Carbon Murder, The

by Camille Minichino

Lorna brought out a folder with current publications from her group, most of which I had already received from Andrea.

  “I’m most proud of our work in materials enhancement,” she said. “We’re taking the lead nationally in producing tougher ceramics and even sunblocks for UV and IR.” Lorna used a wellmanicured finger to march down the explanatory bullets, holding the page in front of her flat, green chest. I was tempted to offer her the use of the laser pointer I kept in my briefcase, but saved my intimidation for something more important.

  I pulled the grant proposal contact list from my stack and placed it on top of the pile of reports on my lap. “I have a couple of questions, Dr. Frederick.”

  She extended her arm full length, as I knew she would, her hand in a halt position. “Call me Lorna, please.”

  I smiled a thank-you. “Lorna, I notice Dr. Alex Simpson’s name here, from Houston Poly. Do you work closely with him?”

  Lorna cleared her throat and fidgeted, catching one of the slits in her cloak in the arm of the chair. Her tiny, dark eyes darted around the room, as if she were looking for a TelePrompTer. I tried to remember what her behavior meant in terms of how credible her next words would be. In what amounted to a training session for me, Matt had showed me a video of an RPD detective interviewing a woman caught robbing a bank. She claimed the man she was with had held her hostage and forced her to assist him. Matt pointed out one clue that indicated she was most likely lying. Several times the woman referred to “we,” as in “we drove down the street,” instead of “he drove me down the street.”

  When was I going to stop piecing together a degree in police work? If I’d approached my career in physics this way, I thought, I’d have been thrown out of the American Institute of Physics long ago.

  Lorna stopped squirming abruptly, switched to a thoughtful pose, during which I supposed we were to assume she was searching her memory banks. She moved her head up and down slowly. A reflective nod. “Yes, I do remember the name. You understand, I don’t personally interact with everyone on the list. It’s a composite of all the contacts of all my groups.”

  “But you’re the groups’ leader, aren’t you? The head of the whole nanotechnology program?” I asked.

  “Yes, but—well, let me ask you this. Do all of you law enforcement people work closely together? For example, do you immediately share whatever I tell you here with other agencies?”

  Berger gave her a questioning look, but I knew where Lorna was going. And I finally understood the real reason she’d offered to come in and “cooperate.” She’d been visited by FDA agents, who probably told her less than they told us, and she was fishing for information. She’d come to get information, not to give it. Very nice trick, I told her, but not out loud.

  I struck a pensive pose myself. “I guess the FDA agents asked you for an alibi?” I asked her in a light tone, almost sympathetic.

  Lorna sighed heavily. “They did, and I just wondered …” She threw up her hands.

  “If the Revere police consider you a suspect in Nina Martin’s death?” I finished for her, compassionate. How could they? my tone said.

  Lorna relaxed a bit and Berger took the opportunity to jump in. “What were you doing that night, by the way, Dr. Frederick?” He tapped his pen on the desk pad, his slightly pudgy face expressionless. Warm cop, cold cop. Maybe Matt and I should adopt this interview strategy, I thought.

  “I rode my horse, as I often do after work, then went home. I already told this to Detective Gennaro.”

  Berger nodded, wrote in his notebook, and studied the page for several seconds.

  “And you don’t know Dr. Simpson?” he asked, tapping again, suspicious.

  “I know him, but not really well.”

  Lorna stood, her habit when she lost control of a meeting, it seemed. But I had one more question.

  “I see you’ve listed a veterinarian on your contact page. Dr. Timothy Schofield. I happen to know Dr. Schofield from our volunteer work with Revere High students.”

  A friendly comment about a mutual acquaintance, casually made, but Lorna’s swallow was audible. “Oh?” The reaction I’d hoped for. She didn’t have to know I could barely describe the man. I remembered little other than his exceptionally shiny bald head.

  “How are veterinarians connected to the buckyball program?”

  Another flustered movement as she caught part of her bright green fringe on a deep scratch in the metal chair. She bit her lip, then said, “Probably as consultants on animal testing.”

  “So, some of your programs require testing on animals?”

  “Not exactly.” She picked up her briefcase and gave it an annoyed tug, as if it were at fault for a meeting gone wrong. “Well, thank you for seeing me. I won’t take any more of your time.”

  Lorna Frederick’s exit had less flair than her entrance.

  “Nice job,” Berger said, after Lorna left. It seemed strange coming from him, and not my real partner, now encased in a Styrofoam cradle. “What was that about a vet?”

  “Someone I found at the last minute, on her consultant list. It so happens I know this vet, and I plan to ask him about his connection to her.” I paused. This was not Matt. I couldn’t appear to investigate on my own. “If that’s okay with you,” I said, trying to sound meek.

  Berger smiled. “Go for it.”

  I could only hope my relationship with Jean would develop as well.

  Halfway down Fernwood Avenue, I could see that Jean’s BMW was gone. A flood of relief came over me, not just because I’d had enough of her, but it meant Matt was fine; otherwise, I was sure, she’d have stayed.

  “Good news,” Matt said, as soon as he heard me come through the door.

  I stopped in my tracks.

  “Oh?”

  No cancer, I thought. No tumor, no treatments. A miracle, like the Virgin Birth or the resurrection of Lazarus.

  “They found Wayne Gallen and issued his PFA. The bike shop owner gave them the lead.”

  This information paled next to the wonders I’d come up with, but I was relieved nonetheless.

  “Terrific, now let’s hope it doesn’t make him even angrier at MC.” Or me. “How are you?”

  “The tire tracks did it, you know.” Not answering my question, but I smiled, accepting the compliment, a new skill I was learning, thanks to Matt especially. “Gallen got himself involved with a bike group, like a poor man’s motorcycle club. Not your Harleys or Yamahas. They meet every night at a truck stop on One-A, near Saugus, past the marsh. They’re into a lot of noise and bar fights, near as anyone can tell, but nothing violent.”

  “Maybe they’ve upgraded to murder in the marsh?” I asked.

  Matt rocked his hand back and forth. A favorite gesture of my father’s. Mezza mezza. Maybe yes, maybe no.

  I briefed Matt on my meeting with Berger and Lorna Frederick, including a description of her costume.

  He laughed. “Well, it’s almost Halloween.”

  “She knows something,” I said, taking the easy chair opposite him.

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “No, but I’m closing in on it.” I told Matt about Dr. Schofield and Berger’s go-ahead for me to talk to him.

  “You two are getting to be good buddies. I’m glad.”

  “Me, too.”

  The coffee table between us was littered with yet more brochures and flyers from the clinic. A huge orange warning against wearing perfumed lotions within two hours of treatment. A list of possible side effects of external beam radiation therapy. Unpleasant words stood out. Irritation. Inflammation. Dysfunction.

  “Now are you going to tell me about your appointment?” I asked him.

  He waved his hand. “It was nothing. First they made the mold, then I got in it, and they X-rayed the area. They say the hormone medication worked, which is good, so that means the radiation treatments can start right away.”

  “When?”

  “Monday morning.”

  “So soon?”
/>   I should have been happy to get started, and therefore, be finished. Instead, I choked up, something I hadn’t done until now. I considered the irrationality of crying over the treatment rather than the diagnosis.

  Matt came over and pulled me off the chair.

  “I’m not saying I’m not worried or scared, Gloria. But if we don’t have faith and hope for the best, well …”

  “I know.”

  “Come on, I’ll show you the marks the technician made on my skin.”

  I recovered quickly and followed him upstairs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  On Friday evening, things looked brighter. Matt had talked to me for a long time about the great confidence he had in Dr. Abeles. He recited the names of several men he knew who had recovered completely from prostate cancer. Plus, Wayne Gallen was being PFA’d away from MC, and Matt and I were invited to dinner with the Galiganis.

  “And there’s a surprise,” Rose told me when she called to confirm our presence at seven for drinks—a French wine for them, I was sure, and mineral water for Matt and me. “Guess who’s coming to dinner?”

  “Spencer Tracy.”

  Rose laughed. “No, and anyway it would be Sidney Poitier. He was the guest in that film.”

  “You should be surprised I even know the movie.”

  “I am. And it’s Jake Powers.” I paused to process the information, and Rose filled the space. “MC is bringing Jake Powers to dinner.”

  I sensed Rose’s mixed feelings, like my own. “Well, it’s good that we’ll get to meet him.”

  “I hope this doesn’t mean anything,” Rose said.

  “It might mean she wants your opinion of him.”

  Rose blew out her breath, a scoffing sound rippling across her lips. “I’m only the mother. Well, we’ll see; let’s be nice to him.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of anything else.”

  “I would,” she said, and hung up.

  Jake Powers was a delightful guest. Physically he was a lot like Frank Galigani, small, dark, impeccably groomed. Maybe we all choose our fathers, I thought, realizing how much Matt was like my own father, minus the tiny mustache Marco Lamerino had always kept carefully trimmed. I hadn’t seen MC so relaxed since she arrived in Revere. We’d told her that the PFA had been issued, and that probably accounted for a lot of her equanimity. But most of it, I suspected, had to do with things going well with Jake.

  For once it was not Frank’s stories that held the dinner table captive. Jake was out to charm MC’s parents, and by extension, Matt and me. Rose and I had sneaked glances now and then, sending messages that couldn’t be spoken aloud. Who does he think he’s fooling? was one of them. We’ll talk later, was another.

  “Tell them about the guy raising the pole, Jake,” MC said, nudging him.

  Jake managed to affect a bow, even though he was sitting, as if to say MC’s wish was his command. He picked up his knife and balanced it across the top of a set of salt and pepper shakers. “Okay, say this is the pole the horse has to clear in the competition. Okay?”

  We all nodded our okays. “I see that on TV sometimes,” Rose said. Not surprising, she’d been the perfect hostess, even trying her version of Texas cuisine. “This is called ranch chicken,” she said, placing the main course between the guacamole and the jalapeño cornbread.

  Jake breathed in the aroma and gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up. “What you don’t see on TV is what happens before the competition. Owners, or sometimes stable boys, ride the horse around a warm-up arena, with one or two fences. During warm-up there are two people, one on each end of the jump. Maybe they’re coaches, maybe grooms, with a final chance to tell you ‘get your shoulders back,’ or something, you know.” Jake pointed to the salt and pepper ends of the steak knife. “What they do is, when the horse is just about over the jump, they raise the top pole ever so slightly, so it scrapes the horse’s ankle.”

  “Ouch,” Rose said, taking her seat and starting the serving bowls in a counterclockwise direction.

  “Ouch, exactly. Because during the next few jumps—which would be in the competition—the horse will go higher over the pole so as not to get hurt again.” Jake sat back, his story finished.

  We sat in silence, except for a hmm, from Rose.

  “I’ll bite,” Frank said. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It’s illegal,” MC said. “Tell them why, Jake. I know it’s called poling, but I’m not sure I get it myself, why it’s illegal.”

  “Essentially, you’ve enhanced the horse’s performance. You’re not supposed to do anything to affect the performance, you know, except practice, practice, practice. Same with horse racing, dog racing. You can’t even give the animal bute.”

  Crumbs of jalapeño cornbread caught in my throat, and I coughed embarrassingly loud and long. I glanced at MC to see if she’d noticed it—the word Alex Simpson had used in his email. She seemed to give a start, and I guessed she had, but thanks to her habit of taking nanoparticle-size bites of food, she did not end up choking.

  “What’s bute?” MC asked Jake, casually, long before I physically could have. She looked at him intently. Foolishly, I wished I were sitting next to her so we could pass notes.

  “Phenylbutazone, an oral painkiller-slash-antiinflammatory, which is perfectly okay to give a horse outside of competition, for normal aches and pains.”

  I was amazed there were people who could tell if a horse had sciatica or a crick in its knee. How did the horse signify it had a headache when it couldn’t put a hoof up to its forehead? Or maybe it could, if it was lying down?

  My own headache was developing as I fought the urge to leave the table and go to MC’s apartment and check her email from Alex Simpson again. I tried to recall the sentence or phrase he’d written about bute, and at the same time pay attention to Jake in case there was more to learn.

  “Bute is one of the best meds you can give to improve a horse’s ability to perform. It’s entirely against the rules for competition, however, as governed by USA Equestrian and by the FEI in the international arena. FEI is the Federation Equestre Internationale,” he said, with a French flair.

  “Jake’s been to Olympic equestrian shows all over the world,” MC said. Her tone was informational and automatic and I could tell by her concentrated frown that she was also trying to remember the exact words of her email.

  “How do you give a horse a pill?” Frank asked. The anatomist, interested in bodies, human or animal, dead or alive.

  Jake laughed, thinking city folk, I supposed. “You crush the tablets and mix them into grain, or you make a paste with molasses or honey and you put it on the horse’s tongue.”

  “Does it take a veterinarian to give the medicine?” I asked Jake. I thought I’d zeroed in on Dr. Schofield’s part in this … this what? Just because his name showed up as a grant consultant didn’t make him part of anything but normal, legal research.

  Jake shook his head. “No, no, the vet distributes it, but anyone can give it to the horse.” Not anyone. I cringed at the thought of my fingers being in a horse’s mouth.

  “There must be a way to test whether the horse has been given something illegal, the way they do with athletes,” Frank said. I wondered if Frank knew as much about horse anatomy as he did about humans. Were horses embalmed? And where would you bury a dead horse? These were questions that also came to my mind.

  Jake nodded. “Sure, it would come out in a urine test, but those are random. So either you’d take a chance that your horse wouldn’t be singled out, or there’s always …” Jake rubbed his thumb and fingers together in the international gesture for money. “ … paying off the testers.”

  “Fascinating,” Frank said. A compliment, I thought, from one who had so many captivating stories of his own. I thought of asking him to tell one of my favorites—about the deceased prostitute whose friends came and re-did her makeup before the public viewing, or the family who propped up their embalmed grandpa for one last reunion photograph. But for
once I didn’t want to stay very long at the Galiganis’. I kept trying to remember the exact text of MC’s bute email.

  Matt had been very quiet during Jake’s stories. I’d looked over a couple of times and thought I saw closed eyelids. Another of his naps, but the first time at a dinner table.

  Now I thought maybe I could use his fatigue as an excuse to get us home early. I wanted to share the new insight about bute with him, and then to make a trip to the Galigani Mortuary and MC’s computer. I hadn’t worked out how to help her get away early, too.

  I looked back and saw Matt sway, a small circular motion from the waist up. Fortunately Rose’s dining set was an old, sturdy kind with arms on the chairs, or Matt would have fallen to the floor.

  As it was, he was unconscious.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The sight of Matt in a narrow hospital bed, looking pale and weak, frightened me as nothing before in my life. It was more terrifying than being run off the road in the Berkeley, California, hills, or being trapped with a double murderer in the Galigani Mortuary prep room. Certainly worse than being cooped up in my car for ten minutes with Wayne Gallen.

  The time between seeing Matt slumped onto the arm of Rose’s mahogany dining room chair and now, in his thin white gown with tiny polka dots, was a blur. I knew that Frank had taken over, calling a number probably only morticians had, and an ambulance arrived in an instant. I remembered getting into Rose’s car, and then waiting outside Matt’s hospital door, refusing coffee from MC and Jake. I thought I’d never be able to drink from a Styrofoam cup again without thinking of Matt’s disease.

  Matt looked at me now, the tiny smile on his lips forced, like a stretched spring that would snap back as soon as it was released. He was attached to the bed by tubes of three different sizes; a green display followed the pulses of his heart. I realized I was angry at someone or something. I’d dutifully gone through all the literature Matt had brought home, plus my own on-line research, and could not recall a side effect that occurred before the treatment started. This did not make sense; therefore it had no place in my life.