Top
Retired physicist Gloria Lamerino suspects something is amiss when she learns that Gary Larkin has died of beryllium poisoning in his Berkeley, California, physics laboratory. The police declare his death a tragic accident, but Gloria, who had worked with Gary, knows better. Larkin knew far too much about the hazards of this dangerous element for his death to have been simply the "tragic accident" the Berkeley police have labeled it. So Gloria decides to leave her cozy home in Revere, Massachusetts, and heads west, determined to uncover the truth.
The list of Larkin's wrong doings, proven or alleged, is longer than a complex chemical formula: extortion, sexual discrimination, misappropriation of funds, criminal computer hacking, Internet pornography, and general cruelty and nastiness.
Her best friend's lover's teenage son, Manuel, has vanished without a trace. And by a bizarre coincidence, Gloria's search for the missing boy leads her to the very lab where Gary Larkin worked and died. For Manuel had consulted briefly with the scientists there, seeking information for a school term paper he was writing on an ominously familiar subject: beryllium.
The pieces of two seemingly disparate puzzles are beginning to fit together in odd and uncomfortable ways. But Gloria does not have the luxury of time to complete the complex picture - especially when a second homicide further complicates matters.
