Ceremony

by Paul Austin Ardoin

“Serves the university right,” Bernadette said, “hiring IT people without real degrees. You probably got your certificate from Fly-By-Night Technical Institute.”

  “I got my degree in computer science from Kilbourn Tech,” LaSalle spat. “Graduated with honors. Blame the university budget, not the messenger.”

  “Who’s your manager?” Bernadette demanded.

  “Hey!” Curtis stood up and put his body between Bernadette and LaSalle. “No more of this.” He put a finger in Bernadette’s face. “Mr. LaSalle is being cooperative.”

  “I was being cooperative,” LaSalle said. “If I keep getting accused of doing things I clearly didn’t do, you all can do your own work.”

  “Maybe it would be better if we did do our own work. At least we’d know it wasn’t screwed up on purpose.” Bernadette put her hands on her hips. “And you might be cooperative now, but you sure weren’t yesterday when I saw you walking down Highland Avenue carrying two big tote bags.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” LaSalle averted his eyes but made no move to leave.

  “Is everything all right out here?” The voice behind Bernadette made her jump slightly. Professor Lightman stood behind her, his mouth turning down at the corners.

  Bernadette looked around the bullpen area. A half-dozen employees were all seated at their desks; some looking at her, some trying pointedly to ignore the kerfuffle. Good—she’d made enough of a scene to put Lightman on his heels. “I think we should speak in your office.”

  “I told you I didn’t have anything to do with installing the keyloggers!” LaSalle whined.

  “We can speak out here,” Lightman said sternly.

  “I don’t think we can,” Bernadette said, “unless you want personnel matters to be heard by everyone on this floor.” At that, another two heads popped above their computer monitors at the desks around the bullpen.

  Lightman glared at her, then turned and strode into his office. Bernadette followed him, closing the door behind her.

  “Listen,” Lightman began, sitting down in his chair, “I like you, Agent Becker, and the IT guy doesn’t report to me, but I can’t have you getting hysterical in here.”

  Bernadette felt her lip curl and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

  “I was on the phone with the people in charge of our grant,” Lightman continued. “There are rumblings that they want to delay. We’re competing to get to market before another medication, and a delay could mean project cancellation. Poof, there goes my funding—there goes everyone’s job. I’m lucky I hung up before you started yelling. It’s not conducive to a stable work environment.”

  “Neither are murdered employees, Professor.”

  Lightman gritted his teeth.

  “Where were you at ten thirty this morning?” Bernadette demanded.

  Lightman blinked. “This morning? I—why do you want to know?”

  “Because one of your other grad student researchers was shot in front of his apartment building.”

  The color drained from Lightman’s face.

  Bernadette took a step forward. “Considering ibogaine was what killed Kymer Thompson, and considering Eddie Taysatch was shot this morning, the lab is looking more and more like a common element.”

  Lightman opened his mouth, then closed it. “Is Eddie—is he okay?”

  “The last I heard, he was going into surgery,” Bernadette said. “I haven’t gotten a phone call to let me know the shooting is a murder investigation yet.” She cocked her head. “Who else knows the details of what you’re working on here?”

  “Well—Tommy and Eddie, of course.” He blinked and looked balefully up at Bernadette. His eyes were wide, and his breaths were short and quick. “And me.”

  Bernadette shook her head. He was scared. Maybe he was scared of getting caught, but Lightman was acting more like he was scared for his life.

  “What sort of information would Tommy and Eddie have that someone would want to kill for, Professor?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, his voice small.

  “Tell me where you were on Monday night, Professor. Give me someone who can corroborate whatever story it is you’re planning to tell. Tell me where I can find Cecilia Carter. Show me that the ibogaine you have here isn’t the same concentrated version injected into Kymer Thompson’s arm. Give me something to eliminate you as a suspect. Show me that I can trust you.”

  Lightman shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Am I under arrest?”

  Bernadette hesitated. While Lightman had been cagey, he was likely trying to hide his affair with Cecilia Carter. Even if she’d wanted to bluff an arrest, she didn’t carry handcuffs. A gun for protection, yes, but no cuffs. That was Maura’s department—and Bernadette and Kep were supposed to keep the lieutenent apprised of the investigation, especially when they were close to arrest. She wished Detective Dunn was still with them.

  “That really depends on what you have to say for yourself,” she said.

  But her hesitation gave away her weakness. She saw it in Lightman’s eyes, through the fear for his personal safety covering the rest of his face.

  “I’ll say nothing more without a lawyer present,” Lightman said.

  “Not even about Cecilia Carter?”

  Lightman leaned back and clamped his mouth shut, glaring at Bernadette.

  The professor was looking more and more like a dead end. He wasn’t acting guilty—he was acting like he was afraid of being next on the list.

  Something wasn’t quite right with the IT guy, though. She closed her eyes and ran through the conversation with Nick LaSalle. She’d accused him of being incompetent. He’d pushed back.

  And then once she’d purposely ratcheted up the accusations, he snapped.

  If I keep getting accused of doing things I clearly didn’t do, you all can do your own work.

  What had she accused him of?

  Of not doing his job. Of not putting adequate security on the systems. Of not doing things. She’d never accused him of actually doing anything.

  So why did he deny installing the keyloggers?

  It’s possible that he was flustered. But it was also possible that Nick LaSalle had installed the keyloggers. And that even a whiff of an accusation was enough to trigger his defenses.

  “Well?” Lightman stared at her.

  Ugh. She’d gotten lost in thought.

  Lightman knew he wouldn’t be answering any more of Bernadette’s questions. She sighed. This was not the way to claw her way back to full agent status.

  “No,” she said, “no, I won’t arrest you. But you don’t have an alibi for Monday night.”

  Lightman scoffed. “I had no reason to kill anyone. Removing Tommy and Eddie isn’t good for the project or for me. It’s the best way to make sure the funding gets pulled. If that happens, we’re all not only out of our jobs, but the students will have to scramble to get into another lab program to fulfill their degree requirements.”

  “Not the undergrad interns.”

  “Are you kidding? Without this program, most of them wouldn’t have even applied to Kilbourn Tech. Some of them have these internships in exchange for lower tuition. There’s literally no one in this lab who’d be better off with Kymer Thompson dead. A murder in the program is the murder of the program.”

  “Sometimes in the heat of the moment, the rational decision isn’t always made.”

  Lightman glared at her.

  Bernadette turned and left Lightman’s office.

  The door closed behind her, and she gazed across the bullpen. Other employees surely could be interviewed. She wouldn’t get anywhere with Nick LaSalle—not after attacking him verbally in front of everyone. And besides, Curtis was with him.

  Annika Nakrivo might be with the lampreys in the aquarium room where Kep could interview her. But if not, maybe she was at her desk. But Bernadette didn’t want to hyperfocus—that’s how things went sideways.

  The work area had six other desks besides Thompso
n’s. As LaSalle and Curtis worked at the victim’s computer, Bernadette began to question the other employees.

  Half an hour later, she’d talked with five of them. No one liked Tommy—he was not only arrogant but constantly proselytizing. Everyone she spoke with said they avoided him. One of the researchers, Letitia, postulated that Annika had lost some sort of bet in which she had to pretend to be Tommy’s girlfriend for a year. Letitia thought it was creepy that Annika looked so much like Mariska Sikmo. The other employees and interns did not know who Sikmo was but agreed that Annika and Tommy mismatched.

  Bernadette sat in the guest chair in front of the last intern’s desk.

  “So you’re the federal agent investigating Tommy’s murder.” The tall Black woman looked at Bernadette out of the corner of her eye as she typed, then leaned back and appraised her through browline-style spectacles.

  “That’s me. Bernadette Becker.”

  “Zadie Michaels. Nice to meet you.” She leaned forward. “You’ve been asking about Annika and Tommy, huh?”

  “How would you characterize their relationship?”

  “Weird,” said Zadie. “It would be one thing if they had similar interests. All they seem to have in common is this place.”

  “And Agios Delphi,” Bernadette added, handing Zadie a business card.

  “Oh—is that the church that Tommy’s always talking about?”

  “Probably. Annika’s a member too.”

  “Oh,” Zadie nodded emphatically, “that makes sense. They’re a tiny church, aren’t they? If they’re the same religion, that explains it. Probably the only two people the same age in all of Milwaukee who are in that crazy cult.”

  “What do you think of the Anne Askew Chapel?”

  “Me? Well—I think it’s crazy that someone decided to ship it all the way from London to Milwaukee, stone by stone. It’s pretty cool, though. A fifteenth-century chapel right here on campus. I wish more people had heard of Anne Askew. I tell my friends from high school about it, and they think she’s a new pop singer.”

  “Did you know Anne Askew is a central figure in the religion that Tommy and Annika belong to?”

  “No.”

  “And did you know Agios Delphi uses ibogaine in their ceremonies?”

  “What? You mean the same stuff that we inject in the fish livers here?”

  “They chew up the plant bark, and it’s a lot less concentrated, but yeah.”

  Zadie shook her head. “I heard ibogaine can cause hallucinations. Not much more than that, though. I didn’t know it had religious significance.”

  Bernadette smiled. “It’s a relief to finally talk to someone who knows about the medication you’re making.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Zadie said. “Sometimes I don’t have enough to do to fill up my day here, so I read the literature from the studies. At least I don’t have to gut the lampreys. They’re nasty. Like something from a horror movie.”

  The employee at the desk next to Zadie stood up, stretched, and walked toward the elevator. Zadie glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and when he pushed the down button, she leaned closer to Bernadette. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but Tommy and Eddie were the brains behind all the breakthroughs.”

  “I thought Professor Lightman was behind most of it.”

  Zadie shook her head. “He’s been skating by on the work of his grad students for years now. With Tommy gone and Eddie in the hospital, I hope this last formulation works. Otherwise, we’ll all be rearranging deck chairs.”

  Bernadette rubbed her neck; it was starting to hurt. “Lightman’s got a reputation for being brilliant.”

  “Not at all earned, I promise you. And we all know it.”

  “Why doesn’t anyone say anything?”

  “Because he’s got the financial connections. Without him, we’d have no research to work on.” Zadie’s eyes twinkled. “Do you want to see something crazy?”

  Bernadette tried not to let her surprise show, and she nodded. “Sure.”

  “This is because you called that asshole IT guy out,” she said. “Ordinarily I’d keep this under wraps.” She clicked her mouse, and a web browser came up on her screen. She typed hurriedly and a curvy, scantily clad brunette appeared.

  “This is what you wanted to show me?” The brunette looked familiar, but Bernadette couldn’t quite place her.

  “You don’t recognize her, do you?” Zadie grinned conspiratorially. “Lighten the hair a few shades, give her a haircut, put her on a diet to lose ten pounds, who do you see?”

  Bernadette squinted.

  Zadie rolled her eyes. “And get a Sharpie to put a big dot on her upper lip. Come on, white people don’t look that much alike.”

  “Oh,” Bernadette said, eyes widening.

  Zadie pointed to the woman’s face on screen. “You do see it, right? Annika Nakrivo, straight up.”

  Bernadette nodded. “But—that’s not what this page says.” There was something else, too—she’d seen this woman somewhere before, and it wasn’t with the beauty mark or the collagen.

  “Nope. Verity Vivacious. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that’s her real name.” Zadie laughed.

  Bernadette blinked as the hot pink text on the black background jumped out at her. “Is this an escort site?”

  “It sure ain’t a church choir.”

  Bernadette cocked her head. “It says she’s based in Miami—is that right?”

  “That’s what it says.”

  “I know some women work their way through college by stripping or by, you know, escorting. So maybe that’s what she did. Now she’s at the top university of her choice, about to get into a great science program.”

  “Except,” Zadie said, “she’s auditing all her classes.”

  “What?”

  “Yep. She and I have lunch sometimes. I was stressing out about my midterms, and I asked her why she wasn’t stressed—and she said she’s paying for her classes, but not taking them for credit.”

  “They let her do that and stay in the dorms?”

  Zadie waved her hand. “Some loophole. You know the type of people who always find cheat codes for everything. I think she’s one of those.”

  “But why? If this is the college of her choice, why isn’t she taking the classes for credit?”

  “No idea. None of my business.”

  “Is she in today?”

  “She is, but I think she’s headed out early.” She pointed to a door. “That opens into another hallway and into another bullpen like this one. She’s the third desk on the left.” Zadie put her elbows on the desk. “Her boyfriend was killed, so Lightman told her to go home.”

  Bernadette glanced up. Curtis was still working on Thompson’s computer, and she caught LaSalle giving her a nasty look.

  I told you I didn’t have anything to do with installing the keyloggers.

  Oh—that was what was bothering her. They’d only found a keylogger program on one computer—Thompson’s. But he’d used the plural: keyloggers.

  Maybe he knew about Thompson’s home PC too.

  What else did Nick LaSalle know?

  Chapter Fifteen

  After talking with Zadie, Bernadette followed the hallway behind the door to Annika’s desk. She hoped Annika hadn’t left yet—and found the young intern behind the desk, computer screen on. Kep stood on the other side of the desk, trying to appear relaxed but failing.

  “I’m unsure why you’re not as concerned about the security footage disappearing as we are,” Kep said. “Even if she’s the reverend from your church, it’s not appropriate for her to be in your dorm room if she’s not invited.”

  “It’s not that I’m unconcerned,” Annika said. “I’m resigned to the fact that someone stole the footage.”

  “You’re resigned?”

  Annika rolled her eyes. “There are so many girls on my floor who do drugs. Not weed. I mean cocaine, X, molly. Last week they had their dealer come up to the third floo
r with them. He didn’t want to be caught on camera.”

  Kep nodded. “Are you implying that the drug dealer stole the security footage?”

  “It’s the most likely explanation.” She sniffed. “Listen, Professor Lightman is insisting I take the rest of the day off. Am I free to go?”

  “Not quite,” Bernadette replied. “I wondered how much work you do with the ibogaine—and if you’ve got access to the locked cabinet upstairs.”

  Annika shrugged. “My job is dealing with the fish enzymes.”

  “Are you saying you don’t have access to the ibogaine?” Bernadette asked.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Even though it’s used by your church?”

  “I don’t know how the church gets its ibogaine.”

  “Have you taken ibogaine at any Agios Delphi meeting?”

  Annika folded her arms. “I don’t believe I’m going to answer that.”

  Kep nodded. “But Tommy was an elder there, wasn’t he? Did you ever see him take any ibogaine for the church?”

  “No,” Annika said, “and if you’re going to throw wild accusations at my dead boyfriend, you can do it when I’m not here.” She grabbed her pack, her parka, and her purse, and stomped off around the corner.

  “Congratulations,” Bernadette said. “You’ve pissed off another witness.”

  “Pissed her off enough to make her forget her notebook,” Kep said, already leafing through the spiral-bound pages Annika had left on top of the desk.

  Bernadette leaned forward. “Last year, Annika Nakrivo was working as an escort in Miami.”

  Kep put a hand to his chest and rolled his eyes. “Oh my stars. A young lady who chooses to work her way through school. I haven’t clutched my pearls this tightly since I saw a 1987 Afterschool Special on the dangers of marijuana.”

  Bernadette elbowed Kep. “Cut it out. If that was the only thing that raised suspicion, it’d be one thing. She faked crying when her boyfriend is dead, which again, by itself doesn’t mean much. But now I found out she’s auditing all her classes this semester.”

  “She’s—what?”

  “Weird, right? She had to work for an escort service to pay for college, but then she pays tuition for a semester and doesn’t even take her classes for credit? That doesn’t make any sense.”