Poison Most Vial

by Benedict Carey

  Ruby could see and hear the whole thing through the open door between the two offices. She closed her eyes, her ears warming. She had been afraid to ask her dad about this directly, afraid he’d think that she doubted him. She peeked at him over her sketchbook, saw her father nodding, shifting in his chair.

  “Our relationship?” Mr. Rose said. “Not good. I mean, Rama was such a total—ah, I mean, he was, you know, formal. Cold. That’s just how he was. That’s who he was. What I didn’t like was . . . well, Rama didn’t notice people. It was like we were invisible, all of us, even the grad students. Then he’d blow up at some little thing out of nowhere.”

  Ms. Diaz held her pen over her pad but had not taken her eyes off of the client. “Mr. Rose,” she said coldly, “did you poison Dr. Ramachandran?”

  Ruby saw her father sit up, tip forward on his chair. He looked somehow bigger. “No. No, ma’am, I did not.”

  Ruby breathed again. Of course he hadn’t. Ms. Diaz seemed satisfied, too. She nodded slowly and sat back in her chair. “Well, someone sure did. Someone in that lab, almost certainly. If it wasn’t you, then who?”

  Mr. Rose did not have an answer. Ruby, her head down now, wished her dad could say something. Anything.

  “OK,” Ms. Diaz said. She sighed heavily. “Mr. Rose, tell me about everyone who came into the lab that night, starting with yourself. The times people came and went, as you remember it all.”

  “Right,” said Mr. Rose, glancing over his shoulder at Ruby. She pretended to draw but began taking notes.

  “Well, I got there just about six o’clock in the evening, like always. I can tell you the exact times. I already been through all this with the police.” Her father stated his routine, which now seemed much less boring to Ruby than it usually did. Punch in with security card (6:02 P.M.). Hang jacket in locker, put sandwich in fridge (6:05 P.M.). Make sure lab instruments are clean, well supplied (6:10 P.M.).

  “And then I made Rama a pot of tea, because Lydia was busy, I guess.” he said. “I took it in to him at about 6:15 or just after, I’d say.”

  “Stop there,” said Ms. Diaz, still engrossed in her notepad. “You usually made his tea, or you did it this once?”

  “Well, this once. Lydia—she’s a grad student—she usually made it.”

  “And she asked you to do it this time?”

  “That’s right.”

  “A change in routine. No wonder you’re a prime suspect. I wonder what they found in that tea. We’ll have to find that out, and soon.”

  Ruby felt an urge to mention the red vials but swallowed it. She wasn’t even supposed to be listening; and how would she explain knowing about that?

  “OK, keep going. What else?” Ms. Diaz said.

  Her dad said that Rama had a taped TV interview scheduled for 8:15 P.M. Nothing unusual there. Dr. Ramachandran often commented on cases and evidence as an outside forensics expert and, Mr. Rose said, he was expected that night to say something about the Robert Pelham case. Pelham was a prominent investor with ties to the university. He’d been cleared of an alleged plot to kill a business partner as a result of problems with the handling of evidence.

  “You know, the rich guy who went free because the evidence fell apart—”

  “Of course I am very familiar with that case; when Pelham’s company went bankrupt, people all over the city were trying to get their money back,” Ms. Diaz said. She made a note, circled it. “Go on.”

  “Well, you may not know that DeWitt Forensics did the lab work while Rama was gone on vacation. I don’t know the details, but someone made a mistake there, at DeWitt, handling or testing the evidence. Rama took it personally, even though he wasn’t around. He couldn’t let it go.”

  Ms. Diaz raised her eyebrows. “Hmm. Did he blame anyone in particular?”

  “No idea. He kept his opinions to himself.”

  “All right. What was the next thing you remember from that night?”

  At 7:59 P.M., the dean and a DeWitt publicity person knocked on Dr. Ramachandran’s office door to make sure he was ready. No answer. After repeated knocks and calling his name, they entered.

  “Dean? You mean Earl Touhy, dean of forensics, correct?” Ms. Diaz said.

  “Sorry—yes, that’s right.”

  A minute later the entire lab was gathered around Rama’s body, awestruck. “And there he was, right on the floor near his chair.”

  “You heard nothing before that?”

  “Nope.”

  “You didn’t even hear him fall?”

  “The lab can be a noisy place, and the door was closed.”

  “OK. You said the entire lab gathered around, huh?” Ms. Diaz said, again lost in her notepad. “How many people total in that group? In fact, tell me how many people total entered the lab that day. As far as you know.”

  Mr. Rose looked up at the ceiling. “Right. Including me? Seven. Four grad students. Me. The dean, and Miriam—that’s the public affairs lady.”

  Ms. Diaz squinted at her nails. “Let’s hear about every last one of ’em,” she said. “Including the dean. And the publicity person. Everyone. Everything about them and anyone who regularly enters that lab.”

  Mr. Rose dropped his head and put a fist to his mouth. Ruby badly wanted to get a drink but didn’t dare move. “I feel like I’m ratting people out here, and I don’t like it,” her father said finally. “But I guess there’s no choice.”

  Ms. Diaz tipped her head and gave him a look that said, Uh, no.

  “Right, OK. Well, let’s see. Regularly entered. Well, there’s Roman Kapucinsky, the day janitor. His shift starts at about 10 A.M. or so, goes till about 6 P.M., when I start. Older guy, barely speaks English. Kind of angry, in a quiet way. Not the smartest kid in class. I’m not saying I’m a genius, either, but Roman sometimes has this slack-jawed look, like a lost peahen. Almost retired, I think. I can’t imagine him doing something like this. He doesn’t have the energy, at least I don’t think—”

  “OK, good. Who else?”

  Ruby wrote in her book: Roman, day janitor, quiet, angry, tired. She’d seen Roman dozens of times but had never thought about him much.

  “All right,” her dad was saying. “Well, I don’t know if it matters, but Dean Paul Touhy was always in there. You seen the dean. Big boy, sometimes on TV with Rama, commenting on crime stuff.”

  “If he was there, he’s a suspect,” Ms. Diaz said.

  “Yeah, I agree, he should be. Dean and Rama got on OK, but Dean’s job depended on Rama totally, and I don’t think he liked that. You know, having to manage this superstar and all. Then again, he’d be crazy to take out Rama; it would be impossible to replace him. And Dean completely lost it when we found the body. Fell to the ground on top of the body, all that. I don’t know. Maybe they were closer friends than I thought.”

  Ruby wrote: Dean Tubby. That’s what the grad students all called him behind his back. Big, jolly fella, reminded her of Rex a little, the way he laughed a lot at almost everything. He was nothing like Rama or the other important people over there. Dean Touhy knew who Ruby was and actually greeted her, asked about school. Random adult chatter, but it was more than she ever got from the little gods.

  “Who else, Mr. Rose? What about students? Don’t forget a single person.”

  “Yeah, there’s a bunch of students. Or fellows, or, uh, postdocs, or whatever. Some’s all right, others I don’t like so much. Sit there studying for ten hours and never say boo to anyone. I mean, I guess—”

  “Names.”

  “Right. Victor Ng. From China. Still learning English, but jokes most of the time. Victor is half clown. The other half is all business, though. He kind of turns it on and off, like he has a switch. Victor liked to take charge at times when Rama was out. That was strange. No one liked that at all.”

  Ms. Diaz nodded, made some notes to herself. So did Ruby. “Go on,” the lawyer said.

  “All right, let’s see. Grace Fleming. She’s from Boston or somewhere around there. Fri
endly but very, I don’t know, fragile. Stressed is the word people use. But it’s more than that, I think. She’s the daughter of some big shot, not sure who. I personally think that—well, not my business really.”

  “Tell me.”

  A moment passed before he answered. “Drugs. It’s a hunch, that’s all. I have seen her with those little prescription bottles, and I don’t know. I just got this feeling about it.”

  Ruby, taking notes, wrote exclamation points in the margins where the descriptions rang true to her. She saw instantly that her father’s description of these people matched some of her own vague impressions of them. If only she’d paid more attention, she’d have known them all so much better and, being a kid, maybe learned stuff about them that her dad never could.

  She leaned forward to catch every word.

  “Lydia, the one who usually made the tea. Lydia Tretiak is her name—”

  “Yes, let’s hear about Lydia.”

  “Grad student, like I said. Russian or Ukrainian or something: I mean, really Russian, from over there. Intense, almost desperate, for some reason. I don’t think she has much money. I mean, I don’t know anything about her situation. I just know that look.”

  Mr. Rose also described Wade Charles, from Colorado, the other grad student regular. Easygoing wise guy Wade, who reminded Ruby and her dad so much of characters from back home in Arkansas. Wade was good to have around, a cool breeze in this hothouse of work-crazy egos. Maybe a little too cool. He was out drinking at all hours, and Mr. Rose mentioned that he’d seen Wade at Biddy’s (pathetic, thought Ruby) and even once coming out of the Orbit Room (insane).

  Mr. Rose knew very little about Miriam, the publicity person. She was new and hadn’t met Rama before that night.

  Ruby wrote down every word that she could catch, working until her hand froze with a cramp. She now had a list of suspects.

  “That’s it? No one else came into the lab?” Ms. Diaz said.

  “Those were the regulars, and the ones who were there when we found Rama that night,” Mr. Rose said. “Bigwigs came in, too, once in a while. City officials. Dr. Childress, the university president. That kind of thing. Rama was always working on these big cases. But no one like that came in that night.”

  The lawyer shot a look over at Ruby. “Are you taking notes on this case, too, young lady?”

  “Huh?” Ruby said, as if startled from a nap. “Drawing.” She turned her book to reveal an intricately detailed horse, drawn the previous day.

  Ms. Diaz gave her a brief, knowing look—almost like a wink—before turning back to her own pad.

  “OK, Mr. Rose,” she said abruptly, pushing her chair back and coming out from behind her desk. “This is a start. Here, take my card.” She handed him a Post-it with a number on it. “We’ll speak in a few days.”

  Ruby’s dad, standing now, made for his wallet.

  The lawyer put a hand on his arm. “Not yet. No talk about money until we get further along. I’ll have an expert pull the coroner’s report, and we’ll begin reviewing witnesses’ statements as soon as possible because”—Bernie Diaz turned to Ruby in midsentence and held out her hand—“if your father didn’t do this, we need to come up with some theory of what happened, so talking to suspects is particularly important.”

  Ruby took the lawyer’s hand and bowed abruptly, wondering why it felt like the woman was asking her to do something. Interview suspects? No way on earth a kid could possibly get access to the very people who—Oh.

  Take that back.

  “Another day at the Regular Ranch, where the wild animals roam,” Rex said, arriving in class. “Now, what’s this secret plan you’re talking about?”

  “You’ll see, you’ll see,” Ruby said, glancing around the familiar room. Regular Honors was where DeWitt teachers dumped any student who wasn’t identified as High Honors or otherwise didn’t fit in with the little gods. Ruby was moved in the middle of seventh grade (“student highly distractible,” for drawing in class) and met Rex (“anger issues,” for sitting on an older boy who had started a fight).

  “All you have to do is get a hall pass and follow me to the library when I leave after this period,” Ruby told Rex. “Let’s hope this lesson goes fast.”

  Their teacher, Mrs. Patterson, arrived a minute later, and without a word slashed out on the blackboard, in huge letters, What is a criminal?

  Mrs. Patterson turned, opened her book, and tapped her knuckles on the desk. “All right, now, all eyes here, the day has started. I trust that everyone’s done the reading.” She scanned blank faces. “Miss Rose?” So much for fast.

  Rex whispered, “Incoming.”

  “Yes, Mr. Rexford?” Mrs. Patterson said. Ruby took a breath. “You have something you’d like to tell the class?”

  “Uh—no, ma’am. Nope, sorry, I’m good.”

  “Then maybe you would like to begin the reading. Please open to page—Excuse me. Yes, Simon?”

  Simon Buscombe, briefcase boy, who usually spent class time drawing intricate mazes, had his hand up. “A disturber of the peace,” he said in his deep, formal-sounding voice.

  “Come again?” said Mrs. Patterson.

  “Who is a criminal. Outsiders, castoffs, disturbers of the peace. Those who don’t fit into the accepted power structure.”

  “Sounds like Regular Honors,” Rex said.

  Mrs. Patterson gave him a look. “There happen to be some very gifted children in this—Why, yes, Danielle?”

  “Simon’s confused, as usual,” said Danielle Mays, who objected strongly to almost everything (which was why she was here). “How about the person who poisoned Mr. Rama?”

  Ruby flinched. She knew it would come to this.

  “He killed someone,” Danielle continued. “Doesn’t matter to me if he’s an outcast or whatever Simon’s little theory is. He did it—period. He’s guilty. He’s a criminal.”

  “How do you know it was a he, Danielle? You know something the police don’t?”

  Ruby turned. Sharon Hughes (“character issues,” for hacking into the school computer), the laces girl, was doing her nails in the back of the class. “Have you solved the crime already? Go ahead, tell us who did it, then. A criminal is the person who looks most guilty, that’s who it is.”

  “Yeah, you should talk, Sharon.”

  Sharon glared at Danielle.

  “Those two about to go criminal on each other,” Rex said.

  “Theodore, no more comments from the peanut gallery,” the teacher said. “Raise your hand if—Yes, Kevin?”

  So it went, for longer than Ruby could stand, until Mrs. Patterson finally put her hands up. “OK, OK. That’s enough. I think everyone gets the idea. It’s not always so simple as people assume. Why don’t we take a break, a short study period. Let’s everyone calm down.”

  Ruby took the cue and approached Mrs. Patterson for permission to leave class (the one good thing about having a father involved in a murder investigation was that you always had a ready excuse for a hall pass). The teacher seemed too happy to hand out the pass, maybe because she felt embarrassed, too.

  Minutes later Rex joined Ruby in the science library, a short walk through an enclosed passageway from the Regular class. “How about that Sharon? I never seen that before.”

  Ruby put a hand up. “Stop. Forget your true love Sharon for one second. Look who’s here. Just what I thought, too. I knew they must be meeting somewhere, and that’s their table. All hidden back there.”

  “My true love always been myself. Who’s here?”

  “Shh. Way back there by the copying machines. That first table. Those are the grad students who worked in the lab—stop staring, will you?”

  “Grad students? Looks like some metal band. Tattoos all over that one girl’s neck. Now, why do people want to go do that? That’s worse than those maroon wigs they got at the House of Wig.”

  “Wigs. House of Wigs, plural. They’re henna, not maroon. And if that’s a band, it’s the Suspects. Someone o
ver there knows something. I’m going over.”

  “Nah, you’re right, House of Wigs plural’s got those maroon— Hey, you’re going now?”

  “You just hang back and cover me if something happens, OK?”

  “You be careful, now. They gonna be as suspicious as they look.”

  At first it seemed like the opposite. Victor stood up and smiled wide as Ruby approached the table.

  “Ruby. Oh, hello!” Victor actually gave her a hug, the way some older adults did to say hello. “We are so very sorry about your father; we don’t think he did this at all,” he said, and blushed and half bowed to her.

  “I, uh, thanks, Victor,” Ruby said. All of the others were there: Wade, Grace, Lydia.

  Ruby learned in no time that these four, Rama’s chosen grad students, had been meeting regularly at this back table in the forensics section, trying to figure out how and where to carry on their work. And she could tell by the looks on their faces that they were talking about the case.

  “How are you holding up?” Grace Fleming, her voice more fragile than ever. “We are devastated. The lab work is probably over. None of us can leave town because of the case. We think it must have been one of the other university people who were in and . . . ” Grace stopped and the group exchanged looks. Nobody spoke for a moment. Silent signals were flying between them, Ruby sensed.

  Wade opened a book and began reading. Not like him at all. Lydia squinted out the window as if the secrets of the universe were inscribed in tiny print out there. Grace turned to Victor, who nodded slightly.

  “Ruby,” Victor said finally. No longer a friend, now the lab leader. “Listen. If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to ask any of us. But we’re really not supposed to discuss this case, because the investigation is ongoing. We shouldn’t be meeting at all, to be honest.”

  Ruby took a step back. “But . . . ” She was confused. She had so much to ask them. They were witnesses as well as suspects. How come they got to discuss the case, but she and her dad were excluded?

  “It’s really for your own sake more than anything,” Victor was saying.

  “But so, I can call you?” Ruby asked. “Can I have your number then, or e-mail? I mean, my dad, you all know him.” She lowered her voice. “You’ve got to help us.”