The Cyclops Conspiracy (21 page)

He had expected to find the answers stuffed away in the prescriptions files of the Colonial. But after pulling a half-dozen real prescriptions, Jason realized it wasn’t going to be as simple as waltzing in and plucking the evidence from the computer databases and the stored files.

He leaned against the wall between Lily’s locked office and the storage closet, admiring his handiwork. A patina of perspiration coated his skin. He wiped his brow with a sleeve. With just a few boxes left to stack, the task of sorting the files was almost complete. The hallway was still jammed with paper and cardboard in various forms. Jason made sure the “keeper” boxes were arranged so as to hide the surveillance system Pettigrew had installed. If Lily didn’t know about it, he didn’t want her finding out now.

His stomach growled. Besides his small breakfast this morning, Jason hadn’t really eaten in two days. When he finished, he was going over to his favorite steakhouse to gorge himself on their largest steak, the fattest baked potato, and as many buckets of sweet rolls as his belly would hold. He would top it all off with a tall, icy beer, maybe two.

The first of the last three boxes was old and taped together at the corners. Jason grasped the tattered container by the cutouts. It felt like it contained lead. He sucked in a breath and heaved. As he turned, the left cutout gave way, tearing. One end of the box dropped toward the floor. He tried to catch it, but missed. Prescription bundles scattered everywhere.

He cursed and sank to his knees, gathering the bundles. A stray prescription lay on the floor like a lost child. He picked it up and examined the thin strip which had been affixed to the face of the prescription, assigning it a prescription number. He didn’t know why
he looked at the number rather than just stuffing it back in the box, which would be shredded anyway. Just part of a pharmacist’s anal nature, he would later recall. Find the correct bundle and put it back.

He scanned the prescription numbers scribbled on the outside of the California folders, looking for the bundle from which this prescription had spilled. The number did not belong. It was not part of the sequence of this box.

When he turned it over and looked at it more closely, Jason’s heart nearly jumped out of his chest.

“What does this say?” asked Jason. His forefinger tapped the copy of Pettigrew’s autopsy on the kitchen table.

Peter and Waterhouse had been tasked with scouring every bar and pub in Smithfield and the surrounding localities. Their goal was to find anyone who might recognize Thomas. Someone who’d seen him drinking the night he died. They’d found no one. It was another missing link fueling Jason’s suspicion.

The three men took seats at the table as Jason opened the report.

“My buddy in the Newport News PD,” Waterhouse said, “was able to get a copy of that from someone he knows at the medical examiner’s office. It’s inconclusive—”

“What else is new?” Peter chimed in.

Jason scanned the pages. “His neck was broken, so were three ribs, both arms and legs. His face was badly smashed. His blood-alcohol level was equivalent to 0.18 measured by extracting vitreous humor. Well above the legal limit.”

Waterhouse said, “What kind of alcohol?”

“What the hell is vitreous humor?” asked Peter.

“Eyeball juice,” Jason replied.

Peter cringed and rubbed his eye.

“The stomach contents show no food, only some kind of distilled spirit like whiskey,” Jason continued.

“This guy had everybody fooled,” said Peter.

“No way,” Jason declared. “Maybe he was forced to drink it.”

“You know, Jason, I’m tolerating your little investigation here,” Peter sighed. He scratched the gap in his eyebrow where the scar cleaved it. “But let’s face facts. Pettigrew was drunk. Now you’re telling me someone forced him to get drunk. Then they faked his car accident.”

“It’s possible,” Jason replied. “None of the facts point to Thomas being a drunk. Chrissie found no evidence of booze anywhere in his house. No one saw Thomas drinking anywhere in Smithfield. Hell, Walter even said Thomas was trying to get him to stop drinking a week before he died. And anyway, how the hell did he drive thirty miles when he
already
had a BAC high enough to stop an elephant? It doesn’t add up.”

“I’d believe it more if he was just hit over the head or shot,” said Peter. “If they were going to kill him, why go to the trouble of making it look like an accident? Why not just put out his lights and dump his body in the Chesapeake?”

“Maybe whoever did it didn’t want an investigation. If he disappeared or turned up murdered, then people would ask questions. If there’s an insurance scam, they wouldn’t want the scrutiny.”

Peter shrugged. “I’m not convinced.”

Walter produced the cell phone wrapped in its plastic bag. “I had a friend check the serial number with all major carriers. It was Thomas’s. He used AT&T, purchased the phone a year and a half ago. Where did you say you found it?”

“In a bucket of water in the back room of the Colonial.”

“Christine said he called and left a message on her phone from his cell. The phone was found in the pharmacy. I pulled his phone
records. The last call was to Christine’s landline. It must have been made before the phone ended up in the bucket.”

“He was in the pharmacy the night he died,” Jason explained. “Christine said it was late when he made the call, close to midnight. The autopsy said he died somewhere between two and four in the morning.”

Waterhouse shuffled the phone logs. “According to the records, the call was made at 11:27 p.m. What was he doing in the pharmacy at that hour?”

“I’m guessing he wasn’t getting drunk. Maybe doing exactly what we’ve been doing?” Peter said.

Jason withdrew the folded prescription from his pocket, opened it, and laid it on the autopsy report. “Or maybe he was looking for this. It’s the missing prescription.”

Peter picked it up and examined it. “Big whoop! We knew the prescription existed. That doesn’t prove he was murdered.”

“Thomas thinks he was.” He turned the prescription onto its face.

Peter and Waterhouse leaned over the table as if they were looking at a rare diamond.

It read,

If you find this, I was murdered.

T. P.

“How do we know Pettigrew wrote this?” It was Walter questioning Jason this time.

“I pulled several prescriptions from the files. Prescriptions Thomas had taken from doctors over the phone and written down. They were written months ago. They’re the same. Take a look.” Jason removed six more prescriptions from a folder.

“The handwriting looks the same, I’ll give you that.” Peter nodded. “But just because he wrote it doesn’t mean he was
actually
killed. Maybe he wrote it in a fit of paranoia.”

“C’mon, Peter. Give me a break!” Jason glared at his brother. “Can you use that pea brain of yours for a second?”

“So now you’re a conspiracy nut too. I think you’re partaking of some your own product, Jason.”

“That’s enough, you two,” Waterhouse interrupted. “The autopsy…” The private investigator flipped the pages of the report. Finding the section he was looking for, he read from it. “Right here, it says he had two sutured wounds, front and back, in his right
shoulder. The wounds were relatively recent but definitely inflicted before the death occurred. The ME opened the sutures and reported a pulpified track between the scapula and the left humerus radiating to the surrounding tissues. It’s consistent with a gunshot wound. The bullet went clean through.”

“Two wounds?”

“One in front of the shoulder, one in the back.”

“Entry and exit?”

“Yup.” Waterhouse pulled several eight-by-tens from the stack. Jason winced at the first photo. “It appears our dearly departed Thomas was shot in the back, and the bullet exited through the front.”

“He was running away.”

“Damn,” Jason said. “What do you think?” He passed them to Peter. There were four photographs. One of Pettigrew’s torso, one of his upper back, one of both legs, and a close-up of the face.

Waterhouse said, “The coroner is certain it’s a bullet wound. But he said it had nothing to do with the cause of death.”

“So why wasn’t it investigated?” asked Jason.

“I can’t answer that. But as a former cop, if I saw the gunshot wound and thought he died in a car wreck, I probably wouldn’t pursue it either. Especially if it was sutured. What would be the point?”

“The guy was shot!” A look of incredulous disgust spread across Jason’s features. “The last time I checked, that was a crime.”

“The police are overwhelmed with cases. He’s dead. The result of drinking and driving, supposedly. The two had nothing to do with each other.”

“Isn’t this enough to take to your buddy the cop?”

“Not really. It’s all circumstantial.”

“These files and notes are
not
circumstantial,” Jason pleaded.

The three men contemplated the photographs in silence.

“If he was seen in an emergency room, wouldn’t they file a police report?” Peter rubbed his eyebrow.

“Yes, they would,” Waterhouse replied.

Peter shook a cigarette loose from a pack. “I need a smoke. Let’s go outside.”

They withdrew to the back porch, the same porch where Jason had first seen the article about Pettigrew’s death in the
Hampton Roads Gazette
. Peter and Waterhouse lit cigarettes, while Jason sipped from a bottle of water.

“My buddy on the force checked for reports of gunshot wounds treated in emergency rooms in the area for the last month,” said Waterhouse. “There were none for Thomas’s wound. He wasn’t treated in a hospital.”

“So who sutured it?” asked Peter.

“I’m no doctor,” said Jason, “but whoever did it knew what they were doing. A physician—or someone with that kind of skill—sutured those wounds.” Jason did not voice his thought that Jasmine Kader
was
a physician. Had she been involved in Thomas’s death? Did she suture the wound, and if so, why?

Waterhouse said, “I know you don’t want to tell Christine about the autopsy results. But we need to find out what she knows. Maybe she remembers if he looked or sounded like he was in pain.”

Jason drained the water bottle and they moved back inside. “What about you? You were his friend. When was the last time you saw him? Did he appear to be injured?”

Waterhouse shook his head. “Thomas and I had dinner a week before he died. We played chess and talked for a few hours. He was his usual self. If he was hurt, I would have noticed. He was fine.”

“What date exactly?”

“Thomas died on the night of the fifteenth, a Friday. His body was found on the sixteenth. We had dinner at Outback on the Saturday before, September ninth.”

Peter shook his head. “What if he was shot the same night he died?”

“You coming over to the dark side, Pete?” asked Jason.

“Don’t go there, brother,” Peter shot back. “As you so eloquently put it, I’m trying to expand this itty-bitty brain of mine.”

“What if we ask someone at the Colonial?” Waterhouse said, thinking out loud.

“That’s not a good idea. It might raise alarms. Someone might mention that we were asking.”

Waterhouse persisted, glaring at Jason. “There’s no police report about a shooting. You don’t want to ask anyone at the Colonial. You don’t want to ask Christine. What the hell
do
you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” Jason replied.

“Jason, I was a cop for more than twenty years. It’s never easy to investigate a murder. You have to scramble some eggs to get answers. If we want to get to the bottom of this shit hole, we need more answers. Christine might have them.”

Jason looked between the grungy private investigator and his skeptical brother. “I don’t want to hurt her again. But you’re right, it needs to be done. I’ll talk to her.”

* * *

In a dark room surrounded by glowing electronic instruments, a female technician with thick glasses, spiked hair, black nail polish, multiple earrings, and a top-secret clearance watched the graphic display of the audio recording pulse with every word. With the exception of the few minutes the three men had been outside, every word had been captured with remarkable clarity.

She quickly encrypted the vital passages and forwarded them to Hammon.

All three men rode to Christine’s house in silence. Christine showed them in, offered sodas and snacks. Jason hesitantly asked her about the days leading up to her father’s death, explaining that they were trying to pin down exactly when Thomas had suffered the gunshot wound. Christine nodded once and reminded them that she’d seen the wound when she’d identified the body. But she hadn’t known it was a gunshot wound at the time. She hadn’t found out until a police detective asked her about it. The second to last time she’d spoken to her father was three days before the accident. It was on the phone, and he sounded like his usual grumpy, distracted self. She didn’t know anything more.

Relieved to be done with the questions, Jason brought up the voice message, which was the primary reason for their visit tonight.

“I don’t erase my messages until the mailbox is full. It’s a bad habit,” said Christine.

“Don’t apologize,” Jason replied. “Your bad habit might help us figure out what happened that night.”

“I didn’t have much trouble finding it. It’s just noise. I don’t see how it’s going to help. It was between eleven thirty and midnight when he left the message. Obviously, I wasn’t home when he called. In fact, I was at his house looking for him. He tried my cell earlier and didn’t leave a message. I’d left it in the car. The second time he called the house directly.”

She punched the speaker button and hit play. The generic female voice recited the date and time of the call, September 15, followed by Pettigrew’s cell phone number.

The first sounds were whooshes of air. The breaths were hushed and hurried, overlapped by the rustling of clothing. They paused briefly, as if Thomas had ceased all movement and was remaining perfectly still. The silence was broken by muffled voices. Peter and Waterhouse leaned in, angling to hear.