Nondisclosure Read online

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR NONDISCLOSURE BY GEOFFREY M. COOPER

  “This book manages to accomplish, in a short space, what few books are capable of with far more pages. It is at once a compelling mystery, a fascinating peek into the politics of academia, and a nuanced look at the Me Too movement. This is a well-thought-out examination of current events and a worthy addition to the national conversation.”

  —Manhattan Book Review

  “Geoffrey M. Cooper crafts a riveting saga of mystery, discovery, and redemption…. readers interested in medical thrillers will relish the turns taken in an engrossing story that’s hard to put down.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “A fast-paced medical thriller with a cast full of brilliant characters. Engaging and suspenseful to the very end!”

  —San Francisco Book Review

  “Gene-targeted drugs and immunotherapy aren’t normally the stuff of heady thrillers, but thanks to liberal doses of drama, deceit, and interpersonal relationships woven into the storyline, Nondisclosure is a riveting read with wide appeal. A medical thriller with plenty of twists and turns, Nondisclosure is sure to satisfy lovers of the genre.”

  —Self-Publishing Review

  PRAISE FOR THE PRIZE BY GEOFFREY M. COOPER

  “Fans of Robin Cook–style medical thrillers will relish the interpersonal relationships, drama, and contrast between lab and scientific research special interest...the result is a thoroughly engrossing science odyssey that touches upon social and research issues alike.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “An intense story about ruthlessness in the scientific community.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A fast-paced science thriller that would rival Michael Crichton or Patricia Cornwell.”

  —Manhattan Book Review

  “Geoffrey M. Cooper creates stunning antagonists in The Prize, while peeling back the curtain of the scientific community to reveal its humanity. A great read for science lovers and anyone who enjoys a big, juicy scandal.”

  —IndieReader

  “The Prize is a clever, suspenseful page-turner for seasoned lab-coat wearers and novice geeks alike.”

  —Colorado Book Review

  “A medical thriller at its best . . . a page-turner that is intelligently plotted and accomplished with unusual finesse and mastery.”

  —Readers’ Favorite

  “What Geoffrey Cooper, a former professor and cancer researcher, has produced here is an engaging and page-turning thriller with a scientific context.”

  —Popular Science

  “[A] serious account of how scientific investigation can be side-tracked by chicanery. . . . The end spirals to a climax that is only partially predictable.”

  —San Francisco Book Review

  ALSO BY GEOFFREY M. COOPER

  Fiction

  The Prize

  Science

  The Cell: A Molecular Approach

  Oncogenes

  Elements of Human Cancer

  The Cancer Book

  Nondisclosure copyright © 2019 by Geoffrey M. Cooper

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the National Academies Press for permission to reprint an excerpt from Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Paula Johnson and Sheila Widnall, 2018. Permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, and events in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is merely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-7337714-0-5 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-7337714-1-2 (ebook)

  Cover and interior design by Lance Buckley.

  www.​lancebuckley.​com

  “Through our work it became clear that sexual harassment is a serious issue for women at all levels in academic science, engineering, and medicine, and that these fields share characteristics that create conditions that make harassment more likely to occur.”

  —Paula A. Johnson and Sheila Widnall, Cochairs, Committee on the Impacts of Sexual Harassment in Academia*

  * National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2018.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  I reached behind me to get the box of tissues I kept in my office for visitors. Usually they were needed by students who were meeting with me because they were having trouble with one of their professors and hoped that the chair of the department could smooth things over. But today was different. Kristy was my administrative assistant, not a student. She was probably the best I’d worked with in my twenty-odd years as a faculty member, normally cool and super-competent. But right now, she was close to tears, and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing I could do for her. Especially with only half an hour left to go before our annual meeting with the dean.

  “C’mon, it’s not such a big deal,” I offered, hoping to at least calm her down.

  She looked up from the stack of files spread out in front of her on my conference table. “How can you say that? We’re about to go to the dean’s office for our annual budget meeting, and we’re missing almost twenty thousand dollars in department discretionary funds. They’ll tear us apart.”

  “They’ll fuss a bit, sure. But we’re a productive department at one of Boston’s top research universities. Twenty thousand is a drop in the bucket—less than one percent of the request I’ve made for new department facilities. We’ve got to keep focused on the big picture. I know you don’t like the fact that you can’t account for every dollar, but the dean isn’t going to care.”

  “Maybe not. But it’s my twenty thousand, and that jerk Carlson is going to ream me out. Not only that, he’s the one who has to sign off on my annual raise. I may have to sleep with the asshole to make up for this.”

  She forced a smile as she said it, but I knew she wasn’t completely joking. Carlson was the college’s chief financial officer. He enjoyed making people squirm, and I’d heard the other rumors too. I tried to be reassuring. “Look, I’ll handle Carlson. Your girlfriend wouldn’t like it if you had to sleep with him.”

  She almost laughed. Good, more like her usual self. “No, Nancy wouldn’t like it.” She shook her head. “Let’s keep looking. We still have some time before the meeting.”

  She picked up the next file and started flipping pages when a hammering at the door startled us both. An unexpected interruption. People usually took a closed door to my office as a sign to go away.
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br />   I frowned. “Guess we better see who the hell that is.”

  “Okay, I’ll get it.”

  I watched as she walked across my office. She’d dressed in a smart-looking gray business suit for our meeting. Professional, yet attractive. I could see why she thought Carlson might hit on her. Made me think that I should be wearing something other than chinos and my well-worn corduroy jacket. But I was still an academic, even though I was now chair of the Department of Integrated Life Sciences. I didn’t have to dress like a businessman.

  Kristy opened the door and said, “I’m sorry, we’re tied up preparing for our finance meeting with the dean. Can I book an appointment for you tomorrow?”

  Mike Singer’s husky voice was unmistakable. “No, this can’t wait. I really need to see Brad right away.”

  Singer wasn’t someone to be trifled with. He was one of our star researchers—the best-funded member of my department and a frequently mentioned candidate for a Nobel Prize. He also seemed to have a direct line to the president of the university, which he was happy to use to go over my head when he wanted something.

  “It’s okay, Kristy,” I said. “Let me talk to Mike for a few minutes. You can keep going through the papers.”

  I got up from the conference table to greet him. Kristy grabbed the stack of folders and took them to her desk in the outer office as Singer lumbered across the room and took her place. His neatly trimmed black beard and imposing figure—I put him at around six foot two and 220 pounds—fit the image of someone who was used to being in charge. I was no lightweight, but the couple of extra inches and twenty pounds he had on me made me feel diminutive in his presence.

  “What’s up, Mike?” I asked. “You know my door’s always open to you, but things are a little hectic right now, getting ready for our annual budget meeting.”

  “I understand, but this is an emergency. A student’s been attacked.”

  I sat up straight in my chair. “What do you mean? What’s going on?”

  “It’s one of the graduate students, Emily Jackson. She’s been assaulted, maybe even raped.”

  That brought me to full alert. “By who? She’s not one of your students, is she?”

  “No, she’s Steve’s student. And I think he’s the one.”

  “Steve Upton?” That was tough to believe. Upton was mild-mannered and popular with students and faculty alike. Not someone I’d suspect of sexual misconduct, or worse. But you could never tell.

  “Yes, Steve Upton,” Singer spat out. “My closest collaborator, damn it. And this is really going to screw up our research. As you know, we’re onto something big, and having Steve involved in a sexual assault case is going to be a mess. But whatever the fallout, I can’t ignore what he’s done. The girl, Emily, sent a text to one of my students this morning. Here’s a printout. See for yourself.”

  He handed me a screenshot of the text. I read it twice, stalling for time as I tried to get my head around it.

  Carol, I’m at the airport. I’ve got to get out of here. Something happened last night, I don’t even know what. But this morning I woke up on the couch half-naked with my pants pulled down around my ankles. I remember someone doing things to me, but I don’t know who or what or why I let him. Or even if I did. It’s just too awful, and I can’t face anyone in the lab. I’m going home to Chicago. I’m not sure for how long, but I’ll let you know when I’m coming back to Boston. Don’t tell anyone, please!

  “Hang on a minute, Mike.” I got up and grabbed a notepad from my desk. I wanted to get the details straight for my meeting with the dean. Like it or not, this was going to usurp whatever else we had on the agenda.

  “Okay, let’s go through this, so I can get it right. I take it that Carol is your student? And presumably a friend of Emily’s?”

  Singer nodded. “Yes, the two of them are close friends. They’re the two leads on the big collaborative project Steve and I have been working on. Emily’s his student, and Carol’s mine. Together, they’ve put together a story that’s going to revolutionize the field.”

  “I know. You’ve told us about their work. But let’s focus on this text for now.”

  The last thing I needed at the moment was another exposition on Mike Singer’s science. I’d had the dubious privilege of listening to him toot his own horn often enough. “Why would Emily have sent this to Carol instead of reporting whatever happened to me or the college office that handles sexual harassment?” I asked. “And for that matter, why did Carol take it to you?”

  “Didn’t you read the text?” He addressed me, as usual, like I was the village idiot. But I’d learned not to take offense—it was the way he felt about everybody. His arrogance was a pain in the ass, but he wasn’t much different in that regard from many accomplished scientists at leading universities. It seemed to come with the territory.

  “Emily didn’t want to talk about it, and she specifically asked Carol not to tell anyone either. All Emily wanted to do was to get away, but she had to let her best friend and colleague know what was going on. When Emily didn’t show up for our regular weekly meeting this afternoon, I asked Carol where she was. Carol felt bad betraying her confidence, but I pressed her, and she eventually broke down and showed me the text.”

  “Okay, but what about Steve Upton? Why are you suggesting it was him, whatever happened?”

  “Because I was out with him and the girls last night, the bastard. Emily had too much to drink, and he took her home.”

  “Wait a minute, what do you mean—the four of you went out last night?” I glared at him with my accusing department chair expression. “You’re not dating your students, are you?”

  He gave me his “what a jerk you are” look. “No, of course not. Our paper just got accepted yesterday by Nature. It’ll blow the whole field open by showing how effectively we can treat lung cancer with a combination of a new gene-targeted drug and immunotherapy. Emily and Carol are the two first authors, so Steve and I took them out for a nice dinner to celebrate.”

  I scribbled furiously. “Okay, fine. Having your students land a paper in the world’s most prestigious journal is certainly worth celebrating. What happened?”

  “We went to the Mexican restaurant in Back Bay—you know, where we usually take department visitors.”

  I nodded. “El Camino?”

  “Right. We had their melted cheese appetizer and got a platter of enchiladas for the table. And a couple of pitchers of margaritas. I guess Emily had too much to drink, and by the end of dinner, she was pretty tipsy.”

  Great, two of my top faculty members going out with their students and getting them drunk. Special occasion or not, this would look just super in the Boston Globe.

  I shook my head. “Do you know how stupid that sounds?”

  He shrugged. “Look, it was just an innocent celebration. Or at least I thought so. Anyway, by the time we were ready to leave, Emily was too zonked to walk straight, so I put everyone in my car to take her home. Carol lives just a couple of blocks from the restaurant, so we dropped her off, and then we drove to Emily’s apartment in Brookline. Steve got out with her and helped her upstairs to her place on the second floor. I saw the lights go on for a few minutes, then off again, and he came back to the car. Said he’d gotten her onto her couch, and she was passed out. Then I drove him back to where his car was parked near the lab, and that was it. I went up to my office to get some things off my desk and then went home.”

  “What are you saying? You think he had sex with her when he was up in her apartment?”

  “What else is there to think? He was alone with her, and she passed out. And he was pretty loaded too. I think he couldn’t resist pulling down her pants and doing, well, whatever he did. The bastard.”

  “How long was he in the apartment with her?” I asked.

  “Maybe ten minutes or so. Long enough.”

  I looked up at the ceiling. “I guess it’s possible, but it’s hard to believe Steve would do something like that.”

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p; “What else could have happened?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe someone else found her passed out on the couch later. A boyfriend? I just don’t want to put the blame on Steve too quickly.”

  Singer shook his head. “I don’t think so. Steve’s always playing around with his students. Emily’s one of his favorites, and he’s probably been trying to get in her pants for months. Last night he had the perfect opportunity. I wouldn’t be surprised if he even put something in her drink at dinner.”

  I sighed. What a mess. At least my meeting with the dean was well timed. I could tell her what I knew, and she’d have the right people take over.

  “Okay, Mike. Thank you for bringing this to me so promptly.” I stood up to signal the end of our meeting. “Emily’s in Chicago now and out of harm’s way, right?”

  “Yeah, she’s okay for now.”

  “All right, then. We have our annual budget meeting in fifteen minutes, and I’ll take the opportunity to brief the dean on this. I suspect the procedure will be to initiate an investigation from the college sexual harassment office, and they’ll no doubt be in touch with you shortly. In the meantime, don’t say anything to Steve, okay?”

  “I don’t intend to ever speak to that son of a bitch again.”

  He got up and left, and I followed him across the office to get my coat. It was time to head over to our meeting with the dean. There was suddenly a lot more on the docket than I’d planned.

  2

  Rain was falling as Kristy and I walked across campus to the college administration building. The whole summer had been like this, hot and rainy, and it was continuing through the fall. I had my raincoat, but Kristy also had an umbrella and insisted on trying to share it with me, despite my protests. As a result, we made slow progress, and both of us got wet.

  Kristy was uncharacteristically quiet, I assumed still worrying about the missing twenty thousand. That was fine with me. My head was spinning with the implications of a messy sexual misconduct case—okay, maybe rape—involving one of the top researchers in my department. If Upton was guilty of assaulting a student, his dismissal would be a foregone conclusion. And well deserved. But I also had to think about how to protect the department from collateral damage by the publicity that would follow. And the implications of shutting down Upton’s lab, with the necessity of finding new positions for the dozen or so junior researchers—graduate students and research associates—that he currently supported. The damage he’d done not only to Emily but to the entire department, especially his other students, was incalculable. Kristy’s missing twenty thousand paled in comparison.