Free The Boric Acid Murder by Camille Minichino

feeling from a public affairs officer. No surprise there. I still have Yolanda’s boron articles to read.”
    “Was that boring articles?”
    “I was hoping you wouldn’t say that.” I wondered if I should tell him about element number one hundred and seven, called bohrium, after nuclear physicist Niels Bohr.
    “That was too easy a shot, I guess.”
    I nodded. For the first time since we’d started dating, I felt strained around Matt. In spite of the distraction of Yolanda Fiore’s murder and John Galigani’s predicament, it was clear that we were stepping around another important topic. Us .
    Matt’s pager went off just as we’d run out of excuses to discuss our future together. A wave of relief flowed through me.
    “Another case,” he told me after responding to the call.
    I suspected he was equally relieved.
    IN MATT’S ABSENCE, I took Yolanda’s reports to bed with me, a scenario much more typical of my adult life than the last few months with a steady boyfriend.
    One report was a treasury of data on the radioactive waste that’s been gathering for the last fifty years, mostly in large pools right next to the nuclear reactors that generated it. Like lethal swimming holes all around the country.
    In another of her articles, Yolanda had created an accident scenario: suppose a steam line in a power plant breaks, causing a rapid temperature change in the cooling system. Immediately, the control-room staff would need to inject a solution that would safely shut down the plant—a solution containing boron. What if the plant didn’t have enough boron on hand? Yolanda asked. A meltdown on the horizon, she answered.
    All of Yolanda’s articles had a definite antinuke slant—in one she managed to bring up the hazardous presence of weapons-grade material on lab property—but hard as I tried, I couldn’t see anything worth killing her for. No individual would likely feel threatened by her pseudo-exposes. Ordinarily I’d be happy to find no scientific motive in a murder investigation,
but this time I was ready to sacrifice one of my own species, a professional scientist, for the sake of exonerating John Galigani.
    My eyelids drooped as my gaze and my fingers drifted off the pages.
    Boron. Maybe Matt was right. Boron is boring.
    An eruption of sound woke me. I couldn’t place it at first. An overlay of at least three excruciating tones—a clanging bell clapper, a loud, annoying buzz, a boisterous honking.
    An alarm.
    Something—someone?—had set off the Galigani Mortuary intrusion alarm.
    I hurried to get myself out of bed, my reading matter spilling onto the floor, my ears ringing from the din. I went to the window—why not under the bed? I wondered later. The metal box, just under the roof overhang, seemed to be shaking from its own noise.
    My heart pounded in my throat, nervous tingles raced through my body. I tiptoed to the threshold of my bedroom door, as if my footsteps could be heard over the clamor. I looked across my foyer to the front door, the only entrance to my apartment other than third-floor windows.
    I saw the chain, still fastened across the frame, and let out a deep breath. No one was in my apartment. Unless he’d replaced the chain behind him.
    The cacophony from the alarm box went on at the same level, hurting my ears.
    No doubt a false alarm.
    Maybe I’d forgotten to lock one of the downstairs doors and the wind blew it open. I tried to determine which mortuary door could have swung free on this warm, still night. Or maybe an animal pushed against it. Never mind that I hadn’t seen a stray animal big enough to do that since I’d left California.
    I walked to the alarm pad, on the wall in my entryway. Even though my security chain was in place, it frightened me to be so close to where someone might crash in.
    The building was divided into sectors, each one with its own
light on the pad. I had to determine which door corresponded to the light that was blinking red. Why hadn’t I