The Nitrogen Murder

by Camille Minichino

  “Robin flipped on Julia,” Matt said, pouring us ordinary coffee in Elaine’s kitchen. The one without an espresso maker. “Julia’s being charged with a number of counts of theft, drug-dealing, fraud.”

  “So Robin is free and clear?” Not exactly a whine, but close.

  “Free and clear. In the other matter, Howard Christopher is being charged with two counts of murder, one attempted.”

  “That ‘attempted’ is for Phil, right?” I asked, meaning, You didn’t tell Russell about the shot fired at me, did you?

  “For Phil, yes,” Matt said, frowning. Neither of us wanted to talk out loud about the bullet that passed way over my head.

  “I’ll bet Christopher gets a better deal than Julia gets,” I said. “They’ll want all the details of the information that got leaked.”

  “Same reason cops make deals every day,” Matt said. “Damage control. You want to know the big picture. In this case, what did they sell to whom, and for how long?”

  “And that’s the message we’re sending. You can beat a murder charge if you’ve also been involved in selling government secrets.”

  Matt gave me a that’s-life shrug. Sometimes I was happy that I hadn’t spent my career as a cop.

  “In any case, Russell seemed to like Christopher for Patel and Tanisha. He thought it seemed likely Christopher assumed the duffel bag might have something that incriminated him.”

  “Why wouldn’t Russell tell me all this?” I asked.

  “It’s a cop thing.”

  Oh, well, I thought, a person didn’t have to like all cop things to marry one.

  CHAP TER THIRTY-ONE

  Matt and I spent a good part of the next week shopping for our wedding present of choice for Elaine and Phil—the most up-to-date espresso/cappuccino maker in Berkeley.

  “Almost as pleasant as searching scientific supplies catalogs,” I told Matt.

  We decided against a bronze model with a mythical bird on top. Matt liked a tall, old-fashioned tower arrangement topped off by an Italian glass dome, but we settled on a squat black version that would blend in with the modern Cody/Chambers kitchen. It was labeled “semiautomatic,” and Matt enjoyed pointing out that espresso makers, like weapons, came in automatic, semiautomatic, and manual models.

  “It has a three-way solenoid valve,” I said.

  “That should do it,” Matt said.

  I didn’t tell him it also reminded me of a fast servo tool I’d seen in a precision engineering magazine.

  We bought the package that included a pound of special beans each month for a year. Expensive, but we meant it as combination hostess, shower, and wedding present, with maybe an apology thrown in.

  “We can deliver it at the shower on Thursday evening,” I said.

  “We?”

  “Wedding showers are not just for girls anymore.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  Dana seemed excited about hosting the shower for Elaine and Phil, whose doctors declared him ready for anything he thought he could handle. She’d enlisted the help of some friends: her noncriminal roommate, Jen Bradley, who wore a tiny white apron (“I’m here to serve,” she announced); Jen’s boyfriend, Wes, who plied his short-order-cook trade for our benefit (no on cucumber sandwiches, but yes on man-sized pesto-stuffed mushrooms); and a young, petite EMT, Melissa (who seemed thrilled to be included and allowed to fill coffee cups and collect dirty plates).

  It was obvious Dana had cleaned and rearranged things for the occasion. The moving boxes were gone or hidden, the floor vacuumed, and fresh flowers placed on every available surface. The wall that usually supported two bikes was now covered by a stack of presents; the bikes had been moved out of the way into the hallway off the kitchen.

  Besides Matt, Phil, and Wes, there were a number of other men present, evening out the population to ten and ten. I was happy to reconnect with some BUL acquaintances I hadn’t seen in a long time, most of them part of a group of editors and graphic artists Elaine worked with.

  “How’s retirement, Gloria? Any new hobbies?” a woman I recognized as an editor asked. She didn’t know me well enough to realize I had no old hobbies.

  I smiled, calling up the expression I use on small-talk occasions. “I’m keeping busy,” I said.

  I caught Matt’s grin.

  I had a flashback to the wedding showers of my college days. All girls, silly games, pink- or (the more creative ones) yellow-and-white crepe paper, doll-sized food, and too much giggling over filmy sleepwear and sexy (we wouldn’t have said that word) lingerie. I remembered once having to make as many words as possible from the letters in HERE COME THE BRIDE AND GROOM. The first on my list had been BORING.

  I knew I would have felt the same even about a shower for me, but I hadn’t been engaged long enough to have one. I made a note to talk to Rose Galigani, in case she had plans for me this time around.

  Much of the talk was about the dramatic events of the week, some of which had made the local papers. I listened without comment to opinions about the spy ring in our neighborhood (not the first); about whether the ambulance company owner, Julia Strega, would stand trial or take a deal; about Howard Christopher, whom a couple of BUL editors had worked with, and how he still denied shooting anyone.

  Out of deference to the hostess, I guessed, no one brought up Robin Kirsch, who had a deal in the works for a suspended sentence in exchange for her testimony against Julia Strega. Robin was on an employee retreat with her San Francisco bank group, Dana told us, and was sorry she couldn’t make the shower.

  Everyone doubted it.

  As soon as we’d eaten, Matt offered to leave separately, and early, to take the presents to Elaine’s house.

  “Generous man,” I said, leaning into his ear.

  “I’m practicing for ours,” he said, leaning back.

  “Let’s serve these delicious mushrooms,” I said.

  Hearing my nonchalant tone, you might have thought I was looking forward to a shower of my own.

  At the end of the evening, I abandoned my privileged position as guest and took my turn with the cleanup crew. By now, all the men had left; most of the women stayed to help. Maybe times hadn’t changed all that much.

  Elaine was practically giddy. After the meal, Dana had set up three card tables, with different games: mah-jongg, Scrabble, and a board game I didn’t recognize. I’d opted for mah-jongg since that table had its own Chinese American tutor, a computer scientist I’d worked with a few years back. Much better than wedding games.

  “I can’t remember a nicer evening, Dana. Thank you so much,” Elaine said. I was sure she meant it, even if the past week would not have been hard to top. She quickly dropped her bride privilege and pitched in at the sink.

  The mood was so light and happy, I expected us all to break out into a song like “Whistle While You Work,” or the modern-day equivalent.

  As my last chore, I wrapped the trash and dragged it into the hallway by the back door. I bent over to settle the plastic bag between two bicycles and an already stuffed waste can.

  Something not very heavy hit my head as I straightened up after depositing my load. I’d bumped into a crystal hanging from the handle of one of the bikes.

  I remembered it from the first time I met Robin, when she carried her bike into the living room. And from another time …

  My mind went back to Patel’s cul-de-sac, to the third time I was there, after Elaine had found Phil on the floor of the library. I’d gotten out of the Saab and spun around to check the reflections from the streetlight. One was off the bumper of a car in a neighboring driveway, a new Volvo. And that was the car that didn’t deserve the garage, I thought irrelevantly. Another reflection came from the crime scene tape, and the third from the handle of a bike.

  But it wasn’t from a handle; it was from a crystal.

  I saw it now. Robin’s bike had been near Patel’s home the evening I was shot at.

  “We have what we wanted,” I told Matt. “The second li
nk between Robin and Patel. The ID card could be explained away, but not this.”

  I’d waited until Elaine went upstairs to tell Matt the latest in what was supposed to have been a closed case. Two closed cases. Dana had dropped Elaine and me off; I’d spared her also. Both women deserved an evening and a night’s sleep uncluttered with confusing pieces of information.

  “This means Robin could have been part of what you lovingly call the spy ring,” Matt said.

  “It does. It makes Robin part of both threads. But how did she even know Patel? If it were anything obvious, like meeting through Phil or Dana, one of them would have told us.”

  What I hoped was that this new revelation didn’t bring us back to Robin and Phil being involved involved.

  We tried to devise a way to query Dana about the link without alarming her. Matt was in favor of leaving her out of it. “She must have been thinking about this for a long time already,” he said. “Ever since she found that ID card.”

  I deferred to his judgment.

  “Okay, we don’t ask Dana. Let’s focus on why. Why would Robin involve herself in giving secret data to India—or wherever Patel was sending his downloads? Just for the money?”

  “Why does anyone do it?” Matt asked.

  “Still,” I said, “there should be a reason.”

  “It’s not physics,” Matt said.

  “Well, it should be.”

  On Friday morning, the day before the wedding, I had a voice message from Rose, who’d sent a lovely set of linens as a shower present. I knew she’d want a complete description of the party. I tried to remember the menu (mushrooms plus an outstanding seven-layer cake were all I could recall), what everyone wore (California casual), what the other gifts were (general household merchandise, boring as it sounded). I wished I’d taken notes.

  Catholic guilt took over my mind, and I decided to dig out and look over the police report Rose had sent me on the exploding hearse, so I could sound as though I cared. After all, I thought, Rose is the person I’ll be living near whenever I’m not on vacation in California.

  I scanned the report, stopping at a mention of nitrogen, my current favorite element. Apparently the uniform who wrote up the incident decided to include a tutorial on the workings of explosives. I read his description.

  Most bombs are like fireworks. They contain nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon, I read. When the molecules containing these atoms decompose, carbon dioxide and nitrogen gases are released quickly and with great energy, making the explosion.

  Not bad, I decided, and figured that passage was probably the reason Rose wanted me to see the report.

  “That was one thing,” Rose said, when I reached her. “And I also wanted you to see that list down at the bottom, where the police catalogued the other incidents that they felt were from the same perps. See, I just didn’t want you to think I was crazy.”

  I looked at the sheet of paper with the familiar letterhead. At the very bottom was a list of what the RPD had called “similar pranks,” some of which I’d already heard from Rose. Like the switched clothing. My eyes settled on a new one to me.

  Deceased had tennis ball stuffed in mouth.

  “A tennis ball?” I asked, fishing around my mind for a connection I knew was there.

  “Yes,” Rose said. “Didn’t I tell you that one? That was at O’Neal’s, too. Someone came in the middle of the night and evidently went into the parlor and stuffed a tennis ball in the deceased’s mouth. Imagine when his family came in for the viewing—”

  “Thanks, Rose,” I said. “You’ve just become part of the Berkeley homicide team.”

  “It was there all along,” I said.

  “The tennis connection,” Matt said. He’d already made the trip to the Berkeley PD, as the official liaison for the team. “Robin hanging out with the rich guys at the tennis club; Patel right there, recruiting for his cause.”

  It hadn’t taken a long discussion for Matt and me to decide to inform Elaine, Phil, and Dana of this new development, for safety reasons first. Robin was still Dana’s roommate, after all.

  Robin had been in charge all along, we realized. Working with Julia for money, as Dana figured out, and with Christopher and Patel for political reasons. She’d used her skills in finance to help Julia launder money, and her knowledge of international business procedures to help Patel manage his crimes against the country

  “Well, Russell was impressed,” Matt said. “That’s something, huh? He said they were on it. They’ve already hit the bank where Robin works with a warrant. Since Robin thinks she’s clear, there shouldn’t be any problem finding her.”

  “I knew something was going on in her mind, some real resentment about the way her father ended up,” Dana said. “It was like she blamed the government for what happened to the Vietnam vets.”

  “Many people did,” I said.

  “But why would she think India was any better?” Dana asked, apparently still trying to make sense of things.

  “Not everyone thinks things through,” Matt said.

  I had a few things to add, but I could see that Dana was satisfied with that.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Friday night, the wedding eve, at last. We gathered at the viewing patio at the top level of the Rose Garden. The sunset vista was perfect in all directions, from the hills of Marin County straight ahead of us to Richmond on one side and Oakland on the other.

  Time for the rehearsal, the official start of the wedding celebration. We were so close to having this wedding come off with no more disasters, I thought I should be breathing easily, but instead I was tense as we walked down the stone steps. The tennis courts off to the side of the garden reminded me of Robin, and I half expected her to jump from behind a lovely bush and attack us all.

  I scanned the sparse crowd of people in the garden, some paying attention to us, others wandering among the rows of shrubs, lost in their own conversations or meditations. No one was threatening the bridal party. Relax, I told myself, but I kept my shoulders stiff and my gaze alert.

  Elaine provided corsages for Dana and me.

  “Just for the rehearsal?” I asked.

  “Absolutely,” Elaine said, nearly stabbing me with a weapon-length straight pin. “It’s only a little one. Tomorrow’s will be bigger.”

  Of course. I figured this two-corsage protocol was in a bride book authored by a florist, but I knew such thoughts were anathema at a time like this.

  The minister was a friend of Phil’s from Dorman Industries. A nice enough man, but I suspected he’d been ordained online.

  On the second run-through, my corsage came undone. I unpinned it before it fell off completely and laid it on top of a small bush next to the gazebolike area at the bottom of the garden, where we stood for the pretend vows. We made one more run-through, this one with music from a boom box Elaine had brought.

  Though I couldn’t name the piece, I knew I’d heard it at about three out of every four weddings I’d attended in my life. It was designed to be meditative and tear-jerking and seemed to be working already, even before the final take. Both Elaine and Dana were dabbing at the corners of their eyes.

  I was holding out for a full-fledged cry tomorrow.

  Ten minutes later, back at the top of the garden, ready to carpool to dinner at Berkeley’s world-famous Chez Panisse, I realized I’d left my corsage behind.

  “Elaine is bound to notice,” I told Matt.

  “I’ll get it,” he said.

  I pointed, trying to aim my finger at a spot six levels down, to where three peach tea roses nestled among dozens of adult roses in full bloom. “I think I’d better go. You’ll never find it, and I know exactly where I put it.”

  I made my way down the steep pathway, using the same aisle I’d used as a rehearsing maid of honor. I found the corsage and started up the steps.

  It had turned dark suddenly, as it always seemed to do when the sun made its way down those last few degrees above the horizon. The garden’s visit
ors had left also, as if the sunset had signaled the park’s closing, though I was sure a posted sign indicated that it was open until ten o’clock at night. I saw shadows where I hadn’t seen them on the way down. They moved in strange ways.

  I strained my neck to see the wedding party above, at street level, but it was a long way up, and there were many twists and turns and lattice overhangs between the garden levels and the opening at the street. The tennis players had left, and I felt an enormous distance between me and anyone else in the universe.

  On the third level, a shadow materialized and a strong hand grasped my arm.

  “I’m here to say good-bye.”

  My throat went dry. I felt a shiver through my body.

  I barely recognized Robin’s voice, hollow and menacing. With each word, she squeezed my arm more tightly. Her jacket was torn in several places; she looked and smelled like she hadn’t had a shower in days.

  I thought I cried out, but I couldn’t be sure. I grabbed a branch and earned a few punctures from the thorns. My movie fantasy come true, but with the wrong leading actress.

  Robin pulled me down, below the bushes. Even if my team missed me and looked down, they’d never see us. I tried to improve my odds—I screamed. But I’d never had a particularly loud voice, and I doubted anyone heard me.

  Robin shoved me down next to her, still holding my left arm. I could hear her breathing, raspy and loud. It wasn’t the first time my retirement contracts had put me in the clutches of a killer.

  This time seemed different.

  Less frightening, as strange as that feeling was, even as Robin took a gun from the pocket of her windbreaker.

  “My plan was to come tomorrow and ruin Phil’s wedding,” Robin said. She sounded drunk, but I smelled no alcohol on her breath. “Now I think this is even better, since you were the one who put all the pieces together.”

  “Don’t do this, Robin,” I said. A weak command. “We can work things out. That’s your father’s gun, isn’t it?”