“Lucky you.” He laughed.
“You have no idea,” I said.
This time he drove us to the New Hanover County medical examiner’s offices. The ME himself was not available, and since he hadn’t been willing to tell Price what the developments were over the telephone, we remained in the mushroom mode while they rustled up a substitute.
Price had given me a long once-over when I got into his unmarked Crown Vic. “Mmm-hnnh” was all he said.
“Jealousy doesn’t become you,” I replied.
“Good thing we’re not walking to the lab,” he said.
“I can walk just fine,” I said.
“You squeak pretty good, too.”
We finally met with one of the assistant medical examiners, a visibly agitated, middle-aged black woman wearing a doctor’s white coat and radiating a disapproving attitude. She swept us into a tiny conference room and asked Price to close the door.
“Who’s this?” she asked him, pointing at me with her chin.
“Closest thing to next of kin and also the DOA’s employer,” Price said. “He’s a retired police lieutenant. What’s the big deal here?”
The doctor thought about it for a moment, looked me over belligerently, but then apparently consented to my remaining in the room.
“The big deal,” she said, “is that your College Road DOA turned out to be highly radioactive.”
I saw Price frown, as if he were confused. “Radioactive” is a term cops sometimes use to describe another cop who has sufficiently pissed off the brass that all the other cops begin keeping their distance. Then I realized she meant literally radioactive.
It turned out that they’d sent Allie’s remains to the state autopsy facilities in Jacksonville, where the requisite cutting and gutting had been duly conducted. When the remains were rolled by the nuclear medicine office on their way to cold storage, three separate radiation monitors had gone off simultaneously. The people in the nuclear meds office had started tearing the place up looking for the problem when the monitors suddenly went silent again—which implied that the highly radioactive something had gone by and was no longer in range.
They caught up with the morgue attendant in the hallway and had him roll his draped gurney back down the corridor. All the alarms went off again. When they explained what that meant to the attendant, the attendant went off. He’d abandoned said gurney and beat feet down the hall, at which point the entire facility had gone to general quarters. The feds had been summoned, and there were lots of questions flying around and apparently lots more inbound.
“You said they did the autopsy,” Price said calmly. Being the good bureaucrat that he was, Jacksonville being in a state of pandemonium wasn’t necessarily his problem. “Do they have an opinion?”
“An opinion?” she repeated, almost shouting. “Yeah, they have an opinion, Detective. Severe radiation poisoning. She apparently drank something that was highly radioactive.”
“Literally radioactive?” I asked.
“There’s a damn echo in here,” she snorted. “Whatever it was, it was hot enough to burn the bejesus out of her innards. Mouth, esophagus, trachea, heart, lungs, stomach—the works. First-class case of radiation poisoning. The lab people up there are beside themselves, and, of course, the whole damn world wants to know where it came from.”
“Beats me,” Price said equably. “But I guess we do have ourselves a homicide.”
I thought she was going to brain him, so I intervened. I explained what Allie had been doing in Wilmington, and that there was no plausible link between a pending divorce case and radiation poisoning.
“That all makes sense to me,” she said, “but inquiring federal minds are going to explore that notion in some detail. So I’d recommend you stick around here in Wilmington, Mr. Ex-police-lieutenant. And now I need to speak to the detective sergeant here in private, if you please.”
Price came out a few minutes later and shook his head. He put his finger to his lips until we were in the elevator. “Full-scale Lebanese goat-grab spooling up in the ME circles,” he said as we rode down. “Jacksonville is yelling at New Hanover for sending up a radioactive DOA, and New Hanover is yelling back that they had no way of knowing, et cetera, et cetera. You sure you’ve told me everything you know about this?”
“All I know is that Allie is dead. How she came in contact with radiation is beyond me. So now what?”
“The state chief medical examiner’s called in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC has called the Bureau. The federal host is inbound, as we speak.”
We went out to his car and climbed in. He sighed and looked around the peaceful parking lot, which we both knew wasn’t going to stay that way much longer.
“She give you any details?” I asked. “Like radioactive what?”
Price said no. She had told him they wouldn’t know the “what” until a lab very different from the state facility reviewed the case and the corpse. “She mostly wanted to vent, and I was the nearest cop. We’re the ones who sent the body to New Hanover, so somehow, this is all our fault.”
“That sounds familiar,” I said. What the fuck, Allie, I thought again. I’d felt like washing my own hands on the way out.
“So where do they sell radioactive fluids in beautiful downtown Wilmington, North Carolina?” I asked as we drove out of the lot and headed back to the city police building.
“We’ve got the Helios nuclear power plant over next door in Brunswick County,” Price said. “Did your legal lovebirds have any connection to the nuke industry?”
“Hell, I don’t know,” I said. “All lawyers look alike to me, and, besides, Allie wasn’t taking pictures of them at work.”
Price’s cell phone rang as we stopped for a red light. He picked up, listened for a minute, grunted an okay, and hung up. “They’re he-e-e-re,” he chanted. “Boss wants me back downtown ASAP. You really want to dance in this cow pie?”
“No way,” I said. “Gave that shit up when I retired.”
“Retirement’s starting to look real good.” Price sighed longingly.
Ten minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot. “I’ll let you out here, if that’s okay. You stayin’ overnight?”
I grinned at him. “As in, don’t leave town, there, stranger?”
Price shrugged. “Naw, not really. The federal suits will want to talk to you at some point, but otherwise . . .”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, immediately thinking of Mary Ellen Goode. “I’ll stay over another night. Anything I can do to help, you holler. They going to be able to keep this out of the media?”
Price shook his head. “Probably not,” he predicted. “Specially if somebody ties that radiation shit to the power plant over in Brunswick County. Which would be a real surprise—those folks have damned good security, and the guy who runs it is downright scary. What’s your cell number?”
I gave it to him, and he promised to stay in touch.
Two hours later, the phone at my bedside rang. I picked up. It was Bernie Price again.
“Lieutenant Richter?” Price said, speaking formally, which told me immediately he was probably calling from a room full of feds and other undesirables.
“Having fun yet, Bernie?” I asked.
“Not at all, sir,” Price said, without an audible hint of humor. “Would you be available to meet with two special agents from the FBI this afternoon?”
I looked at my watch. There wasn’t all that much left of the afternoon. “I’ll be in the hotel lounge in an hour,” I said. “Got names?”
“Special Agents Caswell and Myers,” Bernie said.
I smiled. Creeps Caswell and Missed-it Mary Myers. This could be interesting.
“I can’t wait,” I said. “I’ll fill you in after I see them.”
“Probably not, sir,” Bernie said, and then paused. I got the message.
“You’ve been told to sever all connections with itinerant ex-cops meddling in city business, have you?”
�
��That’s absolutely correct, sir,” he said.
“Gosh, Bernie, this really hurts my feelings. But maybe when all the dust settles, I can buy you a beer, hunh?”
“Count on it, sir,” he said. He sounded relieved that he hadn’t had to spell it out for me.
I thanked him, hung up, and went out onto the balcony to do some stretch exercises and try to wake up. For some reason I suddenly missed my shepherds. Then, looking at the other chair, I realized I also missed Allie. Had she been the victim of some random act of God, or had someone done this to her? The angry pathologist had used the word “ingested.” So she drank radioactive . . . what?
The Hilton’s lounge was spacious, modernistic, and relatively empty. There was a nice view of the Cape Fear River as the sun started down. The dark gray bulk of the battleship USS North Carolina, parked now as a World War II museum across the river, filled up the downstream windows. I got myself a beer and took a corner booth away from the main bar. The two FBI agents showed up fifteen minutes later, and I smiled when I caught the bartender staring at them.
I had encountered Special Agent Caswell and his partner only once during my active-duty career, and he had provoked the same reaction from me. He was a supervisory special agent, now in his late forties, with a spare, six-foot-six, permanently stooped frame. He had long, intensely black hair plastered straight back from his forehead, hooded eyes, an elongated, bony nose, large teeth, the original lantern jaw, and undertaker’s white hands and fingers, which seemed to protrude unnaturally from his suit jacket. He was a man who moved silently, and he tended to rub those porcelain hands together a lot. He had a soft, whispery, almost unctuous voice, reinforcing the funeral director impression. I didn’t know who’d given him his unofficial nickname, but I suspect it was one of the female agents over in the Bureau’s Raleigh field office. He was reputed to be a challenging interrogator, who, as I recalled, specialized in science and technology crimes.
Special Agent Mary Myers had apparently come to the Bureau with a high creep threshold if she was still partnered up with Brother Caswell. She was a well-fed, late-thirty-something blonde, five-seven or -eight, with watery blue eyes, a bunny rabbit nose, and round, horned-rim Wall Street eyeglasses, which framed a permanently puzzled and near-sighted expression on her otherwise unremarkable face. I figured she probably had an accounting degree and was one of those tenacious detail miners the Bureau used in complex white-collar financial crimes. Her Missed-it Mary nickname had arisen in the course of a stakeout incident during her first and only assignment as a street agent. Mary thought she’d been fired upon from a parked car and had emptied her service weapon in return, hitting three other parked cars and managing to set two of them on fire, while leaving the suspect vehicle untouched and her fellow agents watching in awe from beneath their own vehicle.
“Special Agents,” I said as they approached my corner table. I had not actually worked with either of them before, so they introduced themselves, flashed the appropriate picture-plastic, and sat down.
“So, how can I help you?” I asked, addressing myself to Caswell. Even sitting, he seemed to tower over me and the table, and I’m six-foot-plus. He began rubbing those undertaker hands together.
“We understand,” he began, “that Ms. Gardner was an employee of your company and that she was pursuing evidence of marital infidelity, involving one or more officers of the court?”
“I think just two philandering lawyers, actually,” I said. I saw Special Agent Myers discreetly opening her notebook. “I’ve gathered up the details of Allie’s investigation for you right here,” I continued, and handed a written summary to Myers so she wouldn’t have to take so many notes. She looked at it warily and then handed it to Caswell, who fished out some Silas Marner glasses and scanned it for a moment.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Richter,” he said, folding the two fax pages lengthwise and sliding them into his suit jacket pocket. “It is ‘mister’ these days, am I correct?”
“Absolutely,” I said, knowing full well that Caswell was telling me I’d been vetted before they came to see me. I had some history with the Raleigh Field Office, not all of it pleasant. “I haven’t been in law enforcement since I declined to testify in the cat dancers case.”
“Yes-s-s.” Caswell nodded, a bit startled that I would bring that up. “I do remember that case, but not why, exactly, you declined to testify.”
“Because I couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad guys anymore,” I said. “And I had a civilian to protect as well. So: Where’d the hot stuff come from?”
Myers rolled superior eyes and looked away. Caswell gave me a patient if somewhat disappointed smile. “You know how this works, Mr. Richter. We ask the questions. You do your civic duty and help your Bureau. Or perhaps not, I suppose, in your case.”
It was my turn to smile. “It’s not my Bureau, Special Agent,” I said. “But nothing’s ever forgotten, is it.”
“Almost never, Mr. Richter. You’re quite right there. Quite right. Now, back to Ms. Gardner: Did she report anything at all which might have a bearing on how she died?”
I decided to quit sparring. “Nothing at all. As I told Detective Price, the case was entirely routine, to the point where Allie said she was coming back early. She had the goods, and that was it.”
“May we have access to ‘the goods,’ as you put it?”
“If our client is willing, we certainly won’t get in your way. But I should warn you, the client’s a Georgia redhead, and she’s really pissed off. In Georgia, that’s usually a legitimate pretext for gunfire.”
“Thank you for the advice, Mr. Richter,” Creeps said, peering at me over those antique specs. “As you may remember, we’re always extremely grateful for advice. And even if the client is not willing, may we please have her name and address?”
“Sure,” I said. I knew perfectly well that they could get that information, one way or another.
Caswell turned formally to his partner. “Special Agent Myers?”
“Do you have any idea why Ms. Gardner was at that particular gas station?” Mary asked.
“Getting gas?” I said. Her eyes narrowed. “Or do you mean her being over in the university district?”
“The latter, Mr. Richter,” she said patiently, pen and notebook poised.
I’d wondered about that, too. “Two possibilities, I think. She was just out for a drive, saw that she’d need to get gas before coming back the next morning, and hit the first station she came to. Or.”
“Or?”
“Or, all of the above and then whatever she drank got to her before she could get back to the hotel. She felt ill and found the nearest bathroom. I never did hear a time of death.”
“Where would you have heard a time of death?” Myers asked.
“At the county morgue?” I said.
“You were at the morgue?”
“I was. I was asked to make the ID for Detective Price. Talked to an assistant ME. Or rather, listened to one.”
Myers looked at Caswell. It was obvious she thought my talking to the assistant ME represented a grave breach of some federal procedure or another. Caswell nodded, rubbed his hands, and changed the subject.
“Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm Ms. Gardner?” he asked. Myers, back in her box, subsided and resumed taking notes.
“Her ex would be a long shot,” I said. “He left her for another woman, but that was eight, maybe nine years ago. She divorced him and then whacked him financially, at least as she tells it. Told it. But Allie was a pretty tough lady, so that’s not really likely after all this time.”
“And at work? At your, um, company? Everything okay there?”
I grinned at him. “It’s a real company, Special Agent. Licensed, bonded, the whole nine yards. We can even carry guns if we want to. And, yes, indeed, Allie was fine at work. Lots of boys and girls having trouble keeping their pants on, apparently.”
Myers sniffed, as if the notion of people without thei
r pants on disagreed with her. I got the impression that lots of things probably disagreed with Special Agent Mary Myers, and that she always kept her pants on. I wondered if she even knew what her unofficial handle was.
“Was she personally involved with anyone that you know of?” Caswell asked.
I shook my head and had a sip of beer. I hadn’t bothered to offer the agents a drink. Bureau people are always on duty. Always. It’s one of the things that makes them formidable. “I think the both of them—Allie and Mel Lindsay, her partner in the firm—were tired of men and their bullshit.”
Myers blinked. Actually, she almost smiled at that. The lounge was starting to fill up.
“A relationship there?” Caswell asked.
“No, just work. They often traveled together. They were lethally thorough and enjoyed their specialty. Mel was seeing some guy for a while, but then discovered that he was married, so that ended abruptly. But, no, they were not a pair in that sense.”
Caswell almost looked disappointed. Creeps indeed, I thought. He looked at Myers and raised his eyebrows. She closed her notebook. We were done. I exchanged cards with Caswell. He asked me to call or e-mail him if I thought of anything else, and reminded me he needed Allie’s client’s name and address. He started to push back his chair and then stopped.
“You’re an investigator by trade, Mr. Richter,” he said. “Please tell me you are going to stay out of this one, correct?”
I looked at him. That was a question and a warning. “Sure, Special Agent,” I said, perhaps sounding more casual than I felt. “With you guys on the case, who needs me, right?”
“Precisely the right answer, Mr. Richter,” he said with a charming if patronizing smile. “Don’t disappoint your Bureau. We’ll be in touch.”
I signaled the college-student waiter for another beer. He brought it and asked me who the weird-looking dude was. I told him that the weird-looking dude was from the Darkside, and he nodded knowingly. Awesome, he said. Totally, I replied. We had communicated, and life was, like, good. So was the beer.
I put Allie’s death out of my mind for a few minutes and just enjoyed my drink and the sight of the sun going down on the battleship’s dimpled gray hull. The setting sun turned the river into a sheet of bronze, which made everything out there pretty much invisible. My inner self was still somewhat aglow from the previous evening with Mary Ellen. We had come so close to physical intimacy in our previous acquaintance that I’d half-expected to be disappointed. Instead, she had been almost intimidating in her need. Naturally, I felt used. Used, abused, and hoping like hell she’d want to do it all again.
Cam - 03 - The Moonpool Page 3