A Tangled Web (6)
Det. Sykes let out a soft groan as they crossed a narrow campus walkway toward a tall, glass-walled building. Noticing the sideways glance from Sanchez, she shrugged.
"This is the third building we've had to check. I'm just thinking it'd be so much easier if they just had the animal labs all in one building. You know?"
"Different departments, different labs," the Public Safety officer with them led the way up the entrance staircase. "Different buildings." He swiped his ID card to open the front doors. "This is the last one, though. Genomic Sciences center. Molecular Biology, Bio-Chemistry and Genetics are all in here. Do you have the room numbers you want?"
Sanchez held up the list they'd gotten from the Animal Resources director; a printed page with all the animal labs that James Donnell had had to take care of. After a quick glance at the paper, the Public Safety officer led them to the nearest one. With another card swipe, a metal door hissed open into a cream-walled corridor; Amy scrunched up her nose at the by-now-familiar rodent smell.
Next to her, Sanchez smirked knowingly, and she shot him a dry glance as they walked up to the mouse colony room.
"Don't even get me started on how they should have some kind of electronic sign-in system." She stopped in front of a door that read A331, the first number on their list. A hand-written sign-in sheet was pinned to the wall next to the door, which prompted Sykes to shake her head again. "Seriously. How is this the way they keep track of anything in a top research facility?"
With a silent shrug, Julio read the sheet. "There it is." He tapped a finger to the last filled out line. "J.D., nine forty-one p.m. last night. Food and water boxes are checked. Donnell was here, too."
Amy checked their notes. "That's the latest timestamp so far. He signed in to the last lab in the Neurobiology building at… nine-sixteen. The med school labs said eight forty-eight. Oh, and there was that bat room at nine oh-four." She couldn't help a grimace at that, eliciting another smirk from the other detective.
"You don't like bats, Sykes?"
"They're rats. With wings," she informed him. "And they suck the blood out of their prey. No one likes them."
"They can see at night using sonar vision." He sounded appreciative, but Amy remained unimpressed:
"I have a phone that can do that. And it doesn't give me rabies."
Sanchez flashed her one last amused look before his expression turned serious again, and he addressed the DPS officer. "Are there cameras here?"
"Only at the entrances."
"We're gonna need the footage from those, too."
The officer nodded; they'd requested the same from the last two research buildings, so he'd expected it this time, as well.
Having finished adding the latest information to their timeline, Sykes glanced up and down the corridor one last time. "Does everyone who comes into the building need to sign in?"
The man shook his head. "No. The only reason the Animal Resources guys do is so people can make sure the animals are being taken care of every day. If there's no note of someone feeding and changing their water, then one of the students will do it. That way the animals don't get mistreated," he explained.
The two detectives exchanged a slightly frustrated look; even though they now had a slightly better idea of Donnell's whereabouts, progress was slow.
"Let's check out the rest of the rooms on the list," said Julio.
They checked the sign-in sheets at a few other animal colony rooms, three of which smelled like mice, one with some weird ventilation noises coming from inside, and one that instantly became Sykes' favorite so far on account of no smell.
The Animal Resources director met them on their way out, just as they exited the elevator back onto the first floor.
"Did you find what you were looking for?"
Amy's eyebrows arched. "I thought you didn't work on Sundays."
"So did I," the older woman said dryly, "before the LAPD starting asking questions about animal research and my employees. I got a phone call from the dean…" She sighed, shaking her head. "You have no idea how sensitive this whole thing is. What did James do, anyway? He didn't harm any of the animals, did he?" She sounded anxious. "The last thing we need is to spark the interest of the PETA protesters… they usually prefer to make a scandal at the UCLA, and I'd like to keep it that way."
"We don't think he harmed any of the animals," Sykes allowed. "In fact it seems like he completed his rounds just fine last night." She left it unsaid that they might want to get someone else to do it tonight.
The DAR director let out a relieved breath. "Great. I told you, we never had any problems with him. So what happened?"
The two detectives exchanged a glance. It wasn't their obligation, or their habit, to reveal more information than necessary. Sanchez took a step forward.
"Ma'am, are you sure you don't have any poisonous animals on campus?"
The woman groaned. "Oh god, if the dean hears this. No, we don't – well, at least not in the research facilities," she amended. "I'm not responsible for what the students bring with them. Couple of years ago one of them snuck in a baby alligator."
"No… snakes? No … tarantulas?" Amy tried to think what else could fall under a similar category. "Scorpions…?"
"We're not the circus!" protested the director. "All we have are rodent colonies, a small primate colony, the echolocation lab… some zebrafish and sea slugs…" She made brief pauses as she mentally counted off their research labs.
"And you're sure none of the animals can be toxic in any form?" Amy reiterated.
"No! Well –" The woman paused.
Under Sanchez and Sykes' intent stares, she looked a little wary all of a sudden.
"Yes?" prompted Julio.
The DAR director pinched the bridge of her nose. "They're not poisonous… but I suppose there are the frogs..."
" – the tree frog toxin is on its way to the lab for testing. But if Dr. Morales is right, we can assume that's what caused Donnel's liver damage and hallucinations."
Sharon shook her head. No wonder the lab hadn't identified this. Two-inch frogs were far, far down on her list of possible weapons, too.
"Julio and Amy are bringing in the researchers in charge of the … frog lab." The things they had to deal with in their cases. "We'll see if one of them can explain how Mr. Donnell came into contact with the toxin. Did Provenza and Flynn check in?"
Tao nodded. "Nothing that stands out at our guy's home," he updated her. "No signs of a girlfriend or roommates, and no traces of any sort of home-made bomb materials. They're going to question the neighbors about Donnell, then bring in his computer and personal files."
A glance at the clock showed just past three-thirty. She'd been on this case over eight hours, and her team even longer. And all they had so far was an environmentally conscious opinion blog and a toxic tree frog.
Lowering the printouts of Donnell's phone records that she'd been scanning (two to his parents, one to the utilities company, and the rest to university numbers and local delivery places), she made her way toward the break room. It was definitely time for another coffee. She briefly considered texting to see if Rusty had gotten home… but he hadn't left that long ago and he wouldn't appreciate all the checking up on him.
She'd hoped that he might spent the rest of the afternoon at the station, after all it was plenty quiet on a Sunday and he'd have homework help from Buzz… but Rusty had pointed out that he hadn't brought his school things along and like, he could go get them if she really wanted him to, but…
She'd dropped it, of course, smiled and said 'just a thought' and finished the last bit of her salad on the safer topic of a grocery list.
Her eyes wandered over the phone records again as she waited for the break room coffee machine to finish a new batch, but her thoughts were elsewhere.
Maybe she owed Dr. Joe another call. Rusty had taken three weeks to finally consider going to see him for actual therapy, and then he'd gone once and had been postponing scheduling the second session since then. If something had happened during that one meeting, he hadn't told her about it and she'd run out of subtle ways to pry.
Of course, wheedling information out of the doctor instead wasn't a promising avenue, either – they'd been there already. 'Talk to Rusty', he'd say, and Sharon was trying, only… communication was a challenge, these days.
It was hard to tell how much of it was typical teenage sullenness, and how much of it was… something else.
And the inconsistency was maddening. One day everything was fine and the next Rusty was canceling plans on her abruptly and complaining that what did she expect, that he'd want to spend all his spare time hanging around police officers, he had like, an actual life, you know.
Which, granted, wasn't that far off the spectrum of typical teenage behavior.
Maybe she was overreacting.
Although if she had to hear 'what's the big deal, Sharon' one more time…
She allowed herself a small groan into the fresh coffee cup.
"Long day, huh, Ma'am?"
The voice startled her enough to send a little coffee spilling onto her skin, and Sharon swiveled on her heels to face the doorway. Her eyebrows arched.
"Officer Cooper." She easily slipped into her inscrutable Captain Raydor voice. "What are you still doing here?"
The young man cleared his throat. "Well, I'm off duty so I was going to get a coffee and… stick around, see if you need any extra help. Happy to assist."
Oh dear God. "The detailed incident report you gave Lt. Flynn is sufficient," she assured him.
"I don't mind, I mean if you can use –"
"Thank you," said Sharon, "but it's really not necessary for you to stay. You had a long shift last night. Go home." She stopped herself just before adding 'we've got this', because maybe there was such a thing as too much sarcasm.
"Sykes is with one of them in Interview 1, and the research assistant is waiting in Interview 2, Ma'am. The other two researchers are on their way in."
"What about the professor in charge of the lab?" asked Sharon.
Julio's expression grew a notch more deadpan. "He's at a conference. In Hawaii." His eyebrows rose fractionally. "He's getting paid to do that. Ma'am, can we go to conferences?"
Her lips curled in an amused smile. "Not with the Chief's budget cuts, I'm afraid."
"We should go to conferences," he informed her.
At his desk, Tao put down the phone before looking up. "Flynn and Provenza finished searching Donnell's house and talking to the neighbors. No signs of anything suspicious… and still no indication of who his friends might've been." He responded to the Captain's displeased expression with a sympathetic grimace. "They're on their way back with his laptop and personal files."
She nodded; that, at least, was sure to get them more information. Tao was truly a miracle worker when it came to digging out secrets from a variety of electronic equipment.
"Did we search Mr. Donnell's workspace at the university…?" Did he even have a workspace there? His job entailed zero desk time. "Is there some common office for the Animal Resources employees?"
"No assigned desk space, Ma'am," Julio replied, "but I think he had a locker. We didn't get to that, I'll look into…"
When he paused and gave a meaningful eyebrow wriggle in the direction of the door, Sharon half-turned and glanced over her shoulder. Disbelief crossed her face at the sight of Officer Cooper once again.
"Yes." She let a fair amount of impatience seep into her tone; was she going to have to order him to stop hanging around?
He walked up to her and handed her a handful of papers. "You left these in the break room, Captain."
Donnell's phone records. She took them, suppressing a sigh.
"Thank you." She looked meaningfully toward the door. "Enjoy the rest of your –"
"Hey, I know that guy."
His comment derailed Sharon's pointed suggestion that he take off; she followed his gaze to the murder board. "What?"
The young patrol officer tapped the photo, reading the name underneath. "James Donnell. I've seen him before."
Her eyes narrowed. "You told Lt. Flynn in your statement that you didn't know the victim."
He grimaced a little uncomfortably. "Well – uh, I didn't recognize him when we found him. His face was kind of…you know." Another grimace. "Anyway, yeah, I know that guy. Last month we caught him and his buddies getting high near the old shipyard."
Sharon glanced to Tao, who was already at his keyboard. "There's no record of his arrest anywhere," the lieutenant confirmed.
"We didn't arrest them," Cooper explained. "One of them had a permit, and they dumped everything over the side before we got to them… so we just let them off with a warning about smoking weed in public places and filled out an incident report."
There was a brief silence as they processed the news, then Sharon let out a long breath.
"Are you sure this was one of the men you saw?"
"Yes Ma'am. I have good photographic memory. That's him."
"Do you have a name for his friend who had the permit?" With the way Cooper and his partner were filling their incident reports, she had to ask.
When he confirmed that they did, Tao began to look up the report. "Danny Murray," he said after less than a minute. "Twenty-two, works as a delivery man for... a ... local hardware and supply store," he added as he read more. "Couple of mentions of marijuana possession in his records – Provenza's going to be happy," he noted, remembering the older lieutenant's earlier predictions, "but nothing serious. I've got an address here."
Sharon nodded, her expression thoughtful. Then she let out another long sigh. "Alright – Mike," she waited for Tao to look up from his screen again, "until Lts. Flynn and Provenza bring you the laptop, would you mind assisting Det. Sykes in interviewing the researchers who had access to the tree frogs? I want to know why, if these animals were poisonous, there weren't more safety measures in place – and if there were, I want to know how Mr. Donnell could have avoided them."
"Yes, Captain."
She gave him a restrained sort of smile, then turned her head to Sanchez. "Julio… with me. We're going to pay Mr. Murray a visit. Yes, Officer Cooper," she gave the young man a dry sideways glance when he took a step forward and opened his mouth, "you're coming too. I'm going to need you to identify the men you saw with Mr. Donnell."
It took most of her self control to not roll her eyes when he looked about ready to break into a celebratory dance.
The neighborhood looked peaceful enough, though maybe not the most luxurious of real estate. The houses were small, the yards not as well kept up as they could have been, paint was chipping here and there and there was rust around the street lamps and dust on the porches – but overall it looked like a quiet residential area.
Sanchez parked the car in front of a house painted grey-blue, and the three of them got out.
They walked up the dusty walkway to the front door, Julio staying a step ahead of Sharon and at the ready. When Officer Cooper fell into step with him, the detective responded with a pointed glare; the young man fell back only to see Sharon's impatient look instead.
The first knock on the door went unanswered.
Cooper glanced in through the window. "There's definitely movement in there. Someone's home."
Sanchez knocked again, louder. "Danny Murray?"
It took a third knock for someone to open the door, a girl in her late teens or maybe very early twenties. She gave them a dreamy smile and brushed an errant strand of unkempt hair from her forehead. Her smile froze a little as she studied the three of them more carefully. Then her gaze landed on Cooper's badge, and her eyes widened.
"Shit. Cops‼"
With that alarmed cry, she backpedaled into the house and made a straight line to the back door. A couple of other people stumbled over each other to follow her out. In the middle of the commotion, Sanchez stepped inside, followed immediately by the young patrol officer. Sharon walked in after them, wrinkling her nose as the strong smell hit her.
Noticing her reaction, Cooper gave a serious nod:
'That's weed, Ma'am," he informed her.
She spared him a wry look, lips pursing imperceptibly. "Thank you, officer." She refrained from adding that oh, that was what weed smelled like, wow, and here she'd gone thirty years on the force without knowing that.
Some other few young people were popping out from various corners and fleeing toward the back door with varying degrees of motor coordination. At the foot of the staircase, Sanchez stopped one of them with the aid of a hand on the shoulder and his scariest look. "Where's Danny?"
The boy's eyes widened. "Uh, upstairs, man, I didn't do anything, I'm not even, this isn't what it looks like, I was just like, looking for my…"
"Do you want to go to prison?" barked Julio. "Is that what you want?"
"No, dude! Like…no…!"
"Then I better not catch you doing anything like this again, do you get it?" He didn't wait for a reply before scowling harder. "I didn't hear you!"
The kid didn't know how to acknowledge the order faster, and he scrambled out as soon as Julio released him.
Sharon gave her detective an amused, knowing look. Sometimes he enjoyed the scary act a little too much. He kept up the straight face even as his shoulders twitched in a minute shrug.
"Doing what I can to keep kids away from drugs, Ma'am."
As the house emptied out, the three of them made their way up the stairs toward the room at the end of the hall. Again Julio took point, pulling out his gun and motioning Sharon to stay back. She did, although by the looks of it a violent confrontation was likely not in the cards.
The door to the room wasn't closed all the way; when Sanchez pushed it open, a pungent cloud erupted into the hallway.
Sharon took another step back, grimacing as her eyes began to sting. Even the detective had to clear his throat before speaking.
"Danny Murray?"
She peered into the room in time to see a young man glance up from his seat on the floor; there were two others with him, another man and a girl, the three of them seated around a low coffee table that held mugs, a few half-chewed pizza crusts, and the remains of what looked like a very elaborate board game.
"Are you Danny Murray?" Julio asked again, though they could all recognize Danny from his DMV photo.
"Uh… yeah, man." He stared at the gun in the detective's hand. "Is that like, real?"
"Yeah." The scary act was back. "You know what else is real?" Julio showed his badge. "LAPD. We're gonna need you to accompany us downtown."
"Awesome," the girl giggled.
Cooper pointed to the other young man. "He was also with Murray and Donnell that day at the docks. I recognize him, too."
Sharon stepped around the coffee table, glancing down at the man. "What's your name?"
"Uh…Diego…?"
She waited, and he just stared up looking confused at her still-expectant expression.
"Last name, genius," growled Sanchez.
"Oh. Uh. Do I have to tell you that?" He glanced between the three of them. "Don't you need like, a warrant?"
"Not to ask you to identify yourself, no," Sharon said with a smile.
"Oh."
The girl peered up at Sharon. "You've got like, seriously awesome hair." Then she noticed the bong on the table and tried to surreptitiously cover it with a pile of board game cards.
The top card read 'Dilapidated Haunted Catacombs!' in bold horror-movie-font letters.
Sharon was getting a headache.
It took another five minutes to finally ID and rouse the three, and convince them that yes, they did actually have to come downtown and no, they couldn't stop for fries on the way. 'Diego' asked for a lawyer once and the bathroom three times. The girl tried to curl her fingers through Sharon's hair when Sharon wasn't looking.
The Captain prayed for patience, and hoped that the sense of calm enveloping her was a response to the circumstances, not the weed.
And ugh, she was just never going to get the smell out of her clothes.
No cliffhanger! But I *will* say that one of the lines in this chapter is a thinly veiled prediction of what awaits one of our favorite characters in the not-too-distant future.
Thanks for reading. You know I love hearing from you! How else can I survive the next eighty-six days with my sanity more-or-less intact?
(just kidding - my sanity hasn't been intact since 1999.)