Deadly Science

by Ken Brigham

  Katya had always thought that Cy and Beth were an odd couple. Cy seemed to be an olio of samplings from multiple ethnic gene pools, as his name suggested. He was a world traveler, comfortable moving in the circles of the moneyed classes. Beth was pretty much straight uncomplicated Texas tough. One would guess that this plain woman was a product of a much more homogenous source of genes and much simpler life experiences. But Beth was clearly devoted to Cy, pathologically so in Katya’s opinion. Beth virtually worshipped him. He could do no wrong. She may have also disliked Katya because Katya had no problem disagreeing with Cy. No doubt Beth thought it presumptuous to dare to disagree with the great and infallible object of her adoration. Bullshit! Katya thought. Cy Bartalak wasn’t half the man even a paraplegic Shane was. A woman like Beth could never understand that. But then Katya could care less what Beth Bartalak understood.

  The standing meeting on Monday mornings was with the three of them—Cy, Katya, and Beth. The main topic of the meeting in recent months had been the drug. Cy’s interest in the drug, and therefore Beth’s, bordered on obsession. They didn’t talk much about the data anymore. As far as Cy was concerned, there was no need to talk about the data. He was all about logistics. How to secure the financing of the startup that would get the drug into a phase III trial and how to move as quickly as possible to FDA approval. That’s when the really big money would come.

  Katya entered Cy’s office without knocking and was surprised to find him alone, staring out his office window. He was profiled against the light of the window. His flat, sloped forehead, massive blunt-ended nose, and protruding chin seen in profile made Katya acutely aware of what an ugly man Cy Bartalak was. He was half a head shorter than she was with a prominent stomach bulging over his belt. Lately, he had grown a scraggly mustache and goatee, which did nothing to improve his looks.

  “Is Beth coming?” Katya asked, intruding on Cy’s reverie.

  “No,” he answered without looking at her, “She won’t be here today.”

  That was very unusual, but Katya was relieved not to have to deal with the woman. That task often got the week off to a bad start. The previous day’s events had already headed things in a bad direction, and the last thing Katya needed that morning was a confrontation with Beth Bartalak. She didn’t ask for an explanation, and Cy didn’t offer one.

  Cy turned from the window, walked over to his desk, and sunk into the overstuffed leather chair, resting an elbow on the desk and cradling his substantial chin in the palm of his meaty left hand. Katya sat opposite him in the uncomfortable straight chair that he reserved for visitors.

  “Katya,” he said, “We’re making progress toward a deal on the drug.”

  “That’s nice,” she answered distractedly. After a pause, she added, “Did you see that Bonz Bagley was murdered? You know Bonz, from the alley? One of the subjects in the drug study?”

  “Yeah,” he answered.

  He got up from his chair, walked to the window, and presented again his grotesque profile to Katya.

  “That’s too bad,” he said. “Too bad. Wasn’t he one of the subjects that got an especially robust response to the drug?”

  “That’s right,” she answered.

  She was annoyed at Cy’s apparent lack of any personal feeling about the murder. But she wasn’t surprised. Personal feelings for his fellow humans was not Cy’s long suit.

  “I’d like to review Bagley’s data,” she said.

  “Why is that?” he snapped.

  “I think I mentioned to you a while back that I thought he was deteriorating. I’d actually scheduled him for some follow-up tests.”

  “Beth told me that,” Cy answered. “But I don’t see why. The study is almost over. The data are solid. We just need to move this thing forward as fast as we can. We don’t need any more data right now. That’ll come in time with the phase III studies.”

  “OK,” Katya said. “But I’d still like to look at Bonz’s data. Can you have Beth give me access to it?”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “It is necessary,” she responded. “She has all of the data from the drug study firewalled in her computer or sequestered somewhere, and she is the only one who can access it. She refuses to let me see the data.”

  “Well, of course,” Cy answered. “The integrity of those data is critical if we’re to use them with the FDA. We can’t have those documents out there for just anybody to see.”

  “I don’t think you would describe me as just anybody,” Katya said, some indignation creeping into her voice. “After all, I collected most of the specimens and managed the trial.”

  “I know, I know,” he answered. “I’ll talk to Beth about it. The two of you really should try to get along better, you know?”

  “Thanks,” was all Katya could bring herself to say while keeping a civil tone to her voice.

  She didn’t think that attempting to get along with Beth Bartalak was a useful way for her to spend time and energy. Beth was Cy’s problem.

  Shane Hadley had retrieved his worn copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes and was searching through the index looking for The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot. It was one of the stories recounted by Dr. Watson, as he recalled. It was the devil’s foot in the title that surfaced in his mind as he contemplated the gait of Bonz’s fleeing murderer. Shane had the vague recollection of the title of the story but also a feeling that the story actually had nothing to do with a real foot. But, unable to remember for sure what the story was about, he felt compelled to look it up.

  Shane had wheeled himself out onto the balcony facing Printers Alley. Sunshine filtered through the iron latticework of the balcony supports etching their filigree patterns onto the brick wall. A soft breeze ruffled his hair. He looked up and down the alley, almost empty at this time of morning.

  Shane had been fascinated with Sherlock Holmes since his teen years. His parents desperately wanted him to follow in the footsteps of his successful physician father, but he was seduced by the intellectual challenge of crime-solving before they could head him in a proper direction. Arthur Conan Doyle, a physician of another sort, got to Shane first. His parents never recovered from that disappointment. They thought that Shane had wasted his considerable gifts on a lifetime effort to realize an adolescent fantasy.

  Shane’s parents didn’t understand any of his life choices. The University of the South at Sewanee instead of Princeton. Then wasting the Rhodes scholarship by choosing advanced study in English instead of something in the hard sciences or medicine. What good did he think an advanced degree in English would do him? And coming back from Oxford with a phony accent and with his Sherlock Holmes obsession even stronger. Taking a job with the Metro Police? This would have been ludicrous if it weren’t their son. And the Russian woman. At least she was a real doctor, but still, she wasn’t the sort of person they had expected for a daughter-in-law. The seedy lifestyle. And, of course, the accident, if that’s what it was. So many things about Shane saddened and disappointed his parents.

  As Shane suspected, the devil’s foot of the Holmes story had nothing to do with a real foot. Pedis diaboli was an African plant, source of a peculiar poison that presented the great detective with an especially challenging case of multiple murders. Nothing to do with a real human foot that turned slightly inward, creating the slightly lopsided gait that he couldn’t get out of his mind. In spite of that, he couldn’t help thinking of Bonz Bagley’s murder as the Pedis Diaboli Case.

  Case. He hadn’t really thought about being involved in a case in several years. But this one came to him. He didn’t seek it out. And he was intrigued by the possibility of getting involved in a real case again. He felt a nascent stirring of the old juices.

  Looking for connections, even tenuous ones, between cases that interested Shane and the fictional experiences of Sherlock Holmes was a habit. The hunt was an excuse to resurrect the old leather-bound volume that he had bought at Blackwell’s in Oxford during his student days as
a Rhodes Scholar at Lincoln College. And an excuse to recall the freedom and excitement of those days. It was probably the immersion in the real history surrounding Conan Doyle’s creation as well as the fiction that was the basis for his master’s thesis in English that sealed Shane’s fate. He had forever perceived the line separating reality and fantasy as more than a little artificial so that reconciling his Sherlock Holmes obsession with a career spent attempting to understand the real motives and actions of violent people wasn’t that difficult. He hadn’t considered the personal risk. Since suffering the results of that miscalculation, it seemed to Shane that the line between reality and fantasy had faded even more. He needed fantasy to thrive in his new world, suddenly shrunken by his immobility. His real world was small, but his imaginary one was boundless.

  Shane was contemplating whether to phone the detective, Hardy Seltzer, to tell him about the odd gait of the man he’d seen fleeing the alley when he heard the phone ring. He wheeled himself inside and answered it.

  “Hadley here,” he said.

  He pronounced here as the two-syllabled Oxfordian he-ah, a lingering influence of those seminal years.

  “Shane,” Hardy Seltzer’s raspy monotone was unmistakable, “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Hardy,” Shane answered. “I was just thinking of calling you.”

  “Really?” Seltzer responded. “Do you have some thoughts about the Bonz case?”

  “Probably nothing important,” Shane said, “but a small detail that I omitted when we talked earlier.”

  “Yes?”

  “It has to do with the way the person I saw leaving the alley ran, his gait. There was something odd about it. It was his right foot that appeared to toe inward so that he favored it a bit listing ever so slightly to starboard with each step. Subtle. And I’m not even sure why I noticed it except that there was something familiar about it. Probably not important but I thought that I should mention it.”

  Seltzer was reminded of Shane’s legendary fondness of nautical terms. He smiled to himself.

  “Familiar?” Seltzer queried. “Did you associate that with someone specific?”

  “Not really. It’s quite vague at the moment. But I keep trying to sort it out. If I come up with anything I’ll let you know,” Shane answered. “What were you calling about?”

  Seltzer was reluctant to dismiss this new information considering the source, but for the life of him, he didn’t see how it could be much help. He jotted the information down in the small note pad that he used for keeping track of things. He had the habit of starting a fresh note pad with each new case, and this one was just beginning to accumulate a few pages of his jottings.

  “I just wanted to run something by you,” Seltzer answered, “It’s about the weapon in the Bonz Bagley case.”

  “You have a weapon?”

  “Not really, but we have an interesting description of it.”

  “From the slugs? The NIBIN?”

  Shane pronounced the acronym as though it was a word, nibin, a sure sign of an insider.

  “That’s right,” Seltzer was reminded again of Shane’s history, wondering if he was sensing something of the old Sherlock Shane.

  Seltzer continued. “The single slug recovered from the dog appears to have been fired by a very unusual weapon. A collector’s item. And very expensive. What do you make of that?”

  “There should be some registries, shouldn’t there? If it’s rare enough you may even be able to get names and locations of the owners,” Shane’s wheels were turning now; you could sense that. “But strange, isn’t it? Why would a collector of expensive guns want to kill Bonz? And even if he did, why use such a unique weapon? Hardy,” Shane said, “can you give me the details about the weapon? I may be able to help with some of the leg work. I am quite familiar with computers now.”

  Leg work, Seltzer thought. An unfortunate choice of metaphor. But Shane seemed to use it unselfconsciously.

  “Sure,” Seltzer responded. “Any help you can give us would be appreciated.”

  So, the old juices had been stirred, Seltzer thought. This could prove to be a particularly interesting case for more reasons than one. He hadn’t worked directly with Shane Hadley but knew the myths well. This could prove very interesting. He told Shane everything he knew about the weapon, agreed to stay in touch, and rang off.

  Shane hung up the phone and wheeled himself back out onto the deck. The afternoon sun splayed building shadows across the cobblestones that had paved the alley since its salad days as the epicenter of Nashville’s Gentleman’s Quarter, where the well-heeled from the affluent west and south parts of town ventured for the kinds of entertainments that were not found at The Club. Shane had grown up with those people. He was more than familiar with the façade, the open secrets they fed on. It was that pretense that he had needed to escape. Although his Anglophilia was a kind of affectation, at least it was transparent.

  Some remnants of Printers Alley’s checkered past were still there. The Brass Rail, now a strip club, had been The Brass Rail Stables where, in an earlier era, you could get a drink when it wasn’t yet legal and most anything else you wanted. No doubt, there was still some of that marginal commerce going on down there. But the cache of those early days was gone.

  Shane looked across at Bonz’s club, now locked down and obviously abandoned. The vacant chair sat in its usual place, an icon that conjured the memory of its former occupant. One could imagine Bonz’s spindly frame suddenly materializing there from the dark beyond, his precious Pecan Pie perched impudently on his lap.

  Shane had often thought that all murder was pointless. Nothing was resolved by such an act regardless of the motive. In this case, the murder seemed especially pointless. He could not imagine a motive, and even if there was one, Bonz was such an innocent and benign victim. Killed by a well off gun collector? Truly strange. But, of course, it was always the inexplicable crimes that were the most intriguing.

  He sat on the balcony for a while as the sunlight disappeared. He remembered that other small world across the pond, the heady enclave of mossy elegance and brainy sophistication where he had fallen in love with all things English…and with KiKi. He remembered his life before the accident and relished for a moment the memory of past pleasures. He felt, too, the nascent thrill of the hunt, the challenge of explaining the apparently inexplicable. It was that challenge that had seduced him all those years earlier. The adrenalin surge that had always come with the realization that a game is afoot. And he had the distinct feeling that there was a game afoot and that for the first time in a while he might be a player.

  Chapter 4

  Beth Bartalak drove to The Club on Monday morning. She went directly to the gym and started her usual long run on the treadmill. She didn’t explain to Cy why she chose to take the day off. She just said that she didn’t feel well, and he didn’t inquire further. She had told him the truth. She didn’t feel well.

  Although she rarely mentioned the fact, Beth had been a track star when she was in college at TCU, and she still kept in shape by running regularly. She preferred running out of doors, but the heat and humidity in midsummer in the city often drove her to the air-conditioned comfort of The Club’s gym and to the treadmill. She tuned the treadmill-mounted personal TV to CNN as she ran.

  The murder of the Nashville semi-celebrity Bonz Bagley in Printers Alley had made the national news, and CNN was doing a brief segment about it that included some file footage of a younger version of Bagley playing the bones on the old TV show. Beth knew that Bonz Bagley was one of the subjects in the study of Cy’s drug. She also knew that his data were especially important to Cy. It was an anecdote, of course, but an impressive one. Cy always said that the money guys were more impressed with a good individual story than with tables of boring statistics. The anecdote was safe now. No chance that the true story would see the light of day. Beth had made sure of that.

  Beth didn’t want to see the news story. She switched channels. Her legs were
starting to feel heavy, although she had covered only a couple of miles and wasn’t running very fast. She stopped the treadmill and went to the sauna. She felt nervous and the penetrating heat from the sauna seemed to calm her. The sweat washing down her body felt good. She lay back and closed her eyes trying to let the heat also purge her mind.

  Beth was surprised at the intensity of her reaction. Killing living things was not a new experience for her. She grew up hunting with her father. She had killed all sorts of animals. She didn’t see why killing a human should be that different. And a human approaching the end of his days anyway. It wasn’t very difficult to decide to do it. It had to be done and she was the only one who knew that. It wasn’t very hard to actually do it either. There was something particularly satisfying about using a weapon carefully selected from the collection that her father had left her to accomplish something tangible. It brought life to the collection, gave it meaning beyond the aesthetics that motivated her father.

  She had never understood the aesthetics of firearms. There were a lot of things about her father that she didn’t understand. The guns were nice looking, but she thought they had to do something useful to be fully appreciated. And Beth learned from her father the value of taking matters in her own hands. “You make your own bed,” he often told her. If he were still alive, maybe he would finally be proud of her.