Red Mist (34 page)

“New York,” I reply, and I’m aware of the burnt-fruit odor of the Scotch again, and it triggers a jolt of emotion.

“Looks like that’s the last call she made, on this phone anyway, and he recites the rest of the number out loud as he jots
it on a notepad.

The number is familiar, and it takes a moment for me to realize why.

“Lucy.
My niece.
That used to be her cell phone number when she lived in New York,” I explain, not showing what I’m feeling.
“When she moved to Boston she changed it eventually.
Early this year, maybe in January.
I’m not sure, but that number isn’t
hers anymore.”

Jaime must not have known Lucy had a new number.
When she told Lucy she didn’t want any contact with her ever again, apparently
she meant it.
Until very early this morning.

“Any idea why she might have tried to call Lucy at one-thirty-two in the morning?”

“Jaime and I were talking about her,” I reply.
“We were talking about their relationship and why it ended.
Perhaps she got
sentimental.
I don’t know.”

“What kind of relationship?”

“They were together for several years.”

“What kind of together?”

“Partners.
A couple.”

Chang places the handset inside an evidence bag.
“You left her at what time last night?”

“I left her this morning at about one.”

“So maybe a half hour later she calls Lucy’s old number and then fumbles with the phone when she’s hanging it up.
It ends
up under the bed.”

“I don’t know.”

“Indicating something might have been really wrong by that point.
Or she was really drunk.”

“I don’t know,” I repeat.

“You told me the last time you’d been in here prior to last night was when?”

“I told you I’ve never been in this apartment prior to last night,” I remind him.

“And you’d never been here before.
You’d never been inside this room, the bedroom, prior to now.
You didn’t come in here last
night or really early in the morning before you left, maybe to use the bathroom, the phone.”

“No.”

“What about Marino?”
Chang is squatting near the bed, looking up at me as if to give me a false sense of dominance.

“I’m not aware of him coming back here at any point last night,” I answer.
“But I wasn’t with him the entire time.
He was
already here when I arrived.”

“Interesting he has keys.”
Chang stands up and begins to label the evidence bag.

“Possibly because both of them were using this place as an office.
But you’d have to ask him about the keys.”
I expect that
at any minute he is going to escort me out and read me my rights.

“It strikes me as a little unusual.
Would you give him keys if you had a place?”
he asks.

“If there was a need, I’d trust him with keys.
I understand my opinions don’t matter, so I’ll stick with the facts,” I then
say, responding to his suggestion that I can’t be objective about Marino.
“The facts are that except for the sushi, Jaime
brought in the food.
She served food and drinks to us in the living room.
Afterward, and I’m estimating this would have been
close to ten-thirty, maybe quarter
of eleven, Marino left us alone for a while.
He returned to pick me up in front of the building at approximately one a.m.,
at which time Jaime seemed fine except intoxicated.
She’d had wine and Scotch and was slurring her words.
In retrospect, she
might have begun having symptoms related to something besides alcohol.
Dilated pupils.
Increased difficulty in speaking.
Her
eyelids were drooping slightly.
This was about two and a half, maybe three hours, after eating the sushi.”

“Dilated pupils wouldn’t be opioids but could be a lot of other drugs.”
Colin presses his gloved fingers into an arm, a leg,
making a note of blanching.
“Amphetamines, cocaine, sedatives.
And alcohol, of course.
Did you happen to notice if she might
have taken anything while you were with her?”

“I didn’t see her take anything or have a reason to think she might have.
She was drinking while I was here.
Several glasses
of wine and several Scotches.”

“What happened after you left?
What did you do?
Where did you go?”
Chang asks.

I don’t have to answer.
I should tell him I’ll be happy to cooperate under certain conditions, such as with my lawyer present,
but that’s not who I am.
I have nothing to hide.
I know Marino did nothing wrong.
All of us are on the same side.
I explain
that we spent some time driving in the area where the Jordans lived, discussing that case, and returned to the hotel around
two a.m.

“You see him go into his room?”

“He’d forgotten something in his van and went back out to get it.
I went on up to my room alone.”

“Well, that’s a little bit curious.
That he walked you in and then returned to his van.”

“There was a valet on duty who should be able to say whether Marino did what he said he was going to do and got groceries
out of the backseat, or whether he drove off again,” I reply pointedly.
“And the van was having serious mechanical problems
that made Marino take it to a body shop this morning.”

“He could have gone on foot.
The hotel’s maybe a twenty-minute walk from here.”

“You’ll have to ask him.”

“Ambient temp’s seventy-one degrees.
Body temp is seventy-three degrees,” Colin says, as he moves Jaime Berger’s body off
the side of the bed.

Her arms and head are unwilling, and he has to apply pressure to coax them, and it is difficult to watch.
I’ve broken rigor
thousands of times, countless times, really, and don’t give it a thought when I’m forcing the dead to give up their stubborn
and unreasonable positions.
But I can scarcely bear to look.
I think of the take-out bag I offered to carry upstairs and feel
guilt.
I feel to blame.
Why didn’t I question the person who materialized out of the shadows on the dark street last night?
Why wasn’t I concerned
when Jaime indicated she hadn’t ordered sushi?

“Anything else in here you think I should be aware of?”
Chang continues to ask me questions that have little to do with what
he really wants to know.

“The turned-over glass.
And I would swab what appears to be spilled Scotch on the table.
But you might want to wait until
we’re dealing with the leftover food and what’s in the trash.
All of
it needs to be handled the same way.
Anything she might have eaten or drunk.”

I keep my hands in my pockets as we begin to walk around.
I tell Sammy Chang the same thing I told him earlier at the prison.
I will look and explore as long as he approves, and I will touch nothing without his permission.
We start with the master
bath.

T
he mirrored medicine cabinets are open wide, their contents strewn over shelves and the granite countertop, in the sink,
and all over the floor, as if a storm blew in or an intruder ransacked the master bathroom.
Scattered about are cuticle scissors,
tweezers, nail files, eye drops, toothpaste, dental floss, teeth-whitening strips, sunscreens, over-the-counter pain relievers,
body scrubs, and facial cleansers.
There are prescription medications, including zolpidem tartrate or Ambien, and anxiolytic
lorazepam, better known as Ativan.
Jaime wasn’t sleeping well.
She was anxious and vain and not at peace with aging, and nothing
she had on hand to relieve her routine discomforts and discontentedness was going to defeat the enemy that confronted her
the final hours and minutes of her life, a violent attacker that was sadistic and overpowering and impossible to see.

As I interpret her death through the symbols of her postmortem artifacts and her chaotic clutter, it is clear to me that at
some point early this morning she suffered an onset of symptoms that caused her to search desperately for something, for anything,
that might mitigate panic and physical distress so acute that it looks as if an intruder pillaged her apartment and murdered
her somehow.

There was no intruder, only Jaime, and I imagine her dumping out the contents of her pocketbook, perhaps looking for a medication
that might relieve her suffering.
I imagine her rushing inside the master bath for a drug that might offer remedy, and sweeping
and knocking items off the shelves, frantic and crazed by the torture of what had seized her.
Only it wasn’t another person
killing her, not directly.
I believe it was a poison, one so potent it transformed Jaime’s body into her own worst enemy,
and I wasn’t here.

I hadn’t stayed.
I’d left earlier, so relieved to get away that I’d waited outside in the dark under a tree for Marino to
pick me up, and I can’t stop thinking that had I not been hurt and angry, I might have noticed the warnings.
It might have
occurred to me that something was wrong, that she wasn’t merely drunk.
I was defensive of Lucy, and she’s always been my weakness,
and now someone she loves, maybe the love of her life, is dead.

“If you don’t mind.”
I indicate to Chang that I want to look and touch as he takes photographs.

Had I been here during Jaime’s crisis, I could have saved her.
There were signs and symptoms, and I ignored them, and I don’t
know how I will explain that to my niece.

“Sure, go ahead,” he says.
“Any reason for you to suspect she might have had something inside this apartment that someone
else wanted to get hold of?
I notice several computers and what looks like case records and other confidential documents
in the living room.
What about sensitive information on her computers?”

“I have no idea what’s on her computers.
Or even if they’re her computers.”

I could have gotten a squad here.
I could have given her CPR, I could have breathed for her until paramedics took over with
an Ambu bag as they rushed her to the ER.
She should be in a hospital now, on a ventilator.
She should be all right.
What
she shouldn’t be is cold and stiff on her bed, and I will have to tell Lucy I failed Jaime and I failed her.
I’m not sure
Lucy will forgive me.
I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t.
All these years she has made the same comments to me again and again,
repeating the same objections because I make the same mistakes.
Don’t fight my battles.
Don’t feel my feelings.
Don’t try to fix everything, because you only make it worse.

I made it worse.
I couldn’t have made it any worse, and I’m saying to Chang, “I think you’re aware of what Jaime’s been doing
in Savannah, and therefore the nature of the documents you’re referring to.
But to answer your question, I wouldn’t know if
she had something inside her apartment that someone might have wanted.
I have no idea what’s on the computers in the living
room.”

“When you were with her, did she say anything to give you the impression she was worried about someone wanting to harm her?”

“Only that she’d gotten increasingly security-conscious,” I reply.
“But she didn’t mention anything specific about being afraid
of anything or anyone.”

“Don’t know what jewelry and other valuables she might have brought down here from New York, but her watch is still sitting
there.”
He indicates a gold Cartier watch on a black leather strap on the counter near a glass that has a small amount of
water in it.
“Seems like that would have been worth stealing.
I’m wondering if she started rummaging for medication or something
when she was drunk.”

I pick up a box of Benadryl out of the sink, noting that the top has been ripped off as if the person was in a frantic hurry.
On the floor is a silver packet with two of the pink tablets missing.

“I’m no longer sure she was drunk.
At least not as drunk as she seemed.”
I look at the price sticker on the Benadryl box.
“Monck’s Pharmacy.
Unless there’s more than one, it’s in that shopping area near the GPFW where the gun store is.”

“She bought this since she’s been down here, since she’s been interviewing people at the prison.
Maybe she had allergies,”
he says.
“You have an idea when she first came to Savannah and rented this place?”

“She indicated to me that it was several months ago.”

“Maybe April or May.
The pollen was really bad this spring.
It was like everything had been spray-painted yellowish green.
For a while I couldn’t run or bike outside.
I’d breathe in all this pollen and my eyes would swell, my throat would close
up.”
He is making conversation, being amicable, the good cop chatting with me.

Sammy Chang is being collegial, and I know the game.
Loosen up, open up, I’m your friend, and I intend to treat him as my
friend because I’m not the enemy.
I have nothing to hide.
I’ll take a polygraph.
I’ll swear to the facts under oath.
I don’t
care that he hasn’t read me my rights, and I don’t care what he asks.
I will admit freely
that I feel guilty, because I do.
But I’m not guilty of causing Jaime Berger’s death.
I’m guilty of not preventing it.

“I’m going to guess she took Benadryl last night based on the torn-open box and the packet on the floor,” I say to him.
“If
she took two tablets, she must have been suffering significant symptoms, possibly was having trouble breathing.
But we won’t
know until her tox is back whether she has diphenhydramine on board.”

“Maybe she had a severe allergic reaction to something she ate.
Maybe the sushi.
Was she allergic to shellfish?”

“Or she thought she was having a severe allergic reaction because she was having difficulty breathing or swallowing or keeping
her eyes open,” I tell him, as I pick up other toiletries to see where she bought them.
“It’s been reported, as you know from
being at the prison a few hours ago, that Kathleen Lawler was having difficulty breathing after she came in from the exercise
cage.
Supposedly she had trouble speaking and keeping her eyes open.
Symptoms one might associate with flaccid paralysis.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“Nerves are no longer stimulating muscles, usually starting with the head.
Drooping eyelids, blurred or double vision, difficulty
speaking and swallowing.
As paralysis progresses downward, breathing becomes labored, and this is followed by respiratory
failure and death.”

“Caused by what?
What might she have been exposed to that could do what you describe?”

“Some type of neurotoxin is what comes to mind.”

I bring up Dawn Kincaid.
I tell him that Kathleen Lawler’s biological daughter, who is charged with multiple violent crimes
in
Massachusetts, including the attempted murder of me, experienced difficulty breathing inside her cell at Butler this morning
and went into respiratory arrest.
She appears to be brain-dead, and I explain that officials there are concerned she was poisoned.

“I’m not aware of Jaime being allergic to shellfish, unless she developed a sensitivity recently,” I continue.
“Although an
anaphylactic reaction to shellfish could cause flaccid paralysis and death.
As could other types of poisoning.
It appears
Jaime did a lot of her shopping at the same pharmacy, Monck’s.
It would be good to pay close attention to anything she might
have purchased there, anything from there that’s in the apartment.
Any product or over-the-counter meds or prescriptions,
including anything she might have gotten in the past that we’re not seeing now.
Just to rule out she didn’t do this to herself
or that something she bought there wasn’t tampered with.”

“You mean if someone tampered with something on the shelves inside the store.”

“We need to consider every possibility we can think of, and we need a careful inventory of everything in this apartment,”
I reiterate.
“The last thing we want to do is overlook a potential poison that gets left behind and hurts or kills someone
else.”

“You’re thinking suicide’s a possibility.”

“I’m not thinking that.”

“Or that maybe she accidentally got hold of something.”

“I have a feeling you know what I’m thinking,” I answer him.
“Someone poisoned her, and it’s deliberate and premeditated.
My overriding question is poisoned her with what?”

“Well, if something was put in her food,” he then says.
“Any ideas
what could cause the symptoms you described?
What might you put in someone’s food that within hours would kill them from flaccid
paralysis?”

“There’s nothing I would put in any person’s food.”

“I didn’t mean you personally.”
He continues to photograph every item in the bathroom, every toiletry and bath product, every
beauty aide, even the bars of soap, and he is jotting notes in his notebook, and I know what he’s doing.

Buying time and gathering information, methodically, painstakingly, patiently.
Because the more time we spend, the more I
talk.
I’m not naïve, and he knows I’m not, and the game plays on because I choose not to stop it.

“And a neurotoxin would be what?
Give me some examples.”
He probes for information that might tell him I murdered Jaime Berger
or the others or know who did.

“Any toxin that destroys nerve tissue,” I answer.
“The list is long.
Benzene, acetone, ethylene glycol, codeine phosphate,
arsenic.”

But I’m not worried about any such thing.
I don’t believe Jaime was exposed to benzene or antifreeze, or that some household
product like nail polish remover or a pesticide was laced in her sushi or mixed with her Scotch or that she got into the cough
syrup.
Those types of poisonings are usually accidental or irrational acts.
They aren’t the stuff of my nightmares.
There
are far worse things I fear.
Chemical and biological agents of terror.
Weapons of mass destruction made of water, powder,
and gas, killing us with what we drink, touch, and breathe.
Or poisoning our food.
I mention saxitoxin, ricin, fugu, ciguatera.
I suggest to Sammy Chang we should be thinking about botulinum toxin, the most potent poison on earth.

“People can get botulism from sushi, right?”
He opens the door of the shower stall.

“Clostridium botulinum, the anaerobic organism that produces the poison or nerve toxin, is ubiquitous.
The bacterium is in
the soil and the sediment of lakes and ponds.
Virtually any food or liquid could be at risk for contamination.
If that’s what
she was exposed to, the onset was unusually fast.
Usually it takes at least six hours for symptoms, and more commonly twelve
or thirty-six.”

“Like when you have a can of vegetables that’s bulging because of gas and you’re always told not to eat something that looks
that way,” he says.
“That’s botulism.”

“Food-borne botulism is commonly associated with improper canning and poor hygienic procedures or oils infused with garlic
or herbs and then not refrigerated.
Poorly washed raw vegetables, potatoes baked in aluminum foil and allowed to cool before
they’re served.
You can get it from a lot of things.”