They worked on a huge sheet of blue plastic, onto which each searcher emptied a container before inspecting the empty interior, complete with a flashlight, for anything that might have adhered or stuck in a seam. The trash itself was gone through meticulously, then thrown into a big drum.
“When the menu is smoked salmon, your choice of chicken breast or broiled scrod, and peach pie à la mode, why the hell would you bring these?” Donny asked, sitting back on his heels and holding up an empty Cheez Whizz packet.
“Not everyone likes good food,” Delia answered, head down and tail up. “I’ve found Twinkie wrappers by the score, as well as part of what looks like a theory of the universe written on a tatty piece of paper. It must have been wrong — the genius threw it out, anyway.”
“Who had a baby at this junket?” Paul asked, holding up a soiled disposable diaper.
“No one was supposed to. It must have been in a basket of rushes. Oh, the mysteries inherent in a nation’s trash!” Delia exclaimed, holding up a can of mosquito repellent. “At this time of year? Really!”
“I’ve found a book of crossword puzzles and five jigsaw pieces,” said one of Paul’s technicians, sniggering. “I guess some people come prepared for the boring speeches.”
They had nearly finished; it would be, they hoped, the least palatable job concerned with this case.
Donny yelped. “Hey! Found something, Deels!”
She scurried over on hands and knees and looked into the palm of his glove, the others crowding around too. It held a metal saucer about a half inch in diameter and a quarter inch deep at its center. Underneath, soldered to the saucer’s center, was the business end of a fine bore hypodermic needle perhaps five-eighths of an inch long. It was plugged with a tiny cube of cork. On the top rim of the saucer a rubber cover had been stuck using a glue that partially dissolved the rubber, thus fusing it extremely efficiently to the steel saucer.
“Bingo!” Paul breathed. “I can’t believe he threw this out in the trash.”
“Carmine was right,” Delia said. “The killer didn’t know we stood no chance of getting warrants to search people before they left. So he ditched it at first opportunity.”
“He respects the poison, making sure that none could accidentally enter his own flesh as he carried it — a pocket of his jacket would have been ideal, but fiddling around to get it out — yeah, he might have pricked himself,” Donny said. “It was still risky, though. I wonder when he removed the cork? And why, having used the thing, didn’t he just drop it and kick it under the table? Except I don’t see how it was done.”
“Carmine has to see this right now,” Delia said, scrambled to her feet and made for a wall phone.
Ten minutes later he was there, leaving Buzz to continue grilling Dr. Jim Hunter. With him he brought a half gallon of distilled water, a ten cc syringe armed with a short twenty-gauge needle, some test tubes and a kidney dish.
“Okay, Paul, you get to do the rinsing,” Carmine said. “If there’s tetrodotoxin in this contraption, it’s potentially lethal until, Gus says, it’s been rinsed to death, which we do by pushing water into the saucer through the rubber diaphragm and collecting it in test tubes or, if worst comes to the worst, in the kidney dish.”
It was a painfully slow business, as the fine bore needle soldered on to the saucer’s base dripped the water at a dreary rate, but finally Paul pronounced himself satisfied, and rinsed the device’s exterior into the kidney dish.
“Do you know what?” Carmine asked, taking the device. When no one answered, he spoke again. “I reckon all our work has been for nothing. I don’t believe this thing has ever held a drop of tetrodotoxin.”
A gasp went up; everyone stared at Carmine, shocked.
Donny recovered first. “How does it work?” he asked.
“Like this, I think.” Carmine took the device and tucked the hypodermic end between the first and the middle fingers of his right hand so that the needle tip just protruded adjacent to his palm. This saw the saucer rest against the backs of the same two fingers. “The saucer is filled with tetrodotoxin and he holds the thing like so. Then he puts his hand, palm side down, on the side of his victim’s neck. The needle goes in as far as his fingers let it. Then he put the thumb of his other hand on top of the rubber diaphragm and pushes at it the way he’d push at an eyeball. That drives the poison out of the saucer, through the hypodermic and into the victim’s flesh. It’s done in literal seconds, and that left hand covering the right one completely obscures what he’s actually doing. As soon as it’s done, the hands come down. He must have a way of being positive he can get the needle tip plugged with his cork before it floats free in his pocket. I’d say he practiced the whole operation until he could do it in his sleep. There would have needed to be an incident that diverted people’s attention — made everyone look to the wrong side, maybe. More important at the Tunbull dinner.”