner’s office—and maybe
beyond—and Jan was missing. She’d pulled Mark back into her life,
though it wasn’t clear that he wanted anything to do with the news
she brought him. Oh yes, and Jack had started sneaking cigarettes
again, though she was certain he didn’t know she knew.
Gwen had heard the
stories of women entering a state of bliss during pregnancy; she
knew that would never be her story.