The Flourine Murder by Camille Minichino - written version
The Fluorine Murder
There's nothing special about a third wedding anniversary, unless your best friend has been waiting three years to get you to celebrate. Deprived of the pleasure of planning my wedding, Rose Galigani wouldn't stop nagging until Matt and I agreed to some form of public display.
"It's leather," Rose told me, as we sat on lawn chairs facing the geranium-filled back yard of the mortuary she ran with her husband.
"Leather?"
"The traditional gift for third anniversaries is leather."
"Who else knows this?" I asked.
"It's a hard theme to deal with, but maybe we can work up something around luggage. We can have tiny suitcases for favors, but that means you'll have to take a trip right after the wedding, Gloria."
I checked her expression. Teasing or serious? It was never possible to tell for sure. Rose didn't ask for much in life, other than continued good business for her funeral home, which was pretty much guaranteed, and the freedom to provide a meaningful social life for those she loved.
"We agreed to a small party," I reminded her. "Not a full-blown wedding. We're already married. And we're not twenty years old."
Homicide detective Matt Gennaro and I had run off, if fifty-somethings can be said to run, for a weekend in Vermont and had come back married. Thus, the delayed consumer-approved show of bliss.
Rose snapped her fingers. "A Unity Candle. That's what you need," she said. "They do that at all the weddings these days. The mothers in each family light a small candle. Then the bride and groom use those flames to light a big candle in the middle, to symbolize the coming together of the two families."
I could have sworn her eyes started to fill up.
"Our mothers are dead, Rose. Matt has one sister; I have one cousin. It will look silly."
"Maybe you're right, Gloria. But we need candles. How about just one big one?" She held her hands to indicate a circumference of about nine inches. If we lit a candle that size, it would alert every smoke detector in its path.
As Rose's hands grew farther and farther apart, the candle expanding to larger and larger proportions, the shrill whine of a siren filled the night air, still humid at eight o'clock in the evening. I heard a loud honk, then saw the flash of a fire engine zipping past on Tuttle Street.
For a minute I thought they'd come to extinguish the flame on our imaginary Unity Candle.
#
The fire was one of the biggest in the history of Revere, Massachusetts. It was also the fifth major blaze in the small city in less than a month, which was five times the usual number. The first four fires had leveled empty buildings, sweeping through an abandoned elementary school, a set of vacant apartments in a long-ago public housing project, a deserted church hall, and a car dealership that had gone out of business.
This fifth and latest fire was different in one significant way. The inferno had hit a sprawling, operating nursing home across town from Rose and Frank Galigani's mortuary. The box-shaped building, which had been a general hospital many years ago, was full to capacity with patients at various levels of disability, from people in a doctor-recommended program of physical therapy, to those needing around the clock care.
This fire had also claimed a life. The Revere Journal reported that the body of a young woman, as yet unidentified, had been found in the rubble.
The residents of the home had been moved to safety, and all members of the staff were accounted for. The fire had broken out well past visiting hours.
So who was the dead woman?
Not to mention—who was trying to level Revere?
#
I learned a little more when a call to Matt's cell phone interrupted our regular Sunday morning brunch in the Galiganis' beautifully appointed dining room. Matt's and my dining room, by contrast, was still a work in progress even after three years.
"Looks like we're going to need your help again," Matt told me when he clicked his phone off. "Fluorine came up in the investigation."
"Is that the deceased woman's name?" Rose asked.
"It's the ninth element of the periodic table," her husband, Frank, said, polishing off his second home-baked croissant and earning a nod of approval from me for his science literacy. "And we know who's the expert on all things science."
"Dr. Gloria Lamerino," Rose said, using her best drum-roll voice.
I did enjoy my association with the Revere Police Department, which called me in as a consultant whenever science was involved in a case. Revere was home to the Charger Street Laboratory, a major research facility with more than seven thousand scientists and support staff. I often found myself in the position of interpreting and explaining their work to my husband and his department.
"Fluorine. I'm on it," I said. "What else do we know?"
"The woman's death has been ruled a homicide," Matt said. "The autopsy report says she was dead before the fire got to her."
"No smoke in her lungs, I'm guessing," Frank said, breaking the silence that followed the news of a murder in our town and the senseless ending of a human life, whether we knew the victim or not.
"That's a big part of it," Matt said. "No inhalation. Looks like her body was dumped at the fire site. The only identifying mark is a tattoo that looks like a coin or a seal of some kind."
"The tattoo survived the fire?" I asked.
I'd addressed Matt, but Frank raised his hand to answer, as if we were all back in school. If I was supposed to know "all things science," Frank, the veteran embalmer, knew "all things dead body."
"Tattoo ink is embedded in deep scar tissue," Frank began. "Even if a body is badly decomposed, a pathologist can just wipe away the sloughed skin and there's the tattoo as pristine as the day it was made."
"Not the first time I've seen it," Matt said. "In this case, the victim's body wasn't destroyed by the fire, so there's a decent image left of the tattoo. They tell me they can't read the writing, but there's a pretty clear representation of a woman with some kind of crown."
We cleared away juice glasses and craned our necks to view the photograph Matt pulled out of his pocket, Columbo-style, and set on the table. The circular graphic, on the victim's lower back, looked like a collage of several themes—as if the Statue of Liberty were sitting in a cluttered garden. Draped in fabric, the faux Miss Liberty was holding what might have been a large-diameter candle, and at her feet were what looked like an urn, farming equipment, and some indefinable shrubbery.
"It's not an American coin or any common foreign currency," Matt said. "Too bad we don't have one of those magic computers where we scan this in and some enormous database with every image from the beginning of time clicks away and then suddenly blinks 'MATCH MATCH'."
Frank helped Matt out with blinking hand gestures. I knew he was trying to prevent Matt from launching into a speech about how inadequate real-life forensics labs were compared to the hi-tech environments we saw on television shows.
Rose took us off the topic with her own analysis. "There weren't even any injuries in the other fires and now we have a fatality. Do they think this was set by a different person?"
"No, there are too many other similarities," Matt said. "For one, the accelerant is different every time, but never very sophisticated. He's used everything from a cigarette to a welding spark to ordinary fuel."
"Is he trying to make it look like different people were involved?"
"The RFD doesn't think so. The blazes have one strange feature in common."
I was already on my way to retrieve the notepad and pen from my purse. Matt kindly waited.
"Go ahead." I smiled, pen poised.
"Okay, the RFD equipment gets there in record time, of course, but in each case there's been evidence that someone got there before they did."
"The arsonist," Frank offered, with a chuckle.
"Yeah," Matt said. "But also someone who tried to put the fire out."
"Amateurs with fire extinguishers?" I asked. "Like someone who follows fires? Aren't there people who actually get a thrill watching fires?"
"There are plants called fire followers," Rose said. "There was this case where a plant that hadn't been seen in a location for a thousand years suddenly bloomed again after an enormous fire swept through the area."
"How?" I asked, amused at myself for succumbing to one of Rose's trivia lessons, irrelevant as it seemed to our discussion.
"The temperature of the soil increased and the fire burned away some stuff that wasn't friendly to the plant. I read about it in a plant book." Rose and I obviously frequented different parts of the bookstore. "Also, I think fire symbolically brings things together, as well as being destructive."
Matt and Frank gave her funny looks, but I knew she was talking about the Unity Candle she saw as the centerpiece of our anniversary party.
"We know lots of people who have scanners and intercept police and fire calls. John is one of them," Frank said.
"He's a reporter," Rose said, as if she needed to defend their second son from his father.
"Badge bunnies," Matt said, a grin forming. "That's what we call people, especially women, who follow cops around."
Should I be jealous? Probably not, I decided. Matt had been a celibate (according to him) widower when we got married, and I had no reason to think he'd go astray now.
"What do they call fire groupies?" Rose asked.
"Hose bunnies," Frank said, then blushed. Our usual conversation was singularly free of double entendres. Something about the fire talk had sparked a different kind of repartee.
"Good one," Rose said, letting him off the hook.
"Who do the firefighters think is helping out at the scenes?" I asked Matt.
"Up to now, it's been impossible to say. But finally we have an RFD report—whoever is getting there before the engines is using a variety of different kinds of fire extinguisher material. There's nothing the RFD has ever seen before, but they always contain fluorine."
Aha. The fluorine connection, at last. I thought back to industrial research I'd read about in general science magazines.
"It's not that strange to have a fluorine compound in a flame suppressant. Early attempts wreaked havoc on the ozone layer, so they had to go back to the drawing board. I'd have to do a little research, but I believe the latest products with perfluorinated compounds work better."
"I remember when we just used water," Frank said, gilding the lily by adding butter to a third croissant. It was hard to figure how he and Rose were the trim, fit ones in this foursome.
"Water puts out fires but it ruins most materials that it falls on," I reminded him. "Imagine a room with expensive and important computer equipment drowning in water. It's tricky to find something that will put out a fire but still leave breathable air for people to survive."
"Unless they're dead to begin with," Matt said, bringing us back to the case at hand.
"Where exactly does Gloria come in?" Rose asked.
Good question. "I might remind you that I'm a retired physicist, not a chemist. We deal with simple atoms and simple reactions. Once we get into the complicated alphabet soup compounds like PEIK—that's perfluoroethylisopropylketone—or PMIK—that's perfluoromethylisopropylketone—I'm lost."
"You don't sound lost," Rose said.
"She never does," Matt said.
"Would you like me to introduce you to the Charger Street chemists who are working on fluorine-based flame suppressants?" I asked.
My loving husband of the Year of Leather gave me a vigorous nod. "You know the language, which puts you way ahead of most of us on the force. And right now we're going on the assumption that the fires and the murder are related."
"I know the fluorine research team fairly well," I said. "I attend their seminars now and then. I'm sure they'll be a big help in figuring this out." Matt raised his eyebrows and gave me a sad look. It took a few seconds to register. "What is it?"
"You might not be happy to hear."
"The Fire Department thinks the fluorine chemists are racing to the fires so they can test their formulas?" I could hardly keep my voice steady.
"Or … " Matt said, completing his sentence with a shrug.
"Could they be deliberately … ?" Frank was wide-eyed.
Rose gasped. "You don't think they're … ?"
No one dared say the words in my presence—the notion that the scientists could be setting fires themselves, to use in their research. My husband and friends knew my extreme protectionist attitude, wanting to hold onto the concept that scientific research was carried out by men and women whose motives were always pure and altruistic.
"I'm assuming the RFD is investigating, too," Rose said.
"The murder is ours," Matt said, not meaning to sound so callous, I was sure. "They've interviewed the Charger Street chemists." He turned to me. "I have to be honest, Gloria. The RFD suspects the chemists, but they can't prove anything."
"Suspects them of what?" I hadn't meant to raise my voice, but no one seemed surprised.
Matt scratched his head. I could tell it was bad news. "Everything."
Rose stifled another gasp, turning it into a cough.
I took a deep breath. It didn't help much. "So I'm supposed to get evidence against fellow scientists? To show that they go around setting fires and then experiment on putting them out? And that they may have killed someone in the process?"
I took my husband's silence as a "yes."
I tuned out as my three brunch companions went off on another subject. I needed to make some notes on the fluorine researchers at the Lab. No one said I couldn't try to clear their names. I left the dining room table and settled myself one room away on a kitchen stool. I heard no protests.
#
One of the best things about being retired was that I no longer had the pressure of knowing what was being done every waking hour in my own field of spectroscopy. Instead of focusing on one narrow field, I could dabble in every area that held interest for me, reading books and magazines and attending seminars across the board in physics and chemistry departments. It was nice to listen to everyone's problems—not enough temporal resolution with the new scanning equipment, too many unknowns in a set of equations—and not have to solve them.
I wrote Stan Nolan's name first. He was the leader of the fluorine research group, nearing retirement and eager to have one last paper accepted in the Journal of Fluorine Chemistry. I pictured his thinning gray hair and the same dark green cardigan I'd seen him in at every meeting.
Peter Barnett and Teresa Verrico were the new post-docs in the group. The two young people seemed to get along well, their only rivalry stemming from an ongoing chess game, played at times in the chemistry department lounge and at times on line. Peter played up his nerdy reputation by wearing a pocket protector.
Teresa was the reason I attended so many chemistry meetings. She'd gotten her degree at the University of California, like me, and we'd met at a reunion of UC science alums now residing in Massachusetts. Unlike me, Teresa missed the sunny west coast. I let her moan about the humidity of a New England summer and helped her buy a snow shovel for the winter.
Carson Little was the heir apparent to replace Stan as the group's leader. He was affectionately called "Little Boy" not only for his surname and small stature but because he was an avid student of mid-twentieth century atomic science. Carson's personality was a match to that of Little Boy, the first atomic bomb, in many ways—he was volatile, energetic, and unpredictable.
The last member of the team was an on-again off-again young temp who handled the clerical work for as many hours per week as the budget (also on-again off-again) allowed. Danielle Laurent was a French exchange student in environmental sciences at a Boston college.
I remembered going out for coffee after a seminar, with Teresa, Peter, and Carson. I didn't think it strange that Stan and Danielle declined, saying they had work to do. They went off, Stan in his long cardigan and Danielle in a sweater that barely reached her waist.
Then I was treated to the workings of the chem department rumor mill.
"May-December," Carson Little had said, with a wink in their direction. True to his nickname, he mimicked the sound and gestures of firecrackers going off.
Peter and Teresa laughed and nodded, as if everyone who was anyone knew of the relationship. It was news to me.
"You mean Stan and Danielle are an item?" I asked, realizing there must have been a cooler way to say it. I was also sorry I'd encouraged the banter.
They all nodded. "Nothing wrong with it," Teresa said, trying to keep her long, curly hair from dipping into her cappuccino. "They're uncommitted and they're both adults."
"Barely," Peter responded. "Danielle is twelve."
"And Stan is one hundred and twelve," Carson said. "With a thing for French, uh, accents." He grinned.
"And she has a thing for green cardigans," Peter said.
"I have cardigans," Carson said.
The jokes and the topic had gone on longer than I'd been comfortable with, ending with the two men accusing each other of being jealous of Stan's "luck" and Teresa and me rolling our eyes.
Rumors and jealousies aside, I couldn't imagine any of the fluorine group as arsonists, let alone murderers. But I had to admit that there was no telling what a dedicated scientist would do if she or he thought it would mean a breakthrough in the field. Each time I took on a case where scientists were suspect, I held my breath, hoping the guilt would fall on someone other than a scientist—the budget director, a mailroom or cafeteria worker, a personnel rep—anyone but a person trained in sifting through the mysteries of the universe.
I looked forward to accompanying Matt on the interviews and resolved to keep an open mind. I was ready to return to my brunch companions at Rose's dining room table, now fully stocked with chocolates and mints, as if the pastries hadn't qualified as dessert.
The sooner we got going, the sooner I could help find the true culprits and clear my colleagues.
I sat down and tapped my pen on my notepad. "When do we start?" I asked Matt.
"First we're all going to the movies," he said.
#
"I should have known you'd never take us to see George Clooney," Rose said.
The four of us sat in front of a low-end television/VCR combination in a conference room at the Revere police station. It made sense for Matt to invite Rose and Frank to the view the latest crime scene video, and not just because they were our best friends: No two people in the city knew as many of its citizens as they did. Not only did they run the largest mortuary in town with their older son, Robert, but they had their fingers on the legal pulse through his lawyer wife, Karla, and on anything newsworthy through John, the reporter with a police scanner. Whatever was left over came to them through their high school teacher daughter, Mary Catherine. They were up on all stages in life and death in Revere.
"Maybe Clooney is on this tape," Matt said, to a chorus of disbelieving chuckles.
The video was home grown. One of the neighbors across the street from the nursing home had rushed out with his video camera when he smelled smoke.
"We used to just take pictures of First Communions and weddings. Now people record any kind of disaster," Rose said.
I caught Matt's eye and we smiled at each other: Did Rose realize she'd put weddings in the disaster category?
"And we're throwing everything up on YouTube," Frank said, tsk-tsking.
"Was the cameraman the one who called in the fire?" I asked.
Matt shook his head. "We don't know who called it in. The voice on the dispatcher's tape sounded like a robot. We're assuming it was one of the would-be firefighters and/or the arsonist, and/or the murderer."
"All of whom may be the same person," Frank said.
Matt gave a resigned nod and pushed PLAY on the remote.
Even on a very low-definition government-issue television set, the footage on the fire was startling. Bright red and orange flames shot out from the old wooden structure. There was no audio, but I was sure I could hear crackling and popping. It had been a mild night, without the usual ocean breeze. I wondered if the arsonist had chosen the evening deliberately, to have more control of the fire, or if the choice was governed by some other factor. Many offenders, I knew, committed crimes on dates that had meaning for them, or followed a mental rhythm that no one else was privy to.
My amateur profiling would get us nowhere. I focused on the scene before me. I wrote down a few phrases and thoughts, noting the uniformed nursing home attendants pushing people in wheelchairs, the crumbling window and doorframes, and a gathering crowd, some of whom pitched in to help move people away from the flaming building. The firefighters arrived pretty quickly and took control of the crowd and the soaring, mesmerizing flames. It was hard to tell the gender of the hatchet-carrying, masked, helmeted professionals who ran toward the conflagration.
We all sat back and exhaled deeply as figures in neon yellow-green stripes worked the scene. We'd been at the edges of our seats and, apparently, holding our breaths as if we'd been there at the site of the crackling blaze.
"What are we looking for?" I asked Matt.
"Anything that looks odd. The RFD has already interviewed everyone they could that night. They always look for people who are at more than one scene, or at a fire away from their neighborhood. But this is a murder crime scene, too, and you never know what new pairs of eyes will catch after the fact."
Within the first two minutes, Rose and Frank ID'd at least six people, including a retired postal worker who'd just lost his wife to cancer and the weekend clerk in the flower shop across from St. Anthony's Church. The trick was to get them to hold the ID to a line or two and not give us the family history going back two generations, as they did for deli owners Carol and George Zollo, before we could stop them.
Something occurred to me after the first viewing, but I couldn't pin it down. "Can you play the first few minutes again?" I asked Matt. He rewound the tape and this time I watched only one part of the screen, focusing on the upper right, where I knew the niggling bit was. The flames overloaded the camera, resulting in poor definition of the building parts and objects on the ground. Nothing was as good as the human eye as far as being able to adjust to different intensities of light in real time.
"What are you looking for, Gloria?" Rose asked.
"Stop," I said, too loudly, causing Rose to jump. Matt tried to get a good still frame but the picture was marred by noise and tracking bars. I was surprised that a person interested enough to take videos like this didn't use a digital camera. Matt finally zeroed in on a decent frame. I pointed to a large, rolling two-level lab cart I'd seen in passing the first time. The cart was almost out of range of the camera, but the shape was very familiar to me. Several pieces of apparatus were piled onto its shelves.
"What is it?" Matt asked.
"There's your unofficial equipment," I said.
In a flash, our four heads were angled for viewing the screen up close. I was grateful that no one pointed out where lab carts were readily available. In restaurants, I thought, in desperation.
"Can you tell exactly what's on the cart?" Matt asked.
I moved my chair still closer to the screen and squinted, without gaining much in clarity. "It's hard to tell, but I think we're seeing ordinary testing apparatus—a cone calorimeter and a smoke density chamber. Maybe a blanket tester, too. It's the kind of apparatus used by fire safety professionals to test various kinds of heat response." And you'd never find it in a restaurant, I thought, my heart sinking.
"What do you think is going on?" Rose asked. Throughout the viewing, Rose had used tissues to wipe down the small conference table that also held the television system. She'd finished and now wadded up the tissues and handed them to Frank, who tossed them into a corner wastebasket. It looked like choreography, forty wedded years in the making.
"Someone is testing the flammability of materials, for one thing," I said. "Probably using materials from the nursing home, like clothing, bedding, draperies, upholstery. Anything that's manufactured with flammability in mind."
"That could be an ordinary fire extinguisher," Frank said, indicating a blurry cylindrically shaped object.
"I see that. But what if it isn't an ordinary one?" Matt asked. "It's piled on there with all that other obviously special apparatus."
I blew out a deep breath. I had to admit it—this frame pointed to the Charger Street scientists as surely as if the lab logo had been visible on the cart.
I had an idea that I hoped would redeem the scientists at least somewhat.
"Let's do one more bit of analysis."
It had been years since I'd been inside the nursing home—the last time was before an aunt died there, more than ten years ago. It was a good thing I had a resource. "Can you give us a sketch of the layout of the home?" I asked Rose.
"Sure. What's this about?"
I handed her a pad and Rose went to work without needing an answer. The project took only a couple of minutes, during which I kept my head down, unable to face Matt, and, therefore, the sad music I was hearing.
"Not bad for a funeral director," I said, tapping Rose's finished sketch. "It's just as I thought. The residents' rooms are in the middle of the building. In the back we have the pharmacy, the kitchen, and the recreation room. That's where the fire was started, right, Matt?"
Matt nodded. "I see where you're going. It's as if the arsonist wanted to make sure no one was hurt. He started the fire as far away from the residents as possible."
"Maybe he just didn't want to be seen," Rose suggested.
"I don't think that's it," I said, running my pen along the middle of Rose's rectangle-cum-building. "I noticed on the video that there are more trees, plus lots of shrubbery around the central part of the building, so patients can look out their windows at some greenery, I suppose. It would be easier to hide there and start the fire, whereas the back is pretty bare and open."
"I get your point," Frank said. "It sure looks like he picked a spot away from the residents, and knew the staff would have time to remove them safely."
In other words, scientists are not monsters.
"In a way it fits the pattern of the previous fires," Matt said. "The other buildings were unoccupied and this one was empty by the time the fire took hold completely."
"Except for the woman," Rose said.
"It must have been an accident" I said, my voice weak and my resolve fading.
We took a moment to remember the murdered girl with the telling tattoo. If we could only figure out what it was telling us.
#
As was typical before any important meeting, Matt took his notes to bed the night before our scheduled visit to Charger Street. I wondered if anyone in the fluorine group was doing the same.
"Pushing that cart around on its wheels could be just a one-person job. Or they all could have been involved." Matt said. "The question is whether there's a murderer among them. Premeditated or not."
I was glad Matt didn't expect an answer to his musings. The case was upsetting me enough as it was.
"What's our strategy?" I asked him. "Do we pretend we're just there to tap into their fluorine expertise or do we have the handcuffs ready?" I hadn't meant to sound so peeved.
He leaned over and rubbed my neck. "It's not personal," he said, in that voice that would have made him a wonderful doctor.
"I know. I promise I'll be open."
Matt was kind enough not to mention that it would be a first for me.
#
Matt and I walked with a security escort down one of the few unclassified hallways, our visitor badges resting on our chests. I'd been here often, but with the anticipation of learning about the thermodynamic properties of fluorine compounds or the latest in heat transfer analysis.
The Charger Street Lab was its own city in many ways, its relationship to Revere much like that called "town and gown," when a large university was located in an otherwise small city. The Lab had several cafeterias and classrooms, a research library, a fully equipped gym, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and its own infirmary.
Usually I'd walk in on a busy group—Stan setting up the display screen for the monthly presentations, Carson and Danielle moving chairs around, Teresa and Peter arranging pads, pencils, and, best of all, fresh pastry from Luberto's downtown bakery.
This morning, the room was empty. No scientists, and no pastry.
"I'll let them know you're here," our escort said, without a trace of warmth.
"I wonder why the cold treatment," I said, when he'd left, failing to keep sarcasm out of my tone.
Matt was smart enough to forego comment. Instead he walked around the small room checking out the photographs on the wall. One side was lined with depictions of complex molecules. "Are these all fluorine compounds?" he asked. He knew how to distract me.
I nodded. "Fluorine is much too active an element not to be in a compound. Those are all the basics." I walked along the wall with him, naming the few that I recognized on sight.
"This place smells," Matt said, with an exaggerated sniff. "Like acid, or something worse. Not like physics departments, which always have a pleasant aroma."
I smiled, loving his attempts to soothe me.
We moved to the other side of the room where photographs of humans took precedence, some formal, others candids from conference gatherings. One shot was from the group picnic only a month ago. I was glad now that I hadn't been able to attend; I felt I didn't belong with this team any longer.
The door opened and the fluorine research group filed in. I heard a soft "hey" from Teresa, but nothing from the three men. They took seats along one side of the table; Matt and I sat across from them. The arrangement looked too much like a police line-up to suit me.
Stan, in a white lab coat, clutched his special coffee mug with a drawing of the molecular structure of caffeine. Teresa and Carson both looked at me with suspicion. I felt I'd betrayed our friendship by showing up with a police officer. Peter wore his nerdiest frown, looking down on the conference room table as if he were studying chess moves.
I drew in my breath. Danielle was missing. I sincerely hoped she was shopping, and not … I couldn't go there.
Matt cleared his throat. "Good morning, everyone. Thanks for meeting us." He looked down at his notebook, and took attendance in as pleasant a way as possible. I figured this was the most benign looking group of suspects he'd seen lately.
"Where's Danielle?" I asked. "Is she in today?"
I'd been looking at Stan, but it was Teresa who answered. "I haven't seen her this morning. As you know, she's a student and keeps funny hours."
"Does she usually call in and let you know when she's going to be here?" Matt asked.
"Most of the time she'll check to see if there's something special we need her for," Peter said. "But not today."
I thought of a dozen reasons why Danielle didn't call in, from a summer cold to a very long date. Still, my stomach churned.
"We appreciate your taking time to talk to us," Matt told the team. "I'm sure you're all very busy and I'll try to keep this short."
Stan folded his arms across his chest. "Indeed," he said with an almost British accent. Was his dalliance with a friend from across the ocean affecting his speech?
Nods and murmurs of "yeah" and "right" rippled across the row of researchers.
Matt's standard interview techniques ran through my mind. Rule one: Give the person time to answer even if there are periods of silence. A guilty person has a harder time with silence than an innocent one. A guilty person talks more, in general, often asking for a question to be repeated or shifting blame elsewhere.
I kept quiet while Matt reviewed the information he had on the fires and on the unidentified murder victim. The team looked bored.
Not exactly enthralled myself, I looked around the room again at the familiar photographs. My gaze landed on a framed enlargement, showing Danielle in front of an official-looking building. A French embassy?
At this distance, a large gold seal stood out against the white stone of the building. A queasy feeling took over my insides. I pulled my iTouch onto my lap, careful not to disrupt the interactions of the group, such as they were.
My fingers flew through links from my search engine until I got a close-up of the Seal of France.
And of the murder victim's tattoo.
No wonder I'd thought of the Statue of Liberty when I saw the photo of the tattoo. The crown with seven arches was the same, both associated with France. I scanned the online write-up. The personification of Liberty held a fasces, an ancient symbol of authority—not a thick candle, as I'd thought. I must have been channeling Rose and her Unity Candle when I'd first seen the blurred image of the tattoo.
My heart was heavy. It seemed clear that the murder victim was Danielle Laurent. It didn't help that her killer might have been someone in this room.
Matt's nudge brought me back to the seminar room, where he was asking me a question. I had a feeling it wasn't the first time he'd asked.
"Gloria? The spectra?"
I did my best to gather my wits. I retrieved a set of printouts from my briefcase—the spectra provided by the arson lab. I spread the sheets along the middle of the table. Familiar peaks and valleys revealed the chemical composition of the five different fire retardants used in the recent blazes.
"We're hoping you can help identify these very complex substances," Matt said, apparently realizing he couldn't count on me to lead the discussion.
"Can't tell," Carson said, arms still folded.
"Could be anything," Peter said, his eyes seeming out of focus.
All we got from Teresa was a shake of her head, which was more than Stan offered.
Matt pushed the printouts closer and waited. Who would break?
"We've been through all of this with the fire department," Carson said, finally. "You should be looking elsewhere. Don't you have a list of known offenders, or something?"
I pushed my distress over Danielle's death to the side. Maybe I could come at this in a different way and catch someone off guard. "I know how it is, these days especially, to get funds for research," I said. "By the time you write up a proposal, wait for the approval and then the funding, you're way behind another lab or even another country." I clucked my tongue in sympathy.
"Throw in a mountain of paperwork and regulations that are updated hourly and you've got an impossible situation," Carson said. "No one on the outside seems to get it."
Stan leaned over and stared down the table at Carson, knocking into his coffee mug, splashing the sleeve of his white lab coat with brown liquid.
Which prompted me to wonder—why was Stan so nervous? And where was his sweater?
I couldn't recall seeing Stan without his trademark cardigan, even in the summer months since the whole facility was kept at a pretty low temperature for the sake of the computers and the equipment.
Things were stacking up against Stan. As the oldest in the group, he'd likely be the most eager to get results and retire on the strength of a groundbreaking paper. Danielle could have been in the wrong place, perhaps trying to end a romance with an improbable future.
On an impulse I stood up. "I need to use the restroom," I told the group. "I'll be right back."
Matt gave me a questioning look. I knew he didn't believe my excuse for a minute.
#
I headed down the carpeted hallway toward Stan's office. I needed to find his sweater. I pictured my returning to the room triumphant, carrying a charred green cardigan.
A few feet from the office door, I nearly collided with Albert, a janitor I'd seen a few times. He was carrying a plastic bag from a dry cleaners. Through the transparent wrapping, I saw a hanger with a green sweater attached.
I swallowed hard. Had Stan already destroyed the evidence I needed to put him at the scene of the latest fire?
"Nice to see you, Dr. Lamerino," Albert said in Italian-flavored English.
"You look busy," I said. "Doing errands for Dr. Nolan?"
"Yes. His sweater. He let me borrow it last week when I was sick and had the chills. I have it cleaned for him and now I return it. He's a nice man, no?"
"He's a very nice man," I said.
As relieved as I was that the fluorine team leader was probably not an arsonist, I was aware of the huge setback in solving the case.
I turned and headed back to the conference room, peering into cubicles as I walked. Only the leader of each group in the department had an office; the others worked in cubicles, open to the world.
I came to Carson's cubicle and stopped short. I knew of his passion for the early days of atomic energy, but I'd never seen the array of photographs in his workspace.
Many of the shots were familiar from my own passion, reading science history and biographies. Carson's collection included a sketch of the pile at the University of Chicago, where sustainable nuclear fission was born; a startling black and white image of Little Boy; a fiery mushroom cloud.
Most striking was a series of time-lapse images of test houses at the Nevada Proving Ground. Several operations during the era of above-ground testing consisted of building houses at different distances from ground zero and blowing them up to test their responses. The set of pictures on Carson's wall showed six shots of one house, from standing upright to collapsing in a surge of flames, in less than three seconds.
I felt a shiver as it dawned on me how Carson Little's hobby was woven into his approach to his research.
I walked back toward our meeting room knowing all I needed to know about the fires.
#
Matt and the fluorine team seemed to have taken a break at the same time that I did. I wondered if Teresa had looked for me in the women's room.
Now Matt was ready to resume. He pulled four photos from a folder and placed one in front of each chemist. He folded his hands and watched their expressions, like a macabre Nevada blackjack dealer: Hit or no hit?
Not only the chemists gasped at the sight of the charred body, face down, surrounded by a thick layer of debris. Up to now, I'd seen only the cleaned up image of her tattoo. I took only a quick look, making out a human form that was as black as carbon and so thin in places that I knew it could be pulled apart with very little force. I was grateful that I hadn't eaten yet.
"Is this the woman who died in the fire?" Peter asked.
"Not in the fire," Matt said. "Someone murdered her first."
Teresa shivered. "Why are you showing us these? Are we supposed to recognize her?"
I knew better. Matt was trying to shake loose a telltale reaction—a show of remorse, a slip of the tongue, an uncontainable need to confess.
No such thing happened, however. Instead, everyone looked ill; they drew back from the table and now all arms were folded across chests.
"Can you tell me a little about your work here?" Matt asked. He smiled and added, "In layman's terms, please."
Teresa volunteered. "Sure, I'll explain what we do. We're investigating various flame retardant coatings."
"Coatings for … ?" Matt asked.
"Anything," Carson said. "Once we figure out the process, we'll be able to use the coating for leather, glass, ceramic, plastic, wood … you name it."
I slipped Matt a hastily written note. He nodded and asked the group, "Do you have a testing facility here?"
"Sure do," Peter said. "We have all the standard stuff."
It was time to make my move. "But there's nothing like testing in the laboratory of real life, is there?" I asked. "It reminds me of the model town built at the Nevada Proving Grounds in the fifties." I turned to Matt, as the one who might need to be informed. "The government built houses of every kind of material, furnished them, and then blew them up and studied the results."
"Is that what you're doing?" Matt asked, looking from one chemist to the other.
Stan stood up, kicking his chair behind him. "Absolutely not," he said. "Is that why you're really here? To accuse us of setting the fires in town?"
"Just so we can do research on the ashes?" Teresa gave me a look that was part sad, part disappointed, mostly angry.
"It beats your plan, which is to wait around forever," Carson blurted. "You guys may have all the time in the world, but that's not what I signed up for." He unleashed his frustration in a loud blast.
The other three chemists looked at Carson in disbelief.
"Carson? You did this?" Teresa asked. Her face had fallen, making her seem almost as old as Stan.
"I'd do it again," Carson said. "Except for Danielle." He bit his lip and choked back tears. "She shouldn't have threatened me."
Peter put his head in his hands; Stan looked up at the ceiling, an uncomprehending look on his face.
"You killed Danielle?" Teresa's voice was low and menacing.
"It was an accident. She wanted to stop the project."
"What project are you talking about?" Teresa asked, this time nearly screaming.
"'Big Boy.' We called it Big Boy. Danielle was fine with it for a while, but she didn't want to use the nursing home. She came down there to stop me. We fought and I pushed her away." Carson's voice grew more and more shaky. "She fell … and … I … she hit her head."
"And you left her there?" Teresa had assumed Matt's role of interrogator. I was sure that was fine with him.
Carson threw up his hands. "I had to get out of there. The fire was coming at me. I couldn't help her. I knew she was dead."
Stan and Peter, who'd remained silent through Carson's confession, now stood together and, as if they'd planned it, lunged toward Carson with faces and arms ready for battle.
Matt jumped up, handcuffs at the ready.
Carson continued to babble through the four-man struggle. "I couldn't breathe. I panicked."
I might have felt sympathy for Carson, except for his last words: "And it was too late to get any data, anyway."
I buried my head in my hands and resigned myself—a scientist had gone bad.
#
A lot had happened between two Sunday brunches at the Galiganis'.
"It was all there in the emails," Matt told us during the omelet course. We listened attentively as he recounted how Carson had talked Danielle into helping with Big Boy, convincing her that it would be good for the environment in the long run. He'd assured her that no one would be hurt.
I swallowed hard at the outcome: only Danielle ended up being hurt.
"It was a different kind of motive for arson. We've got to give him that," Frank said. "Nothing ordinary, like vandalism, or insurance scamming, or a guy getting his kicks from seeing the flames."
"Or someone making a political statement, like a terrorist," Rose said.
"In a way it was a statement," I said. "About how researchers have to struggle for funding." I put my hand up in a STOP gesture to stem any backlash, and to protect my right to a cannoli. "Not that I'm excusing Carson or Danielle," I said. "Not a bit." I looked at my husband. "I'm a big fan of law and order."
"Wonderful news," Rose said. "Now let's plan that anniversary party."
"I won't stall anymore, I promise. But I have just one favor to ask."
"Anything, as long as we can set a date," Rose said.
I smiled a thank you at my best friend. "No candles, please."
THE END
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There's nothing special about a third wedding anniversary, unless your best friend has been waiting three years to get you to celebrate. Deprived of the pleasure of planning my wedding, Rose Galigani wouldn't stop nagging until Matt and I agreed to some form of public display.
"It's leather," Rose told me, as we sat on lawn chairs facing the geranium-filled back yard of the mortuary she ran with her husband.
"Leather?"
"The traditional gift for third anniversaries is leather."
"Who else knows this?" I asked.
"It's a hard theme to deal with, but maybe we can work up something around luggage. We can have tiny suitcases for favors, but that means you'll have to take a trip right after the wedding, Gloria."
I checked her expression. Teasing or serious? It was never possible to tell for sure. Rose didn't ask for much in life, other than continued good business for her funeral home, which was pretty much guaranteed, and the freedom to provide a meaningful social life for those she loved.
"We agreed to a small party," I reminded her. "Not a full-blown wedding. We're already married. And we're not twenty years old."
Homicide detective Matt Gennaro and I had run off, if fifty-somethings can be said to run, for a weekend in Vermont and had come back married. Thus, the delayed consumer-approved show of bliss.
Rose snapped her fingers. "A Unity Candle. That's what you need," she said. "They do that at all the weddings these days. The mothers in each family light a small candle. Then the bride and groom use those flames to light a big candle in the middle, to symbolize the coming together of the two families."
I could have sworn her eyes started to fill up.
"Our mothers are dead, Rose. Matt has one sister; I have one cousin. It will look silly."
"Maybe you're right, Gloria. But we need candles. How about just one big one?" She held her hands to indicate a circumference of about nine inches. If we lit a candle that size, it would alert every smoke detector in its path.
As Rose's hands grew farther and farther apart, the candle expanding to larger and larger proportions, the shrill whine of a siren filled the night air, still humid at eight o'clock in the evening. I heard a loud honk, then saw the flash of a fire engine zipping past on Tuttle Street.
For a minute I thought they'd come to extinguish the flame on our imaginary Unity Candle.
#
The fire was one of the biggest in the history of Revere, Massachusetts. It was also the fifth major blaze in the small city in less than a month, which was five times the usual number. The first four fires had leveled empty buildings, sweeping through an abandoned elementary school, a set of vacant apartments in a long-ago public housing project, a deserted church hall, and a car dealership that had gone out of business.
This fifth and latest fire was different in one significant way. The inferno had hit a sprawling, operating nursing home across town from Rose and Frank Galigani's mortuary. The box-shaped building, which had been a general hospital many years ago, was full to capacity with patients at various levels of disability, from people in a doctor-recommended program of physical therapy, to those needing around the clock care.
This fire had also claimed a life. The Revere Journal reported that the body of a young woman, as yet unidentified, had been found in the rubble.
The residents of the home had been moved to safety, and all members of the staff were accounted for. The fire had broken out well past visiting hours.
So who was the dead woman?
Not to mention—who was trying to level Revere?
#
I learned a little more when a call to Matt's cell phone interrupted our regular Sunday morning brunch in the Galiganis' beautifully appointed dining room. Matt's and my dining room, by contrast, was still a work in progress even after three years.
"Looks like we're going to need your help again," Matt told me when he clicked his phone off. "Fluorine came up in the investigation."
"Is that the deceased woman's name?" Rose asked.
"It's the ninth element of the periodic table," her husband, Frank, said, polishing off his second home-baked croissant and earning a nod of approval from me for his science literacy. "And we know who's the expert on all things science."
"Dr. Gloria Lamerino," Rose said, using her best drum-roll voice.
I did enjoy my association with the Revere Police Department, which called me in as a consultant whenever science was involved in a case. Revere was home to the Charger Street Laboratory, a major research facility with more than seven thousand scientists and support staff. I often found myself in the position of interpreting and explaining their work to my husband and his department.
"Fluorine. I'm on it," I said. "What else do we know?"
"The woman's death has been ruled a homicide," Matt said. "The autopsy report says she was dead before the fire got to her."
"No smoke in her lungs, I'm guessing," Frank said, breaking the silence that followed the news of a murder in our town and the senseless ending of a human life, whether we knew the victim or not.
"That's a big part of it," Matt said. "No inhalation. Looks like her body was dumped at the fire site. The only identifying mark is a tattoo that looks like a coin or a seal of some kind."
"The tattoo survived the fire?" I asked.
I'd addressed Matt, but Frank raised his hand to answer, as if we were all back in school. If I was supposed to know "all things science," Frank, the veteran embalmer, knew "all things dead body."
"Tattoo ink is embedded in deep scar tissue," Frank began. "Even if a body is badly decomposed, a pathologist can just wipe away the sloughed skin and there's the tattoo as pristine as the day it was made."
"Not the first time I've seen it," Matt said. "In this case, the victim's body wasn't destroyed by the fire, so there's a decent image left of the tattoo. They tell me they can't read the writing, but there's a pretty clear representation of a woman with some kind of crown."
We cleared away juice glasses and craned our necks to view the photograph Matt pulled out of his pocket, Columbo-style, and set on the table. The circular graphic, on the victim's lower back, looked like a collage of several themes—as if the Statue of Liberty were sitting in a cluttered garden. Draped in fabric, the faux Miss Liberty was holding what might have been a large-diameter candle, and at her feet were what looked like an urn, farming equipment, and some indefinable shrubbery.
"It's not an American coin or any common foreign currency," Matt said. "Too bad we don't have one of those magic computers where we scan this in and some enormous database with every image from the beginning of time clicks away and then suddenly blinks 'MATCH MATCH'."
Frank helped Matt out with blinking hand gestures. I knew he was trying to prevent Matt from launching into a speech about how inadequate real-life forensics labs were compared to the hi-tech environments we saw on television shows.
Rose took us off the topic with her own analysis. "There weren't even any injuries in the other fires and now we have a fatality. Do they think this was set by a different person?"
"No, there are too many other similarities," Matt said. "For one, the accelerant is different every time, but never very sophisticated. He's used everything from a cigarette to a welding spark to ordinary fuel."
"Is he trying to make it look like different people were involved?"
"The RFD doesn't think so. The blazes have one strange feature in common."
I was already on my way to retrieve the notepad and pen from my purse. Matt kindly waited.
"Go ahead." I smiled, pen poised.
"Okay, the RFD equipment gets there in record time, of course, but in each case there's been evidence that someone got there before they did."
"The arsonist," Frank offered, with a chuckle.
"Yeah," Matt said. "But also someone who tried to put the fire out."
"Amateurs with fire extinguishers?" I asked. "Like someone who follows fires? Aren't there people who actually get a thrill watching fires?"
"There are plants called fire followers," Rose said. "There was this case where a plant that hadn't been seen in a location for a thousand years suddenly bloomed again after an enormous fire swept through the area."
"How?" I asked, amused at myself for succumbing to one of Rose's trivia lessons, irrelevant as it seemed to our discussion.
"The temperature of the soil increased and the fire burned away some stuff that wasn't friendly to the plant. I read about it in a plant book." Rose and I obviously frequented different parts of the bookstore. "Also, I think fire symbolically brings things together, as well as being destructive."
Matt and Frank gave her funny looks, but I knew she was talking about the Unity Candle she saw as the centerpiece of our anniversary party.
"We know lots of people who have scanners and intercept police and fire calls. John is one of them," Frank said.
"He's a reporter," Rose said, as if she needed to defend their second son from his father.
"Badge bunnies," Matt said, a grin forming. "That's what we call people, especially women, who follow cops around."
Should I be jealous? Probably not, I decided. Matt had been a celibate (according to him) widower when we got married, and I had no reason to think he'd go astray now.
"What do they call fire groupies?" Rose asked.
"Hose bunnies," Frank said, then blushed. Our usual conversation was singularly free of double entendres. Something about the fire talk had sparked a different kind of repartee.
"Good one," Rose said, letting him off the hook.
"Who do the firefighters think is helping out at the scenes?" I asked Matt.
"Up to now, it's been impossible to say. But finally we have an RFD report—whoever is getting there before the engines is using a variety of different kinds of fire extinguisher material. There's nothing the RFD has ever seen before, but they always contain fluorine."
Aha. The fluorine connection, at last. I thought back to industrial research I'd read about in general science magazines.
"It's not that strange to have a fluorine compound in a flame suppressant. Early attempts wreaked havoc on the ozone layer, so they had to go back to the drawing board. I'd have to do a little research, but I believe the latest products with perfluorinated compounds work better."
"I remember when we just used water," Frank said, gilding the lily by adding butter to a third croissant. It was hard to figure how he and Rose were the trim, fit ones in this foursome.
"Water puts out fires but it ruins most materials that it falls on," I reminded him. "Imagine a room with expensive and important computer equipment drowning in water. It's tricky to find something that will put out a fire but still leave breathable air for people to survive."
"Unless they're dead to begin with," Matt said, bringing us back to the case at hand.
"Where exactly does Gloria come in?" Rose asked.
Good question. "I might remind you that I'm a retired physicist, not a chemist. We deal with simple atoms and simple reactions. Once we get into the complicated alphabet soup compounds like PEIK—that's perfluoroethylisopropylketone—or PMIK—that's perfluoromethylisopropylketone—I'm lost."
"You don't sound lost," Rose said.
"She never does," Matt said.
"Would you like me to introduce you to the Charger Street chemists who are working on fluorine-based flame suppressants?" I asked.
My loving husband of the Year of Leather gave me a vigorous nod. "You know the language, which puts you way ahead of most of us on the force. And right now we're going on the assumption that the fires and the murder are related."
"I know the fluorine research team fairly well," I said. "I attend their seminars now and then. I'm sure they'll be a big help in figuring this out." Matt raised his eyebrows and gave me a sad look. It took a few seconds to register. "What is it?"
"You might not be happy to hear."
"The Fire Department thinks the fluorine chemists are racing to the fires so they can test their formulas?" I could hardly keep my voice steady.
"Or … " Matt said, completing his sentence with a shrug.
"Could they be deliberately … ?" Frank was wide-eyed.
Rose gasped. "You don't think they're … ?"
No one dared say the words in my presence—the notion that the scientists could be setting fires themselves, to use in their research. My husband and friends knew my extreme protectionist attitude, wanting to hold onto the concept that scientific research was carried out by men and women whose motives were always pure and altruistic.
"I'm assuming the RFD is investigating, too," Rose said.
"The murder is ours," Matt said, not meaning to sound so callous, I was sure. "They've interviewed the Charger Street chemists." He turned to me. "I have to be honest, Gloria. The RFD suspects the chemists, but they can't prove anything."
"Suspects them of what?" I hadn't meant to raise my voice, but no one seemed surprised.
Matt scratched his head. I could tell it was bad news. "Everything."
Rose stifled another gasp, turning it into a cough.
I took a deep breath. It didn't help much. "So I'm supposed to get evidence against fellow scientists? To show that they go around setting fires and then experiment on putting them out? And that they may have killed someone in the process?"
I took my husband's silence as a "yes."
I tuned out as my three brunch companions went off on another subject. I needed to make some notes on the fluorine researchers at the Lab. No one said I couldn't try to clear their names. I left the dining room table and settled myself one room away on a kitchen stool. I heard no protests.
#
One of the best things about being retired was that I no longer had the pressure of knowing what was being done every waking hour in my own field of spectroscopy. Instead of focusing on one narrow field, I could dabble in every area that held interest for me, reading books and magazines and attending seminars across the board in physics and chemistry departments. It was nice to listen to everyone's problems—not enough temporal resolution with the new scanning equipment, too many unknowns in a set of equations—and not have to solve them.
I wrote Stan Nolan's name first. He was the leader of the fluorine research group, nearing retirement and eager to have one last paper accepted in the Journal of Fluorine Chemistry. I pictured his thinning gray hair and the same dark green cardigan I'd seen him in at every meeting.
Peter Barnett and Teresa Verrico were the new post-docs in the group. The two young people seemed to get along well, their only rivalry stemming from an ongoing chess game, played at times in the chemistry department lounge and at times on line. Peter played up his nerdy reputation by wearing a pocket protector.
Teresa was the reason I attended so many chemistry meetings. She'd gotten her degree at the University of California, like me, and we'd met at a reunion of UC science alums now residing in Massachusetts. Unlike me, Teresa missed the sunny west coast. I let her moan about the humidity of a New England summer and helped her buy a snow shovel for the winter.
Carson Little was the heir apparent to replace Stan as the group's leader. He was affectionately called "Little Boy" not only for his surname and small stature but because he was an avid student of mid-twentieth century atomic science. Carson's personality was a match to that of Little Boy, the first atomic bomb, in many ways—he was volatile, energetic, and unpredictable.
The last member of the team was an on-again off-again young temp who handled the clerical work for as many hours per week as the budget (also on-again off-again) allowed. Danielle Laurent was a French exchange student in environmental sciences at a Boston college.
I remembered going out for coffee after a seminar, with Teresa, Peter, and Carson. I didn't think it strange that Stan and Danielle declined, saying they had work to do. They went off, Stan in his long cardigan and Danielle in a sweater that barely reached her waist.
Then I was treated to the workings of the chem department rumor mill.
"May-December," Carson Little had said, with a wink in their direction. True to his nickname, he mimicked the sound and gestures of firecrackers going off.
Peter and Teresa laughed and nodded, as if everyone who was anyone knew of the relationship. It was news to me.
"You mean Stan and Danielle are an item?" I asked, realizing there must have been a cooler way to say it. I was also sorry I'd encouraged the banter.
They all nodded. "Nothing wrong with it," Teresa said, trying to keep her long, curly hair from dipping into her cappuccino. "They're uncommitted and they're both adults."
"Barely," Peter responded. "Danielle is twelve."
"And Stan is one hundred and twelve," Carson said. "With a thing for French, uh, accents." He grinned.
"And she has a thing for green cardigans," Peter said.
"I have cardigans," Carson said.
The jokes and the topic had gone on longer than I'd been comfortable with, ending with the two men accusing each other of being jealous of Stan's "luck" and Teresa and me rolling our eyes.
Rumors and jealousies aside, I couldn't imagine any of the fluorine group as arsonists, let alone murderers. But I had to admit that there was no telling what a dedicated scientist would do if she or he thought it would mean a breakthrough in the field. Each time I took on a case where scientists were suspect, I held my breath, hoping the guilt would fall on someone other than a scientist—the budget director, a mailroom or cafeteria worker, a personnel rep—anyone but a person trained in sifting through the mysteries of the universe.
I looked forward to accompanying Matt on the interviews and resolved to keep an open mind. I was ready to return to my brunch companions at Rose's dining room table, now fully stocked with chocolates and mints, as if the pastries hadn't qualified as dessert.
The sooner we got going, the sooner I could help find the true culprits and clear my colleagues.
I sat down and tapped my pen on my notepad. "When do we start?" I asked Matt.
"First we're all going to the movies," he said.
#
"I should have known you'd never take us to see George Clooney," Rose said.
The four of us sat in front of a low-end television/VCR combination in a conference room at the Revere police station. It made sense for Matt to invite Rose and Frank to the view the latest crime scene video, and not just because they were our best friends: No two people in the city knew as many of its citizens as they did. Not only did they run the largest mortuary in town with their older son, Robert, but they had their fingers on the legal pulse through his lawyer wife, Karla, and on anything newsworthy through John, the reporter with a police scanner. Whatever was left over came to them through their high school teacher daughter, Mary Catherine. They were up on all stages in life and death in Revere.
"Maybe Clooney is on this tape," Matt said, to a chorus of disbelieving chuckles.
The video was home grown. One of the neighbors across the street from the nursing home had rushed out with his video camera when he smelled smoke.
"We used to just take pictures of First Communions and weddings. Now people record any kind of disaster," Rose said.
I caught Matt's eye and we smiled at each other: Did Rose realize she'd put weddings in the disaster category?
"And we're throwing everything up on YouTube," Frank said, tsk-tsking.
"Was the cameraman the one who called in the fire?" I asked.
Matt shook his head. "We don't know who called it in. The voice on the dispatcher's tape sounded like a robot. We're assuming it was one of the would-be firefighters and/or the arsonist, and/or the murderer."
"All of whom may be the same person," Frank said.
Matt gave a resigned nod and pushed PLAY on the remote.
Even on a very low-definition government-issue television set, the footage on the fire was startling. Bright red and orange flames shot out from the old wooden structure. There was no audio, but I was sure I could hear crackling and popping. It had been a mild night, without the usual ocean breeze. I wondered if the arsonist had chosen the evening deliberately, to have more control of the fire, or if the choice was governed by some other factor. Many offenders, I knew, committed crimes on dates that had meaning for them, or followed a mental rhythm that no one else was privy to.
My amateur profiling would get us nowhere. I focused on the scene before me. I wrote down a few phrases and thoughts, noting the uniformed nursing home attendants pushing people in wheelchairs, the crumbling window and doorframes, and a gathering crowd, some of whom pitched in to help move people away from the flaming building. The firefighters arrived pretty quickly and took control of the crowd and the soaring, mesmerizing flames. It was hard to tell the gender of the hatchet-carrying, masked, helmeted professionals who ran toward the conflagration.
We all sat back and exhaled deeply as figures in neon yellow-green stripes worked the scene. We'd been at the edges of our seats and, apparently, holding our breaths as if we'd been there at the site of the crackling blaze.
"What are we looking for?" I asked Matt.
"Anything that looks odd. The RFD has already interviewed everyone they could that night. They always look for people who are at more than one scene, or at a fire away from their neighborhood. But this is a murder crime scene, too, and you never know what new pairs of eyes will catch after the fact."
Within the first two minutes, Rose and Frank ID'd at least six people, including a retired postal worker who'd just lost his wife to cancer and the weekend clerk in the flower shop across from St. Anthony's Church. The trick was to get them to hold the ID to a line or two and not give us the family history going back two generations, as they did for deli owners Carol and George Zollo, before we could stop them.
Something occurred to me after the first viewing, but I couldn't pin it down. "Can you play the first few minutes again?" I asked Matt. He rewound the tape and this time I watched only one part of the screen, focusing on the upper right, where I knew the niggling bit was. The flames overloaded the camera, resulting in poor definition of the building parts and objects on the ground. Nothing was as good as the human eye as far as being able to adjust to different intensities of light in real time.
"What are you looking for, Gloria?" Rose asked.
"Stop," I said, too loudly, causing Rose to jump. Matt tried to get a good still frame but the picture was marred by noise and tracking bars. I was surprised that a person interested enough to take videos like this didn't use a digital camera. Matt finally zeroed in on a decent frame. I pointed to a large, rolling two-level lab cart I'd seen in passing the first time. The cart was almost out of range of the camera, but the shape was very familiar to me. Several pieces of apparatus were piled onto its shelves.
"What is it?" Matt asked.
"There's your unofficial equipment," I said.
In a flash, our four heads were angled for viewing the screen up close. I was grateful that no one pointed out where lab carts were readily available. In restaurants, I thought, in desperation.
"Can you tell exactly what's on the cart?" Matt asked.
I moved my chair still closer to the screen and squinted, without gaining much in clarity. "It's hard to tell, but I think we're seeing ordinary testing apparatus—a cone calorimeter and a smoke density chamber. Maybe a blanket tester, too. It's the kind of apparatus used by fire safety professionals to test various kinds of heat response." And you'd never find it in a restaurant, I thought, my heart sinking.
"What do you think is going on?" Rose asked. Throughout the viewing, Rose had used tissues to wipe down the small conference table that also held the television system. She'd finished and now wadded up the tissues and handed them to Frank, who tossed them into a corner wastebasket. It looked like choreography, forty wedded years in the making.
"Someone is testing the flammability of materials, for one thing," I said. "Probably using materials from the nursing home, like clothing, bedding, draperies, upholstery. Anything that's manufactured with flammability in mind."
"That could be an ordinary fire extinguisher," Frank said, indicating a blurry cylindrically shaped object.
"I see that. But what if it isn't an ordinary one?" Matt asked. "It's piled on there with all that other obviously special apparatus."
I blew out a deep breath. I had to admit it—this frame pointed to the Charger Street scientists as surely as if the lab logo had been visible on the cart.
I had an idea that I hoped would redeem the scientists at least somewhat.
"Let's do one more bit of analysis."
It had been years since I'd been inside the nursing home—the last time was before an aunt died there, more than ten years ago. It was a good thing I had a resource. "Can you give us a sketch of the layout of the home?" I asked Rose.
"Sure. What's this about?"
I handed her a pad and Rose went to work without needing an answer. The project took only a couple of minutes, during which I kept my head down, unable to face Matt, and, therefore, the sad music I was hearing.
"Not bad for a funeral director," I said, tapping Rose's finished sketch. "It's just as I thought. The residents' rooms are in the middle of the building. In the back we have the pharmacy, the kitchen, and the recreation room. That's where the fire was started, right, Matt?"
Matt nodded. "I see where you're going. It's as if the arsonist wanted to make sure no one was hurt. He started the fire as far away from the residents as possible."
"Maybe he just didn't want to be seen," Rose suggested.
"I don't think that's it," I said, running my pen along the middle of Rose's rectangle-cum-building. "I noticed on the video that there are more trees, plus lots of shrubbery around the central part of the building, so patients can look out their windows at some greenery, I suppose. It would be easier to hide there and start the fire, whereas the back is pretty bare and open."
"I get your point," Frank said. "It sure looks like he picked a spot away from the residents, and knew the staff would have time to remove them safely."
In other words, scientists are not monsters.
"In a way it fits the pattern of the previous fires," Matt said. "The other buildings were unoccupied and this one was empty by the time the fire took hold completely."
"Except for the woman," Rose said.
"It must have been an accident" I said, my voice weak and my resolve fading.
We took a moment to remember the murdered girl with the telling tattoo. If we could only figure out what it was telling us.
#
As was typical before any important meeting, Matt took his notes to bed the night before our scheduled visit to Charger Street. I wondered if anyone in the fluorine group was doing the same.
"Pushing that cart around on its wheels could be just a one-person job. Or they all could have been involved." Matt said. "The question is whether there's a murderer among them. Premeditated or not."
I was glad Matt didn't expect an answer to his musings. The case was upsetting me enough as it was.
"What's our strategy?" I asked him. "Do we pretend we're just there to tap into their fluorine expertise or do we have the handcuffs ready?" I hadn't meant to sound so peeved.
He leaned over and rubbed my neck. "It's not personal," he said, in that voice that would have made him a wonderful doctor.
"I know. I promise I'll be open."
Matt was kind enough not to mention that it would be a first for me.
#
Matt and I walked with a security escort down one of the few unclassified hallways, our visitor badges resting on our chests. I'd been here often, but with the anticipation of learning about the thermodynamic properties of fluorine compounds or the latest in heat transfer analysis.
The Charger Street Lab was its own city in many ways, its relationship to Revere much like that called "town and gown," when a large university was located in an otherwise small city. The Lab had several cafeterias and classrooms, a research library, a fully equipped gym, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and its own infirmary.
Usually I'd walk in on a busy group—Stan setting up the display screen for the monthly presentations, Carson and Danielle moving chairs around, Teresa and Peter arranging pads, pencils, and, best of all, fresh pastry from Luberto's downtown bakery.
This morning, the room was empty. No scientists, and no pastry.
"I'll let them know you're here," our escort said, without a trace of warmth.
"I wonder why the cold treatment," I said, when he'd left, failing to keep sarcasm out of my tone.
Matt was smart enough to forego comment. Instead he walked around the small room checking out the photographs on the wall. One side was lined with depictions of complex molecules. "Are these all fluorine compounds?" he asked. He knew how to distract me.
I nodded. "Fluorine is much too active an element not to be in a compound. Those are all the basics." I walked along the wall with him, naming the few that I recognized on sight.
"This place smells," Matt said, with an exaggerated sniff. "Like acid, or something worse. Not like physics departments, which always have a pleasant aroma."
I smiled, loving his attempts to soothe me.
We moved to the other side of the room where photographs of humans took precedence, some formal, others candids from conference gatherings. One shot was from the group picnic only a month ago. I was glad now that I hadn't been able to attend; I felt I didn't belong with this team any longer.
The door opened and the fluorine research group filed in. I heard a soft "hey" from Teresa, but nothing from the three men. They took seats along one side of the table; Matt and I sat across from them. The arrangement looked too much like a police line-up to suit me.
Stan, in a white lab coat, clutched his special coffee mug with a drawing of the molecular structure of caffeine. Teresa and Carson both looked at me with suspicion. I felt I'd betrayed our friendship by showing up with a police officer. Peter wore his nerdiest frown, looking down on the conference room table as if he were studying chess moves.
I drew in my breath. Danielle was missing. I sincerely hoped she was shopping, and not … I couldn't go there.
Matt cleared his throat. "Good morning, everyone. Thanks for meeting us." He looked down at his notebook, and took attendance in as pleasant a way as possible. I figured this was the most benign looking group of suspects he'd seen lately.
"Where's Danielle?" I asked. "Is she in today?"
I'd been looking at Stan, but it was Teresa who answered. "I haven't seen her this morning. As you know, she's a student and keeps funny hours."
"Does she usually call in and let you know when she's going to be here?" Matt asked.
"Most of the time she'll check to see if there's something special we need her for," Peter said. "But not today."
I thought of a dozen reasons why Danielle didn't call in, from a summer cold to a very long date. Still, my stomach churned.
"We appreciate your taking time to talk to us," Matt told the team. "I'm sure you're all very busy and I'll try to keep this short."
Stan folded his arms across his chest. "Indeed," he said with an almost British accent. Was his dalliance with a friend from across the ocean affecting his speech?
Nods and murmurs of "yeah" and "right" rippled across the row of researchers.
Matt's standard interview techniques ran through my mind. Rule one: Give the person time to answer even if there are periods of silence. A guilty person has a harder time with silence than an innocent one. A guilty person talks more, in general, often asking for a question to be repeated or shifting blame elsewhere.
I kept quiet while Matt reviewed the information he had on the fires and on the unidentified murder victim. The team looked bored.
Not exactly enthralled myself, I looked around the room again at the familiar photographs. My gaze landed on a framed enlargement, showing Danielle in front of an official-looking building. A French embassy?
At this distance, a large gold seal stood out against the white stone of the building. A queasy feeling took over my insides. I pulled my iTouch onto my lap, careful not to disrupt the interactions of the group, such as they were.
My fingers flew through links from my search engine until I got a close-up of the Seal of France.
And of the murder victim's tattoo.
No wonder I'd thought of the Statue of Liberty when I saw the photo of the tattoo. The crown with seven arches was the same, both associated with France. I scanned the online write-up. The personification of Liberty held a fasces, an ancient symbol of authority—not a thick candle, as I'd thought. I must have been channeling Rose and her Unity Candle when I'd first seen the blurred image of the tattoo.
My heart was heavy. It seemed clear that the murder victim was Danielle Laurent. It didn't help that her killer might have been someone in this room.
Matt's nudge brought me back to the seminar room, where he was asking me a question. I had a feeling it wasn't the first time he'd asked.
"Gloria? The spectra?"
I did my best to gather my wits. I retrieved a set of printouts from my briefcase—the spectra provided by the arson lab. I spread the sheets along the middle of the table. Familiar peaks and valleys revealed the chemical composition of the five different fire retardants used in the recent blazes.
"We're hoping you can help identify these very complex substances," Matt said, apparently realizing he couldn't count on me to lead the discussion.
"Can't tell," Carson said, arms still folded.
"Could be anything," Peter said, his eyes seeming out of focus.
All we got from Teresa was a shake of her head, which was more than Stan offered.
Matt pushed the printouts closer and waited. Who would break?
"We've been through all of this with the fire department," Carson said, finally. "You should be looking elsewhere. Don't you have a list of known offenders, or something?"
I pushed my distress over Danielle's death to the side. Maybe I could come at this in a different way and catch someone off guard. "I know how it is, these days especially, to get funds for research," I said. "By the time you write up a proposal, wait for the approval and then the funding, you're way behind another lab or even another country." I clucked my tongue in sympathy.
"Throw in a mountain of paperwork and regulations that are updated hourly and you've got an impossible situation," Carson said. "No one on the outside seems to get it."
Stan leaned over and stared down the table at Carson, knocking into his coffee mug, splashing the sleeve of his white lab coat with brown liquid.
Which prompted me to wonder—why was Stan so nervous? And where was his sweater?
I couldn't recall seeing Stan without his trademark cardigan, even in the summer months since the whole facility was kept at a pretty low temperature for the sake of the computers and the equipment.
Things were stacking up against Stan. As the oldest in the group, he'd likely be the most eager to get results and retire on the strength of a groundbreaking paper. Danielle could have been in the wrong place, perhaps trying to end a romance with an improbable future.
On an impulse I stood up. "I need to use the restroom," I told the group. "I'll be right back."
Matt gave me a questioning look. I knew he didn't believe my excuse for a minute.
#
I headed down the carpeted hallway toward Stan's office. I needed to find his sweater. I pictured my returning to the room triumphant, carrying a charred green cardigan.
A few feet from the office door, I nearly collided with Albert, a janitor I'd seen a few times. He was carrying a plastic bag from a dry cleaners. Through the transparent wrapping, I saw a hanger with a green sweater attached.
I swallowed hard. Had Stan already destroyed the evidence I needed to put him at the scene of the latest fire?
"Nice to see you, Dr. Lamerino," Albert said in Italian-flavored English.
"You look busy," I said. "Doing errands for Dr. Nolan?"
"Yes. His sweater. He let me borrow it last week when I was sick and had the chills. I have it cleaned for him and now I return it. He's a nice man, no?"
"He's a very nice man," I said.
As relieved as I was that the fluorine team leader was probably not an arsonist, I was aware of the huge setback in solving the case.
I turned and headed back to the conference room, peering into cubicles as I walked. Only the leader of each group in the department had an office; the others worked in cubicles, open to the world.
I came to Carson's cubicle and stopped short. I knew of his passion for the early days of atomic energy, but I'd never seen the array of photographs in his workspace.
Many of the shots were familiar from my own passion, reading science history and biographies. Carson's collection included a sketch of the pile at the University of Chicago, where sustainable nuclear fission was born; a startling black and white image of Little Boy; a fiery mushroom cloud.
Most striking was a series of time-lapse images of test houses at the Nevada Proving Ground. Several operations during the era of above-ground testing consisted of building houses at different distances from ground zero and blowing them up to test their responses. The set of pictures on Carson's wall showed six shots of one house, from standing upright to collapsing in a surge of flames, in less than three seconds.
I felt a shiver as it dawned on me how Carson Little's hobby was woven into his approach to his research.
I walked back toward our meeting room knowing all I needed to know about the fires.
#
Matt and the fluorine team seemed to have taken a break at the same time that I did. I wondered if Teresa had looked for me in the women's room.
Now Matt was ready to resume. He pulled four photos from a folder and placed one in front of each chemist. He folded his hands and watched their expressions, like a macabre Nevada blackjack dealer: Hit or no hit?
Not only the chemists gasped at the sight of the charred body, face down, surrounded by a thick layer of debris. Up to now, I'd seen only the cleaned up image of her tattoo. I took only a quick look, making out a human form that was as black as carbon and so thin in places that I knew it could be pulled apart with very little force. I was grateful that I hadn't eaten yet.
"Is this the woman who died in the fire?" Peter asked.
"Not in the fire," Matt said. "Someone murdered her first."
Teresa shivered. "Why are you showing us these? Are we supposed to recognize her?"
I knew better. Matt was trying to shake loose a telltale reaction—a show of remorse, a slip of the tongue, an uncontainable need to confess.
No such thing happened, however. Instead, everyone looked ill; they drew back from the table and now all arms were folded across chests.
"Can you tell me a little about your work here?" Matt asked. He smiled and added, "In layman's terms, please."
Teresa volunteered. "Sure, I'll explain what we do. We're investigating various flame retardant coatings."
"Coatings for … ?" Matt asked.
"Anything," Carson said. "Once we figure out the process, we'll be able to use the coating for leather, glass, ceramic, plastic, wood … you name it."
I slipped Matt a hastily written note. He nodded and asked the group, "Do you have a testing facility here?"
"Sure do," Peter said. "We have all the standard stuff."
It was time to make my move. "But there's nothing like testing in the laboratory of real life, is there?" I asked. "It reminds me of the model town built at the Nevada Proving Grounds in the fifties." I turned to Matt, as the one who might need to be informed. "The government built houses of every kind of material, furnished them, and then blew them up and studied the results."
"Is that what you're doing?" Matt asked, looking from one chemist to the other.
Stan stood up, kicking his chair behind him. "Absolutely not," he said. "Is that why you're really here? To accuse us of setting the fires in town?"
"Just so we can do research on the ashes?" Teresa gave me a look that was part sad, part disappointed, mostly angry.
"It beats your plan, which is to wait around forever," Carson blurted. "You guys may have all the time in the world, but that's not what I signed up for." He unleashed his frustration in a loud blast.
The other three chemists looked at Carson in disbelief.
"Carson? You did this?" Teresa asked. Her face had fallen, making her seem almost as old as Stan.
"I'd do it again," Carson said. "Except for Danielle." He bit his lip and choked back tears. "She shouldn't have threatened me."
Peter put his head in his hands; Stan looked up at the ceiling, an uncomprehending look on his face.
"You killed Danielle?" Teresa's voice was low and menacing.
"It was an accident. She wanted to stop the project."
"What project are you talking about?" Teresa asked, this time nearly screaming.
"'Big Boy.' We called it Big Boy. Danielle was fine with it for a while, but she didn't want to use the nursing home. She came down there to stop me. We fought and I pushed her away." Carson's voice grew more and more shaky. "She fell … and … I … she hit her head."
"And you left her there?" Teresa had assumed Matt's role of interrogator. I was sure that was fine with him.
Carson threw up his hands. "I had to get out of there. The fire was coming at me. I couldn't help her. I knew she was dead."
Stan and Peter, who'd remained silent through Carson's confession, now stood together and, as if they'd planned it, lunged toward Carson with faces and arms ready for battle.
Matt jumped up, handcuffs at the ready.
Carson continued to babble through the four-man struggle. "I couldn't breathe. I panicked."
I might have felt sympathy for Carson, except for his last words: "And it was too late to get any data, anyway."
I buried my head in my hands and resigned myself—a scientist had gone bad.
#
A lot had happened between two Sunday brunches at the Galiganis'.
"It was all there in the emails," Matt told us during the omelet course. We listened attentively as he recounted how Carson had talked Danielle into helping with Big Boy, convincing her that it would be good for the environment in the long run. He'd assured her that no one would be hurt.
I swallowed hard at the outcome: only Danielle ended up being hurt.
"It was a different kind of motive for arson. We've got to give him that," Frank said. "Nothing ordinary, like vandalism, or insurance scamming, or a guy getting his kicks from seeing the flames."
"Or someone making a political statement, like a terrorist," Rose said.
"In a way it was a statement," I said. "About how researchers have to struggle for funding." I put my hand up in a STOP gesture to stem any backlash, and to protect my right to a cannoli. "Not that I'm excusing Carson or Danielle," I said. "Not a bit." I looked at my husband. "I'm a big fan of law and order."
"Wonderful news," Rose said. "Now let's plan that anniversary party."
"I won't stall anymore, I promise. But I have just one favor to ask."
"Anything, as long as we can set a date," Rose said.
I smiled a thank you at my best friend. "No candles, please."
THE END
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