Death in a Cold Hard Light

by Francine Mathews

  “Perhaps,” Taylor temporized. “The pollution of coastal waters is at an all-time highland so are the toxic blooms; but they have existed forever, and it may be that we are simply able to monitor them better now than we did fifty years ago.” He shook his head. “I’m inclined to think it’s nitrogen runoff, myself. Take pfiesteria piscida.”

  “Fis what?”

  “It translates roughly as ‘fishkiller.’ A dinoflagellate that emits a deadly neurotoxin when a fish passes by, literally stripping the tissue from the bones. It was discovered only a few years ago, and since then, millions of fish in the Carolina estuaries have died. Now it’s migrated into the Chesapeake. The scientists studying pfiesteria have linked it to fertilizer and sewage runoff.”

  “Does it affect humans?”

  “Seems to. Local fishermen working in infested waters claim to have suffered skin lesions, mild paralysis, and memory loss. They equate the experience with Alzheimer’s.”

  Merry winced and held up her hands. “Okay. You’ve convinced me. But what does our brown tide algae do?”

  “To the scallop? Nothing.”

  “To a person who ate the scallop.”

  Taylor folded his arms across his chest, considering. “The observations on this are so new, I can only extrapolate from other algal neurotoxins. Initially, you’d feel a tingling on the lips and gums. In a few minutes, that would spread to the legs and arms. Your speech would become incoherent; you’d feel light-headed and nauseated. In severe cases, respiratory depression or arrest might occur.”

  Respiratory arrest. In the middle of the boat basin. She knew, now, how Jay Santorski had died. And she thought she knew why.

  “You only felt certain about the existence of these neurotoxins this morning,” Merry probed. “What drove Jay to talk to you last week?”

  The bird-like eyes grew sharper. “Hannah Moore tried to recruit Jay for AquaVital. She wanted to hire him once he got out of school. She was very… persuasive, from what I understand.”

  “And Jay?”

  “—Had decided to refuse her. He mistrusted Moore’s approach. Jay had studied long enough with me, Detective, to suspect that Nature usually knows what it’s doing. There was a reason, he surmised, why scallops died before they could digest brown tide. Because a greater evil might result if the scallop lived.”

  “A deadly pairing,” Merry mused. “Like bleach and ammonia.”

  “Sort of.” Taylor was amused.

  “Did Jay know about the toxins when he left here Wednesday?”

  “Oh, yes. When I said I wasn’t certain until this morning, I simply meant I hadn’t reproduced the phenomenon in my own lab, under more controlled conditions.”

  “I see. And what was Jay going to do with the information?”

  “Well—” Taylor threw up his hands as though the answer were obvious. “He was appalled at the implications. If Dr. Moore released these mutated specimens in the harbor in large quantities, as Jay thought she meant to do, the devastation to the scallop industry—and indeed, to humans consuming the shellfish—might be incalculable.”

  “But surely Hannah would recognize that!”

  “I imagine she’s working frantically to find a way around the problem.” Taylor smiled sadly. “Isolating the toxin. Trying to control the interaction of scallop bacteria and algae. Looking for ways to alter the scallop further genetically—it could take years of research. But she’s pressed for time and money. In the meantime, one of these”—he gestured toward the tank of tigerbacks—“might slip into the harbor.”

  If Taylor had anything to do with it, Merry thought, the mutated tigerback would be blotted out of existence. Even in death, Jay would confound Hannah’s work; he had charged a man of obvious reputation and integrity with safeguarding the truth.

  “How strong is this toxin, Dr. Taylor?”

  The scientist’s face grew sober. “In general, shellfish neurotoxins are about fifty times stronger than similar plant toxins—curare, for instance.”

  “Curare,” Merry repeated, and her hand clenched in a fist. She remembered the blue tinge to Jay Santorski’s face, the apparent paralysis of the eyelids. It was clear what had happened.

  Jay had returned from Woods Hole late Wednesday, alive to the horror of all that might happen if Hannah’s scallops were allowed to slip into the harbor waters. He called her that night or early the next morning and demanded to see her after his shift at Ezra’s. In his anxiety, Jay may even have mentioned his trip to Woods Hole.

  Merry wouldn’t put it past Hannah Moore to have had a needleful of toxin ready and waiting for Jay mere moments after ending her phone call. His flight from her house later that night, answering machine tape in hand, merely confirmed the need to kill him; she had Charles Moore’s cash flow to protect, after all, as well as her life’s work.

  Merry swallowed hard, and fixed her eyes on Taylor’s face. “So if someone had isolated this toxin, and if it was injected directly into the bloodstream …”

  The doctor said nothing for a moment, simply stared as though she were an unobserved phenomenon herself. “You thought Jay died of an overdose. Was that because of a needle mark?”

  Merry nodded.

  Mel Taylor sat down heavily in his chair, all the energy drained from his body, and put his face in his hands.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “Starbuck.”

  The voice, low and urgent, came from the shadows beneath a venerable elm tree that shaded Will’s front lawn. He looked up from his bicycle lock, eyes straining through the torrential rain and darkness of late afternoon, and said, “Paul?”

  The blond head emerged, followed by Paul Winslow’s lanky body. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “You should have gone inside. It’s wicked wet out here.”

  Paul huddled into his Tommy Hilfiger jacket. “I didn’t want anyone to know I was around.”

  Comprehension dawned. “Did you sneak out of the hospital?” Will’s voice dropped to a whisper, and he glanced uneasily over his shoulder at the lighted windows of his house.

  “They let me go. I’m flying to the mainland tomorrow.”

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “Can we talk in my truck? It’s parked down the block.”

  Will hesitated. He had told Tess he was riding over to the Atheneum to do some research for a history term paper, and she had asked him to be back by seven. But it wouldn’t take long to talk to Paul. He probably wanted to know about Jorie. She hadn’t seen Paul since Monday night. “Okay.”

  He followed the other boy hurriedly to his battered old truck, both of them ducking as if they could avoid the streams of rain. The streets were deserted; Nantucket offseason felt like a theater set ready for striking. Behind the blank windows of the empty houses, there would be no one to watch Paul Winslow’s furtive return.

  “What’s up?” Will asked as he slid into the passenger seat. The interior of the truck was stale with cigarette butts, the smell intensified by rain.

  “I need your help. And I haven’t got much time.”

  “Neither do I. I’ve got a term paper, and my mom wants me home in an hour and a half.”

  Paul drew a deep breath and reached into the small space behind the driver’s seat. “You ever worked a video camera?”

  Will’s brow furled. “Once or twice.”

  “It’s my dad’s. A Sony. Should be pretty simple.” He handed the camera to Will, who hefted it consideringly.

  “You want to take pictures?”

  Paul rubbed anxiously at the fogged windows. “I don’t know if it’ll work tonight. But I can’t wait until tomorrow—my plane leaves too early, and you’ve got school.”

  “What are we taping?”

  “A drug buy,” Paul said, and put his key in the ignition.

  Thirty seconds later, a second car sprang to life. It kept a casual distance behind the two boys—almost indistinct, but for its headlights piercing the rain-lashed darkness.

  “
Seitz? Thank God you’re still there.”

  “Detective! How’ya doin’?”

  “I’ve been better,” Merry said. Her voice faded for an instant against the howl of the storm as it crossed the telephone wire. “The ferries are out and I just flew in from Hyannis.”

  “No way.” Howie’s voice was disbelieving. “In this storm?”

  “I kissed the ground when I arrived. Just like the Pope.”

  “What were you doing in Hyannis?”

  “Woods Hole, actually. Look, Seitz—I need you to pick me up.”

  “With a thermos full of hot buttered rum.”

  “Forget that. Just bring your gun.”

  “Merry—”

  “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission, Seitz. Trust me. I’ve got this case sewn up. But I need proof, and I can’t wait for Bill Carmichael to move.”

  “Does your dad know about this?”

  “I’m not sure he’s earned the right to know.”

  The baldness of that statement silenced Howie for several seconds. “You’re really going to get me fired one of these days,” he complained.

  “Or promoted.” She was growing impatient. “If you can’t come, Seitz, I’ll understand. Really. I shouldn’t ask you to share my risks. I’ll just take a taxi. But for God’s sake call dispatch for me and send out some backup.”

  “Where?”

  “To Hannah Moore’s place. Pocomo.”

  “Stay there,” Howie ordered. “I’m on my way.”

  Half the Moores’ windows were glowing against the storm when Paul Winslow pulled around the gravel drive. He was alone in the front seat. Will had jumped down at the gate, video camera in hand, and was creeping up under cover of darkness.

  Paul looked toward the water, and saw a light shining dimly from the middle Quonset hut. Hannah was still working. That was good; he didn’t want to see her. The important thing, now, was to get in and out before she finished up for the day.

  The drug buys usually took place in the Moores’ study, a room at the rear of the house. Charles Moore’s cherry bookcases, commissioned by some nineteenth-century ancestor, contained a drawer with a false bottom. He kept his supply of heroin in its depths. Will’s task was to secrete himself in the hedge below the study window, and film the transaction through the glass.

  Paul set the truck’s hand brake and thrust open the door. He had called Charles before recruiting Will. The man had greeted him with a burst of cynicism, and the suggestion that they meet before dinner. Charles had written Paul off as one of the damned—taking his supply of poison to the mainland detox center.

  He drew a deep breath, and ran up the front steps.

  Catching Charles red-handed on film was important, of course. But Paul was here tonight as much for Margot St. John as for himself. He had stood in the shadows outside her window as Margot’s murderer brought a tomato can down on her skull. He had watched the systematic destruction of the kitchen. And later, it was Paul who had gone back into the house and made certain Margot was dead.

  He had wept, briefly, over her lost young body, before the terror of the place and the increasing pool of blood had driven him, shaking, from the room, to stand in agonized solitude not far from Sankaty Light. He could not leave her alone; but neither could he go to the police. And so he had stood there for nearly four hours, before the gurney and its wasted burden were gone.

  Margot’s ravaged face would not leave Paul alone. It was inconceivable that her murderer should go unpunished—or worse, that someone else should be held responsible for the crime. Paul had watched the brutal business, and he knew the murderer’s weakness. Fingerprints had been left behind.

  He had come here tonight for something like proof, and he would not leave until he had it.

  A faint movement grazed his peripheral vision. Will, ducking around the far corner of the house, his feet slipping momentarily on the rain-soaked ground. So far, so good. Paul rang the bell.

  The car that had followed Paul Winslow’s truck was parked, now, at the verge of the Pocomo road. John Folger zipped his jacket against the rain, pulled a hood over his gray hair, and tucked a pencil-point flashlight into his pocket. His gun nestled snugly in a shoulder holster. It had been years since he had ventured silently into the field, his own master, alone against the forces of evil; and a heady excitement sang in his veins.

  He locked the car behind him and set off, as noiselessly as possible, up the edge of the Moores’ gravel drive.

  John had expected Paul to make a final feverish purchase of heroin before flying to the mainland. He had waited outside Paul’s house, and when the boy went in search of Will Starbuck—Will Starbuck, of all people!—he had followed a sedate distance behind. Kids that age never suspected surveillance; it was like stalking tame deer. Paul would lead him directly to Charles Moore, with heroin in hand. John Folger would arrest a vicious drug dealer, charge him with the murders of three people, and salvage his own career in a single blow. If Bill Carmichael asked, the Chief would credit an anonymous tip—an unnamed source. Or cite his inability to reach the state trooper, who had gone home early in the storm. He’d talk of fearing delay, of Paul’s imminent departure, of striking while certain irons were hot. It was the end result that mattered in these cases, after all—not the means to achieving it. That was something Meredith would never understand.

  Hannah pulled shut the lab’s door and jiggled the knob to make certain it was locked. The rain was coming down in frigid sheets, and with the advancing evening, would probably freeze. They might even get snow.

  She wrapped her open jacket close about her body, and trudged purposefully up the path that led to the house. Rain darkened her black hair to ebony, plastered it to her skull; but she was heedless of the wet. Hannah was nursing a cold fury. Peter Mason’s money had been hers to command, but for Charles.

  Her right hand rode snugly in her pocket, encased in a latex glove. As her fingers closed on the hypodermic, secure in its plastic cap, Hannah smiled. In a matter of hours, she would be free.

  Charles was increasingly dangerous. There was the liability of his drug-dealing, first and foremost. She had welcomed the tax-free income, but she had feared his ultimate discovery. The assets of drug traffickers were confiscated by the government, and sold at public auction. Hannah had no legal claim to the Pocomo estate; she lived there on sufferance. Charles’s work had set AquaVital at risk.

  And then there were the subtle threats. The questions about Jay. The suggestion that Charles knew she was somehow involved.

  He was very ill, of course. He had often told her that, come spring, he would not be around to trouble her. She had steeled herself to wait, believing that at his death the Pocomo estate would be hers by right. And then, this morning, he had revealed his betrayal to Peter.

  Charles would have to be removed. But he had brought his destruction upon himself. For a man in his condition, in fact, the hypodermic would be a swift release.

  Hannah’s head came up as she approached the house. It sat on the brow of a small hill, its windows shining with light. The figures in Charles’s study were clearly outlined against the room’s crimson walls. She stopped still in the middle of the path, oblivious to the cold hard rain. Paul Winslow, buying heroin. The kid would probably be dead in another six months.

  It was a complication, of course, but a minor one. She would simply wait for the boy to leave.

  And then she craned forward, eyes narrowing against the tumultuous dark. Backlit by the room’s golden glow was a dark shape—a head, she was certain of it. A head peering into a black oblong—a hand-held video camera. Indiscernible to Charles from within the room, because of the darkness and the howling wet and the privet hedge that huddled close to the old house’s windows—but screamingly apparent to Hannah’s eyes.

  Paul Winslow, it seemed, was less of a fool than she had thought. And he had just signed his own death warrant.

  • • •

  “You leave the island tomorrow?�
�� Charles said as he opened the false bottom of the cherry desk’s drawer. He extracted a small scale and a large plastic bag filled with white powder.

  “Yeah.” Paul tugged at the zipper of his jacket. His stomach fluttered nervously, and he found it hard to meet Moore’s eyes. “I need some smack for the road.”

  “How much?”

  “Can you give me an ounce?”

  Conviction for trafficking in as much as an ounce of heroin, Paul thought, might land Moore behind bars for a good while. What had the detective said? Five to twenty years?

  “That’s quite a lot,” Charles said with an incredulous smile. “You planning to supply all your friends?”

  Paul flushed and looked away, to keep the man from seeing the anger in his eyes. “I could be at the clinic for a while.”

  “With this in your system, I imagine you will be. Where do you think you’ll get a needle? They’re not going to leave drug paraphernalia in your room.”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  Charles studied him in silence, and Paul felt his heart quicken. Was Will getting all this on tape? Did their voices carry far enough?

  “Can you pay for it?” Charles asked.

  “Depends what you’re asking.”

  “Let’s say—” He looked into space a moment, calculating, and Paul held his breath. Driving home from the hospital, he had asked his father for some money to take to the clinic. Jack had stopped at an ATM on the way and withdrawn two hundred dollars.

  “Four hundred.”

  Paul exhaled gustily, as though disgusted, then reached into his back pocket. “I can give you two.”

  “Then we’ll settle for half.”

  “Oh, man—you can do better than that. I’m a good customer. How long has it been now?”

  “Six months, at least. But I don’t count on you guys having a long shelf life. You’re a high-risk clientele, Paul. Look at Margot.”

  That brought Paul’s head up and his eyes fixed on Charles’s. “What about her?”

  “From what I hear, she was killed by somebody who wanted drugs.” There wasn’t a trace of duplicity in the man’s expression, only the faintest interest in his voice. “Who could that have been, I wonder? You, Paul?”