Page 80 of Of Literature and Lattes
Krista shook her head. In many ways it was the saddest, slowest motion Jeremy could imagine.
“Fine.” She sighed. “I guess we’re doing this.”
Without another word she turned around, stepped inside the house, and shut the door.
Chapter 35
“You asked to see me?” Special Agent Pullman rolled a chair next to Alyssa’s. She glanced over at him. Over the past five days she’d lost her fear of the man and had even come to regard him as more friend than foe.
“I’m done. I found everything you need.” She pointed to the left monitor. “Tag created code E435, and everyone with that code attached to their data was added after a clean data set was run through our algorithms. Back it up further, and the code was added to every individual who answered yes to questions 12, 84, and 119 on the patient questionnaire and showed polymorphisms of a few different genes, and did not have ANA, antinuclear antibodies, in their blood. That last test had to be negative.”
“Why negative?” Pullman pushed up his reading glasses.
“Because if a patient had those antibodies, there was a good chance their doctor had already had a discussion with them, and that could get messy. Not only would Tag not want patients to claim he’d told them nothing new, but if he missed the diagnosis, say the doctor had already talked about hypothyroidism and Tag cited lupus, then red flags would be raised about XGC’s work. The true algorithms could pinpoint a patient’s area of vulnerability, but Tag was going off script. He was basically throwing darts and hoping to land on a chronic disease that sounded feasible.”
Alyssa leaned forward and ran her finger down the second screen’s far right edge. “These are your E435s. Customers who had genetic markers, polymorphisms, without antibodies. And since they were the ones most likely to have something in their family history, but nothing themselves yet, these people gave Tag a warm lead-in. Most were probably already a little worried, and their diagnoses named and confirmed their fears. Confirmation bias. They were less likely to question XGC’s results.”
Pullman sat back and pulled off his glasses. “Good work. Can you document this?”
“Already did. I tracked every step and outlined it for you. I even labeled all the files. You’ll have no trouble tracing what I did. I even designed a clean parallel program that walks you through it.”
“Very thorough.”
“Keeps me out of jail?” Alyssa quipped and rolled her chair back a few inches to better see Pullman’s expression. She hoped for a smile, a laugh, something to let her know everything was okay. She got nothing—which oddly made her feel she had little left to lose. “I also found that the rumors were true.”
“What rumors?”
“You gave me access to everything... I had to dig around a little.”
The corner of his mouth finally lifted. “How long?”
Alyssa studied him and conceded she’d pulled nothing over on him. She even suspected his question was more a test than a query, so she opted for honesty. “I finished this morning and have been poking around all day. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
Pullman’s expression revealed nothing.
She looked down at her hands. She found she was twisting them together, and stilled them against her knees. “He really sold all those names to pharmaceutical companies abroad. I hoped that was just a rumor.”
“That’s how much of this began. We got solid evidence from a company that purchased XGC’s first set of customer data. I’m still trying to discover if he shopped it domestically. We haven’t found any communications yet.”
“Then he didn’t. Tag was completely OCD; he personally tracked everything. I mean everything down to the numbers of ink cartridges used per department. Honestly, this E435 was hard to find, but it never needed to be there either. Tag created the code because he wanted it, not because he needed it.” She waited a beat. “Can I ask you something else?”
“I get the feeling this is a more personal request.”
“It is.” She pulled the keyboard toward herself and brought up another spreadsheet before tilting the screen in Pullman’s direction. “Winsome has statistically more participants in XGC data sets, far above the national average.”
“We noticed that. Almost everyone in management had support from their hometowns. Interestingly, yours was the highest. Mr. Connelly’s was the lowest.”
“I heard my mom practically got all Winsome to sign up. But Tag should’ve had good numbers too. He’s from Bettendorf, Iowa. Another town with good Midwest loyalty.”
“Mr. Connelly grew up in LA.”
“That was a lie too?” Alyssa dropped back in her seat. “Was nothing he said real?”
“I haven’t found anything yet... But back to your question.”
“Someone from Winsome was coded E435. She was told she was headed toward early onset Alzheimer’s.”
“Still not a question.”
