Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4) by Melissa F Miller Page A
Authors: Melissa F Miller
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the cracks.
“Your economic development
project doesn’t look like it stuck,” he commented.
Sasha glanced out the window
herself then repeated her question.
“ViraGene, Leo?”
“Right, sorry. We have a history
with ViraGene. Well, let me back up. The pharmaceutical industry as a whole is
highly competitive and secretive. If you can find out what another company’s
working on, you might be able to beat them to market with a drug. If you can
hire away their sales reps, you can gain access to their client lists, price
lists, all that stuff. So, it’s not unusual for companies to try hard to hire
away one another’s employees. Most employees have to sign noncompetes, but I
don’t have to tell you that those are often ignored.”
“Sure,” Sasha agreed.
“So, we’ve had multiple
instances, even just in the short time I’ve been here, of ViraGene hiring our
employees, and those employees trying to walk out the door with client lists,
price lists, you name it. Mainly, they were hiring sales representatives, but
we heard rumblings that they were talking to the scientists, which made the
board nervous.”
“Did you go after them?”
“Oh, yeah. Tate got fed up with
the nonsense and started firing off temporary restraining orders left and
right. That’s one of the reasons the legal budget is frozen.”
“Yeah, I imagine litigating a
bunch of TROs got expensive pretty quickly,” Sasha commented.
“Apparently. So, after Tate’s
legal offensive, ViraGene got creative. One of our security guards noticed a
guy on the cleaning crew walking out of the building at one in the morning with
papers stuffed inside his shirt. He detained the guy and called me. Grace and I
interviewed him. He said he’d been approached by a man outside the building who
called him over and said he’d pay five hundred dollars for any paperwork he
found in the wastebaskets. He was supposed to meet the guy at a deli in Takoma
Park, right across the border in the District. We took him down to the deli to
identify the guy, but he said he didn’t see him. The guy probably got spooked.”
Leo shrugged.
“But, that wasn’t necessarily
ViraGene,” Sasha said.
Ever the lawyer, Leo thought,
suppressing a chuckle. She was right that they couldn’t prove ViraGene had been
behind it, but he knew in his bones that they had been—just as Oliver and Grace
were likely right that they were behind Celia Gerig and her fake references.
The pharmaceutical industry was cutthroat, and no one played dirtier than
ViraGene.
“That’s true, but the timing
suggests it probably was. We had just signed the contract to supply the
government with the vaccine. The cleaning guy incident happened the day after
the deal was made public,” he explained.
“What happened to the cleaning
guy?”
“He was probably fired, but I can’t
say for sure. We terminated the contract with the company and hired a new
outfit,” Leo answered.
A green traffic light marked the
first major intersection they’d encountered since leaving the highway. Sasha
accelerated, and they entered a commercial strip that showed no signs of
commerce: an abandoned car dealership; a hair salon that sat in a small Cape
Cod building, its sign hanging askew and several letters missing; and a Chinese
restaurant with a “For Sale” sign hanging in the front window.
“Let’s assume it was ViraGene. What
could they possibly have expected to find in the trash—a copy of the signed
contract?” Sasha said, turning right just past an appliance repair shop that
had an “Open” sign hanging in the door but no cars in the snow-covered parking
lot.
“It’s a desperate move,” he
agreed.
As they left the town’s pitiful
business section behind, the road grew increasingly uneven and bumpy.
“Do they have a competing
vaccine?”
Sasha crossed a set of railroad
tracks, and the paved surface ended entirely, replaced by snow-covered gravel.
Leo grabbed the dashboard with
his right hand to
“Your economic development
project doesn’t look like it stuck,” he commented.
Sasha glanced out the window
herself then repeated her question.
“ViraGene, Leo?”
“Right, sorry. We have a history
with ViraGene. Well, let me back up. The pharmaceutical industry as a whole is
highly competitive and secretive. If you can find out what another company’s
working on, you might be able to beat them to market with a drug. If you can
hire away their sales reps, you can gain access to their client lists, price
lists, all that stuff. So, it’s not unusual for companies to try hard to hire
away one another’s employees. Most employees have to sign noncompetes, but I
don’t have to tell you that those are often ignored.”
“Sure,” Sasha agreed.
“So, we’ve had multiple
instances, even just in the short time I’ve been here, of ViraGene hiring our
employees, and those employees trying to walk out the door with client lists,
price lists, you name it. Mainly, they were hiring sales representatives, but
we heard rumblings that they were talking to the scientists, which made the
board nervous.”
“Did you go after them?”
“Oh, yeah. Tate got fed up with
the nonsense and started firing off temporary restraining orders left and
right. That’s one of the reasons the legal budget is frozen.”
“Yeah, I imagine litigating a
bunch of TROs got expensive pretty quickly,” Sasha commented.
“Apparently. So, after Tate’s
legal offensive, ViraGene got creative. One of our security guards noticed a
guy on the cleaning crew walking out of the building at one in the morning with
papers stuffed inside his shirt. He detained the guy and called me. Grace and I
interviewed him. He said he’d been approached by a man outside the building who
called him over and said he’d pay five hundred dollars for any paperwork he
found in the wastebaskets. He was supposed to meet the guy at a deli in Takoma
Park, right across the border in the District. We took him down to the deli to
identify the guy, but he said he didn’t see him. The guy probably got spooked.”
Leo shrugged.
“But, that wasn’t necessarily
ViraGene,” Sasha said.
Ever the lawyer, Leo thought,
suppressing a chuckle. She was right that they couldn’t prove ViraGene had been
behind it, but he knew in his bones that they had been—just as Oliver and Grace
were likely right that they were behind Celia Gerig and her fake references.
The pharmaceutical industry was cutthroat, and no one played dirtier than
ViraGene.
“That’s true, but the timing
suggests it probably was. We had just signed the contract to supply the
government with the vaccine. The cleaning guy incident happened the day after
the deal was made public,” he explained.
“What happened to the cleaning
guy?”
“He was probably fired, but I can’t
say for sure. We terminated the contract with the company and hired a new
outfit,” Leo answered.
A green traffic light marked the
first major intersection they’d encountered since leaving the highway. Sasha
accelerated, and they entered a commercial strip that showed no signs of
commerce: an abandoned car dealership; a hair salon that sat in a small Cape
Cod building, its sign hanging askew and several letters missing; and a Chinese
restaurant with a “For Sale” sign hanging in the front window.
“Let’s assume it was ViraGene. What
could they possibly have expected to find in the trash—a copy of the signed
contract?” Sasha said, turning right just past an appliance repair shop that
had an “Open” sign hanging in the door but no cars in the snow-covered parking
lot.
“It’s a desperate move,” he
agreed.
As they left the town’s pitiful
business section behind, the road grew increasingly uneven and bumpy.
“Do they have a competing
vaccine?”
Sasha crossed a set of railroad
tracks, and the paved surface ended entirely, replaced by snow-covered gravel.
Leo grabbed the dashboard with
his right hand to
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