Sullivan's Justice (25 page)

Hank picked up the papers and then set them back down. “I’ve already read the preliminary. I was hoping they’d be able to match the unidentified prints. One of them must be the housekeeper’s. The others belong to someone who’s not in the system.” He chuckled. “We should hire his housekeeper. She does a better job than most of our crime scene investigators.”

Charley moved the magnifying glass over the body. “See these bruises under her arms. She was either unable to walk unassisted or she was unconscious and someone carried her. My guess was she was killed somewhere else and dumped in the pool.”

The detective pulled his reading glasses out of his pocket. “What about the drugs? Is that what killed her?”

“Probably,” Charley said. “We’ve never seen heroin this pure before. It’s fifty percent stronger than China white. The cutting agent is cocaine.”

“The classic speedball?”

“Nothing is classic about this concoction. We also found a sizable amount of strychnine. Not many drug dealers cut coke with strychnine these days. Believe it or not, we have seen it before. Rarely, though, and mostly in LSD. I guarantee they don’t cut with this strychnine, though. They’d have too much of a problem getting their hands on it.”

“Strychnine is used as a pesticide, right?” Hank said. “You can buy it at Home Depot.”

“Not this,” Charley said, arching an eyebrow. “This is a much higher grade than commercial strychnine and none of the other additives used in pesticides were found. It came from what’s called the Saint-Ignatins’-bean. The name developed because of the attention it attracted from the Jesuits, but it was discovered by two French chemists in the 1800s. It’s highly esteemed in China as a medicine.” He bent down and removed Laurel Goodwin’s brain, setting it down near the slicer so he could section it later. “Now, here’s another interesting ingredient, Novantrone. It took the lab a while to identify it, so it wasn’t on the preliminary report.”

“What in the hell is Novantrone?”

“It’s an injectable medication used to treat multiple sclerosis. Another strange thing is if you drastically reduced the dosage and removed some of the controlled substances, this mixture might be considered medicinal.”

“You’re shitting me?” Hank said, thinking the pathologist was out of his mind.

“Stay with me, all right? Let’s say the killer suffers from multiple sclerosis. Traditional treatments aren’t working. A doctor prescribes Novantrone to prevent the progression of the disease, so the person taking it is becoming more disabled each day. Heroin helps kill the pain. Morphine is almost the same as heroin, but you can’t get it unless you’re hospitalized. Cocaine gives them energy and also serves as a pain reliever. Somehow they believe the strychnine can help them as well.”

“So you think the killer might have MS?”

“Maybe,” Charley said. “But if he used it for medicinal reasons, he’d need a chemist or a pharmacologist to prepare it for him. As evidenced in Ms. Goodwin here, the wrong combination is lethal.” His cell phone vibrated. “I’ll be there,” Charley told his wife, stepping to the back of the room. “I told you I’d pick up Kelly by three. All you have to do is make sure she has money for the ice-skating rink. I forgot to go to the ATM again.”

Hank shut out the pathologist’s conversation. Something was bouncing around in the back of his mind, triggered by what he had said. Was the person who’d loaded the syringe the murderer? This would be the rational assumption, but nothing about these murders was rational.

In four years, the detective would turn fifty. Outside of his liver and the extra twenty pounds he carried, he’d passed his physical with flying colors. He hadn’t had sex since his wife had divorced him. Every now and then, he rented a porno movie and jerked off to make sure the darn thing still worked. He’d been dating a nice lady who worked as a waitress at Denny’s. Although they hadn’t slept together yet, the possibility was good. They went dancing every Saturday night, unless something came up at work. Betty was mad at him now because he’d stood her up three times in a row. The woman didn’t understand the life of a homicide detective, the same problem he’d encountered during his marriage. Next week he’d planned on buying her a cell phone so he could call her when he got tied up. She nagged him about his belly, certain if they did have sex, he’d have a heart attack.

The biggest problem was his memory. What he was experiencing right now was the worst. Most detectives carried around Palm Pilots. They even had computers in their cars. The county had issued him a Palm Pilot, but he’d never had the time to figure out how it worked. Next to his computer was a twenty-year-old Smith Corona typewriter. When everyone’s computer crashed or became infected with a virus, Hank would gloat while his fellow officers cursed and ran around like nuts trying to snag an available tech.

“Old Hank,” as they called him, didn’t have to worry about that kind of thing. Inside his filing cabinets were typed reports, original documents, copies of arrest records, as well as a complete history of every case he’d handled during his career as a police officer. Even though he wasn’t supposed to take certain documents out of the building, once a year he boxed up the overflow and stored it in his garage.

The pathologist had returned to his position at the table. He moved some equipment around so the detective could get closer to the body. “Okay, let’s continue. Like I told you at the scene, I’m almost certain your victim was dead when she entered the water. The killer dragged her facedown to the pool. That’s when the abrasion on her forehead must have occurred. I’ve searched every place imaginable and I only came up with this one injection site.” He moved the magnifying glass over the vein in her left arm. “She doesn’t show signs of being an addict. Look at her. This was a healthy woman. Her muscles are toned. The size of her calves compared to her arms and upper torso indicate that she may have been either a bicyclist or a jogger. The Porter woman was also in excellent condition. The killer must be attracted to athletic women.” He paused and took a drink of his Coke, perched on top of a stainless-steel table next to his scalpels, saws, and other instruments. An unwrapped and partially eaten roast beef sandwich was sitting beside it.

“Was Suzanne Porter injected with the same stuff ?”

“Yeah,” Charley said. “We did a preliminary toxicology on her, but we haven’t had time to start the autopsy. We got so far on Goodwin because we had the sample in the syringe.”

“Then both women were killed by the same person.”

“Looks that way,” he answered nonchalantly. “Of course we still can’t rule out a drug overdose. It’s like the Halloween-candy-laced-with-poison phenomenon that surfaced when we were kids. Remember? Your parents let you go trick-or-treating, but you couldn’t eat the candy. Now, everything has to be sealed or kids can’t even put it in their baskets. Just when things eased up, parents started finding razor blades.”

Hank shoved a toothpick in his mouth. “Why are we talking about Halloween?”

“You’re rude, you know,” Charley said, his feelings hurt. “I’m in here working on your case on Christmas and you don’t even have the courtesy to listen. All you guys are the same way.”

Hank jokingly held his hands in a praying position. “Please forgive me, O God of dead people. I’ll never interrupt you again.”

“Where was I?” Charley mumbled, depressing a pedal on the floor that rewound the audio recording he made during every autopsy.

“Halloween candy?”

“Okay,” he said, depressing the stop button before the recording began playing. “Some nut decides to kill people and doctors up what today’s generation perceives as candy—dope. The dealer may not have known what was in this batch.”

Hank was confused. “But you said neither of them looked like they were drug users.”

“Not the kind we usually see,” he explained. “Someone could be selling a concoction to lose weight. Both ladies want to stay in shape, which is evidenced by their physical condition. Say the weight starts to creep up on them and a friend introduces them to someone they pay to come to their house and give them an injection. This individual could be a doctor or nurse, or just someone posing as a professional. The health department has all kinds of problems with these diet clinics. As soon as they close one, a new one springs up. The people running them aren’t always accredited, so some of them have gone underground.” He glanced back at the body and sighed. “I guess we should try to focus on the autopsy. I’m sure you have somewhere to go.”

“No,” Hank said, tugging on Charley’s lab coat. “What you’re saying sounds feasible, Charley. Tell me more.”

He ripped his gloves off and flopped down in a chair, then gestured for Hank to do the same. Once they were settled, Charley leaned forward, obviously excited. “My wife wants me to write a murder mystery. What do you think? Pretty good imagination, huh?”

Hank frowned. “Just pick up where you left off.”

“The person tells them the treatment is in the experimental stages, but it will soon pass FDA approval. Upper-class ladies suddenly feel great. Their appetites are suppressed because they’re using methamphetamine without realizing it. If this was an occasional thing, the injection sites would disappear. As you know, you don’t get tracks unless you use on a regular basis. Then along comes a maniac who decides to kill all the pretty ladies by poisoning the stash.” Charley grabbed his sandwich off the tray and took a bite. “Sorry,” he said. “Want me to order you some lunch?”

The detective groaned, chastising himself for encouraging Charley’s theorizing. It was hard to watch someone eat a roast beef sandwich when Laurel Goodwin’s lungs were sitting on a scale only a few feet away. “Who poisons the stash?”

“Maybe the diet doctor’s wife got jealous.”

“Great, Charley,” Hank said, standing and pulling up his pants. “We’ll give you a medal if you’re right. What I need is something to help me find the son of a bitch. If you’ve got anything else to tell me about Goodwin, tell me now. I’m about ready to bolt. Either that or puke. Give me that,” he said, snatching the sandwich out of the coroner’s hands and placing it back on the plastic paper. “Finish your lunch later.”

Charley laughed, then turned back to the body. “I couldn’t find anything in her stomach. This is another factor that lends itself to a drug overdose. The first time people shoot up with heroin, they usually vomit. The Novantrone would compound that as one of the side effects is nausea. The crime scene guys didn’t find any vomit inside the house. I located some regurgitated food lodged between her teeth and lower jaw. One of the ingredients was oats and the other was sugar. Probably whatever was left of her breakfast. She was either dead by lunchtime or she didn’t eat for some reason.”

“What’s your best estimate as to time of death?”

“I told you I can’t give you an exact time,” Charley said, his voice elevating. “You guys are always pushing for things we can’t do. I’m listing it as two to six hours. I assume Sullivan is a suspect.”

“One of them,” Hank told him.

“Did you bag his hands?”

“No.”

“That was a mistake.”

“I know,” Hank said, grabbing the report and scrunching it up in his fist. “He’s Carolyn Sullivan’s brother.”

“Carolyn’s a nice lady,” the pathologist said, looking up. “I thought it was kind of strange that you let her wander around the crime scene like that. But, hey, what do I know? All I do is slice and dice them. She’s pretty. You’re alone, aren’t you? Why don’t you take her out to dinner? You’re not employed by the same agency.”

Hank was attracted to Carolyn, even though he would never admit it. Why would she want an old buzzard like him? He would ruin their friendship if he made a pass at her. “What about semen?”

“Nothing,” Charley told him. “Anyway, I doubt if it would have proved anything. Since the victim and suspect were dating, they were more than likely having sex. Are you going to drain the pool?”

“Yes,” the detective said, turning and punching open the door, then glancing back at what was left of Laurel Goodwin. He’d let his feelings for the probation officer cloud his judgment. The woman on the table with her insides removed deserved justice. From this point onward, he’d have to exercise more constraint when he talked to Carolyn.

Hank was halfway down the corridor when he turned around and entered the room again. “Oh, do you know if the lab worked up the cars we removed from Sullivan’s and Porter’s garages?”

“Doubtful,” he answered. “But you’ll have to call them. Like us, they ran out of room. I had lunch with Harold Sagan the other day. He was furious. Seems there’s talk their budget is going to be cut again this year. He claims it’s because the board of supervisors can’t get it through their thick skulls that victims and criminals have cars that have to be processed for evidence. I’ll call and give Sagan a nudge for you. They’ll probably get to the vehicles later this week. Because of its value, Sagan locked up the Ferrari in one of our warehouses. Have you seen it?”

“I’ve seen it,” the detective grumbled. “One of the guys at the lab is probably driving it. That’s why they’re dragging their heels on the report.”

“Don’t get so worked up over everything,” Charley told him. “Appreciate what you have. People aren’t dragging their heels, Hank. Both of these homicides are only a few days old. How would you like to have six unidentified corpses on ice?”

Hank heard only a few words the pathologist had spoken. His mind was still trying to lock onto something related to a chemist. He thanked Charley and left. Suddenly he remembered. Carolyn’s mother had taught chemistry at the junior college.

He reached his black Crown Victoria in the parking lot. Ducking inside, he recalled snippets from his childhood. He saw himself on a sunny afternoon, watching through the picture window in the living room while the kids on the block played. He sat at the piano, his chunky fingers desperately trying to make music. His mother had been an accomplished pianist. Parents thought their child could do anything they wanted with the right amount of effort. He wondered if Neil Sullivan’s mother had felt the same way about teaching her son chemistry.