“Your team is to remove and examine all open food containers, including the contents of all sugar, flour, and salt containers. We’ve had one homicide due to sodium azide poisoning and suspect we may have another. In the first case, the poison was concealed in sweetener packets. My concern is that here it may have been used to contaminate other foodstuffs. So, although this is primarily a hazardous-materials operation, it’s also a crime scene investigation. I want photographs and a properly documented evidence log.”
“I was told no one here was hurt,” Workman objected. “In fact, I asked the dispatcher specifically, and he said-”
“You’re right, no one
“All right, all right!” Workman conceded grudgingly. “I get the picture.” He turned once again to his waiting crew. “Okay, guys,” he said. “Move it.”
One by one, the Haz-Mat team disappeared into the house.
“Good work,” Beaumont said after they left.
Joanna turned on him. “What do you mean?”
He grinned at her. “You know exactly what I mean. You chewed that poor guy up and spit him out. He never even saw it coming.”
The next thing Joanna Brady knew, she was grinning, too.
“Something’s bothering me,” he said, when the lighthearted moment had passed.
“What’s that?” she asked.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone that was very nearly a duplicate of her own. “How come yours works and mine doesn’t?” he asked.
“Oh, that,” she says. “It’s a Dual-NAM phone.”
“What’s that?”
“Two numbers and two cell-phone providers. I got tired of all the dropped calls. Now I’m hooked into the system down in Naco, Sonora, as well. They have a stronger signal…”
“Is that why I keep ending up with the recording in Spanish?”
“Right,” she said. “And you’re going to keep on getting it until you’re on the other side of the Mule Mountains.”
Shaking his head, Beau pocketed his phone. “Sorry I asked,” he said.
SOMETIME LATER, THE FIRST OF THE HAZ-MAT crew members emerged from the house carrying several tightly closed stainless-steel containers. It was an hour after that when the last of them, Ron Workman, stepped out onto the porch. Divested of his moon suit, he stopped in front of Joanna and handed over an evidence log as well as a fanfold of Polaroid prints.
“Whoever your guy is, he knows what he’s doing,” Workman told Joanna as she studied the pictures.
“What makes you say that?”
“If he hadn’t known something about sodium azide, he’d most likely be lying dead in there, too, since just breathing this stuff can kill you.” Dave Hollicker was standing nearby. Remembering her crime scene investigator was lucky to be alive, Joanna shot him a meaningful glance. Dave nodded and said nothing.
Workman continued. “He jury-rigged himself a laminar-flow fume hood. Attached a cooling fan from a computer to one side and cut a hole big enough for his hands in the other. With his hands inside, the two openings would be almost the same. He also cut holes into the top and made Saran Wrap windows so he could work with his hands inside the box and still see what he was doing. Then he sealed all the seams with duct tape. And – voila. There you have it – the same kind of equipment we use when we’re working with hazardous materials in the lab, except ours sets the state back a bundle of money. What your guy used was crude but effective.”
“And portable,” Joanna added.
“That, too,” Workman agreed. “Whenever he was working with it, he would have connected it to an outside vent.”
“It’s hooked to the dryer vent so he wouldn’t end up breathing it himself.”
“Right.”
“Did you dust for prints?” Joanna asked.
“Not yet,” Workman told her. “When we get back to the lab, we’ll dust the box and the food containers we took, but for the rest…”
“That’s all right,” Joanna said. “My people will handle it. How much sodium azide did you find in there?”
“In the box?”
She nodded.
“Plenty,” Workman answered grimly. “More than I wanted to see. If your suspicions about the sugar and flour are correct, he had enough to do some real damage.”
“How long will it take you to find out about the sugar and flour?” she asked.
“Not long,” he said with a shrug. “A day or two. I’ll be in touch as soon as we finish the analysis.”
Joanna wanted to grab the man by his shoulders and give him a shake. She wanted to flood Workman with the same kind of urgency she felt, but he didn’t have people in his jurisdiction dying right and left. He didn’t have some nutcase walking around his town carrying God knew how much more sodium azide. But Joanna understood she had already pushed him just getting him to create the evidence log. If she said much more, it would likely slow the process rather than speed it up.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll do your best.”
I GOT A KICK OUT OF WATCHING it go down. It occurred to me while Sheriff Brady was nailing Ron Workman’s feet to the floor that even though the Haz-Mat squad leader was a good twenty years younger than Harry I. Ball, the two men were cut from the same cloth.
Most people are under the mistaken impression that sexism is limited to old farts like Harry and me. They think one of these days all of the old guys will die off, sort of like the dinosaurs did, and the problem will disappear from the face of the planet. I have bad news for those folks. Since Ron Workman wasn’t a day over thirty-five, they probably shouldn’t look for it to happen anytime soon.
The Haz-Mat guys and Deputy Hollicker were packing up to leave when Joanna’s cell phone rang again. She answered and then handed it over to me. “For you,” she said.
“I’ve got two things to tell you,” Frank Montoya reported excitedly. “Number one: I checked on that Gardendale Correctional Institute you asked me about. It’s private, not public, owned and operated by UPPI.”
“And the other?”
“I’ve finally managed to get a hold of some of the phone records we need. I started with the pay phones down by the post office, and I’ve found something very interesting. There are three long-distance calls that were placed from one of those phones to Winnetka, Illinois, on Thursday. One was at eleven-twenty. The second was at three forty-six, the third at three-fifty. The first two went to the offices of a law firm named Maddern, Maddern, and Peek. The last one was to the residence of someone named Louis F. Maddern, the Third. That call lasted for close to ten minutes. Does the name ‘Maddern’ ring a bell?”
“Not to me,” I told him, jotting the information into my notebook. “Never heard of the guy or the law firm, either one.”
“It could be nothing,” Frank was saying. “Since Brampton is evidently from Illinois, it could be Maddern is a friend or a relative. But still, the timing…”
I was doing some dot-connecting. Frank Montoya was right. The timing of the calls was critical. Vital, even. One had been placed in the morning, probably shortly after the end of the donnybrook at Castle Rock Galley. The second two had been placed within minutes of Brampton’s finding out he was about to be fingerprinted in regard to the Latisha Wall homicide. If he’d had something to do with her death – if he was in any way responsible – he might have been operating in a state of near panic about then. Everyone pretends that detectives solve cases by virtue of pure skill and dogged determination. The truth is, we usually catch crooks because they make stupid mistakes.
“This is good stuff,” I told him. “Thanks.”
“I thought you’d like it,” Frank replied.
