Shoot Not to Kill Read online

  “Let me get some data run on this. There is no sample left, is that correct?” Colin asked, slipping the disk into his pocket.

  “Here’s the vial. I suppose if you washed the vial out again with some de-ionized and distilled water you’d get a pretty good sample to run,” Michelle suggested as she unlocked her desk drawer, finally pulling the empty vial out. “I did that once and got a pretty good reading. The detective side wants that back,” Michelle said as she handed it to Colin. “They’ve been bugging me. It is evidence, so I’m supposed to be signing it out. I signed for it when I did the inventory. You need to sign the tag and give me the last copy.”

  “I know the drill. That’s an excellent idea about a dilution. Meanwhile, you said you’d talked to a doctor that identified the drug. Can you ask him or her more questions?” Colin asked.

  “Sure, he’s my brother-in-law, and I could call him tonight. He’s an anesthesiologist and somehow uses the stuff all of the time.”

  “Ask him if he would e-mail a list of the drugs he knows people use there in the department. If this was a vial from a hospital, the drugs that it could be contaminated with may be pretty standard. I could then run those to see if we get a match. Have to find the drugs first. That will be pricey.”

  “I can cover it. Good chance they’ll be available in some lab around here. I’ll call him tonight. The gumshoes called and said they wanted us to release our file as soon as possible. They want to clear their suspense files before the quarter ends. The investigative boys evidently get penalized for every case they still have open at end of quarter. Do you suppose we can get this done soon?” she asked as she tilted back in her orange swivel chair, perilously close to tipping over.

  Colin looked at the vial and shook it briefly, “There’s a little bit in here. If you get me a list, we can figure it out. I’ll let you know. Call me when you get the list of other drugs from your brother.”

  “He’s my brother-in-law, and I’ll try here in a few minutes,” Michelle said as she turned to work. “Check your mail in an hour. I’ll let you know.”

  Colin turned and left as Michelle picked up the phone. He called out over his shoulder, “Like your chair!”

  Michelle called Portland General Hospital, and she was connected to the anesthesia department. Hank was in a case, but the nurse on duty took the call and patched Hank in from the room.

  “Michelle, I told you to never call me at the office,” Hank said as the radio was playing early Springsteen in the background.

  “I know, Hank, but I need something quick. Who has the rotten taste in music? How many drugs do you use in your work?” she asked.

  “I usually wait until I’m off before I use them, honey,” Hank replied. “And I am in charge of cultural events when the patient is down, that’s my disc playing now.”

  “You’re wilder than usual, Hank. Everything OK with you?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sorry. I’m just finishing up a two-day stretch on call, and I am pretty wired. Bet I got three hours of sleep. New regulations limit the amount of hours I can work the residents, but there are no limits on me, their supervisor. Go figure. You want to know the drugs in a general anesthesia department. Well, I guess it would have to be pretty limited. I bet I have a working knowledge of forty drugs, and use ten of them every day. Why?” Hank bluntly asked.

  “Hank, I’m still working on that vial of Acozil. I need to get a breakdown of what else is in this bottle. One of the other investigators had the idea that it is likely a contaminant from where it came from, so I figure we ought to start looking for it in the anesthesia department. Can you give me a list of the forty drugs you have? What are the chances those are standard drugs in other departments?” Michelle queried.

  “Girl, I’ve worked in three departments, and I’d have to say there is very little variation. My bet is I can walk into any department of anesthesiology and see the same drugs as this one. I’ll get it to you. Send me an e-mail, and I’ll reply to you. My e-mail is [email protected]. Pretty clever, huh? How did you say this guy got killed?”

  “Hank, I didn’t say, and I can’t talk about it much, but he was shot. I’ll get an e-mail to you now, and look for your reply soon. Hi to Sis, tell her I’m thinking of her.”

  “You call her, Michelle. She’d love to hear from you. This is the toughest pregnancy yet, too many kids to keep up with while she’s so big. Bye, girl.”

  Michelle sent an e-mail to Hank with her fax number and sat back, wondering what to do next. She paged Geech. “Hey, animal. Who would you call if you wanted to do some data mining for pattern analysis on the sly?” she asked.

  “For what, might I ask?” Geech said, not wanting to divulge more than necessary.

  “I’ve been working a homicide and trying to figure out what to do with the pattern. Just wanted to see if there’s a way to tie some things together,” she said.

  “Michelle, you didn’t hear this from me, but there’s a dude that’s got a program that will make the mists of winter into a Cuban plot to steal Disney World. The program is called Diamond Miner, and the guy that has it is one strange dude, but he’s good. His name’s Whistler, Marvin Whistler. Call him and tell him Geech sent you. He’s a good guy, and will do anything to play with his program. Came out of some navy research that was used to read crypto stuff.”

  “Thanks, Geech. Go back to your motherboard,” Michelle said in jest.

  “How did you know what I was doing?” Geech said. “I just pulled the motherboard from hell, and now it won’t go back in. Was so old, the wax had welded the terminals closed.”

  “Never mind, bye,” she said as she hung up. As she wrote the name down she realized the program’s name was the same one Colin had referred her to several nights before.

  The department directory listed Marvin Whistler as an analyst in the logistics section. Michelle was accustomed to the false categorization of workers’ true areas of expertise, so she called without hesitation.

  “Mr. Whistler, I am Michelle Lumen, in Crime Scene Investigation. I’ve been referred to you for your help in working on a case by Geech ….” she said before the person on the other end said, “Call waiting, don’t go anywhere.”

  The line went dead. She paused, and called again. The line was busy. She waited a few minutes and tried again. This time someone answered. “Mr. Whistler, I think I was cut off, this is ….”

  “I know who you are, Michelle. Geech just called me and told me you were calling. Now, I owe that screwball Geech just exactly one favor, and this is it, sister, so shoot, and then I’ll call Geech and tell him where to put his key ring.”

  “I see you know our Geech well. Mr. Whistler, I need to have data run on homicides in a certain category of victims over the last few years. Do you have any programs that will do that?” she tentatively asked.

  “Honey, I can make my miner dig out your first date’s social security number if you tell me your birthday and ZIP code when you were a virgin. Now, who’s paying for the time on my computer?” Marvin said.

  “I can have you bill analytics. This branch must be getting seriously cash short. That is the first question I’ve gotten from everyone I’ve asked for help. What do you need to know?” she asked.

  “Honey, question is, ‘What is it that you want know?' and then we work backwards.”

  “I need to know if this guy that died in a bar is unusual statistically,” Michelle stated, wondering if that was the best way to put it.

  “It probably was pretty unusual for him. OK. Was this guy gay?” Marvin asked.

  “I don’t know. What would that have to do with it?” she asked incredulously.

  “Girlie, more gay guys kill each other than any other segment of our society. Besides the boys in the hood. Now, you need to come over here and talk with me. Bring everything you’ve got and everything you want to get, and we’ll ask the crystal stylus to dig it out.”

  “OK, tomorrow be OK?” she asked.

  “No problem, I work on most
days of the week, and that happens to be one of them. See you,” he said and hung up.

  Michelle had the gut feeling she had been set up for another wild chase around the Department of Law and Justice, as Marvin did not volunteer, nor did he give her time to ask where the hell it was he worked.

  Chapter 13

  Diamond Miner

  Marvin turned out to be a lot harder to find than Michelle had expected. First, he turned out to be in his early thirties, when she had expected him to be much older. Second, he was in an office that had a door, which was rare as well as suggestive that he was involved in discussions that required security. Finally, it was difficult to find him because he worked in her building, and she had never met him before.

  Marvin had the requisite computer-geek beard. He also had black, horn-rimmed glasses, something that almost made Michelle laugh. His shirt was yellow and brown plaid, and his tennis shoes looked to be fifty years old. Marvin was slender, with a small memory chip on a necklace which swung out as he stood to shake Michelle’s hand.

  “Mr. Whistler, I am Michelle Lumen, I ….” Michelle started.

  Marvin interrupted her, smiling, “Michelle, chess champion of the tenth grade. How are you?”

  Michelle regarded him for a few seconds and said, “OK, I am I impressed, unless you got that from my mother.”

  “No way. I use digital research, no phone calls. Diamond Data Resources at your service. Tell me what you have, please.”

  Michelle pulled a floppy disc out of her pocket and placed it on the desk. “I have a middle-age, white male found dead in a respectable bar with a bottle of a controlled substance collected at the scene. That is about it.”

  “How did he die?” Marvin asked as he sat down.

  “Gunshot, medium caliber and close range.”

  “That’s all?” Marvin said as he picked up the disc.

  “I was chess champion in the ninth grade, too. You missed that.”

  Marvin smiled, “No, I didn’t. I was too busy looking at the pictures of you on the ski trip at Tahoe.”

  It was Michelle’s option to blush, laugh, or ask which pictures these were. She blushed and asked, “Is the yearbook online somewhere?”

  “Yeah, pretty simple stuff to dazzle the natives. I’ll give you a call when I get a lead here. It may be interesting. Your financial code is on the disc?” he said.

  “No, get it from central. I don’t know what it is because I usually charge through our computer account.”

  “I’ll only bill if it gets to chewing up much time. Geech is a real jewel. He taught me how to break into the vending machines,” Marvin said as he keyed up a terminal that was out of view in his desk.

  “I am not surprised,” Michelle said as she started out.

  “Tell Colin hi. He’s missing a great year on the bowling team.”

  “I will. Thanks, Mr. Whistler,” Michelle said as she started toward the door, wondering how he knew about Colin, unless Colin had been in touch with him, too, and did not pull as much for a favor as Geech. So Colin was on the bowling team as well.

  “Hey, when I work off an account for someone, they have to call me Marvin. I’ll let you know. See you,” he said without looking from his monitor.

  Michelle learned that she was scheduled for a conference on emergent spectroscopy on low-pressure spectral analysis organics. She thought of how exciting her life was and regretted for a moment that she didn’t become a nun, but only for a moment.

  It was three days before Marvin e-mailed her. The e-mail came in the same lot as an e-mail from the gumshoes at investigation saying they wanted her to sign off on the Acozil case. Marvin’s e-mail simply said, “Stop in, not much.”

  Michelle knocked, and Marvin pulled out his laptop. “Michelle, we did some looking. Do you want the long or the short version?”

  Michelle thought for a moment how Geech would go on when you let him, and with some hesitancy, she said, “Give me the long run; I’ll truncate if you get too deep.”

  Marvin looked at his clear monitor screen and started punching in codes. To Michelle’s surprise, a panel lit up in front of her, away from the open door. A three-dimensional diamond began to spin and Marvin glanced at it momentarily, then said, “This will show you how we make the search. It is quick and careful. I’ll ask you to give me input as I go through how I did the search. This first page asks if we have raw data or only categorical research.” Marvin clicked categorical, then typed in the following information:

  Category: homicide

  Sex: male

  Age: 30–50

  Weapon: small arms

  Location: ZIP code directory

  Quartile listing: 26–50 mean income

  Quartile listing: 51–75 mean income

  Dates: start > present

  Start: -999

  End: -0

  Case: open or closed

  Times:

  Start: 0000

  End: 2400

  “OK so far?” Marvin asked.

  “Can you refine it to bars?” Michelle asked.

  “Do you really want to? That may be a parameter for this case, but if you want to look for a pattern, it may not capture the field if we restrict it to bars. Besides, I must admit, I am not aware of how I could do that unless I went to each address individually. That might be easier if we just pull the list I’ve already generated and look at the addresses. Are there any other criteria that you can think of?”

  “Do you want to run one on women, too? We are not certain of this situation, and sex of the victim may not be an issue,” Michelle asked as she brought her elbows onto the desk to see his input screen better. It matched the wall display, but it still seemed more interesting to see the fields on his monitor as well.

  “Good idea. We’ll run male and female.”

  Marvin closed the search data box and had to enter numerous fields.

  “What does all that do?” Michelle asked, sitting back.

  “Telling where to deliver the results, what to do with nulls, stuff like that.”

  “What’s a null?” she asked.

  Marvin seemed pleased with the questions and also with his fields, pressed “enter” and looked up. “A null is a case that does not fit the search categories exactly, and will start a file that we can see about cases that are not the defaults we gave the miner. It will list those that were killed by a knife or a large-caliber weapon as well. I usually use it to check omissions in my search categories. I get some interesting results, and it helps me tweak the research engine.”

  The screen returned with shaded boxes listing each of the criteria. Marvin pulled dotted lines from one box to another, and with each completed line, he had to enter the qualifiers for that relationship. When this was done, the screen changed to a cartoon figure of a miner pushing a box of numbers.

  “That’s the miner, we’re working the data. This will study eight million people living within a hundred miles of us, and we have a few runs to do. I’ll do the high quartile, too, just for completeness. Now, we have a few minutes. I’ve run this once before, but that was a few days ago. The file is printed and in this envelop. The results today will be more complete, but I do not believe they will mean much unless you’ve been made aware of another case.

  The computer terminal beeped, and the cartoon miner pulled a scroll from the box, unrolling it with a very content smile.

  “OK, here’s our list,” Marvin said as he clicked the scroll.

  A list appeared and was broken up into the ZIP codes of the areas of Los Angeles that corresponded to the criteria. There were hundreds of names. Michelle sat back and exhaled. “I don’t have the ability to go through all of these. I guess we should just can it.”

  “Why do you not have the ability to study this?” Marvin asked somewhat incredulously.

  “Marvin, there are literally hundreds of names here.”

  “OK, so what? If it seems tough, redefine your end points. If that does not work, you’re not asking the right q
uestions. Let’s go back to data input. First, we want homicide, right?”

  “We want Acozil in bodies, Marvin, and I don’t know how to get that out of your search,” Michelle said rubbing her head.

  “That’s not a category. Do you want to search for date rapes? We can do that, too.”

  “I don’t know, Marvin. Maybe this is too much about nothing.”

  “Maybe you’re right, but for now, let’s just play with this. That is the beauty. Do you want to stay in homicide?”

  “Yes. My victim was male, so leave that, too,” she said. “And I can’t think of why the age would be different. Can you make it in an area around the index case of maybe ten or twenty miles?”

  “Easy,” Marvin said as he pulled up the search criteria box and began typing.

  Location: Radius: ten miles from datum zero

  Index: 00198-M*

  Map: GPS

  “Michelle, do you have the address of the bar this guy got picked up in?” Marvin asked.

  “Not on me; back in a minute.”

  “No, wait, I’ve got the file stored in the background,” he said as he pulled up the file. He copied the address and pasted it to the location. “OK. Do you want to modify the weapon?”

  “No, we’ll leave that, too,” she said as she wrote down the address.

  “OK, that leaves … dates and case status. Do you want to progressively go back, or take one big bite?”

  Michelle realized Marvin was very serious in his desire to find something for her to work with, so she tried to affect an appearance of optimism as she smiled and said, “Why don’t we just bite off one year and closed cases.

  “Just looking for somewhere to start. Why don’t you go back further than a year, that gets the closed cases, too,” Michelle thought out loud.

  The miner reappeared pushing his box of numbers as Marvin pulled up another entry screen. “OK, we’ll play with that.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, Marvin working on a parallel screen, and Michelle just staring at the miner as he shoveled numbers through a door. When the scroll appeared it had only forty-three cases.