“I remember a mention of this viscous material in records I’ve reviewed. Something grayish in Goulet’s teeth and on her tongue.” I don’t go into more detail than that.
But he knows who I’m married to and can well imagine where I got the information. Lucy gets up from her chair and stands closer to me, staring, making no attempt to hide what she’s overhearing.
“There was no mention of these minerals fluorescing in UV. But that wouldn’t necessarily be included in the elemental report,” I add.
“It wouldn’t be.”
“I found a residue that lights up like that all over the body in my case from this morning.” I watch the two funeral home attendants in formal suits open the tailgate of the hearse.
They smile and wave as if their business is happy.
“It showed up fairly dense on CT,” Dr. Venter says. “But there was no evidence she aspirated whatever it is. I didn’t find this material in her sinuses, airway or lungs.”
“In the Virginia case, Sally Carson, there’s no reference to a material like this. But they don’t have a CT scanner.”
“Few facilities do. So it wouldn’t have been seen readily and very well may have been overlooked during the autopsy,” Dr. Venter says.
“If you can send me whatever you can electronically. Time is of the essence.”
“I’m doing it as we speak.”
I thank him and end the call.
“Is everything all right?” Based on what Lucy listened to she knows it couldn’t possibly be.
“Reports will be coming in from the chief in Maryland, Dr. Venter,” I say to her. “Maybe you can help by checking my e-mail and making sure they get routed to the proper labs as quickly as possible. And I’m expecting a case from Benton.” I don’t mention the name Gabriela Lagos in front of the two funeral home attendants. I’m not going to say another word and Lucy knows not to either.
She’s already checking e-mails with her phone to see if any reports are landing as we head up a ramp to the door leading inside. I scan my thumb in the lock and the attendants roll the stretcher up to us, small wheels clattering.
“How you doing, Chief? I heard you had the weekend from hell.”
“Doing fine.” I hold the door for them.
“The world’s gone to hell in a handbasket.”
“You might be right.” I shut the door behind us.
“That was quite a storm we had. We may get snow in another day or two.”
They push the stretcher inside the receiving area, where massive shiny steel walk-in refrigerators and freezers fill the far wall.
“The temperature’s dropped ten degrees in the past hour. Blowing off the water on the South Shore, it was pretty frigid but not so bad here, sort of in between needing a winter coat and not. A sad one we got. It seems like a lot of people kill themselves this time of year.”
“It seems that way because nobody should.” I check the tag attached to the outer body bag, fake blue leather with the name of the funeral home embroidered on it. “You can have this back.” I unzip it, revealing the flimsy white pouch underneath, the dead woman’s rigorous arms pushing against it, raised and bent at the elbows like a pugilistic boxer.
“Only thirty-two years old,” an attendant tells me as we remove the pleather-like outer bag. “Dressed for church with makeup on and dead in bed. Empty pill bottles on the table. Ativan and Zoloft. No note.”
“Often they don’t,” I reply. “Their actions speak louder.”
27
At the security desk Ron is seated amid flat-paneled security displays, his office behind bulletproof glass. He slides open his window as I pick up the big black case log to sign in the latest. I copy what’s written on the body bag’s tag.
Heather Woodworth, F 32, Scituate, MA. Unresponsive in bed. Poss OD suicide.
An old South Shore name scribbled in ballpoint pen, a young woman who decided to end her life in her quaint seaside town, and I check the log for what else has come in. Five other cases in the CT scanner and on steel tables, in different stages of undress and dissection. Polysubstance abuse, an accidental shooting, a jump from the Zakim Bridge, an elderly woman who died alone in her house a hoarder, and the motor vehicle fatality I’ve heard about and I pause at the name.
Franz Schoenberg, M 63, Cambridge, MA. MVA.
The psychiatrist I noticed in the photographs I reviewed earlier this morning, I recall, slightly startled. His patient committed suicide days ago, jumped off a building right in front of him. Maybe that’s why he was out drinking and driving. More senseless tragedies. Most people dying the way they lived.
“What about her meds?” I ask the attendants.
“In a bag inside the pouch,” one of them says. “The empty bottles that were on the bedside table. Her kids had spent the night at her mother’s, thank God. Little ones, the oldest only five, the father killed exactly a year ago on his motorcycle. A neighbor she was supposed to give a music lesson to found her. She didn’t answer the door and it was unlocked. This was at exactly ten a.m.”
“She planned it, thought it out.” I slide the log through the window so Ron can enter the information into his computer and program the RFID bracelet that will go around the dead woman’s wrist.
“She didn’t want anyone home when she did it. She didn’t want to hurt anyone,” an attendant offers.
“Think again,” I reply. “Now the kids have no parents and will probably hate Christmas for the rest of their lives.”
“Apparently she’d been depressed.”
“I’m sure she was and now a lot of people will be, too. If you’ll lock this up for me…” I hand Ron my fanny pack.
“Yes, ma’am, Chief.” He bends down to enter the combination and gives me an update without my asking. “All is quiet, pretty much. A news van drove real slow past the front of the building several times.”
“Just leave her over there on the floor scale,” I tell the attendants. “Ron, can you let Harold or Rusty know a case just came in? She needs to be weighed and measured and gotten into the cooler until Anne can scan her. I’m not sure which doc. Whoever’s the least busy.”
“Yes, ma’am, Chief.” Ron tucks the fanny pack inside the safe and slams shut the heavy steel door. “That anchor lady you don’t like was here.”
“Barbara Fairbanks,” Lucy says. “She was filming the front of the building when I pulled in. She may have gotten footage of my SUV while I was waiting for the gate to open.”
“And she was hanging around out back after that, too, probably hoping to sneak in again while the gate is shutting,” Ron says. “She did that a few weeks ago and I threatened to have her arrested for trespassing.”
Former military police, he’s built like a granite wall, with dark eyes that are always moving. He walks out of his office and waits for the attendants to leave.
“We’ll need the stretcher back…?” one of them says.
“Yes, sir. When you pick her up.”
“Later today,” I promise them.
Through another door and down a ramp is the evidence bay, a windowless open space where scientists are covered from head to toe in white Tyvek protective clothing.
They’re setting up cyanoacrylate fuming equipment around a vintage green Jaguar that is under a blue tent. The roadster is twisted and smashed in, the roof peeled off, the long hood buckled, the shattered driver’s-side window streaked and spattered with dried blood, the trunk and bashed-in doors open wide. Trace evidence examiner Ernie Koppel is leaning in the driver’s side.
He looks up at me, his eyes masked by orange goggles, an alternate light source set up on a nearby cart. He holds the wand in his gloved hand, processing the car as if it’s connected to a homicide.