For a minute Kat was shocked that the man had the audacity. Then she realized it would give her an excuse to knock the tar out of him. “That’s settled, then.” She’d be glad to see the last of someone with his attitude.
She turned back to see Fiona grinning and pulling a small black box from her jacket. It looked like a remote control. The woman pointed it back in the direction of the Cameron estate and pushed the button and a red light came on. Then she dropped the thing to the ground and stomped it into pieces.
Kat gaped. “What in the deep blue sea was that about?”
“I was activating the final line of defense against anyone trying to get into our home.” She looked at Bart. “Anyone thinking of hiding out on our property is in for a nasty surprise.”
Kat goggled. “Final defenses? In addition to all those traps like the ones I had to avoid?”
Fiona snorted. “That was just a bit of friendly discouragement.”
Flocks of rusty nails and pits with spikes, not to mention the others of which Kat was only partially aware—that was just friendly discouragement? She wondered what Fiona’s final defenses were, and got an inkling from the woman’s next words.
“We’d better hurry up and get some distance. It might not be long before someone sets it off.”
Kat forced herself to blink and change the subject. “Since we just made the drive up, MacTierney and I know the best way back to the FURC, and the best places to stop along the way—if we need to. So I’d like to lead this caravan. But I think it would be safer to keep our regular SUV in the middle and use your armored carriers for the front and rear. What about letting me drive this same tank I’ve been driving and having Grace ride in the SUV?”
Fiona nodded. “The girls and I can take the rear guard. We’ve got enough ammunition if it comes to that.”
“I’m sure you do—and let’s hope it doesn’t turn out to be necessary.”
With a disturbing gleam in her eye, Fiona went back to the jeep she’d been driving and sent Grace to Kat. MacTierney blushed the moment he saw her.
Kat introduced them to each other. “Grace, this is my sergeant. Sgt. MacTierney, this is Chief Cameron’s daughter.” And Kat had a real reason to be glad Lacey would be riding with those two. Not that her sergeant would misbehave, but any appearance of impropriety might get them both into hot water with the girl’s intimidating father.
She turned to her sergeant. “Take another minute to finish waking up. I’ll take us to that clearing we stopped at last night and we can deal with rearranging things there.”
MacTierney saluted with another blush. Really, he needed to get control of himself. Kat left him and Grace at the SUV and stepped over to the tank she’d parked next to it. She leaned in to look at Lacey. “I imagine you heard all that. We’d like you to go with those two in the other vehicle. You can leave those sacks where they are.”
Kat circled around to the driver’s side while the dowdy wife scooted out the other end. She watched the woman meekly walk over to Grace without even a word—then Kat slid behind the wheel and stacked the sacks left behind in the middle of the cab, making a barrier between her and Bart.
The man had a brief talk with his wife before he climbed in the other side with a disdainful glance at the pile of provisions.
Kat bared her teeth at him. “Don’t even think it, or I’ll just push you out while we’re rolling along. I think Fiona might accidentally run over you.”
She started the engine and rolled away, trusting her sergeant would be able to keep up. She started slow, and then sped up as she looked back and saw the other vehicles were on her tail. These days traveling even while it was light was dangerous. Thankfully, the spot they’d stayed at last night was only a few miles away—it shouldn’t take long to reach and then they could stay there until it grew dark. They’d have to go slow, and it might take a while to make it back to the FURC.
They were still short of their nearby destination when the shock wave hit. Though they had traveled over a couple miles from the Cameron estate by that time, they were almost bounced off the road. Talk about burning your bridges. No wonder Fiona had been so reluctant to leave her home behind. She’d left it for good.
Chapter 4
That Queasy Feeling
1:45 p.m. Saturday, March 1st
DAVID watched as Dorothy, with her long brown hair gathered up under a hairnet, bobbed her head and turned to grab the doorknob. She struggled to get the door open in her nervousness. But the other young cafeteria worker had acted anxious as well—though they shouldn’t as yet know this was anything other than a case of accidental food poisoning. Perhaps they know something they shouldn’t.
He finished taking notes on the girl’s last words as the door suddenly swung outward to reveal Mrs. Hudson standing there. Dorothy attempted to curtsy and scurried out. The cafeteria supervisor barely glanced at David before taking a step halfway into her own office. His partner had appropriated Mrs. Hudson’s room to conduct these interviews.
The large woman fixed her stare on Lisa. “Miss Sorenson hasn’t yet arrived but she ought to be here in another ten minutes. If not sooner. Did you want to talk with any of the first shift while you wait?”
David’s partner shook her head. “We can use a short break, actually. Please send Miss Sorenson in to us as soon as she gets here—we’ll finish with her as quickly as possible so she can get to work.”
David nodded to himself. They didn’t want the three women comparing notes, not before they had had a chance to talk with each one individually.
Lisa continued to address Mrs. Hudson. “And we probably won’t need to talk much with the first-shift workers, so they won’t be delayed long in going home. Since you know how everything is done here, we’d like to save you for last. Any questions we still have, I’m sure you’ll be able to answer for us.”
Mrs. Hudson nodded curtly and closed the door behind her as she left. That cut off all the noise from the cheekily named ‘Officers’ Mess’ quite effectively, but David still lowered his voice as he turned to his partner. “I’m still not sure why we didn’t start with the first shift. It may not seem like they had opportunity, but we don’t know enough yet to be sure.”
Lisa frowned as she regarded him. “Better not to forewarn our best suspects about what questions we’re asking. And the three second-shift personnel not only had the best opportunity, they also happen to be our best witnesses. They prepared the meal in question. I need to get everything I can from them, before the details of what happened last evening get any more muddled in their minds.”
David felt queasy as he considered that. “One of the first-shift workers could’ve poisoned food that they knew would be used for the late supper, knowing they’d be under less suspicion since they hadn’t prepared the meal themselves.”
“If someone introduced the poison earlier, how did they manage to only poison the late supper service? The same supplies and ingredients were used for both the early and the late.”
“We still don’t know for sure what food was poisoned—it could just be a coincidence that whatever contained the arsenic happened to be used only in preparing the late service.”
Lisa nodded. “Or someone might’ve slipped in later to add the poison between meals—though that would’ve been quite a risk. I grant you it’s conceivable a first-shift worker was responsible, but it’s quite a remote possibility. Why don’t we concentrate on more likely scenarios first?”
“Like Sgt. Carruthers?”
“He had a reasonable explanation why he didn’t get sick while all of his men fell ill.”
David frowned. “Well, he wouldn’t want to poison himself, would he? So he could’ve started to eat separately in order to establish why he wouldn’t be one of the victims.”
After they’d left Ken’s office, they’d gone over to the guards’ barracks to interview Carruthers, who’d managed to get a couple hours of sleep before they’d disturbed him. The sergeant had explained that he br
ought his own meals to work and ate by himself to avoid getting too familiar with the men under him. He claimed he’d started the practice when he’d first been promoted to sergeant many months ago. But the poisoning could’ve been long in the planning.
Lisa shook her head. “That would’ve taken a lot of foresight. And he would’ve run the same risk as one of the first-shift cafeteria workers—he might’ve been seen. Surely someone would remember a sergeant messing around in the kitchens. But you don’t like him, do you?”
“He’s not easy to like. Stand-offish. Like eating by himself instead of spending time socializing with his men.”
His partner frowned at him. “I’ve not dismissed him as a suspect, but he’s not at the top of my list. I understand, too, his reasons for maintaining a distance from the men he supervises.”
David tried to push down that uneasy feeling in his stomach. “So who is on the top of your list?”
Lisa examined his face. “What’s the matter? Is your stomach still feeling queasy? You should have had more to eat at lunch and you’d feel better now. You hardly ate a thing.” He saw a gleam in her eyes. “Why don’t you have something while we’re here? I hear the food is really good.”
David didn’t appreciate the humor. After being around all those poor guards at the clinic and hearing them talk about getting sick, he’d had a difficult time getting anything down. The idea of eating here wasn’t funny. “I don’t know how you even had such an appetite.” His partner had wolfed down an awful lot of food without any apparent difficulty.
“You can’t just not eat.” Lisa shook her head at him again. “As for suspects, we’ll have a better picture once we finish these interviews, but for now the three late-shift workers are the only ones with really good opportunity.”
David nodded with reluctance. The real reason for his queasiness had nothing to do with seeing all those sick guards or hearing about their symptoms. That had only taken away his appetite. “The two we talked to so far both seemed nervous, but that could just be because they’re worried they’ll be blamed for a regular food poisoning.”
“True. They also might be anxious because they saw or heard something suspicious.”
“In which case, they’d have told us.”
Lisa shook her head at him—she did that a lot, and he’d given up trying to keep count. At least she hadn’t asked for a different partner. Yet.
“David, you’ll learn that most people will withhold information from us. For a variety of reasons, and not all of them sinister. Witnesses often don’t volunteer information because they’re scared of getting mixed up in something sordid. Part of our job entails asking the right questions to ferret out what we need to know. Whether those we’re interviewing are trying to conceal something, or even when they aren’t aware they know something important. And criminals will always try to lie. Catch the lie and you can follow it back to the truth.”
David nodded and quickly typed the gist of her speech into his FURCS pad—into a special file for all the things she was teaching him about being a real detective. As he typed, he saw the note about wearing his weapon in a shoulder holster. I’ll deal with that later.
He slipped the pad back into his pocket, raising his eyes to his partner. “What about the question of motive? Why would any of these women try to poison the guards?”
Lisa squinted at the closed door. “Three women working late at night with all these men around and Mrs. Hudson not here to supervise? I can imagine all sorts of motives, but it’s too soon for that.”
David stood. There wasn’t enough room in this tiny office to pace, but being on his feet would help him think and it might help settle his stomach. “We still aren’t sure what the goal of the poisoning was, which confuses the issue of motive.” Is the culprit a stupid poisoner who’d botched a job of mass murder, or a clever one who’d achieved precisely what they’d intended?
His partner smiled at him. “Exactly. And if the intention was sabotage it may be extremely difficult to pinpoint the perpetrator. If the motive was more personal, it will be easier to uncover. But for now if we can narrow down our pool of suspects by looking at who had opportunity, it will limit how much else we’ll have to investigate.”
“It might help if we knew what actually had the poison in it.”
Lisa nodded. “I like the lasagne. All the guards we could talk to had some, and since it was apparently quite popular it’s not hard to presume the rest had some, too. It’s too bad there were no leftovers for the sisters to test and determine for sure—but I don’t know that it matters as far as establishing who had opportunity goes. What I’m more interested in is finding out is why those leftovers were disposed of. Hopefully Miss Sorenson can clarify.”
David sat down again. “Maybe she can be more definite about who was in and out of the kitchen.”
His partner gave him a sharp look. “Those first two weren’t very helpful. But even if they’d named someone specific, they’re suspects themselves. We couldn’t rely on their word alone for anything. Keep that in mind when we interview Miss Sorenson.”
“But if she does remember anyone else being in the kitchen while they were preparing the late supper, we could confirm with that person. And if they denied it, that would look suspicious.”
Lisa sighed. “And if they confirmed it? It could be an attempt to deflect suspicion. If they denied it, we’d have to consider the possibility Miss Sorenson lied to us. Let’s stick to facts. Theoretically, any of the guards going on or off shift might’ve had opportunity. But until we can establish that one of them did enter the kitchen during the time in question, it remains a possibility only.”
“So you do consider those same guards who got sick as potential suspects?” So far they’d only managed to get the general fact that the guards often did drift back into the kitchen to chat with the girls. No one could say that any guard in particular had been there while they were preparing the evening service last night. At least, neither of the two they’d interviewed already would admit to it.
“Of course. It’s an old trick—the culprit making themselves one of the victims to avoid suspicion. It would certainly explain the outcome. Not wanting to do himself in, our perpetrator might’ve been too cautious with the amount of arsenic he added. And then he wouldn’t have consumed as much of whatever food it had been added to as his fellow guards. You noticed that some had been more affected than others.”
David nodded. “So we look at the lightest cases of poisoning and those are our suspects.” Though it turned his stomach even more just contemplating it. Making yourself that sick? On purpose? Of course the whole idea of murder in the first place was hard for him to understand.
His partner was busy consulting her own workpad. “Thankfully the sisters noted all the symptoms in detail for each patient. They’re in that thick file Dr. Harker gave you. I’ll want you to go over that in case we end up having to look at the guards themselves.”
“Speaking of outside possibilities, it’s also conceivable that someone we don’t know about slipped into the building to poison the food.”
Lisa sighed. “We have enough alternative suspects to be getting on with if it’s not one of the late-shift workers—there’s no need to go dragging in the entire community into our suspect pool. Maybe we can get a confession out of Miss Sorenson, and then it’ll all be over.” David frowned. This was going to be awkward.
He considered going ahead and telling his partner about Crystal, except Crystal wouldn’t have any reason to mention it herself, so it might not be necessary to bring it up. It wasn’t relevant anyway.
His partner was continuing to examine her own notes. “One thing that puzzles me—why use arsenic? It seems careless to use something that would be detected so easily, if this was meant to look like a regular case of food poisoning.”
“Maybe they didn’t know.”
“Maybe. Did they also not know they needed to use more to be certain it would be lethal? Or were they unaware it’s e
asily treated at lower levels?”
“If they did know, perhaps that indicates they’d no intention of killing anyone.”
Lisa shook her head. “But in that case, they had to know the arsenic would be detected and the fact of the poisoning would soon be apparent. If so, why use it? Was arsenic the only thing they could find to use? There’s something about all this that doesn’t quite make sense.”
David made sure to catch her eye. “One explanation occurs to me. If the intention was to cripple the guards and the poisoner didn’t care if they lived or died as long as they were out of commission. If they didn’t mind being found out because it was all in aid of something bigger. Taking advantage of the weakness in our defenses. And soon.”
Lisa nodded, her face grim. “I know. I’m sure it was what was worrying Chief Nelson. But that’s for him and Chief Cameron to deal with. And after all, it’s just a theory. Our job is to find the perpetrator. Then we’ll know.”
David wished he could dismiss such speculation as easily as his partner. He was about to ask her for advice on how to focus on the job at hand when the knock came. They both looked to the door and saw the handle turn.
The door swung out, and there stood Crystal in the entrance, hesitating as she glanced from Lisa to him. She wasn’t wearing her hairnet yet, and David couldn’t help but think how beautiful she was. She would’ve looked as good with the hairnet.
His partner was all business. “Please come and take a seat Miss Sorenson.”
David tried to catch her eye as she walked in, to send a silent message. But she avoided eye contact with him. He wondered if Lisa had noticed, and if she’d read anything into it.
Crystal seemed composed as she took the seat facing Lisa. But despite appearing more collected than the others, David got the impression that she was barely managing to hold herself together. Taking his FURCS pad back out for making notes of the interview, he felt himself holding his breath. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
Starting the Slowpocalypse (Books 1-3 Omnibus) Page 27