Dr. Schofield opened the binder to a page with a circuit diagram. A thing of beauty, compared to an anatomy chart. No messy blood flow, for one thing. No possibility of cancer, for another.
“We can skip the schematic, I’m sure,” he said, moving on to a specifications sheet for an EID, an electronic identification device. He followed the items down the page with his finger, summarizing the structure. “A tiny passive transponder, small enough to fit inside a hypodermic needle, is encapsulated in biocompatible glass. Each transponder is preprogrammed with a unique multidigit, unalterable alphanumeric code. Depending on the brand, there are billions or even trillions of possible combinations of strings, without duplication.”
Nothing new so far. Unlike a tracking circuit, which gave out a signal of its own, a passive circuit like the EID was closer to a bar code on a supermarket item, requiring a reader to scan it for the information.
“It’s like a bar code, only using radio frequency,” I said.
“Good analogy. When a reader is passed over the implantation site, a radio signal activates the transponder and the detector receives the ID, which the user sees as an LCD. With one phone call, the number can be traced back to the owner.”
“Very nice. Why doesn’t every horse owner do this? Is it very expensive?”
“No, not really. A lot of horse owners think their animals are in a secure location and don’t need one, or perhaps that their horses aren’t very valuable.”
“A little like the rationale for home security systems, isn’t it?” I said, thinking of the lack of an alarm in my Fernwood Avenue home.
He nodded. “Indeed. Also, there’s no standardization. Company A’s chips cannot be read by Company B’s equipment, so that’s a nuisance. What else is new, huh?”
I nodded and we chatted amiably about the drawbacks of the great American capitalist system with its lack of industry standardization—automobiles, computers, and even commercial nuclear power reactors.
I eased us back into the microchip industry.
“How do you implant the device?”
“With a simple hypodermic. The chips have a special coating so they don’t migrate through the animal’s body. We inject under the skin and very soon a layer of connective tissue forms around the chip and it stays there forever. It’s quick and painless. And of course we keep a record of which chip went into which horse, so it’s easy to track the horse’s medical history.”
I was ready for the big questions. The first one surprised even me. “Do you know Dr. Owen Evans in Houston?” The doctor who installed the chip into the Houston horse—it occurred to me that if there was some kind of scam going on, they’d all know each other. Scam Theory, by police consultant Gloria Lamerino. I was amazed I remembered the Texas doctor’s name.
Dr. Schofield leaned back and folded his arms. Uh-oh. “I’ve never met him, but I’ve seen his name.”
“Here’s another question I have, Scho.” Now that you’re squirming. “What exactly are you doing for the buckyball program at the Charger Street lab?”
Dr. Schofield rotated his expensive-looking pen around an axis perpendicular to its length. First one end hit his desk, then the other.
“Let’s say we’re an investment in the future.”
I didn’t budge. Try the Matt Gennaro technique, I told myself, and wait him out. Dr. Schofield came through.
“As you know, Lorna’s nanotechnology program is geared to smart medicines, and eventually will develop a small molecule drug that will need to be tested.”
I nodded but said nothing, maintaining an interested if noncommittal look.
“On animals,” Dr. Schofield said. “Now, they’re not ready for that quite yet—even that phase has to have FDA approval, of course. But eventually—”
Now I was starting to feel sorry for Scho and thought I’d help him out.
“Let me see if I have this right—you and Dr. Evans are on the nanotechnology payroll now, just for putting in EID chips, so you’ll be on board when the animal testing starts at some unspecified time in the future? Even though the chips really have nothing to do with any of the nanotechnology projects in Lorna’s program?”
He nodded—a flushed, embarrassed nod.
I sat back. Could this be it? Did Lorna kill Nina Martin in order not to expose this? I’d already ruled out Scho as the killer. I believed he didn’t know that Spartan Q was dead. In fact, even I didn’t know for sure that Jake’s horse was dead; we had assumed it from Jacqueline Peters’s statement. As far as I knew Spartan Q’s body hadn’t been found.