Moellmann rose as did Harris.
“Ah, yes, DMSO,” said Moellmann, staring at the opened container on the shelf. “A most intriguing compound. It never got FDA approval, but that hasn’t stopped people from buying it. At one time it was thought to be the ultimate and harmless answer to pain. This much can be said of it: when applied to the skin, it penetrates the skin and immediately enters the bloodstream. Many have testified that upon application, it relieves their pain immediately.”
“Then why didn’t it get FDA approval?”
“Now, then, my memory grows a bit vague. I believe the problem lies in testing it. In any such test, there must be a control group.”
Harris immediately called to mind all those kids with the cavities because they were in the control group that wasn’t using the sponsor’s toothpaste.
“The control group,” Moellmann continued, “should receive some sort of placebo, some admittedly ineffective substitute for the substance being tested. Something like a sugar pill instead of aspirin. But they’ve never been able to come up with an appropriate placebo for use instead of DMSO, because the application of DMSO usually causes a reddened skin and a very bad breath. People in the control group would know they were not being given DMSO because no other substance causes both an inflammation of the skin and the strong breath.”
“Red skin?” Harris mused.
“Yes, red skin,” Moellmann repeated.
Harris and Moellmann as one looked down at the corpse. Their gaze was fixed on the rash on Hunsinger’s hands and scalp.
“I wonder. .” said Moellmann.
Ewing entered the bathroom, carrying a gallon plastic container. “Found it in the kitchen! Strychnine, if you can believe the label. But from what we’ve seen here, if I had a last dollar I wouldn’t bet it on the truth-in-packaging in this place.”
“Where would anyone get strychnine these days?” Harris asked. “It’s off the market, isn’t it?”
“I thought so,” Ewing agreed.
“Oh, yes, definitely,” Moellmann affirmed. “You can’t get it anywhere these days. Commercially, that is. Nixon signed an order taking it off the market back in 1973, I believe.”
“Well, either this is or it isn’t,” said Ewing, hefting the half-filled container. “But at least the label says it’s strychnine.”
“Intriguing,” Moellmann murmured.
“Doc,” said Harris, “there’s going to be more than the usual pressure to get this one locked up. . and soon. Hunsinger was a celebrity, especially in this area. This is going to be in the papers, prominently, and on all the newscasts, not just locally, but nationally.” Harris hated to get where he was going with this plea. He well knew how Moellmann resisted any pressure to expedite a case. But, in this instance, it needed saying. “So can you hurry this one along a bit?”
Moellmann gave no indication of having heard Harris’s plea. He kept looking from the rashes on Hunsinger’s corpse to the DMSO to the container Ewing was holding. “Intriguing,” he murmured. “A very simple plan. So simple one might even call it ingenious. That is, if it all works out.” Then, to the officers, “We’ll want to get at this first thing in the morning. Have it all shipped down as soon as the technicians finish.” He ambled distractedly toward the door, rubbing his hands together. “How clever,” he muttered. “What a clever plan. But how did he make it work?” He resembled a crossword addict confronted with the world’s toughest puzzle, to which he might hold the ultimate clue.
As Moellmann exited, the police technicians arrived. Harris and Ewing briefed them on the situation and the probable evidence that should be gathered. Shortly, officers were everywhere, taking pictures, dusting for fingerprints, packaging evidence-taking particular care with the twin containers of DMSO and shampoo-and interviewing neighbors of the Hunsinger apartment.
Ewing and Harris disengaged themselves from the hubbub.
“Whatever we got here?” Harris was gearing up for an up-to-the-moment summary.
“One dead football player,” Ewing responded. “A probable homicide by means as yet undetermined. If a homicide, then the perpetrator had to be in this apartment before Hunsinger arrived this evening, or while he was here.”
“That’s right. Hunsinger was alive this afternoon. Some eighty thousand people saw him at the Silverdome. And additional hundreds of thousands saw him on TV. He left the stadium, as far as we know, under his own power. He gets home-something, something, something-he steps into the shower, and bingo, he’s dead.”
“He gets home,” Ewing supplied, “he puts a skin-flick cassette on TV-something, something, something-he showers, he dies, his girlfriend arrives. What about her?”
“Too early to tell. Not likely she’d off him and then report it to the police. Though it’s happened.”
“We’ll have to find out where she’s been today.”
“It’d be good to know when’s the last time Hunsinger showered at home before tonight. If something in that shower killed him-something in the DMSO bottle maybe-and if Hunsinger is the creature of habit he seems to be, then whatever killed him was put in there sometime between his previous shower and the one tonight.”
“And”-Ewing glanced around the room, but he was so familiar with investigative routine he was not distracted-“if not the Taylor woman, someone else got in here and set it up.”
“There’s a security guard on duty downstairs. Let’s go down and check on just how secure this building is-oh, and let me do most of the talking.”
Ewing grinned. “What’s the matter? I get along pretty good with black people.”
Harris winked. “You do okay for a honky. But there was something familiar about that guy when we came in. I think I might know him from a previous bust.”
The two took the elevator down twenty-one floors to the lobby. In the foyer, they spotted the guard. Clearly he had been flustered, first by Harris and Ewing, then by the arrival of the investigating crew. He had phoned his supervisor, who was with him now.
Introductions were exchanged. The officers explained that they wanted to question the guard. The supervisor took over door duties while the three men moved to a nearby empty office.
“We want to know all about the security here, Mr. Malone,” Ewing began. “We know you only work here. It’s not your security system, so you can be very frank.”
“In fact, Mr. Malone,” Harris was gazing at the guard so intently that Malone was becoming visibly upset, “this is a homicide investigation, so it is not to be taken lightly. Answer carefully and be sure you tell the whole truth.”
“Homicide!” Malone licked his dry lips. “Mr. Hunsinger!” He knew which apartment they had come from. “Mr. Hunsinger dead? Oh, God almighty!”
“He’s dead, Mr. Malone. And we’ve got to know everything you know about him,” said Harris. “Start with when he got home after today’s game.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Harris’s tone suggested a short fuse that was burning.
“I don’t know. He’s a resident. He probably parked his car in the basement garage, then took the elevator from there directly up to his floor. He wouldn’t have passed through the lobby.”
“That’s all the security you got? People walk into the basement and go anywhere in the building they want?”
“Wait; it ain’t that bad. At least not now. It’s better than it was.”
“Why don’t you just tell us about the security system, Mr. Malone?” Ewing was more conciliatory.
“Sure.” It was comfortable in the apartment’s all-season climate control, but Malone had begun to perspire. “See, the way it used to be, we’d be in this cubicle, all glassed in, just next to the front door in the lobby. Visitors come, we’d let ’em in, check with whoever they come to see. If everything checked out, we’d let ’em take the elevator up.
“Wasn’t too good a system. For one thing, we never had no record of who the visitor was. Sometimes they’d slip by. You know, come in with a resident or something like that. Then, we was right up front, you know. If someone wanted to take out the guard, they could just do it. You know, Mr. Hunsinger ain’t the first one to get killed here. This can get to be a pretty lively place from time to time.”