Read Online Time Release by Martin J Smith - Free Book Online Page A

mustache.
    â€œStill don’t know why, or what sets him off,” he said. “But Corbett’s killing again.”
    He’d got the word from some young Waynesburg detec­tive who called to pick his brain two days after the latest killing. They had a product-tampering case, he’d said, a poisoning, as if Downing didn’t read the papers. “You’re the guy that did the Primenyl case, right?” the cop asked. Downing had winced at the word, then set aside the Texas Ruby Red grapefruit he’d been peeling. The cop told a story Downing had heard six times already, but with a twist.
    â€œStill holding the yogurt container when the paramedics found her on the kitchen floor,” the kid cop said. “We won’t have final results for a few days, but tox is pretty sure it’s potassium cyanide.”
    â€œProbably not.” Downing remembered his crash course in chemistry in 1986. “Probably not sodium cyanide, either. Too unstable. The powders start reacting with carbon dioxide and moisture as soon as they’re exposed to air. After more than a day or so in a container like that it wouldn’t be potent enough to be fatal.”
    Then he’d remembered another option: hydrogen cyanide, the liquid form. It’s unstable, too, he’d thought; hell, it boils at 80 degrees Fahrenheit. But then, wouldn’t yogurt be the perfect delivery vehicle for it? From your grocer’s refrigerator to yours. The stuff tastes like hell, but who thinks about that first spoonful? And one would probably be enough.
    â€œGet word out fast,” Downing told him. “Get any brand with the same packaging off the shelves of the local stores. You check the lot number on the container?” The kid cop said he’d done that first thing, adding, “We learn from mistakes.”
    Downing pulled his collar tighter.
Fuck you,
was what he’d wanted to say. Have the spine to say what you’re thinking: After the Primenyl screw-up, everybody knows the drill. Say it, you son of a bitch. But no. He’d taken a deep breath and swallowed the words, then asked: “What’s the chance it was a family thing?”
    â€œWe’re talking to the husband, but they’re the Waltons, man. And her boy—maybe twelve; he was there when it happened—he says she ate it right out of the grocery bag.”
    Downing hadn’t listened as the cop described what happened next. He already knew. Racing pulse within seconds. A few pathetic minutes of gasping as the poison constricts the chest. Face pale as the body forces blood to the organs in a hopeless attempt to save itself. Falling blood pressure. Convulsions. Violent skittering of the limbs. Death. Downing saw everything long before the 9-1-1 recording hit the news, including the shit stains on her kitchen floor.
    He’d wheeled his desk chair to the computer terminal as the deputy talked. “Where’d you say this happened?”
    â€œWaynesburg. Near the college,” the deputy said.
    Downing stopped, his hands frozen above the keyboard. “Name some of the other little burgs around there.”
    â€œOld mining towns, mostly,” the deputy said. “Enterprise. Gypsy. Outcrop.”
    Downing traced the grave marker’s chiseled “1986” with his toe. Despite the rain and the hour, others were around. A car passed slowly along the cemetery road, washing him briefly in high beams. He looked away, just in case he knew them.
    â€œYou believe it, baby? Outcrop. Just one guy in the whole goddamned computer living near Waynesburg. Been there since right after the ’86 killings. Knew it was Corbett even before he sent me the tape, even before I checked the database.”
    The database. What started with his own scribbled notes about a random series of deaths that year became the most intensive manhunt in Pennsylvania history. He shuffled the numbers again: twenty-five thousand pages of