“Okay, doesn’t seem like a big deal.”
“Probably not. But let’s call the rental agency and see if they know about it. His uniform was from Atlas Oil.”
I made the call and asked if we’d been scheduled to receive a service visit from Atlas Oil. The woman on the other end said to hold on and she’d check. She sounded concerned when she came back on the line.
“You’re in the Drakes Island house, right? We have strict instructions not to authorize service visits without your permission, so I’m sure we didn’t set this up. And we don’t use Atlas Oil at your address, either. Your house is handled by Lyman and Sons.”
I assured the woman that there must be some mistake on our end and turned to Karen. She was already placing a call on her phone.
“Grab Rosie and let’s get out of here,” she said. “I’m calling the Bureau to get a bomb team sent in and check out the basement.”
A shock wave hit me. The bomb squad. “You’re really worried?”
She looked at me as if I was a bit slow. “The supposed service man was well-built and a little shorter than me. Don’t you think it’s worth checking out? I probably should have reacted more strongly at the time, but he mumbled so I couldn’t tell about an accent, and he had long scraggly red hair rather than blond hair like the guy you saw in the parking lot. But it could have been a wig.”
Two black SUVs sped in, blue lights flashing, less than twenty minutes later. Four men and a German shepherd got out. Three of them started putting on bomb suits while the one with the dog came over to us. He introduced himself as Captain Bookman, the squad leader, while his dog and Rosie sniffed each other.
“Any idea where we should concentrate our search?” Bookman asked.
“He was coming up from the basement when I got home and surprised him,” Karen said.
“Okay, we’ll start there. I need you folks to keep away from the house. Why don’t you go wait down on the beach?”
Bookman donned his gear and the four men went into the house, the dog pulling at the leash in her eagerness to get to work. They emerged half an hour later carrying something in a metal box, which they put in a larger box in the back of one of the SUVs. That done, Bookman motioned us back up from the beach.
“It didn’t take Elsa very long to sniff it out,” he said. “What a nose on that girl!” He gave Elsa a pat on the head as she and Rosie resumed their sniffing routine. Then he turned serious. “Damn good thing you called us. It was a detonating device, tied into your gas line and set to go off at two in the morning. It would have taken out the whole house and would have looked like some kind of freak accident.”
My knees were shaking. Someone had just tried to kill us.
But Karen seemed to absorb this calmly. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “Thank you for dealing with it so quickly. I’ll get a forensic unit over to look for prints or DNA, but I doubt they’ll find anything. He was wearing gloves when I saw him.”
“Worth a try; you can never tell. In the meantime, I think the two of you should stay somewhere else tonight, just in case we missed something.” He looked at Rosie. “Sorry, I should have said the three of you. There’s plenty of motels around that take dogs.” He patted Elsa again, and then bent down to pet Rosie. “At least little ones like your girl.”
31
Karen remained calm while we got everything into the car and I drove off in search of a motel. How she did it was beyond me. The idea that we were the intended targets of some kind of Russian assassin gave me the willies.
“I’m going to call and arrange for a sketch artist to meet us when we find a motel,” she said. “Keep your eyes open for a place that’s dog-friendly and looks clean.”
I still wasn’t thinking clearly. “A sketch artist?” I asked.
Karen shrugged. “May as well give it a try. I got a pretty decent look at him, and a good sketch might help give us an ID. He could even be in the Bureau’s facial recognition database.”
Once I turned onto US 1, motel possibilities popped up. Except most of them had No Vacancy signs lit up in front, which wasn’t a surprise for the height of Maine’s tourist season. We were almost to Ogunquit before I spotted a medium-size complex that not only said Vacancy but also had a Pets Welcome sign.
“How’s this?” I asked. “Not that we seem to have a lot of options.”
“Perfect,” Karen said. “There’s even a pizza place where we can get some dinner across the street. Go check us in while I call and give the sketch artist our location.”
Half an hour later, we were in a comfortable if not luxurious room eating a pepperoni pizza with a bottle of white zinfandel that I’d scored at a Cumberland Farms next to the pizza place. The pizza was cheesy and good, and Rosie gave it a high rating for the pieces of crust Karen kept giving her as treats. An almost relaxed domestic scene until we were interrupted by a knock on the door.
I got up to answer, but Karen stopped me. “Wait a minute.” She went to her travel bag and took out a gun. “Just in case,” she said. “I wish I’d had this handy when I ran into the phony service man. Go ahead, you can open the door now.”
Our visitor was a rail-thin woman in her thirties with big round glasses and long red hair. She didn’t seem surprised to be greeted by a gun pointed at her chest, simply showing Karen her ID and introducing herself as Patty Sullivan, the sketch artist. Then she gratefully accepted a slice of pizza, passed on a glass of wine, and got to work with Karen at a desk under the window.
It was interesting to watch. Most law enforcement agencies now used computer-based systems to generate facial composites, but the FBI maintained that hand-drawn sketches were more accurate. Patty began by asking Karen for a general description of the intruder. Karen being Karen, she systematically supplied plenty of detail—hair, mustache, glasses, shape of the suspect’s face, mouth, nose, and so forth. Patty drew a preliminary sketch and asked Karen what needed tweaking. After a couple of rounds of adjustments, Patty dug into her bag and pulled out a thick book of photos. She went through them page by page, asking Karen to point out ones with a nose similar to the suspect’s. Then the same for eyes, mouth, chin, and what seemed like a long list of additional features. The whole process took a couple of hours until Patty seemed satisfied and Karen sat back and said, “That’s him.”
I went over and took a look at the finished product. Patty seemed disappointed when I said I didn’t recognize him, although Karen didn’t look surprised. “I didn’t get much of a look at him, just from the back,” I explained. “And he had long blond hair, not the scraggly red mess you have on this guy.”
“Could have been a disguise,” Patty said. “Let me do a blond version.”
She made some quick changes and showed it to me again. I couldn’t really tell.
“Could be,” I said. “The hair’s right now, but I didn’t see enough of him to help.”
“That’s okay,” Karen said. “I’ll send both versions to the Bureau and they can run them through facial recognition. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
It was almost midnight by the time Patty left. Karen took photos of the sketches, composed an email, and sent them off. The answer came back quickly. But I could see Karen’s initial look of excitement fade to disappointment as she read the email.
“The system came up with two matches,” she said. “Unfortunately, one died in a traffic accident last year, and the other’s serving twenty years in federal prison.”
“So that’s it? There must be something more you can do with the sketch.”
She shrugged. “I’ll try circulating it to the local cops. Maybe they’ll get a lucky break.”
Then her phone buzzed again. “Hang on, this looks like something from the lab. Could be some results on the pills.”
I watched as she opened the email. Then her eyes widened and her jaw fell. “Holy shit! It’s thallium!”
“Thallium? What are you talking about?”
“The pills. They’re thallium, not Carolyn’s
drugs. Someone’s poisoned her patients!”
I was lost. “Slow down a second. What’s thallium?”
“You’ve never heard of thallium? God, it’s a classic poison. It was widely used in the fifties and earlier when it was readily available as a rat poison. Agatha Christie wrote a book about it, The Pale Horse, and it became known as ‘The Poisoner’s Poison.’ Then its use was banned in this country in the seventies and it became hard to get. It’s not readily available anymore, but it still crops up sometimes. It was a favorite of Saddam Hussein’s, and there was a case in New Jersey a few years ago where a woman in a pharmaceutical company had access to it and poisoned her husband. And you know the major characteristic of thallium poisoning? The victim’s hair falls out.”
“Christ, just like what happened to Carolyn’s two patients.”
“Indeed. Get Carolyn on the phone right away. She has to get Mr. Reed on the antidote immediately.”
It took several rings before Carolyn answered in a voice that was groggy from sleep. I put the phone on speaker.
“Carolyn, I’m sorry to wake you, but this is urgent. We’re on speaker and Karen’s here with me. She had some of Mr. Reed’s pills analyzed, and your patients have been poisoned with a compound called thallium.”
“Oh my God! Like in the Agatha Christie book?”
Despite the tension, Karen gave me a wink. “Yes, exactly,” she said. “Get blood and urine tests on Mr. Reed, and get him started immediately on hemodialysis and Prussian blue.”
“What’s Prussian blue?” Carolyn asked.
“It’s the only known antidote. It’ll help clear the thallium from his circulation. It’s not easy to find, but they’ll have it in Boston somewhere. Maybe try Mass General.”
“All right, I’m on it. Christ, this is crazy! Are you sure? How’d you figure this out?”
I stepped back in. “Carolyn, there isn’t time to go through everything now. I’ll fill you in as soon as we have a chance, but you have to take care of Mr. Reed right away.”
“Yes, of course. I will.”
“Good,” Karen said. “And one more thing. Keep this to yourself, except for whoever you need to tell at York Hospital. Brad and I are starting to figure out who’s responsible, but we don’t have him in custody yet. And he’s dangerous. For your own safety, I don’t want anyone to know that you’re aware of what’s happening.”
32
My mind was spinning after we ended the call to Carolyn. We now had a sketch of the short man with a Russian accent who’d poisoned Carolyn’s patients and tried to blow up Karen and me. But that didn’t give us an ID. Were we really close to getting him?
“Do you think circulating the sketch to local cops will work?” I asked.
Karen shrugged. “It’s possible. That’s how they got Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber. But I’m afraid it’s a longshot. We know that he disguised himself with the wig, and who knows what else he may have done. If he’s good, the face I saw could only vaguely resemble reality. Even if an alert cop stumbles across him, he may not be recognizable.”
That didn’t give me a great sense of optimism. “So now what? Do you think he’ll come after us again?”
“He might, it’s hard to know. We need to get him before he has that chance.” She looked at me with fire in her eyes. “And not just him. Our short Russian is somebody’s hired gun. I want the bastard who’s giving the orders, too.”
“So how do we find him if the sketch doesn’t do it?”
“Maybe there’s another way. Who knew you took Mr. Reed’s pills to the pharmacy for analysis?”
“Just Liz Shanbrun, the pharmacist. I emailed her and requested the analysis shortly before I dropped them off Saturday afternoon. Why?”
“Because the pills you dropped off must have been thallium, just like the ones I sent to the Bureau. But the analysis from the MTRI pharmacy came back as the correct prescription.”
“Meaning you think Liz faked the analysis? I guess that’s possible, but it seems unlikely. I remember her record: She was a pharmacist at Maine Medical Center for more than twenty years before coming to MTRI. Stellar recommendations.”
Karen shook her head. “I actually don’t think she’s the most likely suspect. There’s another possibility.”
My brain was finally starting to get over the shock of learning about thallium and beginning to function again. “That our short Russian killer broke into the pharmacy and switched the poison tablets for real ones? But how would he have known I brought them in for analysis in the first place?”
She gave me a cynical half smile. “Want to bet your email’s been hacked?”
“Oh shit, not again!” My email had been hacked a year ago by a spy in the lab at Harvard where I was doing my sabbatical. That had started us on a hunt that ended with Karen and me making a narrow escape from the clutches of a serial killer. It looked like we were well on our way to a similar mess—if not already there.
“Just a hunch. Open up your email and let’s check your login history.”
I signed in and handed her my laptop. “I have no idea how to do that, but I assume you do.”
“Yep.” She fiddled for a moment. “Interesting. Most of the logins are from just two IP addresses, which I assume are yours. But there seem to be a couple every day or so from odd addresses. Including one on Sunday morning.”
“Meaning someone’s hacking in?”
“Looks like. And they would have seen the email you sent to the pharmacist about dropping off the pills.”
“Crap. So you’re thinking someone broke into the pharmacy and switched the pills, leaving the correct prescription for analysis?”
“Mmm-hmm. And maybe that’ll give us another lead on him. Is there still a security camera at the entrance to the institute?”
“There is. I posted a guard there too, trying to tighten up security after I came on as director.”
“Can you access the video feed from here? Let’s see if we can spot our short friend visiting MTRI on Sunday.”
“Okay.” I checked my watch. “But it’s late, after midnight. Do you want to get some sleep and start on the video in the morning?”
“I’m not exactly sleepy, are you? Besides, time’s running out for us to get him.”
“How so?”
She looked at me as if I were stupid. Which I guess wasn’t unjustified.
“By morning he’ll know that we didn’t go up in a firebomb. Then he’ll either be after us again or, more likely, vanished into the wind.”
I nodded and took my laptop back from her to pull up the video feed. “Let’s watch a movie.”
The video of the MTRI entrance was as boring as you could get, especially since we were viewing it at high speed and could just see people flitting in and out. But two hours into it, I caught a glimpse of our target.
I grabbed Karen’s arm. “Hold it, I think that’s him!”
She reversed the feed a bit and ran it again at normal speed. A short man with closely trimmed black hair entered the building and waved to the security guard. At that moment, the camera caught his face.
“Is that who you saw?” I asked.
She studied the image on the video. “It could be. If I imagine the hair different, and no glasses. Yes, I think that’s him.”
I checked the time stamp on the video. “He went to MTRI just after four on Sunday afternoon.”
“Perfect timing to swap the pills,” Karen said. “Let’s see how long he stayed.”
We started the video up again, no longer bored. It wasn’t long before we saw the man come back in frame. Karen slowed it up, and we watched him exit, again waving to the guard, at five forty-eight.
“What time does the pharmacy close?” Karen asked.
“On Sunday? I think it closes at five.”
“Figures. Looks like he got there an hour early and hung around until after it closed. Then he went in, swapped the pills, and left.”
“How would he get in? The pharmacy m
ust be locked,” I said.
Karen looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “You don’t think a hired hitman would know how to pick a lock?”
I gave her a slightly embarrassed grin. “I suppose he would. Although maybe he’s gotten his hands on a key. He must work at the institute.”
“Because of the way he just strolled in and waved to the guard? Yes, I was thinking that, too.”
“Not only that; I bet he’s on the scientific staff. Administrators or facilities people don’t generally come in on Sunday afternoons, but scientists often do.”
That earned me a smile. “Good point. Nice work, Watson. I don’t suppose you have pictures of the institute scientists anywhere?”
“Oh, I think we do, Sherlock. All of the labs have websites with photos of their staff.”
I navigated to the MTRI homepage and clicked on the heading Research. A list of the institute’s research groups came up, and I clicked on the first name, Adams. That took me to the Adams Lab site, which had photos of eight lab members. Karen just shook her head. Nobody familiar.
I repeated the process for the Becker lab, the Bradley lab, and then the Carlson lab.
“That’s him,” Karen said.
I clicked on the picture to pull up a biosketch. “It says he’s a visiting scientist in Carlson’s lab. The name’s Sergei Turgenev. The website says he got a PhD from Moscow University three years ago.”
“Both the name and the PhD are probably fake. Can you send me the photograph? I’ll pass that on to the Bureau. It’ll have a better chance than the sketch of bringing something up from their database.”
It didn’t take long before her phone beeped with the tone of an incoming text. She looked at it and gave me a thumbs-up. “The photo worked.”
She took a few minutes to read the message. Her expression was somber when she looked up.
“Hired gun is what he is, all right. A real pro. He’s in the CIA database, known to them as former Russian intelligence, now freelancing as an assassin for hire. Apparently very good at his job, too. They think he’s carried out several hits for the Russian mob, as well as being credited with two newsworthy political assassinations that were ordered by the state in his previous life. His real name’s Alexei Orlov, last spotted a year ago in Moscow. No record of his having entered this country recently, so he presumably got in as Turgenev or some other fake identity.”
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