W Is for Wasted

  “There has to be a way to shut him down.”

  “Don’t look at me.”

  “Who better?”

  “Not to sound too cynical, but what makes you think anyone would listen to me? I’m the one he jilted. That’s according to the rumor he’s been spreading around. The first day I showed up for work, word was already out. His claim was we had an affair as undergraduates. That much was true. The way he tells it, I was needy and neurotic. I was jealous of his success, so he broke off the relationship. Now if I say anything at all derogatory, it looks like sour grapes. A woman scorned.”

  “What’s the real story?”

  “I broke up with him. He cribbed a paper. He stole my work. That’s the kind of guy he is. He diddled with the title, added five coauthors, two of whom I swear to god he made up out of whole cloth. Then he sent it off to a scientific journal. When it appeared months later, I confronted him. Big mistake. You know how many papers I have to my name? Six. He’s probably had fifty published in this year alone. That should be another little clue to the higher-ups. With that many, how does he have time to do his work?”

  “Why did you apply for the job?”

  “I screwed up. Big time. I knew it was his lab, but I’d forgotten how crazy he is.”

  “But he’s a bright guy. Why’s he doing this?”

  “Why does he do anything? Because he’s high ego and he’s a narcissist. Dangerous combination. He’s not a man who deals well with stress. Something happened in Arkansas a few years ago. I don’t have all the details, but a patient died and the error was traced to him. He couldn’t face it. He suffered a total nervous breakdown and had to be carted off to the funny farm.”

  “It didn’t affect his career?”

  “Not his career; his residency. Check his CV and you’ll see the gap. That’s when he moved from surgical oncology to research.”

  “And if it happens again?”

  “I hope I’m not around. This turns sour on him, then what? You want my best guess? He’ll have a computer crash and lose everything. That way they’ll never nail him. Imagine all the sympathy he’ll get. An entire year’s work down the drain when he was doing so well.”

  “I thought even with a crash, there were ways to restore the files.”

  “He could spill a cup of coffee down his CPU or the lab might catch fire. He could go in and change a few numbers. The data could be sitting right there, but he’d be the only one who’d have access because no one else would know the magic key strokes.”

  “If I told you I had the charts in my possession, would that help?”

  “It might. Look, I’m not the only one aware of what’s going on. There’s a postdoc in the lab who’s seen the same things I have. Little signs of Linton’s cooking, little things that don’t quite add up.”

  “Would this postdoc agree to talk to me?”

  “No. He’s married and has kids. You think he’d risk his livelihood? I can promise you he won’t. Even if he did agree, you wouldn’t have any idea what he was talking about.”

  “Isn’t there anything I can do?”

  She smiled briefly. “You can do what I’m doing. Pack a bag and flee.”

  After I left, I sat in the car as usual, making copious notes. Altogether, I was looking at two full decks of index cards, but this was new. Something had gone wrong in Arkansas. Linton suffered a nervous breakdown and because of it, he switched his career path from surgical oncology to scientific research, which looked like a nice safe place to land. Then Sebastian Glenn had died. Once things started going wrong, he was back in the same place he’d been, only now he was married and had more to lose.

  • • •

  Saturday morning, I drove the Mustang to the car wash to be detailed in preparation for Drew’s taking possession. Miguel, who was doing the work, said it’d take an hour and a half. That was fine with me. My schedule was clear and I had time to spare. I told him I’d be in the waiting room, which was replete with two metal folding chairs and a wall-mounted display of car accessories for sale. I took out my paperback and settled in to read. This was a Robert Parker novel in which Spenser and Hawk busted up bad guys so often it cheered me no end.

  Ten minutes went by and Miguel appeared. He might have been nineteen, remarkably poised for a guy who was working so hard to grow a mustache with so little to show for it. Miguel’s auto-detailing business was called Detailing by Miguel. He wore a black T-shirt with the company name emblazoned on it in red.

  He stood with his arms crossed, his hands pressed into opposite armpits. “You want me to leave the gun under the seat or put it somewhere else?”

  I ran the sentence through my head, diagraming the parts of speech as I recited it to myself. I keep my H&K in my briefcase, which I knew full well I’d moved from the trunk of the car to the studio before I’d left home. “I don’t have a gun in the car.”

  “Lady, I don’t mean to be fresh, but you do now.”

  “I do?”

  I slid the book into my bag and followed him out the back door and across the lot, passing the two lanes where cars were lined up to be vacuumed in preparation for a wash. He ran his one-man enterprise under a temporary awning that shielded him from the sun while he rubbed paste wax onto auto exteriors. With mine, he was still in the process of prepping the interior. The driver’s-side door stood open and his Shop-Vac was close by. He pointed and stepped back, saying, “I didn’t touch it.”

  I leaned into the backseat and angled myself so I could see what he was talking about. On the floor under the driver’s-side seat there was a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun nestled up against the rail.

  I stared at it for a moment and then backed up a step so I could pull myself upright. I left the car door open. I glanced at Miguel and said, “Hang on.”

  I hadn’t put the gun under the seat. That much I knew. The only .45-caliber semiautomatic I’d heard mentioned of late was one of two guns missing in Pete Wolinsky’s shooting death two months before. Cheney had mentioned it Monday night when he showed up at Rosie’s. I had no way to calculate how many thousands of semiautomatics were floating around in the world. The number must have been astronomical, so what were the chances of that particular gun having been used in the robbery that ended Pete’s life?

  I hadn’t parked the Mustang anywhere near the bird refuge in months. The closest I’d come was the night I’d trundled along at two miles an hour, negotiating the access road along the property line at the back of the zoo. That was the unfortunate occasion when, having suffered a psychotic break, I’d agreed to run interference for Felix and Pearl in their mission to retrieve Dace’s stolen backpack from the Boggarts’ campsite. Those two locations, the strip of parking spaces near the lagoon and the hobo camp up the hill, were perhaps a quarter of a mile apart. Handguns, as a rule, don’t hump from place to place of their own accord. Handgun migration is almost entirely the result of human intervention. But no one had been in the backseat of my Mustang except for Felix that same night.

  Miguel said, “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just give me a minute.”

  I remembered stumbling onto the scene, having waded through the shrubs to warn them that the big Boggart’s arrival was imminent. While Pearl was stomping the makeshift incinerator, Felix had overturned a metal footlocker and the contents were strewn across the ground at his feet. At the moment I caught sight of him, he picked up an item and shoved it into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back. From that distance and as quickly as he moved, I hadn’t identified the object, but later, when he blasted the Boggart with a can of pepper spray, I assumed that’s what it was. He’d even admitted stealing the can of pepper spray from them.

  Had the Boggarts stumbled across the .45 at the scene of the crime? The bird refuge was part of their turf, so the idea wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Cheney had speculated that the whereabouts of both missing firearms was the function of how far the guy could throw. If he’d tossed one gun in the lagoon a
nd hurled the second one into the dark, it was possible one of the Boggarts had spotted it by day. If that were the case, and if Felix had managed to steal it from them, then the savage beating he’d taken made a sudden twisted sense. That was “if” piled upon “if,” but that’s sometimes how these things work.

  I closed the car door and locked it. I pulled a ten out of my wallet and pressed it into Miguel’s hand. “Keep an eye on the car. I’ll be right back.”

  I double-timed it into the building and found a pay phone. I hauled out a handful of change, put a call through to the police department, and asked for Lieutenant Phillips. When I had Cheney on the line, I ran through a highly condensed version of what had happened the Tuesday before last and why I thought the presence of a .45 under my car seat was relevant. I could tell the story made no sense, especially given my attempt to downplay both the raid and my part in it. To his credit, he didn’t argue the point. He said he’d be there in twenty minutes and he arrived in fifteen.

  • • •

  I sat in his cubicle at the police department, the two of us eyeing one another warily while I went through my story for the second time. I’d left the Mustang where it was so Miguel could finish his work. Cheney identified the gun as a .45-caliber Ruger. Before he removed it from under the seat, he’d photographed it in place, donned latex gloves, and then eased a pencil through the trigger guard to keep the handling of it to a minimum. Once the Ruger was bagged and tagged, he’d asked me to accompany him to the station. I agreed so I’d appear to be morally upright. He said he’d drop me at the car wash later when we had a better sense of what was what.

  The Ruger might not be the missing weapon. It might not be relevant to any ongoing investigation, in which case it could end up in the property room, forgotten on a shelf. But I didn’t see how it could be a miss. The stray casing found at the shooting scene was a .45-caliber ACP, which would have been a nice fit for the Ruger.

  On our way to his desk, he dropped the weapon off in the lab, where a ballistics expert would test-fire it to see if the slug was a match for the one found at the scene. The Ruger’s serial numbers had been noted and someone in Records would run them through the computer in hopes the gun was registered. A superficial examination showed the weapon had been wiped clean of prints and a single round had been fired. When we finally sat down to chat, I said, “How soon will you know who owns the Ruger?”

  “Assuming it’s registered at all, it may take a while. Records is backed up and I didn’t put a rush on the request. I’m fascinated to hear how it ended up in your car.”

  “I’ll give you my best guess,” I said. I then laid out an explanation of Terrence Dace’s backpack being stolen by the panhandlers, Pearl’s spotting it, and her determination to get it back.

  Cheney was more patient than I had any reason to hope.

  In addition to recounting my participation in the raid and what I remembered of Felix’s actions, I used the occasion to talk about the Boggarts’ savage attack, which I was now convinced was because Felix had taken property that didn’t belong to him.

  He said, “You think Felix stole the gun from them?”

  “It’s the only explanation that makes sense. He was hunched in the backseat as we left the scene and he’s the only one who’s been back there. I think he was attacked because he came across the weapon at the camp and slipped it into the small of his back. I think the panhandlers bided their time and came after him. If he’d told them where he’d hidden it, they’d have come after me. The owner of that bicycle-rental shop down on lower State saw the whole thing and he’s the one who called 911. I talked to him a couple of days ago, hoping he’d be willing to identify the guy. He knows who it was because he’s seen the same three bums hanging out at the beach for years. He refuses to help because he’s worried about reprisals, and who can blame the man?”

  Cheney made a note. “Let me find out who’s handling the case and we’ll see what we can do. You said three of them?”

  “It’s the big galoot I’m talking about. Bald guy with a red baseball cap.”

  “You have a name?”

  “I don’t, but he’s not hard to find. Rush hour, he’s usually standing on the side of the Cabana Boulevard off-ramp with a cardboard sign. You can’t miss him.”

  “You think he had a hand in Pete’s death?”

  “Either that or he stumbled on the weapon after the fact. I can’t think how else he’d end up with it.”

  “Might be completely unrelated,” Cheney said. “So far, we haven’t confirmed this was the gun used in the shooting. With all the firearms in circulation, plenty aren’t registered and can’t be traced.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing. Those bums are badasses. They’ve put together that camp with stolen goods. They’ve tapped into the zoo’s water and electrical supplies and they’ve co-opted trash pickup. There must be half a dozen ways to bust them.”

  “We’ll do what we can. If the fellow you describe has been in trouble with the law, it will give us some talking points.”

  “I want to run something by you. I’ve been thinking about this and I’d be interested in your opinion,” I said. “Leaving aside the issue of how I came up with all this . . .”

  “All this what?”

  “Would you let me tell it my way? This is pertinent.”

  “Fine.” He looked at me steadily. Instead of making eye contact, I found it easier to avert my gaze. I knew what I wanted to say, but I was organizing the story as I went along.

  “This may take a while, so bear with me. Originally, Pete Wolinsky was hired by a fellow named Willard Bryce,” I said. Then I went through the entire sequence; Pete hiring Dietz, the surveillance, Dietz billing Pete, no pay. I told him about Mary Lee meeting with Owen Pensky, and her quitting her job the same day Pete was shot to death. I told him about the stolen charts. I told him about Eloise Cantrell, who made reference to gossip about Dr. Reed’s work. As I worked my way through the narrative, I could see Cheney putting together the bits and pieces. He gave no indication of what he was thinking, but I could feel my confidence erode as I went on.

  “Pete had a shitload of debts and he was desperate for cash. I think he got wind of Dr. Reed’s problems and saw an opportunity to put the squeeze on him. You know, ‘Pay up or I’ll tell your boss and I’ll contact the NIH.’”

  Cheney cut in. “Did Pete actually have evidence of wrongdoing?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not. He might have suggested that even the hint of wrongdoing would tarnish Reed’s reputation and impact his career.”

  “So you think he tried blackmailing Linton Reed over an issue of I-don’t-know-what without anything to back it up.”

  “It doesn’t matter if he had anything to back it up. What matters is whether Linton Reed believed Pete would blow the whistle on him. What matters is Reed’s anxiety about the kind of trouble Pete could make.”

  “Are you talking about scientific fraud?”

  “That’s what it sounds like to me. He’s been in trouble before over lesser issues than this.”

  “You told me Mary Lee Bryce quit her job.”

  “She did. The same day Pete was killed.”

  “If she quit her job, where’s the threat to Linton Reed?”

  “She’s more likely to blow the whistle on him now. Besides, I have these medical charts Dace stole. Those should help. In the meantime, I did meet with Dr. Reed.”

  That caught him short. “Why?”

  “I wanted to hear what he had to say about Terrence Dace.”

  “And?”

  “He expressed regret about the deaths. He talked about how the study is set up and why he terminated Dace and his friend. Honestly, he made it all sound reasonable.”

  “I’m sure he did,” he said.

  “I’m trying to be fair about this, Cheney. That’s what I’m getting at. I’m not demonizing the guy. I’m not even saying he did anything on purpose. He had a theory about Glucotace. When he ran into a roadblock, in
stead of shutting the study down, he changed the data or deleted it.”

  “Weak.”

  “I know it’s weak. Most of this is circumstantial, but don’t sit there telling me it doesn’t count.”

  “Speculation. No real basis in fact. You think doctors won’t stand together in a situation like this?”

  “Indulge me, okay?”

  He smiled. “I’m already doing that. This is me indulging you.”

  “Just listen. Ruthie found a wad of cash that Pete stashed away. Suppose Linton’s prints are on the bills? Wouldn’t that suggest I’m on track here?”

  “You’re grasping at straws. I don’t understand how we get from fraud to homicide.”

  “Easy. Pete jacked him up for money. Reed paid him once, but he didn’t want to pay again, so he killed him.”

  “Where’s the gun? Does Linton even own one?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You don’t even know for sure Pete and Linton Reed knew each other.”

  “Oh, but I do. Pete met with Reed on July 12 out at UCST. I saw his name in the appointment book, and Ruthie has the properly validated parking ticket, so don’t be a shit.”

  “I am a shit. That’s my job. I’m telling you what will fly and what won’t. All a defense attorney has to do is come up with a plausible explanation. All he needs is a story that covers the same points but with a different slant. You make it look one way? Fine. He can make it look like something else. Right now, there’s no eyewitness and the motive is imaginary. Some guy says he’ll expose you, you tell him to take a hike. You don’t fork over a couple of thousand bucks and then shoot his ass.”

  I reached for the bag I had placed at my feet and took out the shrink-wrapped prescription bottle. “This is one of Dace’s prescriptions. He believed they put him on Glucotace, along with Antabuse and another drug to reduce his craving for nicotine. I asked Dr. Reed straight out if Dace was taking Glucotace or the placebo. He thought about it briefly and said placebo. Can’t you get these analyzed and find out what they are?”

  “Why would we do that? There’s no case.”

  “But if the pills turn out to be Glucotace, it would support my argument, wouldn’t it?”