Curds and Whey Box Set

by G M Eppers

  Using a napkin, he picked up a plate and looked closely at its sparse contents. He sniffed. He picked up another plate and sniffed again, still unsure. He walked over to the sideboard where the leavings were slightly larger. This time he crouched down to sniff. He stood, an expression of surprise on his face. “I believe it’s Caravane.”

  “Caravane?” I’d heard of it in a vague sense. I didn’t recall ever running into it in a decade of working with CURDS.

  “It’s a rare cheese made with camel milk. Not usually found outside of Mauritania.”

  Nitro already had his test kit out. “I’m not sure, but I’ll see if I can scrape together a sample big enough to test.” On TV, investigators sometimes taste things. Bad idea when you are working for CURDS. It would be like a DEA agent ingesting samples of white powder. Also something you see on TV. Take my word for it. Doesn’t happen. In the case of the white powder it could be sugar, could be heroin, could be heroin laced with LSD or something worse. Even a tiny taste would just be foolish. Nitro picked up a knife and used its edge to gather all the similarly colored crumbs on a plate into one place. It wasn’t much of an accumulation.

  Also using a napkin, Sylvia pushed another plate into his reach. We didn’t have the equipment to check for fingerprints. But we knew about preserving them for someone else while we searched for Uber. “No,” he said. “One plate at a time.”

  “But it probably all came from that platter. What difference does it make?” she said.

  I stepped over to where he was working. “You have a theory?”

  “Possibly.” He carefully dropped an accumulation of white particles into a thin test tube and took out a bottle of catalyst. “I hope I’m wrong.”

  “You’re not going to tell.”

  “Not yet.” We waited tensely for the results. After a couple of minutes he said, “clean,” and pushed the plate to the center of the table. He moved on to the plate Sylvia had pushed forward, separating white crumbs from the rest with the tip of the knife. That one came out inconclusive. The sample size apparently wasn’t large enough for the analyzer. Nitro was clearly worried about it, but he pushed that plate to the center to the right of the first. In this way he tested each plate. The next two came out clean and were carefully stacked on top of the first plate, and then another inconclusive which he stacked on top of the second plate.

  The door opened and Billings and the twins walked in. “There you are.” He had his phone out and was following our tracking signals on his GPS. “Dunleavy stopped at a bank, then stood on a street corner talking on his cell for a few minutes. After that, he got in a car and drove west, probably heading home. What’s going on?” I explained to Billings that Nitro was testing cheese particles. He surveyed the room. “Looks like all of it together wouldn’t be enough. We could go back to the Dunleavy farm and question Tevaughn there. I read about some new techniques I’d really love to try on him.”

  “Uber,” said Nitro quietly. He pushed that plate forward into a new stack in front of the others and moved on to the last plate. His hands weren’t quite as steady as usual and he missed the test tube and had to regather the particles. The last plate came out clean, and Agnes brought over the platter, leaving the cloth napkins trapped under the edges. Those particles were a bit larger and he divided them into three piles and tested each one. One pile contained Uber. When he was finished he had emptied two bottles of catalyst and a third of another.

  “I don’t get it,” said Roxy. “Some of the cheese was clean but some was Uber?”

  “We’re not going to get answers from anyone,” said Nitro. “Just a prediction.” He packed up his kit, discarding the empty bottles in the small trashcan next to the sideboard. He was almost breathless with worry. “Anyone see that film Fight Club?”

  I had. A long time ago. “The first rule of Fight Club –“

  “—is you don’t talk about Fight Club,” Nitro finished.

  “So this is like a Cheese Club?” asked Avis, glancing at the colored leavings on the plates. I’d already identified cracker crumbs and bits of some kind of sausage.

  “Not like a Cheese Club. It is a Cheese Club.” Nitro sat in a chair heavily. He’d been standing over his test kit for more than half an hour.

  I was starting to see the situation. “It’s like blowfish in Japan.”

  “What?” Billings asked.

  “Blowfish. Blowfish are highly poisonous but considered a delicacy. Chefs train for years to learn how to prepare it so it can be eaten safely, but if your chef makes a mistake you’re dead about an hour later. In the old days, Emperors were forbidden from eating it on grounds of national security.” I leaned against the sideboard, thinking. “So they just sit around eating Uber for the fun of it? I don’t see the appeal.”

  Still sitting, Nitro arched his back, stretching out the kinks. “They don’t know what’s Uber and what isn’t. It’s like Russian roulette with cheese.”

  Sylvia also sat down, stunned. “Christ, you see it don’t you? Uber doesn’t kill in an hour. It takes weeks. But the addiction is immediate. Your life becomes a living hell of trying to find Uber. You’re a cheese junkie. You’ll give up everything, search the freaking world for Uber, especially the Uber you started with, right? Sir Haughty said Caravane is rare. It’s expensive to begin with. Imagine what someone would be willing to pay if they’re addicted to it.”

  Billings looked at me, his eyes dark and smoldering like they usually get when he talks about his father. “And at least one person who was in this room is newly addicted. And someone around here has a source for unidentified cheese. Not just Uber, but untested, mystery cheese. Because they’ll want to play the game, too.” That might sound easy, but it isn’t. Uber dealers know what they have is Uber. Either they made it themselves or have a contact they trust. The people buying it usually know it’s Uber, too, because it costs. That’s the whole point, after all. Accidents do happen, but it’s rare and unintentional. This cheese club deliberately served unmarked, untested cheese and you can’t get that on the store shelves. As far as we knew, you couldn’t even get that on the black market. CURDS tests all the cheese it confiscates, the vast majority of it is Uber and we mark it with blue food dye before we destroy it, so it doesn’t get into the wrong hands. Unidentified cheese would be a whole separate market we hadn’t known about. Before now.

  “As many as three,” noted Nitro. “The two inconclusive tests could have been Uber as well.”

  Now that we’d found Uber, I felt my instincts go into high gear. “Billings, get Fitzpatrick in here. Bald guy, red beard, probably scowling. Tell him he’s closed as of now. Don’t rush anyone, don’t make a scene or alarm anyone, but see that he locks the doors and instructs the staff to close early, then bring him in. I have some questions for him.” He left the room without a word. Like Nitro, I didn’t think our coming interview would be productive, but it was the next logical step.

  I called Chembassador Zickman, put him on speaker phone, and told him what we’d found. “I’ll send some people there immediately. Make sure the evidence is not destroyed. Hold on.” He left the phone for a moment while he made arrangements then came back on the line. “I’m glad you called. I wanted to let you know that early this morning, armed with a warrant based on the stolen animals, the Department of Agriculture and the Marine raided the Dunleavy farm. The animals were confiscated and will be placed on a government reserve where they will be safe and cared for properly. The senior Dunleavys, as owners of the property, were taken into custody and are being held for further questioning, but we won’t be able to keep them. The charges relating to the livestock result in nothing more than fines. If we can’t link any of them to the fire itself or the O’Sheas, we may have to let them go.”

  “I guess that qualifies as good news and bad news,” I said. I had hopes that something might slip out during their questioning, but odds were against a confession. “Thank you, Chembassador.” I disconnected and we waited for Billings to return with Fitz
patrick.

  Sylvia, still sitting, said, “I wonder what Tevaughn will do when he gets home and finds out the animals are gone and his parents are in custody. You know, he might suspect that we aren’t lying dead at the excavation site.”

  “We can handle Tevaughn,” I said, not entirely sure that we could, as the door opened and Billings came in with one casual but firm arm around Fitzpatrick’s shoulder. Sylvia got up and offered the proprietor her seat, preferring to stand behind him on alert. Sir Haughty and Badger stood blocking the EXIT door, while Billings and Nitro closed and blocked the entry door. Fitzpatrick sat, and started to sweat. “As I said before, Mr. Fitzpatrick, we know the identity of one of the people who were in this room. Would you by any chance know who else attended this luncheon?”

  Fitzpatrick looked at me blankly.

  Badger translated what I’d said into Irish, just to make sure he understood. Occasionally, you run into someone who appears to know English but really only knows the vocabulary needed for the job and can’t really hold a conversation. I didn’t believe that was the situation here, but that’s where having a language guy can come in handy. No one can fake you out. He also made it a point to have his phone out ready to record whatever the man said. “Names,” Badger prompted him. “Lives are at stake here.”

  “I only rented out the room.”

  “Who booked it?”

  “I only rented out the room.”

  I stepped closer to him and spoke clearly. “To whom did you rent out the room?” He may not have understood the term “book” in that sense, if he learned English in a formal setting. “Don’t be afraid. We’re not going to hurt you. We just need some information.”

  He was silent.

  “Was it Tevaughn Dunleavy?” I hadn’t really wanted to reveal the one name we knew. He could use it as a dumping ground for every question just because we already knew it. On the other hand, it might take the pressure off if all he had to do was agree rather than say a name. It was going to be difficult to decide which was happening. In the end, it was moot. He still didn’t answer. “Where did the food come from? Did your kitchen make it?”

  “No!” He insisted loudly. Then, more quietly, almost disappointed in himself, “They brought their own food.”

  “Do you know who brought it?” He could just as easily give Tevaughn the blame on this too, even if it wasn’t true. But again, he didn’t.

  He squirmed. “No! I wasn’t included at all. I only rented out the room, I tell you.” A drop of sweat fell from his chin, slid down his beard, and landed on his leg, making a dark circle on the navy blue pants. The room was not warm. In fact, it was a bit chilly.

  Other groups might have pulled out their weapons and threatened him with injury, which is allowed in CURDS as long as it’s an idle threat. But idle threats aren’t my style. If I threaten something, it’s an action I can and may take, so holding my Glock to Fitzpatrick’s head wasn’t an option. I wasn’t going to let my team members do it, either. He hadn’t done anything that warranted a physical attack. I was even starting to feel sorry for him.

  Nitro had been right. We weren’t going to get any useful information out of Fitzpatrick. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. Your pub is closed as of now. I’ve called Chembassador Zickman and he has a team on the way. You won’t be allowed to reopen until we have all the answers we want. Now, you can still make money renting out the rooms above, but I imagine your income will take a pretty good hit.” In similar interrogations, I might crouch down to eye level to be more intimidating, but he was so tall even sitting down that I was already there. And the intimidation is partly from that motion, so I knew he wasn’t afraid of me. I could threaten him with flaying and it wouldn’t make any difference. He wasn’t really looking around the room, trying to just his chances against us, just at the floor, and was close to hyperventilating.

  He was afraid of someone or something that wasn’t even in the room.

  Billings touched my shoulder gently and I knew he had noticed the same thing. “Mr. Fitzpatrick, we’ve detected Uber here,” he said. “Someone ingested it. We’re trying to save lives. If you give us the name of the person who rented the room, we can arrange for leniency, possibly even immunity. If what you say is true and your only participation is renting the room, you are in no danger from us. In fact, we can arrange for protective measures if you feel threatened by someone else. Are you being threatened, sir?” Fitzpatrick shook his head and tiny drops of sweat scattered from his beard.

  Roxy spoke. “There are records. We can come back with a subpoena to look at them. There’s really no benefit from not telling us. And it could result in actual charges against you such as obstruction of justice.”

  Behind him, Nitro reached forward and put a finger on his neck, checking his pulse. Fitzpatrick looked at him without moving his head. He was twitching with anxiety. “Someone get some ice water.” Billings, closest to the door, volunteered for the task. Nitro came to me. “He’s terrified,” he told me in a low voice.

  “I noticed.”

  “His pulse is almost 150. His body is acting like he’s running away from a charging tiger.”

  “Do we need an ambulance?”

  He was clearly unsure. “I don’t know. I don’t know if he has any medical conditions that this stress could be triggering. This is really an extreme reaction to an interrogation.”

  I bit my bottom lip a little, thinking. The last thing we needed was to give the man a heart attack. We had tried to calm him down. We assured him he wasn’t in danger. All he had to do was give us a single name. It would take time, but maybe it would be better to get the subpoena than hope for cooperation.

  Fitzpatrick’s voice came very softly. “I only rented out the room,” and I got the sense that the phrase was a fallback, similar to the “I don’t recall” provided by many people who have testified in front of Congress. Perhaps he had been coached to repeat that line and say nothing else. It was hard to be sure.

  There was silence until Billings returned with a glass of ice water, which he set on the table in front of Fitzpatrick. Needing something to do, the man picked it up in both hands and sucked at it. His jittery hands had some water spilling out, joining the sweat stain on his pants in dark dots. I half expected him to toss it in Nitro’s face and make a break for it, but he didn’t. The water calmed him a little, but it was clear he really wanted to run away, screaming at the top of his lungs. He still wasn’t going to give us a name.

  I was about to release him, when the team from the Chembassy arrived with three police officers and took over. The CURDS team moved away from the table and stood against the wall, giving them room to do their work. Fitzpatrick stood, turning back and forth indecisively, but there was nowhere to run. He finally put up his hands and backed up against the wall, maybe hoping to blend into the others standing there.

  The lead from the Chembassy, a young woman with red hair so light it was almost blonde and smooth, pale skin that indicated Scandinavian descent, said, “Who’s in charge here? Fill me in.”

  I raised my hand and walked over. “That would be me. We received an anonymous tip that something was happening here. Seems to be some kind of luncheon. We did wait until everyone left for safety reasons, but came in after. My biotech detected Uber on one plate for sure, and potentially two more.” Nitro had used up most of the scraps of Uber testing it , but electronic records from his test kit, copied to their thumbdrive, were sufficient. A police officer bagged and labeled the suspected plates for testing in their labs which would have the facilities to find fingerprints and analyze even microscopic swabs. This would be a highly cooperative effort. They took Fitzpatrick into custody and we filed out of the room. A woman officer crisscrossed yellow tape over the closed door.

  The pub was now empty, with the staff huddled behind the bar murmuring to each other. “The pub is closed,” a Chembassy official told them. “You can continue to operate the hotel, but you serve food or liquid of any kind down here
and there will be charges. Is that clear?” They all gave us stunned nods. “Mr. Fitzpatrick is coming with us.” They didn’t elaborate. They could hold him for three days trying to get that name, but Roxy could probably get the subpoena faster, and the staff was more likely to cooperate with it than if Fitzpatrick was on duty.

  It’s kind of ridiculous how much trouble we have to go to just to get one name.

  Chapter Three

  “Roxy, looks like we’re going to need that warrant to see the records for the private room,” I said as we moseyed back towards the Banshee’s Breath. She and I were in the middle of the pack, with Nitro ahead of us, his field kit slung across his shoulders, and Billings holding hands with the Avis half of Avis and Agnes taking point. Sir Haughty, Sylvia and Badger brought up the rear.

  Roxy was wearing a fairly modest June Cleaver print dress today, but accessorized with a chocolate brown asymmetrical elongated sweater and her usual spike heels. “I’m on it. I know where the courthouse is. Nitro, I’ll need a copy of those files off the test unit for evidence.” Her heels clicking on the walk like old style typewriter keys, she trotted a bit to catch up with Nitro, who was able to transfer the files to her phone by opening the flap to the kit and using a proximity app. They barely broke stride, as if they did this all the time. “Thanks, Nitro,” she said several yards later when he handed her the phone back. She gave him a pat on the head and changed direction. Nitro, for his part, did his best to avoid the pat on the head, managing to turn it into a slap on the ear, which he rubbed off as if it had left a mark.

  “How is it you know where the courthouse is in Ballincollig?” I asked. I didn’t see how we could get more remote than this, except on the actual farms it supported.

  “Lawyer radar,” she called slyly. “I’ll text you when I’ve got it!”

  “Must be within walking distance,” I said, mostly to myself, but Sir Haughty overheard.