“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.