SIREN'S TEARS (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 3) (14 page)

CHAPTER 25 – POISON CENTRAL

Annie Barrett picked me up at the Holiday Inn at 9 AM in a Jeep. She was in uniform.

“I don’t want you to get in trouble on my account, Constable.”

“Knowledge is power,” she said.

It was only a 10 minute drive out to LexGen through some of the most beautiful country I’d ever seen. At one point we had to stop to let a moose cross the road. We weren’t merely being considerate. It was bigger than the Jeep.

“My God,” I said. “A real ungulate.”

“Oh, do shut up,” Barrett said.

The LexGen building was one of those steel-and-glass structures that all but screams “high tech.” It was much smaller than I expected.

“Doesn’t look like a poison factory,” I said as Barrett pulled up to the entrance, ignoring the small parking lot in front, which had about 20 cars in it. “It could pass for a urology clinic.”

“That’s because it’s not a factory. It’s a lab. They just do basic research here.”

We stopped at the security desk. The young woman guard gave us an expansive smile. I have that effect on women.

“Hey, Annie, what’s up?”

They knew each other. The smile wasn’t for me.

“How are the kids, Terry?”

The ladies made small talk for a minute. Finally, after they were all caught up on each other’s families and love lives, Barrett said, “We’d like to see Dr. Cruikshank.”

Terry the guard picked up her phone and a few minutes later a young woman in a lab coat walked out of an elevator and up to us. Her name tag said “E. Perkins.”

“Betty, will you take them up to see Dr. Cruikskank, please?”

“Please follow me,” Betty said, and we did.

After leaving the elevator on the third floor, we walked down a long hall past laboratories on both sides. I saw cages with various kinds of small animals, from rats to monkeys. There were aquariums loaded with ugly fish. Having once trained in the waters off Australia, I recognized one, a stonefish. We had been warned not to go near one. Their poisonous spines could inflict incredible pain. One lab was filled with terrariums. Some held frogs and others, snakes. I spotted a couple of mesh cages with what looked to be large tarantulas crawling inside.

I was pretty sure the long-term prospects for many of the research creatures at LexGen weren’t particularly bright.

“I presume burglary isn’t a big problem here,” I said.

Barrett shivered.

“This place gives me the creeps,” she said.

In one antiseptic-looking lab, technicians were wearing face masks and gloves.  A man was manipulating some sort of robotic arms inside a large glass container while a woman peered over his shoulder. The woman looked up and gave a small wave.

We entered a large office. The sign on the door said “Dr. Cyril Cruikshank, Director.”

Cruikshank was on the phone when Betty knocked on his door jamb. He quickly hung up, saying, “Got to go. Tell Michael I should be able to make his hockey practice.” Betty left and he stood up and came around the desk. We all shook hands and Barrett introduced me. It was obvious they knew each other.

“What’s this about, Constable Barrett?”

She told him. He was not overjoyed.

“I’m afraid that I want to talk to my solicitor before agreeing to an interview with you. He will undoubtedly want to sit in on the conversation.”

“I’m here in an unofficial capacity,” Annie Barrett said. “It’s not my interview.”

“I’m sorry, Constable, but I’m still uncomfortable talking in front of you, in any capacity. Especially after the last time.”

“I’ll wait downstairs,” she said. “Then nothing you tell Mr. Rhode will have any legal weight. And I won’t have to come back with a warrant. All he needs is some general information.”

The threat of the warrant, which we both knew she had no likelihood of obtaining, did the trick.

“As long as he keeps to generalities, I don’t have a problem, Constable.” Cruikshank said. “And why don’t you wait in our canteen. It’s just off the lobby. We have coffee and some freshly baked beavers.”

“Good Lord,” I  muttered.

They both laughed.

“He is referring to Beavertails,” Barrett explained. “It’s a Canadian pastry made from fried dough.”

After she left, we sat.

“What can you tell me about Mary Naulls, Doctor?”

“A brilliant scientist. One of the world’s leading expert on dendrobatid frogs, or what are commonly known as Poison Dart Frogs.”

“Probably not a crowded field,” I said.

Cruikshank smiled indulgently.

“No. I take it you’ve heard of them.”

“They are the frogs that produce poison, in their skin I believe, that Amazon tribes use to coat their hunting darts. They can bring down fairly large game with them, can’t they? And aren’t they used in tribal warfare?”

“Rarely. All dendrobatids are poisonous, but only a few are toxic enough to kill a person. But in a proper concentration, they can kill a full-grown man in minutes. Most of the really dangerous dendrobatids are not found in the Amazon, by the way, but in the rainforests of the Cordillera Occidental, or Western Andes, near the Pacific Ocean.”

Cruikshank was warming to his subject. In a community with more moose than people, and where the local treat was a doughnut named after a large rodent, he had little occasion to show a layman how brilliant he was.

“The frogs themselves are among the most beautiful of amphibians. Very colorful, some hardly bigger than a man’s thumb. The most lethal compounds they produce are batrachotoxins and pumiliotoxins. Crystalline compounds, soluble in alcohol and water, thus ideal for lab study. They basically work the same, by increasing the permeability of the outer membrane of nerve and muscle cells to sodium ions. A large influx of sodium into the cells causes electrical depolarization. Normal nerve signals that allow muscles to relax are blocked. The muscle remains in a contracted state. As it happens, Purkinje cells within the heart are extremely sensitive to this fiber. The resulting arrhythmias and fibrillation cause death.”

“I hope there’s not going to be a quiz,” I said. “And I presume you work with such toxins hoping to find more benign uses for them other than moose hunting.”

At least he smiled at that.

“Of course. We work with all sorts of nefarious agents hoping to, in effect, tame them so they can have medical applications. It was counterintuitive, but Mary Naulls believed that mixing some of the deadliest materials, molecularly altered, of course, might be better than just trying to weaken them individually.”

“Something tells me she succeeded.”

“Well, it’s no secret. It’s been in the medical and chemical journals. The agent she perfected was a mixture of three molecularly altered poisons: sarin, the nerve agent developed by German scientists in World War II; ricin, obtained from the Ricinus communis, the castor oil plant, and a batrachotoxin excreted by
Phyllobates terriblis
, the most deadly of the poison dart frogs. Since it was her idea to use the toxin from the frogs, we allowed her to name the final compound. She called it Ranatoxin. Not very original, I’m afraid. The Spanish name for Poison Dart Frog is Rana Tóxico.”

“It must be interesting to work with such wonderful stuff,” I said. “Sarin came in very handy for the Nazis. Couldn’t have run a Holocaust without it.”

Cruikshank looked offended.

“It was a real breakthrough,” he said, icily. “No one before Mary had been able to combine three such chemically diverse compounds, either in their natural or synthetic form. We call it “The Ranatoxin Solution,” because the key was the frog poison, in which she had a lot of experience from her time in Central and South America, particularly Colombia. Of course, Ranatoxin is lethal in its purest form, but we are working on ways to dilute it to the point where it would be medically useful. When we succeed, we’re going to call it “The Ranatoxin Dilution.”

He chuckled and I think I was supposed to appreciate the inside joke, so I smiled. Pharmaceutical humor being what it is, that’s all it deserved.

“It’s a hit or miss proposition. Not all compounds play well with others, you see. But you’d be surprised at some of the combination we’ve tried. The sarin, ricin and batrachotoxin are the base but we add minute amounts of other chemicals to see if they will mitigate Ranatoxin’s potency.”

“Maybe a dash of nutmeg?”

“Too toxic,” Cruikshank said, seriously. Then he saw the look on my face. “Oh. You’re trying to be facetious. Well, it might interest you to know that nutmeg is a powerful poison. Ingest too much of it and you might die. I think Mary tried it. In fact, I teased her about ordering too much. We have enough left over to make Brandy Alexanders well into the next millennium.”

CHAPTER 26 - ZINC

Right about then, anything alcoholic was looking pretty good to me. Cruikshank picked a piece of lint off his sleeve and looked at it closely. He was apparently satisfied it wouldn’t kill him because he rolled it between his fingers and let it drift to the floor.

“Anyway,” he continued, “we hope eventually to have a wonder drug, useful in treating a whole host of neurological diseases, such as Parkinsons, Alzheimer’s and, of course stroke and cardiac patients. Ranatoxin’s paralytic properties would have surgical applications, in much the same manner as curare. The beauty of Ranatoxin is that it degrades quickly and breaks down into harmless compounds absorbed by the body.”

“Which would make it a great murder drug,” I said. “Apparently the only reason Mary Naulls aroused suspicion was that the priest was given a blood test just before this marvelous stuff killed him.”

“Apparently,” he said.

“Can you explain how he managed to drive away from her house?”

Cruikshank tented his fingers and went into his theorizing mode.

“Less zinc.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Zinc oxide is known for its ability to bind with certain compounds to increase their immediate efficacy. By limiting the amount of zinc in the dose, one can delay the inevitable outcome. The police came to us to help identify some of the substances in the priest’s body. Zinc was Mary’s preferred reagent, and it appeared in the toxicology reports. But it wasn’t important. I mean, there was little doubt what happened. There were still traces of the lethal compounds she used. Had she used more zinc, the man would have died in her house.”

“And if she is out there still playing with her little chemistry set, could she vary the delay and the zinc wouldn’t be a giveaway?”

Cruikshank was on a roll, in full lecture-the-layman mode.

“Zinc is a common substance, found in many food products. In fact, it is considered a micronutrient. If people or animals don’t get enough zinc in their diet they can develop a condition called hypozincemia, which is very debilitating and a huge problem in third-work countries. In fact, may people take zinc supplements. Depending upon the level of zinc used, the lethality time frame could fluctuate from almost instant death to, I don’t know, several days.”

“After which,” I said, “there might not be any obvious tie to the killer and the death might be written off as a heart attack or other sudden, but natural, event.”

He shrugged.  

“That would be a fair conclusion.”

“Are you close, Doctor?”

“Close to what?”

“A Ranatoxin Dilution that won’t kill people.”

“I’m afraid I cannot answer that, Mr. Rhode. Legal considerations, you know. There are Canadian laws against revealing what might be considered inside information. Your own Securities and Exchange Commission has been locking up people for insider trading left and right.”

“But I take it you are proceeding without Mary Naulls.”

“Oh, Mary wasn’t interested in the medical or cosmetic potential of her discoveries.”

“Cosmetic?”

“Yes. You’ve heard of Botox, of course, which women, and I suppose, some men use to eliminate wrinkles? It is derived from the botulism toxin and works by blocking nerve impulses to the muscles that cause frown lines. When Mary was tweaking some of her compounds she discovered that one of them had basically the same result. It was quite by accident, an offshoot of her work with some rhesus monkeys.”

“Well, at least they went out smiling,” I said.

Cruikshank looked confused, but continued.

“Of course, some of science’s greatest discoveries are the inadvertent results of experiments designed for something entirely different.”

“Like penicillin.”

“Exactly,” Cruikshank said, now back on track and actually looking a little proud of his new student. “We call her discovery Rantox and it is just now undergoing clinical trials. One of its advantages over Botox is that it can come in a salve, like a face cream, although injection is the preferred delivery method. The other advantage, if it can be termed that, is a side effect that was completely unexpected.”

“What was that?”

“Well, in some cases, usually women, it can stimulate the libido. It apparently heightens the neurological pathways involved with sexual arousal and gratification. You can see why we are excited about it. A drug that eliminates wrinkles and bolsters the sex drive can be doubly attractive to women of a certain age. To be frank, we’re not sure how we should market it.”

“Your researchers get paid for accidental discoveries?”

“In certain cases, stipulated contractually ahead of time, of course. Mary was a shrewd businesswoman as well as a great scientist. Her contract with us was more liberal than with other researchers. She basically had right of first refusal on her patents. She believed her discoveries would prove the most valuable. I shared that belief. I didn’t want her going to a major pharmaceutical laboratory. Having some of her discoveries was a hell of a lot better than having none of them. Fortunately, in the case of Rantox, she opted to sell us the rights.”

“Why?”

“At first I assumed that it was because she was a pure theorist, with no interest in pursuing research in cosmetics. I mean, her specialty was taming toxins, the deadlier the better. But in hindsight, I now think that she may have suspected Rantox’s sexual proclivities might delay its marketing and she wanted to profit from it sooner than later. As I said, Mary was financially shrewd. Got a small fortune from us.”

“Would you say she is a wealthy woman?”

“Oh, yes. She came here with plenty of her own money and by the time she left was a millionaire.”

If Mary Naulls was indeed a serial killer, I realized, her wealth and financial acumen made her uniquely dangerous.

Cruikshank’s face took on a very unscientific, almost dreamy, expression.

“She tried the original Rantox formula on herself, which took great courage and we all knew she continued using it even after selling us the rights. She was a woman, after all, and vain about her looks. The Rantox certainly did wonders for her. She looked much younger than she was. And Mary was a very attractive woman; she hardly needed any help to begin with. Some of her colleagues teased her about that side effect I mentioned.”

Something in what Cruikshank said clicked in the back of my mind.

“Now, is there anything else, Mr. Rhode? I have a lot of work to do and want to try to get to my son’s hockey practice.”

I lost the half-formed thought. 

“On the day she apparently disappeared, one of your guards was found dead.”

“Yes, Charlie Eichenwald. Nice man. Nearing retirement. A real shame.”

“Didn’t bother you?”

“Of course, we’re like family here. Oh, I see what you’re getting out. No, we saw no connection. And neither did the police, initially. Only Constable Barrett was suspicious. She pushed it and it blew up in her face. Just between us, she was lucky to keep her job. I’m surprised she’s even helping you now. I’d guess she’s on thin ice back in Cashman.”

I didn’t mention that Preston’s hotel indiscretions had thickened the ice somewhat.

“Dr. Cruikshank, is it possible that Mary Naulls, an admittedly brilliant woman, could have stopped here on her way out of town, stole chemicals from her own lab, replaced them with similar solutions and then killed the guard? The only person who would know she was here.”

Cruikshank threw up his hands.

“Anything is possible, Rhode. But why would she do that? She was presumably in a hurry to leave the area.”

“Maybe she wanted to keep killing people and needed the ingredients.”

“She could have brought them out in small batches over years. Why keep them here?”

“For one thing, murderers try not to keep too much evidence in their own homes. For another, what better place to keep stuff than in plain sight in your own lab? And don’t forget, the quick blood test of Richter may have been a shock to her. Her escape was probably spur of the moment.”

He shook his head.

“I would file all of this under logical, but not likely. I think you are hearing hooves and thinking zebras instead of horses.”

I hated that phrase. In my line of work, I never thought horses, because it was the zebras that could get you killed.

There wasn’t much else to get out of Cruikshank.

“I don’t suppose you have a photo of Mary Naulls. In your files, perhaps?”

He shook his head.

“We’re a small company. We don’t take corporate photos. When the police made their initial inquiries, we thought we might find some pictures of Mary at a company function, a picnic or presentation, that sort of thing. But there weren’t any.”

“Convenient.”

“Yes. If what they say about Mary is true, she probably avoided having her photo taken. Employees were asked to sit with a sketch artist.”

“What about due diligence when you hired her? Surely you ran a background check.”

“There was no need. Her reputation preceded her. Mary held a Doctorate from the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering from the University of Toronto, one of the finest research schools in the world. She came highly recommended by experts in the field. We were very anxious when it appeared there might be a snag.”

“Snag?”

“Yes. You see her father died suddenly, just before she was to start with us, and she needed time to settle her affairs. There was property to be sold, and the like. We were afraid that a rival company might steal her before she came here. It’s not uncommon. It’s a form of corporate piracy you don’t often hear about.”

“You said he died suddenly. How?”

“An air accident. He disappeared over the ocean flying his own plane to visit some of his congregation. He was a fairly well-known minister in British Columbia. I even went to the funeral in Ocean Falls, the small fishing village where she came from. Or, rather, memorial service. There was no body, of course.”

Cruikshank went to keep an eye on his prize recruit, I thought.

“When was this?”

“Well, just before she came to us, in 2003. We needn’t have worried. Mary wrapped up her affairs in record time, considering.”

“Did they ever discover what caused the accident?”

“Not to my knowledge.  I spoke to some people when I was out there and the consensus seemed to be that Rev. Naulls had a stroke or heart attack.”

Heart attack, again.

“I thought Mary was Catholic.”

“She was apparently a convert from the Lutheran Church. I gathered from what I heard at the memorial service that she and her father didn’t see eye-to-eye about a lot of things, religion included. Converts can be even more dogmatic than those born into a church. Mary wore her Catholic faith on her sleeve.”

“Why did they think heart attack, if no body was found?”

“Because the plane apparently flew on in a straight line out over the Pacific before running out of fuel, probably on autopilot. What other explanation could there be?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Doc. Maybe he was paralyzed by some froggy poison.”

Cruikshank’s mouth was still open when I left.

***

“How did it go?”

Barrett and I were driving back to town.

“I may be setting a record for finding out things I can’t prove. Cruikshank said he had no photos of Mary Naulls but he and others worked with a sketch artist. Does that mean you couldn’t dig up any pictures of her?”

“There weren’t any. Not in her house. Or in any of the church publications. She was active in certain groups, like the choir, but always seemed to avoid being photographed.”

“I’d like to see the sketch.”

“I’ll see if I can find it. It’s been five years. If she is on the run, she’s had plenty of time to change her appearance.”

“Cruikshank said she attended the University of Toronto. What about school or yearbook photos?”

“We checked. She did her undergraduate and graduate work there, but never joined any clubs or sororities. And there were no yearbook or graduation photos of her. Either she was very shy, or she was really planning ahead.”

“Did you check into her background where she lived in British Colombia before she moved here?”

“Yes. I contacted the R.C.M.P. barracks in Bella Coola, which covers Ocean Falls. But it was a dead end. She grew up in Ocean Falls but after going away to university spent most of her time in South and Central America doing research and living with the natives. She only went home intermittently after her mother died. The locals said she was not particularly close to her father, who was apparently pretty straight-laced. They said she left town more or less permanently when he died.”

“What about photos from high school. Hell, any school? She couldn’t have been planning murder since kindergarten.”

“I thought of that.”

Barrett looked offended.

“Of course you did, Annie. I’m sorry. You are a great cop. I’m just frustrated.”