Poison Most Vial (19 page)

With trembling hands, Mrs. Whitmore lined up the vials side by side; there were eleven of them. “Is that all you found, dear?”

Rex checked his pockets again. “Alls I got, right there. I mighta left some down in there. I was a little rushed.”

The older woman removed her glasses, leaned over the table, and put her face up close to the vials.

“My eyes aren't so good, even with my reading glasses,” she mumbled to herself.

For days she had imagined exactly this moment. Fantasized about it, let herself believe it could happen, against everything: the odds, the children's inexperience, her long history of disappointment.

“Oh my, it has to be here,” she said—and her face warmed, her vision blurred, she felt like she was about to burst out into tears; the last thing she would remember was thinking
Oh, of all things
before all went dark.

“It's OK, Mrs. Whitmore, it's OK, it's OK,” Ruby was saying when the woman's eyes opened.

“What . . . ? How long . . . ?” she said, one hand reflexively reaching to her neck for her glasses. Still there, all fine; and she remembered.

How she always got dizzy when her emotions ran high. How Rama Sr. had interpreted her fainting as weakness, rather than the revving of instincts, the intoxicating surge of excitement and deduction. How long had it been since she had known a dose of that drug?

And this time, her fellow investigators weren't shutting her out, but bringing her back in.

She blinked at Ruby, nodded at Rex, then finally lifted her head. “Oh my, oh my—I thank you, my child—I am
fine, will be quite fine,” Mrs. Whitmore said, smiling at the absurdity of it all. “I think we did it. You must know that by my reaction. You did it!”

“Did what?” Rex said.

“Have a look at those vials,” she said, almost fully revived now. “Tell me what they are.”

Ruby and Rex each picked up one of the glass containers and stared at the labels.
“Insulara,”
read Ruby. “OK. What's that?”

“It's a brand of insulin,” Mrs. Whitmore explained. “Insulin is a substance that helps the body's cells absorb the energy from food that they need to survive. People whose bodies don't produce enough insulin to keep tissues healthy have a disease called diabetes, and usually need to inject themselves with the drug more than once a day.

“Dr. Ramachandran was diabetic; it was right there on the coroner's report, if you recall. Now, tell me if any of these vials is different from the others.”

Rex saw something. “This one here looks like maybe it's the only one with some stuff still in it.”

“Pass it to me. Carefully, please.” Mrs. Whitmore took the small vial, held it up to the light, tipped it, and pointed to the small amount of fluid pooling in the bottom edge. She then studied the top of the vial, which had a white rubber top, through which the needle passed.

“Huh,” she said. “That checks out; only one hole in the top. Tell me: Do any of the other vials have two holes in the top? Look very closely. A syringe hole can be almost invisible.”

Ruby and Rex took turns examining each vial. “No, ma'am, none has two holes.”

“None?” Staring at her hands now.
None
. Her whole body went cold. She told herself to shake it off, not let it show. “OK, OK. It was too much to hope for. We're so close.”

“What? What do the two holes mean?” Ruby said.

The old woman placed one of the vials gently in the middle of the table and sat back. Took another deep breath.
Must not faint again
, she thought.
The whole neighborhood will be in here, including Paulette's cousin the tribal healer, waving some foul weed over my head
.

“Listen to me for a minute,” she said. No one made a sound. “The great Dr. V. S. Ramachandran did not die from chokecherry, nor from that delicate beauty, deadly nightshade. He did not ingest enough of either to be so deadly on their own so fast.”

“But the monkshood . . . ,” Ruby said.

“The murderer's one mistake. Poor Roman—and yes, I agree that it was he, through Lydia, who framed your father, Ruby—and he is the only regular worker who was in the
building and unaccounted for at the time the poisons were put into Rama's tea.”

“So that's it, then? We've known that a long time.”

“No. Roman could not have procured an extra dose of monkshood beyond what was in the Toxin Archive. He wouldn't know how. No, someone else put him up to it, someone in the know, and that someone needed the poisons to
appear
deadly.”

“Even the larger dose, though?” Rex said. “We showed Rama had more in his blood than was in the red vials—how's that not going to hurt you?”

“True, child. Our calculations indeed showed that Dr. Rama ingested a stronger dose of monkshood—and that poison undoubtedly contributed to his death. But let's stop and think. Ruby, kindly remind me what you learned about monkshood poison. About the timing.”

“That it takes between ten minutes and hours to be the cause of death, depending on the amount ingested and the individual.”

“Correct. And what does that mean, Rex, for our killer? If you really wanted Rama dead, would you bet your life—and it would be your life, if caught—that Roman's monkshood cocktail would do the job?”

“No, ma'am, not me. If something goes wrong, or it takes too long, someone down there's gonna find the man and treat him.”

“In that lab, they'd know what happened,” Ruby said. “Especially with those red vials missing from the archive.”

“Exactly. This is DeWitt, one of the most famous toxicology labs in the world,” Mrs. Whitmore said. “Its scientists know poisons and could have had Rama in the hospital within minutes. Besides, there would be no way for the killer to know whether Rama even drank all his tea. No way to be sure. And our killer had to be sure.”

All eyes again shifted to the tiny glass vial on the table.

“Insulin,” said Ruby.

“Yes. Rama routinely injected five units of Insulara, as the empty vials show. But look at the dates on the bottles: The only one missing is the second dose on that Friday.”

“So?”

“So, a stronger dose of insulin could be deadly within minutes. And the beauty of it is that Rama injects it himself. That's why I was looking for a vial with two holes. One puncture made by the killer, drawing out the regular dose of insulin and replacing it through the same hole with a more concentrated dose. And the other puncture from Rama himself.”

“But . . . ?” said Rex.

“Think about it. The old scientist gulps down his tea as usual at 6:15 or so, not long after Roman doses it. Soon he's feeling awful. Stomachache, headache, probably some
dizziness. What's his first thought? That he needs his next shot of insulin.”

“So he didn't call for help because he thought he had the cure,” Ruby said.

“Precisely. And a short-acting dose of insulin would be out of his system before the toxicologists had a chance to fully investigate.”

“But he must keep a whole bunch of those vials in his office or wherever,” Rex said. “How's anybody gonna know he picks out that one special extra-strong vial?”

“Because many diabetics keep their medicine in cases and take the doses sequentially; it's all marked on the case. Rama was undoubtedly one of those, given how organized he was.”

Ruby said, “But—I mean—we don't even have the vial with two holes. How do we know for sure any of this theory is true?”

“We don't, Ruby. It is, at the moment, just a theory, as you say.”

“You mean to tell me,” Rex said, “that we crawled over kingdom come, almost got captured in the morgue, dragged that stupid garbage bag all around all night—and we got nothing?”

“No, not nothing. You may not have found that one incriminating vial, that's true. That was the smoking gun I was hoping for. But you got something just as good.”

“What?” Rex said.

“Someone's attention. The killer by now has to assume you do have the smoking gun.”

She removed a lapel pin from her sweater, picked up one of the used vials, and punctured it again. “And right now, that person will do anything to get it back.”

Planting the bait was the easy part. Speculation about the Rama case was everywhere, in blogs and even on several web pages devoted to “Rama clues.” Most of the conclusions were empty guesswork, but enough real information surfaced in those forums that everyone interested in the case was checking in.

“Not a problem at all,” Sharon said when asked whether she could plant an anonymous tip online.

Later that evening, Rex and Ruby escorted her down College Avenue. “How far are we going?” Sharon kept asking, and the answer was all the way to Neville's. The shop's owner had a pay-as-you-go computer for his customers and anyone who walked in. Untraceable.

Ruby watched as Sharon cut and pasted into a half-dozen forums a simple note written by Mrs. Whitmore:

Note to a special witness: I have something of yours. Small, glass, with two holes in the top. Science Library study room closest to lab school; corner windowsill, tomorrow
.

“That's it? You're done?” Ruby said as Sharon ended her brief session.

“Don't want to spend any more time in this place than I have to,” she said. “Reeks in here.”

Ruby and Rex met Sharon and Simon as soon as school opened, an hour before the bell. They knew the Science Library study room was empty most of the day.

The children scouted the hallway between the library and the Lab School to make sure no one was watching them.

“All clear, as far as I can tell,” Simon said.

He and Rex stood guard outside the study room while Ruby and Sharon set a simple trap. The vial was in plain view on the windowsill for anyone who was looking. Across the room, Sharon set up her open laptop, its video camera running. Anyone who tried to snag the vial would be caught on tape.

“OK, cross your fingers,” Ruby said. “Meet back in class. Try to be casual.”

It was almost impossible to do. Midway through first period, as Mrs. Patterson tried to guide yet another discussion based on the reading (“What is cheating?”), Ruby and the other three were exchanging anxious looks every five seconds.

Sharon passed Ruby her smartphone, which had a direct feed to the laptop in the study room. Ruby concealed the phone in her lap and checked it again and again; she could easily make out both the windowsill and the open door into the room. And in just a few minutes there was a visitor: Victor!

Was it? It was: Victor was peeking into the room; the shape of his body and his longish black hair were unmistakable. And now he was gone—he hadn't even entered the room.

A few minutes later someone else showed up: Wade stole a glance in, looked back over his shoulder, and was gone. What was happening? People were stopping by to look, was what. Dean Touhy did, and five minutes later so did Grace. By the end of the first lesson Lydia had shown up, along with several other students.
Great
, thought Ruby.
The trap is too good. Everyone but Rama himself is making an appearance!

By the end of the second period—Ruby had to read out loud, barely pulled it off—the four conspirators stood and approached Mrs. Patterson in unison, asking for permission to spend free time in the study room. “If you're going to
study, of course,” she said. “It's called the study room for a reason.”

Ruby was the first one in. “It's gone! Sharon, quick, check the laptop—”

“Gone,” Sharon said.

“You surely jest,” Simon said.

“Jest's on us once again,” Rex said. “We got cleaned out. Schooled up, down, and sideways. Looks like game over, at least for today.”

“Not quite, Rex,” said Sharon. She had her cell phone out. “Please be on, please be on—yes!”

“Tell us already.”

“The computer. I'm always losing it. My dad installed at GPS tracker. It's still in the building.”