Chapter Five

Nigel had gotten the security tapes from the hotel. While the tapes had shown no one but Philip Buchanan entering or exiting his hotel room, it did show other people coming and going on the floor – in and out of their hotel rooms. On a hunch, he had found the floor plans for the hotel on internet. He discovered that Buchanan's room had an adjoining door to the next hotel room that could be opened to make a suite, if necessary. And the room that adjoined Mr. Buchanan's room had been occupied by a Mr. Avery Myers. But as far as they could tell, Mr. Myers was an insurance salesman and had no ties to microchips. It still was a bit of a puzzle.

They took the information that Woody had found about the woman and began to trace her....She turned out to be more interesting than Mr. Myers. She was Dr. Cynthia Hough, and her doctorate was in ... engineering. Electronic engineering as a matter of fact. And she had ties to a company called Celluplate. Celluplate was a new up and coming company, but its ethical practices were highly questionable. From Philip Buchanan's conservative background, it seemed unlikely that he would have business dealings with this company. The man may have been rich as Midas, but he had a strong, moral backbone....so far as they could tell. A little more snooping, and Nigel sweet-talking Philip's secretary, turned up the fact that Buchanan didn't approach Hough about investing in his work, she approached him about investing in Celluplate. He had dodged her and put her off for months, but she was tenacious. Buchanan had the funds her company desperately needed to develop their next project. His secretary said that he finally agreed to meet with Dr. Hough, "just to get her to shut up. He was going to listen to her politely, tell her no, and then get her to leave him alone."

Only something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

It took a little more snooping to get to what happened, but within a few days, Jordan and Nigel had most of the loose ends tied up. "Phone the AM's," Nigel said, shortening his terms for the alpha males. "Tell them we're ready for them."

Jordan smiled. She and Nigel had worked their tails off the last three days....not stopping to eat or get much rest. This was one case she was more than ready to let go of. She picked up her cell phone and dialed Woody and Eddie. The meeting was set for two that afternoon.

Woody strolled down the halls of the morgue about twenty minutes before the meeting. He was hoping to catch Jordan alone...he wanted to talk to her. He had been wanting to talk to her for the last two weeks, but every time he had seen her, she had been with someone else....Eddie, Nigel, Garret. He was close to cracking this case...and then he would be shuffled back to the white collar crime office. Away from this part of Boston...away from the morgue...away from her. He had enjoyed the exquisite pain of watching her from a distance...noting how she had changed, matured....softened more around the edges, although she still had a "take-no-crap" attitude. But there was definitely something different about her...it was as if she had made peace with her past and was living in the present.

Of course the MSBI guy kept hovering around. Eddie Winslow. He had asked Nigel about this guy and what was his tie to Jordan's past. Eddie had called her Jordy. If he had ever even tried to call her Jordy, he would have been shot down. But Eddie got away with it. The closest Woody had ever gotten to calling Jordan by a nickname, was when in moments of haste or passion, he'd call her Jo. In situations where every moment counted, Jo was shorter than Jordan. And in the moments of passion, he could only get Jo out ... Jordan would stick in his throat.

Nigel had filled him in, albeit briefly. Jordan had dated Eddie as a young woman....and then again briefly after she returned to Boston. Eddie had left after Jordan refused to make a commitment. Somehow that didn't surprise him. That was the same reason he left.

But Eddie had been her lover when she was younger. He wondered if Jordan had loved Eddie. Had Eddie been the first man she had ever been with?

Did Eddie still love her?

Did she still love Eddie?

And hell, did she ever think about him....and his days in homicide as Detective Hoyt? His answer soon rounded the corner.

"Jordan?"

"Oh. Hey Woody. You're early. Have a seat in the conference room. We'll be ready to go as soon as Eddie gets here."

"Say, Jordan, do you think after this we could..."

"Jordy...." Woody heard the man coming up from behind him. It was Eddie Winslow. Woody clinched his teeth.

"Hey Eddie. You and Woody go to the conference room. Nige and I will be there in a minute." And with that, Jordan went into her office and closed the door. The two men stood there and looked at each other for a minute. Finally they both turned and walked down the hall to the designated area. It wasn't long before Jordan and Nigel joined them.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen," Nigel began. "It's only through great diligence and the fact that both of you are about to drive everyone in this morgue crazy, especially one Dr. Cavanaugh, that Dr. Macy gave us, meaning Jordan and I, permission to finish tracking down most of the leads on Philip Buchanan's death. May I ask that you pay attention to the screen in front of you and I, along with the lovely Dr. Cavanaugh, will firmly set your feet on the path to discovery."

And with that, Jordan flicked off the lights in the conference room...for two reasons. First, to make the screen easier to see. Second, to keep the men's attention focused on the facts....and not the testosterone levels in each other.

Nigel showed the first picture. "Here we have Dr. Cynthia Hough, an executive vice-president with the company Celluplate. She has a degree in engineering and has pioneered some of the smallest microchips known to man. She had just developed a tiny microchip that could be implanted beneath the skin of children....a sort of tracking device that could be activated if your child was ever snatched, kidnapped, or lost. Sort a GPS for kids. It was met with resounding success. But the folks at Celluplate weren't content with this. They began to develop microchips that would go one step further. This time, the chip could control behavior. This was a novel idea...just think what it could do with society's difficult citizens...repeat offenders....child molesters. But it took away the issue of free will...it was too "Big Brother" for Celluplate's investors and stockholders."

"But Cynthia wouldn't give up her dream," continued Jordan. "So she began to search out other possible sources of funding. Enter our Philip Buchanan." She showed the slide of Philip Buchanan. "As you know, Mr. Buchanan met Dr. Hough in the Hilton's restaurant for dinner. She had been dogging him for months to meet with her. Philip had heard of Celluplate's questionable ethical practices with these chips and really wanted nothing to do with Dr. Hough or her company. He met with her simply to shut her up....to tell her no to her face and get her to leave him alone. So they meet. They leave together, and sometime between the time they left together and Mr. Buchanan returned to the Hilton, the chip was implanted in his spinal cord."

"And this chip not only could control behavior, it also let Cynthia know where he was at...what was going on...it was sophisticated tracking and behavioral device. Highly developed. Very impressive," Nigel continued, now showing a detailed diagram of the chip. Philip returns to his hotel room with the chip in his neck...whether he was aware that he had the chip or not, we're not sure. It's hard to imagine with his background that he would willingly have the chip implanted....more than likely, somehow Cynthia got it into him without him knowing it. She may have drugged him..."

"But if she did that, the drug had a very short lifespan. His tox screens came back negative for everything but a decongestant," added Jordan. She may have somehow locally anesthetized the area. We just know he came back with it on the surface of his spinal column, right around this area." She pointed to an area on the back of her neck.

"And this is where it gets interesting. The hotel security cameras show Mr. Buchanan re-entering his hotel room at ten that evening...alone. Shortly after that, he dies of a stroke. The chip has interfered with the natural electrical impulses of his body....shorting them out....causing his massive stroke. The question now is, did Dr. Hough program the chip to interfere with Buchanan's own electrical system or did it happen accidentally? Did she not test the chip enough in primates before implanting it in Buchanan? And how did the chip tell her that her man was in trouble?"

"Either way, she found out. That's where this next character gets involved." Jordan flashed a picture of Avery Myers on the screen. "Meet Mr. Avery Myers. Insurance salesman from Connecticut. No tie to microchips, but a tie to Cynthia Hough. See Nigel ran some DNA that Myers left in his hotel room against some unknown DNA on Mr. Buchanan. Seems they're a pretty close match. We believe the unknown DNA belongs to Cynthia Hough. So Myers and Hough were at least cousins....Hough planted Myers in the hotel room next to Buchanan in order to keep an eye on him. When Hough discovered that Buchanan was dead of a stroke, she had Myers take care of the cover up."

"You see, gentlemen," Nigel picked up and showed a slide of the hotel's floor plant. "Mr. Buchanan's room and Mr. Myers' room were adjoining. There was a common door between the rooms that could be opened to form a type of suite. All Myers had to do was jimmy the door open and enter Mr. Buchanan's room. Donning a pair of latex gloves, Mr. Myers broke into the room, shot Mr. Buchanan, closed and relocked the common doors, and joined the disbelieving crowd in the hall a few minutes later when the gunshot was reported."

"So the case is mostly solved," Eddie said quietly, as Jordan turned the lights back on.

"There's a few loose ends, for sure," she replied. "How did the chip actually get into Buchanan and did he have it done willingly or was he not aware of it?"

"Good work," Woody admitted. "You've almost got it tied up. We've been searching for Cynthia Hough for a week now, and she hasn't surfaced...but she will."

"Yeah. Well at least I have the answers the MSBI needed," said Eddie. "The state keeps track of electronic sales and development....especially since 9/11. I think I can go back to them with this and keep them happy. I'll be turning the rest of the work back over to you, Hoyt."

Jordan silently sighed with relief. At least that was one of them gone....now if she could just get rid of Woody, her life and heart could return to normal. But he shouldn't need her so much now ... if not at all. There was a chance that she wouldn't work with him again. She began to gather her things together to go back to her office.