“Um. Okay. So I got this thing. Could you look at it?”
“Sure thing, Cal. You know I’ll help, honey. Whatcha got?”
“Pop into channel 111.”
“Okay.”
Ashton took the adjacent chair, and they both entered VR. They were silent, sitting still with blank expressions, for long moments.
When the explanation was complete, and Gorski and Demetrius had shown the younger investigators the best way to sort and collate the information, Demetrius glanced around the room to see how things were going.
“Hm,” he murmured, elbowing Gorski. “What’s going on over there?” He gestured toward Ames’ desk, where Ames and Ashton were both patently in immersive VR.
“Dunno, Gene,” Gorski replied softly. “Maybe they’re just reassuring each other in private for a few minutes.”
“I don’t think so,” Peterson said, easing over beside the two men. “Channel 111 is active, and that’s the one Cally has been working in all morning. I’d bet she’s getting Nick’s opinion on something, before she shows it to the rest of us.”
“Well, if they come up for air soon, or if Nick does, it’s probably nothing,” Gorski decided. “But if they stay in there a while, I’m betting they got something.”
In the VR meeting room she’d prepared, Ames showed Ashton the specific files she’d uncovered; there were quite a few. He sat down in the nearer of two armchairs and read through the files, skimming at first, then going back and rereading closer. Finally he looked up into clear blue eyes.
“Damn, Cal, I think you have something, here,” Ashton said then.
“But what, exactly, is the connection?” she wondered. “I mean, there’s a connection there, but...I guess I’m just not understanding it.”
“Each victim of the Sandman is a close friend or relative of a member of the medical treatment approval board at, or shortly before, the time of the first murder,” Ashton pointed out. “Best friend, lover, spouse, parent, or sibling. Somebody was – is – striking back at the board members through their loved ones. Because Lana Rounder is the sister of William H. Rounder, who chaired the board at the time.”
“But what’s the rationale? Why strike at someone close, rather than the board members themselves? And why didn’t any of the board members speak up?”
“Cal, the board reports directly to Lord Falmouth, Councilor of the Department of Health,” Ashton explained. “He’s on the Council. The whole mess is corrupt all the way through. Have you ever had anyone that you knew need permission for a rare or expensive treatment?”
“Um, no...”
“My dad’s favorite uncle did. This board is responsible for determining whether or not the treatment would work, or would be worth the time and expense. It’s a kind of triage, but it’s mostly driven by money and connections. If you don’t have the connections, you damn well better have the money, or you won’t get the treatment. Worse, if you have the connections and the money, but you’re on the wrong political side, you can get turned down, too.”
“Damn!”
“Yeah. My great-uncle made it...barely. Because Dad and the rest of the family managed, between ‘em, to scrape together the money to pay off the board.” Ashton paused. “Imagine if somebody’s loved one didn’t make it, because they didn’t know the right people, or they didn’t have enough money, or the board didn’t approve of their politics, or whatever. That’s a good motivation for a murder spree. But – they can’t go to the police...or at least, to us, and all the Sandman murders were largely in our jurisdiction...even if they realize people close to ‘em are being killed off, because that might risk exposing the corrupt way they make their decisions.”
“Ooo. But what about the IPD? The bunch around here are just as corrupt as they are.”
“True. And chances are, the IPD does know about it, but either they’re not too worried since it isn’t their circus, or they’ve gotten themselves wrapped around the axle with all of their own deceptions and disinformation, and they’re having a hard time figuring out who’s telling the truth to whom.”
“Huh. So...what? We need to go back through the records of the board’s approvals and disapprovals and see if we can put together a list of disapprovals, and the surviving family or something?”
“Exactly! Don’t forget best buddies in that list of possible suspects, too.”
“Right.”
“Now, shall we go tell the others what you found?”
Ames grinned, and Ashton grinned back.
“Well, well,” Demetrius decided, once Ames and Ashton had explained what she had turned up. “I think we have a thread to follow to the end now.”
“Sounds like it to me,” Gorski agreed. “Now, once the puff testers get here, we should be able to start narrowing down the actual crime scene for our current case.”
“Those two make a good team,” Weyand observed, and both Ashton and Ames flushed. The others grinned.
“Let’s help Cally see what she can dig up about the board’s decisions, then,” Gorski opined.
The entire team set to work.
By the time the case of puff testers arrived, the team had collated a list of active members of the medical treatment approval board from a decade earlier, as well as negative decisions by that same board. They passed the data over to Callista Ames in VR channel 111, and she set to work scanning through it for possible suspects.
Eugene Demetrius opened the case of testers while that was occurring, and he pulled one out. It consisted of a small canister containing two tiny tanks, and a small bulb sprayer on the top. The chemicals in the tanks would, when combined, react with the core RNA of the G.A.S. virulosin. The resulting reaction would turn the residue a bright pink.
“This looks good,” Demetrius decreed. “I think we have something here.”
“Go get ‘em, tigers,”
