Free Capital Crimes by Stuart Woods Page A

it. Now the killer knew most of what the FBI knew about his technique of bomb building.
    He finished his breakfast and went to the office. Helen was waiting for him with a notebook in her hand. “Have you been watching TV this morning?” she asked.
    “No, I hate those shrieking tourists outside the morning shows.”
    “Something has happened you may be interested in.”
    “Not another murder of a right-winger.”
    “A death, yes. Who knows if it’s murder?” She consulted her notebook. “This is what I gleaned on three channels: Tim Brennan, who is half the Broadside program on CNN, came home from work last night feeling ill, and in the middle of his dinner started throwing up. His wife got him to an emergency room where doctors found he had symptoms of a bacterial infection, which they were unable to identify.”
    “Oh, my God,” Kinney half-moaned.
    “What?”
    “Go on.”
    “He died at five o’clock this morning. That’s it.”
    “Where did he die?”
    “At a hospital in New Jersey.”
    “Get me the head of pathology at that hospital.”
    Helen returned to her desk and, a moment later, buzzed him. “Dr. Mendelson on the line.”
    “Dr. Mendelson?”
    “Yes?”
    “This is Robert Kinney, deputy director for investigations at the FBI.”
    “Good morning, Mr. Kinney.”
    “Do you have the remains of Tim Brennan at your facility?”
    “Yes, he’s on ice in my morgue.”
    “Have you performed an autopsy yet?”
    “No, I was about to go and attend to that myself.”
    “Please don’t do that, Doctor, at least not yet. I want to send an FBI forensic pathologist and some special equipment up there to work with you on the postmortem.”
    “Why?”
    “Do you have Brennan’s medical record handy?”
    “Right here. What would you like to know?”
    “Cause of death.”
    Mendelson shuffled some papers. “Bacterial infection, unidentified.”
    “Doctor, the unidentified nature of the infection is a red flag for a possible biological or chemical assault.”
    “Assault?”
    “Whatever Mr. Brennan had may have been induced.”
    “That’s very disturbing, but it’s not the first time we’ve had trouble identifying the cause of an infection, Mr. Kinney. What causes you to believe that Mr. Kinney may have suffered an assault?”
    “There are other factors surrounding this death that tend to support such a conclusion. I can’t go into it now, but until our pathologist arrives I strongly suggest that you quarantine your morgue and keep anyone involved in Mr. Brennan’s treatment before his death under close observation for symptoms resembling his. I also suggest that you keep this as quiet as you can, under the circumstances, and that, in particular, you issue no statements to the press, except a statement announcing the time and supposed cause of death and say that an autopsy will be conducted in due course, but that’s all.”
    “All right, Mr. Kinney,” the doctor replied, sounding worried.
    “I should be able to have my people with you by mid-afternoon. Please call me if you have any questions between now and then.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Kinney. I’ll certainly look forward to seeing your people here.”
    Kinney hung up, then called the lab and gave instructions to assemble a team and get them to New Jersey, then he called the Trenton FBI office and instructed them to send an agent to interview Brennan’s wife. “I want to know if Brennan told her about any sort of encounter with a stranger in the hours between the time he left his office and arrived home, especially any sort of physical contact. I’m thinking about a fan who may have shaken his hand, a panhandler, a drunk—anybody at all.”
    He hung up and called the New York City office and instructed them to send agents to interview anyone at CNN with whom Brennan had had contact during the hours between his arrival at and departure from CNN, with particular attention paid to any illness among them. “Tell your agents to remember that