MC was turning the corner from Tuttle Street onto Revere Street when she realized she hadn’t told Aunt G where to meet her. Oh, well. It wasn’t as though it was a dark and stormy night, she thought. And it would all be over soon anyway.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I woke up about two minutes before ten o’clock, feeling rested for the first time in a while. At three—after a final call from Berger telling me they’d have Lorna brought in around ten-thirty in the morning—I’d unplugged the phone by my bed, knowing that anyone who needed me, like the hospital or George Berger, would use my cell phone. Nothing else would require immediate attention, I’d decided.
I was now running late, however, and rushed to get ready for a trip to the police station, happily only a short distance away. Within walking distance if I had time. I frowned at the thought of departmental coffee, but that’s what sleeping in got me.
George Berger had suggested I be present when Lorna gave the technical details of the scam she was confessing to.
I called him cell phone to cell phone to say I was on my way.
“She’s admitted to the illegal drug testing, but she still insists that she never killed anyone. She says she never even heard of Nina Martin and that whatever deaths resulted must have been orchestrated by Alex Simpson. She says she was suspicious as soon as a Houston PI showed up dead in Revere. The Houston PD can’t find Simpson, by the way.”
“Can’t find him?”
“Nope. He was supposedly on vacation at a dude ranch in Montana. Did you know there really are dude ranches, not just in the movies? Simpson was due back yesterday, but never showed. Not home, either.”
“Do they think he’s running, or does he even know he’s wanted for questioning?”
“Not clear. Oh, but guess who we did pick up, right here in Revere, Massachusetts, in the middle of the night?”
I was adjusting to George’s game-show manner. I took it as a sign that he felt comfortable working with me. I wondered how Matt abided it on an ongoing basis.
“Who?” I asked brightly.
“Wayne got-a-mustache Gallen, on a D and D.”
Drunk and disorderly. “Is that a big deal? I mean will he go to jail?”
“Briefly. I think the uniforms did it on general principles, you know. He’s been such a nuisance. So when the call came in from the One A they went over and hauled him in. Just a little innocent revenge. They’ll keep him twenty-four hours and let him go. No harm done.”
I laughed, then caught myself. Uh-oh, not nice. Was I becoming a jaded policewoman who enjoyed cop pranks? I thought of Matt and wished he were around to keep me honest. Berger evidently thought of Matt at the same time.
“How’s my other partner? Still in the hospital?”
“Yes, but coming home today. I’m going to pick him up as soon as I’m free this morning. By the way, we’re …” I stopped. It suddenly didn’t seem right that I’d be announcing our engagement without Matt at my side.
“Say what?”
“We’re looking forward to having him home for good.”
“I miss him.”
“So do I.”
For once I was dressed better than Lorna Frederick. My fairly new charcoal gray sweater set outshone Lorna’s faded blue sweats, which must have been what she was wearing when she was taken in for questioning. Lorna’s hair was at least a day from being tended to, the formerly blond parts giving way to dull brown. Her lawyer, a sharp-nosed, well-dressed young man, was also on hand—to nudge her when there was a question she shouldn’t answer, I presumed.
I listened to Berger’s opening remarks to the tape recorder, picturing it later as a transcript.
Detective George Berger, Dr. Gloria Lamerino, Mr. Paul Di Marco, Dr. Lorna Frederick, on Wednesday …
“According to your statement, Dr. Frederick, you added illegal compounds to microchips intended for use as identification codes for horses. Is that correct?”
“I manipulated the ketone using a Grignard reagent. It involves adding a carbon anion. It’s not illegal, just not approved for wide distribution.”
“Not approved, thank you. And to your knowledge is it legal to use chemicals not approved by the Food and Drug Administration?”
Lorna sighed and leaned into her lawyer. Mr. Di Marco said something inaudible, covering the side of his face with long, slender fingers, one of which sported a large school ring.
“No, it is not,” Lorna said.
“Not legal to use chemicals unapproved by the Food and Drug Administration?”
“No, it is not legal,” Lorna said, with an exasperated sigh.
As if it’s our fault that she’s here, detained and unkempt, I thought. In her circumstances, I knew I’d be tense, not haughty. The gray interview room alone would have depressed me if I were on the wrong side of the questioning. Peeling paint; exposed pipes; dripping, clanging radiator; rust marks on the ceiling—all seemed to scream out that murder suspects weren’t worth the price of decent space.
With a few more questions, Berger determined that Lorna had not enlisted pharmaceutical companies in her scheme, and had not involved her Charger Street research team.
“Alex masterminded this,” she said. “He created the system that kept our bench people in Revere in the dark. They thought they were just repackaging. The Houston guys converted the compound and shipped us the chip, which we then put our label on.”
An injectable form of bute was on the market, Lorna explained, but hers was a vastly improved version, and Charger Street had to take the opportunity to forge ahead, or they’d be left in the dust as far as research money. The derivative they’d used to coat the microchip—Alex Simpson’s “bute that’s not bute,” I realized—was meant to be a longer lasting anti-inflammatory without the side effects that would accompany a larger dose of pure bute.
She followed all the competitions, so she knew when one of “her” horses had had a chip implanted within twenty-four hours. The derivative also had a different boiling point, and therefore would be missed by most of the systems used by competition officials to test for the presence of pure bute.
“This approach didn’t give us an enormous number of samples, by the time you weeded out the non–show horses who had the chip implanted, plus the ones that didn’t compete within a reasonable number of days of the implant. But we didn’t need a lot, just enough to test whether we were going in the right direction.”
“What did you and Dr. Simpson hope to gain by this scheme, Dr. Frederick?” Berger emphasized Alex’s and Lorna’s titles, as if to remind her of the incongruity between their behavior and the respect ordinarily due the profession.
“What did we hope to gain? Please.” Lorna contorted her face, sneering, her lips becoming nearly absorbed into the junction of her downward-curving nose and her upward-curving chin. “You’re asking what did we hope to gain? How about progress? Cures for cancer. Relief from depression. Freedom from pain. How do you think all that comes about? The public doesn’t want to know. The public just wants the results. They’d rather not know how these things are accomplished.”
“We should thank you for murdering people and killing horses?” This was my first time witnessing Berger’s interrogation style. Not much different from Matt, who wasn’t above verbally taunting an arrestee.
“I’ve told you over and over, I did not murder anyone. See Dr. Simpson for that. And do you think I’m happy that two horses died from the error in dosage? I love horses. But I love people and my research even more. No one ever remembers the millions of successes.”
It bothered me to admit that Lorna had a point. How many of us were aware of the animals that died even in legitimate drug testing? Not that I was going to join a protest group. Too many of my firmly held opinions were being challenged by this case. I’d have to rethink them all. But another time.
Maybe we’d all be saved from tough decisions by computer modeling, I thought. Weapons research was the most obvious application where modeling was
taking the place of real-life testing, and I knew pharmaceutical companies were involved in computer modeling also. If we could wait long enough, all the rats and rabbits and pigs might be saved from our laboratories.
Lorna was still ranting.
“How do you think we got so smart about immunization against diseases like polio and diphtheria and all the childhood diseases like mumps and measles? Where do you think our sophisticated knowledge of insulin and chemotherapy comes from?”
I’d had enough. I caught Berger’s eye. I shrugged my shoulders, meaning, I’m not really of much use here. I tapped my watch, meaning, I have to pick up Matt. He nodded and tilted his head toward the door. Perfect body language, I thought, glad I was able to communicate with more than one cop.
I hated days when I ran late for everything, and this was one. I didn’t like the idea of Matt sitting in his room when he could be home, where I had brownies waiting. I decided to check my phone messages on the way to the hospital since I hadn’t had time to access them before I left home for the police station. I hadn’t even reconnected the phone by the bed. I punched in my number and then the code for the answering machine.
The computerized voice was frustratingly slow. “YOU HAVE THREE NEW MESSAGES.” I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, wishing I could fast-forward the machine. It wasn’t as if I had anything else to do but sit in the traffic, I told myself. The pace of my life seemed to have picked up without my being aware of it. In California I seldom had more than one extracurricular activity a week, and fewer when Elaine Cody was starting a new relationship. I had no twenty-four/seven consulting jobs, no significant other.
“MESSAGE ONE. EIGHT TWENTY-TWO A.M.”
The first message was from Rose, who should have known better than to call before nine, even on a good day.
“Still sleeping, I guess. Well, good. I told MC about Lorna so she wouldn’t worry anymore. And of course whew, whew, whew, we’re all so relieved. Looking forward to having Matt home. I’ll bring a lasagna over, but I won’t stay. I’ll bet you made brownies last night.”
“MESSAGE TWO. NINE THIRTY-FOUR A.M.” I stopped at a light and dribbled moisturizer on my hands. Not to waste a few seconds.
“Oh, hi, Gloria. It’s Andrea Cabrini. I haven’t seen you so I thought I’d call and see how the case was going. I know there was another murder, but I guess no one at the lab was involved, huh? I hope everything’s okay.”
That one embarrassed me. Once again, I’d forgotten about Andrea. The fact that she thought she needed to give her last name told me what a poor friend I’d been to her, calling her for help, and seldom otherwise. I made a note to invite her to my engagement party. Rose would be delighted that I was thinking along those lines.
“MESSAGE THREE. NINE FIFTY-SIX A.M.” The last one.
“Hi, Aunt G and Matt if you’re home. Wayne Gallen wants to meet me, one last time he promises, so I’m going. If you’re around … hello … are you screening your calls? Guess not. Well, anyway, I’ll be meeting him in about an hour, so, like eleven o’clock, and if you can meet me there it would be great, but if not, no prob, okay?”
It took a few seconds to register. Wayne Gallen was in jail, wasn’t he? I slammed my foot on the brake, pulled over to the curb and then into a supermarket parking lot. I caught my breath and tried to construct the timeline. What was the time on MC’s message? I couldn’t bear to listen to the first two messages again to find out. I knew it was this morning, after Andrea’s, which was around nine-thirty. No matter—Berger had told me Wayne was pulled in in the middle of the night and would be held for twenty-four hours. So either Wayne Gallen had escaped, or someone else called MC.
I knew where Lorna Frederick was. Berger’s voice rang in my mind. The Houston PD can’t find Simpson. Then I heard MC’s voice: He did a pretty good Texas accent …
Alex Simpson, the man who was so good at disguising his voice, had called MC, pretending to be Wayne Gallen. But where were they? I didn’t think I heard a meeting place on MC’s message. I bit my tongue and punched in all the numbers to listen to the messages again, this time as impatient as if someone’s life depended on it. I played them through. “MESSAGE ONE … MESSAGE TWO …” I wished I’d read the instructions to my phone system more carefully. I was sure there was a way to skip to the third message, but this was not the moment to experiment. It had taken two tries to reach the messages at all this time. My fingers were slippery with moisturizer and my brain was searching for what to do next.
I punched in the number for the hospital and asked for Matt’s extension.
I heard his cheery “Hi, I’m all set to go.”
Like it or not, I was about to change his mood.
“MC is in trouble, Matt. Alex Simpson is in Revere and has managed to lure her … someplace.”
“Hold on, hold on.” A steady voice, that allowed me to tell Matt what I knew and what I didn’t know.
“They could be anywhere,” I said. “What does he want with her? It’s over; there’s nothing he can do now to avoid arrest.”
“He might just want to get back at someone. Or he might have some hostage scheme in mind. That’s not important right now.”
“It is important. This probably means Lorna’s telling the truth and Alex is the one behind the murders.” I took a breath. “I’m sorry. I know what you mean.”
“Let’s work with this. MC wouldn’t go anyplace that would be obviously too private or hidden.”
“No, she wouldn’t. She’d want to be in a public place.” I tried not to be influenced by the fact that MC had done a number of not-so-sensible things in her life, like letting a man push her around. She was over that phase, I told myself.
“A public place, like a restaurant.”
“Yes,” I said, getting into the rhythm. The man who’d been having trouble staying conscious lately was helping me calm down. “But her message came just before ten o’clock. Too early for lunch, so a coffee shop. In fact her message said they were going for coffee. Why didn’t I think of that sooner?”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. What would be her favorite coffee shop, where she’d feel comfortable? Someplace you would know also, so she wouldn’t have to give you directions or anything like that.”
“You mean if she remembered to tell me where.”
“Right.”
In my mind I ran up and down the streets of Revere looking for a coffee shop. Then it came to me. “Tomasso’s Coffee Annex. We had coffee there last week. It’s not that far from where I am.”
“Stay where you are, Gloria.” I’d never heard his voice so firm. “I’m hanging up. If you want to do anything, try Berger’s cell phone while I track the nearest cruiser.”
I sat in my Cadillac and looked ahead of me. My eyes soared over the roofs of the cars in the parking lot, toward the roof of Tomasso’s Coffee Annex, about a mile away, through city streets. I tasted blood from where I’d been chewing my lips.
The connection was broken, but I heard Matt’s voice again. Stay where you are.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
MC chose a large arrangement of asters, mums, and some tiny purple stems only her mother and a florist would be able to name. She wrote out a thank-you message to Gloria and Matt on a small card and filled out forms to have the basket delivered to Fernwood Avenue.
The whole process took longer than MC thought it would—it must have been the pimply young clerk’s first day, the way he kept going to the back of the shop for answers to questions. MC bounced from one foot to the other.
Not that she was eager to see Wayne Gallen, just anxious to get it over with.
She was, in fact, having second thoughts about the whole idea. What if she just didn’t show up? Any normal guy would take it as a lost cause and head home, but Wayne wasn’t your normal guy. She wouldn’t put it past him to tear up his ticket until he had his last look at her. She pulled at her hair, wishing she hadn’t washed it after her run. Maybe if she looked scraggly he’d bug off.
/>
The kid clerk was in the back, probably getting a lesson in addition. MC was the only customer in the tiny shop, which smelled just like the parlors she passed every day on her way to and from her apartment. A light rainfall had started up again outside, perfect for her dreary meeting.
She rolled her shoulders back. Okay, this was a good time to practice the mind/body breathing technique Rick at the health club had taught her. She stood still, focused on her stomach, and imagined a small balloon in that space. She breathed in, inflating the balloon, counting off ten seconds. She heard Rick’s voice. Hold for ten seconds. Now gently deflate the balloon, exhaling through your mouth.
Good thing there’s no one else in here, she thought. This could look weird.
MC left the store and got in her Nissan, silently cursing Wayne Gallen as she turned the key in the ignition. She looked at the empty cup holder and wished she could look forward to the upcoming espresso at Tomasso’s. She felt like calling Matt, finding out if you could have people deported to their home states.
There I go, relying on someone else to solve my problems, she thought.
A little girl in lavender pants and pink sneakers crossed in front of her while MC was stopped at a light. A woman old enough to be the girl’s mother held her hand until they reached the opposite sidewalk. Tears came to MC’s eyes, matching the light mist on her windshield. What’s this all about? Don’t tell me I wish I had a kid? Or that I were six years old again?
When the light turned green, MC pulled over to the curb. A new decision came to her. She clenched her jaws and nodded, as if she were agreeing with herself. She flipped through the CD holder on the passenger seat and found an upbeat jazz disk Matt had given her. She shoved it into her player and turned the volume up. She moved forward, got into the left lane, and made a U-turn, heading toward Revere Beach. She imagined herself standing under one of the pavilion rooftops, her breathing slowing to the sound of the surf.
Carbon Murder, The Page 24