The Fluorine Murder Read online

  "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. It seemed 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 at the lab 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 picked up a dark truffle. "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 weddings and things. 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, or the arsonist, 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 wooden structure of the old nursing home. 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 just happen to be at a fire some distance from their own neighborhood. Just treat this like a regular crime scene. We never know what new pairs of eyes will catch after the fact."

  After only a few years with a homicide detective, I noted, I hardly blinked at the phrase "regular crime scene."

  Within the first few minutes of viewing, Rose and Frank ID'd at least six people, including a retired postal worker who'd just lost his wife to cancer, a brother and sister who served Communion at St. Anthony's, and the weekend clerk in the flower shop a block from their mortuary. The trick was to get them to limit their IDs to a line or two and not give us 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 beginning 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. I was frustrated as 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 still used tape. 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 fire extinguishing 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, the ultimate housekeeper, had used tissues to dust 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 in
to a corner wastebasket. It looked like choreography, forty wedded years in the making.

  "Someone is testing the flammability of materials," 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 ages since I'd been inside the destroyed 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 next to me. "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 front and middle of the building. In the front we also have the lobby and small visiting parlors; in the back we have the pharmacy, the kitchen, and the recreation room. The fire was at the back. 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 had been emptied out 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 the Charger Street lab. I wondered if anyone in the fluorine group was doing the same.

  "The question is whether there's a murderer among them," Matt said. "Premeditated or not. Pushing that cart around on its wheels could be a one-person job. Or they all could have been involved."

  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 at the meeting?" 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. I hadn't even tried to keep sarcasm out of my tone.

  Matt was smart enough to forgo 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 was no longer a part of the team.

  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 today instead of his green sweater, clutched his special coffee mug with a drawing of the molecular structure of caffeine. Teresa and Carson both looked at me with suspicion, as if 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 think she was going somewhere for a long weekend," Carson offered.

  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. "Happy to oblige," he said, sounding anything but.

  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. I squinted, which usually helped my long distance vision. An embassy? I thought I recognized the French flag.

  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 on both; both were French in one way or another. 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.