The Little Burgundy: A Jeanne Dark Adventure

by Bill Jones Jr.

  “I take a size extra small,” she said, smiling.

  “Exactly what is it we’re being protected from?” I asked.

  “Or is being protected from us?” Dark added.

  Arnold handed each of us a suit and answered, pulling one for himself. “This floor houses a bio-containment room. We don’t actually know that there is a biohazard, but we’re not taking chances.”

  His further explanation was interrupted by Dark’s query. “What precisely were the deceased’s symptoms?”

  That stopped Arnold in his tracks. From behind me, standing in the door, a female Michelin Man in a white bio suit asked, “How exactly did you come to decide we were dealing with a decedent?” From her curt, authoritarian entrance, I had her pegged right away as Monica Samuels. A quick introduction by Arnold confirmed it. She turned out to be the equivalent of a CIA Bureau Chief, assigned to Russian and European Analysis and based in London. She wasn’t Hardesty’s colleague, more like his boss.

  “Elementary, Ms. Samuels,” Dark said. “I assume if your victim was murdered in the normal way, you would not have needed to bring his corpse to the biohazard facility. What I don’t know is why I am here. I am not a medical doctor.”

  “We don’t need any more of those, I can assure you,” Arnold said.

  “No one mentioned a murder,” Samuels said.

  “I assume you wouldn’t hire me for a jaywalking ticket,” Dark countered. “Who exactly is it that was killed?”

  “I promise you will be briefed at the appropriate time. Right now, we need your eyes in the examination room. I understand you are something of a wizard when it comes to details,” Samuels said.

  Dark nodded. “I am the Wonderful Wizard of Odd, oui.” She tilted her head and stared at other woman as if she were reading her mind. “Ah, so he is not dead yet,” she said.

  Arnold chuckled and Samuels gave an eye roll that was barely visible through her suit’s visor. “This way,” she said, spinning and heading out of the dressing room.

  I caught Dark at the door. “Wonderful Wizard of Odd? And I can’t believe you pulled the Sherlock Holmes bit. Are you trying to piss her off?”

  “Oui.”

  She tried to take a step through the door, and I took her arm, holding her. “You gonna tell me why you’re trying to piss her off?”

  “I do not like her,” she said, as if that were sufficient to explain her entire strategy.

  I sighed and followed the group to examine what I hoped wouldn’t turn out to be a mutated Ebola outbreak. I may not have been afraid of much in the warzone, but this was different. I’ve never liked germs. Not one little bit.

  We followed our hosts to what looked like a hospital ward except for an advanced alarm system that I suspected were bio containment protocols. On a hunch, I asked Arnold what would happen if something were to get out of the clean rooms.

  He pointed to a series of perforated metal plates along the wall. “See those buggers there? They blow continuous little puffs of air that are sucked into the vents in the ceiling. Those are attached to some expensive kit that can detect almost any hazard known to man.”

  “And if they do detect something?” I asked.

  “Well, then my little lift key stops working.”

  I was sorry I asked. We entered, passing several closed doors until we reached an open one. Inside was a doctor monitoring equipment as best she could in the bulky biohazard gear and a single patient bed with an unconscious man in it. Initially, I thought he was black, but on closer examination, I guessed southern Indian or Sri Lankan. He was withered and bald and appeared to be of advanced age. As we approached, I could see his face was younger than I expected, certainly no older than sixty. Even more surprising, he was still alive, though attached to as many pieces of equipment as one could be. I imagined that if he farted a tube was attached that would collect and analyze the gas. The chart by his bed had the name “Arjun Rao,” but little other information I could make out.

  “What is the diagnosis?” Dark asked.

  “Doctor Mary Jo Phillips, Jeanne Dark,” said Samuels. Dark barely acknowledged the introduction.

  Phillips, who was by now standing next to Samuels, spoke. “He was initially admitted to hospital while suffering from severe diarrhea, vomiting, and nausea. At first blush we thought it might be a food-borne bacterium, like Campylobacter or E. coli, but all tests came up negative. Within two days, the symptoms worsened to the point that he could no longer eat. By then, he had all the signs of stage-four liver cancer. We were able to stabilize him over a period of two weeks. He’s been in and out of consciousness for the past week. Today, however, has been particularly bad. He’s pretty much comatose now and getting weaker.”

  Dark was circling the bed, looking down, although seemingly not directly at the patient. “Have you been with him all day?” she asked.

  “Except for lunch and when I’m on rounds. But he’s wired right to the nurses’ station should anything go awry.”

  Dark nodded her understanding and continued walking about the room. She touched things scattered on the rolling tray by the bed, but picked up nothing. Then she stopped and bent low over a trash can full of the medical debris as if she were sniffing. I hoped that wasn’t possible through her clean suit.

  “How often is the rubbish emptied?” she asked.

  “The cleaning staff comes at 6:00 PM. I don’t want them around my patients more often that once a day.”

  “Ah,” Dark said, walked to the patient, and lifted up his covering, exposing his frail body. “You found no trace of cancer,” said Dark. It did not appear to be a question.

  “No, we did not,” answered the doctor.

  “Dark held her hand above her own stomach. “It is grey here, very dark.” She pointed to the patient’s mid-torso. “There, green, but a yellowish-green, nearly chartreuse.”

  “Is green bad?” asked Samuels. She didn’t seem nonplussed by Dark’s method. Obviously, she had been briefed by Hardesty.

  “Green is healthy. But not this shade of green. There is something, but it is not related to his liver.” Dark walked closer to the bed, looked at the monitors and turned again to the doctor. “Tell me about the arrhythmia.”

  Phillips whispered, “Oh God,” and rushed to the monitor. Once there, she stopped, and stared at Dark. “He’s not in arrhythmia now,” she said. “He’s been responding fairly well to the medication. How … how did you know?”

  “I can see it. It is faint, but it is there.” She pointed to a crash cart in the corner of the room. “Besides, you left his old EKG charts on the cart.” Phillips followed her gaze to the cart and walked over to retrieve the papers.

  “Is it normal for him to be all alone like this?” Dark asked.

  “I’ve been with him almost non-stop,” Phillips said. She sounded defensive.

  “I mean no family visitors?”

  “A few days ago, but not since,” Phillips responded. “Same as usual, really. I guess it’s been really hard on them, plus they still have his restaurant to run.”

  “How long ago did the arrhythmia start?”

  “Yesterday. We moved him here and restricted access to him until we could stabilize him.

  Dark turned her attention to Samuels. “Now, do you want to stop playing these stupide games and tell me the rest?”

  “What ‘rest’ is that, Ms. Dark?”

  “Actually, it’s Dr. Dark,” said Arnold. Samuels shot him a look that clamped his mouth shut.

  Dark was looking at Phillips, who stood at some distance, looking uncomfortable. To my great horror, Dark removed the hood to her suit and began sniffing the air. “I assume she told you not to mention the other symptoms,” she said, addressing the doctor.

  Phillips looked down, but remained silent. I noticed that the doctor did not seem concerned that Dark had exposed herself to whatever biohazards existed. Nonetheless, I left my suit intact. Had no one been looking, I would have put Dark’s hood on over mine.

&nbs
p; “What bloody other symptoms?” asked Arnold. He’d directed his question not to Dark, but to Samuels. It was Dark, however, who answered.

  “Tingling skin, rapid, shallow breathing, dizziness, confusion, watery eyes, perhaps some convulsions, which would explain the bruising on his chest.” I must have looked confused, because she turned to me and explained. “They strapped him to the bed so he would not injure himself.”

  “Yes, this is all very impressive, Dr. Dark,” Samuels said, leaning heavily on the title Dr. “However, you haven’t told me much I don’t know yet.”

  “Well, she’s told me a shiteload I didn’t,” Arnold said. He did not look pleased.

  “Your patient is suffering from Aconitine poisoning.”

  “Acorn bloody what?” Arnold asked, his voice rising.

  “Aconitine, also known as monkshood. Dr. Phillips is to be commended. Mr. Rao should have died in hours.” Dark turned and headed toward the door. I hesitated long enough to catch the smirk that flashed across Samuels face and then followed my partner.

  “Wait, wait!” called Arnold. Dark stopped and turned. “Excuse me for not being up to speed on my poisonous substances and all, but can somebody tell me what’s going on?”

  “I told you, monkshood poisoning. It is sometimes called wolf’s bane.”

  “What? You mean like Harry bleeding Potter?”

  “Without the witchcraft, yes,” Dark answered. “He has been subjected to rather high doses.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” he asked, “how did you come across that bit of information?”

  “I could smell it as soon as we entered the room. In my studies of Chinese herbology, I ran across it once. However, it is used only in very small doses there.”

  “Wait, you smelled it once?” Samuels asked. Her smug look evaporated.

  “Once is all I need,” Dark answered. “My brain files smells, no matter how they are masked or combined. I see …” she waved her hand in front of her face. “It is like a, how you say … barcode. Each smell has its own. It is how I remember them.”

  “Wait, you’re saying he was given so much of this monkshood that you could still smell it through your clean suit?” I asked.

  I could see Dark’s smile even with her chin pointed to her chest. “I only need a trace. Likely, there are still traces in his tissue.” She looked at me. Her smile sent chills down my spine. “These suits do not work well.”

  My skin immediately began to itch and I was convinced that my eyes were tearing up.

  Dark turned once more, heading for the door. “You know, this will cause a major political issue,” she said. Before anyone could respond, she was through the exit and into the anteroom where the remains of her suit were being sprayed to kill contaminants. One by one, we filed out after her, all except Phillips.

  Once we were cleaned, we stripped off the suits and headed down the corridor and toward the bank of elevators. I was surprised to find that Samuels was a pretty woman, a tall redhead with an athletic build that strained her fitted suit. She was staring at Dark as if she was waiting for another shoe to drop. It didn’t take long.

  “You said there would be political implications,” I said. “From whom?”

  Dark looked at me. “From whoever gave that poor dead man polonium 210.”

  Simultaneously, three different voices said, “He’s not dead,” “I thought you said monkshood,” and “How the hell did you know that?”

  Dark answered Samuels first. “The monkshood was given to him after he’d already been exposed to the polonium. I imagine it was to mask the initial poisoning by confusing his symptoms.”

  Samuels nodded. “That makes sense.”

  “I assume you took stool samples when he arrived?”

  Dark was speaking past us to the approaching doctor who was still wearing her suit, sans hood. We turned, and she nodded. Her face was a poorly drawn mask of professional resolve. Dark’s own face twisted into distress, just for a moment, as if she were channeling the woman’s secreted pain. “You liked him, oui?”

  Phillips nodded again. “He was a nice man. Very funny, good humored.”

  “Then perhaps you can convince the staff to test his stool. The decaying polonium should show up there.”

  Arnold scratched his head. “I still don’t understand how you knew about the polonium,” he said.

  “He had more than one thing, and I could sense they were unrelated. Since it wasn’t cancer, that left us with looking for a fatal condition that would mirror cancer and severe food poisoning.”

  Samuels looked at Dark, staring at her own reflection in those opaque sunglasses. “We weren’t sure, you know. This wasn’t meant to be a game. We suspected Po poisoning, but tests on his tissue samples were inconclusive. We tested his home, the restaurant, his wife … nothing. Then, when his other symptoms emerged, we thought perhaps we’d been wrong.”

  Arnold’s eyes lit up. “Besides, after that bloke Aleksandr Litvinenko died, we didn’t think anyone would be stupid enough to try that Po rubbish again here in London.” He looked at Samuels. “I guess our American friends were right this time.”

  I decided it was time to interject. “Am I the only one besides Dark who noticed that Dr. Phillips was speaking about our patient in the past tense?”

  Arnold and Samuels turned to look at her, and Dr. Phillips averted her eyes. “Mr. Rao passed away just as you left. I called the time of death.” Just as she finished speaking, the elevator door opened and a crew that I assumed was from their morgue emerged. The doctor excused herself and accompanied them back toward the deceased man’s body.

  Dark walked over to D.I. Arnold and whispered in his ear. He flashed a look of surprise, then eyed the departing doctor. “If you will excuse me,” he said, “I better make sure they don’t tamper with any evidence. We have a murder now.” He turned and followed the medical staff down the hall, all the while speaking into his phone. I watched him leave and then shot a look at Dark, who did her best to ignore me.

  Samuels was waiting for us in the elevator.

  “May I ask you a question?” Samuels asked. Dark nodded. “How did you know he was dying? The doctors didn’t seem to.”

  Dark sighed. “As I said, he was very gray. I could tell his kidneys were shutting down. Besides, I had the impression that he wasn’t fighting very hard to stay alive.”

  I had spent nearly every waking hour with Jeanne Dark for six weeks. From the way she looked at everything in that elevator car except us, I could tell she was hiding something. I’d not known her to lie, but avoiding telling everything she knew seemed to be a natural gift. This time, however, whether intuition or a professional guess, I was almost positive she was lying. It was difficult to make out those green marvels behind her glasses, but I thought she’d briefly averted her eyes before answering, a sure deception marker. I was starting to think she wore those sunglasses for more reasons than light sensitivity.

  Samuels was oblivious. “If it was polonium,” she said, “fighting wouldn’t have made much difference anyway.” She gave a heavy sigh just as the doors opened to the third-floor lobby. “Well, at least that’s one mystery solved.”

  “And now you have a bigger one,” I said.

  “Meaning?” asked Dark, tilting down her shades as we proceeded to Samuels’s office. Dark was giving me a hard, one-squinty-eyed stare. That was her “Shut up!” look.

  She needn’t have been concerned. I wasn’t about to give away whatever secret she was keeping from Samuels. Dark did not like her, didn’t trust her, and that was enough for me. Still, there was one point worth probing. “The mystery I was referring to is that Ms. Samuels will now have to figure out who in the hell has the resources to poison someone with what’s essentially decaying uranium,” I said.

  That stopped Dark in her tracks. “Oui,” she finally said. The woman was a master of understatement.

  Samuels gave me a smile that softened her face enough to elicit one from me. “Stop calling me Ms. Sam
uels. My name’s Monica and I don’t bite.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Dark purse her lips and mouth the words, “Femme stupide orange.” The woman and her damned rainbow personality typing was beginning to get on my nerves.

  “We’ve been working through some scenarios on the Po poisoning, “Samuels said, closing the door to her office behind us. It was a comfortable space, but not elegant, dominated by a large, L-shaped wooden desk and two floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the compound’s parking lot. I took the view and the furnishings to mean that whatever her full-time duties, the Brits tolerated our host and provided acceptable space, but didn’t consider her important enough to warrant executive accouterments. She sat facing me, her bright orange hair lit by the dying light of the evening sun like a pumpkin-colored halo. I suppressed a laugh, with Dark’s stupid, orange woman comment echoing in my head. Samuels pulled out a folder, unfolded a large map, and slid it in front of me. “Polonium occurs naturally, but it’s one of the rarest substances you can find. The best way to process it is as a byproduct from a nuclear reactor.”

  “Meaning that if you’re a terrorist, you don’t just pull some out of your trusty James Bond spy kit.”

  Samuels smiled at me again. I returned it again. “I think our settings here are getting to you,” she said. Her eyes held mine precisely half a beat too long before she rescinded the smile and pointed to the map. “There are dozens of nations capable of producing Po, and you only need a miniscule amount to kill someone.”

  “So that means the stuff could have been sourced almost anywhere,” I said.

  She smoothed out the map, punctuating her answers by jabbing repeatedly at it. “U.S., Canada, Spain, France, U.K., Germany, Belgium, Russia, Ukraine, China, Japan, South Korea, South Africa, etc., etc. Even places like Pakistan and maybe Iran.”

  I whistled. “It’s going to be a bitch figuring this out.”

  “Yes, it will,” Samuels said, sitting up straight. “Good luck.”