“I need a search warrant,” Theresa told her cousin. She could hear other voices in the background, and the city sounds of cars and wind.
“What for?”
“For the carbon company grounds. All the buildings, not just the apartments.”
“What are you looking for? Just some mustard, thanks.”
“You’re not eating a hot dog out of an aluminum cart parked on the sidewalk, are you?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Mystery meat and botulism-it’s quite a combination.”
“This poor guy’s standing outside in subfreezing temperatures, trying to eke out a living, and you’re criticizing his wares? He’s giving the radio a dirty look right now, and so am I.”
“I had to get up in the middle of the night and bring you ginger ale the last time you had food poisoning.”
“Well, I couldn’t call my mother-you know she needs her sleep. What do you want a warrant for, and how do you know that whatever you’re searching for is there?”
She outlined the conclusions of the morning. “I need to find evidence that Evan transported Jillian’s body to the woods. He must have carried her in something, something that wouldn’t attract attention. Even wrapping her in a blanket would have looked completely suspicious.”
“I thought she disappeared during the day.”
“Supposedly.”
“You think he had someone else move the body from the apartment while he was at the meeting? It would have been a perfect alibi.”
“Maybe. But this guy is used to creating his own world. He’s a control freak. I can’t believe he would trust an accomplice. He doesn’t seem to have any close friends other than Jerry Graham, who was at the meeting with him.”
“So you think it was Drew?”
“Swallow before you talk. Why would I suspect Drew?”
“Because he wasn’t at this meeting on Monday. He had all day long to move Jillian around before Evan came home, and he might have liked the idea of Jillian in his woods. He could sit on his boat and know she was there.”
The words gave her a shiver, and yet she protested, “Drew is no bigger than I am. Jillian weighed a hundred and ten pounds, and someone moved her three miles without dragging or damaging the body, without even getting her clothes dirty.”
“Maybe Drew had an accomplice.”
She hadn’t considered that idea. “I suppose it’s possible. I just don’t think so.”
“Because Drew’s one of those harmless stalkers.”
The sarcasm in his voice made her stubborn. “Yes.”
“And because you think Evan did it.”
“Two-hundred-and-fifty-pounds-if-he’s-an-ounce Evan, yeah. The one who stands to inherit all Cara’s money.”
“But you’re not sure.”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“Great. I’ve got to go assist with some interrogations, kiddo. I might lose this call in the elevator, so one more time, what do you want a search warrant for?”
“For fibers that match those found on Jillian’s clothing, fibers from some item used to transport her body. Ones that match what I found in his car, as soon as I have time to go through what I found in his car. I’ll have that done before you get the warrant, and then I’ll know what to look for.”
“Back up. Car?”
She explained her activities of the previous evening. From the sounds Frank made into the phone, her activities had caused him to choke on his hot dog.
“You’re asking me for a search warrant, Theresa, so I assume that means you understand the concept of one.”
“Yeah.”
“You searched Evan’s car without a warrant.”
“I didn’t search it. I removed detritus.”
“So what? It’s still inadmissible evidence.”
“No. It’s abandoned property.”
A slight pause. “Come again?”
“The car wash attendant would have vacuumed and scrubbed away all the items I collected, and disposed of them. He had Evan’s permission to do so-in fact, his instructions to do so. It’s exactly the same as when you see the suspect drinking from a cup and toss it in the trash can, and then you pick it up and have us swab it for DNA. You can take abandoned property. The hairs and fibers from his upholstery and the dirt from his tire treads were abandoned property.”
“They hadn’t been abandoned yet,” he protested, but weakly.
“He had left them there for disposal. Therefore, abandoned.”
Her cousin remained silent long enough that she wondered if the Nextel connection, always tenuous, had been broken. “Interesting, cuz. I’m not sure it will work, but it’s interesting.”
“I’m also looking for narcotics or poisons or anything that would have made her unconscious or dead. We should probably grab the bank statements showing Cara’s account, as well. That’s his motive.”
“Question-what about Georgie? He’s also two-fifty if he’s an ounce, could carry a one-ten body without straining, and Jillian would have opened the door to him. She would have even hopped in his car and driven off to Edgewater Marina without a care.”
“And without her baby? Not likely. And does Georgie strike you as clever enough to murder someone without leaving a trace?”
“How did Evan kill her without leaving a trace? What did she die of? I thought she froze to death…I’m not hearing an answer. You still don’t know why she died?”
“No, and that’s just it. Do you know how difficult it is to kill someone without leaving any trace? It could only be done by a control freak who’s trained himself to plan every last detail. A former chemistry major who needs that million and a half for his new company.”
“Absence of proof is not proof of absence.”
“That’s cute.”
“It’s also true. Can you prove Jillian didn’t walk out into those woods and freeze to death? Yes or no, Tess.”
She could hear the schtick of the revolving doors as he walked into the police department side of the Justice Center, the sudden deadening of the outdoor sounds, the frustration in his voice.
“No,” she said, hating the word.
“What you want to do is go fishing, and a judge isn’t going to let you. You have to have probable cause to show that A, a crime occurred; B, this person is likely to have committed that crime; and C, evidence is likely present on the property that would help you prove same. You don’t even have A, much less B or C.”
She sat at her desk with the phone pressed to her ear, her forehead held up by the palm of her hand. Frank was right, and she knew it. “So he’s going to get away with it.”
“A search warrant is definitely out unless you can get me some probable cause. Now consider an alternative theory for me, just for a minute. Have you found any trace in common between Jillian and Sarah Taylor?”
“None. Sarah favored jewel tones over Jillian’s pastels. Pieces of vegetation were consistent with the location of the body. No diatoms. Sarah smoked, and ash and tobacco particles were consistent with her own brand. No mysterious smears of phenol,” she added.
“What?”
“Long story. Did she own a dog? A good-size black thing, maybe a Doberman?”
“Honey, Sarah Taylor barely had a place to live. She flopped in a one-room no-tell motel off of East 117th without a toothbrush and about ten articles of clothing, all told. No pets allowed.”
“Then I’ll bet your killer does. The press is still connecting these murders, the two women and the boy.”
“I’m wondering myself. Word on the street is, Sarah Taylor used to work for Georgie. In his less reputable days.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Years. But now Sarah Taylor finds she’s down to her last dime. If she knew where a body or two were buried, she might have tried to shake down her former pimp. I know exactly how Georgie would react to that.”
“Possibly. But she was a hooker, Frank. Their daily work is to get in a car with some stranger and drive off without telling anyone where they’re going. They’re tailor-made for sick and violent men. And if Georgie killed her, then why did he kill Jillian? She certainly wasn’t down to her last dime.”
“Yeah. I know. But you’re getting yourself stuck on Evan, and you’re not usually so…inflexible. Do you have any results on Sarah Taylor?”
“The rape kit came up positive for semen. So say your prayers tonight for a CODIS hit. We should know in a few days. But it’s not a serial killer, Frank-the MOs are different, and then there’s the kid-the boy didn’t have any connection to the women, right?”
“Nope. He stuck to his own neighborhood, and if he could have afforded Georgie’s rates, then he could have afforded a damn cell phone. I’m getting into the elevator, in case we get cut off. Hang in there, Tess. It’s nice to see you-” The rest of his sentence disappeared into a cloud of static and broken syllables. Theresa hung up the phone.
She prodded her chin with the top of a retractable pen. She did not put it in her mouth. One learned very quickly at a medical examiner’s office never to put a writing implement in one’s mouth. You never knew where it had been.
The rules of Sarah Taylor’s life also applied to Jillian Perry. Her clients might have been more nicely dressed and had better table manners, but they were still a group of strangers often with less-than-laudable purposes. She could have met her killer through the same channels as Sarah Taylor, and Evan could be merely unlikable, but innocent.
But she didn’t believe it.
Don dropped himself into the chair at the opposite desk and eyed her over a short bookshelf littered with texts, family photos, her Beanie Babies, and a box of disposable pipettes. “What’s the matter, babe?”
“I got nothing.”
“I wouldn’t say that. You’re beautiful, intelligent, relatively young-”
“I’ll ‘relatively’ you, you supercilious-”
“Did I mention beautiful?”
“I need proof, and I don’t even know what it is I’m trying to prove.”
“Jillian Perry?”
“Yep.”
“So what’s your plan?”
She moved a bean-stuffed tiger to see him better. “What?”
“Don’t you have a plan?”
She stared at him for a few more moments before speaking. “I don’t. That’s been my whole problem.” She dug through a desk drawer and pulled out a legal pad. At the top she wrote, in block letters, MEANS, OPPORTUNITY, MOTIVE. Then she added a fourth column, PROOF.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to show Evan Kovacic that he’s not the only detail-oriented control freak in this city.”
“What do you want?” Oliver discouraged visitors to his corner of the toxicology lab. He kept all the spare gas tanks clustered in a fencelike barrier. He had removed all task chairs except his own, which he rarely left, his extra flesh overflowing the seat and his ponytail brushing the armrests. He displayed printed epigraphs such as I’LL TRY BEING NICER IF YOU’LL TRY BEING SMARTER and IT MAY BE THAT YOUR ONLY PURPOSE IS TO SERVE AS A WARNING TO OTHERS. He varied neither wardrobe nor hygiene. But he seemed to know everything in the world, particularly the chemical world. “I suppose you’re here about that piece of solder.”
“What?”
She’d seen Halloween masks with less of a scowl.
“That tiny sphere you gave me, the one you just had to have analyzed. I suppose you’re going to tell me, after I’ve done all this work, that it isn’t important and I can forget about it.”
“Not at all. It’s very important. It’s solder wire, the stuff you melt to hold metal things together?”
“Solder paste, actually. Tin, silver, a touch of bismuth. No lead. Water soluble.”
He did not continue. She strove to look properly awed by his abilities in inorganic analyses. “What does that mean?”
“Probably used in electronics.”
Suspicious, but not conclusive. Jillian Perry had been surrounded by electronics. “Thanks, that’s very helpful. Regarding that same case, I need to know about Jillian Perry’s blood work. Did she have anything in her system?”
“Normally we put such information into reports. You might have seen them, pieces of paper with words and multicolored graphs. These reports are given to the pathologist, who in this case is Christine Johnson, and since you two seem to be best friends, I’m sure she would share it with you if you asked nicely, or maybe took her some candy.”
“You did, and she did. The problem is-”
“Because otherwise I can’t release tox results, even to trace evidence staff, even though you passed biology, which I’m sure is an admirable achievement in some circles. Tox results are confidential. I’d have to kill you.”
“I’m trying to solve a murder here, and it’s not my own. Christine said you found a small amount of barbiturate?”
Oliver nodded. “I can confirm that, partly because you have already obtained the official results but mostly because I don’t give a shit about confidentiality. Diphenhydramine, forty nanograms.”
“Not enough to kill her?”
“Definitely not.”
“Enough to knock her out?”
“No.”
Theresa leaned against a gas tank. It shifted, and she jumped away. Explosions were so not her favorite thing. “Are you sure? She wasn’t a big person.”
“Doesn’t matter. She’d need at least thirty nanograms per milliliter to even feel drowsy.”
“Is there any way to tell what medication it was?”
“Other than clairvoyance? Unlikely. It could be anything that contains diphenhydramine hydrochloride-Sominex, NyQuil, a hundred other formulas. Did she have any such items in her medicine cabinet or nightstand? Prescription or over the counter?”
“I don’t know.”
Oliver raised one eyebrow. It gave her the distinct impression of a caterpillar trying to escape. “I beg your pardon, I thought you went to the scene.”
“I did. Nothing in the medicine cabinet except Tums and aspirin P.M.”
“Nightstand? Purse? Engraved wooden box on the coffee table?”
Theresa occupied herself with scraping loose paint from the compressed gas tank with her thumbnail. “I didn’t look.”
The overweight toxicologist gazed at her. Examining a victim’s home for drugs and medications would be done in all cases, from heart attack to homicide, by rote. The pathologist always needed the information, whether the drugs had caused the death or not. “You didn-”
“No. You can beat me later, but right now I need to get this straight. She didn’t have enough narcotics in her to put her to sleep?”
“Enough to make her sleepy, certainly, but not enough to make her sleep through her own killing.”
“And/or abduction?”
“And/or abduction.”
“What about the powder in her back pockets? Was that cocaine?”
“No, young woman, it was not cocaine. It wasn’t heroin or even aspirin. That powder you so thoughtfully threw on my pile of work to do contained various calciums-sulfate and hydroxide-and lime.”
“Plaster?”
“Got it in one. And with just a biology degree, no less.”
She thought about this long enough to forget about her previous experience and lean on the gas tank again. She grabbed the top valve to keep it from tipping over. “Don’t drugs, like, metabolize?”
“They’ve, like, been known to.” Oliver worked in sarcasm with the flair of a toddler in finger paints. All drugs metabolized, meaning they broke down into their components during the digestion process. In testing, some of those components might appear as normal by-products of the body and some might not. “And these did, to nordiphenhydramine, DM-never mind. I extrapolated from those to calculate the original dose.”
“So she might have had more in her system originally? Maybe enough to make her unconscious, but then her body absorbed part of the dose before she actually died?”
“Someone doped her, and then let her sleep most of it off before they killed her? Doesn’t sound very smart.”
“No. And he’s pretty smart. But he did have to transport the body. How long would that take?”
“Let me understand your question. You think Jillian Perry consumed enough narcotic to pass out, but then her killer left her alive long enough to metabolize some of the drug?”
“Exactly.”
“Why?”
“Because he didn’t want it to look like an overdose. Because he used the time to transport her. Because he was busy, I don’t know. How long would he have?”
Oliver frowned, but she ignored it since he almost constantly frowned anyway. “I’m not some kind of idiot savant who can break Vegas, you know. Those kinds of numbers would have to be worked out carefully, depending on her weight, activity level…a lot of work to establish a-what, guess?”
“Timeline. It’s important, Oliver. It might be the key to the whole case. Now, what about her gastrics?”
“What about them? No drugs, no undigested capsules.”
“So it had already passed out of her stomach? The narcotic?”
“Affirmative.”
“Did she have anything else in her stomach?”
“How should I know?” He shuddered in distaste. “That’s your job.”
Now Theresa shuddered. “I know. And I hate it.”