Poison Most Vial Read online

  “Um, yeah, OK. It’s me . . . um.”

  “Um. Yes, I’ve heard that before. Um meaning what?”

  “Well, so. One thing is, I have a question.”

  “Another one, huh?” he said from the bedroom. “That’s all I get anymore.”

  “You know your security ID badge?”

  “Of course. Couldn’t go anywhere without that thing. Why?”

  “Do you still have it?”

  “No, no. They took that away, that very same night. The cops did. I told you that a while ago. Why do you ask now?”

  She tried to sound casual. “Well, do you happen to remember the number on it?”

  Mr. Rose leaned over, pulled out a pencil and a pad out of a nightstand drawer, and wrote it down. He handed the paper to her. “Anything else, officer?”

  Ruby stared unseeing at the number for several seconds before seeing the same 015 as the mystery person’s number. She blinked at the last four digits and saw with a wave of relief that it was 4003. Her dad wasn’t Double-O Seven.

  “Dad,” she said, her voice closer to normal, “one more quick thing.”

  “Yes, Ruby. What’s going on?”

  “Well, you said that Roman, the other janitor, would not poison Dr. Rama, right? That he was about to retire and all.”

  “That’s right. He had no reason to do it and plenty not to. He was a pretty sour old coot. Rarely saw the man laugh at life. But he also had a pension coming and no reason to make trouble and lose that.”

  “What coming?”

  “A pension. That’s where your employer pays you a certain amount every year after you retire. But why are you asking about Roman?”

  “I mean, why do you think?”

  “Ruby, you and Rex aren’t interfering in any of this investigation, are you? I know you’re trying to help, and I know you’ve done a lot already. Just be careful you don’t make it worse.”

  Ruby widened her eyes. “Dad, you’re the prime suspect! They’re about to charge you. How could it be worse?”

  Mr. Rose held up a hand. “I know. Believe me. I just keep thinking, you know, they’ll find something that shows I didn’t do it. Ms. Diaz has been working hard on this, I know that.”

  “Well, at least . . . ” Ruby wanted to tell her father what Dean Touhy had said, but she stopped herself. Cleared? Did the dean mean, like, free? How did he even know that? And why would he tell her? Maybe it was all random, just talk to make her feel better, or—What did the dean actually say? Ruby wasn’t so sure anymore. “Just let’s not wait around to be rescued—isn’t that what you always say to me?”

  “It sure is, Ruby.”

  “OK, then listen,” she said. “We know that Lydia met Roman for about ten minutes before the body was found, around 7:30.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Never mind. Just listen for one second.”

  Mr. Rose narrowed his eyes. “All right.”

  “Well, Rex and me, we followed Lydia the other day,” Ruby continued. “She walked right through the Gardens on her way to Davenport.”

  “You—what? Davenport? Ruby, please tell me you didn’t go over there.”

  “She met someone in there, Dad. Roman, I think. No, I’m sure. Mr. Rome, they called him. This was just last week. They were arguing, Lydia and Roman, loud. He sounded scared.”

  Mr. Rose nodded slowly. “Huh,” he said. “Roman lives in Davenport, yes. And I always wondered . . . ”

  “What?”

  “Well, whether he and Lydia are related. Just the way he looks at her, like she’s a daughter. Can’t be, of course. He’s too old. But I know his younger sister has a daughter.”

  “Is it Lydia, you think?”

  “No idea. But let’s assume it is. So what?”

  “Well, what if she was flunking out? Lydia, I mean. If Rama was about to drop her from the program.”

  Mr. Rose got up from the table and went into the kitchen, returning with a root beer. “Ruby, what are you asking me?”

  “If Lydia was flunking out, and she was Roman’s niece or whatever—how would that affect him, knowing about it?”

  “He couldn’t possibly know. Rama kept those kinds of decisions strictly to himself, as far as I know. And Lydia—I can’t imagine her telling anyone that she was struggling. If she was. Least of all her uncle.”

  “She was struggling,” Ruby said. But her dad was right. How would Roman possibly know what Rama was planning to do?

  “Hypothetically,” her dad was saying, “I can see what you’re thinking. Although I don’t—well, let’s see.”

  “What?”

  “If she really is his niece, his one and only in this country . . . You work so hard to get a chance. I know what that feels like, all those long hours and taking orders to get a chance not for yourself but for someone you love. But still.”

  “Still what?”

  “I don’t buy it. One, Roman never showed his face that night. And two, no way he dreams this up himself. Not a chance, take my word for it. And that’s assuming he knew that Lydia was failing.”

  “OK. Maybe . . . uh, I don’t know. What if someone told him and put him up to it?”

  Ruby’s father took a long draw on his drink and shook his head. “Well, that’s a whole bunch of hunches based on hunches, detective.”

  “Well, that’s what detectives do, right?”

  Mr. Rose finished the root beer and set the can down gently. “Yes. And yes again if Roman is involved in this at all, someone else got him to do it.”

  Saturday morning, a quarter to nine, warm for late fall. Mrs. Whitmore, in a dark blue skirt and red cardigan, stood at the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee and a copy of the DeWitt Echo—and there it was.

  Deep in a story about the ongoing investigation into the Ramachandran murder was a quote from “an unidentified federal investigator.” The FBI was involved.

  “That explains it,” she said out loud. Agents from Washington, D.C., were involved in the case, almost certainly because the city police and DeWitt Forensics were such close partners. More detectives meant more delay, which had to be why the police hadn’t filed formal charges against the girl’s father yet.

  She clipped the article and was placing it in a manila folder that said Rama Jr. on it when a knock came on the door.

  “Coming,” Mrs. Whitmore called from the kitchen. She cleared dishes from the table, smoothed her hair in the small mirror in the hall, and opened the door.

  “Why, hello again.” Had it been only a week since she last saw them? It seemed far longer. “Please, make yourselves at home.”

  The girl looked eager; the boy, nervous again. She wondered if he had attention disorder, or whatever it was that so many young boys were supposed to have.

  “Roman,” Ruby said suddenly. “We think Roman did it. With Lydia’s help. And maybe someone else, too.”

  “Whoa there, Nellie.” Mrs. Whitmore smiled, beckoned the two of them to the table, and opened a tin of brownies. “Tell me more,” she said.

  Ruby explained how Lydia was failing Rama’s program. Rex told how they tracked her security card. Ruby said they thought Roman was Lydia’s uncle. Rex said Lydia met with Roman just after seven o’clock, plenty of time to grab the vials and stash them in Mr. Rose’s locker..

  “Very good, very good,” Mrs. Whitmore said. “Yes, yes. I am inclined to agree with you about Roman and Lydia. And it explains something about the timing. Why didn’t Lydia bring Rama his next cup of tea at 7:15? The answer, apparently, is that she was still busy.”

  “How do you know about Roman?” Rex said.

  “You’ve just told me about him, for one,” she said. “But I have read the news accounts, I know who was in the lab that night. Remember, young man—Rex—that I am, I was, in forensics myself for many years.”

  “Oh right, I knew that,” Rex said.

  “Look, we need to go tell the police about Roman, like, now,” Ruby said.

  “Easy now, dear,
there will be time for that. When we have a clear idea of what happened and evidence to back it up. As it is, we don’t even know how much poison Dr. Rama swallowed that night and when. That’s critical information, and only the toxicology will tell us that.”

  Ruby opened her sketchbook, pulled out a piece of paper, and pushed it across the table. “OK, well, look at this,” she said. “This is the list of poisons in the cabinet, with all the amounts. You were right: There was a computer file.”

  Mrs. Whitmore straightened her glasses and studied. “Oh my,” she said. “The toxin quantities. How on earth did you manage to . . . ?”

  She pulled a page from her manila folder and put the two pieces of paper side by side. A long silence; the woman was a statue of concentration. Ruby shrugged at Rex. Now what?

  Mrs. Whitmore stood abruptly, strode across the room to the window, turned. “Well, now,” the woman said. “Well, well, well.”

  “What?” said Rex.

  “We have something here, is what.” Mrs. Whitmore returned to the table. She picked up a pen and circled a number on the archive list. “Take a look at that number right there.”

  “So?” Ruby said. It read 1 milligram.

  “That’s the amount of the deadly nightshade that was in the red vial, according to Wade’s file. See that?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  The woman circled a number on the toxicology report: 2 ng/mL. “Two nanograms per milliliter. Ignore the big words for now: That’s the concentration of deadly nightshade in Rama’s blood at the time of autopsy,” she said. “Well, technically, it’s the toxic compound in nightshade—atropine; that’s what we look for.”

  “OK.”

  “Well, the half-life of atropine—of nightshade—is two to three hours. That means that, after two hours, we should see one half of the amount that was absorbed into the blood. And we do—there it is, the two nanograms per milliliter on the toxicology report.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Rex said.

  “None. Yet,” Mrs. Whitmore replied. She circled the same two numbers for the chokecherry. “Here again, the numbers make sense. After two hours, almost all of the toxin would be eliminated, and that is what we see here: only a trace amount in the blood.”

  “So I don’t get why—”

  Mrs. Whitmore put a finger up. “But have a look at the monkshood numbers. And remember, the active toxin in monkshood is called aconite.”

  The amount of the monkshood in the red vial was 0.5 milligrams, according to Wade’s file. The amount in Rama’s blood was 6 ng/mL—six nanograms per milliliter. “That’s way too high, if the murder occurred the way the police are saying,” Mrs. Whitmore said.

  “What do you mean, too high?” Rex asked, now leaning forward in his chair.

  “Well,” the older woman replied. “Only a fraction of an ingested substance is absorbed into the blood. That fraction may be as high as 70 percent, depending on the substance. But it’s not higher than that. Organs like the liver and kidneys metabolize some of the substance, and some is tied up in the mucosal linings of the mouth and the digestive system. Once you subtract that, you should have only one to two nanograms per milliliter after two hours.”

  “And that’s lower than what they found,” Ruby said.

  “Significantly lower, dear. Now, why would that be?”

  Rex said, “Maybe he drank the monkshood after the others?”

  “Good,” Mrs. Whitmore said. “That’s one possibility. But it would have to be more than an hour afterward to see this big of a difference. And it doesn’t really add up; all three poisons were found in that same teacup.”

  “Well, huh. Then maybe this printout we got is wrong,” Rex said.

  Ruby shook her head. “No, no way. Wade was crazy about this kind of stuff. It’s right.”

  “Extraordinary.” Mrs. Whitmore was on her feet again. She had forgotten what this work was like; it had been far too long. “If Dr. Rama had this much poison in his blood at autopsy, then I think we can conclude—for now—that he drank more than was in the red vial from the Toxin Archive.”

  “Meaning what, though?”

  “We don’t know that, Ruby. To me, it supports what your dad told you—that someone else was involved. If indeed Roman dosed Dr. Rama’s tea, he would have grabbed the red vials and dumped them in. Period. I doubt from what you’ve told me that he would know where to get more of this rather exotic toxin.”

  “So someone else in the lab . . . ,” said Ruby. “But wouldn’t the police know all this by now?”

  “No, dear, not necessarily. The only way to know that the blood level was high is to check the contents in the red vial. Right now, the police are far more focused on the suspects: where they were, what they did, what they said. So the police may not be ahead of us on this.”

  “What now?” Ruby said.

  “My instinct,” said Mrs. Whitmore, who noticed she was twirling a pen in her fingers like she did back when she was working a hunch in her lab days, “tells me that whoever was involved with Roman would have met him that Friday, the day of, to make sure the crime was in motion.”

  Ruby smiled. “The badges again.”

  Rex said, “My guess is Paris.”

  “Yeah?” said Ruby, arranging her drawings, copies of the toxin levels, and other notes on the large table in the science library that had become their base of operations.

  “Probably making a pipe bomb right now to help us out. Or Bruce, to do the reading for us—you think?”

  “I sure do. What are you talking about?”

  “The person she said she was bringing to help. Sharon. Remember?”

  “Oh yeah, right. The someone. Watch it be Simon.”

  “Long as he hasn’t handcuffed himself to another piece of luggage for national securit—Uh-oh.”

  Ruby turned to look. Sharon was approaching their table with . . . Simon Buscombe. Rex leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Ruby blinked in disbelief.

  “Hey, remember I said I had someone?” Sharon said.

  All elbows and dirty blond hair, Simon slid into a chair across from Rex without a word. He adjusted his headband, carefully pulled a plastic wrapper off of a giant cinnamon roll, opened a bottle of cream soda, and plunged his face into the roll.

  “Uh, I just lost my appetite, and that’s saying something,” Rex said. “What you think that pastry made of, Simon?”

  Simon ignored him, demolishing the cinnamon roll in three bites. “I understand my services are needed,” he said in that deep voice that surprised Ruby every time she heard it in class. He had to be faking it.

  “Yeah,” said Ruby, glancing over at Rex. His services, thank you so much. “We, uh, we’ve been looking into this case . . . ”

  “I am aware of your pursuits,” came the deep voice. “I have eyes and ears.” He glanced at Sharon. “And I have associates who keep me informed.” He then cleared his throat, took a long hit on the soda, burped, and said, “Half-life.”

  “Huh?” Rex said.

  “In your equation. T-1/2 means half-life,” replied Simon. “It’s pharmacokinetics. The study of what a body does to substances, how it breaks down and gets rid of them. The half-life is the amount of time it takes the body to eliminate half of a substance. Different times for different substances.”

  “Gracias, Einstein, we already know all that,” Rex said.

  “Then perhaps our business is done,” said Simon, whipping out a cell phone and slouching in his chair. It looked to Ruby like he had some video game going.

  “Perhaps not,” Sharon said. She turned to Ruby. “Look, he knows a bunch about the buildings, don’t ask me how. Can we just, I don’t know, see how it goes for a while?”

  Ruby scanned the others’ faces: Rex exasperated, Sharon impatient, Simon pretending he wasn’t listening. “A while,” she said. “Get me back into the badge tracking system.”

  She explained their hunch: that someone was helping Roman, and if so probably met him sometime th
e day of the murder.

  In moments Sharon was into the system, the others peering over her shoulders at the nearest library desktop. The familiar door numbers scrolled by on the screen, and again Ruby felt light-headed. “Go down farther, earlier,” she said. “And we’re looking for Double-O Seven, remember.”

  “Is that a joke?” said Simon.

  “No, it’s the number—Roman’s number,” Ruby said.

  And there was 007 Roman, coming back from the men’s room at around 4 o’clock; and before that, from the kitchen; and at his lunchtime, he went up to the ground floor to his locker area to have lunch. All normal.

  “Wait. Back it up. D16 again, see it?” Rex seemed to have memorized all the door numbers.

  “Where is it—oh yeah, there, he goes in there at, ooh, at 1:21,” Sharon said. “And then at 1:38 he’s going back into the kitchen.”

  “Same room where he met Lydia later,” Rex said. “Right, Ruby?”

  She had to check her notes. “Yeah, same one. Any other numbers going in there?”

  Sharon scrolled up and down. “Oh no, not one. Nothing . . . Simon?”

  “You called.” He was standing right behind her, squinting at the screen.

  “Make yourself useful,” Sharon continued. “This door we’re looking at goes into a small tech room down the hall and around the corner from the kitchen. You’re the map guy. Tell me whether there’s another entrance.”

  Simon was studying what looked like one of his mazes, rubbing his chin. He probably had a pipe at home, Ruby thought.

  “Yes,” he said finally. “The small tech room has another door that goes out to this little courtyard out back. According to my layout, which is accurate.”

  “Arg,” said Sharon. “If there was someone in there with Roman, he or she could have come in and out through that back door, not using a badge at all.”

  Ruby tried to imagine it. A person crossing that courtyard behind Rama’s office twice, in the middle of the day. “No, I don’t think so. Do one thing: Check the front door and elevator just before Roman went in there—right around 1:20.”

  “You mean—Oh, look,” said Sharon. Someone had come in, right through the front door and down the elevator, just after 1:20. Roman could have let the person into the tech room. It was a number that started with 222—and whoever it was exited the building not long after Roman left the small room.