The Nitrogen Murder(61)

I wished Matt and I were alone. I wanted to ask him, among other things, what the chances were that Phil would send damaging evidence—if it was damaging, another if-through the mail, where it would ultimately be discovered, rather than toss it into San Francisco Bay, or off the cliffs of Grizzly Peak, or into Tilden Park, very near his Kensington home?

As for Julia’s scams, I’d come up with a plausible scenario where Phil framed Julia, generating the false invoices himself, in order to deflect suspicion from his spy ring. Whew, quite an exercise, I thought.

Lucky for me, I hadn’t yet had time to polish the theory for public scrutiny before the phone rang.

“It’s for you, Matt,” Elaine said. “Inspector Russell.”

Matt took the phone and walked to the small hallway off the kitchen, keeping his back to us. Not fair. We all strained to hear at least his side of the conversation.

“Uh-huh.”

Pause. A long breath. “Is that right?”

Pause. “Sure, sure. Understood.”

Pause. “How soon?”

“Appreciated.”

I knew before Matt told us, and looked across the table at Dana and Elaine, both of whom wore heavy expressions.

“They found traces of coke in the briefcase.”

“What?” Elaine’s voice had reached a pitch higher than I’d ever heard from her. “We looked. We didn’t find any drugs.”

“We don’t have trained dogs,” Dana said. Her voice was a match for Elaine’s, high and tight.

“They want us to go down to the station for questioning.”

“Us?” Dana asked. “You mean me.”

“Look, if it were really bad news, they wouldn’t call Matt. They’d come and get you,” I said. The last part came off stronger than I meant. I looked to Matt for confirmation and was relieved to see his nod.

“I’m sure they just want to ask some questions.” He paused. “Dana, they’re going to ask you straight out, do you use? Did Tanisha use? That kind of thing. They’re fishing at this point.”

Dana put her head on the table, landing on the map a little south of where we were sitting, and folded her arms over her head. I had the feeling she had a secret that was on the brink of discovery.

“Do they want me now?” she asked in a tiny voice.

“Sometime in the next couple of hours,” Matt said.

“So, not immediately,” Elaine said. “That’s a good sign.”

“A very good sign,” I said. The lawman’s partner.



“It was never more than pot,” Dana said. “I have no idea where that coke came from. I know they think Tanisha was stealing those medical supplies to feed her habit, but that’s crap, too. And now, why do they think I had something to do with it?”

“The briefcase was in your custody,” Matt said.

And Phil’s, I thought, but not out loud.

I was surprised to hear marijuana still called “pot” and wondered if it was a Berkeley thing. After all, you could still buy hand-dipped tie-dyed T-shirts on Telegraph Avenue. And I’d heard about a new campus hot spot called the Mario Savio Cafe, after the young man credited with starting the Free Speech Movement in the sixties.

For me, I’d hidden in the basement of the physics building during those turbulent times, playing it safe under a white lab coat.

“How much?” Matt asked. “Daily, weekly, what?”

Dana blew out a breath. She’d finally raised her head and moved her folded arms down to chest level.

“It’s probably better to practice here, with us,” Elaine said.

Dana nodded and looked at me, though it was Elaine who’d spoken. I was sure she wasn’t happy talking about her illegal habits in front of her future stepmother.

“We never got into the hard stuff. No E, no crack, none of that junk. All the EMTs use weed now and then. Well, all the ones I hang with. It’s a very stressful job.”

“What color is it?” Elaine asked. “Just out of curiosity.”

I stifled a laugh, but Dana answered as if she were taking a quiz. “Some is brown, some is green, kind of like grass grass, but never as green as grass grass.”

“Did you smoke alone or in groups?” Matt asked, his questions being more in tune with what the Berkeley PD might ask. I expected they knew what color pot was.

I had a flashback to the days of confession with Father Matussi at St. Anthony’s Church in Revere. Did you sin alone or with others? he’d ask, in a heavy Italian accent.

“Both,” Dana said. “Sometimes when I get home, I just light up a joint, get quiet. A few guys smoke on the job, if you can believe it. Not me. And not Tanisha. Once in a while at a party we might pass around a pipe.”