Kiss The Witch Part 3

He leaned back in his seat and offered a reluctant smile. "Of course. You are absolutely correct." He laced his fingers behind his head, leveled his eyes more at me than at Carlos and took a deep breath. "The property, as you call it, is a compound called QE647, a synthetic food additive four-thousand times sweeter than high-fructose corn syrup."

"A sweetener?"

"You are surprised?"

"A little," I said, cracking a half smile. "So, our bandit has a sweet tooth?"

He unlaced his hands and folded them upon the desk. "You think this is funny?"

I shook the smile from my face. "Of course not." I looked at Carlos. He remained surprisingly composed. I wanted him to take over, but he missed the relay pa.s.s, or perhaps purposely dropped it just to see me squirm.

"Detective, this is a serious matter."

"I understand, Mister Ferguson. I promise you we will take this case very seriously. So please, tell us exactly what is missing."

"All of it."

"All of it?"

"Detective, we only produced a small amount of QE647 for testing, about 800 cc's. Whoever stole it also stole the digital research doc.u.ments before erasing our computer drives and backups. He then ran a sophisticated shredding program on our entire systems to prevent us ever reclaiming data off the erased drives. He left us nothing. We are absolutely wiped out."

"I don't understand. Who could do that?"

"Isn't it obvious? It is an inside job."

"One of your employees."

He rolled his eyes. "Of course."

I looked to Carlos. This no longer seemed like such a difficult case. "You want this one?" I asked.

He gestured a wave as if offering the floor to me. "It's all yours."

I returned to Ferguson. "Who in your employ could have pulled this off?"

He held up three fingers. "If you asked me yesterday, I would have told you that only three men, other than myself, had access to the sample compound, the files and the pa.s.sword to our security system's mainframe needed to disable the alarms, shut off the cameras and erase the surveillance tapes."

"What changed since yesterday?"

"Two of the three men died yesterday."

"How's that?"

"Mark Williams, my executive program coordinator fell off his balcony in a drunken stupor."

"Oh my."

"Oh my is right. The second man, Rick Delaney, my operations and logistics manager, died last night after a freight train T-boned his car at a railroad crossing."

"Yes. I heard about that accident on the radio this morning."

Carlos added, "That cannot be coincidence."

"Hardly. Who else Mister Ferguson?"

"Detective?"

"You said three men other than yourself had access to the material, the data and security system."

"Yes, of course. The third man is Howard Snow. He's the senior research supervisor."

"Can we talk to him?"

He shook his head. "Howard failed to show up for work this morning. I had Personnel call. He does not answer his phone."

"That's your man," said Carlos.

"If he's not dead," I said. "Carlos, call Spinelli. Tell him to get a black and white over to Snow's house and have them bring Snow in for questioning."

"Okay."

"And while you're at it, have him send someone here to dust."

"For prints?" said Ferguson.

"Yes, of course."

"No. No dusting."

"Why not?"

We have some very important investors walking the facility later this morning. I don't want them knowing we were robbed."

"You are going to lie to your investors?"

"I am going to wait until a more opportune moment to tell them."

I looked to Carlos and gave him a nod. "Okay, you heard the man. Go ahead and get Spinelli working on bringing Snow in."

"Got it," he said, and he excused himself to make the call outside in the hall.

I said to Ferguson, "You know this is beginning to smell a bit fishy. What are the odds two of your top employees die the same night someone robs you? Have you called the FBI in on this?"

"I did."

"And?"

"They told me it was not an FBI case, that I have no evidence an interstate crime has taken place. They told me to call the State Police, who in turn told me to call you. Seems that because I suggested this was an inside job, they consider it an internal problem and therefore a local complaint."

"But this could be a lot bigger than just some stolen sweetener."

"Thank you. It is good to see you appreciate the gravity of my situation."

I stood and offered my hand. "Mister Ferguson, I promise I will leave no stone unturned."

"I know you won't. Thank you, and thank Detective Rodriquez for me, too."

"I will."

I turned and headed for the door when instincts stopped me and turned me around. Ferguson was just sitting back down. He looked up at me. "Detective?"

"One more thing, sir."

"Certainly."

"You mentioned three men other than yourself had access to the compound, the files and the security mainframe."

"That's right."

"Naturally, I have to ask you."

"You want to know where I was last night."

"I do."

A smile came to him slowly. "Last night I was in Toronto, Detective. I flew back early this morning on the redeye. Would you like to see my ticket stub?"

I crossed the room and put my hand out. "If you don't mind."

He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and produced a boarding pa.s.s for the Toronto to Boston redeye run. I examined it briefly and returned it to him. "Thank you."

"No. No." He pressed it back into my hand. "Keep it. I don't want you second-guessing anything."

I stashed the ticket in my back pocket. "Thank you again, Mister Ferguson."

"You're welcome, Detective." He scoffed lightly. "You know it's funny."

"What's that?"

"McSweeney, my secretary." He rolled his eyes before dropping a dead stare to the floor. "My former secretary, I should say. The poor dear died recently. Horrible accident at home. Anyway, she made those reservations for me. You know she never used to book me on the red eye. Knew how much I hate night travel. The one time she does and this happens." He looked up at me. His eyes were wet, but his cheeks were dry. "I can't even give her h.e.l.l for it now. Can I?"

I shook my head. "No, sir. I guess you can't."

Out in the hall, Carlos was just hanging up with Spinelli. As we started for the elevator, I asked him, "Spinelli sending a unit out to Snow's house?"

"It's on its way."

"Did you think of telling him to check out Biocrynetix Laboratories, too?"

"I did. I also asked him to see what he can find out about Mark Williams and Rick Delaney."

"Good."

"So, what do you think?"

"'Bout what?"

"Ferguson. Is he telling the truth? About the super sweetener, I mean."

"I don't know. I suppose so. You know something that sweet is worth stealing. Just about every processed food these days uses high fructose corn sweetener. If they invented something four-thousand times sweeter, it could revolutionize the food processing industry."

"Yeah, but you see that's just it. I know it's super sweet and all, but why produce only 800cc's of it? That's like this much." He spread his thumb and index finger to indicate a portioned amount in a lab beaker. "This close to going public with it, I should thing they would have produced gallons of the stuff in drums and tested it in hundreds of food products already."

"Hmm, I see your point, Carlos. You know that often big product rollouts are impossible for companies to keep completely under wraps this close to launch date. I wonder if Spinelli can find something about QE647 on the Internet. Why don't you call him back and ask him if"

"Already did."

"You already asked him to check it out?"

"Yup."

"Okay. That's good."

A slick grin creased his face. "I'm getting good at this, aren't I?"

I doubled-tapped him on the cheek and his grin fell away. "After thirty years, my friend, I should hope so."

We hopped into the car and headed back out. "Spinelli was right," he said. I think he was sulking.

"What do you mean?"

"You don't give me enough credit."

"Excuse me?"

"You don't. You don't give either of us credit."

"I most certainly do. Didn't I just say you did a good job?"

"No. You said Okay. That's good, but you didn't say good job, Carlos."

"What? Do you really need affirmation from me for a job well done?"

He tilted his head and offered a half shrug. "Be nice."

"All right then, job well done. Nice work."

He scoffed at that. "Oh, like it means anything now that I had to pry it out of you."