Free Poison Most Vial by Benedict Carey Page B

someone else was in there? I mean, it seems weird that Lydia’s just there by herself. Doing what?”
    â€œLet me try something,” Sharon said. She clicked on the D16 door symbol, waited a moment, and sat up with smile.
    â€œExcellent. Click on the door and it gives you the badges that went through, with the times. And the answer is yes—there was someone else in there with her.”
    â€œAnother badge?”
    â€œYup,” Sharon said. “Look for yourself—number 015-4007, whoever that is.”
    Ruby shook her head. “No idea.”
    â€œHmm,” said Sharon, dropping her head in thought. She clicked and scrolled some more. “OK, check this out. This person who met with Lydia—if it is Lydia—whoever it was, they didn’t go back to the main lab or leave through the building’s main door. This record goes all the way to midnight.”
    â€œWill you look at that? Somebody’s up to something,” Rex said. “Ruby, you got no ideas?”
    â€œI—I don’t know,” she said. All signs had been pointing to Lydia, and now—well, what? Could that be Wade in there? Or Grace? Hard to imagine. Nothing made sense.
    â€œThe mystery person,” Rex said. “Double-O Seven.”
    Sharon said. “Hmm. What do you notice about that mystery number? I mean, compared to the others.”
    Rex saw it first. “Well, those two grad student numbers start with 011, and this one starts with 015.”
    â€œExactly right,” said Sharon.
    â€œBut so—so what?” Ruby said.
    â€œSo, uh, you know,” Sharon said. “These school security badges have different categories, usually in the first few digits. So if 011 is a graduate student, then 015 may be some other type of person—an employee, say.”
    Ruby held her breath. “You mean . . . ”
    Sharon did not answer. She and Rex continued to study the computer screen as if searching for a hidden code.
    â€œYou mean, like a janitor.”

Ruby dropped her backpack near the door, headed into the kitchen, and fixed a bowl of cereal. Make that two bowls, she thought, for stability.
    â€œDad?”
    â€œRu, is that you?” Her father was in the bedroom, sprawled on a chair, listening to baseball on the radio. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
    â€œUm, yeah, OK. It’s me . . . um.”
    â€œ
Um
. Yes, I’ve heard that before.
Um
meaning what?”
    â€œWell, so. One thing is, I have a question.”
    â€œAnother one, huh?” he said from the bedroom. “That’s all I get anymore.”
    â€œYou know your security ID badge?”
    â€œOf course. Couldn’t go anywhere without that thing. Why?”
    â€œDo you still have it?”
    â€œNo, no. They took that away, that very same night. The cops did. I told you that a while ago. Why do you ask now?”
    She tried to sound casual. “Well, do you happen to remember the number on it?”
    Mr. Rose leaned over, pulled out a pencil and a pad out of a nightstand drawer, and wrote it down. He handed the paper to her. “Anything else, officer?”
    Ruby stared unseeing at the number for several seconds before seeing the same 015 as the mystery person’s number. She blinked at the last four digits and saw with a wave of relief that it was 4003. Her dad wasn’t Double-O Seven.
    â€œDad,” she said, her voice closer to normal, “one more quick thing.”
    â€œYes, Ruby. What’s going on?”
    â€œWell, you said that Roman, the other janitor, would not poison Dr. Rama, right? That he was about to retire and all.”
    â€œThat’s right. He had no reason to do it and plenty not to. He was a pretty sour old coot. Rarely saw the man laugh at life. But he also had a pension coming and no reason to make trouble and lose that.”
    â€œWhat coming?”
    â€œA pension. That’s where your employer pays you a certainamount