“I just can’t believe it,” he kept saying. “I only saw her this morning, and she seemed fine.”
“Could we see her office? That was where she passed out, correct?” Demetrius asked.
“Oh, certainly, certainly. And yes, that’s where she collapsed. Right this way,” Witte said, heading for the elevator. “I’ll show you to it personally. I just can’t believe it. We had coffee together and discussed the latest ad campaign plan, just this morning, not an hour before she collapsed.”
“Where did the coffee come from?” Ashton asked, jumping on the statement.
“Oh, from the company break room. Lana’s assistant brought it to us.”
“And you both had some?” Gorski pressed.
“Yes, of course. I drink mine with cream and two sugars, she drinks – drank – hers black.”
“Dead end,” Demetrius murmured to his companions.
“Yeah, dammit,” Ashton grumbled under his breath.
“Did she have anyone under her?” Gorski asked. “Designers, marketers, artists, or the like?”
“She had two marketers,” Witte said. “We hired out our artwork to a well-known firm.”
“Who were her marketers?” Gorski followed up his question. “And were there any problems within the group recently?”
“Livy Glenn and Tristan Wall,” Witte said. “And no, they all got along quite well. Ms. Glenn and Mr. Wall are fairly young, only a year or so out of university, so Lana was mentoring them. Those three made a great team.”
“Here it is, gentlemen,” Witte said, stopping in front of an executive office. “My own office is right down the hall, and I fear I’m expecting an important communiqué, so I need to get back to it. I’ll leave you here; do whatever you need to do, and if you need me, just step down to my office. I’ll stop whatever I’m doing to help.”
“Thank you, sir,” Demetrius said, shaking the vice-president’s hand. “We’ll do that.”
And Witte headed down the corridor.
There was nothing especially unusual about the office where Lana Rounder had collapsed; it was fairly modern, with an executive desk and matching ergonomic chair, a number of colorful, rough print images lying on the desktop. Two recently-stained but empty ceramic coffee mugs sat on a credenza along one wall, along with several more print images; a luxurious visitor chair sat beside it. Old-style books in bookcases sat on shelves along the walls, in addition to quite a few old notebooks, each marked with a year. Ashton nosed about the notebooks; they proved to be scrapbooks of previous years’ marketing campaigns.
“She likes old-fashioned print,” Gorski noticed.
“Some marketing types do,” Demetrius agreed. “They say it helps ‘em envision it on a wall or shop window, or whatever.”
“One thing there isn’t, is Nick’s humidifier,” Gorski observed.
“Yeah, I saw,” Ashton said with a stifled sigh.
“Hey, it was a definite idea, kiddo, and one we need to check up on for the cold cases,” Demetrius encouraged. “Besides, this might not even have been where the virulosin was introduced.”
“But how the hell do we figure out where it was introduced?” Ashton asked, frustrated.
“Well, the stuff is going to take effect really fast, likely within hours, and the bigger the dose, the faster it kicks in,” Gorski pointed out. “So if we have to, we simply try to reconstruct where she was for the last, oh, up to maybe twelve hours, and one of those places has to be where it was done.”
“She was here all day,” came a voice behind them.
They turned. An older woman of around fifty stood there, a salt-and-pepper brunette with more salt than pepper, and hazel eyes wearing a worried expression.
“I assume you’re the police investigators?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Demetrius said. “I’m Inspector Eugene Demetrius. These are my colleagues, Detective Stefan Gorski, and Lieu-uh, Captain Investigator, Officer Dominick Ashton.”
“Pleased,” she said, shaking hands. “I’m Lana’s assistant, Joyce Abelard.”
“Can you tell us if there is anything unusual here, something she doesn’t usually have in her office? Anything new, any unexpected visitor, anyone you’ve never seen before?” Gorski queried.
“No,” Abelard said. “She’s had no visitors, no new projects, not even any shipments or new print proofs. Not today.”
“Where did she go for lunch?”
“Her desk,” Abelard said with a rueful chuckle. “She actually brought in leftovers from home, most of the time.”
“Do we still have the containers the food was in?” Ashton piped up. “It might be good to test them, to make certain they were clean of the virulosin...”
“Good thought, Nick,” Gorski agreed. “Do we?”
“Yes, but it was disposable,” Abelard told them. She pointed. “It’s all right there in her wastebasket.”
“Got it.” Ashton immediately knelt by the receptacle, pulling forensic gloves and some poly bags for the items. He donned the gloves and promptly began a gingerly rooting in the waste can, extracting the food-stained items and bagging them.
“What about this morning?” Gorski continued the questioning while his capable protégé triaged the trash can. “Had she been anywhere before she came to work?”
“No, she came straight from home. I met her at the front door of her building, like I always do, and we walked to work together.”
“I guess we check her home next,” Gorski decided. “Finished there, Nick?”
“Yes, sir; bagged and tagged,” Ashton said, standing and tucking several bags into the special tote Demetrius produced and held out to him.
“Then let’s go,” Demetrius declared.
After the investigators left, a troubled Abelard glanced around the office.
The wastebasket was almost completely empty, where the young investigator had dug around for Rounder’s food containers and utensils, but they had left the various print proofs alone, on both the desk and the credenza. Nothing unduly untidy
