Deadly Science

by Ken Brigham

  “It certainly wasn’t me,” Shane answered. “I doubt that anyone would come to me looking for news anyway. Who even knows that I’m helping you with the investigation?”

  “You tell me, Shane,” Hardy said. “I haven’t told anybody.”

  “Neither have I. It’s probably good to keep it that way.”

  “Yeah.”

  After a pause, Shane asked, “Who in your shop knows about the gun?”

  “The ballistics person who was covering Sunday for sure. The info’s also in my report so the big brass should have known. That’s assuming they read the report, and they might have since this thing is bound to attract a lot of attention.”

  Everybody in the department knew that the chief and his cronies didn’t pay much attention to the daily reports from the detectives in the field unless it was a high profile case, something that might get the chief some air time or ink in the local press.

  “That’s for sure,” Shane answered. “The chief wouldn’t miss a chance like this if I remember him correctly.”

  “You do.”

  “Could he be the leak?”

  “Doubt it. If he wanted the info out, he’d want credit. Probably do a high profile press conference or something like that.”

  “Yeah,” Shane responded. “This has all the earmarks of some intrepid reporter with an inside contact.”

  “That bothers me. The story byline was Harvey Green’s. I know him and he’s the only one at the paper that I trust not to take potshots at the force. I’ve been a source on occasion, but not this time. He’s tried to contact me but I’ve avoided him.”

  “Must have another inside source. What about the ballistics guy?”

  “Gal, actually,” Hardy answered. “I don’t know her very well. She’s pretty new, that’s why she had to cover on the weekend. Low person on the totem pole gets that gig.”

  “Among other gigs,” Shane said.

  “Right. Anyway, I don’t know her well enough to guess what she’d do. I’ll confront her and see how she reacts.”

  “That’s a good idea. I really do think that we should guard any information about the case very closely. If the murderer is a rich and influential local, broadcasting information that points that way prematurely might precipitate events that would complicate the situation even further. Having some high roller leaning on the department brass and the politicos won’t do much for the cause of truth and justice.”

  Hardy was tempted to add and the American Way but restrained himself. He was getting more comfortable with Shane but was still a little guarded in their conversations.

  Hardy said. “Agree. I’ll talk to the ballistics gal.”

  Neither of them wanted to end the conversation, but neither had anything else to say at the moment.

  After a long lull, Hardy said, “This thing about it being a woman still bothers me, Shane. I just don’t see it.”

  “It seems to me that based on what little we have, the possibility can’t be ignored.”

  “It’s putting a lot of confidence in how the person ran. Pardon me, Shane, but that seems like making a big deal out of a really small observation.”

  “That is true, Hardy, my man, that is true. But it’s such small observations that sometimes answer big questions. We’ll see. We’ll see.”

  Seltzer really did think that Shane was pushing in the wrong direction. Maybe the legendary detective’s powers had waned during the years of disuse. It was interesting to see how he went about it, but Seltzer was starting to worry about the investigation getting off track. He knew how to develop a case. There was a standard approach that usually worked. Maybe he was getting too enamored of who Shane had been, mixing that up with the different person he was now. But then, apparently Shane Hadley had always been unorthodox, not one for paying overmuch attention to the rules. That intrigued Hardy alright, but he needed to keep focused on the job at hand. And he had a lot of respect for rules. Hardy liked order.

  That’s what Hardy Seltzer was thinking as he drove the familiar route from his East Nashville flat down Woodland Street, across the bridge to the square, around the courthouse with its twin marble fountains still illuminated in the morning dusk and into the covered parking garage under the police headquarters. He was also thinking about Marge Bland.

  Katya Karpov arrived early at the lab on Tuesday morning. She hadn’t slept well. After lying awake for an hour staring at the ceiling and listening to Shane’s steady breathing, sensing the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest beside her, she got up, showered, had a cup of coffee, and left for work. She left a note on the bedside table for the soundly sleeping Shane.

  That was unusual. Shane almost always maneuvered himself out of bed while Katya was getting ready for work and wheeled up to the kitchen where they shared morning coffee before she left. They both enjoyed the morning time together. But that morning, her thoughts were elsewhere.

  Katya was the first to arrive at the lab. She was still troubled by what seemed to her a discrepancy between Bonz Bagley’s apparent recent clinical condition and the data. She had decided to go over the stuff in Beth Bartalak’s computer in more detail if she could get at it again. Katya went directly to Beth’s computer and opened it up. Good, Beth had again left the machine without logging off. Not like Beth to be that careless, but good. Katya navigated to the folders that she thought seemed most likely to contain the data from the drug studies and e-mailed the folders to her personal address as attachments. She then went to the sent messages and deleted the ones sent to her address. She shut off the machine and went to her small office beside the lab. She closed the door and fired up her computer. She spent several hours there.

  Beth Bartalak went to work late. She made breakfast for Cy and sat quietly with him while he ate. They didn’t retrieve the morning papers since he was in a hurry to leave. It was not an unusual morning.

  After Cy left, Beth took her time getting ready. There was no need to hurry. The feeling of satisfaction at an essential job decisively done lingered with her from the previous day. She had a leisurely shower, brushed her teeth, took her morning complement of supplements, and applied her makeup. On her way out the door, she picked up the newspapers from the porch and tossed them into the entrance hall. She didn’t notice the headline.

  Beth felt good as she drove down Jackson Boulevard and turned right on Belle Meade. She drove slowly, taking time to admire the columned estates of the old moneyed folk that fronted the venerable boulevard. In recent years you could buy your way into this life if you had enough money, even if it was new (Cy had done that), but that hadn’t always been true. And there was still a clutch of the multigenerational moneyed who controlled The Club and the subtleties of access to other amenities that defined the two distinct social classes of the city’s rich. Time had brought some change that was accepted if not welcomed, but the line between the vieux and the nouveau riche was still there and carefully maintained.

  Beth made her way down to West End Avenue, turned right, and drove on north to the medical center that sprawled across several acres at the southern edge of downtown next to the university. She could not keep herself from looking for Katya’s white Porsche when she drove into the parking deck even though the site of the car always riled her. It was there, in its usual place. In spite of Cy's defense of that woman, Beth still harbored the hope that one day before too long, that parking space would be empty. Cy had to understand eventually that Katya Karpov’s departure from their group was inevitable. He just had to understand that.

  When Beth entered the lab, she noted that the door was unlocked and the lights were on, but no one else was there. Then she saw that Katya’s office door was closed and light was visible in the crack beneath it. The bitch was in there. God only knew what she was up to.

  Beth had decided to delete everything related to the study of Cy’s drug from her personal computer in the lab. There was no need to keep it there anymore, and since it seemed clear that Katya was determined to do everything
she could to get at the data, there was every reason to make doubly sure that it was secured where it couldn’t be discovered.

  When Beth opened the computer, she realized that she had left it the previous afternoon without logging off and was disappointed in herself. She often forgot to log off lately. She really must be more careful about that. She navigated to the C drive and started the task of highlighting and deleting each of the folders that contained any of the data from the drug study. This would be a load off her mind. She could assure Cy that everything was secure. That ought to satisfy him if he had any doubts.

  On the other side of the door that separated her office from the lab where Beth Bartalak sat, Katya pored over one particular folder that she had retrieved surreptitiously from Beth’s computer. The folder was titled IIa-1 and it contained apparently raw data from cognitive tests and serum protein analyses from one of the subjects in the study of Cy’s drug. After carefully studying the data, it was clear to Katya that this subject either got the placebo or didn’t respond favorably to the drug. What troubled Katya was that both the computerized tests of cognitive function and the protein studies indicated that this subject had initially improved and then deteriorated considerably during the last few months of the study. The file had not been updated after the code was broken so that there was no way to tell whether subject IIa-1 had drawn the lot that assigned him to the treatment group or to the control group. But Katya was troubled because she could not recall any of the subjects in either group who had been shown to get this much worse according to Beth’s summaries of the data. Since this file included measurements from six month follow up studies and only one subject in the study had completed the six month observation period, these data had to be from the first subject entered into the study. That subject was Bonz Bagley. Katya wanted to establish that with absolutely no room for doubt. Katya noted that the subject was male. She took out a note pad and pen from the desk drawer and began to write down everything in the file that might identify this subject—age, gender, height, weight and of course the study number which could be linked to the subject’s actual identity if one had access to the de-identification code which was held by the research pharmacist. That’s who was responsible for dispensing either drug or placebo for each subject, the choice of agent determined from a list of random numbers. No one else involved in the study had access to the code until the study was ended. Beth was the keeper of the data. Only the data that had been analyzed by Beth were reviewed by Katya or anyone else as far as Katya knew, including Cy. Up to now, Beth alone had been privy to the complete set of raw data. Beth had assumed the task of analyzing the data and insisted on presenting only the fully analyzed results to the group. Cy had supported that. But this folder appeared to contain original information…raw data.

  “So, Detective Seltzer,” the assistant chief of the Metropolitan Police Force reared back in his leather chair, tilted his head back and peered at Hardy through the narrow slits of the rectangular reading glasses perched precariously near the tip of his nose. “Been hobnobbing with your buddy at the paper again, I see.”

  A copy of the paper with the troubling headline lay on the assistant chief’s desk.

  “It wasn’t me,” Hardy answered, “Swear to it. Green tried to contact me, but I’ve avoided him.”

  No need to play games with his boss about his acquaintance with the reporter. That relationship had served the department well over the years, avoiding some potential embarrassments. Harvey Green could be counted on to do his homework and write honest, well-informed stories.

  “So where did Green get his information?”

  What bothered the assistant chief was that the morning headline was the first he had heard of this. As was his usual practice, he had not read Seltzer’s report until after he saw the newspaper story. Neither had his superiors, the deputy chief and the chief himself. None of them had time to read all of those often useless reports usually written more to create the impression that the author was working harder than he actually was than to report anything relevant.

  “Don’t know,” Hardy answered. “Could have been the person on weekend ballistics. I’m looking into that.”

  Hardy dealt with his superiors by telling the truth but not too much of it.

  The assistant chief got up from his chair, tossed his reading glasses on the desk, and started pacing about the room. To follow him, Hardy had to rotate back and forth in his chair, like watching a sporting event of some kind. Hardy noticed that his boss was putting on more weight and walked with a hitch like he had a bad knee. He was showing his age more than Hardy had noticed before. The guy’s hair had become almost completely white, and there were deep furrows in his brow and at the corners of his mouth.

  “Hardy,” the assistant chief stopped just in front of where the detective sat and looked him in the eye, “I know you are good at what you do, and I’m not worried about trusting you with this case. But there’s likely to be an unhealthy interest on the part of the media and one of my jobs is to control that. So be sure you keep me fully informed. I don’t want to learn anything I didn’t already know about this case from the evening news or the morning paper. The last thing I need is to be blindsided by a reporter who knows more than I do about it. That’s the last thing any of us needs.”

  “Yes sir,” Hardy answered.

  “So, we’re agreed on that. What else have you got?”

  “You know about the gun,” Hardy answered, trying to decide whether to reveal the possibility that the murderer was a woman. “The news story was pretty accurate about that. So, unless the gun was stolen, the perp must be a collector, and one with a lot of dough to spend on the hobby.”

  “Yeah, I got that, although it doesn’t make much sense. A gun like that could be a dead giveaway. More likely the gun was stolen, don’t you think?”

  “I’m working that angle as well.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, there is a remote possibility that the perp was female.”

  There, Hardy had said it.

  “Female? Very unlikely, Hardy. What raises that possibility?”

  “Well, the only reliable witness just saw the perp running away from the scene, and, while he didn’t get a good enough look to identify the person, he thought there was something feminine about the way the perp ran.”

  “Pretty flimsy, Hardy. You know as well as I do that this is not the kind of crime that women do…unless there’s something in Bonz’s private life you haven’t found out.”

  “Nope,” Hardy replied. “Bonz’s private life, at least in recent years, was pretty boring. Nothing at all there that we can find.”

  “Maybe you better go over all that again,” the assistant chief said.

  “Of course, of course. We’ll turn over all the rocks we can find.”

  “Good, good,” the assistant chief said, obviously ending the conversation. “And be sure to keep me informed. Like I said, I don’t want any more surprises here."

  Back in his office, Hardy rehashed the conversation. Maybe Hardy should have told his boss about Shane Hadley’s involvement. The reason he hadn’t was that he feared that the assistant chief would nix the idea. Even though Hardy had his doubts about the direction Shane was taking things, Hardy still wanted to keep up that interaction. He thought he might learn something. And, too, he was enjoying getting to know Shane Hadley.

  Shane could not rid himself of the notion that he had seen the person running away from Bonz’s lifeless body before. He even felt that he may have seen the same person running through the alley. Especially early in the mornings, when he occasionally sat on the balcony contemplating how he might amuse himself through another long day without Katya, he would watch the occasional jogger passing along below. Maybe that was it. Maybe the murderer was a downtown morning jogger with an unusual gait that stuck in his subconscious, one of those insignificant observations that just stuck somewhere in a remote cranny of his brain, unattached to his consciousness because t
here was nothing there for it to attach to.

  He wheeled himself out onto the deck. Long afternoon shadows stretched down the narrow street, dark swaths slashed across the splashes of sunlight leaking through the narrow slits of space that separated the surrounding buildings. Shane stared down at the alley, rummaging through his brain, trying desperately to locate that elusive specific bit of memory.

  Chapter 8

  Shane sat in the living room, staring at the screen of his laptop, and was not aware of the sound of the garage door as Katya arrived home. He had been sitting there for a while, considering what he could not help thinking of as the Pedis diaboli case and searching for anything he could find about collectors of rare guns in the city and its environs, specifically anything about the rare gun that seemed the best fit for the slugs retrieved in the investigation of Bonz’s murder. He had had little success. Most of the collectors of such guns seemed to be concentrated in Texas. Big surprise.

  On her way home, Katya had stopped at Provence, an elegant little boutique deli in Hillsboro Village near the medical center, and picked up some take out for dinner along with a selection of cheeses and a baguette. She dropped her briefcase by the bar, deposited the food in the kitchen, and came back to stand beside Shane, caressing his shoulder. He looked up at her and she kissed him warmly.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “I’m looking for the owner of a very rare antique gun.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re working.”

  “Sort of.”

  “Is this about Bonz’s murder?”

  “It is. I’ve gotten sort of unofficially involved. Helping out one of my old colleagues. I’m actually beginning to enjoy it.”

  “Well, I hope to hell you find out who did it. It really disturbs me to think that anyone would do such a thing.”

  “Afraid our species is capable of all kinds of inexplicable acts of violence, my dear,” Shane answered.