The Fluorine Murder(3)

"He's a reporter," Rose said, as if she needed to defend their second son from his father.

"Badge bunnies," Matt said, a grin forming. "That's what we call people, especially women, who follow cops around."

Should I be jealous? Probably not, I decided. Matt had been a celibate (according to him) widower when we got married, and I had no reason to think he'd go astray now.

"What do they call fire groupies?" Rose asked.

"Hose bunnies," Frank said, then blushed. Our usual conversation was singularly free of double entendres. Something about the fire talk had sparked a different kind of repartee.

"Good one," Rose said, letting him off the hook.

"Who do the firefighters think is helping out at the scenes?" I asked Matt.

"At first it was impossible to say. But now we have an RFD report—whoever is getting there before the engines is using a variety of different kinds of fire extinguisher material. There's nothing the RFD has ever seen before, but they all contain fluorine."

Aha. The fluorine connection, at last. I thought back to industrial research I'd read about in science magazines.

"It's not that strange to have a fluorine compound in a flame suppressant. Early attempts wreaked havoc on the ozone layer, so they had to go back to the drawing board. I'd have to do a little research, but I believe the latest products with perfluorinated compounds work better."

"I remember when we just used water," Frank said, gilding the lily by adding butter to a third croissant. It was hard to figure how he and Rose were the trim, fit ones in this foursome.

"Water puts out fires but it ruins most materials that it falls on," I reminded him. "Imagine a room with expensive and important computer equipment drowning in water. It's tricky to find something that will put out a fire but not destroy everything and also leave breathable air for people to survive."

"Unless they're dead to begin with," Matt said, bringing us back to the case at hand.

"Where exactly does Gloria come in?" Rose asked.

Good question. "I might remind you that I'm a retired physicist, not a chemist," I said. "We deal with simple atoms and simple reactions. Once you get into the complicated alphabet soup compounds like PEIK—that's perfluoroethylisopropylketone—or PMIK—that's perfluoromethylisopropylketone—I'm lost."

"You don't sound lost," Rose said.

"She never does," Matt said.

I had a thought, a way that I could help. "Would you like me to introduce you to the Charger Street chemists who've been working on fluorine-based flame suppressants?" I asked.

My loving husband of The Year of Leather gave me a vigorous nod. "You know the language, which puts you way ahead of most of us on the force. And right now we're going on the assumption that the fires and the murder are related."

"I know the fluorine research team fairly well," I said. "I attend their seminars now and then. I'm sure they'll be a big help in figuring this out." Matt raised his eyebrows and gave me a sad look. "What is it?" I asked.

"You might not be happy to hear this."

It took a few seconds to register. "The Fire Department thinks the fluorine chemists are racing to the fires so they can test their formulas?" I could hardly keep my voice steady.

"Or … " Matt said, completing his sentence with a shrug.

"Could they be deliberately … ?" Frank was wide-eyed.

Rose gasped. "You don't think they're … ?"

No one dared say the words in my presence—the idea that the scientists could be setting fires themselves, to use in their research. My husband and friends knew my extreme protectionist attitude, wanting to hold onto the concept that scientific research was carried out by women and men whose motives were always pure and altruistic.

"I'm assuming the RFD is investigating, too," Rose said.

"The murder is ours," Matt said, not meaning to sound so callous, I was sure. "They've already interviewed the Charger Street chemists once." He turned to me. "I have to be honest, Gloria. The RFD suspects the chemists, but they can't prove anything."

"Suspects them of what?" I hadn't meant to raise my voice, but no one seemed surprised.

Matt scratched his head. I could tell it was bad news. "Everything."

Rose stifled another gasp, turning it into a cough.

I took a deep breath. It didn't help much. "So I'm supposed to get evidence against fellow scientists? To show that they go around setting fires and then experiment on putting them out? And that they may have killed someone in the process?"

I took my husband's silence as a "yes."