“Who’s the witness?”
“Luke Palmer.”
Lewis chuckled. “The suspect Sheriff Clayton has jailed?”
“That’s the one. He sketched this.”
“He’s a damn good artist, I’m wondering if he’s a damn good a liar.”
“I believe he’s telling the truth. I met with him, listened to his story. The guy’s been wandering the forest looking from some lost treasure, but by default, he’s become a witness to two murders and finds the body of a murdered teenage girl in a grave.”
One of the CSI members, the woman, came around the corner. She said, “It looks like the sliding glass door lock was compromised. Scratches at the base of the lock. I’ll dust for prints. The door leads into the kitchen.”
I said, “You’ll find my prints in the kitchen. I was here after the funeral. I doubt you’ll find prints near the lock. This guy’s a pro.”
She nodded and continued her work. Detective Lewis said, “Why haven’t I seen this composite before now?”
“Sheriff Clayton hasn’t released it to the news media.”
“Why?”
“He calls it jailhouse art and says Palmer is trying to shine the spotlight off him. The real reason, I think, is because of the intense media coverage of the deaths in the forest. The sheriff thinks he has enough forensics to make the charges stick. Look, Detective, Elizabeth was on death’s door. This is much bigger than Frank Soto. Can your office release the composite?”
Lewis inhaled like he hadn’t breathed all day. He looked at the image and slowly released the pent-up air in his lungs. “This is Marion County’s deal. The guy they’ve got locked up was captured there. The killings happened there. I’d be out of line. But you can run it by Sheriff Olsen, see if he disagrees.”
I said nothing.
“We’ll let you know if we find anything.”
One of the investigators entered. He held out a sealed plastic bag with the bottle of pills inside. He said, “We’ll get these to the lab today. Arsenic is easy to find.” He joined the others in the kitchen. Detective Lewis waited for me to leave.
I started to turn and walk away. Then I thought of Elizabeth and how arsenic poisoning shuts down organ after organ. I said, “Whoever investigated this house last night, when Elizabeth barely managed to call 911, assumed she tried to OD on sleeping pills. She didn’t, Detective. And she almost died because of it. Had the hospital known or suspected poison, they could have given her a different treatment. If we assume this composite is a figment from Luke Palmer’s imagination, we make the same mistake.”
He looked at the picture, and I saw his eyes dilate a notch. He made a dry swallow and touched the tip of his nose, his thoughts distracted.
It was at that moment, I knew Detective Lewis was the investigator on the scene when Elizabeth was taken by ambulance in what was later determined a suicide attempt. I said, “Now’s the time to place a guard outside Elizabeth’s hospital room.”
SIXTY-SEVEN
I looked at Elizabeth’s car, checked all doors and windows for any sign of a break-in or small scratch marks that can be made by the sloppy use of a Slim Jim bar. I found nothing. Maybe the point of entry was through the sliding glass doors.
I left and called a local florist, ordered a dozen red roses and had them sent to Elizabeth’s room. I heard someone beeping in on my phone. I answered as Doctor Patel was leaving a message. “I’m here, Doctor. What do you have?”
“The patient, Miss Monroe, tested positive for arsenic. We found three parts per million. It takes less than a gram to kill an average person. She’s very fortunate in that she only consumed one of those pills, assuming the rest were tampered with arsenic.”
“When can she go home?”
“I want to keep her one more night for observation.”
“Has anyone attempted to visit her?”
“I don’t know. The nurses’ station would know. They’re diligent in enforcing the no visitors’ policy. Except for the police and you, no one else has access to her room.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” I disconnected and called Detective Sandberg in Marion County. “Did you get a match on the two bullets?”
“You must have radar, O’Brien. That information was just delivered to me.”
“Was there enough DNA from the bullet in the tree to match with Molly’s DNA?”
He said nothing for a few seconds. “You know, O’Brien, I don’t have to reveal anything to you.”
“I know that, and I appreciate your willingness to share information, just like I’m trying to do with you. And I understand the dynamics with the sheriff. I’ve been there, but catching the perp or perps is what you and I both want.”
“The bullet in the tree carried a very small amount of body tissue. It matched Molly’s DNA.”
“How about the DNA on the cigar?’’
“Didn’t get a match from CODIS. Whoever smoked that cigar isn’t in the system.”
“Palmer is certainly in the system. So it didn’t match his DNA?”
Sandberg was silent. Between his breathing, I could hear someone being paged. He finally said, “No. Oh, we did find some pot growing in the national forest. But it looks like the photo might be a little deceiving.”
“How so?”
“We found a dozen plants, all growing out of plastic gallon milk jugs cut in half.”
I asked, “How tall were the plants?”
“A good six feet each.”
“Were they next to any coontie plants?”
“Our team looked for them, but didn’t see any. Remember, O’Brien, in the photo from Molly’s camera we could only see a few plants.”
“It’s a decoy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Big time pot farmers don’t grow marijuana to that height in plastic milk jugs. They may start the plants off like that, but once they begin to shoot up, they’ll transplant them to the ground, fertilize and water them. Someone’s trying to steer you away from the real growing area, the place where Molly and Mark first stumbled upon it.”
He sighed. “We’ve called off the search. Sheriff Clayton believes the plants we found, pulled and destroyed are most likely the ones in the photo because the surroundings are similar if not the same.”
“It’s staged. These guys are good.”
“Got to go, O’Brien.”
“Please remind the sheriff that you have a rifle bullet removed from a tree, which is the bullet that went through Molly’s body, and you have one from Palmer’s backpack. That one went into a deer and never came out until Palmer cut it out. So whoever killed the deer killed Molly and Mark.”
“What if Palmer cut the damn bullet out of the deer before he buried it with the bodies, knowing there wouldn’t be ballistics comparison if we found the murder weapon?”
“Then why keep it in a backpack? Palmer’s not dumb. You haven’t found the rifle. But you do have the bullet from the tree.”
“I need to meet with the sheriff before his next news briefing.”
“Before you go, here’s something else you can tell him — someone tried to kill Elizabeth Monroe, Molly’s mother.”
“How?”
“Arsenic poisoning. The perp broke into her home. It looks like he filled her sleeping pill capsules with arsenic. Elizabeth is hospitalized, and the man Sheriff Clayton thinks is tied to her daughter’s murder is sitting in his county jail. The media will have a field day with that.”
“Talk with you later, O’Brien.”
“You know as well as I do that this attempt on her life is not coincidental. The perp is trying to eliminate Elizabeth just like he did Molly and Mark.”
“That’s a possibility, but at this point we don’t know that.”