A Long December (24 page)

“We think there’s a good chance that this could be the delivery system for the ricin,” she said. “We haven’t touched it yet…but we have to wrap it securely and forward it to the FBI labs in D.C. It looks just like an ordinary spray can. But if you look at it really closely,” she said, pointing with her pen, “you’ll see that it’s not a can that’s had the label torn off. No glue marks, no residual paper patches, nothing. But, it
does
have a commercial serial number on the bottom.”

“So, where’d it come from? “I thought that was a good question.

“Not sure,” she said. “I do know, though, that major paint stores will make up spray cans to special order. You buy the paint; they put it in the can and pressurize it for you. That’s a possibility.”

“I didn’t know they did that,” I said. “Cool.”

“There’s also a box of synthetic vinyl exam gloves inside a shoe box in the closet over there,” said Hester. “It’s opened, but I don’t know if any are gone.”

The things you miss if you only think it’s an unattended death. “No smoking guns?” I couldn’t resist.

“Well, not exactly,” she said. “However, there’s also a pair of dust masks, labeled N-95
PARTICULATE RESPIRATORS,
in the same shoe box. They’re just for dust, though. Tell them what you said, Doc,” she said to Dr. McWhirter.

“I don’t think that kind of mask would be particularly effective against the ricin spray,” he said. “I’d wear something with much finer filtration if I was going to be around that. And it isn’t really adjustable enough to make a good seal.”

“It’s labeled in English,” said Hester. “We’ve had absolutely no indication that Gonzales, or whoever he really is, had any English at all.” She shrugged. “Or that he’d understand the finer points of filtration, anyway. A mask is a mask.”

“Right.”

“I figure the can isn’t leaking,” said Hester, noticing that I was edging back toward the door, “because Big Ears didn’t get sick.”

“Sure,” I said, backing up and leaning up against the doorframe. “Good point.”

“So,” said Hester, “lacking any other information, I’d say that our man here used this spray can to spray the meat that went to New York. Most likely when he carried it into the trucks. I’d say that he used the mask and gloves to protect himself, and somehow either failed to do it right, or soon enough, and the mask was inadequate anyway. Maybe contaminated himself when he took the gloves off. He used a mask that provided some protection, but not enough. Maybe it slipped. Maybe it wasn’t tight.”

“Inept,” I said. “Nontrained, then. Just told to use it but not how?”

“You just earned a place on the speaker’s stand,” said George to Hester.

“What?”

He told her about the next meeting.

“Swell,” said Hester. “Just swell. Not that I’m not glad to do it,” she said, “but we really need to get moving on the homicide.”

“I know, and I’m sorry,” said George. “We’ll free you up as soon as possible.
Really.”

“Just one of those little adjustments,” I said.

“But we do have an hour or so, I suspect,” said George. “Why don’t we make some appointments to talk to the fellow workers…you know, the ones who worked with Gonzales and this…?”

“Cueva,” I said. Hester and I exchanged looks. “You wanna tell him?”

“Tell me what?” asked George, falling neatly into the setup.

“Well,” I said, “we’ve got a bit of a problem interviewing the coworkers. The majority of them are not here…well… legally.”

That really got his attention.

“It appears that they all left the area the night after Cueva was shot,” I said. “A couple hundred of ‘em, at least. They had to shut down the plant, so many were gone.”

“Well, damn,” said George.

“That’s what we said,” said Hester.

“We’re looking.” I explained about Wisconsin, and Harry’s search over there. “No luck yet.”

“They could have run to a major metro area,” said George. “Gone forever, in a practical sense, if they did that.”

“We’re hoping,” said Hester, “that they drift back when the heat’s off. Next day or two.”

“I hope you’re right,” said George. “We’re all going to need to talk with those people.”

“We have a couple of names,” I said helpfully. “Maybe you guys could help us find them? They could lead to all sorts of good things…”

During this exchange, both Attorney Bligh and Dr. McWhirter started to get a little fidgety.

“Ah, we’re sort of out of our purview here,” said Bligh. “Our concern is the toxic substance and its effects. Ah, if you think this is a criminal matter…”

“You’re in this for the duration,” said George. “We might be wrong. Unlikely though that is. But we need your work to establish a basis in fact for our case, sort of the antithesis, so to speak. Or the thesis, and we do the antithesis. Whatever. We need you to prove that an accident either did or did not occur. This is going to be a really multijurisdictional effort, in all respects.”

Neither Bligh nor McWhirter looked particularly pleased at that.

When we all got back to the sheriff’s department, Hester and I ducked in the back door to avoid the media people who were sitting in the main parking lot with their engines running. I really thought that somebody should have at least had the courtesy to ask them in to the booking room, where there were a couple of seats and it was warmer, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything because the first person I met was Lamar, who greeted me with, “Where’d all those damned reporters come from?”

“Beats me,” I said. “George Pollard is right behind us, and he wants to talk to you. When he does, you’ll know why Hester and I have to get our reports up to date in the next couple of hours. We gotta get busy,” I said, passing him and heading down the hall.

“You got us in trouble again? “he called after us.

“You betcha!” I called over my shoulder.

About an hour later, when Hester and I were about done typing and sorting things out, Lamar came into my office. He even knocked before he opened the door. That was rare.

“You think this is really this big?”

“You spoke to George, right?” I asked, looking up from my stack of case photos.

“I sure did. What do you think about this? Is he right?”

“I think so,” I said. “It sure takes care of some very loose ends.”

“How about you, Hester? “he asked.

“There’s a good chance they’re on to something,” she said. “The connection to the delis in New York just about clinches it.”

“Damn,” said Lamar, and sat down in on my desk. He picked up a few photos, but wasn’t really looking at them. “As soon as the media got wind of the CDC people showing up here,” he said, “they started pissin’ and moanin’ about ‘access.’ God, I hate it when they do that.”

“Wait until after the briefing,” said Hester. “I think the feds will have a spokesperson assigned. They’ll handle that.”

“I hope so,” said Lamar. “I’m always afraid I’m gonna say somethin’ and accidentally give somethin’ away. It’s worse ‘n court.”

“This is so far out of our hands,” I said, “I think we can just concentrate on making sure we know who killed Cueva.”

“Easy for you to say,” he said. “I been on the phone with Abe Goldstein.” He glanced at Hester. “He’s the guy who owns the plant. The media have been calling him at his office, and at home, all day. He claims he’s the victim of anti-Semitism. Hell, he’s right. But I don’t know what to tell the poor bastard. He says he’s about to be ruined, that he and his family have spent their whole lives making good on his father’s reputation for top products. Now he says the ‘authorities’ say his food kills his friends and relatives in New York. What the hell can I do?”

“It’s not his fault,” said Hester. “Not that that’ll mean a damned thing.”

“He wants to know if we can help him make sure it won’t happen again.”

“We’ll do our very best,” she said. “You
could
tell him that the plant being shut down right now is the best thing that could have happened to him. With the health people going over everything, we can make sure he’s off to a clean start when production starts again.”

“Maybe,” said Lamar. “Oh, and while I’m at it, I had to send an officer back to court with another application for a search warrant.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Mr. County Attorney Hilgenberg walked off the premises after the first search and left his file folder in the apartment. He didn’t discover it was missing until after he got back here.”

One of the things about search warrants is, you have the right to be there as long as it takes you to do the search. But you can’t go back ten minutes later, not without another, separate search warrant.

“That man,” said Hester, “is going to drive me crazy. I hope nobody got into the apartment and read his file.”

“He doesn’t think so,” said Lamar. “But, like I say, the media gets things that way.”

Hester and I got on with what we were doing. One thing you have to be constantly aware of when writing a good police report is that you need to differentiate between what you know and what you suspect. Cueva’s origin was a good example.

“We know he’s not from L.A., and that he used forged a Social Security number and birth certificate,” said Hester. “We have anything confirmed that he is actually from Colombia?”

I leafed through my notes. “Nope. Well, Hector said Cueva was Colombian. Nothing confirmed, though.”

“Okay…”

We both assumed Hector was probably right, and I felt that he’d given us good information. But we hadn’t been able to confirm it.

Another thing you have to be able to do is be absolutely certain you don’t leave anything out. Bad leads, for example, have to stay in the report, and you handle them until you’re satisfied that they’re bad. You
always
say what criteria you used to discount information. Otherwise, the defense gets hold of it and tries to make it sound as if you ignored the
real
evidence just to focus on their client. This can lead to some pretty interesting conversations between investigators.

“Okay, we believe anything she’s told us?” I asked, meaning Linda Moynihan.

“Sure,” said Hester. “Just the indirect, though. Emotional state.” I knew she was referring to Linda’s reaction at the autopsy, and later.

“So…really grief stricken…maybe even surprised?” I was referring to Rudy Cueva’s death in general. Hester picked that up right away.

We both thought about that for a moment. “Not surprised,” said Hester. “Not necessarily. Maybe just really unhappy.”

“So the reaction could have been…well, probably was more like ‘Holy shit! They said they were gonna do it, and they did.’ You think?”

“That’s fair,” said Hester, going through her own notes and looking for something else. “Might even be a case of’I told you so, Rudy.’ Maybe that…”

“Gotta find her,” I said, and went back to the keyboard. “Really quick.”

“That goes in your part of the report,” she said. “I’m still on the scene.”

“Okay. Be sure to tell me when you figure out who the white guy is standing there when Cueva gets shot.” I was only half kidding, because we really needed to figure out who in the hell that man was.

“Sure. When you tell me who Rudy really was.”

“And then the ricin…”

“Oh, no. The ricin’s yours. All yours. I’ll go the connections route, summary, thing.” She was already typing on her laptop again.

“Good enough.”

George stuck his head in once, bringing us coffee that Sally had made. “She says this is her best stuff,” he said.

I was impressed. Sally had a small bag of specially ground coffee she’d picked up in Dubuque. Nobody had gotten to do anything but smell it brewing, except Sally herself.

“I, uh, made a couple of calls, based on what you told me. ATF’s going to helicopter an agent up from Des Moines.”

“ATF?” said Hester.

“The shell casings,” said George. “We think there may be another connection. We’re having all of them dusted, by the way. Thumbprints…”

When you load a magazine with shells, you tend to press down pretty firmly on the shell casings as they go in, especially the last few. It was a possibility.

“The DCI lab hadn’t gotten to that?” I was kind of surprised.

“Probably not,” said Hester. “The legislature had us get rid of overtime for the lab personnel for this year. I’d think the technicians would be concentrating on the homicide evidence from the scene itself.”

“We picked the casings up from your lab. They’re being flown back to our labs in Washington.” said George. Then he added defensively, “Well, we had a plane going that way anyway.”

“Some got resources, some don’t,” I said, trying to lighten things up a tad. “We could have offered our facilities, but the high school chemistry lab closes at three forty-five.”

“Speaking of labs, George,” said Hester, “you wouldn’t happen to have a couple of large hazardous material containment packages, would you? I need two tubes, concentric, the smaller one being able to hold this can, plus a couple of hazmat or biohazard stickers.”

“In my car,” he said, “I’ve got evidence tubes. No biohazard stickers, though.”

“I’ve got some of those,” I said absently. There was a silence. I looked up. “What?”

“What on earth are you doing with those? “asked Hester.

“Oh, Sally snagged a bunch of’em from the hospital. She stuck the things all over my lunch containers and my sauce bottles. She had a couple of rolls left… they’re in that drawer over there.”

“Figures,” said Hester. “I don’t suppose you’d have any address labels for the FBI labs?”

“Check with Dispatch,” I said with a straight face.

George let us get back to our reports.

IT WAS LAMAR ON THE RADIO AGAIN
. Apparently he’d been calling, but in all the commotion we hadn’t heard him.

Sally cranked up the walkie-talkie volume and reassured him that we were still alive and as well as could be expected. However, as she so succinctly put it, “We could sure use some company up here, One.”

“We’re working on it,” said Lamar, and I could really hear the strain in his voice, even ten feet from the walkie-talkie.

“What do we think?” asked George. “We haven’t seen any movement for a while.”