The Omega Formula: Power to Die For (Detective Frank Dugan)

by Paul Sekulich

  He wanted to move in closer, even go inside the house, but though he’d always possessed keys to the place, he resisted the urge. Right now his instincts spoke to him about murder, and he needed to focus on current events. Frank was convinced, more than ever, that a man had been killed in that house, a man who shared his blood. Frank was now going to find out who did it and why.

  * * * * *

  The next morning, Frank watched the Baltimore County Crime Scene Investigation team arrive at Elm Terrace and begin their systematic procedures by gathering their equipment in preparation to examine the house and scour the grounds. A couple of CSIs entered the house while others began taking photographs on the outside. One investigator called out several orders to his team, then approached Frank as he stood next to his car at the curb.

  “Are you Detective Frank Dugan?” the CSI asked.

  “That’d be me,” Frank said.

  “I’m Detective Luce from Baltimore County CSI.”

  “Here’s your consent to search,” Frank said and handed Luce the form and a key. “I dropped off the house keys yesterday at the station, but I forgot to give them the key for the garage. Any chance I can get a look in the house?”

  “As a courtesy to a fellow officer, but only as an observer,” Luce said. “I know this is your house and it concerns your father, but I hope, as a professional, you understand our position.”

  “I do.”

  The two men entered the front door of the house and stopped in the vestibule to observe the activity on the main floor beyond. Men and women wearing surgical gloves, hairnets, and hospital-style shoe covers worked with cameras and fingerprint capture kits down the wide hallway. Detective Luce moved into the hall and beckoned Frank to follow closely behind him to the doorway of the parlor.

  Frank watched the CSIs in the parlor examine the few books that had been removed from the shelves and strewn on the floor. The high-stacked bookshelves running almost all the way around the spacious library room were being pulled out and dusted for prints, and bright lights swept across the Oriental rug as if searching for evidence hiding in the wool fibers.

  Frank turned to face Detective Luce.

  “Thanks for the look, detective, but I think I’m going to come back when I can enjoy this old place. Seeing it dissected isn’t how I want to remember her.”

  “I understand,” Luce said. “We’ll be out of here today. It would be different if there were a lot of blood spatter or bullet holes. This place looks a little disheveled, a few books piled on the floor, but probably not teeming with evidence we can use. We’ll have to take any drugs we find to compare with the ME, but that’s SOP. If we do come up with anything, we’ll keep you apprised. I’ll have the clean-up people come in later to remove the fingerprint dust, and we’ll put anything we move back the way it was. I’ll lock up and you can pick up your keys at the precinct over on Wilkens Avenue.”

  “Appreciate that.”

  “One last thing. If you should happen upon anything you think might have a bearing on this case, be sure to contact me,” Luce said and handed Frank a business card.

  “Will do,” Frank said as he stuck Luce’s card in his jacket pocket and fondled the police button he’d put there earlier.

  Frank walked directly to his car without looking back. In front of his car was an iron grate over a deep drain at the curb, which recalled the day he’d dropped his scout knife into the blackness below. Frank’s grandfather, William, had to come out and pull up the grate to allow Frank to lower himself in and gain access to the knife resting on the bottom of the sewer pipe five feet below. It was dark, slippery and rank-smelling at the bottom, and he felt a choking sensation that stuttered his breathing. Frank grabbed his knife and shot out of the enclosure like a cheetah scaling a tree.

  Now, as he stared at the drain, he could still feel the chilling fear of that long-ago adventure. The car keys were squeezed tightly in his fist. His mouth was dry and tacky, even after he got into his car and drove away.

  Possessing an eidetic memory isn’t always a blessing, he thought.

  Chapter 7

  Frank got the anticipated call from Ed Clement’s secretary and drove to the Medical Examiner’s office in the city to discuss Joe’s cause of death. Frank stood as a tall, graying man came out from the morgue’s laboratory and angled toward him in the waiting area. The man’s name badge said “Edward T. Clement, MD.”

  “You still look the same, detective,” the doctor said.

  “Florida’s been kind to me,” Frank said and extended his hand. “A lot kinder than working homicide here.”

  “You were the primary on the Grandview murder case, weren’t you?”

  “That’s the one that sent me south.

  “Why so?”

  “I pursued a wrong lead. Took me a full day to run it down,” Frank said. “When I finally cornered Grandview the next morning it was too late.”

  “Your job, like mine, deals in death. Comes with the territory.”

  “Eight innocent children murdered, and their body parts cut up and labeled in freezers was never mentioned in the manual. When I arrested Raymond Grandview, he had his bloody butcher knife in his hand. I wanted him to attack me with it. I begged him to. It would’ve saved the state a lot of expense and heartache.”

  “We had ten medical professionals working ‘round the clock. Worst case I ever saw.”

  “Grandview got life in Clifton T. Perkins. He’s still kicking and gets to watch TV all day with his other criminally insane friends.”

  “I know,” Clement said. “It never seems like justice for an animal like him.”

  “I resigned the day the trial ended.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for the acts of a madman.”

  “I failed to get to him in time.”

  “He was a ruthless, cunning young man,” Clement said. “We all failed to stop him. Trouble is, you can’t stop crazy. I went to see him. They put him in a concrete room in the east wing. Room 264. I wanted to personally make sure the sonofabitch was securely locked up.”

  “Room 264? You remember details like that? Damn, that was over five years ago. Need to get you on Jeopardy.”

  “You missed your calling too, detective. Your observations were correct. You’d make a good ME,” the doctor said and looked at the clipboard in his hand. “We did screens for toxicity, liver damage, and cardio-vascular condition. Your father died of potassium chloride poisoning, complicated by thiopental sodium. Delivered intravenous and enhanced by high amounts of alcohol.”

  “An anesthesia? Like sodium pentothal?”

  “Same thing.”

  “And the other injection?”

  “Potassium chloride. Can be lethal in large enough doses. Stops the heart. In this case, the dosage was plenty.”

  “Blood alcohol tested?”

  “Yes. His BAC was .37. Well beyond simply drunk. I checked the clothes they sent over with the body. There were two large stains on his shirt. The darker one checked out to be ethanol with an odor of smoky peat, and a lighter one was strong with the smell of juniper berry. In plain English: I’d say scotch or Irish whiskey and gin. There were also bruises on his neck and one of his arms. May have fallen.”

  “May have been muscled around and held down while gin was poured down his throat.”

  “You sure he would’ve had to be forced to drink?”

  “He hated gin, especially with a potassium chloride chaser.”

  * * * * *

  Frank called Alasdair.

  “MacGowan Productions,” Alasdair said.

  “Death was not from natural causes,” Frank said. “Joe was murdered.”

  “Ay, sorry, lad.”

  “I have to clear some extended leave with Martin County. I need to stay here and get to the bottom of this. I moved to Florida to get away from this murder-a-day burg and here I am right back in that same old grease.”

  “People get murdered plenty in Florida. I watch the news.”

&nbs
p; “Maybe in Miami, but Stuart’s a pretty peaceful resort.”

  “So you took a cut in pay to live in the tropics?”

  “Money was never an issue. I wanted to live someplace safe, uncomplicated. Somewhere that doesn’t have so many murders that only 70 percent are ever closed. No murder has ever gone unsolved on my watch in Martin County. Why? Because we don’t have 500 assholes every year brandishing guns, acting like king shit, because some hapless dolt dissed them, or stared back at them in a bar. Waving a gun around soon escalates to firing it at someone.”

  The phone line was quiet for several seconds.

  “Where are you going to start?” Alasdair said.

  “The house. After the CSIs are done, the house has to talk to us.”

  “Us?”

  “Yeah, us,”

  “Now don’t you go teasing me, Francis. You know I live for adventure.”

  “I could sure use my partner back on this one,” Frank said. “You in?”

  “All in, brother.”

  * * * * *

  Loudon Park cemetery was the same as Frank had remembered it except for the large number of recent residents whose newer grave markers stood out from the ancient ones, now covered in drab gray erosion and mossy-green stains. He wasn’t sure he could find his family’s gravesite among all the new additions, which confused the landmarks he once depended on. He gazed long and hard at the section he thought was where his grandparents and mother lay, but they weren’t there. After several minutes, he decided to consult the cemetery office.

  The clerk in the office was a congenial man of about 40 who pulled the Dugan file from a computer database and printed it out.

  “We received your father’s body after it was released from the Medical Examiner’s office yesterday,” the clerk said as he brought over the file to Frank.

  “I’d like him buried next to my mother, Cynthia Ann Dugan” Frank said.

  “Of course. We already have that plot reserved for him. When would you like to hold the service?”

  “As soon as possible,” Frank said and jotted phone numbers on a business card. “I’ll have the church contact you to make the arrangements with the priest. I’m told our law firm will take care of the expenses. Here are the numbers you’ll need.”

  Frank handed the business card to the clerk, who gave him a map with directions to the Dugan grave section. A short drive to the area and a fifty-yard walk between rows of markers and monuments of varied sizes brought him to the resting place of his grandparents, William and Emily Dugan. Next to them was an empty plot and, to its right, the grave of his mother, Cynthia. Their stones were of simple-cut, gray granite engraved with their names and dates of birth and death.

  Frank contrasted this solitary visit with the foggy, damp day nearly twenty years ago when the area was crowded with people. People he didn’t know, who had come to honor the passing of their friend William.

  Gunnery Sergeant Frank Dugan was back home from a lengthy tour in Iraq and stood up front in his Marine dress blues next to his dad Joe, who teetered from side to side as the priest delivered his graveside words. That day, Frank suspended his anger for his drunken father and replaced it with compassion. It was embarrassing that most of the people offering their sympathy came directly up to Frank without giving Joe so much as a courteous nod of acknowledgement.

  Frank had observed his grandfather’s treatment of Joe, and saw how he pitied what his only child had become, and even regarded him as an outcast; the son who never came up to the high standards and expectations William had set. Frank also believed his father found drinking eased the pain of his failures, especially poignant when Joe so often depended on William’s largess.

  Frank remembered that on that day a man, perhaps in his seventies, withdrew from the crowd of attendees and approached him.

  “Your grandfather was the wisest man I ever knew,” he said. “He was the last of a group of men who likely saved the world. William was especially proud of you.”

  The man placed his index finger on the Silver Star nestled in the rows of ribbons on Frank’s left chest,

  “He would be particularly pleased about this, sergeant,” the man said and withdrew his hand.

  “Saved the world? You mean his work on the Manhattan Project.” Frank said.

  “Manhattan Project?” the man said and smiled. “His work went well beyond that.”

  The man turned and walked away.

  “I didn’t get your name, sir,” Frank said.

  “Vernon. Vernon Ritter,” the man said without looking back, and soon faded into the mist that shrouded the cemetery.

  Frank became the son Joe had failed to be, the boy upon whom William could invest his attention, his knowledge, care, and hopes. Frank stared at the oak casket resting atop the bier. The passing of William was the lowest point in Frank’s 21-year life.

  The only man he ever truly loved was gone.

  Chapter 8

  Frank Dugan never expected to bury his father, inherit an estate in Maryland, and receive a cryptic letter from his long dead grandfather all in the span of a day. While dealing with the unexpected was something he was trained to do, these combined personal events took the detective aback.

  The law firm of Crowder & Burns had been the family’s legal advisors from back in William’s day, and occupied offices in the elegant Carrollton Building in downtown Baltimore. Frank was greeted by Winston Crowder, a man he recognized from years ago when he attended William’s funeral. Winston, now in his late fifties, was the son of the founding partner, James Crowder, and escorted Frank into his posh office. He seated him on the opposite side of his executive desk and pushed a button on the intercom.

  “Ms. Jackson, please hold my calls and see that we’re not disturbed.”

  Winston folded his hands on top of the desk and looked at Frank.

  “Our sincerest condolences on the passing of your father,” Winston said, then reached into a drawer and withdrew a large legal envelope.

  “Thanks for the good thoughts,” Frank said.

  “Here are the documents you’ll need to process the insurance claims and the ownership of the estate,” Winston said and handed Frank the bulky envelope across his desk. “We’ve done all the necessary prep work. You’ll need to sign a few documents, and then it’s done. Everything in the estate has been left to you.”

  Frank took the package and placed it on his lap.

  “Your grandfather, a close friend of my parents, retained us many years ago. He was precise in his instruction that when he passed, only a life estate in the real property was to go to your father. So, during Joe’s possession he could neither sell nor otherwise alienate that property. The real estate was always destined for you upon Joseph’s passing. It was William’s most emphatic directive.”

  “And the payment for your services?”

  “We are the executors of Joseph’s will and will receive $25,000 for our work on his estate. Taxes, inheritance issues, funeral expenses, and death certification fees will be paid from William’s trust, which we’ve been given the power to draw upon. After that, the rest is yours.”

  “May I take all this with me to look over?”

  “Of course, they’re yours to keep. And feel free to call me with any questions or concerns,” Winston said and stood.

  “Good,” Frank said and rose with an extended hand.

  Frank left the law offices clutching the legal envelope. He felt he was carrying his entire family history reduced to a stack of 100% rag paper documents that wouldn’t even fuel enough fire to warm a pair of winter hands.

  * * * * *

  Back at the motel, Frank sat at the small table in his room. His large hands took turns shuffling around the piles of legal documents, and rubbing the sides of his nose as he stared at the array of papers on the table. One particular letter was mystifying. He scoured it looking for hidden answers amid its puzzling words and phrases, but nothing made much sense. Stranger still, the old fashioned fountain pen cli
pped to the letter. The cryptic letter was from William. After contemplating it for several minutes he set it aside.

  Frank scribbled his name on an envelope in the packet with the fountain pen. The bright orange pen was a Parker he’d seen William use often in the past, its familiar blue-black ink matched the writing on his grandfather’s letter.

  He pored over another document from the lawyers and went down the list of its notations from his father’s will. Things cited there conjured up the familiar. The suburban Baltimore house listed in the will was originally built and designed by his grandfather, and was located in an upscale section of Catonsville, Maryland called Oak Forest. Frank played at that house and its spacious grounds over many childhood summers, and he could still recall the pungent smell of the boxwoods that surrounded the front porch. It was an aroma he associated with happiness, but Emily Dugan, his grandmother, despised those dense hedges and described their odor as cat pee. Emily made threats to have them hacked out and burned, but they were never removed and Frank never forgot their distinctive smell.

  Frank hadn’t seen his father in years and was astounded the bastard had left him anything, other than perhaps the heavy leather belt he liked to whale him with in drunken rages. Because William had bequeathed Frank’s father only a life estate in the Elm Terrace house. Joseph had full use of the property during his own life, but he could not sell, assign, or encumber the property. Frank could see his grandfather’s determination to assure that the property was ultimately placed in his grandson’s hands. But William’s adamancy begged the question: Why?