Page 37 of The Perfect Crime

“Because of the requirement to provide them to get a driver’s license?”Ryan assumed.

“Actually, no,” Beth volunteered.“He doesn't have a license or a car, apparently.But he did have to provide prints for a past job.”

“What was that?”Jessie asked.

“As a medical researcher for Prostanica Pharmaceuticals," Beth said."They do research for the government.Apparently, he had to have a security clearance.Thus the required fingerprints, and likely a whole lot more."

“Do we have access to that ‘whole lot more?’”Jessie wondered.

“We’re working on getting it,” Jamil said, “but as you can imagine, the federal government doesn’t share that information without a fight.It might take a while.”

“Even without any of that, this is promising,” Ryan said.“If he did research for a pharma company, it’s not unreasonable to assume that he would know how to poison people in doses that would have delayed effects.”

“Yes,” Jessie agreed, “but I have to say, based on my interactions with Eric Sawyer so far, he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who could evengeta security clearance.”

“Probably not now,” Jamil agreed, “but he got his clearance four years ago.Things might have been very different for him back then.”

“Does he still work at Prostanica?”Ryan asked.

“No,” Beth said.“It looks like they let him go about a year ago.”

“Do we know why?”Jessie asked.

“The details are extremely limited,” Beth said.“All I can find so far is that it was ‘for cause.’We can probably eventually sus it out, but these companies are pretty buttoned-up so it might take some doing.”

“I have my suspicions,” Jamil muttered, his attention on his computer monitor.

“Care to share with the class, Jamil?”Jessie asked.

“Right,” Jamil said, realizing everyone was waiting to hear what he’d discovered.“I’ve been going through Sawyer’s social media.It was pretty conventional stuff until about two years ago, when he started posting more regularly and more…outlandishly.”

“What does that mean?”Ryan wanted to know.

“Well, he went from posting about the movies he saw and how his workouts went to making more conspiratorial comments.”

“Like what?”Jessie pressed.

“Some of them were about Prostanica and what he believed was a plan by executives to cover up various suspicious drug trials, none of which he addresses with any specificity.”

“Could there be any merit to the allegations?”Jessie wondered.

“I haven’t found anything to support his claims, which are vague to the point of useless,” Jamil said, “though that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to them, I guess.But things didn’t end there.”

“How so?”Ryan asked.

“Soon after the Prostanica allegations, the comments become more generalized, about a larger plot by the government to secretly poison citizens to make them more docile.In addition, there’s a lot of surveillance state stuff.Some of it’s pretty out there.”

“Truthfully, it doesn’t sound all that different from what a lot of people post these days,” Ryan grumbled.

“Maybe not,” Jamil acknowledged, “but they are different in one important way.About six months ago, the tenor of some of his comments turned threatening, not just to others but to himself as well.”

“Was anything done?Beth asked.

“Yes,” Jamil said.“After a tip from a former co-worker and friend, authorities did a welfare check on him.He was combative and ended up being put on a 5150.”

“What’s that?”Beth asked.

"It's a 72-hour non-voluntary hold at a psychiatric facility," Ryan explained."It sounds like he kind of spun out at some point," Ryan noted.

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