Authors: John Strauchs
Jared was walking across the Boston Common when his cell phone rang.
Only a
handful of people had that number. Not even Jenny had the number, although he did intend to give it to her the next time there were going to be together.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Jared, Marie.” He knew that. Marie still didn’t understand caller ID.
Marie Bird was Jared’s housekeeper for many years. She was a Montreal French
Canadian who married a Maine lobsterman. He died in the freak storm of 1991—the Halloween Storm. At one time she had been an exceptionally beautiful young woman.
Her
hair was now white and her skin was heavily wrinkled, but that she had once been finelooking still showed through.
Most people found her difficult to understand.
She had
that quaint mix of French Canadian and North Maine accents. It wasn’t that uncommon,
however, on the coast.
No university ever conducted a study to find out why, or even
thought about it, but many young women from Quebec married Maine lobsterman. There
are many folk theories, but that’s all they are. On the surface, however, it wasn’t logical.
Lobstering is a hard life—a very harsh life, especially for families.
She thought herself
lucky that they never had children, but as she grew older, she sometimes regretted it. Only her sisters were family now and they lived far away. None of them married a lobsterman.
“What’s up Marie?”
It took some time to convince her not to call him Mr. Siemels. It wasn’t in her nature, but eventually she relented. And it wasn't in Jared's nature to
be given a meaningless title, such as mister. It was even more difficult to get her to speak
English. Although Jared spoke French fluently, few in Rockland did and her accent was
tough enough without adding French to the fray.
“Fellow from State Police in Augusta here looking for you,” said Marie.
“
That is strange
,” thought Jared.
Why didn’t someone come from Troop D out of
Thomaston? Augusta is more than a 70 mile drive.
Moreover, getting out to the island
meant that he had to call for a hired boat to take him out.
He went to a lot of trouble.
Otherwise, the news didn’t surprise him.
“Did he say what he wanted?” asked Jared. He was hoping they were looking for
a donation. That seemed to be unlikely, however.
The solicitation usually arrived in the
mail.
“Professor from MIT, Dr. Smolenskiy, I think, he say found dead in apartment in
Boston last night. They had question for you. Didn’t say who it was, but someone who
know you say you seen near doctor’s apartment. You call them right away.”
“Fine. What is the number?”
She read him the phone number.
“And the name?”
“Holob, Officer Holob. H-O-L-O-B. He say he with state crime lab.”
“I’ll give them a call when I have time. Thanks for letting me know, Marie.”
She hung up without another word. She knew that Jared didn’t like wasted words
and neither did she.
Jared’s cell rang again. Jared’s phone had an ordinary ring. He thought that musical and other odd ring tones were the worst kind of affectation.
“Hello, Dieter.” He spoke in German.
“I just wanted you to know that the Swiss account for Ms. Ginger Siemels is in
order and ready to receive transfers. When may I expect them Jared?”
“Soon. I don’t have a date yet. It depends on other developments. In any event, I
plan to come to Zurich next week,” said Jared. “We’ll finalize this when I get there.”
“Excellent.
Tschuss
!”
The sooner he took care of this the sooner he could see Jenny again. He drove his
Lexus out of the garage and headed north out of Boston.
When he got to 95, it was a
straight shot.
In just under three hours he exited into Augusta.
It would have taken less
time if there wasn’t that never ending airport construction to get out of Boston. Jared was
speeding the entire way.
Jared hacked his Maine toll road E-ZPass
®
transponder so that it never ran out of money
and wired it into another gizmo that fooled radar.
It was ridiculous to have to pay tolls
for a public roadway. He didn't so much care about the money as it offended him that this
was yet another tax and that the government could track him. It was mostly privacy matter.
He would scan drivers he passed to capture their electronic identification and then
randomly feed it to the toll receiver each time he went through a toll booth. The radar
spoofer was even easier.
He simply altered the characteristics of the return signal to report a legal speed. It didn’t end there.
Jared quickly came up on a red Toyota that was driving at least ten miles under
the speed limit, wandering in and out of the lane.
He pulled in the passing lane and
glanced at the driver. It was a young girl on a cell phone. Jared pulled out in front of her
and slowed down to her speed. He stayed in front of her for fifteen minutes until he saw
that there were no cars behind her within five hundred feet.
He pushed a button on his
console. Jared looked in the rear view mirror.
The Toyota was slowing down. By the
time he was about a quarter mile further, he could see that she had pulled off the highway. Jared smiled.
He had activated a high energy radio frequency device—a HERF—
that fried every computer chip in the girl’s car. There was a bonus. It destroyed her cell
phone too.
He quickly found Hospital Street and pulled into the parking lot of the Maine
State Police Crime Laboratory.
Jared had a phenomenal GPS system in his car that he
had tweaked to do more than would have been imaginable to the folks in Detroit. He intended to get a patent for it, but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
He parked in a visitor spot, bounded out of his car, and ran up the steps, two at a
time.
It was a stark single-story brick building with a hideous blue door.
It offended
Jared’s sense of aesthetics. Jared thought that this was a clue as to what to expect.
He found the receptionist.
“I am here to see Holob.”
“May I tell Major Holob your name?”
“Jared Siemels.” He spelled it for her.
At few moments later, she handed him the phone.
“This is Major Holob. I will be there in a few minutes.”
Jared found a chair and sat down to wait. Less than a minute later, Major Tommy
Holob and a much younger man walked into the waiting area.
Major Holob didn’t extend his hand. He just walked up to Jared.
That he didn’t
identify himself was conspicuous.
“You Siemels?”
“Yes.”
“This is Dr. Crichton.
He is with the medical examiners office in Boston. The
Boston PD asked him to come up here to collect DNA samples. Yours for starters.”
Dr. Crichton put out his hand. Jared accepted the greeting and they shook hands.
He glanced at Holob’s tie. The tie tac was a miniature set of gold handcuffs. That spoke
volumes for Jared.
“Nice tie tac,” said Jared.
“Yea! Let’s step into the waiting room for a few minutes. This won’t take long,”
said Holob.
“Fine!
Can you tell me what this is all about,” asked Jared as they went into the
interview room. “And for the record, I am doing this voluntarily.”
“Yea Sure. Do you know one Dr. Ivan Smolenskiy, AKA Sasha Smolenskiy?”
“Yes, he is a professor at MIT.”
“He was found dead in his apartment last night. His death is suspicious. Hell! He
was a homicide.”
“So what does that have to do with me?” asked Jared.
“You were seen near his apartment by someone who knew you, knew the victim,
and knew you knew each other.
We’re just following up every lead.
There were hairs
and fibers found at the crime scene. Right Doc?”
“Yes, we found some hair, “said Dr. Crichton.
Jared knew that they were both lying. There was no trace evidence, or at least not
from him.
“Who said they saw me? Sounds like someone doesn’t like me.”
“That is police business. And, you and the vic are both Russians.”
“I am a Latvian. He was a Russian.”
“Whatever! Were you in Boston last night?”
“Yes.”
“Did you visit the Russian?”
“Yes, several months ago, but not recently,” said Jared. ” Jared knew that if they
did find his hair..and he didn’t think that likely…there was no way to determine when it
had been deposited. Denying that he had been in the apartment would me a mistake.
“What were you doing in Boston?”
“I was visiting my attorney. His name is Brett Koutsanoudis. He is brilliant. You
will enjoy talking with him. Anything else?”
Holob jotted things into his little black notebook.
“Go ahead Doc,” said Holob.
"The BPD wants to talk to you tomorrow morning,” said Dr. Crichton.
"That isn't convenient for me. It will have to be another day."
"You don't want to cooperate with the investigation? Is that right?" asked Holob.
"Unless you want to hold me as a material witness for a while, I will cooperate
when it suits me. Since I don't know anything, it hardly matters."
Holob walked over to the window and just paced for a while. Jared was getting to
him.
Dr. Crichton unscrewed a sample tube and removed a sterile swab. He ripped
open the plastic bag and gingerly took out a Q-Tip.
“Do I have your permission?”
“Go ahead.”
“This won’t hurt.
I just need to swab the inside lining of your cheek. We need a
DNA sample from everyone of interest to the police.”
“JUST GO AHEAD.”
Jared didn’t like Holob. He knew intelligent and dedicated police officers, but he
also knew that sadists were disproportionately attracted to law enforcement and corrections. As far as Jared was concerned, Holob was a dim-witted thug.
Dr. Crichton swabbed inside Jared’s mouth.
“You’re a pretty smart guy.
It’s all here,” pointing to a large legal sized manila
folder.
He wasn’t about to tell Jared that he was the only suspect they had.
He was
going to rattle him a bit and see what happened.
“Tell him what you know, Doc.”
“Well, let’s see. How do I explain it in lay terms?”
“I said this is a real smart guy. Give it to him straight,” said Holob.
“OK.
We initially thought it was simple congestive heart failure, aggravated by
infection from recent dental surgery.
Non-sterile dental instruments could have been
contributing factors.
The symptoms are classic.
In fact, that is how we stumbled on the
signs of foul play. The key diagnostic clues for heart valve infection are bright red spots
on his palms…..”
“Janeway lesions,” interrupted Jared.
“How could you know that? You’ve had medical training,” asked Dr. Crichton.
Jared just shook his head. “I read a lot.”
Dr. Crichton continued.
“Another key symptom—in fact the most important
one—is a splinter hemorrhage under one finger nail—or at least I initially thought it was
a splinter hemorrhage—you know, a red streak in the nail bed—which is why it is called
splinter hemorrhage—it looks like a splinter under the finger nail.”
“OK, OK. Can you get to the point, Doc?” said Holob.
“That is when I discovered upon a closer examination that he had been injected
underneath his fingernail with some sort of toxin. It wasn’t a splinter hemorrhage at all. It
was the track from a needle. It probably took some time to develop. It was pure luck that
we spotted it. We still haven’t isolated the toxin but it is something that was undetectable
in the preliminary blood and urine analyses. You know, all of the symptoms pointed to a
heart valve infection and congestive heart failure, but it….
“Endocarditis?” asked Jared.
Dr. Crichton was surprised again, “Well, yes, probably.”
“See, I told you we had a smart boy here,” said Holob. “It would have taken us
weeks to get these results, but the Boston PD got it in a day. They got all the latest scientific stuff. “
“The coroner’s office, not the PD, and this isn’t typical for us either,” said Dr.
Crichton.
Holob ignored the corrections. “Whatever!
Anyway, only the murderer would
know this stuff.”
“That is incorrect.
You have it backwards.
Were it not for a preexisting condition that the victim had, we would never have discovered the murder.
If the killer had
known that the splinter hemorrhage would lead us to searching his finger nails, he would
have picked a different lethal method,” said Dr. Crichton.
Holob didn’t understand, but he always recognized the value of keeping ones
mouth shut in the face of authority or more intelligence.
He knew he wasn’t smart—at
least that much could be said for him.
“At the moment we are thinking culture-negative endocarditis. Nothing showed
up in the early blood test.
We haven’t had enough time to do definitive cultures, so
something might still show up. Of course, he may have started an antibiotic regime prior
to his dental surgery which would have prevented finding a causative organism, but I
doubt that. There are many things that could inhibit a positive culture,” said Dr. Crichton.
Without a pause for discussion, Dr. Crichton went on.
“I suspect that he had
rheumatic fever in childhood. We need to find a relative to verify that. His recent dental
treatment—it was obvious—probably was the source of a new infection that attacked the
lining of a heart valve. It could have been a dental abscess that was missed. That would
be my guess.
Regardless, he didn’t die from congestive heart failure, although he eventually would have. He died from a toxin injected into his blood stream. We were damned
lucky finding it.”
“Did you run a GSR on Smolenskiy?” asked Jared.
“Yes, as a matter of fact we did,” said Dr. Crichton.
“And?” Jared already knew the answer.
“There was gun shot residue.”
“And what did you conclude from that?” asked Jared.
“That’s enough Siemels. We’ll ask the questions,” said Holob.
“Fire away, Tommy,” said Jared.
Calling him Tommy irritated Holob.
It was meant to.
It was entirely proper, of
course. It was on his name plate.
“So, Siemels, you seem to know a lot about the medical condition the Russian
had,” said Holob.
“Yes, I am a pretty smart boy.”
Holob turned red.
“Is that it?” asked Jared.
“For now! Don’t leave Lincoln County without telling me. Here’s my card.”
“I live in Knox County,” said Jared.
“OK, don’t leave Knox County wise guy.”
"I hope you have some piece of paper that would compel me to obey; otherwise I
plan to do whatever I want,” said Jared.
Holob was now scarlet, but he kept his mouth shut.
"We'll be seeing each other Siemels. Count on it,” said Holob.
"I do. I do."
Jared bolted out. He couldn’t stand being around a moron like Holob. He left the
building, beeped his car to unlock and start the engine. He flew down the steps, jumped
in, and sped away. He resisted squealing his tires.
He had been very careful. He knew there would be a forensic investigation. It was
probably a fishing trip by the police.
It was highly improbable that he left a hair at the
crime scene, but he had to admit to himself that it wasn’t absolutely impossible. He did
know with certainty that they hadn’t found anything yet. The crime scene was probably
contaminated by now. It had taken him some time going through the closets until he
found the cases containing the crossbow and rifle. This wasn’t going away.