Ask Not For Whom The Panther Prowls Read Online Free PDF Page A

been a wound,
it was well-healed. That line of questioning wasn't going anywhere.
So I tried another, “The other thing I need to do is look for a
common social thread between you and the other possible
victims.”
    “ Grilling me about my private life?”
    “ Not really, you just have to tell me if you know the person
I mention.” I started with the boys from my class. “Sam Green or
Steve Jordan?”
    “ I knew Sam, we both worked tutoring jobs for the online ESL
service. He was a nice guy, for a Freshman.”
    “ Steve?”
    “ No. I don't think so.”
    None of the other names I knew about were familiar. Before
I left I asked her how she was doing, Danny wanted to know when his
favorite teacher would return. She replied, “Pretty well, it's
funny though, parts of me are still numb or don't work right. It's
like I'm a robot and my wiring is wrong.”
    5
    I tried talking to the ESL lab to see if they would let me
see the list of students who worked for them. They said there was
this little issue of student privacy involved. This was a little
odd, since the freedom of information act makes everything spent or
done at GSU a matter of public record ii . So I asked again, and received the
same answer, this time a little more forcibly. If I showed up with
a police detective, a warrant and the down of an unhatched
pterodactyl they'd let me know. Otherwise, would I please go and do
something anatomically impossible to myself.
    I gave Arthur a call. He asked me, “When are
you going to get back on a case that pays?” Then he agreed to see
what he could find out via informal channels. “I've helped a couple
of people in personnel, they should return the favor.” I didn't ask
any questions and he volunteered no further information.
    6
    Laura and I
threw and engagement/wedding party, partially to celebrate our
coming nuptials, and also to introduce our disparate friends to
each other. It also meant that we could skip out right after the
ceremony to have a honeymoon without a lot of fuss. I'd suggested
we go somewhere safe, say Somalia or Columbia, but Laura insisted
that the northern beaches of Jamaica would be best. In retrospect,
she was correct, I don't think she'd look good in a
burka.
    The party
started well enough, given the mix of professors, the occasional
scared-looking graduate student, detectives and lawyers. Most of
our difficulty was making sure that the mixture didn't
self-segregate into knots of people who knew each other talking
about things they mutually knew. It was in this spirit that I
introduced one of the chemists, Isabelle Carling to a knot of
detectives containing my friend Alvin Morrison. They were
discussing shop, the status of the local drug trade, and I figured
her interests in synthetic organic chemistry would fit right
in.
    One of the
detectives was saying, “There's a new source of Meth in south
side.”
    “ Really,”
Dr. Carling observed, “How interesting.”
    “ It is,” he
continued, “It's much cleaner than the usual stuff. Most of these
Meth cooks produce a mixture of products that is not very
pure.”
    “ What do you
expect? It's hard to do a clean synthesis.”
    “ This stuff,
it's clean, almost as if they used a real chemist to make it rather
than cooking it up in some shack in the woods.”
    Isabelle dropped her glass. “I'm sorry. Didn't
mean to do that.”
    While I was mopping up the mess I overheard a
bit more. The detective was continuing to expostulate, “It's called
'blue panther' for some reason. Couldn't have anything to do with
State could it?”
    “ No, no.”
Isabelle quickly replied, “We have strict controls on our
chemicals. It would be impossible to set up a drug lab at
GSU.”
    I wandered
off to dump the debris and rinse my rags, by the time I returned
the conversation was over. I also noticed Isabelle had made her
excuses and left.

5. Fame is
Fleeting.
    Dr. John
Roger's work on micro-encapsulating drugs made the Signal, which
was a bit of a shame, because