Case File #913482

Date: 05-11-XXXX

It was a dark, stormy night.

Well, actually, it was a bright and happy morning, but I didn’t feel particularly bright or happy as I trooped down with the rest of the gang to examine yet another crime scene. It pays the bills, but it doesn’t mean I’ve got to like doing it.

The problem this time was not one person – not even a double murder. Nope, this was sixteen guys all with less life than a high school class on a Monday morning. And that was definitely saying something.

“Well, we caught a big fish today,” I announced, going through the list of the dead. “Bigger than anything you could find in the Hudson, I should think.”

“There are fish in the Hudson?” Christabelle asked, her expression as usual one of complete innocence.

“No,” I said cynically, “but I hear the Easter Bunny lives there.”

Nothing like a bit of sarcasm to brighten up your day. Christabelle gave me a dirty glare and went back to taking the photographs of the crime scene.

The victims were the VVVIPs of the Federated States of Lyganda, one of those nondescript countries in Eastern Europe that you never knew existed until it turns into a mini-Iran. As was the case with this particular country. (Ref. Report: NBA on The Dangers of a Nuclear Lygandan State, R#482-1)

“It seems that they were on their way to the annual United Nations conference before their Gulfstream 550 crashed into the East River,” Ryan said dolefully to no one in particular, his usual, um, cheerful self.

“Oh, that’s right!” I said, snapping my fingers comically. “I was trying to find a reason why the fifteen members of Lyganda’s government were flying around on a private jet. Please don’t jump.”

“They are hauling,” he interrupted, obviously in one of his happier moods today, “the plane out of the water. It should be ready for us to examine in a moments’ time.”

One moment’s time later, everything was ready for us to examine. Honestly, it wasn’t a pretty sight, and I’ve seen pretty ugly sights in my day. Christabelle kept working away, the only job where you can take pictures of dead guys and not be called weird. (Ref. picture set P#482-1)

“Hey guys,” Wen Hao called out to us from behind, “Sorry I’m late.”

“Were you off lifting weights?” Celine asked, and we dropped our professional demeanours (if any) for just a few seconds to crack up at the inside joke.

“Very funny. What have we got?” Ever one for business, he was already zooming in on the dead.

“Um, sixteen of Lyganda’s politicians bought the farm at around six this morning,” I said quickly, and it would’ve been impressive if not for the piece of paper in my hand. “The big shot was Lyganda’s PM, Dragan Dodik, who for the record I have never before heard of. Seeing as we’ve just gotten the plane out, the coroner hasn’t yet been able to check the COD, but there’s something decidedly fishy about the whole thing – excuse the pun.”

“Of course there’s something wrong with the set-up,” Celine said suddenly, staring at the massacre. “No one’s out of their seats.”

To get an idea of how we felt, this was a revelation on par with Archimedes’ ‘Eureka!’ moment, though with no streaking through the streets.

“Of course,” Wen Hao breathed, “if a plane were crashing the normal way, people would be running for the doors screaming for their mommies.”

“This has to be a homicide,” Christabelle agreed, doubling the rate of pictures such that it seemed she was firing a machine gun with her index finger.

We groaned. Homicides are never pretty things when it comes to politics.

***

Cleaning up the crime scene required surprisingly little work, seeing as there was no blood anywhere – perhaps the water washed it off. As they always do in the TV shows, we went around the scene collecting objects of interest, although unlike the shows they were probably not going to turn out useful, and there wasn’t any cool music playing in the background. (Ref. Physical Evidence: Crime scene E#482-1)

Back at the lab we crowded around the TV listening to Lygandan’s stand-in Prime Minister going on and on about the injustice done to his country, the tragedy of it all, so on and so forth. (Ref. Recording: Lygandan’s stand-in PM V#482-1) I was about to throw my shoes at the TV when the coroner, a funny little man by the name of Gayle Agger, came out.

“Want to look at dead bodies, then?” he asked, and the five of us obediently trooped in to perform one of the most exciting things known to man.

“There’s actually very little evidence we’ve got on the cause of death; no asphyxiations, no bullet holes, no gaping wounds in chest from sledgehammer,” the chap began with a disappointed sigh, which freaked me out more than any of the events in the morning had done.

“We found water in some of the lungs, meaning that they might have been barely alive, perhaps unconscious but breathing, at the point of impact,” he continued, moving around the body and pointing randomly at the victim’s mouth. “One possible COD is poisoning, because that rarely ever leaves a trace. You can look at all the details yourself, in the report.” (Ref. Recording: coroner V#482-2, Report: autopsy R#482–2)

“Poisoning, huh?” Celine remarked as we trooped out of the office, ready to drown in the never-ending flow of various chemical experiments. “What are the ways you can get poisoned?”

“Do you really want me to answer that question?” I asked dryly.

“Honestly,” she ignored me, “list the ways. Remember, everybody, including the pilots, died. It’s got to be something that gets around.”

“Syphilis!”

“The food on the plane. Even the pilots drink the coffee.”

“Um, ventilation shafts? Some sort of gas going around?”

“SARS!”

“Lack of oxygen? The masks didn’t get down in time?”

“Perhaps some pressure malfunction.”

“Do we still have that sample of food that you bagged in the plane?” Celine asked Ryan, who dutifully checked what the techies had written on the labeling.

“No traces of any sort of toxins,” he confirmed, “and there were no broken windows, so if we take the sensible solutions from the lot – “ four pairs of eyes shot me a dirty glare – “we’ve got ventilation shafts.”

“Some sort of gas poisoning, then?” Christabelle suggested.

“Okay. Poisonous gases include ammonia, arsine, carbon monoxide, coal gas, nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide, mustard gas, pretty much all the halogens…”

“wait…all the halogens?” I said, frowning. Crud. This was going to mean a hell lot of work.

“I agree with Rachel…if we’re going to have to look into this poisoning lark, we’d better get started on that biggest group,” Ryan commented. And that pretty much settled the conversation – whatever our two chemistry geniuses say, we do.

Just then, a nuclear missile landed in our midst, spouting a ridiculously happy ‘hi-hi-hi’ and grinning like he’d just struck the lottery. Our infallible sidekick, Nitro Green, had finally arrived.

“You know,” I said mildly, “I think it’s an offence to be that happy unless you’ve been cured of cancer or discovered how to bring people back from the dead.”

“What’s the deal now?” he completely ignored me, continuing his eager-chipmunk impression. “What’re we doing? Who’s dead? Who’s going to die? Are we going to catch the killer? Oh, this is so exciting, I can’t wait!”

And you wonder why we call him N₂.

***

“Okay, Nitro,” Celine said patiently – without her I think our next case would have been the murder of Thomas Hilter, wannabe CSI – “I’ll say it again. Halogens are a collection of diatomic non-metals. They’re all lumped in group seven of the periodic table, surely you know what that is?”

“Well, yes,” Nitro said energetically, a squirrel on caffeine. “Why are they all grouped together?”

“Because,” Wen Hao began in a long-suffering voice, quite surprising as he never volunteered for anything, “they all show trends in terms of color, state, oxidizing power and redox reactions.”

Nitro frowned. “State? What kind of state?”

“Oh, you know,” I said, losing my temper by the second, “One of those fifty things lying around North America. That’s why it’s called the USA.” Honestly, and this guy wanted to be a science expert. Benjamin the Tasmanian Tiger would have done better than him, and he’s dead.

“INSERT AND EXPLAIN STATE PROPERTIES HERE”

“Ohhhhh, I see,” said Nitro, clearly not seeing at all. “Then what’s oxy-oxy-oxidising power?”

You couldn’t find a person with a more ironic name.

“I’ll take this one, then,” Ryan said when no one volunteered an answer - more than one person had put on headphones and were trying to nonchalantly perform random experiments with nothing to do with the job at hand. “INSERT OXIDISING POWER THINGS HERE”

Nitro was looking more and more uncomfortable by the minute. “I’m just going to get a coffee,” he said tightly, and fled out of the room.

“Hang on, hang on – you left bits of your brain all over the floor!” I called to him. Strangely enough, Nitro didn’t bother replying.

“Okay, let’s forget about him at the moment,” Celine said, briskly turning attention to the job at hand, as usual always focused when it came to work. “Please give this your all – we don’t want anyone making a fool of us again.”

Ouch. Our defeat at the hands of Doctor O. was still a fresh wound. Even I tried to pay more attention.

“It’s time to write down everything we know about the halogens,” she continued, “and see if there’s anything we can learn.”

“So far we’ve already discussed the state and oxidizing powers,” Ryan said quickly, already reveling in his and Wen Hao’s finest hour. “I’ve read something about their redox reactions with solutions of other halide ions.”

“Oh, yeah,” Wen Hao continued, not to be outdone. “INSERT REDOX REACTION INFORMATION HERE”

“Don’t forget the precipitation reactions with aqueous silver ions of the halogens,” Ryan interrupted, using the big words either to impress us all or bore us to death. “INSERT S.I.O. PART K HERE”

“Too…much…testosterone,” I gagged, and went over to where Christabelle was listening to some records.

“If you still need proof it’s a poisoned gas that killed the people, listen to this,” she said smugly, offering me headphones to the recordings of the black box. (Ref. recording: black box V#482-3)

“So we’ve got the proof that it was gas, what else do we need?” I said. “Just a little matter of cause of death. Oh, and the infinitesimally small, completely useless fact of WHO killed them.”

This shut us all up for a bit. As much as we knew about the halogens, nothing was going to help us find the killer.

Nitro burst into the room. “Hey, guys,” he said weakly, “I’m back.”

“You don’t say,” I said snidely.

“Ha ha, that’s a funny cup,” he ventured when no one else paid heed to his return. “Why does it look like it’s been eaten away?”

“Wait a minute…” five chairs crashed to the floor as we all ran towards the said cup. It was one of those cheap five cent things they gave out on the airplane, the type also commonly used for birthday parties and such. Why they were using that on a VIP flight was far beyond me. But this cup had been through some pretty heavy acid, seeing as there were dents and holes all over the cup such that it looked like the surface of the moon.

“Well, guys,” Celine said, grinning broadly, “I think we’ve found our killer.”

“HCl!” Christabelle said happily. “When Chlorine reacts with water it gives HCl!”

“And that must have eaten the plastic of the cup!” Ryan added, looking considerably brighter than we’ve ever seen him.

“Check this out: some of the victims’ lungs had been slightly corroded!” I passed the autopsy report around.

“Great, just in time for the game,” Wen Hao said, checking his watch. Trust him to care about whether Manchester United or Chelsea was going to win when we had sixteen dead bodies and a killer on the loose.

Nitro was looking very pleased with himself, even though he didn’t do anything but point out a fact we would have realized five minutes later.

“So now we need to figure out WHO did it,” Celine pointed out, bringing the popping of wine to an abrupt halt.

“You don’t think…it could be Doctor O., could it?” I said tentatively. Dr. O., the world famous assassin, was one of the very few people who were capable of planning something like this.

“Hang on,” Christabelle said, a mysterious expression on her face. She went back to her pile of photographs. “I think I remember – something on the plane, just next to a dead dignitary – “