Jake used his Steve Morgan journalist cover to make a one o’clock appointment with Kimura at Neuchem, which turned out to occupy a glass-walled two-story building in a western suburb just outside Route 128. Nice set up, Jake thought. He pulled into an adjacent parking lot, about half full with twenty or so cars, and parked in one of three spaces reserved for visitors. They followed a cement walkway across a manicured lawn to the main entrance and were escorted to Kimura’s office by a security guard stationed inside the lobby. A secretary informed Kimura they were there and ushered them into a spacious corner office.

Kimura greeted them warmly, seated them on his couch, and asked the secretary to bring in coffee. Jake introduced Pam as Nancy Sanders, his technical assistant who would help him understand the science for his article.

“I’m so pleased that you’ve come to talk to me,” Kimura began. “Often the chemistry behind the development of a new drug is neglected in the popular press, yet it’s really so important to the discovery. I would be honored to help you explain this in your article.”

“We’re grateful you could meet with us on such short notice,” Jake said. “I just received a copy of Dr. Prescott’s paper last night. Such an exciting discovery, it’s amazing. When I think of all the impact it’ll have, I want to be sure that I represent it correctly. Perhaps you could tell me some of the background that isn’t in the paper itself. How did you get the idea to synthesize the drug in the first place?”

“Dr. Prescott deserves the credit for that, not me. It’s all from his insight. He found a protein kinase inhibitor in the literature that was supposed to have some activity in promoting brain cell survival. He was always looking for drugs like that and he tested it in his mice that get Alzheimer’s disease. He said it had just a hint of an effect, nothing significant. But he wondered if I could synthesize some derivatives that might have more potency. So I did, and we now have this wonderful new drug! I think it shows Dr. Prescott’s brilliance of course, but also how important the collaboration between biology and chemistry can be.”

Pam jumped in. “It certainly does, Dr. Kimura. And it shows not just Dr. Prescott’s brilliance, but also the skill of your work as a chemist. How many derivatives of the original compound did you have to make?”

“I was surprised, it was not too many before we had what we were hoping for. I believe it was eight in total.”

“Interesting. How closely related is the final drug to the compound you started with? Do you have its structure that you could show us?” Pam asked.

“Of course, give me just a minute.” Kimura got up and looked through a stack of papers on his desk. He pulled one out and showed them a structural formula.

“Here’s the starting compound, different by a few substitutions from our new drug.”

Jake saw a look of recognition cross Pam’s face. And even he thought it looked like the structure Pam had shown him earlier, the active drug Holly had first discovered.

“That’s fascinating. May I take a photo for our article so we get it right?” Pam pulled out her phone and took a picture before Kimura could reply. It looked like he was about to object, but Jake quickly moved the conversation on.

“How long did it take you to do all this?” he asked. “It certainly shows the power of modern chemistry to go from a compound with just a hint of an activity to a cure for a horrible disease.”

“It was easy to do the chemistry. Only a few days to make derivatives by adding different groups to several places on the original compound, hoping for one that would give us a lead to what we wanted. And Dr. Prescott found that one of these was extremely powerful. The rest will soon be history.”

• • •

Neither of them spoke until they were back in the car. Then Jake turned to her.

“It was your drug he started with, right?”

Pam just nodded.

“That pretty well nails it,” he said. “I’m glad you were there. You got him to show you the structure in a way I probably couldn’t have pulled off.”

Pam shook her head. “I still can’t believe it. Prescott really did come up with this whole plot to discredit me and steal my work. But it still doesn’t prove he killed Holly.”

“No, it doesn’t prove it. But I can’t imagine that Holly was part of this deception and then killed herself when it started to go south. It just doesn’t fit the profile of a suicide. And leaving a note implicating you doesn’t make much sense either. At that point, she’d have blamed Prescott for getting her into all this, not been out to get you because of the authorship disagreement.”

Pam sighed. “I guess. But killing her to get the Nobel Prize? It’s just beyond what I can imagine.”

“Well, it’ll become clear soon enough. I’m going to take what we have to my friend in the Bureau. It’s plenty for him to reopen the case with Prescott as a suspect.”

“So what now? Do you want me to go talk to your friend with you?”

“No, I’ll drop you back at your condo and then I’ll go down to FBI headquarters. I’ll need to give a full statement for the record and then I suspect they’ll have Prescott brought in for questioning. They’ll probably want me to hang around and be available when they interview him, so it could take a while. I’ll keep you posted and come back to your place when we’re done.”