Dirty Martini

by J. A. Konrath

“I’m afraid not, Lieutenant. I’m an EMT. We got a call of a woman passing out at a Willoughby’s on Michigan and Huron. Your partner is dead.”

  I squeezed my eyes closed so hard, I saw stars under the lids.

  “How did she die?”

  “It appears to be heart failure. But in someone this young . . .”

  “Okay, you need to be careful. She was probably poisoned, and some of it may still be on her. I need you to talk to the manager. Try not to let anyone leave until I get there.”

  “Was this—”

  “Don’t say anything more. I don’t want to cause a panic. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  I hung up and looked at Herb.

  “She’s dead. It’s a few blocks away. I need you at the crime scene.”

  Herb hesitated for a moment, and then said, “No.”

  “Goddammit, Herb—”

  “Goddammit, Jack, I’m not Homicide anymore.” He looked as angry as I’d ever seen him. “This isn’t my case, and you’re not my partner.”

  “Fine,” I said, the words forming in my mouth before common sense could override them. “Be a coward.”

  I didn’t mean it. But before I could take it back, Herb was storming off, through the crowd, over the yellow police tape, and back to the station. I’d apologize later. Herb would forgive me. Especially if the apology included carbohydrates.

  I turned to look for Rick, but he was still in full gear, hovering over the corpses. Figuring I’d need help at the restaurant, I grabbed the uniform, Buchbinder.

  “How would you like a temporary promotion to Homicide/Gangs/Sex?”

  “My sergeant will bust my balls if I leave my post.”

  “What’s your post?”

  “Parking enforcement.”

  “I’ll smooth it over. You got a car?”

  “A bike.”

  “Even better. Let’s go.”

  That cheered me up a fraction. I liked bikes. My ex-husband, the man who gave me my last name, had a 1982 Harley-Davidson Sportster, and we’d go riding whenever we could. Which, as far as I can remember, was twice.

  I worked a lot back then.

  Unfortunately, when Buchbinder said bike, he meant scooter. The tiny little electric moped barely had room for two, and had a top speed of slow. A five-minute walk took us ten minutes on the bike, because Officer Buchbinder stopped for all traffic signals, pedestrians, strong breezes, and optical illusions. He also pulled behind a horse and buggy giving six geriatrics a tour of the Magnificent Mile—a tour so excruciatingly sluggish that I doubted all of them would live long enough to see its conclusion.

  “Go faster,” I said.

  “If I follow too closely, there could be an accident.”

  As it turned out, there was an accident. Buchbinder couldn’t brake in time, and coasted right through the largest pile of horse shit I’d ever seen.

  “Apparently they can do that while trotting,” I said.

  “Did you see that? It came out of nowhere.”

  Actually, I did see it, along with where it came out of. But I chose not to mention it.

  “Some got in the spokes,” Buchbinder whined. “I just cleaned the spokes.”

  “Pay attention to the road.”

  “My God, my bike is trashed. What was that horse eating?”

  “Let’s get off this topic.”

  “What’s that on the fender . . . peanuts?”

  “Pass the damn horse or I’m firing you.”

  He made a hand signal and thankfully got around the horse and cart. But getting past it and getting past it were two different things.

  “I gotta clean this quick, before it hardens. Don’t want to have to chisel it off.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” I said. I didn’t say, “Like your non-future in the Homicide division.”

  Buchbinder, however, was fixated.

  “I can smell it. Can you smell it?”

  Jesus. It just wouldn’t end.

  “I got some on my pants.”

  “Buchbinder, shut the hell up about the horse already.”

  “Okay. But I never saw Mr. Ed do that, no sir. That manure pile was the size of a small child. Lucky we weren’t both killed.”

  I didn’t feel lucky. Not even a little bit.

  “Do you smell peanuts?”

  We got to Willoughby’s shortly thereafter. I instructed the Horseshit Whisperer to take witness statements after he cleaned his pants. Then I spoke with the bartender.

  “She came in alone. Sat down, ordered a dirty martini, up. Took off her jacket and asked where the bathroom was. I made the drink and set it down by her stool.”

  I looked at the empty glass, an olive at the bottom.

  “Did you see anyone near her drink?”

  “Some guy came to the bar, took some napkins.”

  “Did he touch her drink at all?”

  “I only saw him out of the corner of my eye.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “White guy. Suit. Had an eye patch.”

  Dammit, Roxy. After that long talk about making yourself a target and being extra careful, how could you leave an unattended drink on the bar? I stared at my gray jacket on the bar stool, and could picture her on camera wearing it, looking so confident and professional.

  I left it on the stool. I’d never wear it again.

  I switched focus to the martini glass, trying to figure out how to transport it. The Crime Scene Unit would have the materials. They needed to be here anyway, to dust for prints.

  I used the cell phone to call in the CSU, and some members of my team, including an Identikit artist. Maybe with all of these witnesses, we could give the Chemist a face.

  My phone rang. Rick. I picked it up.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  I filled him in.

  “Shit. She was a good kid. You can’t blame yourself.”

  “Sure I can.”

  “She was a professional. She knew the risks.”

  “She was a child.”

  “Put the guilt on the back burner for a little while. I think I figured out his delivery system. What he’s using to tamper with food.”

  That got my attention. “What?”

  “He’s also been using it directly on people. It’s called a jet injector.”

  “What is that?”

  “I can do better than just tell you. I’ll show you. When will you be free again?”

  I looked around, at the several dozen people in the restaurant.

  “A few hours at least.”

  “We had to cut lunch short. Up for dinner?”

  I thought of Latham, unconscious and on a ventilator.

  “I’ve got something to do after work.”

  “How about a quick bite? I’ll bring some food to your office. I can show you there.”

  I hadn’t eaten anything, and by dinner I’d be ravenous. And if I ate at work, it would give me more time with Latham.

  “Fine. Meet you there at five.”

  No big deal, I assured myself. It wasn’t like we were going to have sex in my office.

  Right?

  CHAPTER 18

  I GOT BACK TO the office a little after four. A copy of the personal ad set to run in tomorrow’s newspaper was on my desk.

  Chemist—the answer is yes.

  My stomach was growling loud enough to make passing dogs growl back. I visited the office vending machine, plunked in two quarters for a candy bar, and then stopped when I remembered that candy bars were on the list of tampered food items.

  What was left to eat? Food in cans, and things I hunted and cooked myself. And I wasn’t even sure about the cans—the CDC found evidence that a can of chicken soup might have been dosed with BT.

  What the hell can contaminate canned food?

  I had half a roll of breath mints that had been in my purse for a year, and I wiped off the lint and ate those, along with water from the tap.

  The CSU had lifted a bajillion fingerprin
ts from Willoughby’s. The crime lab, in conjunction with the CDC/WHO/HMRT, had confirmed that Roxy’s martini had been dosed with Tanghinia venenifera, known as the ordeal bean of Madagascar. It also grew wild in Hawaii. As few as ten drops of extract were fatal.

  Poor Roxy.

  I flipped through a few reports from witnesses at the restaurant, and three of them had put together a composite picture of a generic-looking guy. It was so featureless, it looked like a Ken doll with an eye patch. A hot dog vendor a block away had corroborated the sketch, adding that the Chemist spoke with a Midwestern accent, stood about five feet nine inches, and was between twenty-five and forty-five years old. But even though he had extended contact with him, all he really had focused on was the damn eye patch. Basically any thin white guy could be our perp.

  I guessed the eye patch to be a disguise, because it hadn’t been mentioned in any of the scads of reports. We ran it through the registry just the same. Over two thousand guys in our database could fit the description. I put a team on it.

  The mints did nothing to curb my hunger, so I wandered over to Herb’s office, to apologize for being an ass and to see if he still had those antique Twinkies.

  His office had been cleared out, and there was no Herb to be found. No food either. He’d even taken the wrappers.

  I passed the vending machine again, and paid special attention to the packaging. Chips—could be tampered with. Candy bars—could be tampered with. Mints—it would be hard to inject toxin into mints.

  I bought a roll, then spent five minutes turning them around in my hands, looking for evidence of tampering.

  Life is about taking risks, Rick had said. I opened the package and popped one in my mouth.

  I didn’t die.

  As I sucked on the candy, I went through the reports that Herb had compiled, and made some calls to get updates on the questioning of the victims, witness searches, security tapes, and Alger’s arrest record. None of it pointed in any specific direction. I took out my To Do list and stared at it.

  trace M44 purchases

  Alger-arrest record

  talk to neighbors

  question mailman who delivered letter

  security tapes at BT scenes

  witness search at BT scenes

  survivor interviews/background checks

  research IEDs

  I added to the list: gardener, fingerprints probably on file, disguise/eye patch, white Honda Accord, local, two million dollars.

  I stared at the new list. Why two mil? It was a lot of money, but not that much. He could have demanded more than that. Did it have some kind of significance?

  I also noted that question mailman was still on the list. I leafed through Herb’s folder and found the statement from Carey Schimmel, USPS. It was the shortest statement in the history of statements, amounting to: I delivered the letter. Carey also admitted that since the anthrax scare, he wore gloves, which explained his lack of fingerprints on the extortion envelope. I crossed that off the list.

  I was about to give Hajek a call to see how he was coming with the camera phone pics, when Rick came in, carrying a bag of heaven.

  “Do you like Chinese?” he asked, eyes sparkling.

  “Are you kidding? I could eat Mao Tse-tung raw right now.”

  The smells were intoxicating. Sweet and sour. Rice. Soy. Beef. Veggies. My mouth filled with saliva.

  But wariness prevented me from tearing open the bag with my bare teeth.

  “Are we sure it’s . . .”

  “So far, the Chemist has only struck in the city, right? I got this in Cicero.”

  We dug in. I ate an egg roll in two bites, wondering how that might look to a guy, but not caring. Then I dug into some beef chop suey, some kung pao chicken, and a potsticker that had to be the single greatest thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.

  Rick had also brought a six-pack of Tsingtao. My job would be in jeopardy if just one reporter with a long lens caught me through the office window, drinking beer. I took the risk anyway. I wouldn’t call myself a beer aficionado—I liked Sam Adams and I liked a local brew called Goose Island even more—but that Tsingtao went down quicker than any beer I’d had in ages. Rick popped open another for me, and then one for himself.

  “To catching the bad guy,” I said, raising my bottle.

  “And to making new friends.”

  We drank to that.

  When my stomach had distended to the point where my innie became an outie, I threw in the chopsticks.

  “So what is this lunatic using to tamper with the food?” I asked, kicking off my shoes and pulling my feet up under me in my chair.

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure, but it would explain the lack of needle holes or surface toxins, and I confirmed it with the deaths of the couple on the street, and several of the victims of the Sammy’s massacre yesterday. It’s called a jet injector.”

  “Which is what?”

  He dug into his satchel and took out a small blue object shaped like a phaser from Star Trek, only child-sized. It had a white plastic tube jutting out of the handle, which extended about eighteen inches into a silver cylinder.

  “It’s a needle-less injection gun, used for mass immunizations. Invented years ago, to counter the cross-contamination caused by needles, along with the fear factor and high cost of sterilization. Diabetics also use them. This model can administer a dose of liquid up to three cc’s. Its orifice is many times smaller than a needle—less than the width of a human hair, actually—so the hole it makes is very hard to spot. And unlike a needle, it evenly disperses liquid once it penetrates the skin. It’s the perfect system to introduce medicine subcutaneously.”

  I looked at the thing with a mixture of dread and fascination.

  “How does it work without a needle?”

  “Air pressure. This one uses a spring. Other models use compressed gas, like CO2. You arm the device”—Rick turned a key on the cylinder—“then squeeze the trigger.”

  I flinched at the hissing sound, and saw a spray of vapor appear around the nozzle of the gun.

  “The pressure causes a jet stream, which forces the liquid through the skin and into the muscle. Smaller hole, less central concentration of fluid, less pain. Some of these models are tough too. You could inject insulin into a basketball.”

  “What about plastic wrapping, or butcher paper, or aluminum cans?”

  “Conceivable, yes. It would probably even work on thicker plastic, or cardboard. And look how small it is.”

  Rick turned his palm and closed his fingers. The gun was completely hidden by his hand.

  “I think this is what the Chemist used on his last two victims, on the street outside. They died so quickly there wasn’t even bruising, and the puncture wound could only be seen under a microscope. But I biopsied neck tissue where witnesses say he held his weapon, and found uneven concentrations of ricin, a toxin found in castor beans. I think he injected it directly into their throats.”

  Rick was smiling, and while I was happy to know what we were up against, I wasn’t able to share his enthusiasm. Truth told, the Chinese food was doing somersaults in my stomach. The thought of someone using a device invented for good to do so much evil gave me a giant case of the creeps.

  “Can we trace these things?” I asked.

  Rick’s smile faltered.

  “No. There are about two dozen companies that make them, and only six of them make a model small enough that it can be concealed, but that still gives us thousands of possibles. The guy might have picked it up at a garage sale, or on the Internet, or stolen one.”

  He set the jet injector on my desk, where it coiled like a snake among the half-empty food cartons. Rick, so full of energy a moment ago, looked like he’d deflated.

  “This still helps narrow it down,” I said. “We’re looking for a white male, local, with a greenhouse and a jet injector.”

  Rick raised an eyebrow at me. “He’s local?”

  “He has to be. Roxy was just assigned to
the case, and he got to her right after she appeared on television. I’m guessing he was watching at home, then put together a quick disguise and went out after her.”

  “Why the greenhouse?” Rick asked.

  “He uses toxins, which are organic. I’m guessing he makes these himself, which means he has a garden somewhere. Some of the plants are tropical, so unless he keeps his house at ninety-five degrees, he probably has a greenhouse.”

  “Smart. That could mean hydroponics, special lamps, fertilizers. Chicago is a big town, but it shouldn’t have that many specialty gardening stores.”

  My turn to frown. “You’re forgetting the Internet. All that stuff can be purchased online.”

  We were quiet for almost a full minute. It didn’t surprise me that Rick looked adorable while deep in thought.

  “You’re paying him?” he finally asked.

  “That’s the idea.”

  “You’ll try to make the arrest when he picks up the money?”

  “Of course. But I’m sure he’s anticipating that.”

  Rick rubbed the stubble on his chin. I liked stubble. I liked the feel of it, against my cheek. Between my thighs.

  Dammit, Jack, quit it. So, he’s pretty. So what. Get over it.

  “Two million isn’t a lot,” he said.

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “Might be using that small number because it’s easier to handle, easier to carry. Even using hundred-dollar bills, it makes a pretty big pile. About the height of your desk. One person couldn’t carry it all.”

  “Which means, what? A drop-off point? He’ll ask for the money in a big metal box and then swoop down in a helicopter carrying a big magnet?”

  Rick grinned. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “We know all the tricks. Transmitters. Tracking devices. Exploding ink packs. Consecutive serial numbers. Coating the money with spy dust.”

  “What’s spy dust?” Rick asked.

  “An invisible powder that shows up under UV light.”

  “You use that stuff?”

  “No. I saw it on a TV show.”

  We shared a laugh.

  “I guess we won’t know what to do until we hear from him,” Rick said.