“More rides to inspect?”
He shakes his head. “Mom?
“Yes?”
“The county medical examiner said to tell you that you were correct. Arnold Rosen was murdered. Potassium cyanide.”
Adele brings her hand to her lips. “Oh, my. Poor man.”
“Dr. Kurth hypothesizes that the poison was given to Dr. Rosen with his morning medications. That someone poured a lethal dose of cyanide into a gel cap and slipped the tainted capsule into Dr. Rosen’s pillbox.”
“He was taking so many meds,” I mumble. “It’d be so easy to do …”
“Roger that. Ladies? We need to take you home and then Danny and I need to pay a visit to the Rosens.”
We’re not going there to sit shiva.
We’re going there to officially open our murder investigation.
We drop off Ceepak’s mom and wife and then swing by the house to pick up Chief of Detectives Ceepak’s new undercover vehicle: an unmarked Ford Taurus Interceptor.
The sleek black beauty’s bright white and red LED emergency lights are hidden all over the car: behind the thick black grill up front, along the black rim of the trunk in the back, across the top of the tinted-black windshield. Called The Undercover Stealth, the brand new Ford rides on 22-inch Forgiato black wheels and Nitto tires, also black. To tell you the truth, Ceepak’s new ride looks extremely sinister.
Remember those budget cuts I was telling you about? They did not affect the purchase order for the new Ceepakmobile. I’m pretty sure one of Mayor Sinclair’s biggest political contributors runs our local Ford dealership.
We climb into the rolling stealth bomber, savor that new cop-car scent, then cruise over to David and Judith’s apartment at 315-B Tuna Street (yes, some streets in the center of Sea Haven are named after fish).
“This murder investigation will be different than any we have undertaken in the past,” Ceepak remarks as he pilots the incredibly smooth-riding vehicle up Ocean Avenue.
“Yeah,” I say. “None of our other victims were ninety-four years old.”
“True. This is also the first time we know exactly how the murder was done. We already have our weapon: a small capsule filled with potassium cyanide powder.”
That’s right. In the past, we’ve had to spend a lot of time on forensics and bullet trajectories and crime-scene analysis to figure out exactly how the deed was done. This time, we already know the How. We just need the Who and the Why.
“Guess there’s no need to call Bill Botzong,” I say.
Botzong is the head of the New Jersey State Police’s Major Crimes Unit. He and his crew of crime-scene technicians do all that snazzy stuff they do on the CSI TV shows for police departments, like ours, that can’t afford a high-tech lab full of gizmos and gadgets.
“Actually, Danny, we will, once again, be soliciting Bill’s assistance. Hopefully, he and his team can help us track down the source of the potassium cyanide, a chemical with a wide variety of industrial uses.”
Ceepak. The guy probably started doing his cyanide homework the day he asked Chief Rossi for permission to go to Dr. Kurth for a toxicology screening on a 94-year-old’s corpse.