After talking with Zadie, Bernadette followed the hallway behind the door to Annika’s desk. She hoped Annika hadn’t left yet—and found the young intern behind the desk, computer screen on. Kep stood on the other side of the desk, trying to appear relaxed but failing.
“I’m unsure why you’re not as concerned about the security footage disappearing as we are,” Kep said. “Even if she’s the reverend from your church, it’s not appropriate for her to be in your dorm room if she’s not invited.”
“It’s not that I’m unconcerned,” Annika said. “I’m resigned to the fact that someone stole the footage.”
“You’re resigned?”
Annika rolled her eyes. “There are so many girls on my floor who do drugs. Not weed. I mean cocaine, X, molly. Last week they had their dealer come up to the third floor with them. He didn’t want to be caught on camera.”
Kep nodded. “Are you implying that the drug dealer stole the security footage?”
“It’s the most likely explanation.” She sniffed. “Listen, Professor Lightman is insisting I take the rest of the day off. Am I free to go?”
“Not quite,” Bernadette replied. “I wondered how much work you do with the ibogaine—and if you’ve got access to the locked cabinet upstairs.”
Annika shrugged. “My job is dealing with the fish enzymes.”
“Are you saying you don’t have access to the ibogaine?” Bernadette asked.
“Not that I know of.”
“Even though it’s used by your church?”
“I don’t know how the church gets its ibogaine.”
“Have you taken ibogaine at any Agios Delphi meeting?”
Annika folded her arms. “I don’t believe I’m going to answer that.”
Kep nodded. “But Tommy was an elder there, wasn’t he? Did you ever see him take any ibogaine for the church?”
“No,” Annika said, “and if you’re going to throw wild accusations at my dead boyfriend, you can do it when I’m not here.” She grabbed her pack, her parka, and her purse, and stomped off around the corner.
“Congratulations,” Bernadette said. “You’ve pissed off another witness.”
“Pissed her off enough to make her forget her notebook,” Kep said, already leafing through the spiral-bound pages Annika had left on top of the desk.
Bernadette leaned forward. “Last year, Annika Nakrivo was working as an escort in Miami.”
Kep put a hand to his chest and rolled his eyes. “Oh my stars. A young lady who chooses to work her way through school. I haven’t clutched my pearls this tightly since I saw a 1987 Afterschool Special on the dangers of marijuana.”
Bernadette elbowed Kep. “Cut it out. If that was the only thing that raised suspicion, it’d be one thing. She faked crying when her boyfriend is dead, which again, by itself doesn’t mean much. But now I found out she’s auditing all her classes this semester.”
“She’s—what?”
“Weird, right? She had to work for an escort service to pay for college, but then she pays tuition for a semester and doesn’t even take her classes for credit? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Kep slowly shook his head. “No.”
“Do you have something else on your mind?”
Kep nodded. “There’s a second room down on the aquarium level.”
“Did you break in?”
“It was unnecessary. The second room is behind another metal door marked Research Room 12. Inside, I discovered additional tanks with more ammocoetes.”
“Did you find anything besides baby lampreys?”
“I found evidence strongly suggesting Research Room 12 is the murder scene.”
Bernadette shuffled back a step. “The murder scene?”
“I detected a faint odor of bleach last night. Today, I arranged myself on the floor to better ascertain where the scene was strongest.”
“And?”
“There was an area on the floor in front of Tank 15, about two meters long by one meter wide, where I detected bleach more strongly than anywhere else.”
“I imagine they have lamprey accidents once in a while. Fish blood everywhere.”
Kep nodded. “Yes, and I smelled bleach in a few other places in the room, but those spots were older—at least a couple of weeks if not longer. This one, though, is only one or two days old—and there’s a slight undercurrent of ibogaine.”
Bernadette pursed her lips. “This is a facility with a lot of ibogaine. Supposedly under lock and key, but still.”
“No ibogaine is stored in the aquarium rooms.” He set down the notebook. “There are other explanations why someone may have carried a small measure of ibogaine into the aquarium rooms.”
“Right. But even so, we need to get CSI to check the room out now. If there’s physical evidence of the murder, the team needs to find it.”
“Hence, we should call our friends in forensics and immediately secure the scene.”
They passed Lightman’s office, crossed the bullpen area, and reached the top of the stairwell.
A door opened behind them, and Bernadette turned to see Lightman sprinting across the office toward them.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he shouted, his face turning red.
“We believe that Kymer Thompson was killed in your second aquarium on the first floor—”
“Absolutely not,” he said, seething. “We’re not risking our research—”
“This is a murder investigation,” Bernadette said evenly, “and Research Room 12 is a possible murder scene.” She turned away.
“How dare you go down there without a warrant,” Lightman said. “We’ve given you access to Tommy’s PC, and this is how you repay our cooperation?”
Kep took out his phone, dialing. “I’m confident the facts will show that the burden of probable cause has been met.”
“I strongly disagree. Maybe it’s time to get our lawyers involved.” Lightman puffed out his chest as he pulled his own phone out.
Kep was silent as he held the phone to his ear. The gears in Bernadette’s head were turning, but she couldn’t come up with anything to say to stop Lightman from calling his attorney.
Lightman dialed. “Jude Lightman for Wanda Salesi,” Lightman said into the phone. “It’s urgent.” He paused.
“Good afternoon, Lieutenant,” Kep said into the phone. “I believe we’ve discovered the location where Kymer Thompson was killed. We’d like a CSI team to come out right away.”
“Ms. Salesi, hello. I’m sorry to inform you that federal agents are attempting to shut down one of our research labs. That could jeopardize the entire project.”
“Research Room 12 on the first floor of the Kilbourn Tech Freshwater Sciences lab building,” Kep said.
“I think we’ll need an injunction as soon as possible,” Lightman said. “No, I don’t know what their evidence is.” He looked at Bernadette. “Would you care to tell me why you believe Kymer Thompson was killed in Research Room 12?”
Bernadette breathed in through her teeth. “Evidence suggests the presence of blood, the murder weapon, and attempts at cleanup.”
“Did you hear that, Ms. Salesi?” He paused again. “The murder weapon being—what? A knife? A gun?”
Bernadette wanted to punch the smug look off his face—it was the same look Barlow had after he’d told her about his late-night work conference. But she stretched her fingers instead and said, “A syringe full of ibogaine.”
“A syringe full of ibogaine,” Lightman said. “Like the kind we inject into literally dozens of iron-rich lamprey livers every day. In a research lab. In an aquarium room where lamprey blood gets on the floor frequently. A room which we clean top to bottom several times a week. If there’s been a particularly rowdy bunch of lampreys, even more often.” He paused again. “No, Ms. Salesi, it doesn’t sound to me like they have much of a case either.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Contact me when we can expect the CSI team’s arrival.” He hung up. “We were obligated to call this in,” Kep said to Lightman. “I suspect a man was killed in that room. It’s my duty to report that.”
“Good luck,” Lightman said. “We’ll have the injunction signed before your boss hangs up with CSI.”
Bernadette stepped forward. “We’ll wait for CSI to get here. Or the injunction.”
Lightman, phone still against his face, stomped back into his office and slammed the door.
She turned to Kep. “What now?”
“Now we wait.”
“I don’t understand why he’s so upset,” Bernadette said in a low voice. “If you’re sure that the murder happened here, Lightman might as well be off our list of suspects. It’s much less likely that he was here when Thompson was killed.” She folded her arms.
“It’s not about his guilt or innocence of Thompson’s murder,” Kep said. “He’s upset about the funding for the research project. That sizeable grant is obviously from a pharmaceutical company, and the more the laboratory is involved with the murder investigation, the higher the chance that the funding will get pulled.”
“Ah. Follow the money.”
“Exactly,” Kep said. “The concentrated ibogaine and the maturity of those silver lampreys are the most important two things in this lab. Both might be worth killing over.”
“With Kymer Thompson murdered and Eddie Taysatch shot, I believe Lightman fears for his life.” Although it’s hilarious that his employees think he’s incompetent. “Think we should put a protective detail on him?”
“At the very least, an officer should be stationed at his house. Perhaps we can ask Detective Dunn if the police have implemented additional precautions.”
“Right.” Bernadette motioned toward Thompson’s desk with her head. “Come on. Let’s see if Curtis is done playing hacker for the day.”
Curtis was finished when they arrived at Thompson’s old desk. Nick LaSalle refused to meet Bernadette’s eyes and mumbled something about getting back to the university. Curtis shook his head as LaSalle headed for the elevator.
“Sorry for all the drama with the IT guy,” Bernadette said in a low voice. “I was trying to catch him off guard. He’s not being candid about where he was last night—and I don’t think he’s being honest about the keylogger program, either.”
Curtis nodded. “Yeah, well, he got really nervous after you yelled at him. Didn’t know which way was up.”
The elevator arrived, LaSalle got on, and the doors shut behind him. A weight lifted from Bernadette’s shoulders, though she wasn’t sure why. She cleared her throat. “He answered a couple of questions strangely. I think he’s involved.”
“Do you believe he was instrumental in installing getting te keylogging program onto the victim’s PC?” Kep asked. “Or are you suggesting he was involved in Mr. Thompson’s murder?”
“I mean—” Bernadette stopped, then put her chin in her hand.
“What?” Curtis asked.
“I meant with the keylogging program. But after seeing him avoid me last night and deny it today, maybe he was more involved than that.”
“What—you think he’s a suspect?” Curtis knit his brow. “That’s a stretch. There’s nothing suggesting that LaSalle and Thompson were more than passing acquaintances.”
“But he’s responsible for security on the PCs,” Bernadette pointed out. “And if the keylogger ended up on Thompson’s machine—and on his home machine too—that would suggest that LaSalle is at least a suspect for installing the malware.”
Curtis shook his head. “LaSalle set all the machines up at the beginning of the school year—at least for the grad students and the interns. There were a couple who started in June, but most started in August.”
“And there was only one machine here at the lab with the keylogger? Not Jude Lightman’s? Not Eddie Taysatch’s?”
“No, only Thompson’s PC. And I was right: it was infected in August, as soon as Thompson started here. It infected a USB drive the Friday before Labor Day. Someone targeted Kymer Thompson.”
“What was the attacker looking for?”
Curtis squinted and shook his head slightly. “I’d be guessing. Thompson had access to almost all the research in the lab. And he had more access to the lampreys than anyone else.”
“But the murderer killed him. The lampreys weren’t touched.”
Kep’s phone buzzed. He looked at his screen, then shook his head. “Maura hasn’t even put the request into CSI yet, and the judge signed the injunction. Now they have to set a date for a hearing, They have successful blocked our access to Research Room 12.”
Bernadette tapped her foot. “Did they give you any idea when the hearing will be?”
“The clerk gave me the impression it could be later today. However, I suspect she was being overly optimistic, as it’s already quite late. Personally, I’m hopeful we can access the room first thing tomorrow. However, the scene could be even more contaminated at that point, and we run the risk that nothing we find would hold up in court.”
Curtis hoisted his laptop bag up to his shoulder, pulling the collar of his leather jacket flat underneath the strap. “So you’re done here as well? You two need a ride back to the station?”
“Yes.” Bernadette shot a look at Kep, who nodded. “And let’s get out of here before Lightman has a chance to gloat.”
The three of them were silent in the elevator on the way down to the ground floor. Kep climbed into the back seat of Maura’s rented black SUV, lost in thought. Bernadette took the front passenger seat as Curtis started the engine.
Curtis snapped his fingers. “Oh—I got some information on that priest. The one who lives out in Whitefish Bay.”
“Vivian Roundhouse? Great.”
“Divorced. Her ex-husband is the CEO of Jefferson Systems. Lives up in Mequon in an equally nice house.”
“Is his name Allan?”
“No—that’s her son. He’s a civil rights attorney in Chicago.”
Bernadette tapped her foot. “What about her van? What about her whereabouts on Monday night?” She shook her head. “Background’s nice, but we need confirmation of her movements.”
“She’s a priest,” Curtis said. “Ugh. I hate the optics on that.”
“If we’re lucky,” Bernadette responded, “the media will treat her like the head of a cult, not like a priest.”
“She’s not our only suspect,” Kep said from the back seat. “Let’s not forget your suspicion of Nick LaSalle.”
“Nor yours of Annika Nakrivo, who won’t even cry.”
Kep gave her a tight smile. “We haven’t talked to Cecilia Carter yet.”
“The woman whose car you jumped on at the Freshie last night?” Curtis asked.
Bernadette grunted.
“Maura and I wanted to bring her in, but her address is in California,” Curtis said. “She’s apparently in Milwaukee on a long-term assignment, but we haven’t discovered where she’s staying yet.”
Bernadette set her mouth in a line. “Cellphone records? Financials? Credit card payments?”
“I’ll put that at the top of my list.”
They arrived at the District 5 station five minutes later. The handsome Officer Chesapeake had been replaced by an older policeman with a scowl evident in spite of his walrus-like mustache.
They walked into the warm, stuffy back room. Detective Dunn was on the phone talking animatedly.
Maura was standing at the printer as it spit out a stack of pages. She glanced up at them. “Oh, good, you’re all back. Any luck at the Freshie?”
“We confirmed how the keylogger got onto Thompson’s machine,” Curtis said. “Remotely installed at work using an anonymized IP address. Then Thompson brought home a USB stick and infected his home PC.”
“Any idea who installed it?”
Curtis glanced at Bernadette. “Go ahead.”
Bernadette nodded. “Nick LaSalle oversees the computers at the Freshie. He’s acting overly defensive.”
“Overly defensive? How?”
“Some odd statements. I called him incompetent to see his reaction.”
“Which was?”
“Instead of telling me how well he did his job, he denied that he’d installed the keyloggers on purpose. I never accused him of wrongdoing.”
Maura rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Not necessarily indicative of anything.”
“The other thing is that we only found a keylogger on Thompson’s work machine. But LaSalle said ‘keyloggers’—plural. I think he knows that it was installed on his home machine, too.”
Maura clicked her tongue. “Anyone who works in computer security would assume that a piece of malware found its way onto multiple machines. Or it could just be a slip of the tongue.”
Bernadette was silent.
Maura sighed. “But we can dig deeper.” She turned to Curtis. “Any chance of getting past the anonymizer?”
“I’m on it.” Curtis said, as Dunn hung up the phone and looked up at them.
“In the meantime,” Maura said, “let’s get a forensic accountant to look at Nick LaSalle’s bank accounts. Any big payments, expenditures, deposits.”
Dunn stood up. “I’ll ask Lesley to help out. She’s the best forensic accountant we’ve got.” She paused. “And one more thing. We got a hit on the van.”
“The Agios Delphi van?” Bernadette asked.
“On camera Monday at 5:37 p.m. going into the Galena Street Garage.”
Right after trying to mow me over on Sixth Street. “Where’s the Galena Street Garage?”
“About three blocks north of the Anne Askew Chapel.”
“And when did it leave?”
“Tuesday morning, ten fifteen.”
“Payment?”
“Kymer Thompson’s credit card at the exit gate. The camera got a great shot of the driver’s-side door.”
“So,” Maura said, “whoever drove the van may have killed Kymer Thompson and taken his credit card. Did we look at the robbery angle?”
Dunn shook her head. “Wallet was still on him. Forty dollars in cash. No indication that anyone took anything.”
“So who drove the van?” Bernadette said. “You had uniforms go to the old salt warehouse?”
“Nothing,” Dunn said. “Gate was open. No vehicles. No sign of forced entry, but no tire tracks either—but it’s been snowing. And no cameras in the area. We have no way of knowing if that van was ever there, never mind figuring out who drove it.”
Maura smacked the table with her hand. “I want your forensic accountant to look at Agios Delphi as well. Something’s not right here. The reverend had opportunity for both the Thompson murder and the Eddie Taysatch shooting. She’s got shaky alibis for both. And she’s the main person with access to the van.”
“Motive?” Bernadette asked.
Maura screwed up her mouth before she spoke. “Both Thompson and Taysatch had access to enough ibogaine to keep her congregation high for the next decade. Let’s push on the ibogaine angle and hope something shakes loose.”
Dunn shook her head. “I’m sorry, folks. I know it’s technically possible that Reverend Roundhouse could have left her van at the Galena Street Garage and killed Thompson back at the lab, but it was twenty degrees below freezing that night. I don’t see how anyone could drag a body ten city blocks—from the river to the chapel—without arousing suspicion.”
“Maybe she Weekend at Bernie’d it,” Kep said, casting a quick glance at Bernadette, who gritted her teeth.
“She did what?” Curtis asked.
“Oh, you poor child, Weekend at Bernie’s was before your time,” Kep said, chuckling. “It’s a piece of cinematic drivel from the late 1980s about a murdered CEO and the two entry-level employees who pretend he isn’t dead. The two of them carry the corpse around and pose him like he’s still alive. Several slapstick moments are considered classic by those who appreciate the medium.”
“And the garage doesn’t have the van leaving until Tuesday morning?” Bernadette asked, ignoring the second knowing glance from Kep.
“That’s right,” Dunn said. “Of course, if she had an accomplice, maybe they took the accomplice’s car to move the body.”
“Is there anything else they could have used?” Bernadette said. “It’s a fairly straight shot from campus to the Freshie. Is there—I don’t know, a bicycle, or some sort of rickshaw, or maybe a free streetcar that could have gotten them from Point A to Point B?”
“The streetcar is on the other side of the river, and it doesn’t go close to the chapel. You’d have better luck with a shopping cart.” Dunn chuckled. “Two winters ago, someone pushed a shopping cart off the roof of the shopping center next to the Freshie, and it landed in the ice in the river. Sort of got half-submerged, and it stayed there until spring. The YouTube video went viral.”
“Hmm,” Curtis said. “Is it easy to filch a shopping cart from a local grocery store or from the shopping center?”
“I was joking about the shopping cart. Mostly homeless people who have them—like Rhonda. We saw her on one of the security cameras the night of Thompson’s murder. She walks with her shopping cart down the Riverwalk every night.”
Curtis’s phone dinged, and he read the screen. “Oh—wow.”
“What?”
He looked up at Dunn. “Two weeks ago, Douglas Rheinstaller bought a hundred pounds of TFM from Wildlife Specialties up in Fond du Lac.”
“TFM? The fish poison?” Bernadette asked.
“Used to control the lamprey population,” Kep said. “It’s particularly poisonous to their ammocoetes.”
“Their what?” Maura asked.
“Their larvae.” Dunn nodded. “I had to do a report on TFM in seventh-grade science. We used to have a real problem in the 1950s with sea lampreys killing the fish in Lake Michigan.”
Kep looked down at his laptop screen. “3-trifluoromethyl-4-nitrophenol. Considered a toxic respiratory irritant.”
“But doesn’t kill trout or salmon,” Dunn said. “Only the lampreys.”
“So it’s the perfect substance to have on hand,” she continued, “if one were planning to poison an aquarium full of them.”
“Right,” Dunn said. “You usually see those types of orders from the Department of Fish and Game. They apply the TFM to the tributaries where the larvae are most common. Fishermen who are out on the lake wouldn’t use it—Rheinstaller wouldn’t have any need for it.”
“But Rheinstaller was the president of the Piscary Association,” Bernadette pointed out. “He wasn’t a regular fisherman. Maybe he had a reason to purchase the TFM.”
“With the spring thaw coming,” Dunn said thoughtfully, “there’s a possibility that he didn’t think Fish and Game was moving fast enough. Something else to ask him.”
“Any word on Cecilia Carter?”
Curtis nodded. “I put in a request with her wireless provider. We’ll see where she is soon enough.”
Bernadette thought for a moment. “Detective, with what’s happened to Thompson and Taysatch, do you think there’s any merit in putting a protective detail on Jude Lightman?”
Dunn nodded. “Probably. We should station an officer at the Freshie too. The bosses will hate the overtime, but they’ll approve it. I can get that started.”
“Call Lightman first. See if he’ll even agree to it.” Bernadette scrunched up her face in thought.
“What is it?” Maura asked.
“Annika Nakrivo,” Bernadette said. “She’s made an accusation about Reverend Roundhouse, who’s one of our main suspects. If Kymer Thompson told his girlfriend about his research, maybe Annika needs protection, too. Especially if the cameras at her dorm can’t be relied on.”
“I’m headed over there next,” Curtis said. “I might be able to salvage some footage—or at least figure out how they deleted the recordings. It might give us a clue on who did it.”
“Annika seems to think it was drug dealers,” Kep said.
“Or campus security not wanting to do their job,” Bernadette interjected.
Maura shook her head. “She’s taking wild guesses. Curtis, you get over there, and if Annika’s in her dorm room, tell her we’ll be adding her to our protective detail.” She turned to Dunn. “How long will it take to get protection in place for them?”
“The request has to go through channels. It’ll take an hour, maybe two—more if there’s any delay about approving overtime.”
“Okay, Curtis,” Maura said, “stay with Annika until the uniform gets there. I don’t know if the reverend will show up, but this has the potential of turning messy pretty fast.”
“What about the camera footage?” Curtis said.
“It can wait until after you’ve confirmed she’s safe.”
He typed a short message on his laptop, hit the enter key with a flourish, then turned to Bernadette. “I got the wireless carrier information for Cecilia Carter, and I forwarded it to you.”
“Thanks.”
Curtis grabbed his leather jacket off the back of the chair and turned to Maura. “Can I take your SUV?”
Maura nodded. “You call us the moment you see she’s safe,” she said. “If we have another incident on our hands, we need to know as soon as possible.”
Curtis gave the team a thumbs-up as he left the office.