Ceremony Read online

  So this was a game. Had the blunt, forward questioning of Vivian Roundhouse been a game, too? Bernadette felt a headache coming on.

  But she could play too.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Dr. Woodhead?” Bernadette shouted, smacking him on the arm. “I’ve been up since four this morning, and you have been a pain in my ass since the moment we met. This man opened the office up late at night for us, and now you repay his kindness by giving him a heart attack?” She flinched. “Oh—shit—sorry, that’s too soon, I know it is, mentioning a heart attack—Mr. Thompson died of heart failure. I apologize for my choice of words.”

  “It’s fine,” Lightman muttered.

  “You,” Bernadette said, pointing in Woodhead’s face, “get to do the grunt work for that little escapade. Let’s have you start with going through Kymer Thompson’s desk. Once you assess any—”

  “Hang on, hang on,” Lightman said, “Tommy worked with some proprietary material. I’ll need to make sure anything confidential is properly secured before you go through his desk.”

  “Oh,” Dr. Woodhead said, hanging his head, “I understand. I’ll wait out here, then, while Ms. Becker asks her questions.” Woodhead’s eyes darted between Bernadette and the professor, and suddenly, Bernadette got it. Lightman didn’t want to talk to Woodhead—he wanted to talk to Bernadette. Her black suit and puffy coat weren’t exactly va-va-voom material, but maybe Lightman liked his women fit and muscular even under layers of winter clothes.

  “Professor,” she said brightly, “is there somewhere we can put our jackets?”

  “Oh, the coat rack—” Lightman began, then stopped.

  “Something wrong?” Bernadette paused, half out of her puffy purple coat.

  “It’s fine,” Lightman said. “I’ll take them and hang them on the rack in my office.”

  “We can do it ourselves.”

  “Nonsense. I insist.”

  Lightman took both their coats and opened the door to his office, walked in, and a moment later returned, leaving his door open.

  “Thanks, Professor. Is there a conference room where we could talk?”

  He turned his head to a darkened room with the blinds pulled. “I, um, don’t really see the reason for that. There’s no one else in the building. We can talk right here.”

  “Or in your office, if you prefer.”

  “Not necessary. This won’t take very long, will it?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Bernadette saw Woodhead nod slightly, and then she noticed his chest expanding—he was taking a deep breath, getting a good sample of all the smells of the lab.

  “Let’s see how these first few questions go,” she said. “What was Mr. Thompson working on?”

  Lightman smiled sadly. “We all called him Tommy, Ms. Becker.”

  “Sorry. What was Tommy working on?”

  Lightman nodded. “Six years ago, we got funding to research the effects of different freshwater-based organic matter on a variety of cancer cells. The specific target was lung cancer, though it’s been expanded to cover breast and bone cancer too.”

  “God’s work,” Woodhead cut in, smiling broadly, without a trace of irony.

  Lightman tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Yes, I suppose that’s how he saw it. You know, he was quite committed to his church. Maybe he felt that the work he was doing here was saving people’s bodies and the work he was doing in the church was saving their souls.”

  “Are you a member of Tommy’s church?” Bernadette asked.

  “Me?” Lightman scoffed. “I’m afraid I’m too grounded in reality for faith-based systems to hold much sway over the way I look at the world, Ms. Becker.”

  “But you didn’t object to Tommy’s religion?”

  “On the contrary,” Lightman said. “He was one of the few authentic people I knew. Lived what he preached—and that’s uncommon. His worldview made him a better scientist.”

  “How so?”

  “He made our big breakthrough.”

  “He did?”

  “One particular combination of organic matter and an existing medication showed promise. It was a combination that Tommy discovered—it’s absolutely brilliant, I must say, although the idea of combining organic matter and existing drugs had been proposed before.”

  “How did Tommy discover the combination? Was he running experiments in a lab?”

  “No, no,” Lightman said. “He was in charge of maximizing the organic matter.”

  “‘Maximizing the organic matter’?” Woodhead asked. “I’m not familiar with that term. Can you elaborate?”

  “I can’t reveal the details of the research,” Lightman protested. “I’m sorry, but if this got out, the grant money would disappear. We’ve been working too hard on this, and we’re closer than we’ve ever been to starting a clinical study.”

  “Oh, I see,” Woodhead said. “Your funding came from a pharmaceutical company.”

  “I’m not at liberty to—”

  “Come now, Professor Lightman, I wasn’t born yesterday. If funding had been provided by a public agency or a nonprofit, they’d be willing to share this information with law enforcement. Only a pharmaceutical company would be so—”

  “I still can’t reveal the source.”

  Bernadette thought for a moment, then reached out and gently touched Jude Lightman’s elbow. “What if we sign an NDA? We have a murder to solve. We’re not interested in disclosing intellectual property.”

  “Even if I wanted to,” Lightman said, “I couldn’t. Not without a subpoena.”

  Woodhead grunted. “This murder affects you, Professor. If one of your other grad students or employees killed him, you want to know. If Tommy sold your intellectual property to a competitor or on the black market, you want to know. If your research is compromised, you want to know. I suggest you think of ways you can help us move our investigation forward. If you lose your funding because you hid valuable information, you’ll have only yourself to blame.”

  Lightman’s head swiveled from Woodhead to Bernadette and back, and finally he sighed. “I can show you some aspects of our research. If anyone asks, I didn’t allow this. Follow me.”

  Lightman strode toward a dark hallway. The overhead lights turned on as he walked through, Bernadette on his heels, Dr. Woodhead behind her a few steps. Bernadette found herself at the top of a metal staircase, and walked down the narrow steps behind the professor, her boots clanking on the steel.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Lightman turned to a metal door, unmarked, punched in a code on the keypad next to the doorframe, and the light turned from red to green. He opened the door, letting Bernadette through first.

  Inside the room, eight clear acrylic tanks, each roughly five feet wide, came into view. The tanks lined a single wall, and low blue lights were the only illumination in the room. Bernadette stepped closer; the tanks were half-full of silt or mud. No fish were visible in the tanks.

  “Clear tanks? Aren’t industrial tanks usually opaque plastic?”

  “For breeding and fish farming, yes. But we need to view the ammocoetes.”

  “The what?”

  “Sorry—the scientific name for the larvae. They’re in the mud.”

  Bernadette stepped closer and peered through the acrylic. She thought she saw movement in the silt, like wriggling worms, and a chill went down her spine.

  “There they are,” Lightman said. “Do you know anything about lampreys?”

  Bernadette shook her head. “Only that they’re a kind of fish.”

  “I should have known,” Woodhead mumbled. “Lampreys.”

  “A primitive fish,” Lightman replied. “They’ve been around for millions of years. Before fish evolved jaws.”

  “Native to the area?”

  “These kind are. Silver lampreys. Not the sea lampreys you might have heard about.”

  “They’re parasites,” Woodhead said.

  “As adults,” Lightman quickly added. “Yes, they latch onto other
fish and derive nutrients from their blood. But not the ammocoetes. They’re fed a special diet of sargassum and gracilaripsis, along with salmon and trout parts.”

  Bernadette stepped closer to the tank, trying to see the larvae. “You said sargassum and—”

  “Gracilaripsis. Types of spirulina algae,” Woodhead said. “Those are two types of exceptionally iron-rich algae, if I’m not mistaken. Why the high iron concentration?”

  Lightman hesitated. “Well—we, uh, harvest the adult lamprey livers because of the high amino acid content.”

  Woodhead nodded enthusiastically. “Ferritin.”

  “Oh—you’re familiar with ferritin,” Lightman said, his face brightening. “This is a different type of ferritin, though. Tommy discovered it.” Lightman began to talk with his hands, his eyes sparkling and animated. “And the livers from this type of lamprey produces more of this type of ferritin than—well, anything else in existence. Feed the ammocoetes an iron-rich diet and we can double the ferritin.”

  Bernadette rubbed the side of her nose. “Why do you need this specific kind of ferritin?”

  “Excellent question.” Lightman beamed, in full professor mode. “This particular molecular structure interacts with the—uh, other medication, resulting in a compound that destroys cancer cells without triggering an immune system overreaction.”

  “Wait—you’re saying that you’ve cured cancer?” Bernadette asked.

  “That’s a vast oversimplification,” Woodhead said.

  “Well, not by that much,” Lightman said. “The test results have exceeded our expectations.”

  “How soon will it be available?” Bernadette asked.

  “It takes a few years for ammocoetes to mature,” Lightman said, his face more serious, “and we can’t harvest their livers until they become adults. The first batches of ammocoetes are maturing now. With any luck, we’ll be in clinical trials in six months, and if the human trials are promising, we could go to market in three years. I expect enormous demand—this could potentially treat the two most common cancers in the world.”

  “Will there be enough lampreys you can use to meet demand?”

  “We think so,” Lightman said. “Adult lampreys don’t do well in captivity, but there’s a coastal section of Lake Michigan north of Port Washington which is ideal for silver lamprey nests. The adults that don’t get harvested are released there—and we’re stocking the fish they feed on, too.”

  Bernadette put her hands on her hips. “I thought the Freshwater Science department didn’t tinker with ecological systems.”

  Lightman nodded. “That’s why our study is limited to a two-square mile area of the watershed.”

  “That must cover quite a bit of coastline,” Woodhead said.

  Lightman crossed his arms. “What’s your point?”

  “There must have been groups who didn’t like what you were doing. Justice for Oceans, for one.”

  “They were quite vocal at first,” Lightman admitted. “They don’t like us altering what they say is the natural population of the rivers and streams.”

  “Any specific threats?” Bernadette asked.

  “Not to my knowledge, no. Some obnoxious signs and chanting with a bullhorn a few months ago. But it’s toned down over the last few weeks.”

  Woodhead pressed on. “There’s a fishing union protesting as well.”

  “Yeah, the local one based in Milwaukee. Can’t remember the name.”

  “Lake Shore Piscary Association,” Bernadette offered. “Any threats from them?”

  “They’re losing the public relations war. We’re killing an ugly, parasitic fish to make a life-saving medicine. The fishermen are the ones destroying the ecology of all the lakes and rivers here.”

  “Sounds like a great sound bite for social media,” Woodhead said.

  “All’s fair in love and war,” Lightman replied. “Justice for Oceans has one huge disadvantage: lampreys aren’t cuddly or cute. Many people find them disgusting. When the public sees pictures of the silver lamprey’s open mouth and circular teeth, grotesquely bigger than the rest of its head, or sees one latched onto the side of a river trout or a Chinook salmon, suddenly donations dry up.”

  “Sounds like the university’s PR people trained you well,” Woodhead said.

  “This area of study—the lamprey livers, the high-iron amino acids—that was all Kymer Thompson’s idea?” Bernadette asked.

  “The whole team contributed, but yes, Tommy first had the idea of combining the amino acids with ibogaine to create—”

  “With what?” she interrupted as her ears perked up.

  Lightman closed his eyes and swore under his breath.

  “Ibogaine?”

  “Forget I said anything. That’s one of the pieces of intellectual property—"

  “Ibogaine is what killed Tommy, Professor,” Bernadette said. “Intellectual property or not, we need to know about the murder weapon. Do you keep ibogaine here on site?”

  Lightman’s eyes darted back and forth between Woodhead and Bernadette, and he finally slumped his shoulders in defeat. “Yes. We have ibogaine here. We based our grant application on a study from the University of Montreal a few years ago about how animal proteins change the properties of benzos.”

  “Benzos?” Bernadette said. “You were experimenting with medications like Valium?”

  “Valium is in the class of benzodiazepines, yes. We didn’t use that medication specifically.”

  “How did Kymer Thompson come up with the idea to use ibogaine?”

  Lightman shifted his feet.

  Bernadette took a step closer. “We know he’s a member of the Agios Delphi church, which uses iboga bark in their rituals. Did Thompson bring iboga bark one day to try it out?”

  “I—” The professor straightened up. “He didn’t explain why he suggested it but adding ibogaine to the study didn’t add much to the cost. We tried different combinations. Benzos—and ibogaine—applied to various organic freshwater assets.”

  “Assets? You mean fish livers.”

  “There were many other organisms in our original experiments,” Lightman said.

  “How often are people down in the aquarium?” Woodhead asked.

  “The tank rooms? Quite often. We take water samples. We feed the ammocoetes four times a day. We try to mimic the sun as if they were still in the lake, and of course there’s a continuous wash of plankton and algae, so we space it out.”

  “And what about the ibogaine?”

  “The ibogaine?”

  “It’s been illegal for purchase or distribution in the United States for decades, Professor. How did you get ahold of it?”

  “Illegal?” He cocked his head. “No. What we have isn’t illegal.”

  “I assure you, it is.” Bernadette paused. “Schedule 1 controlled substances have strict physical control requirements, Professor. Vaults or safes. Alarm systems. Surely you know all this.” She leaned forward. “You must have signed off on it. You’re responsible for making sure that any ibogaine is carefully audited.”

  “Ah,” Professor Lightman said. “I see where the miscommunication is.” He laced his fingers behind his head. “Technically, what we have isn’t ibogaine.”

  Bernadette folded her arms.

  “Ibogaine is narrowly defined by the government,” Lightman continued. “Our substance is synthetically modified from a different iboga alkaloid than the ones listed in the official definition of ibogaine. It’s got almost the same molecular structure, but not the same family tree—quite literally.”

  “You’ve found a loophole.”

  “We’ve found a way to keep our research legal and save the university hundreds of thousands of dollars in storage and compliance costs. Plus, we might save millions of lives.” Lightman locked eyes with Bernadette. “Come on, Agent Becker. Some bureaucrat convinced Richard Nixon half a century ago that ibogaine was as dangerous as cocaine and ecstasy. Anyone who reads the studies knows that’s not true—it can su
ccessfully treat alcoholism and heroin addiction. Trust me, no one is breaking into our stash of chemically altered ibogaine to get high.”

  Bernadette tilted her head. “Except that’s what killed Kymer Thompson.”

  Lightman screwed up his face. “If Tommy had been killed with drain cleaner, would the feds show up at my door asking how I unclog my kitchen sink?”

  “The fact is,” Bernadette said, “someone injected ibogaine—the kind that’s heavily concentrated, like your synthetic loophole ibogaine—into Kymer Thompson and murdered him. We’ll need the names of everyone who had access to your ibogaine supply, vault or no.”

  Lightman wrinkled his nose. “I believe that crosses the line. We’ll need a subpoena for that.”

  Woodhead was staring at the ammocoetes in the tank. “Professor Lightman,” he said, “let’s get back to who could have motive to kill your top graduate student in this program.”

  Lightman nodded.

  “You said Justice for Oceans hadn’t attempted intimidation tactics. But you failed to provide an answer to whether the Piscary Association issued threats.”

  Lightman looked down at the floor. The pale blue lights above the tanks shone through the water, making shadows of waves on the concrete.

  Finally, Lightman sighed. “I’ve got some friends in that group, and I know what fishing means to this community. I wouldn’t have authorized using that area as a spawning zone for silver lampreys if I’d thought we’d disrupt the local fishing industry.”

  “But some members of the group disagree.”

  Lightman nodded. “The president of the organization made a speech at the last meeting about how we can’t do this to their livelihoods, and he said we’d be sorry if we continued.”

  Bernadette frowned. “You’d be sorry?”

  “Well—I think his exact words were, ‘No one can mess around with our fishing lanes.’ They’d made up these T-shirts—Go for the gold, say no to silver, with a picture of the lamprey and a big X through it. But that doesn’t sound like inciting violence to me.”

  “The president of the Piscary Association said that?”

  “I don’t think he meant—”