Murder on the Fly, page 24
part #2 of Riley the Exterminator Mystery Series
My quiet morning was cut short by Larry bursting through the door of the bakery. “Riley, you need to call Nina,” he gasped, having run up the hill from the shop.
“How’d you know I was here?” I asked.
“Carol told me,” he said. That figured, she knew all of my hiding spots. And it would take a real crisis for her to send him to my morning sanctuary.
“What’s up?”
“I’m not sure, but something big. You need to book it down to the shop and call Nina.”
“Use our phone,” Gustaw said, setting the phone on the bakery case. I hesitated, figuring the conversation might not be something I’d want overheard. But urgency trumped privacy. And it didn’t really matter because Nina picked up after the first ring.
“Riley, come directly to my office. Don’t stop at the front desk. I’ll have you cleared.” When I started to ask why, she answered, “I don’t have time to explain. There’s been a murder. Come now,” and she hung up.
~||~
I pushed my rust bucket to its mechanical limit on the drive to the airport, weaving in and out of traffic on 101. When I got to Nina’s office, there was not the slightest hint of softness. I could see why she’d ascended in the agency. Such intense, cold professionalism would scare the hell out of most men who were expecting feminine vulnerability. To be honest, she had me a bit spooked.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“Shut up and come with me,” she said. It wasn’t personal—she needed to make clear who was calling the shots. I understood where she was coming from. There was nothing worse while I was on the force than a bunch of uniformed nimrods cluttering up a crime scene without a striper taking charge. We went down the hall and back out to the suite of main offices, where Clell was standing outside a door inset with frosted class and the name plate of its occupant: Jerry Tabachnik, Ph.D. Associate Director, Invasive Pests.
“You haven’t let anyone in, right?” she asked, making clear the only acceptable answer.
“No ma’am,” he said. “The director wanted access, but I told him it’s a crime scene and you ordered me to keep everyone out. But the secretaries know something’s up, so rumors are starting.”
“Not our problem,” Nina said. “Soon enough, they’ll find out what happened. You just make sure nobody enters.” She looked over her shoulder, opened the door just wide enough to let me in and then joined me in the very classy office. There were cherrywood bookcases along the walls, a conference table with black-lacquered captain’s chairs emblazoned with the USDA’s seal, an oriental rug with a couple of visitor’s chairs in front of a massive desk with a brass lamp, and a high-backed tufted leather desk chair.
Behind the desk was a federally unapproved office furnishing—the body of a nattily dressed man who was staring wide-eyed at the photo of President Reagan on the wall. His head was tilted back into a pool of blood soaking into the carpet. If the corpse with a slit throat wasn’t sufficiently problematical for Nina, a small American flag like the ones people wave during parades had been wrapped around a sweet potato and stuffed into the mouth of the dearly departed. This was going to be hard to explain.
“Looks like a ritualistic murder,” I said. “I’ve heard of some pretty twisted stuff involving voodoo and Satanism. But this looks even weirder.”
“Any guess as to the message being sent here?” she asked.
“I’d guess this is a political commentary on the meat-and-potatoes diet of Americans,” I offered. Nina suppressed a smile and stayed in her role.
“Damn it, Riley, this is serious. A murder in a federal facility is going to be a huge mess. If we’re going to get any information before the FBI shows up, we’ll have to act fast. I should’ve called them as soon as Clell told me about the body. He was just looking for someone to sign a purchase order for supplies, and this guy is the first administrator to show up most mornings.”
“Can we stall before bringing in the G-men with their badges and bullshit?”
“Sure, but what do you have in mind?”
“We need to squeeze the director for information about our Mr. Potato Head.”
She took me to the head honcho, Norman Coleman. Like his subordinate, the director evoked bureaucratic intimidation through his office furnishings and the photos of him shaking hands with Jimmy Carter. I guess he hadn’t found an opportunity to glad hand Reagan so far. Actually, he bore a rather striking resemblance to Reagan in his Hollywood days, including the Brylcreemed hair.
“Agent Cabrera, I demand to know what’s going on,” he said. “And who is this?” he waved impatiently in my direction.
“This is detective Riley. He’s working with me in the initial phase of the investigation,” she said with sufficient authority to shut down further questions. A tailored suit and power tie were no match for Nina. “Dr. Tabachnik has been murdered. I will be calling in the FBI to take over once I have the necessary information to establish which section head to contact.” Complete bullshit and total believability; the woman had moxie. Her commanding tone took the wind out his officious sails. She nodded for me to begin my questioning.
“Mr. Coleman, what can you tell me about Dr. Tabachnik? And I don’t mean the official biographical nonsense. We need to know about anything that could give somebody a reason to kill him.” The director rubbed his temples.
“It will come out eventually,” he sighed. “Dr. Tabachnik was deeply involved in Fort Detrick’s biological warfare program.”
“In what capacity?” Nina asked.
“I’m not entirely sure. But I think it had something to do with using insects as weapons,” he said.
“Weapons? You mean to kill people?” I asked.
“In conversations with Agriculture and Defense administrators, I’ve gleaned that there are scientists working on disease vectors. Mostly mosquitos and yellow fever to attack targets in Central Asia and the Middle East. But I gather that Tabachnik was involved in developing tactics for destroying crops of the Soviets and their allies. You know, releasing insects in the enemy’s fields to sabotage their food supply,” Coleman said.
“So why did he move out here?” I asked.
“His knowledge of how to attack an enemy using insects was translatable into the opposite—how to defend agriculture from an invasive species. And the USDA undersecretary decided Tabachnik would be valuable in our effort to deal with the Medfly outbreak.”
“So, you didn’t have any say in his being assigned to your outfit?”
“I received a dossier that included a heavily redacted record of his work with the Department of Defense, along with a very strong letter from a retired colonel in the Bay area.”
“What was his name?” I asked.
“Let me see.” Coleman opened a file drawer, rifled through the contents, and pulled out a sheet of paper. “It was Colonel Ashton Shook.” He slid the paper over to me and I took down the address in the Russian Hill neighborhood, which struck me as an ironic location for a guy who was figuring out how to attack the Soviets.
“So all we know is Tabachnik had been working on developing methods for using insects to wipe out Russian crops and he was sent here to figure out how to keep Medflies from wiping out California crops.”
“That’s right, except for the part about Russia. From what I can tell by reading between the lines of military postings and unclassified reports, I’d guess his projects were aimed at Soviet bloc targets in our neck of the woods—Nicaragua, Grenada and Cuba,” Coleman said.
“Cuba? Are you sure?” I asked.
“Not positive, but there were studies of methods for mass production of citrus aphids, coffee borers, rice mites, and melon thrips. A real entomological menagerie of tropical pests. But I can’t see where that would matter in terms of what’s happened to him. Are you sure he was murdered and it’s not something like a heart attack?”
“We’re quite positive,” Nina assured him without going into detail. I’d barely noticed the question because I was trying to piece together flag-wrapped sweet potatoes, Cuba and Medflies. And the only link I could find was Alina. At least she was evidently Cuban and possibly involved with Medflies. And maybe she liked sweet potatoes. Okay, that didn’t fit. But if things were spinning out of control at The Refuge, then maybe Alina and Caskey were making their exit from nirvana. And maybe they’d stopped by to leave a parting gift for the federal government on their way out.
Nina thanked Coleman for his assistance and we headed back into Tabachnik’s office. I told her it was a long shot but our best suspects were Alina and Caskey, who could be somewhere in the airport looking to book a flight. I didn’t tell her about the knot in my gut from thinking about Dennis and Marcia given Tabachnik’s fate. She called airport security and told them to issue a general bulletin to detain anyone fitting their descriptions.
~||~
While she made the call to the FBI, I contemplated removing the patriotic potato. It had probably been a couple hours since Tabachnik developed his terminally sore throat and with rigor mortis setting in I figured it would be an unpleasant struggle to pry open his jaws and release the tater. But I didn’t want the feds putting things together too quickly and getting in my way. Other than paranoia, I didn’t have a good reason to think they’d connect the dots back to Alina and Caskey. Well, unless they’d been snooping around The Refuge, which is the sort of thing the feds just might do in their unending pursuit of subversive malcontents. However, that was highly improbable—far less likely than my being charged with evidence tampering if this whole insane puzzle ever came together. So I left the clues in place and counted on the feebs moving with the methodical deliberation that generally allowed them to crack cases about as rapidly as DDT breaks down.
My next move was to not move—a move that I’m good at before having had adequate coffee, and I’d left half of Gustaw’s elixir behind when Larry interrupted my morning. I found the USDA’s coffee pot and a pile of donuts coated in powdered sugar from which I concluded that just because an agency is involved in agriculture doesn’t mean that they can provide decent food and drink. The donuts were stale and the coffee was slightly stronger than tea. I considered waiting in Tabachnik’s office where I’d have some quiet to think about the course of events, but breakfast with a stiff was even more unappetizing than the donuts and coffee.
So, while the office staff was busily spreading rumors about what had happened in the associate director’s office, I waited in the reception area and thumbed through back issues of California Agriculture and California Farmer magazines, from which I learned that a permanent establishment of Medflies would cost the state fifteen billion dollars (more than the expert had reported at the workshop, but what’s a couple billion bucks among economists?). After a couple hours of coming up to speed on sex pheromones (turns out that males of the artichoke plume moth are easily confused), storage methods for French prunes (seems that letting prunes rot might not be so bad), and irrigation scheduling (lots of math and graphs), I was in the process of learning that jojoba—which sounded like a Caribbean dance but turned out to be a plant—was developed to replace whale oil when Nina came rushing into the room and gave me a look indicating that my day was about to get more exciting.
She grabbed my arm, pulled me to my feet, and started leading me out into the airport with that now familiar “Shut up and come with me” insistence. She might’ve been torn between womb and work at one level, but I wasn’t detecting much nurturing this morning. And while I wasn’t sure how much I liked being woman-handled, I was positive the pain in my bruised arm was doing more for my wakefulness than the insipid Folgers had done.
CHAPTER 33
We made our way through the catacombs until we arrived at a hallway with a glass door emblazoned with the unimaginative and officious seal of the Department of Justice’s Immigration and Naturalization Service. Nina and I walked in, and she asked to see agent Russell, explaining he’d called her on a very urgent matter. Receptionists at federal agencies must all get the same training. The big, black, bored woman at the desk evidently didn’t think the “service” part of her agency’s name was all that important because she moved with studied indifference. So as not to chip a nail, she pressed some buttons on her phone with the eraser of a pencil, waited a moment, reported our arrival, paused to listen, hung up the phone with a sigh, and told us we could find agent Russell in holding room 4.
The INS guy was standing in the hallway, looking like a human mountain dressed in what I presumed was the standard-issue uniform of black pants, a grey shirt with a sewed-on badge and a shoulder patch of the American flag, and a black tie that looked like one of those clip-on jobs. Agent Russell explained he had received the security bulletin and nabbed Alina as she tried to board a flight to Miami.
“Nice collar,” Nina said, endearing herself to a potential asset. Agent Russell sucked in his gut and straightened his tie in what I took to be the INS version of law enforcement swagger. “I’ll be sure your supervisor is aware of your professionalism.” He thanked her, detached a wad of keys from his belt, found the right one, and unlocked the door.
The holding room was a windowless cube, illuminated with a buzzing fluorescent light and furnished with a metal table and two steel chairs upholstered in gray vinyl with foam rubber pushing through the seams. Alina was leaning against the wall and wearing a black, sleeveless, low-cut blouse and tight, black leather pants. I pretended not to notice. Nina took charge.
“Sit,” she ordered. And with a great show of disdain, Alina took a chair on the far side of the table. “I don’t have time for being nice. So just tell me why you killed the associate director.” Alina smirked and sat back in the chair. Nina came around the table, stood behind her and repeated the demand. Alina spat on the floor. Then Nina grabbed a handful of the other woman’s hair, yanked her head backward, leaned down and whispered in her ear for several seconds, once gesturing in my direction.
“I was achieving justice,” Alina said, once Nina released her and took the chair on the other side of the table. I tried to look menacing, figuring that whatever Nina has whispered made me the bad cop in this interrogation.
“Go on,” Nina said.
“I was getting even for my people. Your government destroyed Cuban agriculture with biological weapons, including my father’s farm. I left my brothers and parents to join Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias when I was fifteen so there would be one less mouth to feed.”
“And then?” Nina asked.
“I was trained to fight and to translate intercepted communications from the capitalist pigs. I was patient and loyal. So when there was a chance to infiltrate your country, I was selected to come as part of the Mariel boatlift. It was simple to evade your inept police, and I hitchhiked to California where I waited further orders. I was told to use my farm experience and military training to sabotage your crops. But I needed a base of operations and logistical assistance.”
“So you set up shop at The Refuge?”
“The residents were stupid sheep. Caskey wasn’t much of a leader but he was good enough for what I needed. He was angry at what industrial agriculture had done to his people with the complicity of your government. And he was easy to manipulate, being a man,” she said with a contemptuous glance in my direction. “Caskey was a confused idealist from a bourgeois family, little better than the other sheep, but he had the trust of the residents and enough money to construct what we needed—at least in the beginning.”
“And what you needed was a facility to breed Medflies?” I asked. Alina shrugged. “Where did you get your original stock?” I asked. Again, a shrug. I figured it would be much easier to get answers from Caskey, once we caught up with him.
“We’ll get answers soon enough,” Nina said, and I could tell she also recognized that interrogating Caskey would be more productive. “Right now, I want to know why you slit the throat of the associate director.” She rose from her chair and slowly walked behind the other woman. Silence and another shrug from Alina, followed by her head snapping back as Nina grabbed a fistful of hair. “I won’t slit your throat here and now,” she hissed, dragging a fingernail across Alina’s throat and leaving a red welt. “But I’ll make sure it happens while you’re in prison.” Another jerk of the head. “Unless I get some cooperation.”
“I took revenge for my family,” Alina said between clenched teeth.
“Murder in exchange for a crop failure?” Nina asked, releasing her grip but staying behind Alina.
“No, a life for a life. Our sweet potato crop was destroyed by insects released by your government. We know this. We heard the plane fly over and our neighbors reported seeing what looked like a puff of smoke which floated to the ground. It was a cloud of tiny insects that infested our fields. That season, my family’s farm could not produce enough food to support us.” Her voice softened for the first time. “My youngest brother was weakened by hunger. He could not fight off dengue—a disease inflicted on Cuba by your CIA spreading infected mosquitos.” She looked at me with pure venom. “He suffered terribly, with fever, seizures and bleeding. It took weeks for him to die. Your filthy associate died quickly.” That explained the potato and the flag. The woman had a flair for dramatic justice—at least in her mind.
“But why Dr. Tabachnik?” Nina asked.
“I saw his picture in the newspaper and it matched an intelligence report that the Dirección de Inteligencia provided to me when I left Cuba. That swine was involved in starving and sickening my country. My brother’s blood was on his hands. Now his blood is on mine, and I am happy. Your government will probably execute me, but I don’t care. I have done my duty as a soldier and sister.”
The Irish know what it’s like to live under foreign tyranny and the US had made things tough for the Cubans. But what could they expect after letting the Soviets take aim at us with nuclear missiles? In a way, I admired her sense of loyalty and justice. One can respect a bitter enemy. But I despised her warped politics.
