The Nitrogen Murder

by Camille Minichino

  I tended to agree. In fact, I hoped he was right. Otherwise, I could imagine the buzz at the Berkeley PD. Gloria Lamerino arrives in town, and the crime rate shoots up. In a week we have two killings, a missing person, and now a stolen car.

  “Don’t you have her keys?” Elaine asked.

  “Just this.” Matt produced a miniature blue-striped beach sandal hanging on a chain, along with a single key. “I’m sure Dana has another.”

  “Why would she do that? Just sneak off.”

  I felt Dana had had enough of us, but I didn’t express that to Elaine. “She probably needed some space” was how I put it. I thought it sounded holistic enough for a Berkeley native.

  We sat in front of dried-out eggplant parmegiana, limp salad greens, and strained conversation, until Elaine called us to order.

  “Okay, I’ve consumed about two thousand calories here. It’s time to come clean.”

  Well, at least the food brought back her sense of humor, I thought.

  We laid everything in front of Elaine, including the two Phils: one in Hawaii and one on Woodland Road. There was a way quantum mechanics could account for colocation, through the eigenstates of a system, but I knew it wasn’t the time for a modern physics lesson.

  I could tell Elaine was running the possibilities through her mind. “He could have business in Hawaii,” she said finally, casting her vote against my first-rate evidence. “Did they tell you which hotel he checked into?” she asked Matt.

  I had to admire my friend, keeping it together while asking my fiance what the police had reported on the whereabouts of her fiance.

  Matt shook his head. I searched his face for signs of strain. The bags under his eyes were a permanent part of his Italian American look, I knew, so I wasn’t worried about them, and I calmed myself by remembering that his doctor had given him a referral to a Berkeley physician in case of emergency. “I think they quit at the airlines stage,” he told Elaine.

  Elaine put her napkin aside and got up from the dining room table. “Excuse me, please. I need to make some calls.”

  I followed her as far as the stairway and gave her a hug.

  “I’m here,” I said.

  I was sorry I had so little to offer.

  Once again I was on my own.

  I’d heard Elaine’s office door close, shutting me out of the e-mail and attachments that might be coming from the young PDA genius, William Galigani. I imagined her coursing through every hotel on the five Hawaiian Islands.

  Matt had fallen asleep on the couch to a mellow jazz saxophone. He’d found a CD of the Monterey Jazz Festival among the collection Elaine’s old boyfriend Bruce had left behind.

  It was a good thing my cell phone rang, to keep me from being bored. I picked up on the first ring, not to disturb Matt, and carried the phone to the empty kitchen, which still smelled of cooked tomatoes and oregano.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Galileo?” A man’s voice.

  I nearly knocked over a stack of dishes on the counter. I couldn’t be sure it was Phil. But who else? Even if someone else had heard the answering machine message I’d left at Patel’s phone number, he wouldn’t know who Galileo was. Or was I more transparent than I thought?

  “Yes,” I said. A soft, quick answer, not wanting to wake Matt, and even less to betray my fear and ignorance of who was on the line.

  “Come to the house. Alone.”

  I held on to the phone with both hands and talked in a whisper. “What house?” As if I didn’t know. “Who is this?” As if I couldn’t guess.

  But the line had gone dead.

  I tried to remember my phone message to “Robert Boyle.” I’d referred to my cell phone number only, knowing that Phil had it—he’d used it to change the location of our lunch date. There was no question in my mind; the house was Patel’s, the caller Phil.

  I told myself how foolish it would be for me to respond, unescorted, to such a message. Then I rationalized. How superb it would be if I got some valuable information, especially something that cleared Phil in all our minds. And if he meant to hurt me, surely there were easier ways to get to me than to lure me with a nebulous phone call.

  I checked Elaine’s freezer. No ice cream. Good.

  I walked upstairs and knocked on Elaine’s office door.

  “I’m going out for a bit—we’re out of ice cream.” I talked quickly, hoping to sound desperate for dessert, with no time to chat.

  “Oh, sorry, and thanks, Gloria. I’m plugging away here. We’ll have some ice cream when you get back.” Elaine seemed no more eager to chat than I was. “Was that your phone I heard?”

  “Wrong number,” I said.

  I drove to Woodland Road, my brain split between This is unwise; you’re going to be killed and What a lucky break; we can settle this and get back to the plans for the wedding. I never thought I’d long for chats about who would be seated with whom at the ten-person tables at Elaine and Phil’s wedding reception.

  The Claremont neighborhood, so beautiful in the daytime with its magnificent, dark, leafy trees, had an eerie cast at night. The cul-de-sac Patel lived on seemed even quieter and farther away from the city streets than it had during the day.

  I pulled up to the house I’d cased a few hours earlier. A single dim light showed in a downstairs room, more likely to be an automatic night-light on a timer than a reading lamp for a current occupant. I sat in the Saab, its motor still running in case I decided to leave, and took some breaths. What did I hope to gain? Information, I answered. I cursed myself for not being a normal person who spent Thursday nights in front of the television with a favorite sitcom or hospital drama.

  I drove up to the spot I’d been in earlier in the day and parked the car, again mostly hidden by the trees. I walked up to the front door this time, poised to ring the bell. A visitor, for tea. I told myself once again that this was not a dangerous scenario. What attacker sits and waits for his victim to ring his doorbell?

  I’d told Elaine I was going out for ice cream but had left no note for Matt. I was afraid he’d see through any sentence I’d construct. If he woke up before I returned, maybe he’d believe Elaine.

  And maybe they’d be having this conversation at my funeral services. Why did I continue to put myself in danger? I hated to think my motive was to win approval, an attitude that had dominated my childhood and young adult life. Growing up with a mother who would never be pleased can have that effect.

  Look, Ma, I’d say, I got all As.

  So? she’d say. You don’t do anything around here but study. Who couldn’t get As with your life?

  But that was a long time ago. What was my excuse now? Was I so insecure in Matt’s love that I felt I needed to be heroic to win his approval?

  Crrrash! A loud noise coming from the bushes by the side of the house where I’d been snooping this afternoon.

  I froze. A raccoon, I told myself, going after the pizza boxes. A rational explanation from my brain, but my body took over, and I turned and ran down the path, back to the car. My heart pounded, and at once I saw the ridiculousness of being there alone. I made my usual bargain with the universe: If I would be spared, I’d never do this again.

  I’d put the keys in my pants pocket. I pulled at them, but they were caught on some loose threads that I’d meant to cut. A little careful homemaking would come in handy at times like this, I thought. I managed to get the keys free and clicked the remote.

  I didn’t hear a beep—and remembered that I hadn’t locked the car.

  I dove for the driver’s side, jumped in, and pushed the lock button, at the same time wrestling with the key to fit it into the ignition. After an interminable amount of time, the key clicked in. I drove away without looking back.

  At the first traffic light, I caught my breath and steadied my hands. I looked in the rearview mirror, but I knew I’d never be able to tell if someone was following me. All I saw was headlights, one set indistinguishable from another.

  At the next l
ight, I was stopped directly under a streetlight. An unfamiliar reflection from the passenger seat caught my eye.

  I looked over to see a small white padded envelope.

  Someone had entered the Saab on Woodland Road and made a deposit.

  I stepped into Elaine’s living room with a quart of chocolate showers—Loard’s delicious version of chocolate chip ice cream—in one hand and an audiotape in the other. I found her and Matt across from each other. Elaine’s eyes were red; the nearby wastebasket overflowed with tissues. I suspected there was no Dr. Philip Chambers registered in a hotel anywhere in the Hawaiian Islands.

  It might have been the first time in my life that I postponed ice cream in favor of an audio recording.

  “You got this tape where?” Matt asked.

  I put my finger to my lips and pointed to Elaine, who had pushed the PLAY button on her old portable tape recorder. I remembered the little black machine from the days when she’d record meetings to be sure she got work assignments and due dates right. I had fond memories of the time she’d been the lead editor for a program I worked for, making it legitimate for us to have long lunch meetings.

  “Okay, Howard, it’s just you and me here, and we need to get some things straight. It’s almost the middle of June, and I need to find out what you want me to do, how far we’re willing to go, and so on.”

  Elaine pushed the STOP button. “That’s Phil’s voice,” she said. She took a breath and held it.

  “He wants to establish a record,” Matt said. “He’s giving us who’s there, the date, and the agenda. I’m guessing Howard didn’t know this was being recorded. Very smart.”

  “Phil is very smart,” Elaine said, as if she’d been trying to tell us this for a long time and we were getting it at last. I wondered if she felt a bit of relief, just hearing her fiance’s voice. “‘Howard’ must be Howard Christopher, Phil’s boss.”

  Matt nodded. “Gloria and I met him at Dorman the other day.”

  I was itchy to push PLAY, which Elaine finally did.

  “What do you have so far?” Howard Christopher’s voice.

  “I have more than enough to take this to the next level. First, as I told you, I’ve been tracking missing nitrogen in Washington’s database of special substances. You can see from this table”—(rustling)—“that Patel has been at the site in all these highlighted cases.”

  “Phil’s giving us a review,” Matt said, nodding approvingly.

  “We’ve been over this. So Patel was in the vicinity of reported material losses. That could be coincidence. The man travels a lot.”

  “You sound like you don’t want him to be guilty.”

  “Not at all. I’m just trying to keep you honest, Chambers. (laugh) I want to get to the bottom of this more than you do. When you came to me with this, what did I do? I gave you a full go-ahead, relieved you of other duties. You know that.”

  “Okay, you’re right. I’m just telling you now what I’ve found out. I told you I saw Patel download from the classified system in the VTR. I walked in on him and he tried to cover it up, but I’m positive that’s what he was doing. Our work is paid for by the U.S. government, and that’s all who’s meant to see it. Patel is stealing.”

  “Let’s say he is stealing. What’s he going to do with the information?”

  “He could have been transferring everything we’ve been working on. Those files contain all the equations for nitrogen-enhanced molecules and all the device designs.”

  “And what’s he doing with them, in your view?”

  “Making money, I presume. India is, what, third place in the world economy? We’ve been hearing for years that it wants to become a member of the nuclear club.”

  “This isn’t nuclear.”

  “No, but it would go a long way toward getting them into the big weapons club.”

  “And isn’t this a little racist, Chambers? Just because the guy’s Indian?”

  “Okay, some other country. He could be sending the stuff anywhere.”

  “You know, Patel could also have been uploading, not downloading. Maybe his only violation was to use a classified computer to upload his PDA calendar with his kids’ birthdays, for God’s sake.”

  “He doesn’t have kids.”

  “Geez, Chambers, maybe it was his tee times. You can’t be sure he was downloading classified information.”

  (Exasperated grunt) “You’re right, Howard. So, you want me to back off?”

  (Sigh) “Yeah, you get back to work, Chambers. We need you back on the bench. I’ll take it from here.”

  The machine went silent, except for the whiny noise of the clutch. The meeting, obviously held before Patel’s murder, appeared to be over.

  “Phil might have taped this for his own protection,” Matt said. “Maybe he’d begun to suspect his boss of being in on it.”

  “It being some kind of industrial espionage or even national security violations,” I said. Aren’t you sorry you didn’t pay more attention to my nitrogen lesson? I thought, but considered it too flip to say at the moment. “And that’s why he mailed the PDA to me instead of turning it over to his boss.”

  “Why not the police?” Elaine asked.

  “No context,” Matt said. “If I were the cop who got this, I’d need a long explanation. On its face, there’s nothing but two guys disagreeing about a third.”

  “But the third one is dead,” Elaine said.

  No one mentioned the “missing” status of the second one.

  Matt yawned. As much as I felt we were making progress, I wanted us all to retire for the night.

  “I’m not saying Phil made the right choice. But he knew Gloria was investigating.” Matt ticked off the evidence. “She asked him pointed questions at lunch—”

  I felt my face flush. “You weren’t there.”

  “Did you?”

  “Lucky guess,” I said.

  “Let’s say it is Phil at the house. He probably saw her the first time. He’d have to wonder how she got the address and realize she’d accessed the PDA.”

  “She could have gotten the address from the police,” Elaine said.

  “Not likely,” Matt said, apparently thinking, as I was, that the police were not bending over backward to include us in their investigation, nor to share information. “Then, if he had any doubt, she left the Robert Boyle message.”

  “And he might have gotten anchovies the next night,” I said.

  Elaine looked bewildered at that, but I didn’t take the time to explain.

  “Hmmm, it almost looks as though you’ve been doing the work of a cop,” Matt said.

  “I prefer to call it research, acting as a consultant, as usual.”

  “You know what this means,” Elaine said, ignoring our banter. Her voice had all the confidence of a moment of enlightenment.

  Matt and I gave her similar looks. I, for one, hadn’t begun to see the clear picture Elaine had apparently worked out.

  “What does it mean, Elaine?” I asked, since she seemed to be waiting to deliver a punch line.

  “Phil’s one of the good guys.”

  I should have realized how much it would mean to Elaine for Phil to be the guy who was ferreting out a spy, and not be a criminal himself.

  I gave her a hug. I heard the faint sound of wedding bells.

  All we had to do now was straighten out a few loose ends. It was looking good for Christopher as the murderer, and I looked forward to working out the logic more carefully in a session with Matt.

  And to luring Phil out of hiding and down the aisle.

  Elaine went upstairs shortly after we heard the tape-recorded meeting between Phil and his boss. I heard a soft “Thanks, Gloria” as she left the room. She looked weary beyond words. I sensed that hearing Phil’s voice had brought her about a microliter more hope than she had the day before.

  Matt and I called Patel’s phone number a few more times, to no avail, then agreed that we needed a fresh start before outlining murder scenarios
and listing all the questions that still remained to be answered.

  William Galigani called long before we’d had enough sleep, however.

  “Hey,” William said. “I’m surprised you’re up this early. But I have some stuff to send you.”

  I guessed this was a teenager’s version of you had to wake up anyway to answer the phone.

  “What did you find, William?” Words spoken through a wide yawn.

  “There’s no games on it,” he said, through boyish chuckles. William’s voice was in the transition stage; I expected any day to mistake his voice for his father’s, as had happened with Rose’s two sons. “And only a few hot chicks.”

  “Nice, William.”

  “Sorry, don’t tell Grandma, okay?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  And I wouldn’t, though I thought it curious that William was more concerned about Rose’s reaction to his little jokes than his parents’. But William had probably been up half the night working on my project, and he deserved a little fun. At least school was out for the summer and I didn’t have to worry about keeping him from his homework.

  “Okay, well, there’s a calculator, and an expense sheet, and then some book downloader, but no books,” William said. “Then there’s some charts, with columns, like the first heading says ‘storage places,’ and there’s amounts, and it says ‘missing materials.’ I think it’s, like, a list of missing chemicals and stuff, plus dates.” The facilities Phil mentioned on the tape, with evidence that Patel was in the neighborhood during the time period of recorded thefts. “There’s a lotta equations, too, and formulas and reactions. They don’t look that complicated, though.”

  “Do you recognize the equations from your chemistry class?”

  “Yeah, they’re sort of like TNT and nitroglycerin and ammonium nitrate. Stuff like, you know, we studied this year, except there’s one term that might be off from that. Well, it’s hard to explain, but I’m just sending it all now and you’ll see what I mean.”

  “Thanks, William. You’re the man. Is that the right expression?”

  “Wow, Aunt Glo, you talk the talk. Call me back if you need anything else, okay? And, oh, I think Grandma is going to be calling you in a few minutes.”