Nelson DeMille - Plum Island

Max pointed out to Foster, "I called county homicide within ten minutes of learning of the murder. It was out of my hands at that point. My ass is covered."

Ms. Penrose felt eight eyes on her ass and said, "I had no idea the victims were Plum Island people."

Max said, gently but firmly, "I reported that to the guy who answered the phone, Beth. Sergeant… something. Check the tape.'

"I will," replied Detective Penrose. She added, "You may be right, Max, but let's not get into this now." She said to Foster, "Let's stick to solving the crime."

Mr. Foster replied, "Good advice." He looked around the room and offered, "Another possibility is that whoever took this stuff is not trying to take it out of the country. They could have a lab set up locally, an inconspicuous kind of operation that wouldn't attract attention, wouldn't require unusual materials or chemicals that could be traced. Worst-case scenario is that the organisms, whatever they are, are cultured, then introduced or delivered to the population in various ways. Some of these organisms are easy to deliver in the water supply, some can be airborne, some can be spread by people and animals. I'm no expert, but I phoned some people in Washington earlier, and I understand that the potential for infection and contagion is very high." He added, "A TV documentary once suggested that a coffee can full of anthrax, vaporized into the air by a single terrorist riding around Manhattan in a boat, would kill a minimum of two hundred thousand people."

The room got silent again.

Mr. Foster, enjoying the attention it seemed, continued, "It could be worse. It's hard to gauge. Anthrax is bacterial. Viruses could be worse."

I asked, "Do I understand that we're not talking about the possible theft of a single type of virus or bacteria?"

George Foster replied, "If you're going to steal anthrax, you might as well steal Ebola, too, and anything else you can get. This would pose a multifaceted threat, the type of threat that would never be found in nature, and would be impossible to contain or control."

The mantel clock in the living room struck twelve chimes, and Mr. Ted Nash, with a sense for the dramatic and wanting to impress us with his education, undoubtedly Ivy League, quoted the Bard, thus: " 'Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world."

Ididn't go directly outside for air, but detoured to the west wing of the house where Tom and Judy had set up their office in what used to be a bedroom.

A compu-nerd sat at the PC where I had intended to sit. I introduced myself to the gent, who identified himself as Detective Mike Resnick, computer crime specialist with the county police department.

The printer was humming away and stacks of paper lay all over the desktop.

I asked Mike, "Did you find the killer yet?"

"Yeah, now I'm playing Jeopardy."

Mike was a real card. I asked him, "What do we have so far?"

"Oh… mostly…hold on, what's this? Nothing there… what do we… what…?"

"Have so far." I just love talking to butt holes at the computer. " Have so for ."

"Oh…mostly letters…personal letters to friends and relatives, some business letters…some…what's this? Nothing…"

"Anything mentioning Plum Island?"

"No."

"Anything that looks interesting or suspicious?"

"No."

"Scientific papers — "

"No. I'll stop what I'm doing and let homicide know the minute I think I have something."

Mike sounded a little testy, like he'd been at this a few hours and it was past his bedtime. I asked him, "How about financial stuff? Investments, checkbook, household budget -?"

He glanced up from the monitor. "Yeah. That's the first thing I downloaded. They wrote their checks on the computer. There's the printout of all their checkbook activity for the past twenty-five months — since they opened the account." He pointed to a stack of paper near the printer.

I took the stack and said, "Do you mind if I look through this?"

"No, but don't go far with it. I have to attach all that to my report."

"I'll just take it into the living room where the light is better."

"Yeah…" He was playing with the computer again, which he found more interesting than me. I left.

Out in the living room, the latent fingerprint lady was still dusting and lifting prints. She glanced at me and asked, "Did you touch anything?"

"No, ma'am."

I walked over to the bookshelves on either side of the fireplace. To the left was fiction, mostly paperbacks, a nice mixture of trash and treasures. To the right was nonfiction, and I studied the titles, which ranged from technical biology stuff to standard health and fitness crap. There was also a whole shelf of locally published books about Long Island, flora, fauna, history, and so forth.

On the bottom shelf was a row of sailing books, navigational charts, and such. As I said, for land-locked Midwesterners, the Gordons had really gotten into boating. On the other hand, I'd been out with them a few times, and even I could tell they weren't great sailors. Also, they didn't fish, clam, crab, or even swim. They just liked to open up the throttles now and then. Which brought me back to the thought that this was a drug thing.

With that thought in mind, I put the computer printouts down and using my handkerchief took an oversized book of navigational charts from the shelf and propped it up on the mantelpiece. I flipped through the pages, my finger wrapped in the handkerchief. I was looking for radio frequencies, cellular phone numbers, or whatever else a drug runner might mark in his chart book.

Each page of the navigational charts showed an area of about four miles by four miles. The land that appeared on the charts was basically featureless except for landmarks that could be seen from the water. The seas, however, were marked with reefs, rocks, depths, lighthouses, sunken wrecks, buoys, and all sorts of aids and hazards to navigation.

I scanned page after page looking for "X's," I guess, rendezvous points, or grid coordinates, or names like Juan and Pedro or whatever, but the charts seemed clean except for a yellow highlighter line that connected the Gordons' dock with the Plum Island dock. This was the route they took to work, passing between the southern shore of the North Fork and Shelter Island, keeping to the deep and safe part of the channel. That wasn't much of a clue to anything.

I noticed that on Plum Island, printed in red, were the words, "Restricted Access — U.S. Government Property — Closed to the Public."

I was about to shut the large book when I saw something nearly hidden by my handkerchief — toward the bottom of the page, in the water south of Plum Island, was written in pencil, "44106818." Following this was a question mark, similar to the one that just popped out of my head like a little cartoon balloon — 44106818? Make that two question marks and an exclamation point.

So, was this a standard eight-digit grid coordinate? A radio frequency? A disguised Dial-A-Joke? Drugs? Bugs? What?

There is a point in homicide investigations when you start to assemble more clues than you know what to do with. Clues are like ingredients in a recipe with no instructions — if you put them together in the right way, you have dinner. If you don't know what to do with them, you'll be in the kitchen a long time, confused and hungry.

Anyway, I held the chart book with my handkerchief and took it to the latent fingerprint lady. I asked her, "Could you do a real thorough job on this book for me?" I smiled nicely.

She gave me a tough look, then took the book in her latex-gloved hand and examined it. "This map paper's hard to do…but the cover is good glossy stock… I'll do what I can." She added, "Silver nitrate or ninhydrm. It's got to be done in the lab."