Afraid of the Dark - James Grippando [70]
“Money. A wrongful-death theory, I presume. She thinks Jamal was set up.”
“How?”
Jack emptied the rest of his bottle into his beer glass. “Mays has been working for a few years now on something called Project Round Up.”
“Yeah, Jamal mentioned that. But he didn’t seem to know much about it.”
“No one does, except for Chuck. Jamal’s mother thinks it was something illegal, or at the very least not totally on the up-and-up.”
“All these guys in the data-mining business push the envelope,” said Neil.
“True. But what makes this situation a little different is that after McKenna was killed and Jamal disappeared, the FBI actually came in and found encrypted messages on Jamal’s computer. Even Andie confirmed that those messages exist, but I can’t get anything more than the fact that they relate in some way to terrorist organizations.”
“And Mom refuses to believe that her son was in any way connected to terrorists.”
“Beyond that. She thinks Chuck Mays needed a pawn to venture into a forbidden area of cyberspace as part of the research and development for Project Round Up. That way, if the shit hit the fan and the FBI swooped in with a search warrant, Chuck Mays had his own in-house Muslim to point the terrorist finger at.”
“Chuck used him as the fall guy.”
“That’s the theory.”
Theo was back. “One hot tea,” he said as he placed the cup in front of Neil.
Jack’s cell rang. The display read PRIVATE. “This could be Andie,” he said.
“Go ahead and take it,” said Neil.
Jack answered with anticipation, but it wasn’t Andie. It was Dr. Spigelman.
“I’m sorry, who?”
“The doctor who gave CPR to Ethan Chang at Lincoln Road Mall. Do you have a minute?”
Jack glanced at Neil, who was multitasking between the list of tapas on the bar menu and the e-mails on his BlackBerry.
“Sure, go ahead,” Jack told the doctor.
“I’ve been following your case for Jamal Wakefield in the newspaper, and I know that the police have been looking into a possible connection to Mr. Chang’s death. Anyway, you may or may not know this, but the medical examiner’s office just released the toxicology report a few hours ago.”
“I did not know that,” said Jack. “What did it show?”
“That’s the reason for my call. It’s extremely vague.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“I also wanted to let you know that I’ve been following this toxicology issue very closely. For reasons of my own safety.”
Jack was reaching for his beer, but that halted him. “What kind of danger are you in?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem. I’ve been thinking a great deal about that night on Lincoln Road Mall. Something wasn’t quite right—from a medical standpoint, I mean. There’s no doubt that Mr. Chang went into cardiac arrest, but the medical examiner states that it was induced by asphyxiation. Suffocation, in layman’s terms.”
“Someone strangled him?”
“No. Suffocation induced by a toxin.”
“What kind of toxin?”
“The toxicology report says it cannot be identified.”
“That sounds weird.”
“To say the least. And I have a theory for that. Have you seen the mall’s security tape where Chang has that brief encounter with someone who’s probably just pretending to be blind?”
“I haven’t seen it, but I heard about it.”
“Action News loaded the key frames on their Web site about an hour ago. I’m sure all the networks have it up by now. Check it out. Chang clearly gets stuck in the leg with the white mobility cane. An hour a later he was in convulsions and dropped dead. I believe that something was administered at that point of contact.”
“But the initial autopsy showed no sign of injection.”
“That’s what has me so worried. It must have been a toxin that’s lethal even if just a small amount comes in contact with the skin. Possibly a synthetic, like VX, or—”
“Nerve gas?”
“In liquid form, yes. A ten-milligram drop of VX can kill you. A raindrop is eighty milligrams.”
“But it doesn’t just fall from the sky like rain.”
“Look, I know I must sound paranoid, but I researched this. Terrorists in Japan used sarin to kill commuters on the Tokyo subway back in the 1990s. VX is even more deadly, but there