Frank and I spent another half hour in Tech, but discovered nothing more of value.
At some point we got a call from Olivia, Banning’s assistant. “There’s a car waiting for Agent Camden downstairs,” she said.
I hung up and took the elevator down.
A kid in his twenties met me in the lobby. He was there to bring me back to the airstrip in Stafford, Virginia. To get on a plane heading west.
“Montana?” I asked as we walked out to his car, guessing where I was headed.
I recalled an article in Botany Magazine by a Montana State professor who studied the connection between CO2 levels and the amount of water needed to sustain deciduous plants, specifically evergreens.
The kid nodded. “Deputy Director Poulton said he’d send you an email with a bio.”
I got in the SUV.
Montana State University has an extensive agronomy farm and horticultural department. The bulk of their facilities are focused on animals, feeding, and cattle, but a small group of specialists study plant science and pathology.
Ten minutes later we were back in Stafford, and a flight engineer was refilling the same small plane that Frank and I had come in on.
“It’ll be ten minutes,” he said. “Why don’t you wait inside. I’ll come get you.”
I walked into the one-story box of a structure that overlooked the private runway. Took out my cell phone to make a call.
My mother’s number rang twice, and then I heard her voice.
“Hey,” I said, “it’s me.”
“I know it’s you,” she replied. “The phone’s got a picture of you on it.”
I’d set up my mother’s cell phone with a photo of me and Camila, standing together outside her nursing home.
“I’m just calling to check in,” I said. “How are you, Mom?”
“I’m perfect,” she said. “I was just giving advice to my nurse Flavia, who had an issue with her estranged husband. I can’t discuss the details, of course. Privacy issues and such.”
When she was lucid, my mother still acted like she was practicing.
“I was bragging to her about my son. Showed her pictures of Camila. When are you bringing my gorgeous granddaughter by again?”
“Well, she’s in Florida, Mom. You’re in Texas.”
“So get on a plane,” my mother replied.
“Spring break,” I said. “She’ll be out of school, and we’ll come for a weekend.”
“Then it’s settled. What else is going on?”
“Just work. Do you remember the case we talked about?”
“Of course.”
I paused. Did she?
“Well, it’s mine to lead,” I said. “This particular serial killer … I think he grew up playing puzzles, like me. He leaves odd clues. A paper in a mouth. Insects inside a heart.”
“Serial killer?” she repeated, and I wondered if I’d lost her.
“Mom?” I said.
“The expression ‘serial killer’ is just a convention of man, Gardy. Of cops and journalists. You know that, right? At the end of the day, every killer is just a human, searching for something. Validation. Understanding.”
This was the woman who raised me. Always unraveling the complexities of human behavior. Even abnormal behavior.
“It’s your job to dig deep inside for that kernel, Gardy. The meaning behind the maniac.”
I stared out at the airstrip. “I know,” I said.
“When you do, son, be careful with it. It’s a privilege to understand another person. Even an evil one.”
My mother was always teaching. Always trying to instill some lesson.
And then she said something I’d heard a hundred times.
“Gardy, never use your intellect as a weapon.”
The pilot waved that he was ready, and I put a hand up.
“Okay,” I said. “I gotta go, Mom. I love you.”
She replied with the same, and I boarded the plane. By 2 p.m. local time, I had touched down in Bozeman and found Richie in the lobby of the corporate airport, finishing up a corned beef sandwich.
“Ready?” I asked.
He dumped the remains in a nearby trash can and stood up.
A half hour later, we were escorted toward a nondescript brick building and the lab of Dr. Brent Volus on the MSU campus. A light snow covered the ground, and the weather felt like it was high thirties.
Inside the building, a short woman led us down a hallway, where multiple doors opened onto lean-to–style greenhouses. She brought us to the last one on the left and pointed inside.
The temperature here couldn’t have been more different than outside. Four raised boxes of soil sat in pine containers, and the air was humid.
At the back of the space, hunched over one of the beds, was a man in his fifties. The doctor. He wore a long-sleeve denim shirt and tan slacks under a lab coat. His long, wavy gray hair flowed loosely past his shoulders.
When he saw us, his blue eyes, adorned with horn-rimmed glasses, lit up.
“Ah, the boys from D.C. Thank you, Tonya.”
The woman turned and left. Volus’s wild eyes and unkempt hair gave off the impression that he didn’t get a lot of visitors.
“Dr. Volus.” Richie pulled out his badge. “This is Agent Camden. I’m Agent Brancato. You received the pictures I sent.”
“I certainly did.” He pulled up two stools, and we sat around a raised pine box whose contents looked and smelled like manure.
“By the reference markers in the photo, you’ve got a small piece of evergreen,” Volus said. “I’d bet my salary it’s a Hellebores.”
I flipped open my pad.
“Two l’s?” Richie confirmed, taking notes on his phone.
Volus nodded, his hair shaking as he did. He looked similar to a neighbor that my college roommate had called “that crazy hippie down the hall.”
“Are you familiar with a Christmas rose, Agent Camden?” he asked.
I was seated across the box of dirt from him, and I met his eyes. “I am,” I said, remembering one my mother had once brought home. The plant had green leaves and white flowers with yellow and green interiors.
“Well, your sample is part of the same family.”
“So it’s domestic?” I said, knowing our next step would be to trace the origin of the evergreen. Where it could be purchased or grown. This could indicate where our killer lived or worked.
“They’re grown domestically,” Volus said. “Everywhere. But to be clear, they’re not native to this country. Hellebores grow wild in Greece and Eastern Europe.”
So the plant was ubiquitous. Unhelpful.
“Richie,” I said. “Could you show the doctor our sample?”
Richie took a petri dish from his bag and handed it to Volus. The glass was five inches round, and the top was sealed. The piece of greenery was a tiny spot in the center.
Volus tapped at the glass. “Now aren’t you the prettiest little Helleborus foetidus at the dance?”
I translated the scientific name. “A stinking Helleborus?”
Volus flicked his eyebrows and smiled. “Someone paid attention in Latin class.”
His eyes were on the second petri dish, which Richie had taken out, but not handed to him. The one with the tiny bug in it.
“And you,” he said, grabbing the dish. His voice changed, as if he were scolding a dog. “You are a nasty little bugger,” he said to the insect. “And we know what you eat, don’t we?”
Richie side-eyed me.
“Dr. Volus,” I said, focusing him.
Volus looked up, returning to his natural voice. “A smart gardener might call this guy a hellebore leaf miner.” He lifted the second petri dish. “But in the scientific community, we know him as Phytomyza hellebori.”
“This insect feeds on the leaf in the first dish?” I confirmed.
“Not just feeds on it. He digs little tunnels into the leaves of foetidus. Lays larvae in there.” Volus shook his head, as if describing something criminal. “The larvae eat the plant from the inside out, Agent Camden.”
“What’s their purpose?” Richie asked. “Do they do anything … valuable?”
“The plant or the insect?” Volus asked.
“Let’s start with the insect,” Richie said.
“Well,” Volus glanced around, his blue eyes glistening as if he was about to say something treasonous. “I could give you a speech about the circle of life, Agent Brancato. Tell you that all life has value. But between us girls.” He paused and smiled. “These little guys are just pests.”
“You’re an expert on Phytomyza?” I asked.
“When you study evergreens like I do, you have to know their predators. These bugs feed on developing seeds. They produce galls, which are like warts for plants. They destroy bark, attack plants of agricultural or ornamental value. The only thing they’re good for is target practice.” He made his finger into a gun and pointed at the dish. “Pikow. Pikow.”
And people said I was odd.
“The strip of evergreen,” I said. “This is the primary plant that Phytomyza hellebori eat?”
“That’s how I figured out what the plant was from your pictures.”
“And the plant’s use,” I asked him. “Agriculturally?”
“Nothing critical.”
“Why are they called stinking?” Richie asked. “Do they smell?”
“Not unless you crush them,” Volus said. “They’re also called dungwort and bear’s foot, depending on the area of the world you live in.”
“And why would you crush them?” Richie asked.
“You wouldn’t,” I answered, “Because if you do, you’d release glycosides that are poisonous.”
Volus turned to me. “Ding ding ding. Winner winner, chicken dinner.”
While Richie was peppering the doctor with questions, I had been mentally reviewing plants used for poison. The oleander. The vinca. The periwinkle. The hellebore. After all, we were chasing a killer, not getting a BA in botany. Was something about the poisonous nature of this plant a clue that I was not seeing?
“Wait,” Richie said. “Poison?”
“Goes back to ancient times,” Volus said. “Your Latin was good, Agent Camden. How’s your Homer?”
“Above average.” I didn’t mention that I’d memorized the Odyssey and the Iliad.
“Then you know that Odysseus poisons an arrow. He taints that arrow with hellebore.”
My mind sorted this fact alongside the others. The paper found in Tignon’s mouth. A poisonous plant in Fisher’s heart. What did they have in common?
Volus was rattling off information. “Symptoms of the poison include vomiting. Delirium. With enough quantity, death.”
Except no one had been poisoned in any of our cases. In fact, the piece of evergreen was placed in the artery after death, which meant the poison had no bearing on Fisher’s death. Were we even supposed to find it?
“The bug,” I clarified. “Poisonous or not poisonous?”
“Unrelated to the poison,” Volus said. “Just a predator.”
Mad Dog had told me this was a game to him. I thought about where the plant had been placed. It had to mean something.
“Dr. Volus,” I said. “If we told you we found this inside a human body, what would you make of that?”
Volus cocked his head. “Like in a nose? Someone inadvertently inhaled a piece while trimming a bush?”
“In an artery in the heart.”
Volus picked up the petri dishes again, one at time. “Impossible.”
Richie glanced at me, his face screwed up. I understood his confusion. The evergreen was a strange detail. It was a connection, but on its own, it didn’t seem to lead anywhere.
“How many experts on this bug and leaf are there?” I asked. “In the United States?”
“Like me? Two maybe. Three?”
“So someone would come to you or these other two,” I said, “for expertise.”
“Oh sure. A colleague of yours was here last year. Asking about the delivery of Helleborus as a poison. How it would react in the bloodstream.”
Richie and I exchanged a look.
“Someone asked about the Helleborus foetidus specifically?” Richie said.
“Guy like you.” Volus pointed at me. “Thirties. White. Brown hair.”
Exactly like the man we were chasing.
“He was a cop?” Richie asked.
“Oh yeah,” Volus said. “I can’t remember what branch. But you guys all talk to each other, right? After 9/11, you have databases and share files?”
We heard this a lot.
“If we bring in a sketch artist,” I said, “do you think you could—”
“No. Plants, I remember. People—not so much.”
Volus glanced at his desk twenty feet away, and I followed his eyes. The big wooden rolltop looked out of place, set down in between two rows of soil beds.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I might have gotten his card.” He moved around me, toward the desk. “This guy didn’t have a piece of a plant like you two, though. He also wasn’t asking your kind of questions.”
“What was he asking about?” Richie said.
“A bow and arrow,” Volus replied. “If Helleborus could be delivered that way.”
Volus opened a drawer and dumped scraps of paper onto his desk blotter. As he did, I contemplated this new detail. No victims of ours had been shot with an arrow. And in none of the original crimes of Fisher, Tignon, or Lazarian had an arrow been used.
Dr. Volus fished through the papers before stopping a minute later. He walked a few steps away and grabbed a textbook sitting on the corner of one of the planter boxes.
He came toward us, shaking the book upside down. As he got close, a piece of card stock fell from it.
It landed on the manure, face up.
And Richie and I saw the familiar crest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Not just some cop.
An FBI agent.