"Still, better go for it," Joe recommended.
"You gonna stay up there awhile?" she asked.
"Yeah," he told her. "I got a couple of loose ends I have to take care of. Let me know how you fare with Mueller."
"Roger that."
There was a cafe in Thetford, serving only breakfast and lunch, that was cheap, familial, offered good basic food, and had been long known in the neighborhood as E. T. Griffis's home away from home. Joe timed his arrival there for about half an hour after E. T.'s usual appearance, when he hoped the man would be just nearing the end of his meal.
He was sitting in a corner booth, beside the window and facing the door-the perfect place for the best view-in front of the remains of some spaghetti and meatballs.
He and Joe spotted each other as soon as Joe entered, and exchanged the barest of nods. Joe walked down the length of the restaurant to stand before him.
"E. T. How've you been?" They didn't shake hands.
The old man picked up a piece of bread and sopped up some sauce with it. "Fair."
"Sit down for a second?"
He didn't look up, concentrating on his task. "Free country."
Joe slid in opposite him. A waitress appeared, and Joe asked for coffee. E. T. made no comment.
"I was sorry to hear about Andy," Joe said.
E. T. paused in mid-motion for several seconds, then resumed eating, as if alone.
"I looked into what happened to him in prison," Joe continued. "I know about Wayne Nugent."
E. T. stopped chewing. Joe remained silent. The waitress came with the coffee and silently placed it on the table, looking at the two men quizzically.
"Good for you," E. T. finally said, still stubbornly refusing to make eye contact.
Joe sipped from his coffee before saying, "The reason I'm here is because you'll be hearing about Nugent in the news today. He died while one of my men was trying to arrest him for what he did to Andy."
That did it. E. T. looked up and stared at Joe, his lips parted in surprise.
"He was escaping at high speed in a stolen car. Lost control."
E. T.'s hand moved to his chest, seemingly on its own, and Joe wondered if he might not be having a heart attack. He certainly looked ripe for one.
"You okay?" he asked. "You need anything?"
The old man glanced around the table, saw his water glass, and grabbed hold of it for several deep swallows.
Again Joe waited, nursing his coffee. Griffis finally put down the glass, hung his head, and sat there with his hands in his lap.
"Fuck off," he said at last in a quiet, slightly tremulous voice. "Leave me alone."
Joe stayed where he was, the blood pounding at his temples. "In a minute. I have one last thing to say to you. I also found out why Andy pleaded guilty to what I busted him for in the first place."
E. T.'s head snapped up and he slapped both hands onto the edge of the table, as if prepared to tear it off its moorings and throw it.
Joe, just as fast, leaned forward so his face was inches from the other man's. Behind him, he heard several voices questioning what was going on.
"You made a choice, E. T.," Joe said, barely above a whisper. "Then you stuck me with the blame. I did my job-twice now, counting Nugent. Don't tell me to fuck off, asshole, because all I've done is clean up your messes. Talk to Dan about this, like you should've in the first place, when you had the chance to save the right son."
He slid out of the booth, dropped two dollars on the table for the coffee, and left E. T. staring at the empty seat across from him.
Joe was halfway to Chelsea, approaching it from Thetford this time, when his pager went off. It was Beverly Hillstrom's number. He pulled out his cell phone and watched its screen periodically as he drove, waiting for the reception indicator on the tiny screen to reach the level where he could have a decent conversation. It took him ten minutes before he could pull over, predictably at the top of a hill.
"Hi, Beverly. It's Joe."
"I tried calling you," she said, "but the message said you were out of the area."
"I'm in Vermont," he laughed. "So in their terms, I guess they're right."
"I heard back from toxicology about Mr. Nashman. That is the current name you're using, isn't it? The ex-Ready Freddy? I received an update from your office."
"Yup, that's it. The Freddy part turned out to be his first name. Anything interesting?"
"Oh, you bet," she said in a rare burst of exhilaration. "His system had a lethal dose of fentanyl."
He hesitated. "I've heard of it. An opiate? But I don't know why it's ringing a bell."
"Excellent. That's exactly right. A synthetic opioid, fifty to eighty times more potent than morphine, patented in France in the late fifties or early sixties. I had to look it up-fascinating. It's used in childbirth, to control cancer pain-anytime a truly heavy gun is required. The biological effect is identical to heroin but much, much more potent, and it's metabolized at a much faster pace.
"But the reason it probably sounds familiar," she continued, "is because, in 2002, either it or something just like it was used by Russian security forces as part of an effort to take back a theater that Chechen rebels had seized, complete with some eight or nine hundred people."
"They put gas through the ventilation system," Joe blurted out, his memory revived.
"And killed over a hundred people in the process," Hillstrom agreed. "All of the rebels died, but so did fifty hostages or so. I may be a little off with those numbers, but you get the idea."
Joe made a face. "What I'm getting, I don't like."
"Oh, yes," she reacted, "I see what you mean. You're thinking of the terrorist angle. Well, that may be, although I think that's a stretch. For one thing, I doubt that Nashman's motel room was filled with fentanyl gas-sounds a little too James Bond, don't you think?"
Joe thought back to all the careful planning that had gone into the killing of these two men. James Bond didn't seem like such a stretch.
But he played along. "How else does it get administered?"
"Any number of ways, including a lollipop. When we and the Mossad and a few others were considering it as a chemical weapon years ago, all sorts of delivery systems cropped up. I read that we used it in darts during the Vietnam War, since, in the right dose, it can knock you out in a snap."
He heard her fingers click over the phone.
"If it doesn't kill you first," he muttered.
Her mood was not to be dampened. "Right," she said brightly. "That was the problem, and why we supposedly dropped its use for that purpose-the margin between effective and lethal was too narrow. But it does still work as a painkiller."
"In more ways than one," he added.
She chuckled. "True. But your question is directed at how this particular dose was delivered to Mr. Nashman."
"Do you know?"
"I think I do. Did you find any food in his motel room-specifically cookies?"
Joe thought back. "No."
"Well, there were recent remnants of a cookie in his stomach, which I also sent along for analysis. They found traces of DMSO-dimethyl sulfoxide-along with the fentanyl, mixed in."
"What's that tell you?"
"DMSO is a super carrier of other compounds through the skin and other membranes. By itself, it's used as a topical analgesic and as a liniment for horses. It's good for joint pain. But I think it was its first application that came into play this time. Whoever killed Mr. Nashman wanted to make sure the fentanyl really did its job and was taken deep into the body systems. Putting both it and the DMSO into a cookie guaranteed that the fentanyl would hit home like a bullet."
Joe gazed out onto the snow-covered hills around him for a moment, mulling the scenario over in his mind. It was so far removed from the run-of-the-mill, whack-'em-over-the-head murder that he was having a tough time accepting it.