Lucy generated, studying an enhanced surveillance image of the woman who delivered the take-out bag of sushi last night.
A sadist, a poisoner, I believe.
“We don’t see cases of exposure to the pure toxin,” Briggs says. “I can’t think of a single one.”
The woman’s head and neck are completely whited out, but Lucy has produced sharply defined and enlarged images of the rest of her, including the silvery bicycle she walked across the street and leaned against the lamppost. She is in dark pants, running shoes and socks, no belt, and a light-colored short-sleeved blouse tucked in. The only flesh exposed is her forearms and her hands, and a close-up of her left ring finger shows a baguette-cut square band that might be white gold or yellow or platinum, I can’t tell. All of the images are infrared and in shades of white and gray.
“Food contaminated by the Clostridium botulinum spores that produce the toxin,” Briggs is saying, “and it’s got to work its way through the digestive tract, usually becoming absorbed in the small intestine before it gets into the bloodstream and begins attacking neuromuscular proteins, basically attacking the brain and preventing the release of neurotransmitters.”
The woman in the surveillance footage also has on a watch: what Lucy shows through other image files is a dark-faced Marathon wristwatch with a high-impact fibershell and waterproof and dustproof case, made by contract with the U.S. and Canadian governments for issuance to military personnel.
“What if a pure, extremely potent toxin was exposed to mucous membrane?” I propose, as I continue to worry that the killer has some sort of military connection.
Someone with access to military personnel, perhaps her real target.
“Think about people who apply drugs to the mouth, vagina, rectum,” I add. “Cocaine, for example. We know what happens. Imagine a poison like botulinum toxin.”
“A really big problem,” Briggs says. “No cases I’ve ever heard of, no precedents, nothing to compare it to, in other words. But could only be bad.”
“The pure toxin in the mucous membrane of the mouth.”
“Much faster absorption, as opposed to ingestion of the actual microbe, the bacterium Clostridium botulinum and its spores, what is actually in contaminated food,” Briggs contemplates. “The bacteria have to grow and produce the toxin, all of this taking hours, possibly days, before paralysis starts in the face and spreads down.”
“Nothing worked its way through the digestive tract, John. It would seem these people had an exposure that actually induced gastroparesis,” I reply, and I can see what Lucy wants me to realize about the bicycle.
It appears lightweight, with very small wheels, and she has included an article she pulled off the Internet. A folding bike. Someone possibly with a military connection and a folding bike.
“Could also be induced by severe stress,” Briggs says. “Fight-or-flight syndrome, and your digestion quits. But that would be true only if the onset of symptoms was rapid. Again, no cases to compare it to. A direct hit to the bloodstream, and everything vital starts shutting down, my guess. Eyes, mouth, digestion, lungs.”
A seven-speed bike with an aluminum frame that has quick-release hinges, the entire bike folding into a 12x25x29-inch package, and in a series of zoomed-in and enhanced photographs from the security camera, Lucy shows the woman taking off a backpack, opening it, and pulling out the take-out bag from Savannah Sushi Fusion. The next page is an ad from a sports and outdoors online site where one can order what appears to be the same type of backpack for $29.99. Not an insulated bag for delivering food but a folding bike backpack for carrying or transporting the bike when one isn’t riding it.
“But the truth is, we don’t know what extremely potent doses of botulinum toxin manufactured in a lab might do,” Briggs continues, as I listen intently and go through paperwork on the bed, my thoughts moving rapidly in multiple directions that somehow point at the same thing.
“I’m just not aware of any deaths from that, any homicides, as I’ve said,” he adds. “Not one.”
A folding bike that’s nothing more than a ruse, a prop, an explanation for the helmet that interferes with security cameras, Lucy is implying. It would look suspicious to be wearing a bike helmet with safety lights on it if you didn’t have a bike, and it would look equally odd if you were wearing a lighted hat or headband. That’s why the woman was walking the bike across the street when she appeared at Jaime’s building at almost the same moment I did, it occurs to me. The woman with the baguette ring and military watch wasn’t riding the bike at all, and probably had a car parked somewhere.
“It’s about dosage,” Briggs continues. “Almost anything can be a poison if you get too much of it, including water. You can be poisoned by your wallpaper if there’s enough copper arsenide in it. That’s what happened to Clare Boothe Luce, paint chips falling from her bedroom ceiling when she was the ambassador to Italy.”
“I’m just wondering if there’s been anything new in efforts to weaponize botulinum toxin,” I say to him. “Any technologies that a violent sociopathic person might have gotten hold of. A rogue military person, for example. Like the Army scientist who was working on an improved anthrax vaccine and carried out anthrax attacks that left at least five people dead.”
“You always have to pick on the Army,” says Briggs, who couldn’t be more Army. “Nice of him to do us the courtesy of killing himself before the FBI could arrest him.”
“Any other scientists who have been banned from labs where such research is going on?” I ask. “Especially anyone with military ties.”
“If it becomes necessary to look for that, we could,” Briggs says. “In my opinion, it’s necessary.”
“Obviously that’s your opinion, which is why you’re up all night and calling me in Afghanistan.”
“No new technologies that the military might know about?” I again ask. “Anything classified, you don’t have to tell me what. Just that we should be considering such a possibility.”
“No, thank God. Nothing I’m aware of. A gram of pure crystalline toxin could kill a million people if it was inhaled, and to weaponize it, you’d need a way to produce a large aerosol. Fortunately, there’s still no effective method.”
“What about a small aerosol distributed to a lot of people?” I ask. “In other words, an approach that is different, more painstaking. Or a distribution of small packages of poison that are mass-produced like MREs.”
“I’m curious about why you’re mentioning MREs specifically.”
I tell him about Kathleen Lawler, about the burns on her foot and the trace evidence in her sink, and that her gastric contents were similar to an MRE menu of chicken and pasta with a ration of cheese spread.
“How the hell would an inmate get hold of an MRE?” he asks. “Exactly,” I reply. “Almost any food could have been poisoned, so why an MRE? Unless someone is experimenting with them to use on a bigger target.”
“That would be pretty damn awful, and it would have to be a systematic approach, a highly organized one. Someone working in the factory where rations are being produced and packaged, otherwise you’re talking about a lot of vials of the toxin and hypodermic needles and hijacked delivery trucks.”
“You wouldn’t need a systematic approach if the point is terror,” I reply.
“Well, I guess that’s true,” he reconsiders. “Have a hundred or three hundred or a thousand casualties at once in theater or on military bases or in operational areas, and the impact would be destabilizing. It would be disastrous to morale, would empower the enemy and further cripple the U.S. economy.”
“So not anything we’re doing or working on,” I make sure. “Not research our government might be involved in to damage morale and cripple the economy of the enemy. To terrorize.”
“It’s just not practical,” he replies. “Russia’s given up trying to weaponize botulinum toxin, as has the U.S., for which I’m grateful. A terrible idea, and I hope no one ever cracks the technology, but that’s just me. A point source aerosol release, and ten percent of the people downwind of it up to a third of a mile away are going to be incapacitated or dead. God forbid it drifts to a school or a shopping mall. One thing we need to figure out is why some people are dead while others aren’t or weren’t intentional targets.”
“We don’t think Dawn Kincaid was intentional.”
“But you think her mother was, and also the prosecutor.”
“Yes.”
“And based on what you’re telling me, you think that whoever is responsible really wanted the prosecutor …”
“Jaime Berger and Kathleen Lawler. Yes, I believe whoever is responsible really wanted them dead.”
“Then they’re not necessarily what you’re considering research, like the deaths of inmates, if what you suspect is true. A science project. I don’t mean to trivialize the death of anyone who might have been killed with
