Transgressions

by Ed McBain

“Luminux. Right, Luminux . . . I’d really like to know, I mean, if it’s not against any rules or anything, what you want to know for. I mean, and what are you doing here? You haven’t really said.”

  “We’re investigating some suicides.”

  “Suicides?” he asked, frowning. “And Luminux is involved?”

  “Yes indeedy,” LaTour said with all the cheer that the word required.

  “But. . . it’s based on a mild diazepam derivative. It’d be very difficult to fatally overdose on it.”

  “No, they died from other causes. But we found—”

  The door swung open and a strikingly beautiful woman walked into the office. She blinked at the visitors and said a very unsorrowful, “Sorry. Thought you were alone.” She set a stack of folders on Montrose’s desk.

  “These are some police officers from Westbrook County,” the president told her.

  She looked at them more carefully. “Police. Is something wrong?”

  Tal put her at forty. Long, serpentine face with cool eyes, very beautiful in a European fashion-model way. Slim legs with runner’s calves. Tal decided that she was like Sheldon’s Gaelic assistant, an example of some predatory genus very different from Mac McCaffrey’s.

  Neither Tal nor LaTour answered her question. Montrose introduced her—Karen Billings. Her title was a mouthful but it had something to do with product support and patient relations.

  “They were just asking about Luminux. There’ve been some problems, they’re claiming.”

  “Problems?”

  “They were just saying . . .” Montrose pushed his glasses higher on his nose. “Well, what were you saying?”

  Tal continued, “A couple of people who killed themselves had three times the normal amount of Luminux in their systems.”

  “But that can’t kill them. It couldn’t have. I don’t see why . . .” Her voice faded and she looked toward Montrose. They eyed each other, poker-faced. She then said coolly to LaTour, “What exactly would you like to know?”

  “First of all, how could they get it into their bloodstream?” LaTour sat back, the chair creaking alarmingly. Tal wondered if he’d put his feet up on Montrose’s desk.

  “You mean how could it be administered?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Orally’s the only way. It’s not available in an IV form yet.”

  “But could it be mixed in food or a drink?”

  “You think somebody did that?” Montrose asked. Billings remained silent, looking from Tal to LaTour and back again with her cautious, swept-wing eyes.

  “Could it be done?” Tal asked.

  “Of course,” the president said. “Sure. It’s water soluble. The vehicle’s bitter—”

  “The—?”

  “The inert base we mix it with. The drug itself is tasteless but we add a compound to make it bitter so kids’ll spit it out if they eat it by mistake. But you can mask that with sugar or—”

  “Alcohol?”

  Billings snapped, “Drinking isn’t recommended when taking—”

  LaTour grumbled, “I’m not talking about the fucking fine print on the label. I’m talking about could you hide the flavor by mixing it in a drink?”

  She hesitated. Then finally answered, “One could.” She clicked her nails together in impatience or anger.

  “So what’s it do to you?”

  Montrose said, “It’s essentially an anti-anxiety and mood-elevating agent, not a sleeping pill. It makes you relaxed. You get happier.”

  “Does it mess with your thinking?”

  “There’s some cognitive dimunition.”

  “English?” LaTour grumbled.

  “They’d feel slightly disoriented—but in a happy way.”

  Tal recalled the misspellings in the note. “Would it affect their handwriting and spelling?”

  Dangrous. . .

  “It could, yes.”

  Tal said. “Would their judgment be affected?”

  “Judgment?” Billings asked harshly. “That’s subjective.”

  “Whatta you mean?”

  “There’s no quantifiable measure for one’s ability to judge something.”

  “No? How ‘bout if one puts a gun to one’s head and pulls the trigger?” LaTour said. “I call that bad judgment. Any chance we agree on that?”

  “What the fuck’re you getting at?” Billings snapped.

  “Karen,” Montrose said, pulling off his designer glasses and rubbing his eyes.

  She ignored her boss. “You think they took our drug and decided to kill themselves? You think we’re to blame for that? This drug—”

  “This drug that a couple of people popped—maybe four people—and then killed themselves. Whatta we say about that from a statistical point of view?” LaTour turned to Tal.

  “Well within the percentile of probability for establishing a causal relationship between the two events.”

  “There you go. Science has spoken.”

  Tal wondered if they were playing the good-cop/bad-cop routine you see in movies. He tried again. “Could an overdose of Luminux have impaired their judgment?”

  “Not enough so that they’d decide to kill themselves,” she said firmly. Montrose said nothing.

  “That your opinion too?” LaTour muttered to him.

  The president said, “Yes, it is.”

  Tal persisted, “How about making them susceptible?”

  Billings leapt in with, “I don’t know what you mean. . . . This is all crazy.”

  Tal ignored her and said levelly to Montrose, “Could somebody persuade a person taking an overdose of Luminux to kill themselves?”

  Silence filled the office.

  Billings said, “I strongly doubt it.”

  “But you ain’t saying no.” LaTour grumbled.

  A glance between Billings and Montrose. Finally he pulled his wire-rims back on, looked away and said, “We’re not saying no.”

  ∞

  They next morning Tal and LaTour arrived at the station house at the same time, and the odd couple walked together through the Detective Division pen into Tal’s office.

  They looked over the case so far and found no firm leads.

  “Still no who,” LaTour grumbled. “Still no why.”

  “But we’ve got a how,” Tal pointed out. Meaning the concession about Luminux making one suggestible.

  “Fuck how. I want who. ”

  At just that moment they received a possible answer.

  Shellee stepped into Tal’s office. Pointedly ignoring the homicide cop, she said, “You’re back. Good. Got a call from the P-I-I team in Greeley. They said a neighbor saw a woman in a small, dark car arrive at the Bensons’ house about an hour before they died. She was wearing sunglasses and a tan or beige baseball cap. The neighbor didn’t recognize her.”

  “Car?” LaTour snapped.

  It’s hard to ignore an armed, 250-pound, goateed man named Bear but Shellee was just the woman for the job.

  Continuing to speak to her boss, she said, “They weren’t sure what time she got there but it was before lunch. She stayed maybe forty minutes then left. That’d be an hour or so before they killed themselves.” A pause. “The car was a small sedan. The witness didn’t remember the color.”

  “Did you ask about the—” LaTour began.

  “They didn’t see the tag number,” she told Tal. “Now, that’s not all. DMV finally calls back and tells me that Sandra Whitley drives a blue BMW 325.”

  “Small wheelbase,” Tal said.

  “And, getting better ‘n’ better, Boss. Guess who’s leaving town before her parents’ memorial service.”

  “Sandra?”

  “How the hell d’you find that out?” LaTour asked.

  She turned coldly to him. “Detective Simms asked to me organize all the evidence from the Whitley crime scene. Because, like he says, having facts and files out of order is as bad as not having them at all. I found a note in the Whitley evidence file with an airline locator number. It
was for a flight from Newark today to San Francisco, continuing on to Hawaii. I called and they told me it was a confirmed ticket for Sandra Whitley. Return is open.”

  “Meaning the bitch might not be coming back at all,” LaTour said. “Going on vacation without saying goodbye to the folks? That’s fucking harsh.”

  “Good job,” Tal told Shellee.

  Eyes down, a faint smile of acknowledgment.

  LaTour dropped into one of Tal’s chairs, belched softly and said, “You’re doing such a good job, Sherry, here, look up whatever you can about this shit.” He offered her the notes on Luminux.

  “It’s Shellee,” she snapped and glanced at Tal, who mouthed, “Please.”

  She snatched them from LaTour’s hand and clattered down the hall on her dangerous heels.

  LaTour looked over the handwritten notes she’d given them and growled, “So what about the why? A motive?”

  Tal spread the files out of his desk—all the crime scene information, the photos, the notes he’d taken.

  What were the common denominators? The deaths of two couples. Extremely wealthy. The husbands ill, yes, but not hopelessly so. Drugs that make you suggestible.

  A giddy lunch then suicide, a drink beside a romantic fire then suicide . . .

  Romantic . . .

  “Hmm,” Tal mused, thinking back to the Whitleys’.

  “What hmm?”

  “Let’s think about the wills again.”

  “We tried that,” LaTour said.

  “But what if they were about to be changed?”

  “Whatta you mean?”

  “Try this for an assumption: Say the Whitleys and their daughter had some big fight in the past week. They were going to change their will again—this time to cut her out completely.”

  “Yeah, but their lawyer’d know that.”

  “Not if she killed them before they talked to him. I remember smelling smoke from the fire when I walked into the Whitley house. I thought they’d built this romantic fire just before they killed themselves. But maybe they hadn’t. Maybe Sandra burned some evidence—something about changing the will, memos to the lawyer, estate planning stuff. Remember, she snatched the mail at the house. One was to the lawyer. Maybe that was why she came back—to make sure there was no evidence left. Hell, wished I’d searched her purse. I just didn’t think about it.”

  “Yeah, but offing her own parents?” LaTour asked skeptically.

  “Seventeen point two percent of murderers are related to their victims.” Tal added pointedly, “I know that because of my questionnaires, by the way.”

  LaTour rolled his eyes. “What about the Bensons?”

  “Maybe they met in some cardiac support group, maybe they were in the same country club. Whitley might’ve mentioned something about the will to them. Sandra found out and had to take them out too.”

  “Jesus, you say ‘maybe’ a lot.”

  “It’s a theorem, I keep saying. Let’s go prove it or disprove it. See if she’s got an alibi. And we’ll have forensics go through the fireplace.”

  “If the ash is intact,” LaTour said, “they can image the printing on the sheet. Those techs’re fucking geniuses.”

  Tal called Crime Scene again and arranged to have a team return to the Whitleys’ house. Then he said, “Okay, let’s go visit our suspect.”

  ______

  “Hold on there.”

  When Greg LaTour charged up to you, muttering the way he’d just done, you held on there.

  Even tough Sandra Whitley.

  She’d been about to climb into the BMW sitting outside her luxurious house. Suitcases sat next to her.

  “Step away from the car,” LaTour said, flashing his badge.

  Tal said, “We’d like to ask you a few questions, ma’am.”

  “You again! What the hell’re you talking about?” Her voice was angry but she did as she was told.

  “You’re on your way out of town?” LaTour took her purse off her shoulder. “Just keep your hands at your sides.”

  “I’ve got a meeting I can’t miss.”

  “In Hawaii?”

  Sandra was regaining the initiative. “I’m an attorney, like I told you. I will find out how you got that information and for your sake there better’ve been a warrant involved.”

  Did they need a warrant? Tal wondered.

  “Meeting in Hawaii?” LaTour repeated. “With an open return?”

  “What’re you implying?”

  “It’s a little odd, don’t you think. Flying off to the South Seas a few days after your parents die? Not going to the funeral?”

  “Funerals’re for the survivors. I’ve made peace with my parents and their deaths. They wouldn’t’ve wanted me to blow off an important meeting. Dad was as much a businessman as a father. I’m as much a businesswoman as a daughter.”

  Her eyes slipped to Tal and she gave a sour laugh. “Okay, you got me, Simms.” Emphasizing the name was presumably to remind him again that his name would be prominently included in the court documents she filed. She nodded to the purse. “It’s all in there. The evidence about me escaping the country after—what?—stealing my parents’ money? What exactly do you think I’ve done?”

  “We’re not accusing you of anything. We just want to—”

  “—ask you a few questions.”

  “So ask, goddamn it.”

  LaTour was reading a lengthy document he’d found in her purse. He frowned and handed it to Tal, then asked her, “Can you tell me where you were the night your parents died?”

  “Why?”

  “Look, lady, you can cooperate or you can clam up and we’ll—”

  “Go downtown. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I’ve heard this before.”

  LaTour frowned at Tal and mouthed, “What’s downtown?” Tal shrugged and returned to the document. It was a business plan for a company that was setting up an energy joint venture in Hawaii. Her law firm was representing it. The preliminary meeting seemed to be scheduled for two days from now in Hawaii. There was a memo saying that the meetings could go on for weeks and recommended that the participants get open-return tickets.

  Oh.

  “Since I have to get to the airport now,” she snapped, “and I don’t have time for any bullshit, okay, I’ll tell you where I was on the night of the quote crime. On an airplane. I flew back on United Airlines from San Francisco, the flight that got in about 11 P.M. My boarding pass is probably in there—” A contemptuous nod at the purse LaTour held. “And if it isn’t, I’m sure there’s a record of the flight at the airline. With security being what it is nowadays, picture IDs and everything, that’s probably a pretty solid alibi, don’t you think?”

  Did seem to be, Tal agreed silently. And it got even more solid when LaTour found the boarding pass and ticket receipt in her purse.

  Tal’s phone began ringing and he was happy for the chance to escape from Sandra’s searing fury. He heard Shellee speak from the receiver. “Hey, Boss, ‘s’me.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Crime Scene called. They went through all the ash in the Whitleys’ fireplace, looking for a letter or something about changing the will. They didn’t find anything about that at all. Something had been burned but it was all just a bunch of information on companies—computer and biotech companies. The Crime Scene guy was thinking Mr. Whitley might’ve just used some old junk mail or something to start the fire.”

  Once again: Oh.

  Then: Damn.

  “Thanks.”

  He nodded LaTour aside and told him what Crime Scene had reported.

  “Shit on the street,” he whispered. “Jumped a little fast here . . . Okay, let’s go kiss some ass. Brother.”

  The groveling time was quite limited—Sandra was adamant about catching her plane. She sped out of the driveway, leaving behind a blue cloud of tire smoke.

  “Aw, she’ll forget about it,” LaTour said.

  “You think?” Tal asked.

  A pause. “Nope. We’re way
fucked.” He added, “We still gotta find the mysterious babe in the sunglasses and hat.” They climbed into the car and LaTour pulled into traffic.

  Tal wondered if Mac McCaffrey might’ve seen someone like that around the Whitleys’ place. Besides, it’d be a good excuse to see her again. Tal said, “I’ll look into that one.”

  “You?” LaTour laughed.

  “Yeah. Me. What’s so funny about that?”

  “I don’t know. Just you never investigated a case before.”

  “So? You think I can’t interview witnesses on my own? You think I should just go back home and hump my calculator?”

  Silence. Tal hadn’t meant to say it.

  “You heard that?” LaTour finally asked, no longer laughing.

  “I heard.”

  “Hey, I didn’t mean it, you know.”

  “Didn’t mean it?” Tal asked, giving an exaggerated squint. “As in you didn’t mean for me to hear you? Or as in you don’t actually believe I have sex with adding machines?”

  “I’m sorry, okay?. . . I bust people’s chops sometimes. It’s the way I am. I do it to everybody. Fuck, people do it to me. They call me Bear ‘causa my gut. They call you Einstein ‘cause you’re smart.”

  “Not to my face.”

  LaTour hesitated. “You’re right. Not to your face. . . . You know, you’re too polite, Tal. You can give me a lot more shit. I wouldn’t mind. You’re too uptight. Loosen up.”

  “So it’s my fault that I’m pissed ‘cause you dump on me?”

  “It was . . .” He began defensively but then he stopped. “Okay, I’m sorry. I am. . . . Hey, I don’t apologize a lot, you know. I’m not very good at it.”

  “That’s an apology?”

  “I’m doing the best I can . . . Whatta you want?”

  Silence.

  “All right,” Tal said finally.

  LaTour sped the car around a corner and wove frighteningly through the heavy traffic. Finally he said, “It’s okay, though, you know.”

  “What’s okay?”

  “If you want to.”

  “Want to what?” Tal asked.

  “You know, you and your calculator. . . . Lot safer than some of the weird shit you see nowadays.”

  “LaTour,” Tal said, “you can—”

  “You just seemed defensive about it, you know. Figure I probably hit close to home, you know what I’m saying?”