Red Mist (13 page)

This is followed by directions for the preparation of the drugs included with the “kit,” instructions for mixing the solution
and how
to attach an intravenous line to an eighteen-gauge needle and a bag of saline to keep the line open.
I’m struck by the informal,
almost casual, tone of a document that is a step-by-step guide for how to kill someone.

Be sure to expel the air from the line so it will be ready for the injection….

“I did the decent thing and complained directly to the commissioner instead of going to the media,” Jaime continues to describe
her conflict with Dan Farbman and NYPD.

Remember to check the prisoner immediately prior to the administration of any drugs to be sure the intracath is patent and
there’s no infiltration of the IV solution….

“Unfortunately, the commissioner is pals with the mayor.
It got ugly,” Jaime explains.
“I got ganged up against.”

“And so the FBI decided to go into my e-mail and tap my phones because of your battle with Farbman?
Because you’ve accused
him of data cheating?
And because some years ago I had a few run-ins with him, too?”
I don’t buy it.

Marino sets down another page, and I pick it up next, reading the highlighted paragraph:

Following the injection of the thiopental sodium into the system, it is “washed in” by normal saline.
THIS STEP IS EXCEEDINGLY
IMPORTANT.
If the thiopental sodium remains within the IV and
pancuronium bromide is injected, a precipitate will form and possibly clog the line.

“It’s messy when you make enemies.”
Jaime doesn’t answer my question as she removes chopsticks from their paper wrapper.
“It’s
been messy enough in New York for me to leave the DA’s office.
My apartment’s on the market.
I’m thinking about alternative
places to live.”

“You’ve left your life in New York because of an acrimonious situation with Farbman?
That’s hard for me to imagine,” I reply,
as I look at more documents relating to Georgia’s most infamous poisoner, the Deli Devil.

Between 1989 and 1996, Barrie Lou Rivers poisoned seventeen people, nine of them fatally, with arsenic she got from a pesticide
company, all of her victims regular patrons of the deli she managed in an Atlanta skyscraper occupied by multiple companies
and firms.
Day after day, unsuspecting innocents lined up in the atrium at her deli counter for the tuna-fish special, which
was quite the deal: sandwich, chips, a pickle, and a soda for $2.99.
When her sadistic crimes were finally discovered, she
told police she was tired of people “griping about their food and decided to give them something to gripe about, all right.”
She was sick and tired of “shitholes bossing me around like I’m Aunt Jemima.”

“There are other nuances,” Jaime Berger is saying as I read.
“Unfortunately, of a personal nature.
Some of what I was asked
by the FBI agents who showed up at my door was most inappropriate.
It was obvious they’d talked to Farbman first, and you
can imagine his favorite point was about me.
That you and I were almost family.”

I scan the chain-of-custody form that accompanied the execution drugs scheduled for Barrie Lou Rivers, DOC #121195.
The prescription
was filled at three-twenty p.m.
on the first day of March 2009.
Kathleen Lawler told me that Barrie Lou Rivers choked on a
tuna-fish sandwich in her cell.
If that’s true, she must have choked to death at some point after three-twenty p.m.
on the
day of her execution.
The prescription for what was to be her lethal cocktail was filled but never administered, because she
died before prison officials could strap her to the gurney.
It occurs to me that her last meal may have been the same thing
she served to her victims.

“You’ve been back and forth to the GPFW, interviewing Lola Daggette, whose appeals have run out,” I say to Jaime.
“I assume
she’s talking to you about something important or you wouldn’t have transplanted yourself to Savannah.
Your problems in New
York aren’t why you’re here, I don’t imagine.”

“She’s not been helpful,” Jaime says.
“You’d think she would be, but she’s not as afraid of the needle as she is of
Payback.
The person she claims killed the Jordan family.”

“Has she said she knows who
Payback
is?”
I inquire.

“
Payback
is the devil,” Jaime says.
“Some evil ghost that planted bloody clothes in Lola’s room.”

“Her execution is set for this fall, and she’s still saying such things?”

“October thirty-first.
Halloween,” Jaime says.
“I suspect the judge who delayed her execution and then reset it is letting
everyone know what he really thinks of Lola Daggette, wants to make sure she’s given a trick, not a treat, four months from
now.
Emotions still run high about that case.
A lot of people are eager for her to get
what they perceive she deserves.
They want her to die as painfully as possible.
You know, wait just a little too long after
administering the sodium pentothal.
Forget to expel air from the line.
Hope it gets clogged.”

Marino places a stack of color printouts on the table, autopsy photographs, and I pick them up.

“Sodium thiopental is fast-acting and can wear off just as quickly, as I’m sure you know,” Jaime continues.
“If you screw
up the timing when injecting the remaining drugs, and what we’re really talking about is the intramuscular blocking agent
pancuronium bromide?
If you wait too long?
The sodium thiopental, the anesthesia, begins to wear off.
A blocked line and prison
officials have to put in a new one, and the efficacy of the sodium thiopental has dissipated by the time all that’s been done.

“You may look asleep, but your brain has come to,” she says.
“You can’t open your eyes, talk, or make a sound as you lie on
the gurney with restraints holding you down, but you’re conscious and aware that you can’t breathe.
The long-acting pancuronium
bromide has paralyzed the muscles in your chest, and you asphyxiate.
No one watching has any idea that you’re anything but
peacefully asleep as your face turns blue and you suffocate.
One minute, two minutes, three minutes, maybe longer, as you
die a silent, agonizing death.”

The autopsy of Barrie Lou Rivers was performed by Colin Dengate, and I have a good idea how he might feel about someone who
poisoned innocent victims by lacing their deli sandwiches with arsenic.

“Except the warden knows.”
Jaime retrieves a bottle of wine and
a Diet Coke from the refrigerator and shuts the door with her hip.
“The executioner knows.
The anonymous doctor in his hood
and goggles knows and can damn well see your panic as he monitors your racing heart before you finally flatline.
But then,
some of these very people presiding over judicial homicides, the death squad, want the condemned to suffer.
Their secret mission
is to cause as much pain and to terrorize as much as possible without lawyers, judges, the public knowing.
This sort of thing
has been going on for centuries.
The executioner’s ax blade is dull or off the mark and requires a few extra blows.
The hanging
doesn’t go well because the noose slips and the person strangles slowly, twisting at the end of a rope in front of a jeering
crowd.”

As I listen to what sounds like one of Jaime Berger’s classic opening arguments in court, I know that most people who count
in this part of the world, including certain judges and politicians and most of all Colin Dengate, would be unmoved by her.
I have a pretty good idea how Colin feels not only about what happened to the Jordan family but about what should happen to
Lola Daggette.
Yes, emotions run high, especially those of my feisty Irish colleague who heads the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s
Coastal Regional Crime Lab in Savannah.
Jaime Berger coming down to the Lowcountry wouldn’t impress him and might just feel
like an invasion.
I suspect he’s not inclined to give her the time of day.

“As you’re well aware, Kay, I don’t believe that a form of euthanizing begun in Nazi Germany to eliminate undesirables is
one we should emulate in the United States.
And it shouldn’t be legal,” she says, as she arranges sushi and seaweed salad
on a plate.
“Doctors
are prohibited from playing any role in executions, including pronouncing death, and the lethal-injection drugs are increasingly difficult to obtain.
There’s a shortage because of the stigma for U.S.
manufacturers to make them, and some states have been
forced to import the drugs, making the source and quality of them questionable.
The drugs shouldn’t be legally available to
prison officials, and none of this stops anything.
Doctors participate and pharmacists fill the prescriptions and prisons
get their drugs.
Regardless of one’s beliefs or moral convictions, Lola didn’t kill the Jordans.
She didn’t kill Clarence,
Gloria, Josh, and Brenda.
In fact, she never met them.
She was never inside their house.”

I glance up at Marino as I study copies of photographs.
Last I knew, he was in favor of capital punishment.
An eye for an
eye.
A taste of their own medicine.

“I think Lola Daggette was a screwed-up person, a drug addict with a temper, but she didn’t kill anyone or help do it,” he
says to me.
“It’s more likely she was set up by the person she calls
Payback.
She probably thought it was friggin’ fun.”

“Who thought it was fun?”

“The one who really did it.
She got her hands on some kid who’s in a halfway house and basically retarded.”
Marino looks at
Jaime.
“IQ’s what?
Seventy?
I think that’s legally retarded,” he adds.

“She?”
I ask.

“Lola’s innocent of the crimes she was tried for and convicted of,” Jaime says.
“I’m not as clear as I need to be about what
happened the early morning of January sixth, 2002, but I do have new evidence to prove it wasn’t Lola who was inside the Jordans’
house.
What I can’t
know is what went on from a forensic standpoint, because I’m not that kind of expert.
The injuries, for example.
All inflicted
by the same weapon, and if so, what was this weapon?
What do the bloodstain patterns really mean?
How long had the Jordans
been dead when the next-door neighbor went out with his dog and happened to notice the glass was broken in the back door and
then no one answered the bell or the phone?”

“Colin is that kind of expert,” I remark.

“I have a very nice Oregon pinot,” Jaime says.
“If that’s all right with you.”

She pulls the cork out of the bottle of wine as I study photographs of Barrie Lou Rivers on the stainless-steel autopsy table,
her shoulders propped up by a polypropylene block, her head hanging back, her long gray hair stringy and bloody.
The skin
of her chest has been reflected up to above the larynx and the vocal cords, and there is nothing lodged in her airway.
Close-ups
of the small triangular vocal cord opening show it is unobstructed and clear.

Whether it’s an object as small as a peanut or a grape or a large bolus of meat, nothing can get below the level of the vocal
cords when someone is choking, and Colin was appropriately careful to make sure he checked for aspirated food before he did
anything else.
He also deemed the case important enough to stay late or return to his lab after hours and perform the postmortem
examination immediately.
The time and date of the autopsy are listed on the protocol as nine-seventeen p.m., March 1.

I go through more photographs, looking for anything that might verify what Kathleen Lawler told me about Barrie Lou Rivers’s
death
in custody.
I ask Marino for rescue-squad run sheets or statements made by the guards on duty, for the autopsy report, and
he shuffles through the file and hands over whatever there is.
I get confirmation that Barrie Lou Rivers likely ate a tuna-fish
sandwich on rye bread with pickles not long before she died.
Her gastric contents are consistent with this: two hundred milliliters
of undigested food, what appear to be fishlike particles, pickles, bread, and caraway seeds
.

But there’s nothing to support Kathleen’s claims that Barrie Lou Rivers choked to death.
Apparently nobody attempted a Heimlich
maneuver, so it doesn’t seem possible that a bolus of sandwich or anything she might have been choking on was ejected, thus
explaining why it wasn’t found during the autopsy.
There’s no official document that mentions food aspiration or choking,
but I know Colin looked for it.
I can tell he did by the autopsy photographs.