Murder on the Metro

by Margaret Truman

  That was how Brixton knew this man. Not a name, a firm background, or even a nationality. He knew there may have been some military experience in the man’s background, likely in the blackest of ops. Not as the man carrying out the assignment but as the maker of the device designed to do the deed. How to get at people who were unreachable—that was the professor’s specialty, and might still be, for all Brixton knew. He was an enigma, a puzzle, a contradiction, to the point where Brixton had heard the professor being referred to as something else entirely: Dr. Death.

  In more recent years, that moniker had been replaced by another culled from a book, or a movie title, Brixton couldn’t remember which: the God of War.

  There were targets impervious to the efforts of even the Navy SEALs or Delta Force, targets so well hidden or guarded that ordinary commando raids would never succeed. In some cases, the target might be accessible but other determining factors had ruled out a strike, execution, or assassination. Sometimes people had to die with no knowledge or indication left to suggest it had been murder. It needed to look like an accident or natural causes, as may have been the case with Stephanie Davenport. And when that was the case, they came to the professor, aka Dr. Death.

  The Russians weren’t the only ones to have mastered such dark deeds. In fact, at least some of their most notorious murders, undertaken with poisoned umbrella tips or radioactive isotopes, had been stolen from American lore—although this was never reported, because such operations would have been carried out with far more restraint and alacrity than the Russian examples.

  “I heard about that nasty business on the subway,” the professor told him.

  “Metro. In Washington, it’s called the Metro.”

  “And what do you call the slimy snake pit that is Washington?”

  “A slimy snake pit,” Brixton said, leaving it there.

  He’d taken the eight a.m. Acela out of Washington, hoping to steal some added sleep on the ride, but had found himself barely able to close his eyes. The trauma from his experience on the Metro had left him even more hypervigilant than he normally was, and he spent the entire ride studying each and every passenger in the car, along with those moving up and down the aisle, coming to or from the food service car. In his mind, any of them could be a terrorist, and he nearly suffered a panic attack when one passenger, damp with sweat, likely from running to catch the train, passed by his seat, toting an overstuffed backpack.

  “I’ll grant you that,” the professor said, smiling above the beard that hung over his neck.

  It was white with flecks and patches of gray, same color as his wild mane of shoulder-length hair. He’d kept all of it from his youth, didn’t seem to have lost a strand, although his craggy face showed the cracks, furrows, and lines of too much unprotected time spent outdoors. Brixton wondered if that might hold some clue as to the man’s true past or was nothing more than the product of too many hours spent upon this rooftop with his pigeons.

  Do you understand my fascination with these birds? he’d asked Brixton once.

  I suspect it has something to do with the fact that they were a subject of interest to the likes of both Charles Darwin and Nikola Tesla. Darwin even included two chapters on them in one of his books.

  Good answer but incorrect. As a person who specializes in the technology of war, it was the fact that America had a fleet of two hundred thousand pigeons serving our cause during World War Two. By delivering critical updates, the avians saved thousands of human lives. One racing bird named Cher Ami completed a mission that led to the rescue of a hundred and ninety-four stranded U.S. soldiers in October of 1918, if you can believe that.

  I’ve learned to believe anything you tell me, Professor.

  “When you called and said you needed to see me, I assumed it was about the bombing.”

  “There are some anomalies,” Brixton told him.

  The professor’s eyes perked up. “Like what?”

  “There are indications the suicide bomber was being watched the whole time, her actions followed every step of the way by her handlers.”

  “Any proof?”

  “Not yet. It’s also possible her suicide vest was detonated remotely, like an insurance policy against the bomber changing her mind or some unexpected element being thrown into the mix.”

  “Meaning you, in this case, Robert.”

  He nodded. “I suppose.” That provoked a fresh thought. “Would it be possible to detect whether the bomb was triggered manually or remotely?”

  “The signal carried would have been along identical receptor lines within the device. So the answer’s a qualified yes, only in the event the manual triggering mechanism survived the explosion intact enough to be examined.”

  “Is that even remotely possible?”

  “You’d be surprised how much of a bomb’s critical elements are preserved in the explosion,” the professor told him. “This is due in large part to the kinetic energy spreading outward from the blast wave, so that unless the triggering mechanism was destroyed in the initial firing, there’s a good chance at least a portion of it survived. The question, of course, is whether that surviving portion is sufficient to prove this theory. And there’s something else you’ll want to have checked, Robert.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You mentioned the possibility that the young woman’s handlers, as you called them, were watching her in real time.”

  “A distinct possibility, yes,” Brixton said, thinking of the iPad peeking out from the coat pocket of the supposed Detective Rogers.

  “Then you should also consider something else,” the professor said. “Specifically that the bomber was wearing some kind of camera as well. If it survived the blast—again, a much better possibility than most imagine—it would be among her evidentiary personal effects collected from the scene. I’d look for a pin or brooch, perhaps a hairpin of some sort.”

  “She was wearing a hijab.”

  “Offering potential concealment for just such a device. What about her clothes?”

  Brixton searched his memory for the proper images. “Bulky, shapeless, too thick for the unseasonably warm spring weather.”

  “A coat?”

  More searching. “Yes, Professor.”

  “Check the buttons then. They make ideal minicams. I’ve designed a whole bunch based on that model myself.”

  Brixton regarded the man who’d spent an entire generation designing weapons of death, handling the pigeon he was holding as if it were a newborn child. He guessed it was the way a man like the professor displaced the ugliness of his work, of designing an instrument intended to kill one human being or scores of them. What it must be like to open the newspaper or turn on the television to news of something he had been party to perpetrating or, at least, made possible. Tending to his pigeons compensated for that, life preserved standing in for lives taken. Surrounding himself with among the oldest of wartime “technologies” served as an object reminder of the enormity of his burden.

  “But that’s not why you’ve come here at all, is it?” the professor said to him.

  “No, it isn’t,” Brixton conceded. “I’m here about the death of Vice President Stephanie Davenport.”

  “A heart attack, I thought,” the professor said, looking up from the bird he was currently petting.

  “She was suffering from a heart condition, but a source close to the vice president believes the heart attack may have been induced somehow.”

  “On what basis, Robert?”

  “Instinct.”

  “I’m a scientist. You need to do better than that.”

  “That’s why I’m here, Professor. Because you’re a scientist and I want to do better than that.”

  The professor returned the pigeon he was holding to the large cage and eased out another in its place. Brixton wondered if this were a daily ritual for him, wondered if any birds not receiving his affection might be offended.

  “Anything turn up in the postmortem?”

 
“Not so far, according to my source. I suspect an autopsy may be performed, if it hasn’t already. But if she was murdered, it would’ve been through a means sure to be utterly undetectable.”

  The professor smirked, smiling smugly. “We’ll see about that.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  The professor said he needed an hour to peek into things, glean what he could before providing Brixton with his thoughts. Actually, it was only forty minutes before he returned to the roof where Brixton had waited.

  “You failed to mention that the vice president had stents inserted into a trio of coronary arteries feeding the heart, a month before her death.”

  “I thought I did.”

  “Well, you didn’t. You wanted to know how the vice president may have been murdered and I just told you.”

  “Stents?” Brixton posed incredulously.

  “Let’s back up a bit first. Cardiovascular disease is the top medical reason for deaths worldwide. But that number has been drastically reduced by millions of patients benefitting from angioplasty procedures where stents are placed in clogged arteries to improve blood flow and reduce the risk of heart attack. But there is also a risk associated with stents: plaque can build up, causing arteries to narrow again. You with me so far?”

  Brixton thought of his age and lack of exercise these past few years, wondering if he might find himself a candidate for stents before too much longer. “Yes.”

  “Okay then. Moving on, researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, have figured out that stents could do a lot more than just be a dumb tube on the wall of an artery. So they’ve created a ‘smart stent’ empowered with sensors that can monitor and provide real-time feedback on blood flow. The feedback can detect renarrowing of stented arteries, known as restenosis, a common complication of stent implantation. The researchers believe in-stent restenosis can reach as high as fifty percent among patients. Follow me?”

  Brixton nodded. “In essence, these new generation stents aren’t just hardware, they’re also software.”

  “Exactly!” the professor beamed, with genuine enthusiasm. “Call it a technological means to extending life, not just a medical one. The next step beyond pacemakers and internal defibrillators. My first thought, when I hear reporting like this, is ‘What took so long?’ The smart stents provide an early warning system that the researchers believe is a better way to diagnose restenosis. In-stent restenosis in arteries is currently diagnosed through duplex ultrasound and angiography, usually done when patients complain of heart attack–related symptoms like chest pain, which means more damage may have already been done to the heart muscle itself.

  “Stents, in some cases, are coated with slow-release medication to prevent plaque buildup, which can be effective in the short term, but it doesn’t protect against a heart attack in the long term. The smart stent detects signs of restenosis and also thrombosis, which is clotting inside a vessel. It has sensing and real-time communication ability via micro-electromechanical systems and antenna functions. The signal sent by the stent is received by an external portable reader that is monitored by computers twenty-four/ seven. The point, Robert, is that these smart stents transmit binary signals so it figures—”

  “That they could also be used, theoretically, to accept signals,” Brixton completed, taking his cue.

  “See,” the professor beamed, “you didn’t even need me. You’re smarter than you think.”

  “I’m a fast learner, Professor. And what I’m learning from all this is that it may be possible to transmit a signal to these implanted smart stents, telling them to close the arteries and shut down the blood flow, instead of keeping them open.”

  The professor flashed the look that many of Brixton’s teachers or instructors had given him over the years, after he’d failed at this task or that. “Not may be possible; it is possible, through technical means I won’t bore you with today.”

  “But simply stated…”

  “You know I never state anything simply, Robert, but if you’re looking for a way the vice president may have been murdered, I believe you’ve found it.”

  CHAPTER

  13

  NEW YORK CITY

  Flo Combes hadn’t been expecting him, which was just the way Brixton wanted it. He showed up unannounced at her dress shop, loitering uncomfortably until the fashionable boutique’s traffic reached a lull.

  “See anything you like?” she asked him, smiling.

  Brixton made a show of fanning through a rack of dresses with four-figure price tags. “I was looking for something in paisley.”

  “And what size would that be?”

  They finally hugged, Brixton surprised at how tightly and long she held him.

  “So,” she said, when they finally separated.

  “So I happened to be in the neighborhood.”

  Flo scolded him with her eyes. “Robert Brixton is a lot of things, but he never just happens to be anywhere.”

  Brixton threw his hands in the air dramatically. “Okay, you got me. I’m up here on business.”

  “Business.”

  “Well, kind of. You know, looking into something.”

  “Care to tell me more?”

  “Wish I could, but I can’t.” He held Flo’s gaze long enough for discomfort to settle between them. “Can you get out for a coffee?”

  She looked around her shop. “No, but I can stay in for one.”

  * * *

  They adjourned to her office, Flo closing the door behind them.

  “I know Annabel filled you in on what happened,” Brixton said, as she moved to the Keurig one-cup coffee machine in a corner.

  “And thank God she did. I would’ve been worried sick otherwise.”

  “About me? Still?”

  Flo forced a smile. “Good thing Annabel told me. I might have thought you made this trip to propose, if she hadn’t.”

  “Really? And how would I have done that?”

  Flo fingered her chin dramatically. “Being the hopeless romantic you are, you’d pull up outside in a horse-drawn carriage and ask me to marry you on bended knee.”

  “I’m not that romantic.”

  “A girl can dream,” Flo said with a smile, all the tension that had characterized their last few months together having slipped away. “Anyway, I would have been worried sick if not for Annabel’s call.”

  “You couldn’t possibly have known I was involved.”

  “Maybe. But as soon as my phone blew up with news flashes, I just had this feeling…”

  “Well, my reputation does precede me.”

  “Well earned in all respects.”

  She came over and hugged him again, while the first cup of coffee began to brew. “I’m sorry, Robert. I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Can we start with ‘everything’?”

  “You can apologize by having an early dinner with me,” Brixton proposed, figuring he could still catch the last train back to Washington on Amtrak. “We can celebrate.”

  “What?”

  “The fact that I wasn’t blown up two days ago.”

  She did that thing with her eyes, scolding him again. “That’s not funny.”

  “But it is true.”

  “Annabel said you were a hero, that you saved a lot of lives on that train.”

  “The bomber knew I was watching her. When she got up to change cars, I followed her. That’s the extent of it.”

  “And if you hadn’t been on that car, what would have happened?”

  Brixton shrugged.

  The first mug filled, Flo returned to the Keurig machine to brew the second. “An early dinner sounds great,” she said, mixing him the first cup just the way he liked it.

  “Novita?” he said.

  “Even greater.”

  * * *

  It was their favorite restaurant in the city, a consistently fashionable establishment that served great food that never disappointed. Flo ordered a ma
rtini while Brixton stuck with club soda, in keeping with doctor’s orders over the supposedly minor concussion he’d suffered in the blast. They split a crab meat salad, one of the house specialties, and then divided the breaded swordfish and Chilean sea bass between them.

  “Did I mess up, Flo?” Brixton finally found the courage to ask her. “Should I have asked you to marry me?”

  She looked up from her plate. “How well do you know me, Robert?”

  “Oh, I’d say pretty well.”

  “At least well enough to know I’m not shy about speaking my mind or expressing my feelings. If I’d wanted to get married, you would’ve known it.”

  “So you would have turned me down?”

  “We had a good thing going. Why mess it up?”

  “Because it ended.”

  “Well, there is that…” Flo looked as if she was finished, and Brixton was ready to speak again, when she resumed. “I spoke to Annabel again this morning. She told me about Mac’s decision to downsize the firm and what that means for you.”

  He toasted her with the iced tea he’d moved on to. It was swimming with pieces of fruit, which was another Novita hallmark. “It hasn’t been a banner week exactly.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I haven’t given it much thought yet.”

  “Yes, you have. Knowing you as well as I do, Robert, I’d say it’s all you’ve been thinking of.”

  Brixton toasted her again. “Guilty as charged.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. I’m fifty-six years old with the kind of skills that aren’t readily in demand. If I try high-end security work, I’m up against former Navy SEALs. If I go in for private intelligence work, I’m up against computer mavens who can lap me with their keyboards. That doesn’t leave me with much.”

  “Did you come up here on something job-related?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I guess it could lead to something, but that’s not why I came.”