The Whale's Footprints - Rick Boyer (6 page)

"Who are those guys?"

"One is David Klewski, the local cop you met
yesterday. The other guy is your counterpart for Barnstable County.
Name is Keegan."

"Yeah, I know Paul Keegan. A hardass. Former
marine captain. So he's here already, huh?"

The policemen were helping Jack carry the fishing
gear. Joe, Mary, and I went back inside, where Mary adjusted the heat
under the kettle. I added the potatoes. Joe poured a mug of coffee,
but so far he hadn't said much. Something was bugging him; his mood
had noticeably soured since his departure earlier in the day.

"S'matter Joey, cat got your tongue?" asked
Mary.

Joe sighed and eased down into a chair at the kitchen
table. He looked down at his big, hairy, brown hands as he rubbed
them over the Formica table top.

"After I finished up at home, I went over to Ten
Ten Commonwealth. You know, to check in with Kevin. So . . . So I'm
in the office with Kev and who comes in but Major Mahaffey. He tells
me that the M.E. has found something interesting about young Mr.
Cunningham. And he tells me that it was Dr. Charles Adams, no less,
who suggested certain lines of investigation regarding the corpse."

We waited for Joe to continue.

"Yeah, well?" said Mary softly, peering
into the iron pot.

"And so what happened was, before I leave the
building, the M.E. himself comes over to Ten Ten on his way to the
D.A.'s office. So I'm standing there talking to this guy not even two
hours ago. Like you two, he was thinking the cardiac arrest was
curious. Even suspicious. And your phone call to the forensic lab
gave them some hints, Doc, and sent them snooping again. So they went
back and did more tests. And as a result, they found something else
in the kid's system. They found it just before I showed up there.
Another drug, along with the Dilantin."

Joe took out a pocket notebook, flipped through the
pages, and read a single word.

"Digoxin."

I froze, staring down at the potatoes in the kettle.
Those tan spherical shapes were beginning to move and bump around in
the hot water like billiard balls in a  three-dimensional game
of pool. My vague hunch had been confirmed.

"Digoxin?" said Mary. "What the hell
was digoxin doing there? He wasn't on that. Why, that would be the
very worst—"

"Yep," said her brother. "That's what
the M.E. told me: it would be the very worst thing for the kid to
take. His parents confirmed he wasn't on it. What was it doing there?
I'll tell you what it was doing: it was reacting with the Dilantin
and phenobarbital. Reacting lethally, fatally, with the medication.
Was what it was doing."

"I don't get it," said Mary. "How did
it get there?"

Joe tapped his fingers on the counter top. "Somebody
put it there, presumably by tampering with the capsules. The state
M.E. told me that somebody—somebody familiar with medicine and
drugs—tampered with the Cunningham boy's capsules, inserted a heavy
dose of digoxin in place of the usual dose of medication."

He looked up from his notebook and wiped his hand
across his stubbled chin. "That ain't all, either."

"There was another drug in there, too, wasn't
there?"

"Yeah, Doc. Yeah, there was. And it was a drug
you told them to look for—

He flipped the pages of the tiny book, looking for
the name. "Lasix. That right? Lasix?”

I nodded. "That's right. I guessed a diuretic
from what Jack told me earlier. Andy was urinating almost constantly
Friday. That means, actually, that the Lasix was introduced in
Thursday's meds . . . so it would take effect on Friday and deplete
the boy's serum potassium."

"Well, you got it right on the button, Doc.
Because according to the M.E., switching the drugs in this
fashion—substituting this Lasix and digoxin in place of the
Dilantin and phenobarb downers—would cause an inevitable cardiac
arrest. Which is what the kid died of; it's been confirmed. So
kiddies—he looked up at us with a wide, forced, fake smile. "So
kiddies, so much for the 'natural death' we'd hoped for."

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"Diabolical," I whispered. "Thursday's
dose of Lasix must have been mixed with the usual drugs, so Andy
wouldn't know the difference. He'd just urinate a lot and feel a
little sick to the stomach, which is exactly what happened. And it
would set him up for the digoxin the following night. Wham. A one-two
punch. Holy Christ."

"So what did the M.E. do, Joey? Did he file for
homicide with the district attorney?"

He nodded.

"Yep. And now I got to tell you this: the prime
suspect in this homicide, as of right now, is none other than John
Brindelli Adams."

"Joey!" Mary shouted.

"Bullshit!" I yelled at him. But his face
didn't change.

The front door opened and slammed shut. Jack,
dripping wet, walked into the kitchen. The rain had matted down his
blond hair and darkened it. The two policemen stood right behind him
on either side. Jack's face clouded over when he looked at us.

"Hey, what's up, anyway? Why are you all staring
at me?"
 

FIVE

"HAS ANYONE ELSE been in the house this
weekend?" asked Paul Keegan, pencil poised over notebook. He
leaned back in his chair near the fireplace. Officer Klewski stood
behind him, while Joe, Mary, Jack, and I sat on the couch and in
chairs facing Keegan. The interviews were continuing inside now, and
it didn't take a genius to figure out that we were the collective
object of the investigation, with Jack as its focal point. It didn't
feel good. Not good at all. Keegan was a pro; his questions followed
clear lines of logic and syllogistic argument. His rational
methodology was inexorable, and a little frightening.

"
No, just us," said Mary in a monotone.
"Joey wasn't even here until after Andy died. He came down here
yesterday afternoon, then returned today when you saw him."

Keegan leaned forward over the pill case and the big
brown bottle of medication sitting on a sheet of clean paper on a
corner of the coffee table. The bottle of meds had been found in
Andy's duffel bag—his back-up supply of the important medicine. The
contents, and instructions, were typed on the label. Keegan had
removed them from the guest bedroom earlier, during his initial
cursory examination of the room, and brought them downstairs with a
pair of kitchen tongs. Now he prodded them with a pencil, using the
eraser end to scoot them around on the clean paper.

"So then, whose prints could we expect to find
on these items?"he asked.

"
Who knows, Paul?" said Joe. The annoyance
showed in his voice, even though I was sure he was trying to hide it.
"Hell, Jack says there are three roommates in the house, and the
medication was in the bathroom. There were parties there, too, with a
lot of young people coming and going. You figure it out."

Keegan looked up at Joe as if to say something, but
didn't. He looked at Jack.

"Your prints would be on here, wouldn't they,
Jack? I'm not accusing you; I'm just asking, so if we find them we
won't be surprised and jump to any conclusions."

"
Sure, you'd find my fingerprints on the bottle,
anyway, since I touched it a lot of times. So did Tom."

"Tom being?"

"Tom McDonnough, our roommate. He's another
student working in Woods Hole. He works for the National Marine
Fisheries Service."

Keegan held down the pill case with the pencil and
flipped up the last little door on its top with the clicker end of a
ball-point pen. He looked inside at Saturday's medication.

"
Okay, so we're missing one capsule, which you,
Dr. Adams, took out and examined in order to identify it. That
capsule is here," he said, pointing to a lone capsule sitting on
the paper. "Now I know that your prints will be all over that;
the soft gelatin of capsules takes prints better than anything. Jack,
you say that Andy took his medications each night, all at once?"

"Right. He'd take all three pills around nine or
ten, usually about an hour before he went to bed. If he had to stay
up late for a project, he'd take maybe one after dinner, then the
other two later."

"But he didn't take them one at a time, during
the day?"

"No. He said they slowed him down too much.
They're downers."

"But what it says here on the label," said
Keegan, peering at the side of the big brown bottle, which was a
third full of the capsules, "is 'Take one capsule three times a
day.' It doesn't say to take three capsules once a day."

"I know, but that's the way Andy took them;
trust me."

Keegan looked up at him across the coffee table.

"No, I won't trust you. It's my job to distrust
everybody."

Joe rolled his eyes up and drummed on the couch arm
with his fingers. He was right; Keegan was a hardass.

"Now, you had dinner during the storm, in the
dark, and then Andy went upstairs to make a phone call. What time was
that?"

"Between eight and eight-thirty," I said.
"He came back downstairs looking sad, or disappointed. Then he
and Jack played chess for a while, and then, around nine, he put on
his raincoat and left."

"He left the cottage around nine?" Keegan
asked. He was writing every detail down in his notebook.

"Yes, and didn't get back till eleven. He was
out in that storm walking around for two hours. We were worried about
him."

"So he left soon after the phone call. Maybe
then the phone call was to set up a meeting. Do you think that's
possible?"

"No, I don't think—began Jack.

"Wait!" Mary said. "When he left, he
wanted to go alone. Remember Jackie, you said you'd go along, but he
refused?"

"Uh-huh. He said he wanted to be alone. Dad and
I figured maybe he'd had a fight with Alice and he—"

"Who's Alice?" Keegan asked, and we told
him. Nothing was said, however, about Jack and Andy's rivalry over
her affections. I was glad of this, and sensed that Mary was, too. It
was as if the Adams family formed an immediate, unspoken alliance to
protect Jack.

"We can check the phone company's records and
find out where the call went," said Keegan, tapping his open
notebook with his pen. "That should tell us something, since it
appears that the call and the nocturnal walk could be connected. Do
any of you have an idea about who he went to meet, assuming it was a
meeting that took place?"

We thought for a while and drew a blank.

"How about this Henderson girl?" he asked.

"
Woods Hole's pretty far away," I said. "Of
course, he was gone almost two hours. Jack, who else?"

Jack shook his head.

"And now for the big one," continued
Keegan. "Since it seems more and more as if we're looking at a
homicide here: who would want to kill Andy Cunningham?"

Head shakes all around, and then Mary brought up the
name of Lionel Hartzell, the professor who was Andy's supervisor, and
who, Andy was convinced, was nuts. Keegan wrote his name down, then
asked us why Andy thought this.

"Actually, I think Andy made too big a deal of
it," said Jack. "I mean, it's true he's difficult at times.
A real perfectionist. But then, most good research scientists are.
And Andy had his difficult side, too. He was the kind of guy who'd
tell you just what he thought. He couldn't stand dumb people, or
people who moved too slow for him. It was natural that they wouldn't
get along that well. I mean, here's old man Hartzell, who wants to go
step by step, being super careful all the way. And then there's Andy,
always wanting to hurry it up. But no, Mr. Keegan, I don't think
Hartzell would kill him."

"
But didn't Andy say something about Hartzell
accusing him of stealing some research data?" I asked. "What
was that all about?"

"
I don't know; maybe you better talk to Hartzell
after all," said Jack.

Keegan put his notebook away and stood up.

"I will do that," he said. "And I'll
interview Alice Henderson and others as well. But for now, I have to
tell you, Jack, that you're the one we'll be looking at most closely.
I'm going on the assumption, at this stage of the game, that you
won't leave the state and that you'll be available for further
questioning as the need arises. We have an officer of the law who's a
relative. Joe, am I safe in assuming you'll enforce these
conditions?"

Joe remained seated and nodded wearily.

Right then, I started to lose it. The words 'you're
the one we'll be looking at most closely' took a few seconds to sink
in. The starkness of that statement. The accusatory tone of it.
Directed at Jack, the kid who waded frantically back and forth to
comfort those dying whales fifteen years before. My boy who'd never,
ever hurt a living thing in all his life. This boy was the chief
suspect in the murder of his friend.

I felt myself walking up to Paul Keegan, with his
goddamn, jarhead, Marine Corps face. My legs were stiff and
trembling. "just a minute," I said between clenched teeth.
"just a god-damn minute Keegan—"