The Nitrogen Murder

by Camille Minichino

  I shivered a bit as I thought how easy it had been for me to think of Phil as a killer.

  “I took my concerns to Christopher right away,” Phil continued, “and he told me to look into it, but when I did … well, you heard what he thought about it.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the cops?” Dana asked, clearly still shaken from nearly losing her father.

  “What could I have done? Given them Patel’s PDA? They wouldn’t have understood the context,” Phil said. He glanced quickly at Matt. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” Matt said. He stood back from the bed. I loved his serene expression and took it to mean he wasn’t hurting. I was glad he’d been in the almost constant company of an EMT on this trip, however.

  I looked at my watch. I wondered how long we had before the curfew nurse returned and cut us off. I needed more from Phil, and I didn’t have much time.

  “What about the invoices in your house, Phil?” I asked. “From Valley Med.”

  Phil looked surprised. I realized he’d been missing in more ways than one. He had no idea of the extent of our investigation. How could he have guessed we’d been rooting around behind his kitchen bulletin board?

  He glanced at Matt. “You’re a good detective,” he said.

  I supposed it was natural that Phil would think it was the cop among us who’d been pursuing the case. This, in spite of our Robert Boyle/Galileo messages. Old stereotypes died hard.

  Matt smiled, wisely letting me decide whether to call Phil on his false assumption. I let it go—he was recovering from a TNT gunshot wound, after all—and Phil continued.

  “Well, I was looking for missing special materials, not just nitrogen but other controlled material, to try to trace it to Patel. I searched everywhere, both classified and unclassified Web sites, and I hit on a lot of lists with details of incidents and reports of missing substances, nuclear and nonnuclear. These would be either illegal or hazardous in the wrong hands.”

  “And the missing hospital meds came up?”

  “You’d be amazed. There’s nitrogen in Viagra, for example. And nitroglycerin. And of course morphine, C17H19NO3, which, coincidentally, I was offered a shot of this afternoon.”

  I was impressed that Phil could rattle off the chemical composition of a complicated molecule like morphine. And I’d had no idea it contained nitrogen. He shifted a bit and his lips tightened. He had to be hurting, I thought.

  Elaine put her hand on his forehead and made another offer to let him be. “Phil, are you all right? Do you want us to leave?”

  A breeze blew in from the slightly opened window, past a shabby credenza, carrying light perfume from a large basket of flowers from Elaine. I wondered if she’d used her wedding florist. I assumed she and Phil had had a wedding talk during the day. I figured I’d learn the parameters—on/off, postponed/canceled, full throttle/scaled down—when I needed to. Phil looked like he was only one good nap/shower combination and a tux away from walking down the aisle, but I knew there was more to it than that, and not just physically.

  “I’m fine,” Phil said. “I’m trying to do this without morphine, and it’s a little rough right now.”

  “Miss Emma,” Dana said, getting a smile from her dad.

  I was learning a lot—not only the composition of the drug, but one of its street names as well.

  “So, with the N atom in there, nitrogen will show up on the missing morphine list. Check your friendly DEA controlled substance list and you’ll see what I mean.”

  Dana smoothed her long hair back from her face, making a temporary ponytail, then a bun at the top of her head. It fell back into the original arrangement as soon as she let go. “I’ve been thinking about this, Dad. I know the procedures. These facilities do a daily inventory of controlled substances. It requires a strict accounting, including the signatures of people going off duty and the people coming on duty.”

  “I know, sweetheart, but then how do supplies ever go missing in the first place? We know how it’s supposed to work, but—” Phil shrugged the wrong shoulder and winced again.

  I felt certain Dana was thinking of how her own friend and partner had managed to find a way to skirt inventory rules.

  “They’re supposed to write incident reports,” she said. “I guess eventually someone did, and that’s how you got to see it on those lists.”

  Phil nodded, but weakly He was fading, and I wasn’t finished. I switched topics again.

  “The interview with Howard Christopher? Was that the only one you taped?” I asked.

  “Yeah, unfortunately. By the time I caught on that he might be involved, it was too late. And even with the interview I gave you, I’m aware I didn’t quite get him to give himself away. I can’t prove he knew about Patel’s downloading to his PDA.”

  The dull white walls of Phil’s room seemed to light up as I had a flash of memory.

  “Maybe you got more than you thought, Phil. I’ll have to check the tape when I get home, to be sure.”

  I was finished for the time being, and it’s a good thing, because the door opened and Nurse Bunting gave us a you’re-out gesture that we would have been foolish to disobey.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Dana had to keep herself from resenting Gloria just because she’d be taking Matt home with her. After all, it was Gloria who’d located her father at Patel’s house in the first place, and then her bravery had allowed him to pass on the PDA while Dana was hiding at Marne’s. Her own discovery of Tanisha’s money counted only as serendipity, not courage or investigative ability.

  Dana watched as Gloria pushed REWIND then PLAY on Elaine’s tape recorder. They all listened to the whole interview between her father and Howard Christopher once through, and then Gloria rewound to the passage she wanted.

  The voice of Howard Christopher:

  “Maybe his only violation was to use a classified computer to upload his PDA calendar with his kids’ birthdays, for God’s sake.”

  “I don’t recall Phil’s saying anything about a PDA before this point in the meeting, do you?” Gloria asked. “I think this is what we need.” She glanced around the room, her expression too smug for Dana’s liking. Matt gave a thumbs-up; Elaine clapped lightly, a wide smile on her face; Dana was quietly thrilled that her Dad might have successfully stopped a threat to national security, however remote.

  She shuddered at how close her father had come to dying this week—twice. She had a new respect for Robin, losing her father at nine years old, and in a way that couldn’t help but mar her for life. Maybe Dana should cut her roommate some slack.

  Dana was glad she finally knew how and when her father had hurt his hand—tussling with Patel and his killer. Probably Howard Christopher, from the sound of that tape. It was awful enough that Tanisha Hall had turned out to be on the wrong side of the law; she wouldn’t have been able to take her father’s being a bad guy, too.

  “Can I call Dad and tell him?” Dana asked. She wanted to be the one to give her father the good news—that they finally had something to take to the Berkeley PD. She was pleased at how quickly everyone agreed, Gloria first.

  “Of course,” Gloria had said. “That’s the best idea.”

  Dana certainly couldn’t claim that Gloria was selfish or hard to get along with, and she was attractive enough for an old lady It wasn’t Gloria’s fault that Dana hadn’t found anyone her own age who was worth her time.

  Now that things were getting cleared up, her life looked doable again. She might dig out those medical school applications and play up her EMT experience. Popular opinion was that it would go a long way to counteract her less than stellar academic performance.

  As for dating possibilities, she’d exhausted the pool of guys at Valley Med; every eligible male was either an ex-boyfriend, like Scott Gorman, or a never-to-be, like Tom Stewart. And she’d already dated too many premed students. They all wanted to practice their phlebotomy procedure on her.

  “It’s no fun pretending to draw blood f
rom a straw,” Scott had told her as he stuck her arm.

  She remembered how conscientious he was, getting down at eye level with the needle, so he could be sure to keep it between fifteen and thirty degrees. Too bad he wasn’t that meticulous about being faithful to her.

  She might have to start doing the singles thing. Nah.

  Dana’s phone call to her father was short, since her father was still being monitored by Nurse Bunting, but he was clearly happy and relieved that his ordeal might be over.

  “You know, at the time that nagged at me, that Christopher mentioned the PDA, but I couldn’t put my finger on what was off kilter. Good for you, sweetheart.”

  “It was Gloria, really,” Dana told him.

  “But you were always on my side, I know, and that means a lot.”

  Not always.

  Dana remembered the Robin/Patel connection, still unresolved in her mind. But her recuperating father didn’t have to know that.

  Dana sat in front of the TV in Elaine’s living room. She noticed Elaine had a new piece of furniture for her television set—an “entertainment center” that looked like a huge dresser, but with doors. She wondered if she’d ever have a home like this, where everything matched and all the prints were framed, or if she was doomed to stapled posters and dormitory decor forever.

  “Make yourself at home,” Elaine had said when she went upstairs. Matt and Gloria went up, too, and Dana decided to hang around Elaine’s a little longer.

  She’d put together a late-night snack of milk and crackers and peanut butter, too lazy to make popcorn with Elaine’s non-microwavable raw kernels. She got comfortable with an old Doris Day and Clark Gable movie. Good enough to stare at while she decided what to do next.

  Dana hated to admit she was afraid to return to her own house. She hadn’t shown up there since she’d walked in on Robin and Julia shuffling papers, looking guilty (Julia) and angry (Robin). Jen, who seemed oblivious to the drama-filled days Dana had been having, had called to check on her, but she’d heard nothing from Robin, of course.

  “Are you there alone?” Dana had asked Jen. She imagined Robin somehow taking her anger out on their petite roommate.

  “Wes is with me. Why? I came back to get some things, and I thought as long as you’re not depressed or anything, I’d stay at his house.”

  Sweet thought, Jen. “Do it,” Dana had said.

  Dana tried to get her head around Tanisha’s being involved in the medical supply scam. Tanisha had had enough talent and personality for four; she could have made it without getting sucked into Julia’s scheme. Dana smiled, remembering the time Tanisha had talked down a crazy old guy. He’d been throwing furniture out the window of the convalescent home, yelling, “Satan is making me do it,” when they arrived. Everyone was afraid to approach him, except Tanisha. She’d put on a scary face and said, “I’m from Satan, and I have a message for you.”

  That had stopped the guy just long enough for the paramedics to come in with straitjackets.

  She tried again to come up with another reason for the wad of money under the mattress—ten thousand dollars in twenties—but she couldn’t. The irony was that Tanisha apparently hadn’t been shot over stealing the meds but because she happened to be carrying Patel’s duffel bag with some sweaty T-shirts and socks. At least that’s how it seemed.

  Dana hoped that in time the old knock-knock Tanisha would prevail in her mind, and not the image of her friend tiptoeing around nursing-home medicine cabinets and making deals with the guys who monitored the hospital pharmacies. She also hoped everyone who participated in the scam would pay. She knew that a couple of Julia’s EMTs had already been suspended by the county office. Even so, it wouldn’t cost any of them as much as it had cost the Hall family.

  Robin Kirsch’s behavior was still a little hard to understand. It was obvious now that she was still working for Valley Med, not as an EMT but as part of Julia’s scam, and that was probably what had set her off when Dana appeared to be—make that was—snooping in her closet. But how was she involved? As far as Dana knew, Robin didn’t have access to meds, unless one of the companies she did home consulting for was a pharmacy. Robin had never told them specifically what she was consulting about.

  Another thing that didn’t make sense was that Patel ID in Robin’s closet. The cops had suggested that Dana herself dropped it there; maybe they were right. She did have a bunch of them in her pockets, and she’d been tense while she was rummaging through Robin’s new clothes, that much was for sure.

  Dana wondered if Tom Stewart was also involved. Part of her wished he was, but she knew that was only because she wanted to make a trade—let him be guilty and not Tanisha.

  Dana was due at the PD in the morning, along with Elaine and Matt and Gloria. So, by this time tomorrow, the police could have everything they needed to arrest all the perps. Everyone who wasn’t dead. She heard herself sound like Jerry Orbach/Lenny Briscoe on the original (still her favorite) Law & Order. She pictured Julia Strega and Howard Christopher in dull gray jumpsuits sitting at Rikers (so what if this was California, not New York City) with Sam Waterston/Jack McCoy and a model-thin lawyer from his office, offering them a deal.

  Dana brushed cracker crumbs from her shorts. She’d been in them more than twenty-four hours, except for a brief stint in Tanisha’s T-shirt. She remembered her father saying he’d acted cowardly, but Dana felt she was the wimp in the family, hiding out wherever they’d take her in. Matt would be anything but proud of her. Look at what Gloria had accomplished by her courage and willingness to take risks. If Dana had been braver, she might have been able to help.

  Wouldn’t it be cool if she had more to bring to the table at the PD tomorrow?

  Something concrete.

  Maybe it wasn’t too late.

  But the first thing she needed to do was get a good night’s sleep in her own bed. How brave did she have to be to do that?

  Dana unlocked the front door, ready to jump back if anything or anyone lashed out at her. It’s pretty sad when you’re scared to enter your own house, she thought, but there’d been too many creepy scenes lately, too many creepy places. Her Dad’s empty house in Kensington; Patel’s huge house in the Claremont district. She hadn’t entered Patel’s home, but her cop friend, J. J., had described the scene as bizarre, with the blood soaking into an Oriental carpet, making a surreal pattern. That was before he realized he was talking to the victim’s daughter.

  Dana pushed open the front door and took a deep breath.

  No sounds, no lights, except the little Washington Monument night-light in the hallway. Jen had brought it back from a trip she took to D.C., to gain an appreciation for our national treasures, she’d said in her totally white-bread way.

  She knew Jen was with Wes. Robin was either asleep or out. On Friday night, most likely the latter.

  Dana put her ear to Robin’s bedroom door. Not a sound.

  Jen’s door was open a crack and Dana pushed it a little more, until she got a look at Jen’s empty bed, neatly made up with a quilt from her mom. No surprise that it was a bright, cheerful flower pattern. Dana wondered what it would be like to have a mom who quilted. Her mom had spent most of her time at tennis and fitness, and ended up marrying her personal trainer.

  Dana walked around the empty house, flipping light switches, her arms outstretched, doing twists from the waist. It was good to be home. She felt her body relax, warming to the idea that home was safe again.

  The dining room table was messy as usual with mail, newspapers, and a pile of books for Jen’s summer class project on a French artist. Dana studied a painting in a huge, propped-open art history book. It was of a young girl reading, holding a book up, her elbow resting on the arm of a chair. Who holds a book that way to read? Dana wondered. And who could write a whole paper on one painting?

  Dana leaned over to pick up some papers that had fallen to the floor. Junk mail, mostly. She shook her head and pictured Jen and Robin deliberately tossing their catal
ogs and local ads on the floor around the wastebasket.

  One loose piece of paper didn’t fit the profile of a credit card offer or a special rate for a magazine subscription. The red-and-white Valley Medical Ambulance Company letterhead stood out—an original this time, not a copy like Gloria had found behind her dad’s kitchen bulletin board.

  Dana scanned the page, a spreadsheet. It looked like part of a tax form or a memo about finances. The totals and itemizations were of no interest to Dana—she already knew Julia’s books were fraudulent. But the signature at the bottom was news. The document was PREPARED BY ROBIN KIRSCH.

  Robin was doing Julia’s books. More accurately, cooking them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I gave up on trying to sleep. I closed the door on Matt’s light snoring and went down the hall to Elaine’s office. As I passed the stairway, I saw the flickering light of the television set, telling me that Dana was still in the house. Dinner smells had dissipated, replaced by the fragrance of a large jasmine-scented candle, one of many in the house, its flame newly snuffed out.

  I wanted to make the most of my interview at the Berkeley PD in the morning, and a review of our information would be handy. I was a self-designated consultant, it seemed. A part of me that I wasn’t proud of hoped that Russell would be on sick leave, but only because he didn’t seem the type to take a vacation.

  The case for theft and fraud in People v. Julia Strega, dba Valley Medical Ambulance Company (I wasn’t sure what the charges would be, technically, but it was amusing to pretend I was) seemed unbreakable. If there were EMTs other than Tanisha Hall involved in her side business, the Berkeley PD could ferret them out.

  I was also sure we had a vacuum-sealed case against Howard Christopher. He’d given himself away with his comment about Patel’s method of getting classified information out of a VTR. I pictured the Indian scientist, a trusted transfer manager, skulking around the vault-type room, taking the steps to remove data, copy equations, even record a note to himself—all the while appearing to be just doing his job, preparing media for the transfer of material to unclassified sites.