The Arms of Death

by Maggie Foster

  A woman came out of one of the back rooms and stepped towards them. “May I help you?”

  “I’d like to see Andrea Goddard, please.”

  “Hang on. I’ll get her for you.” The woman disappeared and in short order Andy herself came bustling out from the recesses of the building.

  She was a cheerful, comfortably rounded, rosy-cheeked grandmother. Not at all what you would expect to find as an Investigator for the county Medical Examiner’s office. Dressed in blue slacks, loose white shirt, and a bib apron, she looked as if she had just stepped out of the kitchen. Ginny’s nostrils twitched as she identified the smell coming from the apron. It was not fresh baked cookies.

  “Ginny! It’s good to see you!”

  “Hi, Andy.” She introduced Jim, then said, “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  The older woman looked at her a moment, then led them down a corridor and through two sets of doors into a small room furnished with a table and folding chairs. Posters on the wall and books on the shelves proclaimed this a training room.

  Andy settled down on one of the folding chairs and gestured for the other two to do the same. “So what’s up, sweetie?”

  “Is there any way you could get your hands on an autopsy report for me?”

  Andy looked from her to Jim and back again before replying. “Might be, if there’s a reason for it.” She cocked her head sideways and waited for an explanation. Ginny summarized what she had learned so far about Professor Craig and the mysterious virus.

  “So I wanted to look at the autopsy report, the full one, to see if there was any mention of an unexplained needle stick on his body. Would that sort of thing be noticed?”

  “Oh, yes. The techs are very thorough. After the photographer gets finished, we go over the body carefully and write down every mark. Most needle sticks produce a little bleeding at the site, as long as it was done before death.”

  Ginny nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. So can you help?”

  Andy leaned over and patted her hand. “Wait here.”

  When they were alone, Jim raised an eyebrow at her. “You have useful friends.”

  Ginny smiled, “I know a few people.”

  He did not smile in return. In fact, he was frowning, an expression in his eyes that made Ginny wonder if she’d made a mistake, confiding in him.

  Andy was back in a few minutes with a manila file folder in her hand.

  “Donald Craig, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Here you go, sweetie.” She pushed the autopsy report across the table at Ginny, who picked it up and skimmed through it quickly, one eyebrow raised.

  “This is a lot thicker than I expected.”

  “The lab reports are attached to the back.”

  The other two waited while Ginny read through the report. “Here it is, back of the neck, right at the collar line. Not somewhere you’d normally put a needle.”

  Andy peered at the report. “It’s listed as a possible insect bite, with a question mark.”

  “That would make sense. They were looking for an insect vector.” Ginny looked at the lab reports, then set the papers down on the table and looked over at Andy, her face serious. “I need a photocopy of this.”

  “You think someone inoculated him with that virus.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Ginny nodded.

  “In that case, we’ll have to change the classification and report it to the police.” Andy reached for the phone and dialed the number of the Dallas Police Department’s Crimes Against Persons unit.

  Ginny watched her in alarm. “Now?”

  “Yes, of course, now.”

  “But Andy—”

  “But, what?”

  “It’s nothing more than a half-baked idea and I have no evidence to back it up.”

  “Collecting evidence is the police’s job. You leave it to them. It’s not a good idea for a girl like you to go chasing cold blooded killers.”

  Ginny shook her head in further alarm. “I have no intention of doing any such thing. All I want is a reasonable theory—”

  Andy held up her hand for silence. “Hello? Yes. This is the M.E.’s office. I’d like to speak to a detective, please. Thank you.” She looked over at Ginny. “You have a working hypothesis and a potential murder weapon. That’s more than we have to go on many times. Let’s just see what the professionals say about it.”

  Ginny listened as Andy explained the situation to the responding officer.

  “Yes. A body. With a puncture wound. Right. A device for making punctures. It’s one of those things diabetics use and it may be unrelated, but we won’t know until the crime lab gets through with it.” She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “Have you got that thing with you?” she asked.

  Ginny nodded.

  “Yes. My informant is here and has the device with her.” She listened a moment then handed the phone to Ginny. “She wants to talk to you.”

  Ginny took the phone and held it up to her ear. “Hello?”

  “This is Detective Tran. Whom am I speaking with, please?”

  Ginny identified herself.

  “You are the one who found the device?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Can you bring it to the station or do we need to come get it?”

  “I can bring it in.”

  “How soon can you get here?”

  Ginny glanced at the clock. “Where do I have to go?”

  The detective gave her directions, which Ginny repeated so Andy could jot them down for her.

  “I can be there in thirty minutes.”

  “When you get here, tell the desk sergeant you have an appointment with me. I will come up front and get you.”

  Ginny hung up the phone and looked over at Andy. “You realize this is probably a wild goose chase.”

  Andy reached over and patted Ginny’s hand again. “You’re doing the right thing, honey. These are good folks. I work with them all the time. Just tell them what you think. I’ll let you know if I hear anything on this end. Okay? And I’ll run off a copy of this for you right now.”

  Ginny swallowed hard. “Thanks, Andy.”

  “You just remember what I told you. You let the police do the chasing.”

  “I will.” Ginny turned to find Jim standing by the door, his face blank. They waited for the promised photocopy, then he led her out to his car.

  “So much for keeping your theory under wraps,” he said.

  Ginny blushed. “I had no idea she was going to take me so seriously.”

  “No?” He raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Well, let’s see what the police say.”

  * * *

  Ginny took a deep breath, marched up to the front desk and announced her errand. In fewer than three minutes, a petite Asian woman in a dark blue suit came out to collect her. The woman held out her hand.

  “Miss Forbes? I am Detective Tran.” She turned to Jim.

  “Dr. Mackenzie,” he offered.

  “This way.”

  Ginny followed the detective through an electronically controlled door, down a long hallway and into a small, windowless office.

  “Please. Sit down.” The detective gestured in the direction of the desk. Ginny sat on the edge of an ancient wooden chair, noticing that Jim dropped into the other and brought his ankle up to rest on his knee. He looked comfortable and unconcerned, as if he had spent lots of time in police substations. The detective settled behind the desk, then reached into one of the drawers and pulled out an electronic device.

  “I would like to record this if you do not mind.” She set the machine going, then took up a pad and pencil and focused her entire attention on Ginny.

  “Now,” she said, “start at the beginning and tell me everything that has happened, and when you are done, I will ask some questions. All right?”

  Ginny nodded, swallowed once and started talking. She went over all the same ground she had covered with the CDC and with Alex (leaving out his unaut
horized help). She explained how she had come into possession of the lancet pen and why it had troubled her enough to approach the Medical Examiner’s office.

  “You have it with you?”

  “Yes.” She pulled it out of her purse, showing how it worked. “See? The lancet sits down inside this tube and is released by a spring mechanism.”

  The detective pulled an envelope out of her drawer and had Ginny drop the device into it. She put a label on it, then set it aside and picked up her pencil again. “Go on.”

  Ginny emphasized she wasn’t trying to make a nuisance of herself and she was glad to turn the problem over to the professionals (here the detective nodded), but she was concerned, not just because of her own exposure and Jim’s — the detective’s eyes swiveled around to look at Jim for a moment, then returned to examining Ginny — but also because there were three possible victims, so far.

  Ginny sat waiting for the detective to start interrogating her, but all she said was, “Thank you, Miss Forbes. That was very interesting.” The detective wrote down her contact information, and Jim’s, then stood up.

  “We will need your fingerprints, to exclude them, and anyone else who may have handled the device.” She looked over at Jim.

  He held both hands up. “I haven’t touched it.”

  “Walter did,” Ginny said.

  “Walter?”

  Ginny explained about the child. “But he only touched the outside.”

  The detective nodded and took contact information for Walter and his father, then led Ginny down the hall to an area where ‘persons of interest’ were processed. Ginny offered her fingertips to the technician and they soon had a handsome set of digital images to work with.

  She took Ginny back to her office. “Thank you very much for coming in. I will not keep you any longer.”

  “Is that all?” Ginny asked.

  “Yes, Miss Forbes, unless you have remembered something else.”

  “No.” Ginny shook her head and collected her purse.

  Detective Tran gestured for Ginny to precede her out the door, then turned to include Jim in her smile. “I am sorry to have disrupted your day, but very happy to have this information. We appreciate it when citizens take the trouble to come in and give a statement. Not enough of them do.” She chatted as they walked out. “It was very conscientious of you. Thank you, again. Goodbye.” She shook their hands then turned them over to the desk sergeant, who escorted them out of the building.

  Ginny blinked, then took a deep breath and started for the car, feeling disappointed and rather foolish. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, but not this abrupt dismissal. Surely the detective had some questions.

  Jim held the door open for her, then got in, put the car in gear, and drove off.

  “She seemed very nice,” Jim said.

  Ginny glanced over, finding his eyes on her.

  “But not very interested,” he continued.

  Ginny shook her head. “I knew they wouldn’t be. There wasn’t enough evidence.” She felt snubbed and, as a result, sounded peevish. She saw the corner of Jim’s mouth twitch.

  “Yet.”

  Ginny turned to look at him. “You did hear Andy telling me to leave the investigating to the professionals, didn’t you?”

  “I did.” He smiled over at her. “But she didn’t say a word to me.”

  * * *

  Chapter 15

  Monday

  Ginny opened the front door and stuck her head around the corner. “Mother? We’re back.”

  Her mother’s voice answered from the den.

  “Did you have a nice time, dear?”

  Ginny lifted an eyebrow at Jim who was just closing the door behind him. “Very nice. We’re going to be up in the office if you need us.”

  “Sandy called. He said he sent you some files.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ginny led the way upstairs and settled down behind the big oak desk. She waved Jim into a seat, picked up the phone and dialed Alex’s number.

  “Sandy?” She hurried to reassure him. “No, we’re all fine so far. I have another favor to ask. I need permission to show those files you sent to someone I’m working with.” She listened for a moment, then nodded at the phone. “I know, but things have changed. Remember those needle sticks? Well I think they were deliberate. Right, deliberately injected with this virus and the M.E.’s office agrees with me.” Ginny glanced across the room at Jim. He was sitting quite still, listening to her end of the conversation. “That’s right. What we’re trying to do is find out whether there’s any reason to think these three deaths are related. Can you get the proper clearance? Well, tell Chip. He’s the primary investigator.” She listened for a moment longer. “Okay. Yes, give him my number. In the meantime, I’ll remove any identifying information. Will that do? Right. Okay, thanks. Yes, I’ll be careful. Mother sends her love. Talk to you soon. Bye.”

  She hung up the phone and flipped on the computer, pulling up her email program first. She downloaded the files, opened them, did a global search and replace on each one, substituting Victim # 1 and Victim # 2 for the patient names, and saved them, using new file names.

  “There. Now we have HIPAA compliant versions.” She smiled at Jim. “Since neither you nor I took care of these two, we can’t recognize them. And neither you nor I is going to show them to anyone else until Chip gives us permission, right?”

  Jim nodded, laying his hand on his heart. “On my honor as a physician and an Eagle Scout.”

  “An Eagle Scout!” Ginny said. “I’m impressed.”

  “Yes, ma’am. You should be.”

  Ginny put her eyes back on her computer, pushing aside a sudden image of Jim in shorts, though not the Eagle Scout variety. She pulled her desk drawer open, found an empty flash drive and copied the new materials onto it, then ejected it, crossed the room, and pulled out her laptop.

  “Here.” She handed him the flash drive, set up the second computer, and signed in.

  “You’re Victim # 1. I’ll be Victim # 2.”

  Jim looked at her. “Are you sure you want to put it that way?”

  Ginny blanched. “Just feed me the data.”

  He nodded, opening the files and scrolling through the material. “Okay. What do you need?”

  She pulled up the tables she had created the day before. “If we go on the assumption that these are not random deaths, it implies there’s a connection between them. Let’s see if we can figure out what it is.”

  They spent the first thirty minutes filling in demographic and medical information.

  “All male,” Jim said.

  Ginny nodded. “But all over the place on everything else.”

  “What else do we have?”

  “Method: the same virus, or a similar one, killed each of them.” Ginny opened the CDC file on Victim # 2. “Check the autopsy on Victim # 1 and see if there’s an unexplained puncture wound on your guy.”

  Jim nodded. It took him ten minutes. “Here it is. Upper left back, under the scapula. Not a routine site for either intramuscular or subcutaneous injections. Noted as possible insect bite.”

  Ginny made a note, “left back” in the column for “presence of unexplained puncture wound” under Victim # 1. “See if he noticed and reported it.”

  Jim flipped to the scanned digital images of the E.R. records and peered at the scrawled handwriting. “How is anyone supposed to read this?” he asked.

  Ginny smothered her grin. “Years of practice.” She turned to her own file. Victim # 2 had been caught, like Professor Craig, in the neck, just above the collar line, and had a similar E.R. entry. Ginny added it in.

  She summarized. “Okay. So everyone has an unexplained puncture wound in an unlikely location and none of the three reported it to the E.R. doctors. All three caught on autopsy and attributed to insect bites.”

  She chewed on her lower lip. “Why did all three get autopsied? The first victim was eighty and in poor health. His death could hav
e passed for natural causes.”

  “That’s a good question.” Jim scrolled through the records. “Physician Progress Notes indicate a definitive cause of death was required for insurance payout.” Jim looked up. “Maybe he was rich.”

  Ginny nodded. “Maybe.” She added another row to her list of characteristics. “It says here Victim # 2 had some expensive hobbies. Maybe there’s a connection to money.”

  “Always a good motive for murder,” Jim nodded.

  “But Professor Craig definitely was not rich so that can’t be the connection. It has to be just a coincidence.”

  “Let’s try opportunity,” Jim suggested.

  “Okay, that’s a little easier, at least for Victim # 3.” Ginny frowned. “If my theory is correct, then Professor Craig was infected in the stacks at the Dallas Public library.”

  “So what does that tell us?”

  “It was someone who knew where to find him?” she suggested.

  “It might have been a chance meeting,” Jim pointed out.

  “Yes. All right. Someone who knows where the library is, and the genealogy department.”

  “Does that imply a genealogist?” Jim asked.

  Ginny wrinkled her forehead. “Not necessarily. It could be a historian or someone unconnected with genealogy.”

  Jim leaned back, stretching his arms above his head. “Okay. We have an assailant in the library. Is there any kind of control about who goes in and out?”

  “Not so far as the library is concerned. There’s the sign-in sheet in the department, but it’s voluntary. I told Chip about it and his people collected the sheets for the week, but what self-respecting murderer would sign in?”

  Jim snorted. “I wouldn’t. How about parking records?”

  Ginny shook her head. “It’s automated. Time stamped tickets only, and he, or she, could have come on the bus or on foot just as easily.”

  “So is there any way to know who was in the genealogy section that afternoon?”

  “What makes you think he was attacked the same day he got sick?” Ginny asked.

  “Oh. Well, no, of course not. There’d be an incubation period, wouldn’t there?”