Quantum

by Patricia Cornwell

  “And mustard, fresh salsa, beer,” Scottie jumps in. “The pita bread’s in a basket next to the stove.”

  “Anything like that we’re going to dust for prints and swab for DNA, just in case,” opening the cabinet under the sink, finding the trash. “Or bring into our evidence room, better yet, if justified. That way no one’s working in Antarctic drafts and noxious fumes. Or worst of all, these chemical suits.” I’m already sweating, and it seems impossible I was all but frozen a few minutes ago.

  “You’re thinking she’s not the one who made the sandwich,” Butch decides, and his eyes look irritated behind scratched plastic, his cheeks red and hot.

  “We want to consider all potentials while we’ve got the chance.” I pull out the trash can, lined with a garbage bag and almost full. “But let’s do a quick systems check first. How are you guys feeling? Any ill effects?”

  They give me a thumbs-up, saying no problem, and no big deal. Reminding me of how much fun it is getting sprayed with oleoresin capsicum and other fiery chemicals as part of our training. Sitting in a gas chamber, you’ll learn in a hurry if your respirator isn’t seated properly, only making that mistake once. Neither of them has been on a scene like this, none of us has.

  I suggest to them that we do the best we can in these unpleasant and hazardous conditions. Not to feel pressured or rushed, and that we’ll seal off the apartment when we leave. Other than the hazmat team cleaning up the spill, we’ll keep everything exactly as is for as long as needed.

  “That way, if we need to get back in because of other information that comes up, we can,” I add, fogging up my face shield. “In the meantime, let’s collect everything that might be relevant. What about a Walgreens receipt? When I asked about it yesterday, she said she didn’t have it with her. That it was here at the apartment.”

  “If it is, I’ve not seen it yet,” Scottie’s voice over the intercom inside my helmet. “I assume the point is to prove she really went to the drugstore on her way home, as she claims in the suicide note.”

  “If it’s really a suicide note, but yes, we need to know if she stopped anywhere at all and what she purchased,” I explain.

  “Bleach, for example,” Butch suggests.

  “Right, but where’s the bottle?” Scottie brings up that glaring problem again.

  “You’ll want to go through the trash very carefully.” As I watch Fran by the front door, still on her phone, but she has her helmet off now, and we can’t hear her. “If you’d rather bring it into the evidence room, as I’ve said, dealer’s choice. But that’s what I’d recommend because the conditions in here certainly aren’t optimal. I’m sure Fran would agree.”

  But she’s not looking in our direction, fidgeting with her pack of cigarettes and talking to Easton. I can tell she’s fitting for a smoke, and that motherhood isn’t her favorite thing right about now.

  “We’re going to want a stat alcohol level to see if she was drinking beer before she died.” I’m going down the list with Scottie and Butch. “And are her stomach contents consistent with a ham sandwich?” I explain, and my interest in what she might have eaten and when go beyond figuring out time of death.

  I also have my other thought, not a pleasant one. But if it turns out she died by a hand other than her own, then clearly someone else was inside this apartment with her. Should that turn out to be the case, it’s not unheard of for a burglar or killer to raid the victim’s refrigerator after the fact, fixing a snack, leaving detritus similar to what I’m seeing on the coffee table.

  “Let’s package the sandwich, plate and all the fixings in the fridge, anything touched. Including the knife from the dishwasher that might have mustard on it. And the beer bottle comes in,” I’m telling Scottie and Butch. “In the off chance the DNA might not be the dead lady’s, obviously,” as I look around for any sign of a migraine.

  19

  AT A GLANCE, there are no prescription bottles, no over-the-counter medications.

  Nothing that might tell me the person living here suffered from sick headaches, the special kind of misery my mom is plagued with from time to time. But I’ll have to wait and see what else turns up, and my attention wanders back into the living area. To the small brick fireplace that was coal burning when the barracks were built after the War of 1812.

  I’m curious about the laptop computer, wider than the old iron mantel and unsafely propped up. I wonder why it’s there. It would seem a strange and perilous place to use a computer or park one. There’s no evidence a fire has been built in recent memory, so nobody was standing there for warmth or the sound of crackling logs. Then why not work at the kitchen counter or leave the computer there? Why not the couch?

  Or the bed or desk in the other room? I have to wonder if the laptop might have been left conspicuously where it is, perhaps deliberately with first responders in mind. Maybe someone wanted us to notice it and puzzle the way I am. And I stare across the room at Fran leaning against the front door, gloves and respirator off, on the phone with her unhappy 6-year-old son. And I shove up my visor because she has her helmet off.

  “. . . You’re going to do what she tells you, now aren’t you?” she’s saying to Easton. “Being unpleasant isn’t going to help me change my mind, now is it?”

  Fran watches everything and all of us. Doesn’t matter how out of sorts, agitated or phobic she might get. One makes a huge mistake assuming she misses much, and I catch her eye.

  “Have you looked?” I point a bulky gloved finger at the laptop.

  She shakes her head no. “Computers and cyber crap are your department, Aggie.”

  “Thanks for that, Sherlock,” I smack her right back.

  But Fran seems none the wiser, back to Easton with a sigh, “Okay, okay, but only for tonight. I’ll let you skip the peas, as long as you tell your aunt Penny peas and thank you very much . . .” Shooting me a wink and a thumbs-up in appreciation of her own pun, not a new one, by the way. “Yes, you’ll stay there until I’m done just like always. Of course, you won’t be by yourself . . .”

  “What about you? Either of you look at this yet?” Visor back down, I’m asking Scottie and Butch, and they tell me that as far as they know, the laptop hasn’t been touched. “What about the officer who was first on the scene?” I have to make sure.

  “Not Scope either,” Butch says, and I shrug, having no idea who that is. “Hampton officer Clay Gibbons, he’s new. People call him Scope, like the mouthwash. Don’t ask me why. A decent cop and cool guy but can’t smell anything anymore, as you’ve gathered. Chicks find him dreamy.” Snidely, and it’s rather obvious no matter what Butch might say, beneath it all he doesn’t like this officer nicknamed Scope.

  “Who calls us chicks anymore? And you said it. He’s cool and dreamy,” Scottie’s voice and gushing sigh. “As in cool and dreamy like fresh mint and getting ready for the prom . . . Maybe explaining the nickname,” as she retrieves a fingerprint-dusting kit from the field case.

  “Or he can’t smell his own bad breath, which is the more likely story,” Butch retorts, going at each other again, bickering, fogging up the face shields on their helmets.

  Barely listening, I focus on the fireplace, approaching the mantel. Eyeing the computer, recognizing the brand, the profile, a 15 incher, and I’m betting a 4.8 GHz 6-core processor with at least one terabyte of storage. Plus, Thunderbolt ports. Possibly 8th generation depending on how new. Could be fingerprint instead of password protected, which will be a challenge considering what’s in the other room.

  Under normal circumstances, if push came to shove, I could press the dead woman’s finger to the scanner and unlock her computer, her phone and possibly other devices. But she’s covered with a caustic chemical, and I can’t say with certainty what shape her ridge detail might be in if her skin is bleached, burned and blist
ered.

  And then there’s the not-so-small problem of cross-contamination if the decedent, possibly a murder victim, starts touching things at the scene with dead fingers. So to speak. A crazy thought, and imagine that playing out in court. Welcome to the modern world, where the old ways of doing things are irrelevant and all bets are off.

  “. . . Seriously, he has polyps or something, said he’d been meaning to get the problem looked into,” Butch is saying to Scottie about the officer they call Scope, and I cautiously approach the laptop as if it’s a wild animal I might scare off.

  Unsure what to make of it because I can’t fathom why someone would prop it up on edge, leaning it against the back of the mantel. Say the laptop weighs 2.04 kilograms (4.5 pounds) and falls 1.52 meters (5 feet), the energy at impact will be 30.39 joules (22.4 foot-pounds), I do the math. Not enough to break a bone, but it could crack the display and cause other serious damage.

  00:00:00:00:0

  “BEEN meaning to, will get around to it, and check’s in the mail. You dudes are all alike when it comes to the doctor.” Scottie clucks like a chicken over the respirator’s intercom, unscrewing the top from a jar of black magnetic powder.

  “How do you know what you can’t smell?” Butch carries on with the verbal tennis match. “How do you know what isn’t? Or what’s not? How do you realize how bad something’s gotten if you aren’t actually aware?”

  “I don’t know, Socrates. To be or not to be stupid is what Scope should start worrying about, plain and simple.” Twirling the dusting brush, knocking excess powder into the open jar. “It’s called ‘go to the damn doctor.’”

  “Who are we to talk? We hate the doctor.” Butch’s gloved hand offers her a roll of lifting tape as he films.

  “Don’t speak for the both of us, because I love my doctor. And my nose works just fine. As does yours, especially when you put it where it doesn’t belong.”

  Standing in front of the fireplace, looking at the computer eye level on the mantel, and I’m really bothered. Words like staged and a gift float up from my subconscious. And Come look at me. That’s what I’m sensing. Someone screwing with me. Not just with first responders but specifically with me.

  “Look, when we first walked in here, the odor practically knocked us over.” Scottie dusts an edge of the coffee table, looking for latent prints that might not be Vera Young’s. “It’s really dangerous if you can’t smell anything. What if there’s an electrical burning stink and you don’t notice? Or carbon monoxide, because that for sure will get you fast. Or smoke? Or a gas leak? Like cyanide gas, God forbid . . . ?”

  I don’t add to or edit their carping. But if I did, I’d remind them that carbon monoxide is colorless, tasteless, odorless, that’s why it’s called the invisible killer. And the majority of people, possibly including Scottie, Butch and Fran, can’t smell hydrogen cyanide, HCN, which is sufficiently swift and deadly to be used in capital punishment. A terrible way to die, asphyxiating while feeling like you’re having a heart attack, as I’ve heard it described.

  It would be helpful to smell such a horror coming should you walk into a place where HCN is leaking or has been left as a trap. But less than 40 percent of the population is genetically capable of smelling what truly is reminiscent of bitter almonds, and I should know. I carry the gene, can smell cyanide, but weirdly my twin sister doesn’t and can’t.

  So much for being identical, but at least I feel confident that HCN isn’t what I detected when I first got here and put on my gear. I didn’t smell almonds. I’m pretty sure what I smelled was household chlorine bleach.

  “. . . ‘To be or not to be’ is Prince Hamlet. Not Socrates.” Butch likes to remind us he has a master’s degree in English literature.

  “Hate to break this up,” I interrupt. “But what did this Officer Gibbons—Scope as you call him—actually say to one or both of you directly? What did he actually observe when he tried the front door, found it conveniently unlocked and walked into the apartment?”

  “He said he wasn’t aware of an odor, for reasons already discussed. He noticed his eyes and lungs felt irritated, but he’s also allergic to dust.” Butch looks at me through scratched plastic, his own eyes watery blue on the way to bloodshot. “He made it as far as the bedroom doorway, and when he saw the body, that was it. He got on his radio and was out of here.”

  “The computer was on the mantel when you arrived, just like it is right now?” I ask that next, and I’m assured the answer is affirmative. “What about Scope? Any reason to think he might have touched it?” As I pick up the laptop in my double-gloved hands.

  “From what I understand, he didn’t touch anything.” Scottie centers a section of tape over a white paper card.

  From where I stand, I can see the blackened ridge detail. The inverted tent and whorl of a latent print she’s lifted from the coffee table.

  “I mean, I asked him point blank exactly what he did when he was in here,” she adds.

  “He said he got as far as the bedroom door and called for assistance,” Butch confirms.

  “Was the door open or shut when he got here?” I inquire.

  “Partially open, pretty much the way it looks now.”

  After that Scope waited in his cruiser, keeping the scene, the perimeter secure until backup arrived, I’m told over my helmet’s intercom. In other words, until we got here. NASA special agents taking care of their own, in this instance, an outside contractor who reported her badge stolen yesterday and now is suspiciously dead.

  “He said he didn’t see anything weird and nobody in the area,” Scottie labels the card, sealing it inside a clear plastic bag, then labeling that too.

  “I’m going to need butcher paper, something to place under the computer so I can take a quick look before we package it to bring in,” as I stand in the kitchen, holding the laptop, having no safe place to set it down without risk of contamination.

  “Coming up.” Scottie walks to the open scene case on the floor, out of traffic, in a corner. “I have a feeling the suicide note is on the laptop,” her voice in my head.

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because it’s printed, and she has a printer in the bedroom,” she explains while Butch changes the batteries in one of his cameras. “Printed on plain white paper in 14 pitch. Arial font. Bold and in all caps.”

  “I guess someone wanted our attention. And they’ve got it,” I decide, and I can see Joan passing by the bedroom doorway again, covered up in a chemical suit and full-face respirator helmet like the rest of us.

  But she’s not in body armor, doesn’t wear a gun, a Taser, not even pepper spray or a radio, and I’m reminded of the vulnerability of death investigators and other frontline responders. At a crime scene, most people would assume Joan’s a cop like the rest of us, yet she has no means of defending herself or anyone else. She couldn’t even get on the air and call in a mayday.

  “Gloves clean?” I ask Scottie as she covers the counter with a swath of white paper.

  “New pair.” She holds up her hands to show me.

  “Excellent.” I set down the laptop, and Butch is ready with the video camera.

  They watch me lift up the computer’s silvery metal cover, witnessing in real time the look on my face and almost profanity that rushes out of my mouth.

  “Holy sh . . . !” Stunned by what was closed inside, out of sight, sandwiched between the small display and keyboard.

  20

  “WHOA!” and “No way!” are what Scottie and Butch have to say about the NASA Langley ID smartcard and its Pandora Space Systems lanyard.

  “Vera Young’s badge that she called us about yesterday,” I explain, and I almost can’t believe it. “Obviously, not stolen or even lost, it would seem. And this very minute I might be just as baffled as
you are.”

  “Unless she wanted us to find it,” Scottie offers, the three of us talking over the intercom. “Maybe she was trying to tell us something.”

  “Or someone is,” I reply darkly, getting more unsettled the more we find.

  “If so, what? That she was mentally ill?” Butch doesn’t say it unkindly. “Because that’s the first thing that comes to mind.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so after talking to her,” I point out. “When I questioned her yesterday about her badge, she seemed agitated, frustrated, slightly defensive, et cetera. But not unstable, and when you consider the work she was involved in, I doubt Pandora would have sent her here if there was a question about her mental health.”

  “Well, there’s something irrational about all this,” Butch maintains.

  “I suppose that depends on your definition of irrational,” I reply as I think of the unlocked SUV with the key inside, the unlocked front door that allowed an officer to enter, and now the laptop with no password or fingerprint required. “Maybe to somebody what we’re finding makes sense.”

  “Not to me so far.” Butch has out another camera, begins taking photographs in situ of the badge and lanyard on top of clean white paper.

  Probably the best thing is to process for prints and DNA back at our headquarters, I suggest. But the bigger question I raise is whether the smartcard might have been used anywhere it shouldn’t have been, especially while it was supposedly inactive.

  “Yeah, don’t ask me what happened there,” Scottie says. “I promise I inactivated it the minute she called us yesterday late afternoon to report it stolen. But I’ve searched the security database, and the ID number originally assigned to her hasn’t come up anywhere since last night.”