“In other words, while we come in here fairly frequently, it’s mostly just to grab something, which is why we overlooked the missing tubocurarine.”
Ron added, “Dr. Richie explained that at the time of the burglary, they focused their attention on some destruction in the filing room and one of the offices.”
“Nothing was taken, though,” Dr. Richie interjected. “I mean, that’s what we thought at the time.”
Ron continued. “I figure it was a smoke screen, that the curare was the target all along.”
I gestured to a glass-doored cabinet mounted on the wall, its shelves crowded with rows of small bottles and colorful cardboard containers. “It’s kept in there?”
“That’s correct,” she answered.
“Has anyone used the cabinet since the burglary?”
“No. Your sergeant asked me that, and I’ve checked with the staff.”
Ron and I exchanged glances.
“Want me to get Tyler in with his evidence kit?”
I was about to answer when Dr. Richie interrupted. “You mean to lift prints off the cabinet?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t bother. It gets wiped down regularly, along with everything else. Helps customer confidence if everything looks shiny, even back here.”
Ron pulled a long face, prompting her to add, “But not the contents of the case.”
I crossed over to it and pulled its doors open. “Not locked?”
She looked slightly embarrassed. “Well, none of these are regulated drugs, but, to be honest I lost the key a few years ago.”
“Which is the curare?”
She pointed to the top shelf, where the normally neat rows of bottles had been disturbed. “If you’re after prints, that’s where they’ll be. They pack some of these things in sawdust or plastic peanuts for shipping, so we wipe them off as we unpack them. That should help.”
I couldn’t resist smiling. “Hope springs eternal. Can I use your phone?”
I tried calling Tyler at the Municipal Building, but he was out and didn’t respond to his pager. Unfortunately, that came as no surprise. His pager was ancient and had been slated for replacement for two years, but at five hundred bucks a whack, we’d been told to make do. I hung up and returned to the back room, explaining the situation.
Dr. Richie gave a wide smile. “Is an evidence kit just a way to collect things, to keep them uncontaminated until analysis?”
We both nodded.
“Well, remember, I said we ship most of our lab work out. We probably have most of what you need.”
Indeed they did. Within a half hour, using rubber gloves and tweezers, we’d tucked all the bottles we thought relevant into separate plastic bags, which in turn we placed in a rugged cardboard box filled with packing material. The end result, I thought, would have made Tyler proud.
We gave Dr. Richie our thanks and a receipt and headed out to the slowly dimming parking lot, shading our eyes against the sunset’s reflection in the car windows aligned ahead of us.
We were some forty feet from our cars, with Ron carrying the box in his arms, when I sensed rather than heard a vehicle coming up behind us.
I interrupted Ron, who was remarking on our good fortune. “Better shove over; car coming.”
We glanced over our shoulders and ended up frozen in midstep. Bearing down on us, with a sudden, tire-squealing burst of acceleration, was a dark, rust-spotted van. The driver was wearing a mask.
Instinct taking over, Ron dropped the box, and we both dove to either side, the van cutting between us with inches to spare, or so I thought until I heard Ron’s shout of pain. I’d landed on my side between two parked cars and quickly swiveled around to see Ron curled up in the middle of the traffic lane, both arms wrapped around his left knee. Between us, the box lay unharmed, the wheels of the van having neatly straddled it.
Just as I turned to check on the van, hoping to make at least a partial ID, I heard again the squeal of its tires and saw it tearing back down on us in reverse.
“Ron, look out.”
Klesczewski began scrambling awkwardly toward the opposite row of cars, and in the split second it took for me to gauge his chances of success, I realized the van wasn’t coming for him. It was aimed diagonally across the lane at the box.
Without pausing for thought, I knew instantly that the contents of that box must be what we’d been looking for from the moment we’d found Charlie’s body in his grave-the one mistake that would link his murder to the man who had committed it. Starting from all fours, only dimly aware of the onrushing vehicle to my right, I flew out from between the cars, my body pitched forward as in a dive, and slapped the box as I sailed over it, my momentum sending both it and me skidding across the asphalt toward where Ron was staring at me openmouthed. The van roared by, just grazing my foot as it was still in midair.
There was a shrieking, metal-crumpling crash as the van’s rear end piled into the parked cars near where I’d been hiding.
“Get the box. He’s after the box.”
Ron spun around, sweeping the box up with one arm, and half rolled, half dove between the far row of cars, with me close on his heels. In our ears, for the last time, we heard the van’s burning tires scream past as our pursuer gave up and blasted out of the parking lot.
Lying there, dirty, bruised, and bleeding from various cuts and scrapes, I instinctively groped for my radio. Ron reached his first, pulling it from his belt savagely enough to tear the metal clip off its back. He reported an approximately ten-year-old, black and rusting van with no side windows, and two unreadable bumper stickers on the rear, heading north out of town on the Putney Road. He paused, after a glance at me, and he added that both Vermont license number and driver identification were unknown.
After receiving acknowledgment, he dropped the radio on the ground and lay back against one of the cars.
There was a long pause, filled only with our rapid breathing, before I asked him, “How’s the leg?”
“Hurt’s like a bitch.”
“Can you move it?”
He tried and winced.
I reached for the radio and added, “You better send Rescue for an injured leg-the North Shopping Plaza parking lot.”
I pulled the box toward me and opened its top. Ron looked at me, his face red and soaked with sweat. “How is it?”
I poked around gingerly and grinned. “Couldn’t be better.”
As it turned out, we both made a trip to the hospital, Ron to have his leg X-rayed and treated for what turned out to be a severe sprain, and I to have some of the gravel dug out of my palms and knees.
J.P. Tyler met me in one of the treatment rooms in the emergency department just as I was pulling the tattered remains of my pants back down over my bandaged knees. The box from the veterinary clinic was sitting safely by my side on the bed.
“What the hell happened?”
“Attempted hit-and-run. And that was the target.” I jerked my thumb at the box and explained about the curare and our hopes that the thief had left his prints behind on some of the other bottles. J.P. gingerly opened the box, shaking his head in wonder at my description of how the drug worked.
“If my guess is right,” I continued, “that holds the major key to this case, or at least the killer thinks it does. Which brings up another point, something I want kept just between the two of us for the moment.”
Tyler reclosed the box and looked at me.
“I want you to sweep my office for a listening device.”
“You’re kidding.”
“This morning I brought Ron into my office and told him about the curare; the only other time I mentioned the stuff was on the phone when I first heard about it. I haven’t written anything yet in the reports; I haven’t even brought Brandt up to date. Yet someone knew enough to ambush us outside the vet’s office. I’m beginning to wonder whether someone hasn’t placed a bug in the office. With all the construction going on, it’s not inconceivable. And it would explain some of the other leaks we’ve been having. It would also explain how the killer knew about my attempt to talk to Milly. We’d thought his killer had just tailed me to Horton Place and then gotten the jump on us, but a bug could’ve given him an even bigger edge. You got something you could sweep my office with?”