Deadly Science

by Ken Brigham

  Shane turned off the computer and laid it on the coffee table. Katya sat in the chair that faced him.

  They looked at each other for a long time before Katya spoke.

  “I need your help, Shane,” she said.

  Shane didn’t like the sound of it. Of course, he wanted to help KiKi in any way he could, but there was an undertone of what sounded like desperation in her voice. Shane had never known KiKi to be desperate about anything. Well, almost anything.

  “Of course, KiKi,” Shane responded, reaching for her hand. “Of course.”

  Katya got up and walked through the French doors that separated the living room from the library. Shane followed her, and she closed the doors, shutting out the sounds from the alley. She fiddled for a moment with a remote, and the elegant strains of a Mozart sonata filled the room. Katya sat in a chair beside Shane and neither of them spoke for a while.

  “Did you know,” she said, “that listening to beautiful music does something to your brain to make it work better? It’s called the Mozart effect.”

  “It actually does something to your brain? How is that?”

  “Not really too surprising. You feel something and your brain is where feelings happen. So there must be some biology there.”

  “I suppose so. You should know. It just seems so mystical somehow. Not like the world where you operate.”

  “You’re wrong about that. That is exactly the world where I operate, demystifying apparent mysteries. That’s what research is about.”

  “Sounds a lot like detective work.”

  “It is, actually. Or I imagine it is. But your kind of detective work is what I need help with.”

  “Can’t imagine it, but tell me about it,” Shane said.

  Katya repeated her suspicion that Bonz had been deteriorating in the couple of months before his death. She added that she had also come to suspect that Beth Bartalak was hiding something about the data from the patients in the study of Cy’s drug.

  “What makes you think that?” Shane asked. “I know you don’t like her, but do you really think she is intellectually dishonest? That she would manipulate data? Isn’t that taking a big risk? Wouldn’t somebody be sure to discover it?”

  “I think she is capable of almost anything if she thought it would please Cy. She is pathologically devoted to the man for reasons that aren’t clear, at least not clear to me. I’d guess something to do with her relationship with her father if I wanted to be analytical. But I don’t know anything about that and don’t really care to. What I care a lot about is the integrity of what we are doing.”

  “So you’re suspicious. Do you have any evidence?”

  Katya hesitated. She wasn’t anxious to tell Shane that she had basically stolen data from Beth’s computer. Although she wasn’t proud of how she got the information, she was convinced that her action was justified by the potential importance of what she found. But she also knew how much Shane admired her dogged honesty. She loved him for that.

  “I think so,” she said.

  “So tell me what you have.”

  “I will, but you won’t be pleased with how I came by it, Shane.”

  “You stole it from Beth Bartalak’s computer, no doubt.”

  “Stole is a little harsh.”

  “Let’s don’t go there for now. Tell me what you have.”

  “I have some raw data on one of the subjects in the study of Cy’s drug that doesn’t fit with the data that Beth has been presenting to us,” Katya said, some nervousness creeping into her voice.

  “Bonz’s data?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but that is almost certainly the case. The material is coded. The subjects name is not there. But it sure sounds like it could be him. And the tests for whoever this was show rather marked deterioration of mental function in the last few months of follow up.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t Bonz, but someone who got the placebo,” Shane said.

  Shane was only vaguely familiar with how these drug tests were done, but he knew that some people got the drug, and some people got a look-alike pill without the active ingredient.

  “I thought of that, but none of the data that Beth has presented showed a pattern like this, regardless of which group they were in. I think Beth was deliberately altering these data in her analysis. That’s what I think.”

  “Can’t you just confront her?”

  “I don’t think I want to do that until I know more than I do now. Cy would blow a gasket if I accused Beth of scientific misconduct, and he would be tarred with that brush as well. It would not be a pretty sight.”

  “Any way you can link these data to Bonz directly? Isn’t there a key to the ID code somewhere?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “But you can’t get access to it, I suppose.”

  “Right.”

  Shane rested his chin in a palm and thought for a while. He was contemplating the challenge of figuring this out, but was also troubled by KiKi’s apparent compromise of her principles by basically stealing the data. Not hard to rationalize given her determined honesty about her work, but there was a paradox. Shane had certainly used some questionable methods to gather critical evidence in the distant past. But it was unlike KiKi not to put all her cards on the table.

  “Well,” Shane finally said. “I’m not sure what to say. If you can’t just insist on getting the identity of the person whose data is in this mysterious file, you’re sort of stuck. No way you can get the ID key without raising suspicions? An excuse of some sort?”

  “Probably not, and anyway I wouldn’t be comfortable with such deception, Shane. Surely you know that.”

  Shane thought he knew that, but then she had stolen information from someone’s computer, which didn’t seem that different. Deception is deception.

  “Hmm,” Shane mused. “So help me parse this, KiKi. Theft of supposedly secure information is OK, but a small ruse to obtain the key to interpreting the purloined info is not permitted? I fear I fail to see much of a distinction between the two.”

  “Maybe I should just come clean with Cy. Tell him what I have and what I suspect.”

  “Sounds like what I would expect you to do. Not what I’d do, but then we approach problem-solving in somewhat different ways. I’ve always presumed that that is because the nature of the problems we deal with is different. But this one sounds more like solving a crime than probing the secrets of the mind.”

  “But isn’t that how you solve a crime? Probe the secrets of the criminal mind?”

  “Not really. I don’t understand the criminal mind. I think most crime is not a rational activity. Motive is another matter. Of course we need to establish motive. That’s why Bonz’s murder is so baffling. There has to be a motive and we can’t come up with one so far.”

  “Well,” Katya answered. “The motive for Beth Bartalak altering Bonz’s data isn’t hard to figure out if my suspicion that he wasn’t doing well is right.”

  Shane said, “One usually establishes that there was a crime before looking for a motive, rather than the other way around. I find a motive in search of a crime a novel concept.”

  Katya responded sharply, “If this file I found is from Bonz Bagley’s studies, then there has certainly been what amounts to a crime in my book.”

  “Is it really that important?” Shane asked. “Are the results in one subject that important? Isn’t it the data from the whole group in the study that matters?”

  “Well, yes and no,” Katya answered. “Anecdotal results that are dramatic can have inordinate influence on how things are perceived. And Cy clearly uses Bonz’s response as ammunition with potential investors in his company. Cy says that those people are impressed with individual responses more than statistics.”

  Katya stood and paced about the room, obviously troubled by the ethical dilemma she had created for herself. She had not hesitated to retrieve the data from Beth Bartalak’s computer because, if Katya’s suspicions were right, the truth had to come to ligh
t somehow. And Beth obviously wasn’t going to reveal it voluntarily. Katya felt, even on reflection, that she had no choice. As with her research, she went where the hypothesis and the opportunities led her. True, she detested Beth, but this was not about personalities or vendettas.

  Shane wheeled himself out to the bar in the living room, poured a full glass of sherry, and returned to the library. The impeccable integrity that he so admired in KiKi would not be an asset in solving a crime. With a criminal investigation, Shane had always felt that the ends justified the means. But means were very important to KiKi. In her profession, methods and results were inextricably connected. One could not compromise either without damaging the whole process of discovery.

  “KiKi, my love,” Shane said, “I noticed that you brought provisions. I suggest that we avail ourselves of the fruits of Provence and put this discussion to rest for a bit.”

  “An excellent suggestion,” Katya replied.

  Beth Bartalak arrived at their Jackson Boulevard mansion early in the afternoon. She picked up the morning papers from the foyer and put them in the den beside the chair where Cy liked to sit for his afternoon drink. As she placed them on the side table, the front-page headline in the Tennessean leapt out at her. She read the article. The description of the presumed murder weapon concerned her. It was an uncannily accurate description of the gun her father had left her. Although she couldn’t imagine how they would ever connect her with the murder, she thought that she should take precautions. She would have to do something about the gun.

  She went into her study and stood for a while studying the six guns in the display case. She couldn’t imagine disposing of any of the precious gifts from her beloved father. But perhaps she shouldn’t leave that gun at the center of the display in such a conspicuous place. She opened the case and picked up the gun. She caressed it, relishing the feeling of the smooth cold steel. She put the gun in a drawer of her desk and rearranged the others to obscure the vacancy it left in the display. She would decide later where to put the special gun, somewhere where it could not be discovered. In the remote possibility that some potential connection of Bonz Bagley’s murder with her gun collection was made, she could say it was stolen, or that such a gun was not part of her collection. It should be easy enough to fabricate an explanation. The authorities would not be anxious to implicate Cy Bartalak’s wife in such a nefarious act. He was too important a person in the community. And if it came to that, Cy would protect her. Surely he would do that. He would have to. After all, she had done it for him.

  Beth wasn’t sure how much her husband knew about her gun collection. For the most part, they occupied separate spaces in their sprawling mansion. Cy had designed it that way. Beth wasn’t sure if he had ever been in her private study. They shared some common spaces—the den, the breakfast room, the dining room on those occasions when they had guests. But they had separate studies and separate bedrooms and dressing areas. Cy visited her bedroom on occasion when the notion struck him, but their other separate spaces were their own.

  In spite of that, Beth decided that she would keep Cy from seeing the newspaper story. There was an outside chance that he would recall that she had the rare gun collection, and she didn’t want to have to lie to him. She went back to the den, retrieved the copy of the morning paper and put it in the kitchen garbage compactor. If he asked, she would just tell him that they didn’t get the paper for some reason.

  Chapter 9

  Harold Whitsett Jensen, III, MD (Harry to his few intimates) wasn’t an expert neuropathologist, but he relished cutting brains. There was something sensual and intimate about it. The feel of the razor-sharp knife slipping smoothly through the fixed mass of fat and nerve that had been the control center of the person whose remains he had carefully dissected, parsing out bits to be examined under the microscope’s revealing eye, still thrilled him even after having done it more times than he could count. The brain cutting was the coup de grace, the climactic conclusion of the autopsy. But brains couldn’t be sliced fresh. Fresh brains were mush. It took a few days in formalin to give them the semi-solid consistency that Jensen relished feeling yield to his knife’s razor edge.

  But Jensen had not looked forward to delving into what was left of the brain of Bonz Bagley. It would be a messy job, and Jensen put it off as long as he could. So, it was three days after his desecration of the other parts of Bagley’s body when Dr. Jensen fished the mass of brain tissue from the container of fixative and plopped it on the stainless steel table. The upper parts of the brain, the cerebrum, were grossly distorted with large areas of hemorrhage and almost complete loss of the normal architecture. The usual elegant procedure of sliding the gleaming knife blade through the organ at two-centimeter intervals, creating a lovely symmetrical array of ovoid slices, wouldn’t be possible. But Jensen did the best he could to cut the mass into slices so that he could see if there was anything that could be learned of what was inside from an examination of the gross specimen.

  Jensen adjusted the overhead light so that it shone directly on the slices of tissue and scrutinized them. He was no expert, but there was something very strange there. The cerebral hemispheres were so distorted that he couldn’t say much about them. It did appear that the ventricles were enlarged, not surprisingly given the person’s age. Just the process of aging takes its toll on that organ; the tissue gradually shrinks so that the ventricles, the hollow spaces in the center, enlarge. But there was something about the region at the base of the right hemisphere where the structures were reasonably intact. There were holes barely large enough to see with the naked eye within the substance of the tissue, holes where there should have been solid tissue. This was not a result of acute trauma. Jensen had never seen anything like it before, and he had seen the insides of a lot of brains of all kinds of people.

  He snipped small pieces from several areas and put them in vials of fixative for later microscopic examination. But he couldn’t stop looking at the gross specimen and searching through his memory for something similar that he might have seen in the past. He just couldn’t come up with anything that he had seen or read about that was anything like what he was seeing in the brain of Bonz Bagley. Jensen was fascinated.

  He left the brain slices on the table and went into his small office beside the autopsy room. He took a pipe from the rack on his desk and fondled it for a minute, admiring the bearded face of the figure carved intricately into the meerschaum bowl. He zipped open a leather pouch and filled the pipe with the pungent latakia tobacco that he favored. He lit the pipe with the desktop lighter, aiming the flame carefully so as not to char the meerschaum. He drew a few puffs, relishing the sharp aroma, and pondered the strange anatomy of Bonz Bagley’s brain.

  It took several rings of the telephone on his desk to rouse Jensen from his thoughts.

  “This is Dr. Jensen,” he spoke distractedly into the mouthpiece.

  “Dr. Jensen,” Hardy Seltzer replied, deliberately avoiding addressing the pathologist as Harry; Seltzer was not an intimate of Jensen’s and did not care to be. “Do you have any more information from the Bagley autopsy?”

  “Ah, Detective Seltzer,” Jensen replied. “So good to hear from you.”

  Seltzer was too familiar with the pathologist’s penchant for idle chatter that always preceded any substantive conversation. Maybe it was an occupational trait of pathologists who spent most of their time in the lonely company of human remains that were indifferent to their clever banter. Jensen was the only pathologist that Hardy Seltzer had any contact with, but he thought that such a morbid profession probably attracted weirdoes.

  “Sure,” Hardy replied, “But do you have any information for me?”

  “Interesting that you should call just now,” Jensen said. “I was just this moment slicing up Mr. Bagley’s brain. It is the most enjoyable part of the procedure, you know.”

  “Sure,” Hardy answered. “But do you have any information?”

  “Well, not information, detective,”
Jensen said. “But some observations.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I’m going to need to consult with experts at the university, but there are some changes in the brain that I find strange.”

  “Strange?”

  “Strange. Unlike anything with which I am familiar, detective.”

  “When will you have something more definitive?”

  Hardy was losing patience with the pathologist, and it showed.

  “One cannot rush these things, detective,” Jensen replied. “I will need to contact the local experts at the university and have them review the findings with me. And we’ll need to review the microscopic sections. Be patient, Detective Seltzer. When I have something definitive, I will let you know.”

  Seltzer ended the call on his cell phone without responding. He was dealing with the Dickerson Road traffic while trying to see the street numbers. This was not very familiar territory for him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had driven this far out northeast of downtown. But, Shane Hadley’s Internet searches had come up with the address of a rare gun dealer (there were very few in the area, and Shane thought this one was especially interesting for reasons that he did not disclose) that was out here someplace and the two of them agreed that Hardy ought to pay the place a visit.

  He scanned the facades of pawn shops, down-market retail stores, and a variety of shabby-looking ethnic restaurants that might serve the best food in the city, for all he knew. He’d have to give some of them a try. Maybe Marge Bland would be up to venturing out here; she had been an adventurous soul as he remembered. Marge kept haunting his mind lately for some reason that escaped him. She was a pleasant if uninvited guest there. Did there have to be a reason?

  He located the place he was looking for in a strip mall sandwiched between a check cashing service and a drab looking storefront that proclaimed itself to be a Bolivian restaurant. The sign read just Rare Guns. Hardy parked and approached the small shop with blacked-out windows and a steel door that was painted an incongruous bright red. A bell that sounded oddly like that of a children’s ice cream vendor tinkled as he entered the empty shop.