The Invisible Poison

CHAPTER ONE
Every great detective is bound to meet their match at some point in their career. Someone so cunning that the detective may be forced to sacrifice everything, even their own lives. I nearly lost my good friend, retired Inspector D.C. Pickles, when such an encounter plunged us into a labyrinth of conspiracies that led us to the Tiber City Police Department.

BRRRING!!
Pickles and I dashed for the phone. Coming down from my room, I tumbled down six stairs before crashing into Pickles, sprawling us onto the smelly shag carpet.
BRRRING!!
Pickles pulled himself up and plowed through the curtain that separated his room from our spotless front office. I followed him. He pressed the speaker phone button for my benefit.
"Hello," he said.
"May I speak with Inspector Pickles?" a hushed female voice asked.
"He is speaking,"Pickles answered."Who is this?"
"I can't tell you. I don't know if this line is secure. But I have information for you."
"Let's hear it."
"Ulmnar is in danger at the museum."
"How do you know this?"Pickles asked. But there was no answer, only beeping. Our mysterious caller was gone.
"What do you think of that?" I asked him.
"I think you need to dust off your tuxedo, Cody."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because we're going to the unveiling at the museum tonight."

CHAPTER TWO
The museum was quite a spectacle that night. Men in expensive tuxedos and ties, women in elegant dresses and diamond jewelry, fine art, excellent champagne- or so I heard- and a large painting twice my height that was hidden by a red velvet curtain. Under normal circumstances, I could've enjoyed myself. However, circumstances were far from normal and I knew that something evil was at work here.
I had finally gotten a flute of the champagne I'd been hearing about all evening when a balding giant of a man with a bushy, untrimmed, blonde mustache came towards me and slapped me on the back. The blow caused me to drop my untouched drink. The man was Norman McHalster, the cheif editor of the Tiber City Gazette.
"How are ya, Sleuthsalot?!" McHalster roared. "I can't say I miss you at the paper. I was able to hire a college kid for cheap. I'm savin' five thousand a year thanks to ya!" He gave me a bear hug that was hard enough to crush a whale. I couldn't help but notice the note a waiter slipped into McHalster's pocket.
"Well I'd best be off!" McHalster roared when he released me. "I need to find something newsworthy around here. Ya know I'd do anything for a good story," he said with a wink, and he stompped away. I straightened my bowtie and began a second search for champagne.
No sooner had I found some, than Pickles snuck up on me, grabbed me by my lapels and whisked me into a corner where I lost my grip on my champagne and dropped it.
"Pickles, look what you've done. I've got champagne all over my tux." Pickles rolled his eyes and bent his gangly figure over me.
"I know who Ulmnar is," he said.
"Who?" I asked exitedly.
"Vincent Ulmnar is the artist whose painting is due to be unveiled in five minutes. Unfortunately, no one knows what he looks like. I need you to check around the podium for any danger. I'll see you in five minutes for the speech. Don't fail," he said, and he vanished into the crowd.
Except for a tall, lanky man with a red goatee who drunkenly stumbled into me on his way to the champagne, I had no trouble getting to the podium. I found nothing out of the ordinary, as I told Pickles a few minutes later.
"There's nothing to be done now but wait for things to unfold," he said. As he spoke the red goateed man walked up to the podium. It could only have been Vincent Ulmnar.
"Thank you, friends," Ulmnar said, raising his half empty glass. "For encouraging me to keep painting, even when I was diagnosed with hemiphotophobia, which forced me to work only in pure sunlight or total darkness. Because of your help I can present to you..." The glass slipped from his hand and he collapsed onto the podium, dead.

CHAPTER THREE
The party was obviously over. The Tiber City Police Force was on the scene in minutes. Everyone at the museum was questioned by Sergeant Lea Galta herself, everyone except Pickles and I. We were interviewed by another officer.
The police concluded that Vincent Ulmnar had died from an attack of hemiphotophobia due to dim lighting.
After the body had been taken away and the guests had left, Pickles and I headed out the back door and walked to the Ayson. Halfway to the car, Pickles stopped at a dumpster, leaned in, and extracted a bottle of champagne that still had a few sips left in it. He opened it, sniffed it, corked it again and handed it to me.
"Keep this bottle," he told me. "And don't drink any, we may need this." I was disappointed.
We got in the Ayson and Pickles paused for a second after starting the engine. "Do you know anything about hemiphotophobia?"he asked me. I shook my head. "Neither do I,"he replied.
Pickles turned left out of the parking lot onto 9th Street and right onto Main Street, but instead of turning left when he reached Yacht Way, Pickles turned right. A few minutes later he turned onto Loop Road, a nice neighborhood out-flanked by run-down old houses. Another minute of driving in silence and we pulled over in front of a normal looking house. We got out of the Ayson, walked up the cement path through a tidy, grassy lawn and knocked on the door.
A middle-aged woman with shoulder length, grey hair and wire frame glasses answered in her bathrobe. She had obviously been asleep.
"May we come in, Doctor?" Pickles asked as though it was perfectly normal to show up at people's homes in the dead of the night. She nodded and we stepped inside her practice.
"Dr. Fay Saulberg, allow me to introduce my friend, Cody Sleuthsalot." Pickles said. Dr. Saulberg was too tired to acknowledge my presence.
"We need to know about hemiphotophobia," Pickles continued. Dr Saulberg shook her fatigue away at the mention of one of her areas of expertice. She lead us into a side room and to a tall bookcase where she pulled a thick paperback book from the bottom shelf. She flipped through the worn pages and read to us aloud.
"'Hemiphotophobia, or the fear of half or partial lighting, is a psychological condition that is brought on by hereto unknown factors," she said. "If left untreated by a psychologist for too long, it could escalate to needing an medical specialist. In some cases, hemiphotophobia can cause physical symptoms, most commonly violent, involuntary convulsions. As of yet, there is no cure for hemiphotophobia.'"
"So," Pickles asked. "Can someone die from this?"
"On the mental level, hemiphotophia has been known to drive people to insanity and suicide. Physically, the convulsions could overwork the cardiovascular system and cause heart failure, but that's extremely rare."
"Doctor," Pickles asked. "Do you know Vincent Ulmnar?"
"Yes," she replied. "He's my chief hemiphotophobia patient."
"He's dead," Pickles stated flatly. "Now be absolutely honest, Doctor. Did you think that Vincent Ulmnar was insane?"

CHAPTER FOUR
I must've fallen asleep in the car on the way home, because that's where I awoke the next morning. Heavy rain pounded on the windshield and the smell of exaust hung in the Ayson. I went out into the cool rain and hit the hood of Pickles' "luxury" Polynesian car repeatedly until I heard the engine stop.
I paused to lament the stains and raindrops on my tux and then walked toward the tilted brick house at #81 Stuyvesant Lane. Our next-door neighbor, Mr. Lee - owner of Lee's Laundromat, yelled at me from his upstairs window.
"Tell Pickle I see what he do to wash machine! He owe me fourty cent! We have security camaras!" he screamed.
I nodded and went inside the house I shared with Pickles. My friend was asleep and snoring on the couch. Around him were scattered books and jars of dead insects in jars. He hadn't changed a bit since our days at St. John's University.
I heard the mail slot open and went to check it. On the white linoleum in front of the door were three envelopes. Two were bills. The third was a blank envelope with the name "Lucifer" written on it in blue ink.
"Ah, a letter from the devil," a voice behind me said. A thin, bony hand rested on my shoulder. The movie "Nosferatu" came to mind and I spun to find myself face-to-face with Pickles' pointed nose and keen, grey eyes. "Sorry to have startled you," he said, not sounding the least bit sorry. He grabbed the letter from my hand and sat in the broken office chair behind the desk. He tore it open, read it, and slid it across the desk for me to read. The note read as follows:
TIBER CITY GAZETTE, SECTION B1
WATCH YOUR STEP.

"It seems our mysterious informant has dropped us another clue," Pickles said.
"And it also seems as though we need to get the morning paper," I said.
"And coffee, while we're at it?" Pickles asked with a grin.
A bundle of coats, hats, an umbrella and I walked down Stuyvesant Lane to the Wharfside Cafe at the corner of Atlantic Drive, across from the fishing docks.
"The rain isn't that bad, Pickles," I said.
From under the coats, hats, and umbrella, he answered, "I hate rain."
"Why?" I probed. Interviewing was always my favorite aspect of journalism. I think he shrugged, somewhere under there. I dropped the subject.
At the Wharfside Cafe, we ordered two cups of coffee with cream and sugar and the morning edition of the Tiber City Gazette. On page B1, in a small column at the bottom of the page we found an article titled: EDWARD MESCAL, 20, FOUND DEAD IN HIS PICKUP. We read on and discovered that the police concluded that Mescal had pulled over on his way home last night and had died of an unknown cause. The police suspected overdose. Several people had claimed that he was at the unveiling at the museum last night and had appeared to be in perfect health.
"So," Pickles said thoughtfully. "One murder becomes two."
"Why do you say murder?" I asked.
He looked at me with an expression of dead seriousness. "Do you think they died of natural causes? I need to see the their case files for myself."
We quickly finished our coffee, paid, and left for Pickles' old hunting grounds - the Tiber City Police Department.
The police station was a block away from the museum on the corner of Main and 8th Streets. One wall of the building was tagged with graffiti. No one seemed to care.
Inside, we spoke to a young officer named Jillian Starn. "I'm sorry," she said meekly. "But I can't let you see active case files, sir."
"Listen," Pickles said. "I just retired from the Force four years ago. I know there's a way around this."
"I don't have that authorization, sir."
"Then let me talk to someone who does. You're wasting my time."
"That would be Sergeant Galta or Chief Nelson."
"Let me speak with Nelson."
"He's out to lunch."
"Then let me speak to Sergeant Galta." Pickles began drumming his fingers on the worn, red counter top.
"Just one monment, I'll page her."
A few minutes later, Sergeant Lea Galta came out to meet us. She had hazel eyes, shoulder-length, sandy blonde hair and an authorative presence that demands respect and rarely gets it. She glared at Pickles, who stood over a two heads above her.
"Pickles, it's been a long time," she said sternly.
"Not nearly long enough, Lea," he replied with equal animosity.
"Are you here to insult me or let me rip off your head?"
"Neither. This is my partner--"
"Cody Sleuthsalot," I interjected. She declined to shake my hand.
"We need to see the files for the Ulmnar and Mescal homicide cases," said Pickles.
"Go jump in the bay," she spat and began walking away. Pickles and I followed her across the lobby.
"It's over-polluted, I have my health to consider." She stopped and turned to glare up at her old rival.
"Fine," she said after a few moments. "But five minutes only. I have some real work to get done today. Unlike you, I have responsibilities."
She led us down a green linoleum-floored hallway to her office. It was sparsly decorated. There was a plywood desk next to the small window at the back of the room. On the desk was an address book, a neat pile of paperwork and a Macintosh computer. As I entered the room, I noticed two file cabinets tucked in the opposite corner. Two old photographs were hanging above them. Pickles and Galta poured over the files as I examined the photographs.
The newer picture was of a decorated cop with sandy blonde hair standing at attention. On the frame was inscribed: COMMANDER MICHAEL GALTA -1972. The black and white photo was of a nearly identical man with a larger nose. The plaque on the frame read: CHIEF THEODORE GALTA -1948. They were obviously Lea Galta's father and grandfather. Both had held higher ranks than she.
"I don't understand it," Sergeant Galta said. "I got the files this morning. They're fresh cases. No way Nelson moved them to the Registry. They should still be here."
"They're not," Pickles pointed out.
Lea Galta's face turned a light shade of scarlet. "You're five minutes are up," she said through gritted teeth. "So get out, out, out out!"
She shoved us out of her office and slammed the door in our faces.
"That wasn't so bad," Pickles said with a smile. I blinked at him in astonishment.
As we left the police station, he turned to me and said, "Cody, why don't you take the Ayson to the hospital and find out the results of Ulmnar and Mescal's autopsies." He pulled down his hat against the rain. "Ive got some unfinished business here."

CHAPTER FIVE
The hospital was the best facility that Tiber City's taxes could buy. It was a four building complex on the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Bramwell Street on the north side of town, in a wealthy neighborhood that wanted nothing to do with anything near downtown.
At the wheel of the beat-up Ayson, I recieved no fewer than seven looks of horror from high-class people in fancy BMW's.
Inside the hospital, I met with the County Mediacal Examiner, a young, thin German doctor in the morgue who shared the autopsy results with me.
"There was no doubt that Herr Ulmnar died of a hemiphotophobia attack. There was a very low level of oxygen in his blood, characteristic of heart failure," the doctor said.
"What about Edward Mescal?" I asked. The dead bodies surrounding us were making me feel uneasy.
"We think that Herr Mescal also died of heart failure, but we can't figure out why."
"So there was little oxygen in his blood ?"
"Yes. And they both had elevated alcohol levels. They ver drinking at the museum last night so that makes sense."
"Dangerous levels of alcohol?"
"No," the doctor replied. His pager beeped. "I am very sorry, but I have a patient waiting. I hope I vas able to help." He left me in the lobby and rushed off.

I met Pickles back at our house and told him what I'd learned. He nodded solemny and tossed a pile of shredded paper onto the grimy coffee table.
"What's this?" I asked.
"The Ulmnar and Mescal case files," he replied sullenly.
"Why are they shredded, Pickles?"
"Exactly what I want to know." There was a knock at the door. I ran to get it, but found only a note taped to the door, from 'Lucifer', who had to have been somewhere nearby in the evening rain and fog. I read the note and Pickles read it over my shoulder. It said:
MORE TO COME TODAY
USE WHAT YOU HAVE

"What does that mean, Pickles?"
"Well," he said as he plucked the wet paper from my hands. "The first line most likely means that there will be more deaths today." He closed the front door and began pacing the length of our office.
"And what do we have that were supposed to use?" I asked.
"Maybe we're supposed to use the facts that we have. Ulmnar and Mescal were both at the museum last night..."
"And they died within an hour or two of each other, possibly sooner."
"Good, Cody. So from what we know, it is logical to hypothesize that more people who were at the museum will die."
"What about the time of death?"
"Time may not be a factor. To prove it is, there will be no more deaths today, but all the victims would have died during the night." We walked around the curtain into Pickles' room.
"And the shredded case files?" I asked.
"Our murderer is either inside or has an accomplice in the police force, I've no doubt about that. And we must remember the article in the Gazette. A suspicious death is front page news, isn't it?"
"Yeah," I said. "Unless the cops weren't willing to to give any details."
"You read the article, Cody. It was brimming with details. You know the newspaper business, who could move an article?"
"Only an editor can change page formatting."
"So our culprit is either in the police force or at the Gazette." Pickles sat down on the couch with a grin.
"But where does 'Lucifer' fit in?" I asked, sitting down beside him.
"'Lucifer' is somehow in the thick of this, doesn't want to go through with it anymore, and fearing for his or her life is dropping us clues under an assumed name."
"Where do we go from here, Pickles?"
"We find out about every death in Tiber City that occurred late last night or early this morning. Then we follow the trail from there."
"What if there is no trail?"
"There will be."

"Twenty," Pickles said. He hung up the phone. "All seemed to have died from natural causes. The hospital has no reason to suspect otherwise.
"I'm gonna take a walk by the docks, call the museum and get last night's guest list." He walked out the door and slammed it behind him for no reason.
Upon learning that I was a friend of Pickles, the museum secretary was more than willing to give me the guest list from the unveiling.Out of almost fourty names, eighteen matched Pickles' list from the hospital. It was mass murder, all where dead within an hour of Ulmnar. Those with previous health conditions died earlier than those who were healthier. Still the question remained: why did only half of the people at the unveiling die? Why were Pickles and I alive when younger, healtier people were dead? Why?
"Cody!" Pickles yelled from outside. "What's the temperature?!" I switched on the radio and heard that it was currently sixty degrees.
"Sixty," I said to Pickles as he came inside.
"That makes it nearly eighty degrees in the Ayson," he said and held up the champagne bottle he'd fished out the dumpster the night before. At first glance, it looked like it was bubbling normally. Then, I looked closer. The champagne was boiling.

CHAPTER SIX
The champagne was immediately put in the small freezer I kept in my closet. We hoped that whatever was in that bottle wouldn't explode.
"Cody, I think we need to see the good doctor about this," he said to me. "It may be crucial to figuring out what happened at the museum."
A few green lights later, we were inside Dr. Fay Saulberg's house and medical practice. The house was small and her office took up almost the entire ground floor. Dr. Saulberg was a woman with a passion for her work, so much so that she lived in her workplace.
She took the intriguing champagne bottle and dumped its contents into a petri dish. She then took it eagerly into her small in-home lab to analyze, leaving Pickles and I to wait in the eerie quiet of the living room that had been converted into a lobby. I prefered the house at night, when the darkness hid the sterile blue sofas and vaguely gruesome posters of the digestive system hanging on the wall.
"What's wrong?" Pickles asked, sensing my discomfort.
"It's really nothing," I lied. I wanted to leave, and longed to be back on the trail of a cold-blooded murderer.
"No," my friend pushed. He took a monstrous step in my direction, and his long, inquisitive face wore an expression of concern. "You're sweating. Something's certainly making you uneasy."
I tried to surpress a childhood memory of breaking my right arm and waiting in the emergency room for treatment. A gunshot victim and a woman pulled from a burning building were wheeled past where my parents and I were sitting. It frightened me, the horrible injuries, the toxic stench of cleaning chemicals, the death.
"Why are we having this conversation?" I retorted a bit more forcefully than I'd intended. "I'm fine. Really."
Pickles looked at me suspiciously. Now I knew how the criminals felt when they were subjected to his cold, grey, logical gaze. No wonder so many of them broke down into confession by the end of his interrogations. I'm sure he saw my behavior as an interesting puzzle, but he dropped it. I suppose he owed me from our earlier conversation regarding his overreaction to rain.
Dr. Saulberg came back with an excited sparkle in her brown eyes that almost cast a glare onto the lenses of her glasses. Never before had I seen someone so delighted by such morbid news.
"Did either of you notice a parculiar odor at the unveiling?" she asked.
"Now that you mention it, I do remember a strange smell," I replied. I recalled the scene of the murder, the dusty smell of the carpet and the curtains, the damp smell of dozens of mingling colognes, and then a faint, but ever present smell... "It was bitter, and nutty. Almond, I would say."
"Very observant, Mr. Sleuthsalot," she said with a respectful nod. Pickles was disappointed that he hadn't noticed it, too. "The champagne is laced with trace amounts of hydrogen cyanide, a compound that smells like almonds. It wasn't much, but certainly enough to kill four or five people."
"Cyanide?" Pickles mused. "So, they were poisoned. That would account for the close times of death, the low oxygen levels in Ulmnar and Mescal's blood, and why we're still alive."
"I guess I should thank you and Mr. McHalster for spilling my drinks and saving my life, But I still making you pay to have my tux dry cleaned," I said. To think I had been just inches away from injesting a lethal poison!
"Now the question is, who put cyanide into the champagne and why," Pickles said. The case had taken a new turn.