Carbon Murder, The

by Camille Minichino

  MC played with her fork, twirling the stringy melted cheese around the tines. “Jake, don’t worry about Wayne. It’s not as if I’m the slightest bit attracted to him. Except for his mustache, of course.”

  Jake smiled, gave her that intense look she couldn’t resist. He leaned toward her and they used their fingers to trace two long handlebar mustaches, curved at the ends, in the air between them. This was the Jake she loved, teasing, giving her adoring looks, abandoning entire meals to be with her.

  Later, at the doorway, she kissed him. “Don’t go,” she whispered.

  “I have to get this settled. When I come back, shall I bring my suitcase?” He gave her a sheepish look, as if to ask if he’d behaved well enough for her to take him back.

  She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “Let’s go slow, Jake.” He kissed her and she knew he could tell she didn’t mean it.

  MC leaned against the open door, watching Jake skip down the stairs. All the old feelings had come back and this time she felt it could really work. No one was more a turn-on than Jake Powers at his peak of charm. Not that she had any intention of rushing back to Houston with Jake, at least not until he proved he could last more than four days without a beer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “You did good,” Matt told me, using our traditional complimentary phrase from our first case together. “Berger says they were able to trace the tire tread to a low-end motorcycle made by Melrose Company and sold in only one shop in Revere. The owner ID’d Gallen based on the photo we took of him the night MC called in the nine-twenty-one.”

  I was excited that I had at last contributed to an investigation, if only the one relating to the whereabouts of Wayne Gallen, which, now that I thought of it, wasn’t really an investigation in the eyes of the police. Matt had taken the report of my late-afternoon encounter with Wayne better than I thought he would, probably because I downplayed the fright I’d felt when he first entered my car.

  “And the bike shop had an address for him?” I asked, with great hope.

  He shook his head. “Not that lucky. But now we know how he’s traveling and the uniforms are checking local biker hangouts; it could be he’s trying to blend in that way.”

  “If he really wanted to blend in, he’d wash up and shave off that mustache.”

  I brushed out a jacket Matt would wear the next morning to his “modeling appointment,” as we were calling it. I was uneasy about their using Styrofoam in a serious medical diagnostic, and felt better reading the new paperwork we’d been given, which called it a thermoplastic mold.

  “What about Alex Simpson?” I asked. I’d decided Simpson must be in Revere, too, since all the other Texans involved with MC were.

  “Negative. It’s possible that Gallen is with Simpson in a motel, but if so Simpson’s using a different name.”

  “I don’t think Gallen’s in a motel room. Why wouldn’t he clean himself up if he were? Gallen smells as though he’s been on the street half his life.”

  “You were that close?”

  “I … uh … heard MC say that.”

  “Uh-huh. Because you made it sound no more intimidating than a guy just stopping to ask directions, and if he’d gotten close or threatened you, you’d have told me. Right?”

  “Of course.”

  Matt’s simulation was scheduled for Friday morning. This would take about an hour and would help pinpoint the tumor, according to Dr. Abeles. Matt’s pelvic area would be scanned, and a three-dimensional image would be generated. A technician would make marks on Matt’s skin to indicate the area to be radiated, a large area compared to what would be required with the new small-molecule medicine I’d been reading about.

  “I’m supposed to leave the marks there, and not wash them off for the whole treatment cycle, just pat with water and then a dry towel,” Matt said. “That ought to look cute. A nice decoration, like a tattoo. Maybe I’ll get a navel ring to match.”

  I laughed. “You’re doing a great job putting me at ease about this. How are you doing?”

  “I’m nervous, but I’m feeling no pain,” he said. “I even have some pre-pre-premedication to help prevent nausea and diarrhea once the treatments start.”

  He read through the booklet one last time, mumbling reminders to himself not to use moisturizers or powders, as if that were his habit.

  Jean had been in and out the day before, visiting other friends and clients in Revere, and was now back so she could join Matt and me for the trip to the clinic. Once Jean saw that her brother was fine, she’d head south to the Cape.

  That was the arrangement, until Berger showed up at our door. The rain was in full swing again, and he stomped the water off his rubbers—the kind I hadn’t seen since I was a kid, requiring untold strength to overcome the friction as you pulled them on or off your regular shoes. “I’ll keep these on if you don’t mind,” he said, and we waved our approval.

  “Sorry to bother you so early,” Berger said, accepting a cup of coffee. He leaned his elbows on our tile tabletop and held the mug with two hands as he drank, as if he were a very old man who’d slept outside in a storm. The image caused me to wonder whether Wayne Gallen had any protection from the nasty weather. Ugly as he was in all ways, I didn’t want him out of commission before I had some answers.

  Matt introduced Jean, who’d entered the kitchen when she heard the doorbell. She’d gone for a run already, and had changed from one expensive-looking sweatsuit to another. They were the kind Rose might wear, I noted, and wondered why I didn’t resent the same look on Rose.

  Jean shook Berger’s hand, her head half-turned to me. “Matt’s real partner? So glad to meet you, Detective Berger.”

  Then I remembered why the fancy sweatsuits appeared pretentious on Jean, but classy on Rose.

  Berger gave no indication that he caught her hostility to me, possibly recalling a period when he might have felt the same way. “Ah, this coffee’s good,” he said, reaching for a bagel to go with it. “I’m beat. I feel like I’ve been working two jobs.”

  Matt sighed heavily, and Berger, flustered by his own remark, rushed in. “I don’t mean it that way, Matt. You take all the time you need. Cynthia and Rebecca both have bad colds, and I was up all night listening to them coughing. And—”

  Matt held up his hand. “It’s okay. I know I’m slacking off here. What do you have?”

  Berger put his mug down and flipped open his notebook, from the same supply closet Matt used, apparently, and put it on the table in front of him. “Lorna Frederick called yesterday afternoon, late. She wants to talk to someone at the department, preferably you and Gloria.” He swung his mug at me. “Ms. Frederick … I guess it’s Dr. Frederick, said she may have been abrupt at the interview you had the other day, and she does not in any way want us to think she is not cooperative, blah blah blah.” Berger twirled his bagel in the air to indicate that the rest of Lorna’s words were not worth repeating exactly. He closed his notebook, which, as far as I could tell, he hadn’t glanced at while he talked.

  My excitement that we didn’t have to wheedle Lorna into a second interview took a backseat to Matt’s needs. “Matt has a medical appointment this morning,” I said.

  “He needs to have his simulation done.” From Jean, not to be outdone in mothering.

  “I know,” Berger said. “So, I thought you might come with me, Gloria. We should move on this while she’s willing, and I could use a little, you know, technical assistance.”

  Matt, who’d been a good sport about being talked about in the third person, now raised his eyebrows and gave me a quick wink. We both knew what a breakthrough this represented. Berger had gone from not wanting me around the department when I first signed on, to now wanting me as a partner on an interview. Very flattering, but bad timing, however. I wasn’t about to leave Matt’s side.

  “Can’t this wait until later today, or tomorrow?”

  “I don’t mind at all taking care of my brother,” Jean said, her delicate chin in the air.
Matt gave her a look that I assumed was supposed to remind her of her recent promise to work on accepting me. I did my best not to look in her direction. It was hard, and even harder not to come back with the fourteen retorts on my lips, like “How sweet of you,” or “Maybe you could leave your Cape Cod estate and move in with us.”

  “Gloria, I’d feel much better if you’d go with Berger,” Matt said. “This simulating thing is nothing anyway. It’s just pretend, right? And this way, I’d feel like my job was being taken care of.”

  I sighed. “If you put it that way …” I turned to Berger. “I’d love to come with you, though I’m sure you could handle it yourself.” One more shot at being let off the hook, without alienating my new partner.

  “Well, it’s always nice to have someone else around, and since this lady is a scientist …”

  I looked at Matt. He nodded. “What time?” I asked.

  “Matt’s office, eleven o’clock.” He smiled at Matt. “Your office is bigger.”

  I checked my watch. I had two hours to go over the reports Andrea had given me. Two hours to pull something useful out of my next interview with the scientist-cum-horsewoman Lorna Frederick. After Berger left, I kissed Matt, ignored Jean, and went to work.

  I liked my newly arranged office, in the second floor guest room, facing the busy Fernwood Avenue. I worked better with worldly noises like traffic and neighborhood sounds around me, probably a holdover from having to share lab space all my professional life. Old Mr. Dorlando next door often obliged, using his power mower on his front lawn at all hours. This morning delivery trucks made a clamor on their way to and from a supermarket at the end of the street, their alternate route when there was construction work or repairs on Broadway, which seemed to occur frequently.

  Too late I’d realized this was the room Jean had always used when she visited, and she was now relegated to the smaller downstairs bedroom at the back of the house. Another reason for her to resent me, I figured. Matt had shrugged and said, “It’s your house,” when I asked why he hadn’t advised me against the choice. My house—I wondered why that hadn’t immediately leapt to my mind.

  I set a mug of fresh coffee on the little table next to a high-back wooden rocker and piled the stack of papers on my lap. I’d started in the same way several times since Andrea had given me the reports, and each time I’d been distracted by one of Matt’s many brochures on his cancer. I slid easily from science to medicine lately. Last night he’d placed a new leaflet on my desk since I was the keeper of the files, and I glanced through a tri-fold on male sex hormones and a new agent, ketoconazole, that blocks their production. I tried to adjust my mind to the idea that blockage was a desirable outcome in this case—we did not want cells in a cancer patient to grow, but to be inhibited. It was a technology pharmaceutical companies were working on, but not quickly enough to suit me.

  I filed the pamphlet, and focused on the nanotechnology group reports and grant proposals. I’d written my share of funding documents, and recognized the forms and summary charts. Project name, principal investigator, action items, delivery schedule, contacts. The government usually awarded researchers money based on a record of research and development activity and tangible signs of progress in a certain direction.

  Trying to make sense of Wayne Gallen’s comment about a diversion of funds got me nowhere. I was hopeless at financial auditing; reports of income and spending were meaningless to me.

  The Charger Street scientists were promoting their ongoing work in nanoropes, bundles of nanotubes that would be valuable in HIV studies. Nanoropes could be used as probes to explore the core structure of the HIV virus.

  I enjoyed reviewing an image gallery of beautiful graphics that made up an appendix of one report. A small, bright green rope of buckytubes. Vials of buckytubes in colorful solutions, three shades of red. A green buckytube with four red peptide rings wrapped around it like a Christmas garland. Who needed a museum?

  A half hour of my allotted two hours had passed and I had nothing that would be useful in the upcoming interview with Lorna Frederick. I realized the reason for my failure was that I had no clear idea what I was looking for; I knew only my primary mission—determine why MC was being stalked, warned, and cajoled into leaving Revere.

  I abandoned my star method of a few days before and went into a linear organizing mode, writing down what I had, what was missing.

  Q.: Why was private investigator Nina Martin murdered in Revere?

  A.: 1. She was on a job in Revere and her death was related to that job.

  2. She happened to be in Revere when she was murdered, but the killing was random, or related to another assignment.

  I wrote NO next to number two. No coincidences allowed at this point.

  So, given that her murder was related to an assignment that took her to Revere, the surrounding facts must all be connected. I wrote them down.

  The job Nina Martin was working on had something to do with:

  1. her enrollment in MC’s chemistry class.

  2. the Houston Poly buckyball team (since she used the class to instigate contact with them through a pretend term paper).

  3. the Charger Street lab buckyball team (since she was in Revere with Lorna Frederick’s card in her pocket).

  4. the FDA (since she had their card in her pocket also).

  5. (possibly) the email matter Wayne Gallen was keeping to himself, but which should force MC to run away with him, like some Romeo and Juliet escaping their feuding families.

  Brilliant, I thought. I still had no clue what tied all these together.

  From Matt, I knew that the Texas agencies had shared very little information. I assumed that was because Nina Martin’s murder was essentially solved and they might see no further need to investigate. Rusty shoots Nina; Nina shoots Rusty; both die.

  I made a note to ask Matt if there were any chance Houston police would question Alex Simpson, based only on Wayne’s ravings and an admittedly innocuous, possibly misdelivered email. I doubted it.

  Dejected, I straightened the papers and shoved them into my briefcase, catching them on the yellow-lined pad I kept in it. I pulled out the pad and scanned the notes I’d made while Andrea and I talked about the reports. I’d generated a checklist, and forgotten to follow through. Reading down the items, I saw that I’d done everything except check the contacts, to see if I recognized the names of any of the researchers on the payroll. I still had another ten minutes before I had to leave, so I pulled out the contact list and read down.

  The consultants for Lorna’s team represented a wide variety of research, government, and educational institutions, with an impressive array of credentials. I ran my finger along the column. MD, MS, PhD, MChem.

  I scanned down.

  Alex Simpson, PhD, Houston Polytechnical Institute. An aha went through my body, though I already knew the two labs were connected through common research. I searched for Wayne Gallen’s name, but couldn’t find it. I did find more MDs, an MBio., and a DVM.

  A DVM? I looked again. Dr. Timothy Schofield, DVM, of Revere, Massachusetts. Daniel Endicott’s vet. Why was there a veterinarian on the contact list?

  Finally, I had a couple of questions for Lorna Frederick.

  I looked out the window to see Matt and Jean pull away in Jean’s new black BMW. Matt had come up to say good-bye and wish me luck at the interview; Jean had not.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Lorna Frederick did not disappoint me with her second outfit. Green enough for a St. Patrick’s Day parade, swirly enough for belly dancing, enough layers for a silicon chip on a wafer. I hadn’t forewarned Berger about her flamboyant appearance—a good partner would have, I thought, too late—and I saw him swallow his surprise as Lorna swept into Matt’s office.

  “I’m so sorry to hear that Detective Gennaro is not feeling well,” she said. I wondered who had told her what, about why Matt was missing this meeting.

  “Nice of you to come in,” Berger said. He pulled out a ch
air for her on the opposite side of Matt’s desk.

  I sat to the side, and had a view of the photo of Matt and me that he kept on his desk next to the Massachusetts penal code.

  Lorna folded herself and her fabric into the gray chair, an unworthy background for her costume, and smiled. “I certainly didn’t mean to be uncooperative when Detective Gennaro came out to the lab,” she said. “I was taken by surprise, I guess, and felt uncomfortable, but of course I’d be glad to answer any questions about our work, or anything else that might be helpful to you.”

  “You’ve met Dr. Lamerino, our science consultant,” Berger said, nodding my way.

  Lorna smiled at me. “Indeed I have. It seems I’m the last to know of your sterling reputation around the lab.”

  “Sterling” sounded like a horse word, or maybe that was “gelding.” In any case, I couldn’t gauge her level of sincerity.

  Lorna had the shortest distance I’d ever seen between an adult’s forehead and chin, as if her features had been squeezed together in an accident with a vise. A remarkable contrast between her tiny face, topped by tight blondish curls, on the one hand, and her dramatic costumes and gesticulations on the other.

  For about a half hour the three of us talked, Lorna establishing that she still hadn’t been able to come up with a single reason why a murdered private detective would be carrying around her phone number. She’d done a little research, however, and come up with several numbers close to hers, she said—a dry cleaning establishment, a fast-food restaurant, and assorted citizens of Revere and Winthrop. Berger wrote down the information and promised to follow up.