Unlucky 13 (Women's Murder Club 13)

DR. DAMARIS CORTES looked luminous and had a pleased ta-dah look on her face, as though she’d just discovered the eighth wonder of the world.

“Smoking gun?” I said. “How so?”

She was happy to explain—at length—which only told me how much work had gone into finding what was revealed to be a miniature gel cap. And, most important, it was intact.

Dr. Cortes’s explanation, translated into everyday English, came down to this.

A small soluble capsule had been filled with three ingredients: magnesium, which we’d already known about; RDX, which we had known nothing about; and oil to keep the two ingredients apart until stomach acid dissolved the capsule.

Cortes refreshed my understanding of RDX, a stable explosive in granular form that was developed for the military. RDX packs a huge bang more powerful than TNT, and to this moment, had only been detonated in conventional ways.

Now there was a new method.

Cortes theorized that when the capsule dissolved, stomach acid activated the magnesium, which created a flare. That flare ignited the RDX, causing a secondary explosion with enough power to blow through muscle tissue and seat belts and windshield glass.

Cortes went on, “The execution was brilliant. The capsule was evidently folded into top-grade hamburger meat, which could be preformed into patties, frozen, and cooked whenever.”

I asked, “And the person eatin

g the encapsulated explosive wouldn’t notice it?”

“Not really,” said Cortes. “The gel cap is flexible and small. And now it’s embedded in this thick meat sandwich, maybe accompanied by cheese, bacon, and bread. The way most people tuck into hamburgers, they hardly chew, am I right?”

Cortes shrugged expansively.

I thought about recently wolfing down a Chuckburger at my desk and gave myself a belated scolding for taking a chance like that.

Cortes went on.

“Odds are your killer didn’t get it right the first time. I can imagine some trial runs before there was liftoff. But to conceive of this bomb at all, well, you’re dealing with some kind of genius. You see that, don’t you?”

Claire said, “What they used to call in the comic books an evil genius.”

Cortes said, “I ran a simple comparison between the beef in my sample and what’s available locally, and I’ve concluded that my sample of mush is consistent with the beef at Chuck’s Prime.”

We thanked Cortes, and Claire and I backtracked through the maze of offices out to the parking lot.

I said to Claire, “You know what I’m thinking?”

“Hold on.” She put her thumbs to her temples. “Let me tune in to your frequency.”

“I’m thinking maybe the Jeep victims’ belly bombs were the test run. If that’s so, if that was the first—”

Claire said, “So you’re thinking there could be another belly bomb?”

“I think so. We still don’t get the message.”

CHAPTER 25

CONKLIN WAS IN the break room, washing out the coffee pot, when I found him.

I got a fresh can of coffee from the cupboard and popped the top. “I’ve got a belly bomb update,” I said.

“Hit me with it.”

I filled him in on the two-stage explosive that had been packaged in a gel cap and disguised inside ground beef consistent with Chuck’s Prime Beef blend.

“The FBI is locking down Chuck’s meat-processing plant. We should go to Emeryville,” I said.