Murder At The Podium

by Alec Peche

  “How can I help, Detective?” Jill asked extremely curious to see where this conversation was going.

  “I’d hoped that you’d continue to supply me with clues as again you seem to be a few steps ahead of my own crime scene staff. My guys are excellent but like me, their time is divided between several crime scenes that they are processing at the same time. I spoke with my Lieutenant and he agreed to bring you on as a consultant for up to a hundred hours for the Stacy Johnson murder,” Castillo said. “That is if you’re interested in helping us.”

  “I’m interested in helping. I’ve never had my contract terminated before the murder was solved and I’m irked by that.”

  “Can you send me your resume or biography and a copy of your driver’s license? We’ll need to do a routine background check on you which personnel is lined up to complete for me today. I’ll also send you our standard consultant contract. Are you free to come to Dallas tomorrow?”

  “Yes, I’m sure I can arrange a plane ticket and hotel near your building.”

  “Actually, Dr. Quint, the manager of the hotel you were staying at in Dallas has offered you a room at no charge. She’s been quite vocal through the Chamber of Commerce and the Visitors Bureau that we solve this murder yesterday. Groups are asking about the murder when exploring booking the convention center.”

  “Wow, that’s some pressure from outside the department,” Jill agreed.

  “Yes,” came the clipped response.

  “Okay, send me the contract and I’ll wait to hear that I’ve passed your background check before booking my ticket.”

  “Do you have something in your background Dr. Quint that I should know about?”

  “Please call me Jill and nothing in my background should worry you. I just lack faith that your people will move that fast.”

  “I’ll look for your signed contract and I’ll see you tomorrow, Jill,” and the detective ended the call.

  Jill sat back and thought about the call. The Stacy Johnson case was taking some interesting twists and turns. She would have to notify Nathan and her team. She would outsource any relevant research needs to them. She heard the ping of an incoming email, she clicked on it to find two attachments from Detective Castillo; one was their standard background form and the other was a consultant contract. She completed both and sent them back to the detective. She dropped an email to her friends and left Nathan a voicemail. They could talk about the case more at dinner tonight, but she wanted to give him advance notice of her plans.

  She entered her lab to check on an organic pest control agent that she’d learned about at the grape growers’ convention in Dallas. One of the seminars she attended mentioned Pierce’s disease; a bacterium that destroyed grape vines in one to five years after it attacked the plant and was costing grape growers millions of dollars in plant damage. One of the speakers offered a proactive solution to preventing the disease from entering her vineyard plants. She’d been experimenting with his suggestions with live culture of the bacteria and they seemed to be effective. When she returned from Texas, she would study how frequently she needed to spray her plants to keep the bacteria from taking root. She was walking back to her house when Detective Castillo’s email arrived. She was approved to work as a consultant for Dallas PD and would she please notify him of her arrival time in Dallas tomorrow.

  Jill entered her house and quickly booked a ticket that would have her in Dallas by noon the next day. She was excited to assist the DPD in this murder investigation, though she had to wonder if Castillo wanted her in Dallas so he could arrest Stacy’s murderer, once he or she stepped out and took aim at Jill. Oh well, didn’t matter, Jill knew she would enjoy the intellectual opportunity to contribute to this case.

  She packed her bag for a week, then packed Trixie’s food and treats. She would join Nathan for dinner, then leave the dog behind and return to her house to sleep. She had to get up at 3:30 in the morning to make the 6am flight. No sense disrupting Nathan with that early call. She debated taking her autopsy suitcase that she kept loaded and ready, but she couldn’t see a reason to take it as there was no autopsy to do. With everything all arranged, she piled the dog in her car and drove to Nathan’s house.

  She found him in the kitchen staring in concentration at his refrigerator’s contents. Arthur moved to a higher perch that would allow him to swat at Trixie if she got close.

  Nathan shut the door and turned around saying, “So you’re back on the case and heading to Dallas in the morning.”

  Jill leaned over to hug and kiss him and replied, “The very early morning, 3:30 is my wake-up call.”

  “That’s ugly. Sometimes I don’t head to bed until 4am.”

  “Good thing, I’m a morning person. What’s for dinner? You’re frowning at your refrigerator.”

  “I’m frowning because I was in the mood to make one thing, but I’m missing an ingredient, so I have to go with my second choice. You have no idea how hard it is to move your chef’s brain from something that was Thai over to something that is Italian.”

  “Since I have no chef’s brain, you would be right about me not understanding your cooking frustrations. We could order in a pepperoni pizza.”

  “You know Jill since we have been together, I’ve eaten more pepperoni pizza than in all the decades before you arrived in my life. I’ll do a pesto sauce for the fish just to stay away from full fledge marinara sauce.”

  “Can I help you with dinner?”

  “No.”

  Now Jill realized that Nathan was in a surly mood about something other than what to cook for dinner that night. Usually she was relegated to pouring wine, or making a salad, two things she was normally successful with in the kitchen.

  “Are you upset about something else besides the dinner selection?”

  “I’m not happy with you taking this job. I just heaved a sigh of relief that you weren't on the case and now you're in harm’s way again.”

  “Hey, I’m more protected in this case than most cases since I’ll be working inside police headquarters.”

  “And when you go back to your hotel at night? Who has your back then?”

  “Hotel security? Maybe there is a Nick like person that runs hotel security.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Okay you have a point and I’ll talk to hotel security and the detective when I arrive to discuss my personal safety. Are you asking me not to take this case?”

  Nathan sighed and didn't say anything for a moment. Finally he asked, “In your gut, who do you think killed the woman?”

  It wasn't the question that Jill was anticipating and she thought through what she knew so far about the murder of Stacy Johnson.

  “In my gut, I don’t have a murder suspect, rather I feel it's not the cartel because I'm stuck on what the kid said to me; it was too much work for the cartel, they’d have killed her in her driveway.”

  “As much as I hate to admit this, I agree with you and the kid. You know I’ve been bothered by Adam and isn’t he on the detective’s most likely to have done it list?”

  Jill laughed at Nathan’s description then asked, “You’ve pegged the man for murder since you met him. Why do you feel so strongly?”

  “There was something contrived about him and I know Angela says that people behave differently when devastated by grief, but this guy didn’t seem that overcome by real grief. I also don’t like the fact that he shipped his children off to his parents in the days and weeks around his wife’s murder. That seemed more an arrangement to suit Adam than a decision made in the best interests of the children. It was like he wanted the children out of his way - it just seemed like a wrong emotion to me.”

  “Okay fair enough; that's interesting insight into Adam. So now that we've talked this through are you still uneasy with my traveling to Dallas?”

  “Hmmm, better the enemy that you know rather than the unknown? Certainly if the cartel is not involved in this murder case then I have to think that you'll be safe; then again you’ve
had plenty of people after you that were not cartel members,” Nathan paused, then added, “I guess I'm talking myself into circles here since I seem to have an equal amount of angst for you whether the cartel is involved or not. Okay travel to Dallas, and I'll take a look at my schedule to see if I can make a long weekend of it and visit you there in a few days.”

  Jill was pretty happy with the conclusion that Nathan arrived at. She would've turned down this case for him if he had asked, but he didn't which said something about the strength of his feelings regarding this being a non-cartel murder. She walked over to him and gave him a long and thorough kiss.

  When she finished, he raised his eyebrows and asked, “What’s that for?”

  “For being the best guy a girl could have. Have I told you I love you in the last hour?”

  “I'm not sure you've told me that at all today.”

  “Then I've been remiss. Though to be fair I told you ‘I love you’ when I got up this morning, but you were still sound asleep and missed hearing my words.”

  He just pulled her close and hugged her, then sighed and stepped away to begin gathering ingredients for dinner. Jill took a deep breath, relieved they had moved beyond the tension of her job.

  “The hotel we stayed in is so concerned about the murder that they have offered me a free hotel room for the length of the investigation.”

  “Wow! The police must be feeling some public pressure. Are you renting a car to go back and forth between your hotel and police HQ?”

  “The hotel also offered me a shuttle to use around Dallas.”

  “Good I was afraid you might walk each day.”

  “I don’t think so; there was one scary block when I did that walk last week in daylight. I wouldn’t want to do it at night so if the hotel hadn’t volunteered transport, I would have rented a car.”

  Jill had been chopping vegetables while Nathan deboned a fish in preparation for dinner. Jill had to admire his skill. Despite years spent performing autopsies and cutting through human skin, she could make a complete hack of a fish. Nathan was adding vegetables and a risotto to complete his Italian menu. The food looked and smelled delicious. Their conversation moved on to their upcoming long weekend at Henrik’s house in Germany. They had made a friend for life when Jill and crew solved his wife’s murder. He’d been such a help on cases since with his facial recognition software that he sold globally.

  After another wonderful meal accompanied by the perfectly crisp white wine, they settled in on Nathan’s sofa to watch the latest episode of a home remodeling show. He had learned early on that it was impossible to watch any medical or police series on television with Jill as she had a tendency to pick apart the accuracy of such a show. An hour later, Jill knew she needed to head home as her early wake-up call was just hours away. With a hug for Trixie and a longer one with Nathan, she was out the door and home in twenty minutes. She fell asleep quickly which was amazing given her level of excitement to start the job in Dallas.

  Chapter Twelve

  After an uneventful flight and a check-in at her hotel, Jill presented herself to Detective Castillo’s office at noon the next day. He provided her with a consultant badge and an empty office from which to base her investigation.

  Castillo had arranged an interview with Dr. Albright, the medical examiner, for Jill and himself. Many of the tests were completed, but some toxicology tests took weeks to get back if they were highly specialized and had to be sent to an outside lab.

  Dr. Albright, a woman about Jill’s age, appeared friendly and cooperative as she sat to review Stacy Johnson’s autopsy file with them.

  “In addition to finding the presence of arsenic in the vomit, I also found it in stomach contents, blood, and in most of the victim’s organs,” noted Dr. Albright.

  “Did you conclude that arsenic was ingested via a blueberry muffin?” Jill asked.

  “Yes. Her stomach contents consisted of the muffin, coffee, water, and a few vitamin supplements. The blueberries appeared to be marinated in arsenic as there was a high arsenic content in the blueberries. I did a quick search and failed to find any other examples of poisoning in this manner. I was surprised that the arsenic was in the blueberries rather than the cake portion of the muffin. To me, that suggests that the poisoner had to have experimented with marinating the berries in order to assure a fatal dose.”

  “That’s an interesting hypothesis and one I’d agree with. Whoever the poisoner was has to have a chemistry background to be able to test the level of arsenic in the blueberries. I can’t believe this was strictly good luck on the first attempt,” Jill noted.

  Castillo had been following Jill’s train of thought and asked, “There was no evidence of chronic poisoning? Is that something you can rule-out in an autopsy?”

  “No, there was no evidence and yes that is something I can detect,” replied the medical examiner.

  “What other testing do you have pending?” Jill asked.

  “Toxicology tests. Given that the victim was speaking in public just prior to her death, I didn’t look at alcohol or drugs of misuse in her system. However, I did send blood work and liver cells for detection of additional poisons. I wondered if any other poisons have been tried in the past and they didn’t work and that caused the murderer to step up her game to a different poison.”

  “Her?” Castillo questioned.

  “Poison has long been the murder weapon of choice for females. Arsenic is used in this country for pest control and the English parliament debated in the 19th century banning the sale of arsenic to females for fear of its use as a poison to kill their husbands.”

  “Remind me not to make you ladies mad,” replied the detective.

  The two women just smiled crazily at the detective enjoying his discomfort.

  “When do you think you’ll get your test results back from the private lab?” Jill asked.

  “Actually, I expect them any day now as they’re not complicated and the private lab has a contractually required turnaround time for test results. I am not testing anything that is microbial, so there is no need to wait while some grows or doesn’t in a Petri dish.”

  The detective stood up moving to shake hands with the medical examiner and said, “You’ll keep us informed?”

  “Yes.”

  Jill and the detective returned to their building discussing the autopsy findings as they drove back to police headquarters. She was now on the hunt for arsenic marinated blueberries. She was meeting with the hotel and convention center security to obtain hours of video tape to watch from her hotel room. She expected it to be mind-numbingly boring, but it was where she would start in the search for the blueberry muffins. Eventually they might have to ask Adam Johnson if his wife brought muffins from home, but for the moment, she was not going to notify him that the police had hired her to work on his wife’s murder.

  The other angle she was taking was researching the Marsh test. It was developed by a chemist named Marsh in 1836. Jill examined the chemical reaction that measured the amount of arsenic and determined that just about any backyard chemist could set-up the same test and measure the arsenic in the poisoned blueberries. The backyard chemist would need a few chemicals and after a quick internet search determined that those chemicals were easy to obtain.

  After the shuttle ride back to her hotel, Jill met with the head of hotel security who pulled the video tapes for her of the relevant locations and time related to the case. The convention center security compiled every piece of footage from every camera inside and out of the convention center for the twenty-four hours before and after Stacy’s presentation. Ugh, it was going to be a boring evening. She planned to look at the tapes and eliminate all times that were empty of people. That would reduce the footage she had to watch by hopefully at least fifty percent.

  Jill settled in to her nicely outfitted hotel room and connected her laptop to the hotel television - it was always better to view video clips on a larger screen. To keep her mind active, she planned to wat
ch the screen until she felt her concentration slipping, then she would head down to the hotel’s fitness gym and get a run in. Once she returned to her room she would wait until she lost concentration again to take her post-workout shower. Later when she needed the next break she would order her dinner through room service. At her final mental lapse in concentration, she would head to bed knowing from past cases the importance of having total attention when viewing video footage. She leaned back and went to work, and by the time she needed the first break, she’d eliminated all of the empty footage which was nearly two thirds.

  She entered the gym thinking about the case; maybe she would use a copy of Henrik’s facial recognition software to identify the same face in multiple locations and see what that turned up for her. Surely some of the hotel guests on Stacy’s floor were also attending the same conference. Had the person who poisoned the blueberries attended the seminar that Stacy was a presenter in to watch his or her evil handiwork? Watch Stacy pause in discomfort, sip water knowing it wouldn’t help, then watch her vomit and collapse, watch the conference room attendees come to her aid, the whole time knowing that they wouldn’t figure out what poisoned her in time to save her life. Jill shivered at that cold picture in her head.