Free Fall

36

We drop off Ceepak’s mom and wife and then swing by the house to pick up Chief of Detectives Ceepak’s new undercover vehicle: an unmarked Ford Taurus Interceptor.

The sleek black beauty’s bright white and red LED emergency lights are hidden all over the car: behind the thick black grill up front, along the black rim of the trunk in the back, across the top of the tinted-black windshield. Called The Undercover Stealth, the brand new Ford rides on 22-inch Forgiato black wheels and Nitto tires, also black. To tell you the truth, Ceepak’s new ride looks extremely sinister.

Remember those budget cuts I was telling you about? They did not affect the purchase order for the new Ceepakmobile. I’m pretty sure one of Mayor Sinclair’s biggest political contributors runs our local Ford dealership.

We climb into the rolling stealth bomber, savor that new cop-car scent, then cruise over to David and Judith’s apartment at 315-B Tuna Street (yes, some streets in the center of Sea Haven are named after fish).

“This murder investigation will be different than any we have undertaken in the past,” Ceepak remarks as he pilots the incredibly smooth-riding vehicle up Ocean Avenue.

“Yeah,” I say. “None of our other victims were ninety-four years old.”

“True. This is also the first time we know exactly how the murder was done. We already have our weapon: a small capsule filled with potassium cyanide powder.”

That’s right. In the past, we’ve had to spend a lot of time on forensics and bullet trajectories and crime-scene analysis to figure out exactly how the deed was done. This time, we already know the How. We just need the Who and the Why.

“Guess there’s no need to call Bill Botzong,” I say.

Botzong is the head of the New Jersey State Police’s Major Crimes Unit. He and his crew of crime-scene technicians do all that snazzy stuff they do on the CSI TV shows for police departments, like ours, that can’t afford a high-tech lab full of gizmos and gadgets.

“Actually, Danny, we will, once again, be soliciting Bill’s assistance. Hopefully, he and his team can help us track down the source of the potassium cyanide, a chemical with a wide variety of industrial uses.”

Ceepak. The guy probably started doing his cyanide homework the day he asked Chief Rossi for permission to go to Dr. Kurth for a toxicology screening on a 94-year-old’s corpse.

He fills me in with more cyanide details. How it can be distilled from the kernels of certain nuts such as almonds. How its bluish hue is why cyanide and cyan (blue) toner cartridges are word-root cousins.

“A lethal dose can be as low as one point five milligrams per kilogram of body weight.”

And Dr. Rosen didn’t weigh very much.

It’d be easy to hide a lethal dose of cyanide inside something the size of an Extra Strength Tylenol capsule, which, Ceepak reminds me, was done, by someone who’s still at large, in the Chicago area-way back in 1982. That’s why pain reliever bottles are so hard to open these days-even with your teeth, especially when you have a hangover. And why you now see “caplets” or “gel caps” instead of “capsules” on the shelves at CVS.

“Doing a quick Google search,” Ceepak continues, “I found several sources of ninety-eight percent pure cyanide, available in powder, crystals, or briquette form.”

“No way.”

“It’s a quite common chemical compound, Danny. One frequently used by jewelers to clean tarnish from gold and silver.”

“So, which one of our suspects owns a jewelry store?”

Ceepak actually chuckles. “If only it were that simple.”

Yeah.

But if it were, they wouldn’t give you a super dude detective car.

“Well,” I say, as Ceepak makes the right turn onto Tuna Street, “I guess we know that Christine was the one who gave Dr. Rosen his final and fatal pills.”

“True. However, someone else could have very easily put the poisoned pill into Dr. Rosen’s medical organizer without Christine knowing it.”

“The first time I met Monae, the night nurse, she was filling up the tiny compartments in Dr. Rosen’s weekly box with pills and capsules.”

Ceepak nods. “Ms. Dunn is definitely on our short list, Danny.”

Oh-kay. I didn’t even know we had a list of suspects, let alone a short one.

“Who else?” I ask.

“Dr. Rosen’s family, of course: Michael, David, and Judith. And then, I’m afraid, we must take a hard look at Christine Lemonopolous.”

Ceepak’s list?

They could be the assassins Dr. Rosen was so worried about.