Tunnel Vision by Gary Braver Page B

articles he had coauthored in the Journal of Chemical Physics and elsewhere. Roman grasped the importance of Pomeroy’s work, though he couldn’t imagine why in the eyes of the Catholic Church it was an abomination.
    The man continued to beg.
    “You have cash in the house?”
    “Yes, yes, in a small safe upstairs.”
    Roman snapped on a pair of latex gloves. “Let’s go.” He kept the gun to the guy’s back as he followed him up to a bedroom, where he opened the door of a closet. On the floor sat a small safe, the kind you’d find in hotels. “If there’s an alarm trigger, consider yourself dead.”
    “No, no alarm up here. Just the back door.”
    Roman watched as Pomeroy twirled through the combination, opened the safe, and pulled out four packs of bound fifties and hundreds—$5,000.
    Roman took them and put them into his jacket pocket. “Fine. You just bought the rest of your life. Downstairs.”
    They walked down the stairs and back into the living room.
    “We’re going to make this look like a break-in, so I need to tie you up. I’ll call 911 from the road. Capice? ”
    “Yes.”
    He then bound Pomeroy’s legs together with plastic ties. The same with his wrists, but over his shirt to avoid marks. He put a washcloth across his eyes, then secured it with a small bungee cord. He then had him lie flat on the floor with a sofa pillow under his head.
    According to the spec sheet, Pomeroy had a history of arrhythmia and was taking medication for high blood pressure and cholesterol. Actuarial statistics would give him a higher than 70 percent chance of dying by cardiac arrest. That narrowed the options to one.
    And that came from a plant that grew four thousand miles south of Cape Cod in the rain forests of the Amazon—curare, a vine whose compound was used by local Indians to poison their arrows and blowgun darts. Also known as tubocurarine chloride, the substance upon injection caused paralysis of skeletal muscles, resulting in respiratory failure and death. With the standard autopsy, no trace of the compound would be detected, and the cause of death would be listed as cardiac arrest.
    You’re a warrior of God, a voice whispered in Roman’s head. Like St. Michael. “Okay, lie still.” For a man of 170 pounds, it took about seven minutes. In that time, the victim would remain conscious but incapable of sucking in a breath of air. He would die of asphyxiation. To appear natural, the body could not have any marks of struggle. And because the toxin had to be injected, not even the prick of the needle could be visible on the autopsy table. Special circumstances demanded special strategies.
    Roman moved into the next room and filled a syringe with 4cc curare. When he returned, he knelt beside Pomeroy on the couch. “Before I leave, I have a couple of questions. Is there anything in your research that would be a problem to the Catholic Church?”
    “No, I told you that.”
    “How about any government agency or whatever?”
    “No.”
    “Any personal enemies or associates?”
    “Not that I can think of.”
    He could see Pomeroy relax into the expectation that it would be over soon, that Roman would wrap up the break-in scene and leave. In his head, Roman rehearsed the next step. “One more thing…”
    “What?”
    “Shouldn’t have lost your faith.” In one smooth move, he threw himself full length onto Pomeroy’s body, jamming the needle deep into his left nostril and depressing the syringe with his thumb. Pomeroy’s body jolted under Roman as he let out a thin scream. Roman pulled the needle out of his face while trying to keep his body from bucking him onto the floor. The washcloth and bungee slid off Pomeroy’s face in the thrashing, and Roman did all he could to prevent the man from leaving any telltale bruises for the coroner to ponder.
    Because the compound was rated six out of six in toxicity, in less than a minute Pomeroy’s torso and legs stiffened. His eyes bulged like cue balls and his