Monthly Fiction

Fiction of the Month

The Man Who Moved Too Fast

by Roman Sympos

Part 1 Sunday

11:54 PM.

It was getting late, and he could feel the drug wearing off.

He read the last paragraph to see if it made sense. It seemed to. He'd know for sure tomorrow morning when he could re-read, at an ordinary pace, the seventy-eight pages he'd dictated in the last hour and a half and compress it into more concise data points for his colleagues and lab assistants.

"Frank?"

Gerry was standing in the doorway.

“Are you coming to bed?” she asked. "It's almost midnight."

"Be right there," he said to his screen.

He saved the file, closed the laptop, and followed his wife down the hall.

This was the routine Frank Sorensen had fallen into since the moment he and his group at MIT had signed on with Douleia Pharmaceuticals to develop Accelera, the firm’s registered trademark for a modified version of catataxeine, also known as “CTX.” The drug held tremendous promise as a weapon against several neurological disorders, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. In moderate doses, it heightened attentiveness and sped up recognition, as well as sensory perception generally, with few of the negative side-effects associated with traditional stimulants, like coffee or tea. Because adrenaline levels remained steady, hyperactivity, anxiety, manic affect, and irritability were minimal to non-existent. And as far as anyone could tell, the drug was non-addictive.

Frank was intimately familiar with the effects of CTX, and not just as a researcher. The plant that produced it, hirotaipé, had yet to come under the regulatory control of the FDA. Classified as an herbal remedy, it had become, within months of its discovery on a remote island in the Bay of Bengal, an over-the-counter item in head shops from Massachusetts to Maui and vitamin supplement aisles in major drugstore chains. It was the weedy inverse of marijuana. Smoke a couple of joints and you could work all night and past sunrise.

Like millions of his fellow citizens, Frank took CTX pills to increase his work efficiency, and because hirotaipé was unregulated, his continuing to do so after becoming chief researcher for the Accelera project posed no conflict-of-interest problems for either MIT or the FDA. His receiving compensation from Douleia in the form of stock options, however, did—or would have, if a firewall hadn’t been put in place. This took the form of an independent oversight committee of MIT faculty appointed by the Provost, with administrative duties put in the hands of a project manager working for Douleia. An MIT colleague, Clyde Wharton, oversaw day-to-day operations at the lab. Wharton received no corporate stipend.

Frank proved himself worth every penny of Douleia’s hire. Just months ago he’d succeeded in tweaking the plant’s genome to increase its yield of catataxeine ten-fold. That meant Douleia could produce enough of the refined derivative for sufficient animal and eventual human testing much faster than any of their competitors, and the tweaked gene was patentable, unlike ordinary hirotaipé, which had been found in the wild. The firm was already well into testing lab rats in preparation for Phase 1 clinical trials on human subjects. Once Phase 1 began, however, Frank would have to give up any form of compensation, which FDA regulations strictly prohibited in the testing of human subjects. He was already hard at work on the next research stage: synthesizing this new, supercharged version of CTX in the lab.

Frank saw no reason to wait for lab results before growing the new variant, which he called hirotaip-B ("Hero Type-B," or just "B"), for his own use. He had several tubs of it in his basement, sitting under the UV lights next to his Type A specimens. He'd kept the existence of his cellar terrarium a secret, even from his wife. It was locked in a room that Gerry and the kids knew better than to mess with—“my home lab,” Frank called it. He had good reason to take precautions. Douleia prohibited growing or removing any Type B plants outside its high security greenhouses in Acton, and any hint that the lead researcher on the Accelera project was using Type B could invalidate the lab results, jeopardize the company’s patent application, and make Frank liable to criminal prosecution. As for his own health, Type A’s unregulated availability, in weed or pill form, already amounted, in Frank’s eyes, to an extramural lab test on the general population with no ill effects so far, and just one odd, counter-intuitive symptom: acceleration of the brain's rate of sensory input gave smokers the impression that time was slowing down.

Frank used a film analogy at a press conference about his Type-B breakthrough to explain the effect. “What happens to your brain when you watch a football replay in slow motion?” he asked. “It’s taking in more information per second for every second of the game you’re watching, so it perceives that world as slowing down relative to its own internal clock. You speed things up by reducing information. You slow things down by increasing it.”

Tempus extenta (“stretched time”) is what the lab techs called it. Head cases called it "drag." One heavy user of Type A CTX claimed to have caught a fly on the wing, between finger and thumb, the way a frog might catch one on its tongue.

In moderate doses, hiro reliably increased worker productivity and reduced job-related accidents. Outside the workplace, jazz musicians used it to help them navigate improvisations, and athletes to achieve better focus and response times (until several sports leagues banned it). Cops and criminals were habitual users.

But there were limits to how far a user could go in seeking a competitive edge. First of all, there was only so much hirotaipé you could smoke, eat, pop, or drink before its effects began to plateau, and so little CTX in a single Type A leaf that you’d have to smoke a bushel of them to reach even that point.

Type A in large doses also had two otherwise innocuous side-effects that placed a ceiling on its potential as a stimulant: fatigue and sheer boredom, often leading to periods of distraction. Absent any rise in adrenaline, the body's inertia and energy levels remained the same regardless of how fast the brain was processing incoming signals. The user felt sluggish, not invigorated. Adrenaline is stimulated by new challenges or threats. On high doses of hiro the faster brain seemed harder to surprise, and waiting for something to surprise it only taxed its patience. Attention would begin to wander.

These negative side effects were not as pronounced in users performing mental tasks: academics in general, novelists, number crunchers. Or researchers like Frank. Dictating your thoughts into a voice-to-text recorder, even at a faster rate, wasn't nearly as exhausting as fielding a grounder through what felt like a head wind. Mental tasks were not sensory, technically speaking, and that included mental images. They were the brain’s re-activation of neurons previously stimulated by sensory input. Thus, their speed more closely matched the brain’s processing speed, which diminished the feeling of drag. Finally, mental challenges were more varied, prolific, and unpredictable than those in real life, fending off boredom. The imagination was infinite, reality finite.

Such were the intrinsic limitations of Type A. The much higher levels of CTX in Type B, however, immediately made it an FDA target. A ruling was still at least a year away, but since the announcement of Type B, investment in Douleia had soared. The company was betting on ultimate approval for both the new plant and its derivative, based on the street-level evidence of habitual Type A users: at a certain point, no matter how much of the parent plant you consumed, you reached a ceiling you couldn't get past, with no serious side-effects.

In just a few weeks of smoking Type B, Frank had broken through that ceiling.

Following Gerry into the bedroom, he heard his phone ring: "Unknown Caller." He let it go to voicemail. He assumed it was Pat and that the man would try again, from a different number, by morning.

Frank set the phone to "Sleep" mode and tried his best to set himself likewise.

Without much success.

MONDAY

1:30 PM

Tobin Harris watched as the woman and her friend reached for their purses.

The two of them had finished lunch a while ago, but were reluctant to leave. It was a beautiful day here on the roof deck of Pier 6, after a weekend of showers. A sailboat was coming about on the calm surface of the Inner Harbor, and the sun was high and warm. Spring was here. Why not enjoy it?

Tobin had paid his check well before this moment, taking up space and looking at his Apple watch while pretending to wait for someone. In those twenty minutes he'd had time to appreciate how attractive the woman was. It surprised him when he got his first glimpse of her in person. Mother of two. The photo didn't do her justice.

He'd already visited the restroom, passing the woman’s table just as a belligerent drunk at the other end of the roof deck started bellowing for the waiter because his hamburger was underdone. Everyone turned to look, including the woman and her friend. It was easy to slip the envelope into her purse, with a corner peeking out.

Hiro helped make it easy. Or at least, easier. Not that the assignment was hard to begin with, if you spent your life working at it.

Tobin and the belligerent drunk (his younger brother, Doug) had grown up in Rindge Towers, back when North Cambridge was the boonies and the three high-rise, low-income tenements were perpetual crime scenes: junkies and hookers in the stairwells, battered spouses behind closed doors. There was laundry hanging from the windows and plastic bags clinging like Christmas ornaments to the stunted trees along Alewife Parkway. The brothers learned their trade—picking pockets—from the older boys, who recruited them for a wire mob run by a Faginesque character named Dent. The boys honed their skills drifting through the rush-hour crowds in Alewife Station, at the terminus of the MBTA Red Line. Starting out as shades and stalls and duke men, the Harris brothers were soon working on their own. Tobin, a born fine-wirer, would sometimes go single-o, but not often. The brothers enjoyed each other's company. Doug admired Tobin's legerdemain and Tobin was entertained, generally speaking, by Doug's Oscar-worthy performances.

When the waiter arrived with their check, Tobin watched the woman reach into her purse and discover the envelope. She showed it to her friend.

Done, thought Tobin.

"Not me," said Sybil. "Is it your birthday?"

"It's addressed to “Dr. Sorensen.'"

"Then definitely not from me. Could be a grad student, maybe. Teaching assistant?"

"I don't have any this term," said Gerry, staring at the envelope.

After the waiter left with their credit cards, Gerry read the note inside. She showed it to Sybil.

"See how easy it could be?" read Sybil aloud. "Who's 'Pat'?"

Gerry shrugged.

"Really? Not some secret admirer?"

Gerry gave her a dismissive look.

"Someone at the Museum of Fine Arts?"

"This wasn't in here when I left the MFA."

"Maybe it's for Frank. The other 'Dr. Sorensen?"

"Maybe. I'll ask when I get home. But how did it end up in my purse?"

After leaving the restaurant, Tobin headed for the Dunkin' Donuts at the entrance to a nearby apartment building. It took Doug a long while to join him—or seemed to. It was hard to tell when you smoked hiro. He hoped Doug hadn't gotten carried away. He was something of a Method actor. One time he had to be bailed out of the Suffolk County Jail.

Tobin took tiny bites of his sugar glazed and sipped his coffee as slowly as he could. He'd just eaten, but he had to keep up appearances. The seconds dragged on. He stared out the window. Just as he was taking out his cell phone to scroll through "Messages" for the third time, Doug appeared.

"Took you long enough," said Tobin.

"I left two minutes after you," said Doug, sitting down. "You should lay off that stuff. You don't need it."

Tobin looked at Doug and raised his eyebrows inquisitively.

"All good,” said Doug. “But was that really necessary? Make a scene, kiss the dog?"

"You weren't facing her and she had no reason to look at me."

"Yeah, but why take the chance?"

"He didn’t answer last night," Tobin said, “so Dent thinks it’s time to tighten the screws.” He pointed to the coffee and the maple-frosted in front of his brother. "You must be hungry. Eat."

5:22 PM

By the time she finished teaching and holding office hours and picking up the twins from after-school, she'd forgotten about the envelope. It wasn't until Frank walked in the door that she remembered.

He read the note and paused a beat too long. Then he sighed and shook his head. "Sorry." He tossed the envelope and the note in the wastebasket.

"Do you know anyone named 'Pat"? she asked, plucking out the note.

"Me? Sure. But there are two 'Dr. Sorensens’ in this family. It was in your purse. How many 'Pats' do you know?"

His tone was prickly, defensive. It fit a pattern of irritability that had emerged in the last couple of weeks beyond what could be chalked up to the ordinary administrative pressures that went with any serious commitment to high-end biotech nowadays—all the administrative scutwork that attached itself like a swelling parasite to the excitement of academic research and sucked the life out of it.

She’d felt that excitement, working her own little plot of Chinese art history, Shang Era bronzes. She knew the high that could last for days when, in an instant, a whole network of connections between this and that and a dozen other pieces of information flashed out at you like the exfoliated tubes of a neon sign.

But you didn't need millions of dollars of private and government investment or thousands of square feet of lab space to tease out the philosophical implications of zoomorphic designs at Anyang. You just needed access to the relevant archives or collections, like the Museum of Fine Arts. A generous travel stipend wouldn’t hurt either.

Gerry understood the differences between her research and Frank's, the differences in expense and time-demands and the real-life consequences of messing up anywhere along the line. The impact that one missed deadline could have not just on an academic career, but on the lives and livelihoods of thousands of colleagues and grad students and lab assistants and technicians and investors and white-collar workers in related industries, not to mention the quality of life of millions of people.

That's why, from the beginning, she'd put up with Frank's congenital absent-mindedness and taken on most of the child-raising and household chores herself. These weren't onerous, given the their combined income. They could afford the best child-care and housecleaning services, and in fact, Gerry was surprised at how much enjoyment she'd gotten from being with the twins, watching them grow physically and mentally and emotionally. She'd felt delight—and pride, of course—at each new accomplishment as Charlie and Marianne moved through the stages of infancy, then preschool. She only wished she could have shared these moments with Frank.

When the twins entered kindergarten Gerry found more time to devote to her career. Her standing in the field rose rapidly. The kids were now sixth graders at Buckingham, Brown, and Nicols and she'd just earned tenure. But the enhanced opportunities for sharing a life together, which raising young children had opened up for her and her spouse, were, by this point, severely diminished. Frank had always been wrapped up in his research—he was a certified genius, after all, and had the prizes and awards to prove it. But once he began working on hirotaipé he'd found less time than ever to spend with the three of them. His breakthrough with Type B, and Douleia's rush to lab trials, had amplified the distance. Frank was no longer interested in Gerry or the twins. Or anything, it seemed, but his work.

Gerry suspected that Frank's smoking hiro every night played a bigger role in his mental withdrawal than his habitual dedication to research did. She was well-read in catataxeine's effects and had come to hate its cinnamon smell. Frank was the stereotypical absent-minded professor, prone to run formulas and equations in his head at the dinner table while suspending a forkful of mashed potatoes halfway to his lips. He now needed personal coaching just to eat. He'd been losing weight, along with sleep, and his sexual appetite had vanished along with his appetite for food.

And now, "Pat."

"Mom." It was Marianne. "Tassie Cunningham just called. Can I go with her and her mom to the Mall?"

Tassie’s father, Stuart, was the project manager for the Accelera account.

"We're having dinner soon," said Gerry. She’d just placed the frying pan on the burner to heat and was reaching for a pouch of quinoa.

"After?"

"It's a school night. But I'll tell you what. We'll go after school tomorrow. How's that? Charlie, too. I'll pick you up."

"Tassie, too?"

"I'll have to ask her mom."

Tassie would reduce squabbling between the twins.

She'd thought her husband's latest, most severe phase of indifference was linked to his consumption of the new, more powerful variant of hiro. But he denied it, reminding her that Type B was kept under strict security. As she unwrapped the trout fillets, she wondered if his almost total indifference to her could have something to do with another kind of attachment. Maybe Frank hadn't lost his appetite for sex but redirected it. Maybe he'd fallen out of love with her and in love with "Pat."

See how easy it could be?

How easy what could be? To do it right under her nose?

She opened the pouch and put it in the microwave to heat up, then wet her hand under the faucet and flicked it over the hot oil in the pan, watching it sizzle.

See how easy it could be?

Frank saw.

He saw how easy it could be to maim, kill, or kidnap his wife and children.

The first time Pat called, Frank had hung up as soon as he realized what the caller was asking for. He didn't ring the police, or Stuart. He was simply at a loss and hoped the problem would go away. Maybe Pat would take "no answer" for the answer "no."

The second time Pat called, using a different "Unknown Caller" number, Frank stayed on the line to learn more. He'd had time to get worried.

"The people I work for," said Pat, "all they want is some seeds. Type Bs. That's it. And they pay well."

"That's proprietary," said Frank. "I could go to jail."

"Hey, I understand your position, Dr. Sorensen," said Pat. "If it was up to me, no problemo. We'd go our separate ways. But the people I work for," he went on, "they aren't as reasonable as me. They don't like me giving them bad news. And they know where you live." He recited Frank's address on Appleton Street. "They know your wife's office address, at BU. They know when she drops your kids off at BB&N, and when she picks them up."

"Don't call me again," said Frank, "or I'll call the police."

"I wouldn't do that if . . . "

Frank hung up. Pat had turned his worry into fear.

"Unknown Caller" rang twice more, including last night, then stopped. Left no message. Frank thought that was that.

See how easy it could be?

Gerry's cryptic note meant Pat would call again, soon.

“We’re just sitting down to eat,” whispered Frank. Tobin could barely hear him at the other end of the line. “I’ll have to take this outside.”

"Then hang up and go outside,” said Tobin. “I'll call again in five. Just keep in mind—if anyone's listening, we'll know."

Tobin hung up and waited. The five minutes seemed to take forever. No more hiro, he vowed silently. Enough of that shit.

Dent was standing next to him, texting—presumably to Shadow Man. Shadow Man didn't contact independents like Tobin unless he had a job that required their skill set. Then he'd go through Dent.

On offer this time: $20k for Dent to find someone to set it up. $10k for the set-up man. $100k for Frank Sorensen, in cash. All for just eight ounces of Type B seeds. In a month, the seeds would mature and germinate. By the end of the year Type B plants indistinguishable from Type A would cover several acres of remote farmland in North Carolina. Street value: in the tens of millions.

Tobin was contacted for jobs like this because he had a light touch with people as well as their things—got himself on their side, saved time and effort. Avoided mess. He had something else even more valuable. He'd never been arrested as an adult. Did juvie twice, but that record was erased when he turned eighteen. No mug shots, no prints in the system. If he ever appeared on a surveillance camera, or if his dabs showed up at a crime scene, there'd be no way to identify him.

"Time?" muttered Dent, not looking up. The continuous pinging on his phone said he wasn't texting. He was gambling.

Tobin grabbed the next burner in the bin and punched in Frank's number. He set the phone on the table, on speaker. Frank picked up before the first ring ended.

Tobin gave Frank an address in East Boston and a time, 10 am tomorrow. Clearly, he knew Frank's routine, knew he worked at home in the morning.

"Listen, Pat," Frank replied, "I'll need an extra day to get what you want, and you’ll need to wait until 2 pm. That's when my wife teaches on Wednesdays. I won't have to make up an excuse."

Tobin looked at Dent. Dent nodded, then mouthed, Ten, not two.

"Ok, Wednesday,” said Tobin, “but 10 am, like I said. You'll find the cash there, waiting for you."

"I don't need your money and I don't want . . . "

Tobin told Frank where to park and hung up.

"A stall, do you think?" asked Dent.

"If so, it didn't last long enough to make any difference."

"I don't mean cell towers. I mean the 2 pm."

"Maybe it's just like he said. But what difference does it make?"

"I don't like the mark setting the terms. And I don't like him refusing the money."

Tobin shrugged. "Conscience. It happens. Let's leave it and see." The cash wasn't just a quid pro quo. Taking it would make Frank Sorensen a paid accomplice, giving him another incentive to keep his mouth shut.

"Sometimes you have to let them smell it,” Tobin added, and tossed the burner into the discard bin.

He left the room and headed over to Jackie's. They had a date to watch the Celtics play the Bucks. On the way he wondered, for the umpteenth time, why he was still licking up crumbs under Shadow Man's table.

Or to be more precise, under Dent's chair at the table.

Gerry and the twins were almost finished eating.

"Was it there?" she asked.

It took Frank a moment to remember what she was talking about.

"No," he replied.

First a phone call, a whispered greeting Gerry didn't catch. Then, in reply to her question, something about the lab needing something. From a file. In the car.

When was the last time anyone needed a paper copy of anything?

"I looked everywhere," he said, sitting down, "under the seats . . . ."

"What was it?"

"Nothing important."

Nothing important. But he'd looked under the seats and "everywhere."

In the next minute he was voyaging on strange seas of thought, alone.

"Aren't you going to call them back?" asked Gerry.

"Who?" asked Frank.

"The lab," said Gerry. "To say you couldn't find it."

"Oh, yeah," said Frank. "After dinner. And, by the way, I won't be home Wednesday morning. Meeting with Stuart at 10 am."

She and Frank usually spent the mornings working at home. It was the nearest thing they had to spending time together, even if they worked on different floors of the house and exchanged barely half a dozen words.

"Is that who called?"

"No." He didn't elaborate.

"Well, I'll be at the MFA the rest of the week, every morning until lunchtime, remember? So it won't matter to me." Hadn't she said where she'd be? Yes, she had. He'd forgotten. But why would he tell her about the meeting at all, and two days ahead of time? That wasn't her Frank.

Stuart? thought Gerry.

No, Pat.

PART 4:

“Yep,” said Sam. “Absolutely crazy.”

He was sitting in Hart’s office, reviewing Blalock’s conclusions.

“And she’s sure?”

Hart nodded. He was wearing his blue suit today. It just fit.

“Well, we don’t need to muddy the water so badly that the jury can’t find our silver coin at the bottom of the pond. We just need to show that any excelsior stuck in the gas nozzle—if any was stuck there—couldn’t have caused death by CO poisoning.”

“Or triggered the oxygen depletion sensor,” added Hart. “The carbon monoxide it produced wouldn’t even have set off your standard household CO detector.”

“Great!” said Sam, beaming. “Seals the deal.” He took a step toward the door.

“Not necessarily,” said Hart. “It means that once the excelsior was burned away the heater would have continued working correctly until it was out of gas. It wouldn’t have filled the shed with propane. And,” Hart continued before Sam could interrupt, “when it was found there was still gas in the tank.”

“It’s not up to us to explain why or how,” replied Sam. “Again, let’s not muddy . . . .”

“But the litigants could muddy it. They could suggest the flame was suffocated by accumulating carbon monoxide.”

“But they’d have to prove the Little Devil was emitting it, and Blalock’s tests show it couldn’t have.”

“No. They show that excelsior wasn’t the cause.” Hart paused to think. “The serial number matches the one on Stevie Macuso’s receipt for the new heater, right?”

“Right.”

“Were there any fingerprints on it besides Stevie’s?”

“Just Joe Mancuso’s,” said Sam. “Which is to be expected—it’s his workshop. Hey, look.” He stood up to leave. “I appreciate your thoroughness, but unless someone can show that Mo Calder had a reason to mess around with the heater he sold to Stevie I think we’ve done the necessary for our client.”

“They’d need help,” said Hart. “If it was an obstruction, I mean.” He was staring at the fish tank he’d set up on the shelving between the windows just the day before. The 30-gallon version wouldn’t fit, so this would have to do for the office. Two swordtails were paddling lazily under the fluorescent light, which every now and then made their colors flash iridescent. He found the fish calming, a good mental focus, their colors popping like insights at the end of a long, meandering line of thought.

“Ok. Even better,” said Sam. “Plaintiff needs to finger two suspects if they decide to go after Calder for murder. But they're not.” He looked at his watch and reached for the doorknob.

“You really don’t like him, do you?” asked Hart.

“I don’t trust him,” said Sam. Then, raising his voice, “Once a player . . .”

“His retainer check was good, wasn’t it?”

“I jus’ don’ like doin’ bidness wit’ ‘im!” Sam yelled, wagging his head in a deliberate parody of the man in question. He stopped to collect himself. “Makes me feel dirty. Like I have to watch my back.”

“He’s trying to be friendly,” Hart said.

“You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” asked Hart.

“Shit.”

With that, Sam pulled the door open, stepped through, and slammed it behind him.

Staring at the swordtails, Hart said again, to no one in particular, “They’d need help.”

“So,” said Ulrich.

He and Fallon were sitting at Fallon’s desk eating lunch. Ulrich had his suitcoat draped over the back of his chair and his tie tucked into his shirt, out of the way. He took a bite of his salad, put down the container and plastic fork, and swallowed before asking, “What’d you learn?”

Fallon, coat sleeves pushed up, was hunched over a paper napkin on his desk that was already spotted with drippings from a King’s double bacon cheeseburger. He wondered why Ulrich couldn’t see his mouth was full. This always happened. Maybe Ulrich timed it for when his mouth was full. That would be more his style. He reminded Fallon of his mother sometimes, without the knuckle on the cranium.

Fallon finished chewing and unhunched himself. “Nothing and something.” He put down the burger and wiped his mouth.

He and Ulrich had spent the morning interviewing the parents of the victims. Fallon had visited Joe Mancuso and Alice Pomeroy, along with Mike Walker’s mom and dad. Ulrich got Pat Lafferty’s parents and Maria Sobczynski, Chris Walker’s divorced mom. The two detectives wanted to know if there were any friends, besides the dead ones, that Marianne Pomeroy was seeing on her clandestine visits to Gloucester after she became a star. Also, more about the relationship between her and her stepbrother.

“What’s the ‘nothing’?” asked Ulrich.

“No one I talked to knew who Marianne Pomeroy was meeting with, or if she was meeting anyone at all,” said Fallon.

“Same here,” Ulrich replied, and resumed eating.

“Joe and Alice insist she was reconnecting with—and I quote—‘the usual gang.’ That would be Mike and Chris Walker and Pat Lafferty. But when I asked for particulars, they said that’s what Marianne told them. They never saw her with any of them.”

“And Mike Walker’s parents?”

“They said they knew nothing about their son meeting up with Marianne, or anything about her visits home.”

Ulrich nodded. “Same result with the Laffertys and Mrs. Sobczynski. Got the distinct impression none of the older crowd were especially fond of Marianne Pomeroy. Mrs. Lafferty said “good riddance” when I asked about Marianne’s leaving town. Now Pat had a chance to straighten herself out.”

“Meaning?”

“The usual. ‘Bad influence.’ ‘Not my kid, someone’s else’s kid.’ She was smoking dope, failing courses. Had to be Marianne, right?”

Fallon shook his head. Ulrich continued.

“Marianne leaves, Pat graduates, becomes a podiatrist. Living her dream.”

“Case closed,” said Fallon.

“I asked about Stevie. Something weird there, the Laffertys think. At one point Pat had a crush on him.”

Fallon took a bite of his burger and mulled this over. “And?” he asked.

“Went nowhere.”

“No love lost between the Laffertys and Barbara Gillis, either,” said Ulrich.

“And Christine's mom, what's her name? Maria?”

“Same thing. She says Gillis is a liar.”

“Anything else?”

Ulrich described his interview with Chris Sobczynski’s mother, who had a lot more to say. Married name “Rodzinski.” Came to this country with her husband in 1999, settled in San Diego.

“She was pregnant at the time. He took up with someone else, they got a divorce, Maria changed to her maiden name and moved out here with her infant daughter.”

“Why here?” asked Fallon.

“Has a sister living in Beverly,” said Ulrich.

“Sounds like she’s had to tell this story before. Or felt she had to.”

“I got the impression it’s something she recites whenever she meets someone new. That accent, though. Made it hard to follow.”

“Never assimilated, it sounds like. I’m not surprised she wasn’t invited to dinner at the Beauport. Anything else?”

“She wasn’t happy when Chris took up with Mike Walker, after he dumped Pat. She didn’t like Chris hanging out with ‘dem hooligans.’”

“Can’t blame her.”

“But it turned out Chris drew Mike away from the gang, not the other way around. Mrs. Sobczynski was over the moon when they got married and she became a grandmother.”

Ulrich waited to see if Fallon had any more questions before asking, “What’s the ‘something’?”

Fallon had asked Alice Pomeroy about her husband’s whereabouts that night. Just procedure, he said, to eliminate suspects. She said the two of them went to bed around ten. The detective asked if they shared the same bedroom.

“She hesitated,” said Fallon, “then nodded and said ‘yes.’” He took another bite of his burger, tucked it in his cheek. “Honest people are the worst liars.”

“So she swears Joe was there next to her all night, until we arrived at the house.”

Fallon nodded, swallowed. “I asked her if they had a housekeeper. Before Alice could say they didn’t—a blatant lie, of course—Joe asked why I wanted to know, giving it away. Did the housekeeper ever go into the workshop? I asked. He said no. I called the cleaning agency on the way here, got hold of her. She didn’t want to say anything that might get her in trouble, but I could tell by her accent she was Hispanic, so I played the ICE card.”

Fallon stuck some fries in ketchup to avoid Ulrich’s stare, then, after a few seconds of stirring them around, he said, “Joe and Alice sleep in separate rooms.”

They finished their lunch in silence and began cleaning up before Fallon added, as if it were an afterthought, “Alice saw Barbara Gillis there, at the restaurant, as they were leaving."

“She said so?”

“I asked her.”

"Did they exchange words?"

“Hi and goodbye, says Alice. I asked if she mentioned the afterparty in the shack.”

“And?”

“She doesn’t remember,” said Fallon.

Part 5:

“You really don’t know shit, do you?”

Hart caught the note of wonder in Monica’s voice.

Monica Spinoso seldom wondered. Sarcasm was her preferred mode of communication. Being perceptive and smart, she didn’t have many opportunities to wonder and little use for it. She was quick with comebacks and quick to judge, with a vocabulary as wounding as her Italian surname, which meant “thorny.” All of that was belied by her tall, blonde, Botticelli good looks, lovely as a white rose and just as painful if you were careless.

Having known Monica and Sam since high school, Hart had long-since learned how to smell the rose without getting hurt.

The two of them were walking along the esplanade next to Stacy Boulevard on this unusually warm and sunny last morning of February, Monica pushing a stroller holding her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Portia, dozing inside. The flower beds were just rectangles of dirt and the sunlight was dim, but people were out pretending spring was just around the corner.

“I guess I don’t,” Hart shrugged. The blue suit, he noticed, was feeling a little too comfortable.

“The tat you saw? On Mo Calder?”

“Yeah—a tear drop, it looked like.”

“It means he belonged to ‘Tracks.’ That was one of the gangs in the street fight that killed Sam’s brother.”

Hart was silent. It all made sense. Except the connection between “tracks” and a tear drop.

“From the song, ‘Tracks of My Tears,’” said Monica, reading his thoughts.

More silence.

“Smoky Robinson and the Miracles?” Monica had found something else to wonder at. “And ‘tracks’ are also . . . .”

“I know, I know, needle marks,” said Hart. “I get it.”

“Frankly,” said Monica, “I don’t know why Sam stayed with this case, defending a man involved in murdering his brother.”

“Just shows his dedication. To NOSHLA. And to you.”

“To me?”

“It was your idea, wasn’t it? North Shore Legal Aid? And taking on paying clients to fund the pro bono work?”

“He signed on from the start,” said Monica.

Hart didn’t contradict her. He knew, without Sam even telling him, that Monica would never have married him otherwise. He also knew Sam must be hurting a lot if he could pass up more billable hours on Mo Calder’s invoice just to shorten the time he’d have to spend with the former gangster.

At this point Portia woke up and needed changing, so they stopped at a bench to perform the ritual. People stopped to look, and not just because a tall, beautiful woman was changing a diaper in public. Portia was a gorgeous visual anomaly: a brown baby with ringlets of blonde hair, like her mother’s. The reason for the attention annoyed Monica, but she kept her cool. She was proud of her little girl. When she finished, the three of them resumed their walk toward Stage Fort Park, Portia sucking noisily on a pacifier.

“That suit’s looking good on you,” said Monica. “You must be losing weight. Stuck on something, I’m guessing.”

She’d been briefed by Sam, but Hart laid it out for her again as briefly as he could, including the technical details of the Little Devil and ending with his two-perps theory of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. He often used Monica as a human evidence board.

“And just this morning,” he added, “I read that a counterfeiting ring has been wholesaling Little Devils at discount prices. The ringleaders have been arrested but the fake machines may be responsible for the recent uptick in customer complaints and lawsuits, some involving CO emissions. We’re waiting to see if Calder will be named in the indictment.”

“And if he is?”

“Doesn’t look good for him or for us, if the propane heater found at the scene turns out to be one of these cheap knockoffs. We’ll have to have it examined and see. More delay, more paperwork.”

“So it might not have been excelsior stuck in the burner?”

Hart gave a deep sigh. “It couldn’t have been. The excelsior wouldn’t have produced enough carbon monoxide to kill a fly,” said Hart. “The burn pattern on the heater, though, does match the pattern produced by burning excelsior, according to forensics.”

“So,” she said, “if excelsior contamination from the new heater’s been ruled out, it had to be the faulty heater that did them in?”

Hart nodded. “No point in using a magnet on the new one, the one left at the scene. It wasn’t emitting carbon monoxide.”

“Assuming there was a magnet involved.”

“There had to be. The oxygen depletion sensor . . .”

“Right,” said Monica. “I forgot.”

“Someone might have doctored the new one to make it produce CO, at least theoretically—put something non-combustible in the burner tip, say, to disturb the oxygen flow and then removed it—but no one’s demonstrated that would work and I doubt Mo Calder would agree to paying thousands of dollars to test every conceivable candidate.”

“Nor would Sam,” said Monica. “He wants this over. So, how does a two-person scenario help you make a case for homicide when a one-person scenario doesn’t?”

“Not just any ‘person.’ I’m zeroing in on Stevie. I’m trying to give Sam a reason to point the finger at the stepbrother, some other ‘cause of death’ besides the Little Devil and Mo Calder’s slipshod warehousing.”

“Or counterfeiting. Ok. Go.”

“Stevie’s already in the police crosshairs. They have a motive—not the best, I admit—in his share of the inheritance from Marianne’s estate should his father predecease him, and they have means and opportunity from his own witness statement: a) he volunteered to bring a heater, and b) he left it going when he went to get more wine. He says the victims were still alive when he got back, but he could be lying. Either way, we know the immediate cause of death was CO poisoning, and the most probable murder weapon, given the circumstances, would be a faulty propane heater. The heater found at the scene passed the forensics safety test, so the next most likely weapon would be a different propane heater, one that did produce carbon monoxide, removed before police arrived and replaced with the one they found. And we know, from Joe Mancuso, that Stevie had one. He said he got rid of it, but again, we only have his word for that.”

Just then, Portia’s pacifier fell out and had to be rescued.

“The putative motive is really weak,” said Monica, straightening up. “But resume.”

“So, Stevie goes to get more wine and leaves the faulty heater pumping out CO gas . . .”

“With the magnet attached to keep the oxygen depletion sensor from turning it off.”

“Right. He buys the wine, returns . . .”

“How can he be sure they’ll be dead by the time he gets back?”

“He must know something about gas laws and ‘parts per million’ and stuff like that. He took classes . . .”

“Uh-uh,” said Monica. “He’d need to do all kinds of measurements beforehand, and why would he? On a piece of junk he was replacing? And,” she said before Hart could reply, “he didn’t know he’d have a use for it until dinner that evening, when Marianne agreed to the party. No time to put on his lab coat and get out the gasometer or whatever.”

“Good point. I’ll have to think about that. . . ”

“And where was he when the Little Devil was doing its thing, during the hour before he left to get wine?”

"Well get to that," said Hart. “So he leaves the faulty heater, buys the wine, comes back—they’re all dead . . .”

“Where’s the new heater?”

“Right. Sorry. The new heater’s in his car. He brings it in with him, in the bag with the wine . . .”

“Big bag!”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be the bag he got at the store. He could have a reuseable shopping bag . . .”

“And he doesn’t know yet if the poisonous heater has finished its dirty work?” asked Monica.

Hart’s fedora went flying, pursued by a big white frisbee.

“Sorrreeee!” A tall, gangly boy came pounding up behind them to retrieve saucer and hat. Hart took the hat without comment.

“Look, I’ll figure all that out later,” he said. “Bear with me. Stevie comes back with the wine and the good heater, takes the bad one, with the magnet—puts it in a . . . a ‘big bag,’ whatever—and leaves, telling Ross he’s got an early morning ahead of him and—this is key—that Marianne and her friends don’t want to be disturbed."

"Right," said Monica, "so their bodies aren’t discovered too soon after he leaves.”

“And before he goes, he turns the on-off knob on the new heater to ‘on’ . . .”

“But doesn’t push it down to ignite it. Why not?”

“Right,” said Hart. “Why not? Stevie would have wanted the good heater turned on and burning gas, as expected, when he left for home. That, or out of fuel. He said he left the four victims alive and well—and presumably they’d want to stay warm. Leaving the heater unlit would have looked suspicious.

“That’s why you think someone else must have turned it on but not ignited it. I get it.”

“If there was a second person, they must have turned the heater off after Stevie left and then turned it back on but not lit, so it’d be pumping out gas but not burning any. Blalock told me after she tested mine that if you turn the knob to ‘On’ but don’t ignite it, you’ll get ‘all gas, no flame.’ The other person wanted the shack filled with propane for some reason. That’s why Ross smelled gas when he opened the door.”

“Maybe they didn’t know it would continue to emit gas and left before they could smell it,” said Monica. “This other person—were they aiding and abetting, or trying to frame Stevie?”

“I don’t know,” said Hart. “But . . . “

Suddenly he was aware that Monica was two steps behind him. He turned to look at her.

“You really don’t know shit, do you?” she asked. The wonder was gone. It was all sarcasm now.

“Huh?”

“How does a person ignite the heater? Assuming the gas cylinder stop-cock is open?”

“Press down the on-off knob after turning it to the ‘On’ position. That creates a spark . . . .”

“Wait. What does the spark ignite?”

“The pilot light.”

“The gas going to the pilot light, from a pipe that, you said, bypasses the . . the thingy . .”

“The solenoid.”

“. . . but doesn’t start flowing until the knob is pressed down, and then stops if you let up on it. So you have to hold the knob down until . . . ?”

“Until the pilot light ignites.”

“And then you can let up on the knob because . . . ?

“The pilot light warms up the . . . .” He stared at nothing. “No magnet.”

“No fucking magnet, Miss Marple. What did you just say? Just five minutes ago? No point in using the magnet on the one left at the scene because . . . ?”

“It wasn’t emitting carbon monoxide.”

“Blalock was testing your magnet theory on your brand-new Little Devil when she told you ‘all gas, no flame.’ Without the magnet to keep the solenoid open, it’d be closed when Stevie turned the knob to ‘On’ and only open up if the knob was pressed down to ignite the pilot light, which would warm up the . . . .” She waved her hands.

“The thermocouple.”

“. . . the thermocouple and send current to the solenoid to keep it open, and burning gas, after the knob was released!” She slammed her hands back down on the handle of the stroller, which jostled Portia, who popped the pacifier out onto her seat belt and began to cry.

Monica picked it up and returned it to its rightful owner. Then she turned around in the direction of the parking lot and continued walking.

“Without ignition,” she said, “the propane stops flowing the second you let up on the knob.”

“So whoever turned the knob to ‘On’ must have already smelled gas. That’s why they didn’t ignite the heater. Kablooie!”

“But where’d the gas come from?” asked Monica. “The faulty heater? With the magnet attached? Wouldn’t it just keep burning and producing CO, until it used up all the propane?”

“Maybe,” said Hart. “I’ll have to find out. Maybe the flame went out because it used up all the oxygen in the shed before it used up all the propane. Blalock in reverse: ‘no flame, all gas.’”

Monica thought for a moment, then asked, “What about those big propane tanks the film studio was using?”

“Hard to see how they could have been involved.”

They’d reached Monica’s car. After hugs all around, Monica fastened Portia into her seat and opened the driver’s side door. Before getting in she said, “I still don’t see how two perps helps you point the finger at Stevie when one perp will do. He comes back to get the faulty heater, smells gas—supposing the faulty heater went out for some reason and kept pumping gas—and he can’t light the new replacement without blowing himself up. So he leaves it with the knob turned to ‘On’ to make it look like it ran out of gas.”

“That would only work if there was no fuel left in the cylinder. And there was.”

Monica shrugged. “He was in a hurry? Didn’t think it through?”

“I’ll figure something out,” said Hart. “At least we know the unlit heater found at the scene couldn’t have released all that gas. But thanks for reminding me. People make mistakes.”

Two more weeks went by. The March Nor’eaters had set in, with horizontal rains and high winds piling flotsam and other debris on beaches facing the wrong direction, and furrows of sea hay knee-deep. Gray and cold. Fallon’s kind of weather.

Hot, sunny days made him irritable, reminded him of his two tours of duty in the first Iraq War. He hated to sweat and burned easily. What a shit show that was.

It’d been a month since the massacre. The In-VIN-cibles had stepped up their howls for blood, now that the wrongful death suit seemed headed for litigation. None of the evidence introduced at discovery by Sam or the lawyers for Stamford or Delos or Hermes, the delivery company, had made the least impression on the plaintiffs. They wanted their day in court.

Joe Mancuso was often on the evening news these days, national and local, not just making his case, but defending his son from “the totally baseless rumors” circulating on social media. “Steven is not on trial here,” he said repeatedly. “The mega-corporations who manufactured and retailed the ‘Little Devil’”—at the name, he slowed down for emphasis and lowered his prepared statement to look directly at the assembled press—“have to be held accountable. How many more deaths will occur before those who killed Gloria Vin and her friends are held accountable? It’s not about money, it’s about doing the right thing, and keeping all of us safe.”

Alice rarely spoke on these occasions, preferring to remain in the background, wiping her eyes. She refused all requests for interviews.

The parents of the other victims weren’t unanimous in their support for the suit. The Laffertys joined in, but the Walkers decided to stay out of it because they were in mutual disagreement, Mike’s mother not relishing more media attention. Only Maria Sobczynski seemed repulsed by the idea. “Blood money,” she said, when questioned by a local reporter, and crossed herself.

Mrs. Sobczynski had become a particularly juicy target for reporters when it was discovered that her ex-husband, David Rodzinski, was none other than David Ross, the security guard on duty at the shed the night of the “Massacre.” He’d changed his name after their divorce in LA and never looked back, never wrote or called or tried to find his ex or his daughter, which was just fine with Maria, who returned the favor. She had no idea he was working in Lanesville and he had no idea his daughter had died no more than fifty feet away from his trailer until he saw the name “Sobczynski” in one of the Hollywood glamor rags a week or so after he returned to LA.

David and Maria were sitting across from Fallon in Maria’s living room in Beverly, along with Maria’s sister, Sonia. There was no love lost between Sonia and her former brother-in-law. She was convinced, she told Fallon, that Ross hadn’t come to support Maria and share her grief, like he said. He had an ulterior motive.

“He’s only here because he has some film-thing, some story idea he wants money for,” said Sonia. “It’s always about money with him. And he needs my sister’s permission. Am I right?”

She thought Fallon, being a police officer, would have the answer. It occurred to him that Ulrich might. He was working on a “concept” he hoped to sell to some studio or streaming service, a true-crime series based on his real-life experiences in Gloucester. He must have looked into copyrights and permissions and all that. Too bad he was following another lead at the moment.

Ross sat next to Maria on the sofa, pale and silent. He looked as though he’d aged ten years in the weeks since the Massacre. They were sitting close to each other and holding hands. If Maria shared her sister’s doubts, she wasn’t letting them get in the way of a reconciliation. Fallon ignored Sonia’s question and turned to Ross, trying to set him at ease.

“I appreciate your coming all this way to be with your wife.”

Ross nodded gravely.

“I called because I was hoping you might remember a few more details about that night.”

“I’d rather forget. But I’ll try.” He looked at Maria. “I owe it to Christine.”

“What were you doing while the party was going on?”

“Reading. A book.”

Fallon was surprised but tried not to show it. He thought Ross would say, “Playing solitaire on my iPhone,” or a video game, or gambling, or something like that.

“The whole time?”

“Well, except for making another pot of coffee or going to the bathroom.”

“There’s a toilet in the trailer?”

“Of course. And once in a while, I’d stand up and stretch.”

“Never went outside?”

“A couple of times. Didn’t see anything unusual. Came straight back in. It was cold.”

“Hear anything?”

Ross shook his head. “Just the music coming from the shed. Once in a while, it got louder, then quieter. I assumed that was the door opening and closing when one of them had to go out and pee.”

“Didn’t go over to check on things? Look in the window?”

“I was told to stay away, and I did.”

“By?”

“Gloria—I mean, Marianne—and later by Mr. Mancuso.”

“Steven Mancuso.”

“Yes. Look, all of this is in my statement. You were there when I gave it.”

Fallon was silent for a second or two and was about to give up when Ross said, “But now that you mention it, I did hear something—not when I went outside. It was while I was reading.”

Just then, a gust of wind spattered loud raindrops against the living room window. Ross waited for it to subside.

“You know how, when you’re reading, you sort of block out all the background noise, unless you hear something different?”

Fallon wasn’t a reader, but it was a rhetorical question, so he stayed quiet.

“Cars were passing on the street all night—not a lot of them, it was late—just now and then.”

“You mean Washington Street? The main street up the hill?”

“Yes,” said Ross. “At some point I stopped paying attention to them. Until I heard one slowing down and then turning and heading down toward the Cove.”

“You mean on Duley Street? Or Andrews?” Fallon got out his iPhone and called up a Google map of Lane’s Cove.

“Andrews, I guess,” said Ross, studying the T-shaped cove on the map. “We were filming on the Duley Street side”—he pointed to the left of the T-stem--“and it didn’t sound that close. So it must have been the Andrews Street side.” He pointed to the right of the T-stem. “Then the engine stopped.”

“Did you hear tires on gravel?” Fallon asked. Asphalt gave way to gravel when it reached the narrow road that hugged the cove.

Ross thought a moment, then nodded. “After the engine stopped, I didn’t hear anything else, so I assumed it was someone who lived on the Cove. I didn’t pay any more attention to it until I heard it start up again and drive away."

"This was when?" asked Fallon.

“You mean when it left?”

“Both. When it arrived and when it left.”

Ross looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember. “I think it arrived before Mancuso went to get more wine. But I’m not sure when I heard it leave.”

“Do you remember hearing a car door open or close, either time?”

Again, Ross had to think about it.

“No,” he said.

Part 4

Part 6: Conclusion

“So, you’re saying it was a malfunctioning Little Devil heater that killed Marianne Pomeroy on the night of February 14th?”

“Yes,” said Hart.

Sitting across the courtroom, hands clasped on the table, Sam watched him, silent and stony-faced. Mo Calder, at his side, looked confused. Hart could read Sam’s mind: “Why, oh why, did I let him testify?”

Hart knew why. Because the plaintiffs had hired an expert witness to pick holes in Blalock’s deposition. Dr. Lawrence Halper, a physics professor at MIT, had testified, first, that the excelsior used as packing material was of a narrower width than what Blalock had used, and second, that the narrower excelsior could produce damaging amounts of carbon monoxide before burning away because more of it could fit in the combustion chamber. He admitted that the fumes were unlikely to prove fatal, although they might become so under special circumstances, for instance, in a small, tightly enclosed, well insulated space, and if the victims were sufficiently intoxicated. How small? Sam asked during cross-examination. About the size of a walk-in closet, said Halper, but big enough for five people.

“Lying down?” asked Sam.

It didn’t amount to much, but it did amount to something, and the soot pattern Dr. Halper had produced in his tests did match the one Blalock obtained, which noticeably impressed the jury. The defense needed to plant a doubt in their minds before the court adjourned for the weekend.

“However,” added Hart, “the defective heater wasn’t the one left at the scene.”

“Was the cause of death a Little Devil propane heater or not?” asked Mr. Gamer, counsel for the plaintiffs. “It’s a simple question. Yes or no?”

Behind him his co-counsel, a skinny young man wearing a suit identical to Gamer’s, was jotting down notes. Next to him sat the plaintiffs, Joseph Mancuso and his wife, Alice Pomeroy. Joe was scowling. Alice was wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

Behind Joe and Alice, in the first row of spectators, sat Stevie Mancuso. It occurred to Hart that the last several weeks must have taken their toll on the young man. He looked cadaverous. Despite himself, Hart felt sorry for him.

“Mr. Hart,” said the judge. “Please answer the question.”

“Not necessarily,” said Hart. “Not a Little Devil specifically. But it had to be exactly like it in one respect.”

“And that would be?”

“Susceptible to tampering in the same way.”

“And your evidence for this ‘tampering’ is the imaginary magnet cited in Ms. Blalock’s deposition?”

“I prefer the word ‘hypothetical,’” said Hart. He looked at the jury. “Imaginary things are just made up. Hypotheticals are imagined, yes, but also required by facts. In this case, it’s a fact established by the Massachusetts State Forensics unit, and thus far unrefuted by Dr. Halper with any degree of certainty, that the heater found at the scene was incapable of producing enough carbon monoxide to kill the victims without being tampered with, even if it had been contaminated by excelsior in Mr. Calder’s warehouse.”

“So now we have an imaginary . . .”

“Hypothetical.”

“. . . hypothetical murder weapon and a hypothetical murderer?”

“Both required by the facts as they stand.”

Gamer turned his head slightly to make sure the jury could see, in profile, the smirk on his face.

“And what’s your hypothetical murderer’s hypothetical motive?”

“Not one murderer,” replied Hart. “Two, or rather, one and an accomplice.”

Mr. Gamer laughed and rolled his eyes. “Your Honor,” he said, “I see no point in continuing. No further questions.”

Sam shot to his feet. “Redirect,” he said with a firm voice.

“Proceed,” said the judge.

Sam came forward and took a laser pointer out of his shirt pocket. He pointed it at a large diagram placed into evidence earlier that day. The diagram was projected on a screen to his left, facing the jury, and showed a cross-section of a Little Devil propane heater.

“Mr. Hart,” said Sam, “Ms. Blalock’s deposition states that if a magnet were fastened to the Little Devil heater at a particular spot,” he pointed to the spot, “right here, near the solenoid valve, it would disable the safety device that was supposed to turn off the unit in the presence of carbon monoxide, and that, if it were fastened to a defective unit that was producing that poisonous gas, the magnet would have enabled it to continue doing so until it ran out of fuel.”

“Or,” Hart said, “until it was smothered, when the available oxygen was burned up and replaced by carbon monoxide.”

“And in that case,” continued Sam, “again according to Ms. Blalock’s deposition, the unit would continue to emit unburned propane gas after the flame went out, is that correct?”

“Yes,” said Hart.

“And why is that significant?” asked Sam.

“It would explain why Mr. Ross, the security guard, smelled propane when he opened the door to the shed and discovered the victims’ bodies. The unit found at the scene couldn’t have emitted unburned propane, even if it had been left running, because it did not have a magnet or a similar attachment to keep it emitting gas after its flame went out for lack of oxygen. A physical obstruction in the gas nozzle might produce CO gas, but the unit would not release unburned propane into the air either before or after the obstruction was removed, even if its flame went out. Its safety device would have shut it down as soon as it detected an imbalance in the proportion of oxygen to the propane released into the surrounding air, and Ms. Blalock’s tests showed that the safety device was in perfect working condition.”

“But the on-off knob was turned to ‘on,’ wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but as Ms. Blalock states, that would not release any gas unless the heater was ignited by pushing the knob in and holding it there. In that case, the gas would have mixed with oxygen and burned harmlessly away.”

“Couldn’t the propane have leaked from the gas cylinder attached to the unit?”

“Again, Ms. Blalock’s deposition says the cylinder was firmly attached and not leaking when discovered, even though it still contained unburned fuel.”

“Objection, Your Honor.” Mr. Gamer didn’t bother to stand. “Relevance? Where is this going?”

“I’m about to show relevance, Your Honor,” said Sam.

“Get to it, Counsel.”

“Mr. Hart, could you explain the significance of these details?”

“We know that the heater found at the scene couldn’t have released the propane gas that Mr. Ross smelled when he discovered the bodies. Therefore, the propane must have been released before that unit was placed in the shed. Whoever turned the knob to ‘on’ didn’t ignite it because they suddenly realized what would happen.”

“Which was?”

“Kablooie!”

There was laughter in the courtroom.

“Do you mean the propane trapped in the shed would have exploded?”

“Yes.”

“But why leave the knob turned to ‘on’?”

“To suggest that the heater left at the scene had been the source of the propane.”

“But the murderer must have known . . .”

“I’m not talking about the murderer.”

“So, this is the accomplice?”

“Your Honor . . .” Mr. Gamer was on his feet.

“I’ll let it stand, Counsel. I want to see where this is going.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” said Sam.

“Yes,” said Hart. “The accomplice. The person who switched out the propane heaters after the victims were dead. People make mistakes, especially when they’re under pressure. They panic. The propane must have been unexpected and, combined with lethal levels of carbon monoxide, it would have made the shed too toxic to remain inside for more than a few seconds at a time. And the security guard was just a few feet away and could appear at any moment to check on things if he heard anything.”

“But Mr. Hart, why would any of this require an accomplice? Why couldn’t the murderer have returned after the victims had succumbed and switch out the heaters himself?”

“Whoever brought the faulty heater to the shed wasn’t going to hang around to make sure of the outcome, or risk coming back after the victims were dead. They came up with an excuse to leave before the carbon monoxide levels became dangerous, counting on the heater to have finished its job and run out of fuel by the time the accomplice replaced it. They weren’t expecting that it would, in effect, smother itself but keep running, filling the shed with propane.”

“Objection, Your Honor!” shouted Mr. Gamer, leaping to his feet. “Tendentious, speculative, argumentative . . . .”

“Again, overruled. But it’s time to wrap things up, Mr. Tull.”

“Yes, your honor,” said Sam. He turned to Hart. “You’re assuming a lot here, Mr. Hart. How could the accomplice remove the faulty heater without being discovered? Wouldn’t they set off the motion sensor lights and attract the security guard’s attention?"

“There are ways to avoid them,” said Hart.

Sam called up another slide. It showed the layout of the film set in Lane’s Cove. “Could you show us?” he asked, handing the pointer to Hart.

A murmur went around the courtroom as the little red dot moved carefully through the diagram. Joseph Mancuso had stopped scowling by now. Stevie looked miserable.

“Now, Mr. Hart, you just testified that the faulty unit, the one initially brought to the scene, might have continued running longer than expected. Could you tell us how?”

“That could easily happen with one of the newer gas cylinders,” said Hart. “The older ones are disposable. The newer ones are refillable, and they burn fifty percent longer.”

“You mean a cylinder like the one attached to the replacement heater, the one left at the scene?” Sam replaced the cut-away image with a picture of a gas cylinder.

“Your Honor!” shouted Gamer.

“Mr. Tull!” said the judge. “This is your last warning.”

“So, Mr. Hart,” said Sam, taking care not to face the jury. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying the propane filling the shed when the bodies were discovered could not have come from the heater found at the scene, the one in dispute in this case—is that right?”

“It is.”

“And you believe the most likely source is a faulty version of the same heater, presumably the one that poisoned the victims with carbon monoxide?”

“Yes.

“And the only way it could have done both is if it were tampered with by means of a magnet or a similar device to keep the unit emitting gas after the flame went out for lack of oxygen, is that right?”

“Yes,” said Hart. “And tampering or deliberate misuse of any kind voids the . . . .”

“Your Honor!” Gamer was on his feet and trembling with rage. “I strenuously object to this entire line of questioning. If it is allowed to stand I will file for dismissal!”

“Duly noted, Counsel. Mr. Tull, one more word on this topic and I will hold you in contempt.”

“That’s all, Your Honor. I have no further questions.”

Ulrich walked in holding a manilla envelope. Before he could get to Fallon’s desk, Fallon held up a sheaf of papers. “Did you see this?” he asked. “It’s a transcript of Friday’s proceedings. Look where I marked it.”

Ulrich dropped the envelope on Fallon’s desk and took the papers. He raised his eyebrows. “So, two perps, not one. That's supported by what Ross says he heard.”

His partner nodded. “Gotta hand it to that detective. First the magnet, then the accomplice. And he didn’t know about the car.”

They’d abandoned the idea of Stevie using the faulty heater. The idea was that he’d worked alone, placing a removable obstruction in the gas nozzle and attaching a magnet to the Little Devil left at the scene. Stevie assumed the obstruction would produce CO and the magnet would keep the unit running without interference from the oxygen depletion sensor until the shed was filled with carbon monoxide. He thought it would just keep running until all the fuel was gone. Once the victims were dead, you just remove the obstruction and the magnet at the same time and leave the heater in place with the knob turned to “on,” and you’re home free. He never expected the flame would get smothered and the unit would keep emitting propane. When they asked Blalock about their theory, though, she said it would explain the shed filling with gas, but she pointed out the unlikelihood that anything other than excelsior would leave that particular soot stain on the glass mesh. Also, there was fuel still left in the tank.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Ulrich, tapping the envelope.

“Is that what I think it is?” asked Fallon.

“Yep,” said Ulrich. “It was all there. You were right about the expiration date. Took them until now to release it.”

“I appreciate your printing it out,” said Fallon, reaching into the envelope.

“You can look it up online if you want more information,” Ulrich went on, “but I don’t think we need any.”

Ulirch and Fallon both knew that Fallon wasn’t about to waste time feeling his way around an official government website, and they didn’t need a printout of the evidence to apply for a search warrant either. Fallon was just more comfortable with official documents he could hold in his hands. He was old-fashioned that way, as in so many others. He’d make the call to Judge Thayer while Ulrich, the more tech-savvy of the two, dealt with the digital paperwork, just like he’d dealt with the online rummaging through patent applications.

“When you’re through,” said Fallon, not looking up from the first page, “assemble the team."

“So that’s that?” asked Hart.

“He pled guilty,” said Sam, “and Joe was charged as an accessory.”

“What did he plead?”

“Guilty . . . of murder. Says he gave Stevie the death heater and later switched it out. Stevie couldn’t tell the difference, knew nothing about any of it.”

“Noble, but it won’t wash,” said Hart.

Sam agreed. “His motive was stronger, if money was the motive. But none of that dovetails with bringing a suit for wrongful death. Why keep attention focused where it could do the most harm?”

“So there goes their case.”

“To put it mildly.”

“The patent office.” Hart said, shaking his head. “And my timeline was off by a mile.”

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up. You were right about the ‘two perps,’ and mistakes, and the switch-out, and I think your testimony planted enough doubt in the jury’s mind to get us over the hump, even without this development.”

“If you say so,” said Hart, but he was clearly unconvinced. Sam knew, from their years together, that Hart was ashamed. Not just embarrassed, like when you make a mistake, but the feeling you get when you’ve done something wrong. He also knew that any more attempts to relieve the detective’s distress would just make things worse. So he moved on.

“That was a genius move by the detective, though, wasn’t it? The patent application.”

Hart nodded. Stevie had invented a diagnostic magnet for solenoid valves, like the ones they use on the big HVAC machines but smaller and adaptable, for propane space heaters.

“Can’t believe he let it expire,” Sam added.

Hart shrugged. “A lot on his mind? Maybe he misunderstood and thought when it expired it would be expunged. Maybe he ran out of money and couldn’t pay to extend it or pay his patent attorney. Stroke of luck for us, anyway. And for the DA.”

“And for the mayor,” said Sam.

The patent application was the snowflake that brought an avalanche rumbling down on the Mancusos, father and son. The search of Joe and Alice’s home revealed design sketches for Stevie’s diagnostic magnet, along with several prototypes, one of which, when tested on a Little Devil propane heater, worked perfectly. It kept the solenoid valve open for as long as it was attached, rendering the ODS, the thermostat, and the on-off knob useless and leaving the gas-cock on the cylinder as the only method for turning the thing off.

Alice Pomeroy provided the next break. As soon as Stevie’s designs came to light, she admitted to Fallon that she’d lied about Joe’s being home asleep with her the night of the murders. She’d done it out of loyalty to her husband and stepson but had her suspicions from the start. Her trust had eroded further in the course of the wrongful death litigation, and any remaining doubts were swept away when the patent application came to light.

The search also uncovered a sizable cache of emails between Stevie Mancuso and Marianne Pomeroy, dating from when Marianne, having emerged from her chrysalis as the glamorous Gloria Vin, re-established contact with her family, and with Stevie. The emails showed that Marianne had seduced her stepbrother when he was 12 and that their liaisons continued until she became pregnant and left home a year later. The emails also referred to Marianne’s attempts to deflect suspicion by ridiculing Stevie to her friends, a strategy Stevie agreed to but wasn’t happy with. “That was so hard for me,” he later wrote. “You seemed to really mean it. I see why you’re such a great actress. I hated you for it, but I understood.”

When Marianne began making regular trips home to see her family and “hang out with friends,” they picked up where they left off. An Econo-Lodge on Route 1 was their regular trysting spot. Marianne used her real name, not “Gloria Vin,” and a wig and sunglasses did the rest.

Things were going smoothly until Stevie started asking for money. He needed cash to hire a patent lawyer and build up enough of a stake to attract investors once the patent came through. He was sure it would. Maybe too sure. Among the items uncovered by Fallon and Ulrich was a file on his laptop listing gambling debts going back almost four years, along with a month-by-month record of interest owed. The earliest had been paid off with loans and gifts from Marianne, but then the payments fell off and the vig skyrocketed. At the time of his stepsister’s death, Stevie owed his bookies almost half a million dollars. His family connection to the fabulous—and fabulously wealthy—Gloria Vin had kept the mob at bay for that long, at least.

At first, Marianne had been glad to help, but she lost patience as Stevie kept wading deeper into the swamp. When she flatly refused to send any more money, Stevie played his ace: a tell-all interview with Giulietta Sabroni for her scandal substack, Trash Talk, describing how his stepsister had raped him when he was barely out of grade school. (It was statutory, but still rape.) Gloria Vin hadn’t made a secret of being pregnant when she ran away from home. But sibling rape and incest? Marianne was furious Stevie would even consider it.

The bad feelings got worse, prodded by Marianne’s lingering shame and Stevie’s lingering resentments. A year ago, the whole messy brew boiled over when Stevie received a card in the mail. Opening it, he found a chubby winged cupid holding a bow and arrow above the words, “Won’t You Be My Valentine?” The “Won’t” was crossed out and “DON’T” written above it, and at the bottom, in capital letters, “I ABORTED IT!” A big black arrow was planted in Cupid’s chest. Both his eyes were crossed out.

The card was now in a sealed bag in the evidence room at Gloucester Police HQ.

The emails stopped for a few months and then resumed after Stevie apologized in an apparent effort to repair the relationship. From that point on there was no more begging for cash and none was offered.

Stevie’s confession told the rest of the story. It wasn’t about the money. The first sentence out of his mouth after waiving his right to an attorney was “She killed our child.”

He’d been looking for a way to do it for a year, and had come close on two of Marianne’s visits home: once at the Econo-Lodge, by smothering her with a pillow while she slept, the other time by nudging her off the Leap at Nelson’s Quarry and jumping in after, pretending to save her while really holding her under. He knew she couldn’t swim.

What stopped him wasn’t the fear of being found out. It was that he couldn’t do it in person, up close.

“I hated her, yeah,” he said, “but I loved her, too.” He didn’t bother to explain. Fallon thought he understood. He’d been there. Not to the point of homicide, of course. But still.

And then, out of the blue, the perfect opportunity presented itself, and on Valentine’s Day no less. “Like a strawberry shortcake,” said Stevie, “with whipped cream on top.”

The whipped cream was “the assholes,” Marianne’s little circle of snickerers--his tormenters since eighth grade. In fact, it was one of the assholes that gave him the idea, at dinner, when Chris Walker suggested a farewell party at the fish shack. The teasing had gone on almost non-stop at their end of the table, with each of the assholes trying to top the other and Marianne goading them on.

“I swear, she was enjoying it,” said Stevie. His voice was a croaking whisper .

The faulty heater was still on the workbench at home, waiting to be discarded, with the new one his father had bought sitting right next it. Easy enough to play the kid brother eager to be included, offer to fetch something to keep them warm, and a battery-powered lantern, and some sleeping bags. Take both heaters, leave the good one in the car, set up the faulty one in the shed, keep away from the wine, and when you notice yourself getting drowsy, step outside “just for a smoke.” Marianne hated tobacco smoke. Then wait. In a few minutes, it would all be over. Look in the window to make sure. The heater should be out of fuel by then. Leave to get the good heater from the car. Buy more wine. Keep the receipt. Make sure the security guy sees you leave. And if he snoops back there when you’re gone? “OMG! I must have brought the wrong heater! Everybody was just fine when I left!” Human error. But still. Why point the finger directly at yourself?

The plan was to empty the bottles out the car window on the drive back and bring them in with the good heater. Set it up, get it going, and leave, stopping at the security guy’s door to say he had an early morning and that Marianne and her friends didn’t want to be disturbed. Leave it a total mystery. No way to blame Stevie, anyway. He’d brought a brand-new Little Devil in perfect working order. At least, he assumed it was. He hadn’t used it yet, so he was surprised to learn, later on, that it had a soot stain on the radiator mesh when the security guard found it.

What he hadn’t counted on was the faulty heater still pumping out CO when it was time to leave for the wine. He’d fitted it with the gas canister that came with the new heater but wasn’t aware of its bigger capacity. He was planning to just switch the canister back to the new heater when he returned. It’d be empty by then, and he’d leave the on-off knob on the new one turned to “on” to make it look like it had run out of fuel.

So he left for the wine, hoping it would all be over by the time he got back.

When he did, he found another surprise waiting. It was snowing by then, and he didn’t want to leave tracks by going around to look in the window. Chances were good he didn’t need to. He opened the door and stood to one side for a minute to let the CO fumes dissipate, leaving tracks in the snow beside the door. Those wouldn’t be hard to explain. When he entered the shack to switch out the heaters, though, he smelled propane and heard a hissing sound. He knew immediately what had happened, tore the magnet off the faulty heater, and heard the solenoid valve snap shut. Then he noticed the on-off knob was in the “off” position. It hadn’t turned itself off. Someone must have turned it.

That’s when he noticed he was feeling faint. The CO hadn’t entirely dispersed! He took the faulty heater outside, detached the unspent gas canister and attached it to the new one, placed the new one in the shed, and turned the on-off knob to “on.” He was about to push it in but stopped when he noticed he could still smell gas. No help for it. He’d have to leave it like that. He made sure to give Ross the “Do Not Disturb” message on his way to the car.

When he got home, Joe was waiting for him. “He had something to tell me,” said Stevie.

After their dinner at the Beauport, Joe had stayed up to watch a Celtics game. By that time Stevie had left and Alice had gone to bed. When the game was over Joe stopped at the workshop to check on a hummingbird feeder he was building for Alice—see if the glue had dried. Turning on the light, he saw that the propane heater at the end of the work bench was missing. Then he remembered that Stevie had taken it with him. Then he remembered that the old one, the broken one, should still be there, waiting to be thrown away. But it wasn’t.

Both heaters were gone.

“He had a bad feeling,” Stevie told the detectives. “That’s what he said. Wondered, why would I need the broken heater?”

Right, thought Fallon. Not for backup, certainly.

“He had to find out,” said Stevie.

By this time an hour had passed since Stevie had left. Fallon pictured Joe creeping slowly down Andrews Street and turning onto the gravel road rimming the cove. He looks over, sees Stevie standing outside the shack. Just a shadow, standing there, waiting.

“So he turns off his engine,” said Stevie, “and waits to see what happens next.”

“And you didn’t hear him?” Ulrich asked. “The car?”

Stevie shook his head. “Just the music from inside the shack.”

It hasn’t started snowing yet. Joe watches Stevie walk to the corner of the shack, look in the window, then walk past the security guard’s trailer, setting off the motion sensor light, get in his car and drive away.

Joe gets out of his car, careful not to slam the door shut. When he hears it click and sees the interior light go off, he walks around the cove on the grass next to the rim road, avoiding the gravel and staying away from the trailer and the motion sensor light. Then he walks up Duley Street to Washington and down through Lanesville Cemetery to approach the shack from the trailer’s blind side.

Peers over the windowsill.

“They looked asleep,” said Stevie. “But he knew they’d never wake up. His first thought, he told me, was to protect me. It couldn’t have been an accident, with me looking in the window and just walking away. That’s why you can’t believe a word he says. He’s still trying to protect me.”

Joe opens the door to the shack, steps in, almost passes out from the propane. The heater is out, but he can hear it hissing, so he reaches down to turn it off.

“That’s why I found the on-off knob turned to ‘off’,” said Stevie.

But it keeps hissing.

Now the CO is getting to Joe, making him dizzy, so he steps outside to catch his breath.

And think.

“That’s when he got the idea to take the rap,” said Stevie. “Just leave things the way they were. Tell the cops he gave me the wrong heater by mistake, or if that won’t work, he did it to kill Marianne and get closer to the inheritance, through Alice.

“But I wasn’t there when he got home. So he waited up to tell me what he knew, and how we were gonna fix it.

“I tried to talk him out of it. Don’t say a word about the busted heater, I said, don’t even let them know there is one. Just play dumb. But he reminded me that half a dozen people already knew about it, including Alice. I’d challenged myself to fix it and even bragged to my friends that I could. And I’d said, in front of everyone at dinner, that I’d be bringing a propane heater to the afterparty. So the subject was sure to come up.

“I finally got him to give up on taking the fall for me. We’d play dumb and see how it went. The best way to handle the faulty heater, we decided, was bring it up ourselves, show we had nothing to hide. You’ll find it in the cove, behind the house.”

Of course, thought Fallon. Wade out at low tide, at night. Not with the trash, where it might be spotted when the bin was dumped in the truck. And not in the woods somewhere. He knew we suspected him. He was afraid of being watched.

“The wrongful death suit,” added Stevie. “That was his idea, as a counterpunch. I thought I’d talked him out of it, but he got angry at the rumors about me and thought it would be the best way to quash them.”

Hart had to stop inside the door of The Squawking Gull to be sure he was seeing right. There sat Sam Tull and Mo Calder, drinking lattes and eating scones at a tiny, wrought iron table, laughing out loud. Sam noticed him then—he wasn’t hard to notice at any time, and he was back to wearing his brown suit. Mo looked up, too, and waved him over.

As Hart came to a stop, Mo stood and shook his hand.

“My man!” he said. “Sam told me all about it! How you won the case for me!”

Hart blushed, turning his mottled face into a patchwork of pink and brown.

“Not me,” he said. “Sam was in charge, did all the hard work. He mapped out the strategy. I was merely tactical.”

He could tell they wanted him to join them. There was a third chair, but not enough room. There never was. Before leaving them, though, he had to ask.

“What brings the two of you together? I never expected to see you in the same room, let alone sitting at the same table, now that it’s over.”

Sam looked embarrassed. Mo glanced down at him, still smiling.

“A misunderstanding,” he said.

Turned out that Mo’s membership in Tracks began when he was recruited at the age of 8 to deliver dope on his bike. It ended a year later when his auntie sent him away to a farm in New Hampshire owned by her sister-in-law.

“He wasn’t even living in Roxbury when my brother was killed,” said Sam.

They were meeting in The Squawking Gull to work out the details of a $100,000 donation to the operating fund of NOSHLA, in addition to Calder’s legal expenses.

“That’s big of you,” said Hart. “Considering.”

Mo shrugged. “People make mistakes.”