He fills me in with more cyanide details. How it can be distilled from the kernels of certain nuts such as almonds. How its bluish hue is why cyanide and cyan (blue) toner cartridges are word-root cousins.
“A lethal dose can be as low as one point five milligrams per kilogram of body weight.”
And Dr. Rosen didn’t weigh very much.
It’d be easy to hide a lethal dose of cyanide inside something the size of an Extra Strength Tylenol capsule, which, Ceepak reminds me, was done, by someone who’s still at large, in the Chicago area-way back in 1982. That’s why pain reliever bottles are so hard to open these days-even with your teeth, especially when you have a hangover. And why you now see “caplets” or “gel caps” instead of “capsules” on the shelves at CVS.
“Doing a quick Google search,” Ceepak continues, “I found several sources of ninety-eight percent pure cyanide, available in powder, crystals, or briquette form.”
“No way.”
“It’s a quite common chemical compound, Danny. One frequently used by jewelers to clean tarnish from gold and silver.”
“So, which one of our suspects owns a jewelry store?”
Ceepak actually chuckles. “If only it were that simple.”
Yeah.
But if it were, they wouldn’t give you a super dude detective car.
“Well,” I say, as Ceepak makes the right turn onto Tuna Street, “I guess we know that Christine was the one who gave Dr. Rosen his final and fatal pills.”
“True. However, someone else could have very easily put the poisoned pill into Dr. Rosen’s medical organizer without Christine knowing it.”
“The first time I met Monae, the night nurse, she was filling up the tiny compartments in Dr. Rosen’s weekly box with pills and capsules.”
Ceepak nods. “Ms. Dunn is definitely on our short list, Danny.”
Oh-kay. I didn’t even know we had a list of suspects, let alone a short one.
“Who else?” I ask.
“Dr. Rosen’s family, of course: Michael, David, and Judith. And then, I’m afraid, we must take a hard look at Christine Lemonopolous.”
Ceepak’s list?
They could be the assassins Dr. Rosen was so worried about.
315-B Tuna street, David and Judith Rosen’s home, is actually the upstairs apartment in a classic two-story, vinyl-sided beach house.
We climb up the back steps to an outdoor deck. Ceepak raps his knuckles on the regular door in the center, not the sliding glass patio doors down near the charcoal grill; those take you into a dining room with a card table covered with a red-white-and-blue paper tablecloth from the Party Store. While we wait, I study the roofline. I have a feeling the Rosens’ bedroom ceilings are pretty steep-the way they would be if you lived in an attic.