GD00 - ToxiCity

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  ***

  Matt went back to Romano’s apartment. Tremble reported that none of the neighbors heard or saw any visitors at the victim’s apartment, but Matt wanted to double-check. When he knocked on doors, neighbors told him how shocked they were, what a lovely girl she was. Mrs. Morys, an elderly woman who shared the floor with Romano thought she heard laughter from Romano’s apartment a few nights before her death, but when Matt questioned her about it, she admitted it might have been the sound track from a movie or TV; her hearing wasn’t so good.

  He drove home. Inside the apartment, the smell of hot pizza and sight of Georgia setting the table chased away his frustration. She had changed into a pair of cut-offs and a cropped T-shirt, and her thick blond hair, usually tied back, was down. She turned hazel eyes to Matt.

  “Hey, Singer boy. You okay?”

  “Just peachy.” He opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of seltzer.

  “How about a glass of wine?” Georgia refilled her glass from an open bottle.

  “No, thanks.” He closed the refrigerator door.

  Before he could turn around, her hands crept up his back and slowly kneaded his shoulders. His tension eased. He turned around and slowly kissed her, his hands getting tangled in her hair. She leaned into him. His lips moved down to her throat. She groaned softly. He led her into the bedroom.

  ***

  “She was gay,” Matt said afterwards. They were eating pizza in bed, the table Georgia set forgotten. She draped the sheet across their naked bodies.

  “So?” Georgia dropped a half-eaten crust back in the box.

  “It could be relevant.”

  “How?”

  “The ME hasn’t determined cause of death yet.”

  “It’s not a big secret when all you have are body parts.”

  “We’re concerned about what happened before she went into the truck,” Matt explained. “The ME’s ‘gonna do a full tox screen.”

  “A teacher who wore plaid skirts OD’d?”

  “It might tell us if she was already dead when she went into the dumpster.” Matt reached for another slice of pizza.

  “Oh.” Georgia pulled the sheet more tightly around her.

  “Who knows?” He chewed thoughtfully. “Maybe she did a few lines after school. To get herself in the mood for her evening activities.”

  Georgia flicked a crumb off the sheet and pursed her lips. “Tell me something. Why is it that when you find out someone is gay, you automatically assume their life is warped or sleazy?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “You’re the one who’s not fair. It’s not personal, Matt. It’s all of us. Especially cops. We jump to the filthiest conclusions.”

  “We’re usually right.”

  “What if her killer was a student? Someone she’d flunked, for instance?”

  Matt put his half-eaten slice back in the box. He shook his head.

  “Why not? They found her at a high school.”

  “Yeah, but, the MO is all —”

  “You don’t have an MO,” Georgia said.

  He changed the subject. “What about the parking lot? What did you find?”

  “The first person to pull in this morning was a teacher. At six-thirty. She remembers the Saturn. Thought it was strange Romano was in so early.”

  “So her car could have been there all night.”

  Georgia nodded.

  “Why there?” Matt asked. “Why the high school?”

  “That’s what I’m saying, Matt. Maybe it was a student. Or a teacher.”

  “Okay. Maybe I’ll go back over. Check with more teachers.” He recalled the photo in the manila envelope in her kitchen. “There’s something else.” He told Georgia about the shot of the empty field.

  “Nothing on the envelope or edges of the print?”

  “Nada. But the sister said Julie was all smiles and giggles recently. You know, like she had some kind of secret. She thought Julie might have met someone.”

  “A new lover?”

  “Now who’s making assumptions?” He leaned back against the headboard, lacing his fingers behind his head. Georgia frowned. He leaned over and kissed her. “There’s something else I need help with.”

  “What?”

  “Someone needs to check out the gay bars up here.”

  Georgia snorted. “There aren’t any.”

  “You’d know, of course.”

  “Better than you.” Georgia closed the pizza box. “As far as I know, you still gotta go down to Lakeview.” She peered at Matt. “But you said she didn’t hang out in bars.”

  “What else do we have?”

  She flicked crumbs off the sheet. “There used to be a bookstore in Lincoln Park that catered to gay women. It’s probably mainstream by now, but you never know.” Georgia paused. “I could drop in.”

  “Thanks.” Matt lay back against the pillows. Georgia got up and walked the box into the kitchen. Her ass was tight and round. No shelf there, like other women. When she came back into the bedroom, he pulled her down on the bed and rolled on top.

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning blew in one of those crisp fall days that made Matt think of fresh starts—a new school term, new friends, a new suit for the High Holidays. Autumn was a time of possibilities. As he sped up I-94 to Kenosha, blurry clumps of red, orange and green shot past the car. He rolled the window down and let the sun-warmed air whip through the car. Maybe he’d stop for a bushel of apples on the way home. Georgia would like that.

  Earlier that day, he’d gone back to the high school. The Glenbrook police officer assigned to the school had questioned over a dozen teachers. No one knew of any problems between Romano and her students, teachers, or parents.

  “Parents?” Matt asked. The officer explained that some parents were known to strong-arm teachers for a fraction of a grade point, if it meant getting their kids into a better college. Matt asked him for a list of all of Romano’s students and their grades.

  Once over the state line, Matt turned onto a road where frame houses and weathered barns shared space with new colonials and offices. He couldn’t tell if the neighborhood was supposed to be rural farmland or suburban sprawl. Apparently, the developers couldn’t either.

  He turned into a driveway beside an old farmhouse with patchy siding. The concrete on the driveway had long ago cracked, been repaired, and re-cracked. But a wrap-around porch and a sturdy oak gave the place an air of permanence. He got out of the car and sniffed fertilizer. He walked up, hearing the crunch of dead leaves under his feet.

  “Not bad,” he said to the man who opened the door.

  “Nice of you to visit. What’s it been, a year?”

  Denny Horton was a commercial photographer who had escaped to the country after burglars made off with most of his camera equipment. Matt had worked the case, and although he never recovered anything, he and Denny had struck up a friendship. In the past year, though, Denny had grown a full beard, probably to compensate for the pink, shiny skin on top of his head. But he still had the same twinkle in his eye, as if he’d just heard the funniest joke in the world and couldn’t wait to pass it along.

  “Come on in, pal.”

  Heavy furniture and faded raglan rugs gave the living room a timeless feel. The smoky aroma of bacon wafted through the air. Matt’s mouth watered. He tried not to eat pork.

  “You’ve done well for yourself.”

  Denny’s eyes crinkled. “You see the back yard?” Without waiting for an answer, he dragged Matt to the kitchen window. Outside was a huge meadow, large enough to accommodate a couple of football fields.

  Matt whistled. “If you build it, they will come.”

  “I did. Come upstairs.”

  Denny led Matt up a flight of steps, where the décor was as high tech as the downstairs was low. Two doors led off a stark white hall. The first room was a traditional photography studio housing a computer, art stand, and mounted camera. Pictures, both landscapes and portraits, hung
on gray walls. The second door led to a video-editing suite with banks of monitors, switches, and a Mac in the center well.

  “Meet my true love,” Denny said proudly.

  “What?”

  “An Avid. A real-time digital editing system. I bought it with the insurance proceeds.”

  “What does it do?”

  Denny bent over the monitor. “Where have you been, pal? I can shoot, edit, and post any kind of video right here. Special effects too. In fact, it’s gotten so that it almost doesn’t matter who does the location work. With this baby, chicken shit turns into chicken salad. And I hardly ever have to leave the house.” He turned to Matt with a wry smile. “And I owe it all to you.”

  Matt saluted.

  Denny straddled a chair from the back. “So what’s shakin’?”

  Matt pulled out the envelope with the photo from Julie Romano’s kitchen. Denny wasn’t a forensic photographer, but Matt had seen him work magic with photos, sometimes better than the FBI. “You mind taking a look at this?”

  “Sure. What am I looking for?”

  “I don’t know. Anything.” He explained about Julie Romano’s death. “Be careful. I had to jump through hoops to get it out of evidence.”

  Denny extracted the photo and turned it over. He ran his fingers over the back of the print.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to figure out the paper stock they used. Here, see how light and flexible it feels?”

  Matt fingered it gingerly.

  “It’s RC.”

  Denny explained that most prints from Kodak used resin-coated paper now. “RC stock contains plastic, which gives the paper that light, rubbery touch,” he said. “Twenty-five years ago, people used fiber paper — you know, the stiff, white paper.”

  “So the picture’s less than twenty-five years old?”

  “The print is. But who knows about the negative? If it was stored properly, it could have been shot anytime.”

  Denny sat down at his computer and booted up Photoshop. Matt was familiar with it; they had it at the station. But he was beyond remedial when it came to photography, and most of the other cops weren’t much better. Denny placed the photo in a flatbed scanner. A few clicks of the mouse later, the image of an empty field appeared on the monitor.

  “Now for my next trick.”

  Denny pulled down a menu and a group of icons appeared on the screen. He clicked on a graphic that looked like a hand.

  “What’s that?”

  “Exactly what you think it is. Watch.” Denny moved the hand slowly over the image, which made the photo pan from left to right. All Matt could see was prairie grass, but Denny narrowed his eyes and stopped at a small dark lump in the grass. Then he dragged an icon that looked like a magnifying glass over the lump. The lump grew larger and blurrier. Matt watched Denny play with the contrast, brightness, and resolution. Something materialized in the grass.

  Matt leaned forward. “What is it? “

  “I’m not sure.” Denny pulled down another menu and clicked a couple of times.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Creating more contrast. If something is blurry, we can sharpen it up, maybe figure out what it is. I’ll try five hundred per cent. You lose detail, though.”

  Denny clicked again and suddenly the image of a small animal, frozen in time, appeared in the grass. Matt stared at the screen. “Is that a rabbit?”

  “Two points,” Denny said. “Or a field mouse.” He clicked on the image he’d initially scanned in. “See where we started?” The un-retouched original showed nothing but a shadow in the grass.

  “Impressive.”

  “Let’s take a look at these trees.” Denny began to work on the image again, but this time he went more slowly, panning the hand icon across the tree line, then backing up the other way.

  “You see something?”

  “I don’t know. Something may be standing out from the rest of the foliage. Could be a different tree.” As Denny clicked on the mouse, something long and skinny appeared behind the grove.

  “That’s interesting.” Denny mumbled. Magnifying the image, he pasted it into a new file and tinkered with the sharpness and contrast. “Take a look.”

  Matt squinted. Between the trees was a solid object with a vertical pole extending above. As Denny continued to sharpen, a steeple with a cross came into focus. “What is it?”

  “It’s a church, brother.”

  ***

  “A church?” Rick Brewster said doubtfully, fingering the print. He planted his lanky frame on Matt’s desk. “No way. There’s nothing there.”

  Matt handed over the print Denny created on Photoshop. “Now look.”

  A dark chunky steeple was now visible, poking through the top of the trees.

  Brewster compared the two shots. “That’s amazing. What does it mean?”

  “Beats me. Got any ideas?”

  Brewster ran a hand through his thin blond hair. “Do we know when this picture was taken? Or where?”

  “No. All we know is that the print is less than thirty years old.”

  “That narrows it down.”

  “The trees are probably pine. Or spruce. It could have been shot around here.”

  “Or not.” Brewster handed the shot back. “What do you want to do with it?”

  “I don’t know.” Matt slipped the photo back in the file. “But it was sitting on Romano’s kitchen counter. Who keeps pictures in their kitchen?”

  “Maybe we should send it to the Bureau.”

  “Are you crazy? By the time we hear back, we’ll be on social security.”

  Matt took the picture of the Romano family and pinned it on the fabric board above his desk. “Tell me about the autopsy.”

  Brewster detached several papers from his clipboard. “The medical examiner says she died of a belly ache.” At Matt’s puzzled expression, he went on. “Cause of death is acute gastroenteritis. Complicated by sepsis.”

  “Sepsis?”

  “Infection causing massive shock and organ collapse. Her GI system was a mess.” Brewster rubbed a finger under his nose. “The rest of her wasn’t much better.”

  “Are we talking food poisoning?”

  “Poison, a virus, who knows? They’re doing cultures and screens. A full work-up. It’ll take a while.”

  “The woman died from a stomach ache?”

  “Not the kind you’d ever want,” Brewster said. “Her insides were swollen and red. Lots of vomit and bloody diarrhea. The rest of her organs collapsed too. Spleen, kidney – totally degenerated. Whatever she ate ate her up.”

  “But it was ruled a homicide.”

  “Well, we might have a problem there.”

  “Pete –she went through the teeth of a garbage truck. That sure as shit ain’t natural causes.”

  “No, but technically he can’t rule out suicide. Or some kind of accidental overdose. They’re ruling it inconclusive.”

  Matt blew out a breath. “The woman was killed. Dumped in a truck. And we’re supposed to think it was just food poisoning or a bug? Did you check her prescriptions?”

  “We’re doing that now.” Brewster said. “So far, nothing you don’t already know. According to her files, the amoxicillin was for a strep throat she had a few months ago. The diuretics were for kidney stones, like her mother said. There wasn’t much else.”

  “What about the timing?”

  “Timing?”

  “How long was it from the onset of symptoms until she died?”

  “Hard to tell, but with the deterioration of the organs and the shock, the ME says it could have been a couple of days.”

  “We found her on Monday.”

  “Right.”

  “And she took her mother to Field’s the Friday before.” Brewster nodded. “Tell me something, Pete. If she got sick over the weekend, why didn’t she get help?”

  “Help?”

  “A weekend is a long time to suffer with food poisoning or a virus i
n your gut. Did she call a doctor or go to a hospital between Friday and Monday?”

  Brewster shrugged.

  “Check the ERs, will you?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You’d think if she got sick, she’d ask for help.”

  “Maybe she was too sick to…” Brewster gazed at the report. “Oh.” He looked at Matt. “You thinking someone kept her from getting help?”

  “I don’t know what I’m thinking. Just check it out.” Matt stared through the glass wall of the Detective’s office, which gave onto the hall of the police station. Julie Romano must have been in agony at the end.

  Brewster cleared his throat. “There is one piece of good news.”

  Matt looked over.

  “The crime lab found some of Romano’s hairs and clothing fibers on a blanket in the trunk of her car. The fibers were consistent with the clothes she was wearing when we found her.”

  “Meaning someone could have wrapped her in a blanket and taken her to the dumpster.”

  “But nobody heard anything.”

  “There are a set of stairs right across the hall.” Matt picked up a pencil. “The killer wraps her in a blanket, drives over to the high school, throws her in the dumpster, then puts the blanket back in the trunk of her car.” He looked at Brewster. “Which means the killer had her car keys.”

  “They could have taken them out of her purse.”

  Matt drummed the pencil on his desk. “We have the blanket?”

  “It’s at the crime lab.”

  “Any vomit or excrement on it?”

  Brewster rifled through a sheaf of paper on his clipboard. “Doesn’t say. And I don’t re—” Pete stopped. “You think he cleaned her up?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why?”

  “To cover up the crime?” Matt said. “Have them check the blanket again.”

  “You got it.”

  “He?” Matt turned to Brewster. “I was thinking there had to be more than one killer.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “The dumpsters at the high school are what, eight or nine feet above ground, right?