“No, now wait a damn minute, here,” Ashton said, annoyed. “As hard as I worked to get that stuff bagged and tagged, we got evidence right here to test. Inspector Demetrius, where’s that tote with all the evidence?”
“Ah! Yes, you have a point – just a moment; I dumped it off on my desk,” he said, scurrying into an adjacent room and emerging seconds later with the large tote bag of poly-bagged evidence. “Here we are. Let us spread it out on the tables and see about ‘puffing’ all of it. If any of it changes color, we have the source of the virulosin contamination.”
They set to work.
“Damn, Nick,” Smith said with a laugh, “you even bagged the leftover coffee from the cups?!”
“Well, I figured, if it had been contaminated, it would show up even better in that than in the mugs, which you notice I also grabbed,” Ashton pointed out. “And there wasn’t much. Just be careful and don’t spill it everywhere.”
“What is it with you and crime scene coffee?” Jones asked. “Didn’t your first case with Detective Gorski have a couple coffee samples, too?”
“It did,” Gorski remembered. “All right, so we should have two coffee samples here…”
“Yup. One with cream and one black,” Weaver observed.
“Yeah, one was hers and one was her boss’s, but I couldn’t remember which was which, so I bagged ‘em both separately,” Ashton explained.
“I think he said his was the one with the cream,” Gorski said.
“That fits my recollection, Stefan,” Demetrius agreed.
“Well, that’s what I thought, too,” Ashton admitted, “but I wasn’t for sure, so I figured...” He shrugged.
“And that was well done in any case,” Peterson commended. “If he was also dosed, but hadn’t reacted yet due to his larger frame, we’d need to know.”
“Right.”
As the younger investigators laid out the bagged evidence, Gorski and Demetrius moved along the tables, systematically opening a bag and puffing a considerable quantity of the viral detection reagent into the bag, before quickly sealing it, then moving to the next bag. According to the instructions that came with the puff testers, it would take this particular reagent a few minutes to react to the G.A.S RNA snippet, so they would add the reagent to all of the evidence bags, then go back around and see if any had reacted.
Two had.
“The black coffee and the cup it was in?!” Gorski exclaimed in surprise. “That was hers! So it was somebody in her office!”
“Who did she have under her?” Demetrius asked. “And don’t forget that her boss had coffee with her! He may well be the Sandman!”
“True,” Ashton said then, as the others clustered around. “But there’s something off about that, Mr. Demetrius...”
“Gene, son, call me Gene,” Demetrius said with a smile. “Everybody else does. And as well as you’ve done on this case so far, you’ve certainly earned the right.”
Ashton gave him an appreciative smile, but his brain was still working on the scenario Demetrius had suggested, which seemed off. Finally it hit him.
“That’s it! It can’t be Witte, ‘cause Witte is the vice president,” he told the others. “He might get his own coffee, but he isn’t gonna fetch coffee for a subordinate, too. And I don’t see them leaving the review to go down to the break room themselves.”
“He’s right,” Gorski said, one eyebrow going up. “They’d have an underling do it.”
“One of the junior marketers?” Peterson suggested. “What did you say their names were...?”
“Surnames Glenn and Wall,” Demetrius noted. “They’re rather young to be the original murderer, though. Neither of ‘em has been out of university more than about three years.”
“Could be the kid of the Sandman,” Weyand suggested.
“Hey, Cally?” Ashton called. “You get anything on the list of decisions by the medical treatment approval board? Any hits?”
Ames sat at the desk, staring straight ahead, and did not respond.
“She’s still in full VR,” Compton observed.
“Yeah. I’ll go in and see what she’s doing,” Ashton said. “If she’s got anything at all, it might help us narrow down who’s our perp, out of all our suspects.”
Ashton popped into channel 111 again. Ames’ avatar was now seated at a desk, poring over a sheaf of “printed” papers. She glanced up when his avatar appeared.
“Hey, Cal,” he said, moving to the other chair and sitting down, across the desk from her. “Damn, girl, your eyes are getting bloodshot. I didn’t know avatars could do that.”
They laughed.
“Hey, Nick,” she murmured. “You come in to see how I’m getting on?”
“Yup. We got a hit on the victim’s coffee mug, so we know the virulosin was administered in the office coffee. We just don’t know who did it,” Ashton said, as Gorski joined them, remaining silent. “You got anything that might help us narrow things down?”
“Maybe. I have a few possibles, here.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, there’s Michael and Ridge Blackmoor,” she said, as the avatars of Demetrius, Peterson, and Weyand appeared. Gorski’s avatar shushed them quickly with a finger to the lips, and they moved silently to his side, to watch the pair hard at work. Seconds later, Smith, Weaver, and Compton had joined the impromptu peanut gallery, just as Demetrius, Peterson, and Gorski exchanged meaningful, and duly impressed, glances. Ames continued, not noticing the onlookers, so deep into the research was she.
“Michael is Ridge’s father,” she explained. “Michael died about twelve years ago of a rare form of cancer, when the board refused to provide the appropriate treatment. Something about him being a miner – which also means they didn’t have the money to pay off the board – and they could get rid of the cancer, but it would only come back when he resumed mining. Never mind that Michael Blackmoor had retired from
