The Nitrogen Murder

by Camille Minichino

  Matt and I had yet to decide on a present. I’d tried to get a hint from Elaine, but she refused to give one, claiming our trip was present enough.

  “Anyway, if I ask for something, it’ll be too much like registering at some mall store, which I hate,” she’d said. “A gift should be a gift. Whatever moves you.”

  Matt arrived soon after Dana, Elaine, and I reached home. His step seemed lighter now that he’d communicated with Russell, his fellow law enforcer.

  “Phil is still among the missing,” Elaine said, by way of a greeting to Matt. From her tone she might have been a hostess checking off guests invited to a party. Or a wedding. I wondered if she felt an obligation to appear strong for Dana.

  It had been more than forty-eight hours since I’d watched Phil walk out of the bagel shop, the last of this immediate circle to see him.

  In a movie, I’d be the prime suspect.

  Dana briefed Matt on the situation with the phony Valley Med invoices. She’d noticed that Julia Strega’s fictitious driving duties rotated among two dozen or so EMTs.

  “Probably to avoid tax problems,” Matt said. “This way no one individual EMT’s tax returns are going to be flagged as not matching the company’s statements.”

  “Also, there are some fake EMTs here,” Dana said. “I don’t know absolutely everyone in the company personally, but I’m pretty sure I know all the names, from seeing the schedule in the lounge, and from talking. You know, who’s a good partner, who’s an a—” She flushed. For whose benefit had she cleaned up her vocabulary? I wondered.

  “A what?” A tease from Elaine, one of few light moments lately.

  “A jerk,” Dana said with a smile. She ran her fingers down the list. “Gary Langland, Marcia Streich, Jose Williams. Who are these people?”

  “Julia would sprinkle phony names among the real ones, again, just for cover,” Matt said.

  “This could be why Phil is missing,” Elaine said. “What if someone is holding him … hostage”—her voice cracked; she glanced at Dana and continued—“because he uncovered Julia’s scam?”

  I mentally amended her statement, pending some explanation Julia might give, to alleged scam. Hanging around Matt will do that to you.

  Inspector Dennis Russell had not been impressed, according to Matt. Not by Robin’s taking over the printing of Dana’s incident report, and certainly not by her new wardrobe. Russell took custody of the Dorman Industries ID Dana had found in Robin’s closet, but without comment. He had listened to a description of Phil’s connection to Lokesh Patel through Dorman Industries, but again without interest.

  “Unless we’re ready to report Phil missing,” Matt said, with a look around the table.

  Elaine gave me a helpless look. “Not yet,” she said. “It’s still sort of within the window …”

  I gathered Phil had done this before—that is, be even less considerate than Elaine had made him out to be. Not my problem, I told myself.

  “Russell did say he wanted the briefcase immediately,” Matt said, “and that we were not to fiddle with it.”

  “Fiddle?” I asked.

  “His word.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t detain you until he took custody of it.”

  “I told him it was at Phil’s house, so they’re headed over there.” Matt was not about to encourage a joke at the expense of a fellow officer.

  Elaine looked at Dana, and they both looked at me. “The briefcase is here,” we all said, out of synch.

  “What will they do when they get there and no one’s home?” I asked Matt.

  “Except the cookie lady and her open-house guests,” Elaine reminded me.

  Matt frowned. Thinking. “Well, in a situation like this, no urgency, I’d call his office. If that didn’t pan out, I’d ask around at the neighbors, see if anyone knows when he’s due home. They won’t have a search warrant, and, remember, technically Phil is not missing unless and until we make a report. So they’re not going to go busting in.”

  “And eventually they’ll call … whom?” Elaine asked.

  “I gave them this number. By rights, I need to call them now and tell them the briefcase is here.”

  “By the time you look up the Berkeley PD number in the phone book—” I began.

  “Russell gave me his card.”

  “But you still have to find it in your pockets. How much time do we have?”

  “For what?” Elaine asked.

  “For fiddling,” Matt said, and left the room to make his call. His back was to me, so I couldn’t determine what level of humor, if any, was in his remark.

  Elaine brought the briefcase to the living room and set it on the coffee table, pushing aside her bride books in the process. I regretted every derogatory remark I’d made, to myself and others, about the various planning and make-your-day-special volumes. She flipped open the briefcase.

  “It wasn’t locked when I opened it the other day, either,” she noted.

  We peered in and scanned the beige leather lining, as if it would take more than a fraction of a second to determine that the roughly two-hundred-cubic-inch briefcase was empty.

  We each took a turn fiddling with the briefcase. Elaine ran her fingers around the inside edges, trying to pull up a corner. Nothing. Curiously, Dana lifted the case close to her nose and sniffed. She shook her head. A silent Nothing. I manipulated all the metal parts. The hinges, the decorative buckles on the sides, the lock. Still nothing.

  Matt might as well have brought the cops with him to pick up the briefcase.

  To report or not to report Phil missing?

  “What do you think, Matt?” Dana asked.

  Matt scratched behind his ear. I knew he’d already given this matter some thought. He took his time giving his opinion.

  “Can we talk about Phil for a few minutes? When did we see him last, for example.”

  He addressed Dana and Elaine, but for some reason I raised my hand slightly, reminiscent of seeking permission to go to the girls’ room at Abraham Lincoln Elementary School in Revere, circa 1955.

  “I had lunch with him on Monday,” I said. A confession, but no one seemed to notice. We’d gathered in Elaine’s living room, our seats in a conversational arrangement I was sure was meant for her book club, not a brainstorming session on the whereabouts of her fiance.

  “I talked to him Friday night, after Tanisha … we talked about Tanisha,” Dana said. “That’s it.” She rubbed her hands together, as if she were applying lotion. But I knew there was nothing soothing in the gesture.

  “I haven’t talked to him since Monday morning.” Elaine’s voice was controlled and weak.

  “And ordinarily, would you talk to him every day?”

  “Not me,” Dana said.

  “Not every day,” Elaine said. “But he wouldn’t just disappear.”

  It was hard to tell whether Elaine was trying to convince us or herself.

  Dana stood up abruptly. “Maybe this is a clue,” she said. “Before I left for my interview with the police on Monday, Julia told me to be careful—like, don’t tell them too much, or something. Maybe she was afraid they’d start looking into stuff and find her scam.” She snapped her fingers. “And Tom, too, he said sort of the same thing. Maybe he’s in on it.”

  “Don’t forget Robin,” Elaine said. I knew she was speaking from her fear of an involvement between Phil and Robin. “She had that ID.”

  “Okay, we’re getting somewhere,” Matt said.

  I raised my eyebrows. We are?

  “This is just a long shot, but does Phil have any hobbies that might put him in danger? Like—” Matt began.

  “Scuba diving? Rock climbing? Hang gliding?” I filled in with some of my top candidates for dangerous pastimes.

  Elaine shook her head. “Not unless you think handball is dangerous. And I did call Barry, his gym buddy. And I told you I spoke to his BUL administrator, Penny Thomas, since he checks in with her now and then. And also to Verna Cefalu, his secretary a
t Dorman. Phil was there for a presentation Monday, but that’s the last she saw of him.”

  I had a thought. “Phil’s last words—” Bad choice. “Phil was on his way back to Dorman Industries to give that presentation when he left me after lunch, and he did show up there, evidently. Let’s start from there and see if we can pick up the trail.” The trail? It made me nervous that I slipped into cowboy talk so easily when I was out west.

  “Would you be able to go there, Matt, and ask some questions?” Dana asked.

  “You, too, Gloria, in case there’s some … nitrogen … involved,” Elaine added.

  I couldn’t have said it better.

  We reached consensus that once we determined Phil’s movements when he left me, we’d make a decision about whether to make a formal police report. Matt had explained that in cases like this—an adult with no history of criminal behavior, not falling into any special at-risk category, like a person with Alzheimer’s—we could expect the police to enter a bulletin and a photo of Phil into their MUPS system within four hours.

  “Missing unidentified persons,” Matt said. “It got started nationwide in the seventies after a particularly bad case where the police dragged their feet on an MP report, and … it didn’t turn out well.”

  I could see that Matt was sorry he’d referred to a case with an unhappy ending.

  “What will they do with the information?” Elaine asked. “Go out looking for him?”

  “The system is monitored by investigators, maybe from the state, the DA’s office … I’m not sure how they do it in California. But, within that four hours, they’ll start the process. They check to see if he has outstanding warrants, for example, and if maybe he’s in custody somewhere.” Elaine smiled at this, but I couldn’t see how we could rule anything out. “Then they’ll start calling hospitals, ERs, and so on.”

  I figured “and so on” meant morgues.

  I looked at Dana and felt sure she had the same thought.

  “How awkward is this going to be?” I asked Matt on the way to Dorman Industries. After a too brief respite, the heat wave had returned, and even in the late afternoon we needed the Saab’s air conditioner. I raised my voice to be heard over the noisy fan. “I’m sure when Elaine queried the secretaries she did it in a way that didn’t reveal she’s essentially lost her fiance.”

  “I think we just ask the questions and accept that this might be embarrassing to Elaine or Phil.”

  Though I was driving Elaine’s car and not mine or Matt’s—our usual classroom venue—it seemed the right time and place for a nitrogen lesson. We’d had some of our best tutorial sessions in our cars, riding to or from an interview—and once or twice on a stakeout.

  “It makes the science seem less of a commitment,” Matt had told me. “And it’s less likely that there’ll be homework or pop quizzes.”

  I ignored the slur against science education.

  “The two most common forms of nitrogen are N2, which is the most abundant element in our atmosphere—”

  “And number seven on the periodic table.”

  “Very good. And the second form is N3, which is highly explosive. A nitrogen fullerene—sixty atoms of nitrogen arranged in the shape of a soccer ball—would be an oddity, but a welcome one.”

  “Because … ?”

  “Because nitrogen bonding is so tight, when it’s broken, the explosive power of the molecule would be dazzling.”

  “Did you know that there are some people who use the word ‘dazzling’ to describe a piece of jewelry, or the performance of an Olympic-medal-winning skater?”

  “Would you rather be with one of those people right now?”

  “Not on your life.”

  Keeping my eye on the road, I was sure I’d missed a dazzling smile.

  “As I told you in lesson one the other day, the energy released this way could be the basis for either a new weapon or a really novel nitrogen-based fuel—think supersonic transport. Either way, there’d be a lot at stake in the competition to produce this molecule.”

  Matt reached over and put his hand on my knee. He’d waited till we were stopped at a light on University Avenue. Not to disturb my accelerator foot, I guessed.

  “Do you think all lovers talk this way?” he asked.

  I felt my face flush, and nearly missed the green light, but didn’t stop the lesson.

  “Last I heard, people were working on the possibility of joining six ten-atom nitrogen molecules into the soccer-ball shape. We’ll have to check on the progress next time we’re online.”

  “This is sounding like homework,” Matt said.

  I smiled, and reluctantly gave up on the nitrogen tutorial when we saw the address we were looking for on a large white stucco building. Various signage indicated that Dorman Industries and several other consulting firms had quarters in what looked like a restored factory building. We were in the neighborhood a few blocks north of Bette’s Diner, an area that had once been a bustling manufacturing center. It was heartening to see that many of the structures had been converted to useful space for retail outlets, offices, and artists’ studios.

  I pulled into a slot right in front of the building—a miracle in Berkeley, where even residents had restricted parking permits.

  “About that ‘lovers’ comment,” Matt said, as we opened the frosted glass door to the lobby. “Pretty soon we’ll be able to say ‘husband and wife.’”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  And then I tripped on the edge of the carpet.

  “Okay,” Matt said. “‘Wife and husband.”’

  I regained my composure and gave him a loving smile.

  Our worries that Dorman consultants would overreact to our questioning presence were put to rest when we met the imposing, white-haired Dr. Howard Christopher, whom I’d been introduced to at the bagel shop the day Phil and I had lunch. The day Phil disappeared.

  Christopher’s manner was stiff, like his modern office decor, and his responses were brief and factual.

  “Chambers came to the meeting around one-thirty on Monday. Right after that lunch with you, Dr. Lamerino.” He nodded at me, as if to shift blame for any upset. “He gave a presentation to the senior staff.” Christopher leaned back in his black leather chair, keeping his hands in his jacket pocket.

  “Anything you can talk about?” Matt asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Understood.”

  “Was there anything unusual about the presentation?” I asked. A weak attempt at a cop question, though Matt and I had decided not to play up his RPD credentials. He was, after all, three thousand miles from his jurisdiction. We’d made it clear to Christopher that we were on a personal errand, on behalf of Phil’s family.

  Matt and I had discussed the near certainty that Inspector Russell had visited Dorman to inquire about Lokesh Patel, the firm’s recent gunshot victim, but so far Christopher hadn’t mentioned an onslaught of “investigators” at his office.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary,” Christopher answered. “As usual, Chambers had some, uh, charts, and some, uh …”

  “Data?” I offered.

  “Right.” Christopher’s voice was deep and resonant, reminding me of a network news anchorman whose name escaped me. Elaine would know, I thought. She watched all the Sunday morning political talk shows and was always up on current events. I felt a shiver of distress at her current plight. And maybe Phil’s.

  “That’s it?” Matt asked. “Nothing you can tell us about his manner, or his mood?”

  Christopher shook his head, sending a shock of white hair to his forehead.

  I wasn’t sure why I didn’t believe him; maybe because, except for his hair color (that is, not colored), he reminded me physically of Phil, whom I’d never gotten to know well enough to trust.

  With a matronly body much like my own, Verna Cefalu, one of the consulting firm’s secretaries, managed considerably more animation than the tall, fit Dr. Christopher.

  “What’s this about?”
she asked. She raised her eyebrows, revealing more of the pale blue eye shadow that matched her sweater set. “Has something happened to Dr. Chambers?”

  “Ms. Cefalu, did anything unusual come up for Dr. Chambers, say, on Monday afternoon? Something he might have needed to pay attention to unexpectedly?”

  “Nothing.” Ms. Cefalu twisted a button on her cardigan. “Well, except for that urgent phone call.”

  I gasped, but internally.

  “I see. Can you tell us about that?” Matt asked, with a restraint I wouldn’t have been able to summon.

  “Once in a while he gets these calls, from the same man, I think, and then he has to leave in a hurry He got one on Monday I had to call him out of his meeting. Should I have done something different?”

  I was distracted by the thought that Howard Christopher hadn’t considered it important to mention the urgent call that took Phil from his meeting. I knew I’d been right not to trust him. Not that I was quick to jump to conclusions.

  “Do you remember exactly what the caller said?” Matt asked.

  I loved listening to Matt not answer questions. One more way that his training differed from mine. Scientists tended to answer questions directly and literally Like children, sometimes. I thought of a typical telephone dialogue I’d had with Sophie, my cousin Mary Ann’s five-year-old grandniece.

  “Is your aunt home?”

  “Yes.”

  No offer to call Mary Ann to the phone, as an adult would. Children had no context for social dialogue; scientists had context trained out of them, to better prepare them to attack each question or problem with rigorous logic.

  With Matt, it was all context. He understood layers of meaning, and often answered a question with one of his own when on the job. The subtext: I’ll ask the questions; your job is to give me information. Pleasantly administered, but a firm and effective policy nonetheless.

  I wondered what Ms. Cefalu’s training was.

  “The caller said for Dr. Chambers to meet in one hour at the usual place.” Ms. Cefalu emphasized her answer by crossing her right index finger over her left for “one hour,” and then over two left fingers for “place.” “This time he said it was urgent.”