Boldt And Matthews: No Witnesses Part 4

"Be right back."

A lot of what Boldt read was over his head, but some was not. He was distracted, in part by the fact that this was a children's research hospital. In the last forty-eight hours, he had seen precious little of his boy. Liz, too, for that matter. When he was away from Miles for too long, he missed him in a way that until the boy's birth he had never experienced, and would never have expected. It was a chemical longing, like an addict after his fix.

"Make any sense of that?" Mann asked, setting down Boldt's tea in a Styrofoam cup. Liz would not drink out of Styrofoam cups anymore.

The tea tasted terrible, but Boldt choked it down for the caffeine. "If I'm the person doing this, why do I choose cholera?"

Dr. Mann considered this a long time. When he finally spoke, it was cautiously, a man unfamiliar and uncomfortable with being inside the mind of a stranger. "It depends on what you hope to accomplish. I would guess he considered three choices-a poison, a viral contaminate, a bacterial contaminate. The toxins, the poisons-strychnine, or something like what we saw in the Sudafed product tampering-can and will be immediately detected in the blood of the victim. If you're just looking to kill a few people, then that's the poison of choice, I would think. Most of your other choices, if you're talking food products, will give themselves away, either by producing a gas you can smell or a taste that warns you immediately what you're into. Also, all of the more common of these would be immediately detected in the state lab. If it was me, I too would choose cholera if available. What's interesting about cholera is that labs around here once tested for it, but many don't any longer. This gets political, I'm afraid; this enters into health care and insurance costs, and believe me, you don't want to get me started. But the point is, this is the exact area where reduced health care costs are felt. The lab has to cut something and they cut right here. We see virtually no cholera up here. Dropping that test is justifiable at every level of bureaucracy. Don't tell that to these two kids, mind you."

"You'd miss the cholera. Is that what you're saying?"

"It would take longer to type-which is what happened. If I wanted to make a few people real sick, if I wanted to use something that would take awhile to detect, confuse the authorities, then I'd look to something like this strain of cholera."

"A scare technique?" Boldt took out his notebook and pen.

"Could be." Mann tasted his coffee. He grimaced, but drank it. "Is it?"

Boldt did not answer.

"Make this company look bad?" Mann glanced up. Again, Boldt did not answer. "Which company? Or can't you say?"

"Adler Foods," Boldt answered. He wrote the product-run number on a page of his notepad, tore it out, and handed it to Mann. "They're clearing the shelves of this product-run number as we speak. The number will be announced on the news tonight, and in the papers for the next couple of days. At this point the public won't be told exactly why there's a recall."

"Why not tell them?"

"The individual has warned against police involvement. And there's also a concern about copycats. It's the biggest risk with product tampering. We want to keep the actual tampering, the connection to these kids, out of the press just as long as possible. A lot more people are at risk if we don't. We know that. In a British food-tampering case, after word of the contamination hit the press, police faced fourteen hundred reports of similar tamperings."

Mann winced. "Fourteen hundred?"

The two men shared an uncomfortable silence. "You won't hear it from me," Mann said. Boldt looked out the window at the crowded sea of houses. How many cans of contaminated soup might they miss? How many were sitting in a kitchen pantry ready to go off like time bombs?

"I'll need the names of everyone who has access to the lab," Boldt informed him.

"One of my people?" Mann asked defensively. "That strain is marked clear as day."

"But a person can't just walk in and take it," Boldt suggested.

"Why not?"

"You're kidding, I hope."

"Not a bit. This is a university lab. Dozens of people pa.s.s through every day, many of them complete strangers to one another. Students. Grad students. Researchers. We get visitors from all over the world. Every walk of life. Every look you can imagine. It's a teaching hospital. Men, women, young, old, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, African, Middle Eastern, you name it. Every week of the year. Sometimes there are a half-dozen techs working in that lab, sometimes one or even none."

"Just walk in and take it?" Boldt asked, astonished.

"If you know what you're looking for."

"I don't believe it."

"Try it."

"What?"

"Go ahead and try it." Mann pushed back his chair and came to his feet. He eyed Boldt as would a haberdasher. "Not bad. That's the look you need: the run-down professor thing. I'm telling you, just go ahead and try it." The doctor clearly said this as his chance to remove his lab workers from suspicion.

He grabbed his lab coat from a hook on the back of the door and offered it to Boldt, and Boldt put it on. It was a little snug. Mann said, "If you look like you know what you're doing, you're in. Confidence is everything. It's in a half-size refrigerator on the right. If I'm your man, I go in at lunchtime, because the place is deserted at lunch. It's a little late for that-but that's all the better for your test. Straight to the fridge. You're looking for a petri dish." He scrambled and found an empty dish by the computer that was filled with paper clips. "Like this, but containing a tan gelatin with florid spots. You're looking for one marked cholera or V. cholerae, INABA strain, and a number.

"Anyone asks you a question, you say you're working the third floor. You're looking for some vibrio cholera. You watch: They'll hand it to you if you're polite."

"I gotta see this," Boldt said.

"Out through this lab, down the hall, first door on your right."

By the time Boldt was in the hall, he could once again feel himself as the would-be thief. With each step he felt a little more nervous. There were three people perched on metal stools working at the lab counter. Wearing goggles and plastic gloves, they appeared focused on their work. The place was littered with hundreds of gla.s.s flasks, plastic petri dishes, test tubes, and other lab equipment. A mess. He headed directly to the small refrigerator, stooped, and pulled open the door. No one said a word. He caught himself expecting it, but it never happened. The refrigerator shelves were crammed with petri dishes. He picked one up, inspected it, and dropped it as it came apart.

The woman nearest him glanced over at him. An attractive Asian woman in her midtwenties. She smiled at him and returned to her work. He returned the fallen dish and sorted through the others. Way in the back he found it, marked with a black grease pen: V cholerae-395. He took it, shut the refrigerator door, and walked out.

Just like that.

His heartbeat was back to normal by the time he reached Dr. Mann.

"Well?"

"You're right: If I hadn't done that myself, I never would have believed it." He handed Mann the petri dish.

Mann studied the dish, spinning it in his hand.

"And once he has it?" Boldt asked, removing the uncomfortable lab coat, taking notes again.

"Not much to it. He probably has some microbiology under his belt-early college level. Some agar-a petri dish containing a protein base; some broth-the book would have a recipe; an incubator-but could build something-a light box might work. Doesn't need much, I'm afraid. It's all pretty easy. It looks real complex and the language is fairly complex, but the actual mechanics of growing a culture are relatively simple. It's covered in both high school and college chemistry."

"Anything else I should know?" Boldt tried. "Limited shelf life?"

"Not terribly. Cholera's a pretty good choice. Salmonella would have been obvious to whoever opened the can because of gases-bacterial odor. But cholera? No odor or gases to speak of. And if it isn't someone at the university, someone who knows specifically about cholera-395-and there couldn't be more than a handful who do-then this guy probably didn't know what a powerful punch it packed. Three ninety-five is a resistant strain. Probably didn't know what he was getting. And unless and until you do put this in the press, he may not even be aware he may kill people with it."

Boldt felt the wind knocked out of him. "Kill?"

"It's a research strain, 395. It doesn't react to the more common antibiotics. That's why these kids became so ill. It's in the material," he said, indicating Boldt's pile of literature. "Their youth may help them-we're lucky there."

"It's lethal, and it's just sitting in there in a refrigerator?"

"I know. I know. But it's true of much of what's in there: This is Infectious Diseases. We're working to cure people here."

"Am I the only one who sees irony in that?"

"The Lowry boy went critical a couple hours ago," Mann informed him.

Again, Boldt couldn't catch his breath. He could picture the boy as clear as day: the sunken eyes, the strange color to his skin. It made him sick to his stomach. He put down the tea.

"Sorry," Mann said.

"I've got a two-year-old," Boldt explained.

"Me, a boy five, a girl three," Mann said, pointing to color photographs by the computer.

"We're on the back side of the curve, I'm afraid, even with the research work on 395. I'd like to tell you that they will be okay, but I can't because it isn't necessarily true."

Boldt said, "The girl is doing better."

Mann said, "We get lucky now and then." He hesitated, "There's something else you should know-your lab people should be aware of this, but in case they are not: Vibrio cholerae degrades rather rapidly. At room temperature, it will die on the shelf inside these soup cans. With a high enough inoculum, there should be sufficient organisms to cause disease for the first five to seven days. After that, the organisms will die, which means they may go undetected by your lab. Just so you know."

"You're telling me these are time bombs with a shelf life. We won't be able to prove they were contaminated?"

"Not after the first five to seven days. After that, the bug is dead and your tests will return negative." The doctor added, "The bright side is that after a week on the shelf it won't harm anyone."

Boldt was devastated by this. Providing evidence of the contamination in a court of law might prove difficult if not impossible. He thanked the man for his time and they shook hands.

On his way out, Boldt leaned his head into the lab and looked down at the half-refrigerator, unlocked and available for the killer.

This triggered a thought, and he returned to Mann, who hung up the phone. He said, "Will you lock that refrigerator for me?"

"Just arranging that." He pointed to the phone.

As Boldt pa.s.sed the lab, a woman's voice called out: "Did you get what you need?" It was the young Asian woman, her eyes stretched open by the clear safety goggles, a wire loop held in her hand and sparking in the flames of a Bunsen burner.

"Yes," he said with a slightly raised voice, loud enough to carry above the whine of a centrifuge.

"Good," she said brightly.

"Not really," Boldt replied. He turned and left, negotiating his way through a labyrinth of hospital corridors so similar in appearance that someone had painted color bars on the floor to direct you-only Boldt didn't know which colors led where. Like this case. He finally reached the main lobby, and then headed off at a run out into the parking lot, out into the unexpected rain, pouring rain, buckets of rain, out without an umbrella or even a newspaper to hold over his head. Sometimes he hated this city.

SEVEN.

The meeting with Owen Adler was due to begin promptly at three. For the sake of security and privacy, it was to take place aboard Adler's yacht. Earlier that Friday morning, Boldt had a.s.signed Detective John LaMoia to obtain a list of Mann's students and faculty who had regular access to the Infectious Diseases lab. He also asked for employee lists from Foodland, Shop-Alert Security, and Wagner Wholesale, the distributor that supplied Lee Hyundai's Foodland store. In an attempt to link motive with opportunity, these lists would be cross-checked with that of Adler's employees.

s.h.i.+lshole Marina was a clutter of masts alive with the clanging slap of nylon line on hollow-core aluminum. Wind whistled across the steel stays. Stinging rain struck the launch's Plexiglas s.h.i.+eld and drummed on the blue canvas awning as the craft carried Boldt and Daphne through choppy water to the waiting motor cruiser. It was temporarily moored in the lee of the gray stone boulders that created the breakwater protecting the man-made inlet from the sound. The multidecked, fifty-five-foot cruiser could have made a landing at the dock, but Adler was taking no chances that he or any of his pa.s.sengers might be seen meeting with the police.

"It looked so nice earlier," she called across the noise of the twin engines. She was not herself. Nervous, perhaps to see Adler professionally and in the company of others.

"Is he crazy?" Boldt shouted.

Her eyebrows danced. She knew whom he meant. She hollered back, "He's disturbed." She reached up and took hold of her hair, keeping it from whipping her face. "We want to look for suicides when we get this employee list-a spouse, a relative. And bankruptcy. Those are his immediate demands."

"It's personal?" he asked.

"Love, money, and revenge," she said, quoting the three most common reasons humans killed each other. "We may have a possible paranoid schizophrenic on our hands," she warned. "And then again, he may be a cold-blooded psychopath." The wind suddenly felt colder to Boldt.

"I'd like to bring in Dr. Richard Clements. He's BSU." She meant the Behavioral Sciences Unit of the FBI. Boldt knew she had used Clements in past investigations. He had never met the man.

The low charcoal clouds grew oppressively lower. Boldt loosened his collar and chewed down two Maalox.

"You all right?" She crossed unsteadily and flopped down onto the cus.h.i.+on beside him. Her hair whipped in the wind. "Are you okay?" she asked more intimately, pressed up against him.

"The boy is worse, I hear," he said.

She reached out and laid her hand gently on the lower sleeve of his sport jacket and squeezed his forearm.

The launch engines slowed, and as the launch pulled alongside, a woman crew member tossed a line. Daphne climbed the ladder, followed by Boldt. The launch sped away, cutting into the angry green water, ripping open a crease of white foam.

"Lousy weather," the woman offered. She was in her twenties with an athletic figure, nice legs, and quite crisp green eyes. She wore khaki shorts, white and blue canvas deck shoes, and an aquamarine T-s.h.i.+rt damp on her shoulders.

They descended into a s.p.a.cious, well-appointed living room. Owen Adler stood to the side of the steep ladder and offered his hand to Daphne to guide her down the steep steps. "Welcome aboard," he said to Boldt.

Adler was a boyish forty-five, with graying hair at the temples, wire-rimmed gla.s.ses, French cuffs, and silver cuff links. He stood just under six feet but carried himself much taller. He wore soft brown Italian loafers, linen pants, and a faint pink pinpoint cotton s.h.i.+rt with a starched collar. His handshake was firm, his dark eyes attentive.

Adler and Daphne sat on opposite ends of a small chintz couch. Adler's attorney and chief operating officer, Howard Taplin, took the cus.h.i.+oned chair to Adler's immediate right. Taplin was a wiry man with drawn features, a trimmed mustache, and intense gray eyes. He wore a gray suit and black wing tips and the kind of high, thin socks that required garters. Boldt sat between Taplin and Kenny Fowler. Fowler had once served on the police force in Major Crimes, working the gangland wars. Boldt saw him occasionally at the Big Joke, where Boldt played happy-hour piano. Fowler carried a deliberate intensity in his eyes. He wore his dark hair slicked back and kept himself impeccably groomed. He fancied himself a ladies' man, though the rumors had always been that he chased the cheerleading age. Boldt knew well the man's reputation for an explosive disposition and frank honesty. Fowler shook hands strongly with Boldt and asked him about Liz and Miles. He always remembered to ask. He had a couple of new teeth in front and a tiny scar on his lower lip. Boldt wondered what the other guy looked like: Fowler was the workout type and wore tailored clothes to prove it.

As Adler opened the meeting, the cruiser left the protection of the jetty, entering some rougher water. But as the speed increased, the ride smoothed. The cabin was impressively soundproofed. A male crew member delivered a pitcher of iced tea and extra gla.s.ses with sprigs of mint and wedges of lemon. A plate of cookies circulated.

Adler said, "We want to welcome your a.s.sistance and expertise, Sergeant. This is a horrible situation, and we will cooperate in whatever way required to resolve this just as quickly as possible. I want to say right up front that we're aware we may have impeded your efforts by waiting to contact you as we did." He glanced at both Daphne and Howard Taplin. "And I should add that we still feel strongly about keeping the involvement of the police as low-profile as possible. With these contaminations, whoever this is has proved he means business, and we would just as soon be perceived as adhering to his demands-all of his demands."

"Agreed," Boldt replied. "Where do we stand with the recall?"

"We've issued a full recall for the product run in question. Kenny is continuing to quietly search for a possible employee who might carry a grudge. You two will want to coordinate on that, I'm sure."

"We will not give in to terrorism," Taplin interrupted.

Adler did not appreciate the intrusion. "What Tap means," he said addressing Boldt, "is that we would prefer to catch this person than enter into negotiations."

"And some of us would prefer to keep the police out," Taplin said. "Nothing personal," he added coolly, pa.s.sing Boldt the most recent fax.

THE CHOICE IS YOURS.

MORE SUFFERING-AND WORSE-