Molecules with an Emphasis on Ribonucleic and Deoxynucleic Helical Configurations .”
“Where can I find a copy, and what subject would it be filed under?”
Cabroni found Ward’s thesis in the science library at San Francisco State and spent all of Saturday and most of Sunday, with a science dictionary by his side, reading it. By midnight Sunday, Cabroni was as well versed as any officer in the SFPD on DNA, RNA, and the random error theory of aging.
Saturday evening in his study, Ward ran through his day’s mail and came across a picture postcard advertising a discotheque on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, the Electric Daisy Chain. On the back, typewritten, was a line:
Ask Big John for the Roman Venus.
Some prankish colleague whose education in mythology was lacking had sent it, he first thought, because there was no Roman Venus. He had turned his attention back to a set of calculations beginning with SA (2) × P + St = 0, where St represented the sterility factor and the zero was a cipher of chilling implications, when it occurred to him that the Roman equivalent of the Grecian Venus was Aphrodite.
He tossed the postcard into his wastebasket.
Monday afternoon, on his way to Palo Alto, Cabroni picked up a no-knock warrant from a justice of the peace in Belmont and went directly to the house on Pinyon Verde Lane. Observing the letter of the law, he lunged at the front door with his shoulder and almost fell into the hallway. The door was unlocked.
Inside, on Ruth’s desk he found her release of Ward for any responsibility in her death, which he photographed. In the desk he found no documents indicating her financial holdings but he found a peculiar album of family snapshots. In the bathroom he took shots of the bathtub with the electrodes still in place. All hamster pens in the laboratory were empty. Outside in the rose garden, drawn to the spot by a spade leaning against the fence, he found a plot of freshly dug loam three feet wide by six feet long.
Cabroni scooped a shovel of the dirt and his spade hit adobe hardpan six inches below the surface. For a moment he leaned on the shovel. Of all the frame-ups he had spotted in his fifteen years on the force, this was the most amateurish. Yet, there was enough circumstantial evidence here to send Ward to the gas chamber if an investigator didn’t probe too deeply. Whether Cabroni fitted the frame around Ward or not would depend on Ester.
At the moment, the investigator was more perplexed by Ruth Gordon’s motives.
Cabroni went seeking an eyewitness the only place one might logically be found, at the house across the cul-de-sac from the Gordon residence. A woman, thin, pale, with bulging eyes given an Oriental slant by her tightly pulled bun of hair, opened the door to his knock. Cabroni introduced himself and told the woman, a Mrs. Moresby, that he was investigating the absence of her neighbor, Doctor Ruth Gordon. Mrs. Moresby’s eyes seemed focused on a distance fourteen feet in front of her, but she invited him into the living room.
Beneath a vase of rose stems, sear and leafless, her television set was on. She turned the volume down, slightly, saying, “Yes, strange things have been happening over at that house. But if you don’t mind, officer, I’d like to keep an eye on Life Can Be Beautiful . I don’t want to miss this episode.”
“Go right ahead, ma’am,” he said, taking a seat on the divan to her right as she seated herself before the set.
“I can look at you, too, as I talk. My bun gives me good side vision. Those roses on the TV are from Ruth; she brought them over last week, but she forgot to put water in the vase.”
“Did you notice if she had any callers Saturday?”
“Yes, sir. A tall blond man in his late forties, must have been, because he had a haircut. He parked in front of Ruth’s house, headed downhill for a quick getaway, and took some tools into her place. I could see right through the house with the sun behind it and not
“Where can I find a copy, and what subject would it be filed under?”
Cabroni found Ward’s thesis in the science library at San Francisco State and spent all of Saturday and most of Sunday, with a science dictionary by his side, reading it. By midnight Sunday, Cabroni was as well versed as any officer in the SFPD on DNA, RNA, and the random error theory of aging.
Saturday evening in his study, Ward ran through his day’s mail and came across a picture postcard advertising a discotheque on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, the Electric Daisy Chain. On the back, typewritten, was a line:
Ask Big John for the Roman Venus.
Some prankish colleague whose education in mythology was lacking had sent it, he first thought, because there was no Roman Venus. He had turned his attention back to a set of calculations beginning with SA (2) × P + St = 0, where St represented the sterility factor and the zero was a cipher of chilling implications, when it occurred to him that the Roman equivalent of the Grecian Venus was Aphrodite.
He tossed the postcard into his wastebasket.
Monday afternoon, on his way to Palo Alto, Cabroni picked up a no-knock warrant from a justice of the peace in Belmont and went directly to the house on Pinyon Verde Lane. Observing the letter of the law, he lunged at the front door with his shoulder and almost fell into the hallway. The door was unlocked.
Inside, on Ruth’s desk he found her release of Ward for any responsibility in her death, which he photographed. In the desk he found no documents indicating her financial holdings but he found a peculiar album of family snapshots. In the bathroom he took shots of the bathtub with the electrodes still in place. All hamster pens in the laboratory were empty. Outside in the rose garden, drawn to the spot by a spade leaning against the fence, he found a plot of freshly dug loam three feet wide by six feet long.
Cabroni scooped a shovel of the dirt and his spade hit adobe hardpan six inches below the surface. For a moment he leaned on the shovel. Of all the frame-ups he had spotted in his fifteen years on the force, this was the most amateurish. Yet, there was enough circumstantial evidence here to send Ward to the gas chamber if an investigator didn’t probe too deeply. Whether Cabroni fitted the frame around Ward or not would depend on Ester.
At the moment, the investigator was more perplexed by Ruth Gordon’s motives.
Cabroni went seeking an eyewitness the only place one might logically be found, at the house across the cul-de-sac from the Gordon residence. A woman, thin, pale, with bulging eyes given an Oriental slant by her tightly pulled bun of hair, opened the door to his knock. Cabroni introduced himself and told the woman, a Mrs. Moresby, that he was investigating the absence of her neighbor, Doctor Ruth Gordon. Mrs. Moresby’s eyes seemed focused on a distance fourteen feet in front of her, but she invited him into the living room.
Beneath a vase of rose stems, sear and leafless, her television set was on. She turned the volume down, slightly, saying, “Yes, strange things have been happening over at that house. But if you don’t mind, officer, I’d like to keep an eye on Life Can Be Beautiful . I don’t want to miss this episode.”
“Go right ahead, ma’am,” he said, taking a seat on the divan to her right as she seated herself before the set.
“I can look at you, too, as I talk. My bun gives me good side vision. Those roses on the TV are from Ruth; she brought them over last week, but she forgot to put water in the vase.”
“Did you notice if she had any callers Saturday?”
“Yes, sir. A tall blond man in his late forties, must have been, because he had a haircut. He parked in front of Ruth’s house, headed downhill for a quick getaway, and took some tools into her place. I could see right through the house with the sun behind it and not
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