A Case of Amston Poison

By Larry Zimmerman

When people start dying in the small town of Lebanon, CT, the FBI and CDC speculate that terrorists are testing a deadly poison. Ricin, extracted from castor beans, has no known antidote. What no one suspects is the connection of the killer or killers to Dirk Adler and Joe Wolf. When that connection proves to be personal, Dirk and Joe must protect themselves and their friends from sure death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Larry Zimmerman
• Release date: Jan 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9780988754638

Larry Zimmerman

Larry E. Zimmerman graduated from the University of Hartford with a major in mathematics and a minor in literature. He worked for IBM as a Technical Industry Specialist and retired after 25 years. During that time, he taught programming classes, wrote many application programs and manuals for the banking industry. In retirement, he teaches poetry and short story writing to adults and senior citizens. Larry has won a number of awards for his poetry and short stories. He is known in Amston CT, for his mystery books that take place in the local environment.

Book preview

A CASE OF AMSTON POISON

by

Larry E. Zimmerman

Book 6 of the Amston Lake mystery series

* * * * *

Published by: Blue Pinion Enterprises at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 by Larry E. Zimmerman

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This book is available in print from Blue Pinion Enterprises. Order books from:

http://www.amstonbooks.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All rights reserved. The characters and animals in this story are fictional and bear no resemblance to people or animals living or dead.

Amston Lake Map

You give me hope, a reason for anchor.

You are my anchor, a reason for hope.

From the poem Anchor of Hope

by Gregory R. Baier

Dedicated to Betsy and Leo Foxwell

Friends beyond compare.

Table of Contents

Title Page and Front Matter

Map

Quotes

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

About the author

Other Amston Lake mysteries

Chapter 1

Mary Ann Hagan was the first to die. Her 16-year-old son found her writhing on the floor when he came home from school at 3:30 on Wednesday afternoon, September 24. When he couldn’t get his mother to explain what had happened to her, he wisely called 911. Medical aid arrived in less than ten minutes. The EMTs quickly bundled her up in a gurney and transported her to Windham Hospital in Willimantic.

Dr. Glenn Tyler, the intern on afternoon duty, performed the usual procedures. He noted on her chart Temperature elevated; blood pressure low and dropping, patient had vomited and now showed bloody diarrhea. Experiencing mini-seizures. Dr. Tyler put her on an IV drip of a saline solution and called the resident physician. After seeing the patient and listening to the symptoms, he made a guess as to the cause of her malady, which by luck or knowledge turned out to be correct. He concluded that she had been poisoned.

Not having the knowledge, skills, or equipment to treat her in Windham, the physician told Tyler to call for a Life Star helicopter to take her to Yale-New Haven Hospital. At 5:30 p.m., Doctor Donald Strong, the resident physician at Yale, put in a call to the Federal Government’s Center for Disease Control (CDC). Dr. Strong suspected that Mary Ann Hagan had somehow ingested ricin.



Dr. Strong knew that ricin (pronounced RICE-in) is an extremely toxic poison. It is made from waste left over from processing castor beans for castor oil. Ricin is usually in the form of a powder. It is a stable substance unaffected by extreme conditions such as very hot or very cold temperatures. It can be deadly whether inhaled, ingested, or injected. It is soluble in water.

Dr. Strong also knew that it would take a deliberate act to concoct ricin and use it to poison people. Accidental exposure to ricin would be highly unlikely.

There have been more than 750 cases of documented ricin intoxication in humans. Serendipitously, during a forensics class in med school, Dr. Strong had studied a classic case of ricin poisoning that occurred in England. Georgi Markov was a writer and dissident who, as a result of his controversial writings criticizing the Bulgarian Government, became one of the regime's most reviled enemies. He defected from Bulgaria in 1971 and settled in London. On September 7, 1978, Markov walked across the Waterloo Bridge spanning the River Thames. While waiting at a bus stop on the other side, he was jabbed in the thigh by a man holding an umbrella. The man apologized and walked away.

Markov felt a stinging pain where he had been hit by the umbrella tip. When he arrived at work at the BBC World Services offices, he noticed that a small red pimple had formed in the same spot. The pain persisted. That evening, he developed a high fever and was admitted to the hospital. He died four days later.

Markov had told doctors he suspected he had been poisoned. Due to the circumstances, Scotland Yard ordered an autopsy. Forensic pathologists discovered a spherical metal pellet the size of the head of a pin embedded in Markov’s leg. Further examination by experts from Porton Down revealed that the pellet contained traces of ricin. The umbrella had probably been modified to use compressed gas to inject the pellet into his leg. Both the Bulgarian Secret Police and the Russian KGB were implicated in the murder.

Even if the doctors treating Markov had known he had been poisoned with ricin, it would have made no difference. There is no known antidote to ricin poisoning.

Due to its toxicity and ease of manufacture, the United States investigated ricin for its military potential during World War I. They considered using it as a toxic dust, or coating bullets and shrapnel, but the war ended before it was weaponized. During WWII, both the U.S. and Canada explored using ricin in cluster bombs, but it wasn’t any more economical than phosgene (also known as mustard gas.) Some reports claim that ricin may have been used in the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980’s, and that quantities of ricin were found in Al Qaeda caves in Afghanistan.



Within two hours, three teams of doctors, poison specialists, and FBI investigators swarmed over the little town of Lebanon, Connecticut, where Mary Ann Hagan lived. One team went directly to the hospital to confirm the diagnosis and gather more information. The second team tried to reconstruct Mary Ann’s activities for that day. A third team cordoned off her house and property, checked the son for any symptoms, and then shuffled him off to a relative’s home. They then began testing to determine the source of the poison, if indeed it was in the house.

The FBI cleared out all the residents from their houses in the immediate area of Mary Ann’s house, in case the ricin was airborne. Fortunately, most of the houses were seasonal, and the summer residents had already left.

The third team from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) doffed bio-suits outfitted with self-contained breathing apparatus, and entered Mary Ann’s house. The first thing they did was look around for any suspicious powder. Finding none, they took samples of obvious items. There was a half-eaten sandwich on the kitchen table, with a half-empty cup of tea beside it. Both went into sterilized plastic bags. Water samples were collected next – hot and cold water from the sink and bathroom taps, and samples from the toilet bowl tank. Lastly, they collected an air sample using a small battery operated fan that blew air into a large clear plastic bag. The CDC team leader checked around the house one more time and then declared sampling complete.

Meanwhile, the outside team called for a State Police helicopter, and alerted the Laboratory Response Network (LRN) that samples of a possible case of ricin poisoning would be arriving at the nearest analytical lab within 30 minutes. The on-duty monitor at the LRN, Douglas Craig, checked lab locations and instructed them to land the helicopter on the Hartford Hospital roof-landing pad. He told the team leader that he would handle the situation from that point on.

Doug now had a multitude of tasks to perform. Ever since 9/11, every member of the CDC, LRN, FBI, CT Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the State Health Department had been trained on procedures to follow in the event of a terrorist attack. Scenarios included attacks from airplanes used as bombs (as they were in New York and Washington), human suicide bombers (prevalent in Iraq), dirty bombs (atomic or other), bioterrorism (involving viruses or contagious diseases), and poisons (such as anthrax and ricin).

As the first order of business, Doug alerted Hartford Hospital. A security officer needed to be on the roof to receive samples from the helicopter. Next, an ambulance was to wait at ground level to transport the samples directly to the Department of Health Laboratory on 10 Clinton Street, which was located behind the DEEP building.

It was now 7:30 p.m. Most of the lab technicians had left for the day. Doug checked the pyramid. At the top