“Wait for Siler. Who was the DB?”
“A pediatrician.”
“Shit. That doesn’t make sense, and I lose twenty. I figured military. Siler went with CIA. Hey, I didn’t lose twenty. Nobody put in on a kid doctor. Siler.” He crooked one of those long fingers at a small man—maybe five-six—working his way through the labyrinth of the lab.
His white lab coat flapped around a pair of checked pants, a T-shirt that read SCIENCE RULES ALL. He had bright red hair that had never been found in nature springing out in every direction, a hooked nose, dark, sleepy eyes.
“Dallas,” Berenski said by way of introduction. “Abdul Siler.”
“Yo. CIA hit, right?”
Eve said, “No.”
“Damn. I could’ve used the twenty.”
“You’re getting coffee that’s worth more,” Berenski told him. “Here comes Peabody with the black gold. Siler,” he added, and took the coffees from Peabody.
Siler sniffed his, blinked his sleepy eyes, sipped. Closed the sleepy eyes and said, “Gooooood.”
“I got started on the egg. You take it, but don’t get all technical. They’re cops. Science is like a foreign fucking language.”
“Sure. So. We put the egg together—made in Mexico, according to the stamp. You’ll probably find a couple dozen shops in New York have them in stock for under twenty bucks. Cheap, gaudy. You could use them to put candy in or whatever. Bigger than a chicken egg, but maybe for like an Easter egg hunt or whatever.”
“That’s their job, Siler.”
“Right. The interior was coated with sealant, not unlike what you’d have in your field kit, but with a lead base. And a secondary seal, with an adhesive, was added around the edges of both sides of the egg to make it completely airtight. The fabricated wood box, which we assume held the egg, was also sealed, same method. The interior padding, that woulda been added to the box, woulda cushioned the egg.”
“So whoever did it was careful.”
“You bet. Mmmm.” He drank more coffee. “Padding inside the shipping box, inside the wooden box to protect the egg in case the package got dropped. It would probably work unless it got slammed or crushed. But it didn’t.”
“What was inside the damn egg?” Eve demanded.
“That’s the really frosty part.”
“Keep it simple, Siler,” Berenski warned.
“I want to say it wasn’t simple—it was pretty damn brilliant, and took some serious skill. What you had in there, probably in crystalline form—before it hit the air and vaporized—was sulfur trioxide.”
“Why is that brilliant?”
“Because that was mixed with sarin. With— What’s the word I want? A soupçon of sarin. And that? That was mixed with an agent that kills them both—but it kills them about fifteen minutes after the whole shebang hits the air.”
“So,” Eve deduced, “the agent had a … like a shelf life once released.”
“Exactamundo!” Siler gave her a happy look, a friendly slap on the arm she decided to let pass. “See, oxygen triggers the whole thing—releases the toxins that, merged together, are going to kill the shit out of you within like five minutes, and the clearing agent that’s going to kill the toxins inside about fifteen. Biowarfare-wise, it’s total mag because you can target specific, and anybody outside say, twenty feet’s not going to feel a thing, and anybody coming along a few minutes later, same deal.”
“Military?” Eve pressed.
“If it is, they’ll deny it because it violates all sorts of conventions and treaties and interplanetary laws. That’s why I went CIA—because, you know, covert. Because CIA. You’re sure it’s not?”
“Doubtful. How would you get those agents?”
“You gotta figure we’ve got bioweapons stashed away in some secret locations. Getting one out? I don’t know, man. And they’re unstable on top of it. It’s going to take steel balls, and some crazy with it.”
“How do you make it?”
“You’d need a seriously controlled lab, special containers, glassware, a fume hood. And yeah, a bunch of skill, a whacked-out brain. The whacked-out because if you screw up even a little, you’re gone, gone, gone. I can get you all the substances and precursors that go into it. I was going to write it all up after I got some shutdown, but the coffee’s got me revved, so I’ll have it for you in a couple hours. You’re going to need somebody who gets the science. You’re looking for somebody who gets the science or can pay somebody who does.”
“All right. Copy the ME on the report.”
“The body was clean, right? Organs gone, eyes all burned, like that, but the agent was dead?”
“That’s right.”
Siler drank more coffee. “Brilliant.”
Outside, on the sidewalk, Peabody stopped, turned her face up to the sky.
“What’re you doing?”
“Blue sky, pretty day. I’m reminding myself the world isn’t a completely fucked-up place. I did just okay in chemistry, like I said, but I know enough to get that somebody spent a lot of time, took a lot of risks to create something to kill a good man. Overkill, it seems to me.”
“Yeah, it does.” Eve jerked a thumb toward the car. “And back to specific. Just Abner—adding the kill agent in there proves that. He didn’t want Rufty, for instance, running back home. Forgot something, whatever, and being exposed. He didn’t want anybody to die but Kent Abner.”
“Unger Memorial?”
“That’s right. Maybe Dr. Ponti’s brilliant.”
* * *
Middle of the morning, Unger’s ER was busy but not insane. Eve suspected a good portion of the people waiting had put off going to a doctor for whatever ailed them until they hit desperate.
She could relate.
Others looked like a mix of falls, bumps, fights, kitchen mishaps.
She went to the check-in counter, pulled the woman on the stool’s attention away from her comp screen.
“We need to speak to Dr. Ponti.”
“Dr. Ponti’s with a patient. You’ll need to sign in here, then—”
“We need to speak to Dr. Ponti,” Eve repeated, and held up her badge. “Police business.”
“He’s still with a patient.”
“Where?”
She checked her comp screen. “He’s in Exam Three—and if you try to go in while he’s with a patient, I’ll call Security whether you have a badge or not.”
“We’ll wait. Outside of Exam Three.”
With Peabody, she hunted it up, stationed herself outside the door.
“The other three on the list,” Peabody began, studying her PPC. “There’s nothing to indicate they’d have the knowledge or skill to create the toxin. Or have access to something like we’re dealing with. Or, for that matter, the financial means to pay for somebody who did.”
“Blackmail, force, like minds,” Eve reeled off.
“Yeah. Still, it has to cost. I’ll start going down levels on the financials.”
“Do that. And military or paramilitary backgrounds or associates. Spouses, family members. Same with science and medical.”