Chapter 48
Her driving was fast but measured, her manicured hands gripped firmly at ten and two as the car wove through post–rush hour traffic. “We received a tip-off from the SDPD. A friend told us you were being investigated for Justin Matthews’s murder.”
“A friend?” Emmett reached to silence his phone. He’d asked Lizette to swing by the apartment to grab the dogs; judging by the string of profanity-laden texts that followed, the cleaning crew wasn’t quite finished when she arrived.
“Assistant Chief Bautista was a participant in our Phase One trial. Started a two-hundred-sixty-pound diabetic, finished a new man. We’ve been supplying him with maintenance doses in exchange for his help throwing the investigators off your scent.”
“How?”
“Compromising evidence, leading the detectives down rabbit holes. Didn’t you wonder why they were so slow to catch up with you?”
“You lied to me. You knew the drug was making me hurt people. You made me think I was crazy!”
She slowed before a flare of brake lights. “The product has had issues for a while. Phase One, a few participants reported experiencing mood swings, violent blackouts.”
“Tanya Swygert,” Emmett said. “She killed her husband. Ate him too, didn’t she? But the news didn’t report that part.”
“We wanted the story to die as quickly as possible. One of our participants shoots her husband, that’s bad enough, but cannibalism…”
“Sounds like Bautista’s been helping you out for a while.”
Saito smirked. “The point is, she couldn’t stop taking the drug. None of them could, even once they realized what it was doing to them. They were so addicted to finally being seen as people that they were willing to turn themselves into monsters.”
“And you kept it quiet to make sure you got your FDA approval. You didn’t care if people died as long as Monstera cashed in.”
“Don’t be so cynical. Obexity is a miracle cure. It could save people like us.”
“Then why not take the time to do it right? If you knew there was a problem after the first trial, why move forward before you’d fixed the side effects?”
“Who says I’m trying to fix them?”
After a quarter of an hour Saito took the off-ramp for Rancho Penasquitos, a residential community not far from where Emmett grew up. “Have you eaten?”
He realized he was starving. She drove through a Wendy’s, and Emmett, despite his lingering shock at her admission, smiled in surprise when Saito ordered herself a Dave’s Triple combo and chocolate Frosty.
“Cut me some slack. It’s been a long day,” she said.
It was nearly dark when they pulled onto a residential street and into the driveway of a large Spanish-style house, clean white stucco and clay roof tiles. A pair of shaggy four-legged shadows cleared the way for their arrival, their eyes flashing ice blue as the headlights’ beam swung across them.
Saito got out and opened the trunk. “Want to grab your bag? The suitcase,” she clarified as he reached for the other. Surprisingly strong for her size, she hefted the duffel out and lugged it toward the side gate.
Who is this woman? Emmett thought. He was still thinking about what she’d said on the drive over. If she knew the treatment was turning people into murderers, why wouldn’t she want to fix the side effects?
With a backward click of her fob, the trunk closed automatically.
Emmett traced her steps, rolling his suitcase through a luxurious backyard lounge, past a resort-style pool and an up-lit tropical garden of monstera and birds-of-paradise.
As he reached the edge of the yard, he saw that it backed up to a steep and untamed decline, part of the Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve.
Pausing at the waist-high wrought-iron fence, Saito swung the bag up onto the rail, unzipped it, and dumped the contents. They rolled into the scrub with a sudden fury of snarls and champing, the scavengers already tussling over Emmett’s scraps.
“Good doggies.” Saito smiled, then marched back toward the house.
She dumped the duffel into the blazing firepit and threw open the back doors.
Again Emmett followed and found himself standing in a living room lit by a single warm bulb. It was immaculately clean and decorated with stylish masculine furniture. The walls were white and the ceilings vaulted, like a temple converted into a high-class bachelor pad.
“Where are we?”
“Cecil’s house. One of them, anyway.” Saito adjusted the thermostat; the place was boiling. “You can stay as long as you need. You’ll be safe here.”
“What about Aaron’s body? Won’t someone find it?”
Air began to blow through the vents. “Coyotes took care of that problem.”
“They’ve taken care of a lot of problems for you, haven’t they?”
“You don’t think that’s a coincidence?” Saito said, turning on her heel. “A pack of man-eating coyotes running around San Diego the same time you developed a taste for human flesh?”
Disbelief punched Emmett in the gut. “You mean—”
“We needed some assurance in case participants continued to have negative side effects.”
“I take it you weren’t testing the coyotes’ saliva, then.”
“The Department of Fish and Wildlife thought so when they issued our collection permit. They didn’t realize that what we really wanted was to modify the animals’ DNA.
Alter their dietary preferences, make them more aggressive toward humans, even predatory.
The media helped spread the message. Everyone loves a scary story.
When mutilated bodies started turning up all over town—”
“Everyone assumed they were eaten by coyotes.”
“At least until you came along. We couldn’t blame coyotes for bludgeoning a man to death and setting fire to his corpse, now could we?”
“But why?” Emmett said. “All these cover-ups—bribing Bautista, genetically modifying coyotes. Why not just fix the product? You have to know that even if the FDA approves Obexity, they’re just gonna pull it off the market again once its side effects come to light.”
“Ah, but by then it’ll be too late.”
“So you meant what you said in the car. You’re not trying to fix it. You want to turn us into monsters.”
“According to society, we’re already monsters,” Saito said. “I mean, that’s how they see us, right? Stupid. Mindless. Ugly. Dangerous.”
“And you want to prove them right?”
“I want revenge,” she growled. “For how they treated me. For the names they called me. For how to them, I only started to exist once men wanted to fuck me. That’s what Cecil doesn’t understand. What he’s never understood: Obexity isn’t just about getting thin; it’s about getting even.”
“He’s allowing you to kill people just to—?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He thinks we’re doing everything we can to fix the product.
And we will, eventually. Only a few percent of Obexity users will experience its more vengeful side effects.
But sooner or later people will figure out what it’s doing to them, and when they do we’ll fix the issue, slap a new label on it, and push it back out, pretending it’s a whole new product.
As long as it’s effective, people will buy it.
But maybe there’s another issue we didn’t anticipate, another little side effect that didn’t show up in the clinical trial…
another killing spree, but bigger this time. Hungrier.”
She laughed, apparently amused by the expression on Emmett’s face.
“Oh, don’t look so scandalized. Georgina Hodge? Justin Matthews? Clearly you’re not above getting your own back. Although I must say, the old lady in the mobility scooter was an interesting choice.”
“Another little side effect,” Emmett said, echoing Saito’s words.
“Obexity turns us on everyone: not just our tormentors, but each other as well. Lizette…” He trailed off, remembering her look of shock when he’d thrown her obesity in her face.
Calling her lazy—Lizette, who’d busted her ass to build a successful fashion brand all on her own while holding down a full-time job.
“I can live with that,” Saito said.
“Wait. Why are you helping me?”
She smiled. “Because I like you, Emmett.”
“Bullshit.”
“Fine. Because we need you.”
He shook his head, confused.
“The police are onto you. Which means pretty soon the police will be onto Obexity. We need you to take the fall for the murders.”
“I would never—”
“Just listen,” she said, stepping toward him.
“Think of it as another partnership deal: you agree to keep Monstera’s name clean, and we’ll see that you get the best defense that big biopharma can buy.
You’ll be found not guilty on grounds of temporary insanity, and once you’re free, we’ll take care of you for life. Money, a lifetime supply of Obexity—”
“You already promised me that.”
“If you go down for murder, it won’t matter what the fuck we promised,” Saito murmured, inches from him now, intimidating despite her small stature.
“And if you don’t do this, you will go down.
All that big biopharma money can just as easily be used to dredge up your darkest secrets, make you look like a food-obsessed psychopath.
After this morning, everyone already knows you’re a liar.
Blame Obexity and people will think you’re just another fat guy making excuses about what you eat.
In your case, that just happens to be people. ”
“You’d never win.”
“Are you willing to take that risk,” Saito said, “knowing how little society trusts our testimony, even when it comes to our own bodies and experiences? The choice is yours: join us and be thin and rich and healthy, or go against us and eat yourself to death in prison.”
Emmett’s mouth gummed; he couldn’t speak.
“I’m going to give you a moment to think about that.”
Saito left the room. Emmett heard the front door open, and she returned a moment later to thrust his Wendy’s against his chest.
“Eat. You look hungry.”
He noticed the briefcase in her other hand.
“Just a few extra doses, in case you need a top-up,” she explained. “Depending how you play this, they may be the last you ever take.”
She set the briefcase on the floor and walked back toward the front of the house. “You have my number.”
Through the window by the door, Emmett watched her get into her car, back out, and drive away.
Alone, he stuffed his face. Then he pulled the briefcase up onto his lap and opened it, revealing four rows of six injector pens quivering with blue serum.
Indecision ate at him. He already had plenty in his system. But like Saito said, this could be his last chance.
He took the case to the bathroom and administered an injection. Then another. Once he started, he couldn’t stop. His tolerance had increased; he needed more to feel it working, to soothe his soul’s desire for self-destruction.
He managed nine before his heart thrashed, his fat ballooning and contracting.
Another three before the room spun, the walls tilted, and the floor rose up to throw a punch.