The Boric Acid Murder (15 page)

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Authors: Camille Minichino

Tags: #Revere Beach (Mass.), #Police Procedural, #Mystery & Detective, #Boric acid, #General, #Boston (Mass.), #Lamerino; Gloria (Fictitious character), #Women Sleuths, #Fiction, #Women physicists, #Detective and mystery stories; American, #Massachusetts

BOOK: The Boric Acid Murder
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I shook away the memory, happy I was no longer young and foolish. At least not young.
It took Elaine less time than I expected to figure out what I meant. I assumed she’d think I was confessing to loyalty to Al’s memory. But she was smarter than that. “So, if you get engaged to Matt, or whatever it is he wants to do, he might
die?
” The line between us crackled, and I wished it were a call-waiting signal for one of us. I felt Elaine had reached into my soul and pulled out something I hadn’t dared look at.
“You’re good,” I said, when I recovered.
“You’re easy, Gloria. I wish I could be this insightful with my own relationships. Now, let’s work on this. Didn’t you tell me you found out exactly how Al died?”
“I did.”
“It was a hit, wasn’t it? The car crash was set up by his enemies.”
“I love your television language, but yes, it was deliberate.”
“Not exactly your fault, was it?”
“No.” I took a sip of my espresso and shifted on my rocker.
“It’s not like he contracted some disease by having sex with you.”
“Elaine!” I said.
She laughed at the mock horror in my voice. “You’ve got to get used to the S word, Gloria. And you’ve got to realize Matt is not Al and you are not the Gloria of 1963.”
She had a point. Several points.
COMPARED TO MY conversation with Elaine, turning back to thoughts of murder seemed easy. I lined up everyone I’d talked to in connection with the case, placing them behind my mental two-way mirror. Which one looked like a killer? In my limited experience, there was no way to tell. They came in all sizes, ages, and genders.
One of Matt’s friends, who taught in an administration of
justice program, had written a new book on murderers. “This looks like something you’d enjoy,” he’d told me. About as romantic a present as my boron pin, but I loved them both.
I took it from the shelf and flipped through the pages. Are killers chillingly aberrant monsters, the author asked, or are they a part, however perverse, of something in our culture as a whole? The jacket copy was provoking. Only recently, it said, have scholars begun to focus intensely on murder as a window on society and a revealing subject for social historians. In the days of the Puritans, murderers were seen as chief sinners in a community of sinners. Their fall was a warning to everyone. In today’s society, the killer is often seen as an alien monster whose crimes reflect his separation from the rest of us.
Insider or outsider? The topic was almost as interesting as the measurement problem in quantum mechanics.
The digression on the nature of killers didn’t get me very far, so I turned to the victim. What did I know about her? Born in Detroit, living in Revere five years, many boyfriends, an activist, fired from the lab. My information about her outlook on life had come from John Galigani, whose behavior would seem suspicious to anyone but those who loved him.
Before I had to consider the many points against John, my phone rang again.
“Gloria, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this,” Andrea said, her breathing labored as usual. “The lab’s Open House. It’s this coming weekend, and it’s a perfect way for you to walk all around the site and, you know, investigate.”
Indeed it was.
I’D DREADED FAMILY DAYS, as we called them at my Berkeley lab, and not only because it meant an extra cleanup effort. We were also required to secure all levels of sensitive information, think up clever ways of explaining our programs to the families and friends of colleagues, and maintain a cheery countenance and positive attitude toward our place of employment. And this throughout two long weekend days.
Tutoring Matt and the RPD was rewarding, as was explaining scientific concepts to Peter Mastrone’s captive audience of high school students, but I didn’t enjoy entertaining little Josh and Stacey, or Grandpa Ned, who never stayed around long enough to learn anything. The children just wanted a balloon and a hot dog from the special vendors brought in for the event, and the grandparents looked at their watches every two minutes.
I never dreamed how much fun Open House could be from the other side—as a visitor. On Saturday morning, Matt and I were escorted by lab-employee-in-good-standing Andrea Cabrini. Her green badge sat high on her wide chest, hanging on a flat black shoelace. As I expected, she gushed over my boron pin.
“Wow. Did you have that made up special?”
I looked at Matt and smiled. “Matt found it, and he won’t say where.”
“Wow,” Andrea said again, looking back and forth between the boron pin and Matt. I had the feeling she wanted one of each. I also felt very lucky.
We walked past the requisite souvenir booths—T-shirts, pens, water bottles, balloons, all in maroon and gold with the lab logo. The Charger Street lab was technically a division of the Massachusetts University Department of Physics, which had its main campus in Boston. But hardly anyone remembered the connection unless they read the fine print on their paychecks, a lost art in the days of electronic funds transfer.
“Where do we start?” Matt asked, looking at the program and map, specially prepared for the Open House.
In normal circumstances, I’d have been eager to visit one of the extraordinary installations I’d read about. The Charger Street lab had developed world-class precision engineering tools, for example, plus other intriguing projects—decoding the human genome, optical switching, supercomputers, biocounterterrorism, seismography.
But today the overriding circumstance for me was the Yolanda Fiore investigation and John Galigani’s alleged role in her murder.
“Let’s see the Reactor Safety Program is showing,” I said.
ONLY TEN IN THE MORNING, and the temperature was already near ninety degrees. Relative humidity not much less, I guessed, waving my program in front of my face. The respite from the brief rainstorm two days earlier had faded from my memory, replaced by stickiness and discomfort. Rose had told me if I could survive the first summer back in Revere, I was a true native. I’d passed the test—I’d begun my second round of seasons—but the credential didn’t make it any more comfortable.
We took advantage of the lab’s taxi service, a regular feature of any large national laboratory I’d ever visited, and rode one of the outsized, air-conditioned, white vans to a large, old building on the north side of the facility. Since the Reactor Safety Program generated mainly reports and white papers, the staff had offices in what used to be military barracks. The “real” buildings, the ones with amenities such as foundations
and indoor plumbing, were reserved for programs that used mainframe computers and other sensitive equipment.
We entered a faded green wooden structure, one sprawling story high, housing all the projects related to commercial nuclear reactors. The scientists and engineers in this building had served for many years as technical consultants to the congressional oversight committees that regulated nuclear energy.
On display in the lobby was a large model. For a minute I thought I’d landed back in the Revere Public Library, but this was a replica of a pressurized water reactor, a PWR in the trade. I was beginning to see my life as a series of miniature representations. If only I could shrink to their size, I might learn what was going on in the real world.
The PWR model dominated the lobby area, at least three times the size of dollhouses I’d seen on my rare, reluctant trips to toy stores.
More colorful than the real thing, the model reactor had a row of buttons along the front panel—push a button and a particular area lit up. The three main sections were color-coded. The auxiliary building, which housed the control room, fuel handling and storage equipment, and emergency systems, was crayon green. The rounded cement containment section was fiery red. Not a good idea, I thought, unless the designers wanted the visiting public to think
meltdown.
The last building, which housed the turbines, condensers, and the generator to produce the electricity, was California-sky-blue.
We were early enough to have beaten the rush of little Joshes, Staceys, and Grandpa Neds, so Andrea and I took turns pushing buttons. We watched the water pressurizer turn bright orange, the control rods purple, the reactor core a sunshine yellow.
“There’s the steam generator,” Andrea said.
“And the heat exchanger.”
“And the pump.” I
“And the exit line to the turbine.”
No lacy curtains, floral dining-room chairs, Victorian lamps,
miniature pets—here was a dollhouse I would have liked as a kid.
Matt stood by, grinning, as if he were watching children in a toy store. He finally made a contribution to our animated chatter.
“Look at the little people,” he said, pointing to the tiny plastic figures that represented plant workers.
“How come there aren’t any women?” I asked, making a note to have equal numbers of male and female workers in my model waste pool for Erin Wong’s class.
While I pictured little women in radiation suits and hard hats, Tony Taruffi’s voice intruded.
“A great oversight,” he said. “Maybe you could make a female inspector for us.” Garth Allen was by his side, in a seersucker suit, a fashion statement I hadn’t seen since I was in high school.
“I’ll do that.” I smiled, and introduced the men to Matt.
“The real police?” Allen’s graying eyebrows went up. “Is this another official call?”
“Not at all,” Matt said, with a disarming grin. “I’m here to learn about nuclear physics.” With a little coaching from me, Matt had overcome the tendency of many lay people to say “noo’-
cue
-lar” instead of “noo’-
clee
-ar.”
“Are you impressed by our model? There’s a lot more action.” Taruffi pushed a button on the side of the structure, and a puff of pretend steam came out of the bright red containment building. From inside the model, a deep, broadcast-quality male voice announced:
Millions of atoms of uranium 235 hit each other and break apart in a chain reaction. The process, called fission, creates heat, which turns the water to steam
. The cloud of lavender vapor traveled from the heat exchanger down an elaborate system of pipes until it reached the turbine shaft.
The steam drives the turbines and electricity is generated
.
Not bad, though I would have added a mention of the neutrons released, which are the actual bombarding particles that sustain the chain reaction.
“So fission is just an elaborate way to boil water,” Matt said. My best pupil, I thought, as the rest of us nodded.
“Right,” Andrea said. “In other plants you’re burning coal, oil, or natural gas to make the steam, and the rest of the process is the same.” She waved her chubby arms. “More or less.”
My mind was as busy as the intricate layers of pipes, valves, wires, and pumps in the PWR model. How was I going to segue from nuclear reactor mechanisms to Yolanda Fiore? I needed to know if she and Taruffi had had an affair, for one thing, and if our waste pools ever suffered from insufficient boron, for another. Matt’s presence made the task even more daunting. I found it difficult to be fraudulent or overbearing in his presence, one of the few inconveniences our relationship posed.
A plan took shape in my head, but I’d need Andrea’s cooperation, on the level of extrasensory perception. I looked at her and rolled my eyes toward Matt. He’d become engaged in a conversation with Taruffi and Allen about the lab director whose daughter was on the police force. After several blinks, winks, and facial contortions on my part, Andrea picked up my message.
“Excuse me,” she said to the group of three men. “Matt, I’d like to show you where I spend a lot of my time, out in the machine shop.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll stay here,” I said. “I’m doing a project with the high school science club, and I’d like to discuss it with Tony and Garth.”
Matt looked at me, screwed up his mouth to his most crooked grin, and shook his head slightly. It wasn’t a “don’t do it” message, I told myself, just an “I know what you’re doing” one.
“I’m constructing a model waste pool,” I told Tony and Garth when Andrea and Matt left the lobby.
“Interesting,” they said, one after the other.
I explained my connection to Erin Wong at Revere High. “I want to lead the students through a project with more than just
technical ramifications. And nuclear power has many issues surrounding it—social, economic, environmental,
safety.
”
“Of course, there’s where we’re number one,” Garth said.
Taruffi looked like he’d rather be grilled by the real police, who’d left the area.
“I remember your description,” I said, not wanting a repeat of Garth’s speech on the many redundant systems used for spent fuel safety at U.S. reactor sites. I scratched my head just beyond my eyebrows. “Did we discuss Yolanda’s concern about the amount of boron in the pool?”
“We did.” He raised his index finger, pointed it at me. “And I have some additional information. Put it together for you after our last discussion. If you’re going to be here another five minutes, I’ll run back to my office and get it.”
“I’ll be here. I have some things I need to talk to Tony about, anyway.”
Tony rolled his eyes, only slightly, but enough to convey his annoyance to all of us just before Garth left.
I started off with a request I knew Tony would be happy to honor. I opened my arms to encompass the model PWR. “I’d love to borrow this for my class.”
Tony’s face brightened, his posture relaxed. This was his forte—spreading goodwill to the community. Even better, the community schools. “By all means. We have a little-known lending program that I wish more teachers would take advantage of.” So you can keep the funds coming for outreach activities, and keep your job, I thought, ungenerously. “We’ll send it to the school, and even set it all up for you. All you have to do is pay for return shipping.”
“Perfect.” I guessed my own budget could handle the charges if the science budget at Revere High could not.
“We also offer a scientist or engineer for an hour or two to explain the physics, but I guess you’d be doing that yourself in this case.”
I nodded. We chatted about the importance of science education, how more technical staff should volunteer for such programs, and the wonderful teacher workshops sponsored by the
American Nuclear Society. Tony and I were on such good terms at that moment—he must have thought the only “things” I wanted to discuss had to do with borrowing his little reactor—I almost hated to disrupt the atmosphere.
Almost.
“By the way, was I the last person to hear about your close relationship to Yolanda Fiore?” I asked him. I did my best to make
close relationship
sound like
affair,
at the same time attempting a coy smile. Not my best talent.
Tony’s expression turned sour. He clenched his fists, which he then immediately stuffed into the pockets of his pale blue summer jacket. I imagined he’d learned that control device in a class with a title like “How to Deal with Difficult People.” His bushy eyebrows seemed closer together than ever.
“I assume you don’t expect an answer to that question?”
“Too much to hope for?”
A heavy sigh, through gritted teeth. “I don’t appreciate where you’re headed with this.”
I didn’t hear a no. I ran through the responses I’d expect if my suggestion had been way off—a laugh, a quizzical look, an unequivocal denial. Gloria, the relationship expert, became convinced on the spot that Tony and Yolanda had indeed had an affair, in spite of John Galigani’s inability to believe it.
“And where is it you think I’m headed?” I asked.
Tony glared at me. “Get another hobby,” he said. In the next second, Garth Allen rejoined us, and I was spared more venom from Tony, except for one parting shot. He picked up a diminutive hard-hatted figure holding a miniature clipboard. Taruffi’s eyes had narrowed, and were trained on me. “Do you want to borrow a little plastic inspector also?” he asked.
I was surprised he hadn’t aimed the tiny yellow bulldozer at me. It was hard not to turn away, but I kept my gaze and my voice steady. “No, I’ll take care of that myself.”

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