Red Mist (35 page)

“Shit, well, that just ruined a lot of foods for me.
So if you’re the bad guy …”

“I’m not a bad guy.”

“Saying you were, you’d cultivate this bacteria somehow and then put it in someone’s food so they die of botulism?”
Chang
asks.

“I don’t know how it was done.
Assuming we’re talking about botulinum toxin.”

“And you’re worried we are.”

“It’s something we need to consider very seriously.
Extremely seriously.”

“Is it common to use in homicidal poisonings?”

“It wouldn’t be common at all,” I answer.
“I’m not aware of any cases.
But botulinum toxin would be very difficult to detect
if you didn’t have a history and a reason to suspect it.”

“Okay, if she couldn’t breathe, was having all these awful symptoms you’ve described?
Why wouldn’t she call nine-one-one?”
He photographs bath salts and candles on the side of the tub.
Lavender and vanilla.
Eucalyptus and balsam.

“You’d be surprised how many people don’t,” I reply, as I indicate I’d like to examine the prescription drugs, and, of course,
he doesn’t mind.
He doesn’t care what I do as he continues to lead me down the path he wants me on.
“People think they’ll
be okay or can help themselves with home remedies, and then it’s too late,” I add.

I open the bottle of Ambien, and information on the label indicates the prescription was filled ten days ago at the same pharmacy
near the prison where I stopped by yesterday after using the pay phone.
Thirty ten-milligram pills, and I count them.

“Twenty-one left.”
I return the pills to the bottle, and next look at the Ativan.
“Filled at the same time and by the same
pharmacy as the other, where she purchased most things in here, it seems.
Monck’s.
A pharmacist named Herb Monck.”

Possibly the owner, and I remember the man in the lab coat I bought the Advil from yesterday.
A pharmacy that does home deliveries,
it occurs to me.
Same day, right to your door,
the promise on signs posted inside, and I wonder if Jaime had more than food delivered.

“Eighteen one-milligram pills left,” I inform Chang.
“Carl Diego is the prescribing doctor for both.”

“Most people who want to kill themselves take the whole bottle.”
Chang takes off his gloves and reaches into a pocket of his
cargo pants.
“Let’s see who Dr.
Diego is.”
He has his BlackBerry out.

“Nothing to indicate a suicidal overdose,” I emphasize.

I open drawers and cabinets, finding perfume and cosmetic samples Jaime must have gotten free at a department store or more
likely from shopping online.
Things delivered.
Life brought to her door, and then death handed over in a take-out bag.
Handed
to me.

“We don’t want to get hung up on thinking she caused her own death when there’s someone out there who might do it again,”
I say to Chang.
“Multiple deaths already.
We don’t want more.”

I’m suggesting rather bluntly that he doesn’t want to make the mistake of getting hung up on Marino or me.
If Chang looks
too hard at us he won’t look anywhere else.

“A doc in New York on East Eighty-first.
Maybe her GP up there, who called in her prescriptions down here.”
Chang is checking
the Internet, and what he’s really doing is giving me plenty of room to get trapped.
“If something was put in her food deliberately,
it would have to be odorless and tasteless, wouldn’t you assume?
Especially in sushi?”

“Yes,” I agree.
“As much as we know about what’s tasteless.”

“What do you mean?”

“Who tastes a poison and lives to report on it?”

“Examples of really strong poisons that would be odorless and tasteless?”
As if I have a malignant truth he can coax out of
hiding.
“Tell me what you would use if you were a killer.”
He pushes harder.

“There is nothing I would use, because I wouldn’t poison anyone, even if I might know how.”
I look him in the eye.
“I wouldn’t
help
another person poison someone, even if I thought we could get away with it.”

“I didn’t mean literally.
I’m just asking what you think would have done the job.
Something you can’t smell or taste, and
you put it in her sushi.
Besides the bacteria that causes botulism.
What else, for example?”
He returns his BlackBerry to
his pocket and pulls on fresh gloves, tucking his used ones in an evidence bag and sealing it so they can be disposed of safely.

“Hard to know where to begin, and these days it’s also hard to know what might be out there,” I say to him.
“Really scary
chemical and biological agents made in labs and weaponized by our own military.”

W
e step back inside the bedroom, where Colin is pacing as he talks on his cell phone, giving instructions to the removal service.
He has covered Jaime’s body with a disposable sheet, an act of kindness and gesture of respect that wasn’t necessary, and
I’m struck by the irony.
He has shown Jaime far more consideration than she ever showed him.

“You’re going to want to double-bag her at least,” he is saying over the phone, as he paces past the windows, the drapes still
drawn.
It is hard to know what time of day it is, and I realize it’s raining just as hard.
I can hear rain drumming on the
roof and spattering the glass.
“That’s right, just use the same precautions as if it’s infectious
and we don’t know that it isn’t, and we always treat every body as infectious, anyway, right?”

“Fentanyl and the so-called date rape drug Rohypnol, nerve agents such as tabun and sarin, oksilidin, anthrax,” I go down
the list with Chang.
“But some of these are very fast-acting.
If someone put Rohypnol or fentanyl in her food, for example,
she wouldn’t have made it through dinner.
I think the priority is to screen for clostridium botulinum.”

“Botulism.
Wow, that’s scary.
Why are you thinking of that as opposed to something else?”
He places his bagged contaminated
gloves on the foot of the bed.

“The symptoms as they’ve been described.”

“It’s just strange to think of poisoning someone with a bacteria.”

“Not the bacteria but the toxin produced by the bacteria,”
I explain.
“That would be the way to do it, and it’s what the military has in mind.
You don’t weaponize the bacteria.
You
weaponize the toxin, which is odorless, tasteless, as best anybody knows, relatively easy to get hold of, and therefore difficult
to trace.”
I add to his suspicions about me.
“We don’t have time for a mouse assay.
Not a nice thing to do to a mouse, by
the way.
Injecting it with serum and waiting days to see if it dies.”

Colin covers the phone with his hand and says to me, “What about botulism?”

I tell him we should screen for it.

“You got a place in mind?”

I tell him I have an idea about it.

He nods and gets back to the removal service.
“Exactly.
The regular way with a removal cot, bags that don’t leak.
I know all
of them
do, let’s be honest, but double or triple up and autoclave or incinerate them after the fact, along with soiled protective
clothing, gloves, whatever’s contaminated.
The same drill if you were worried about hepatitis, HIV, meningitis, septicemia.
For God’s sake, don’t reuse the bags, is what I’m getting at, and wash everything down, disinfect really good.
Bleach … Yes.
I would.”

“Your idea?”
Chang asks me.

“An aggressive one.
A blitz attack,” I reply.
“Screen for anything that is a reasonable possibility, and botulinum should
be first on the list, all serotypes.
And do it as quickly as possible.
I mean immediately.
Two people have died in twenty-four
hours, and a third is on life support.
We don’t have the luxury of waiting days for an old-fashioned assay when there are
newer and faster methods.
Monoclonal antibodies or using electrochemiluminescence, ECL, which I know is being done at USAMRIID,
the U.S.
Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick.
I’m happy to contact them and see if I can
help facilitate testing if needed.
But I think it would be more practical and expeditious to deal with the CDC.
That’s my
vote.
A lot less red tape, and I’m sure they would have an analyzer that can test for biological agents such as botulinum
neurotoxins, staphylococcal enterotoxin, ricin, anthrax.”

“USAMRIID?”
Colin says, as he gets off the phone.
“Why are we thinking about the military, and what the hell is this about
clostridium botulinum, and did I just hear anthrax?”

“I’m simply suggesting possibilities based on not just this situation but others,” I reply.
“Three cases, and the reporting
of the symptoms is similar if not the same.”

“You thinking this is a national security issue or terrorism?
Because USAMRIID’s not going to help unless it is.
Of course, I realize you probably know people.”

“The accurate answer at the moment is we don’t know what this is,” I reply.
“But what’s going through my mind is the other
cases you’ve told me about.
Barrie Lou Rivers and other inmates who died suddenly and suspiciously at the GPFW.
An onset of
something and people quit breathing.
Nothing is found on autopsy or on a routine drug screen.
In those cases, you didn’t have
specimens tested for botulinum toxin, I assume.”

“Wouldn’t have been a reason for that to occur to me or anyone,” Colin replies.

“I’m just going to say it.
Right now I’d be worried about a serial poisoner.
Nobody hopes I’m wrong more than I do,” I tell
them, and I go into more detail about the delivery person who rode up on a bicycle last night as I was about to enter this
building.

I describe the impression I got that Jaime might not have placed the order for the sushi and that the person who delivered
it mentioned the restaurant had Jaime’s credit card on file.
She said that Jaime had food delivered regularly.

“As I look back on it,” I add, “the person offered a lot of information.
Too much information.
I’m vaguely aware of having
an unsettled feeling at the time.
Something seemed strange.”

“Maybe trying to convince you she was a delivery person because maybe she wasn’t,” Colin considers.
“Someone who placed an
order, picked it up, poisoned whatever it was, and pretended to be a delivery person for the restaurant.”

“If someone who works at the restaurant is responsible, that
won’t be hard to track,” Chang remarks.
“That would be really risky.
Stupid, in fact.”

“I’m more worried it wasn’t a restaurant employee,” Colin says.
“And that it’s going to be hard as hell to track.
If this
is someone who’s been doing it for a while, the person is anything but stupid.”

“Certainly would have to know her patterns.”
Chang looks at the sheet-draped body on the bed.
“Have to know where she orders
food and what she likes and where she lives and all the rest.
Has Marino mentioned her having any other associates or friends
in the area?”

I reply that he hasn’t and insist that sushi didn’t appear to be on the menu last night.
By all appearances, Jaime had no
intention of eating sushi or serving it to us, and in fact would have known that neither Marino nor I eat it.
I describe arriving
at the apartment and being told that Jaime had walked to a nearby restaurant for take-out, and when she returned it was with
more than enough food for the three of us.
Even so, when she was presented with the option of having sushi, she joked that
she was addicted to it and said she had it sent in at least three times a week, and she ate the take-out delivery and was
the only one who did.

“Kathleen Lawler also ate something that wasn’t on the menu,” I remind them.
“Her gastric contents indicate she ate chicken
and pasta, and possibly cheese, while the other inmates were served their usual meals of powdered eggs and grits.”

“She didn’t buy chicken and pasta in the commissary,” Chang says.
“And her trash was missing, plus there was something weird
in her sink.
If it was poison in her sink, though, it wasn’t colorless and odorless.”

“Unless she was escorted somewhere for a special meal, obviously somebody delivered chicken and pasta, and possibly a cheese
spread, to her cell,” I tell them.
“You probably noticed Jaime had security cameras installed, out front and outside her apartment
door.
Question is whether they record, and Marino will know the details.
I think he helped her with the installation or advised
her about it.
Or I suppose you might find the digital video recorder somewhere, if there is one.”

“It’s her cameras?
The one out front in particular is hers and not the building’s?”
Colin asks.

“They’re hers.”

“Perfect,” Chang says.
“Do you remember what the person looked like?”

“It was dark, and it happened fast,” I tell him.
“She had lights on her helmet and a bicycle and some type of bag or backpack
that the take-out food was in.
White female.
Fairly young.
Black pants, light-colored shirt.
She gave me the take-out bag,
recited what the order was, and I handed her a ten-dollar tip.
Then I went inside and took the elevator up here to Jaime’s
apartment.”

“Anything unusual about the take-out bag?”
Colin asks.

“Just a white bag with the name of the restaurant on it.
Stapled shut with the receipt attached, and Marino opened it, placed
the sushi in the refrigerator, and Jaime served herself and ate most of it.
Various rolls and seaweed salad.
There should
be one seaweed salad left that I placed inside the refrigerator when I helped her clean up last night, or more exactly, after
midnight, around twelve-thirty, quarter of one.
We need to get the containers out of the trash, gather up all of the leftovers.”

“Including the bag and the receipt,” Chang says.
“I definitely want those going to the labs for fingerprints, DNA.”

“I’m estimating she’s been dead at least twelve hours.”
Colin finishes packing up his crime scene case.
“So early morning.
How early, I can’t be precise.
Between four and five is a safe estimate.
I’m not seeing anything that tells the story of what
happened to her except the obvious, and if the other two are poisonings as well?”
He means Kathleen Lawler and Dawn Kincaid.
“Then how is that possible?
How do you do that to inmates who are incarcerated a thousand miles apart and then to this person?”
He means to Jaime.
“The good news, if there’s any good news to be found in all this, is the path for the drug or toxin, the
route of administration, likely is something that was ingested and not intradermal or inhaled.
So hopefully the rest of us
are okay.”

“Nice to know,” Chang says.
“Since we’ve been poking around in one victim’s prison cell and now are about to dig in another
victim’s trash.”

I return to the living room, and the clutter on the coffee table is similar to what was in the bathroom, items scattered,
as if Jaime upended her pocketbook and dumped everything out.
A bottle of an over-the-counter pain reliever.
Lipsticks.
A
compact.
A brush.
A small bottle of perfume.
Breath mints.
Facial tissues.
Several blister packs that are empty, ranitidine
and Sudafed.
Chang looks inside a crocodile wallet and finds credit cards and cash.
He reports there’s no obvious sign of
anything stolen, and I let him know he might want to check for a concealed weapon.
The handgun he pulls out of a side compartment
of the big brown leather bag is a Smith & Wesson snub-nosed .38, and he points it up toward the ceiling and
pushes in the ejector rod, unloading six rounds into the palm of his hand.

“Speer Plus P Gold Dots,” he says.
“She didn’t mess around.
Only I don’t think what got her was anything she could shoot.”

“I’d like to get started with the trash.”
I walk into the kitchen.
“What I can do is place each take-out container in a plastic
garbage bag.
I noticed a box of them last night when I was helping clean up.
The heavier-duty the better.
Thirty-gallon garbage
bags should work just fine temporarily.”

I go into the cabinet under the sink and begin to shake open black trash bags, deciding to package each take-out container
from the sushi restaurant separately.
While I deal with the kitchen garbage can, Chang goes into the refrigerator and looks
at what’s inside without touching anything.

“I’m assuming you’ve got some waterproof tape with you,” I say to him, as the rancid stench of rotting seafood wafts up from
the metal can.

“Damn, that stinks,” he complains.

“She didn’t take out the trash last night, and I didn’t volunteer to do it for her, and now I’m glad.
Thank God for that.
We need to make everything as watertight as possible,” I explain.
“What we don’t want is anything leaking, especially if you
plan to transport evidence in your car.”