by Lisa Black
‘Think he did it? The cousin?’
‘He could have. He admits he was in the area. Your shifts change at six, right? He could have killed Diana, gone on duty, and hung around the area waiting for the call to come in. He sends the rookie out to the car for some reason, takes the ring and bags the hands.’
‘Then why tell James about the ring at all?’
‘Maybe he was afraid James would eventually remember it, or eventually remember something that would implicate him. A distraction.’
‘Maybe James actually did kill his wife and wasn’t coherent enough to remember it.’
‘Then who killed him?’
‘Why steal this ring at all?’ he asked wearily.
‘Let’s assume for the moment that James didn’t kill her. The person who stole the ring might have done so entirely for profit. In that case they are almost certainly not the murderer, or they would have taken the ring during the murder. Or, the person stole the ring because he gave it to her and thought it could be traced back to him.’
‘In which case he still might not be the murderer. James could have done it, but lover arrives on the scene and doesn’t want his little secret getting out, either because of his wife or because he doesn’t want to be a suspect. But James still did it.’
‘Then why kill James? Ten years later, would a little affair still be worth killing a man in cold blood?’
‘You don’t know some wives.’
‘Okay, we’re going around in circles here.’
‘Been doing that for two days,’ he grumbled. ‘Why stop now?’
‘I think one thing we can be certain of is that whoever called James is the one who killed him. Can you get the phone records?’
‘It was a burner phone.’
‘Yeah, but we should have the number from the caller ID on Don’s phone.’
‘I’ve got the phone company working on it, but it’s going to take a while. Days, maybe. Of course,’ he added, watching her, ‘Don had the number.’
‘You all had it. You were all in the room with him, right?’
He thought a moment, then nodded reluctantly. ‘Yeah. Me, Yin and Yang, and half your upper staff here.’
‘You seem keen to think of Don as your primary suspect.’
‘And you don’t. I get that. So who are our suspects?’ He started to tick them off on his fingers. ‘Cousin Casey the Cop. George Bain, deceased. Darryl Johnson, deceased. Dr Hubert Reese, deceased. Dr Elliott Stone, now the ME. Don, your buddy. Mitchell Causer. Who do you think is the most likely to have been the lover-slash-killer of Diana Allman?’
She thought. ‘Casey Allman seems to have been in the best position to, and he still has conflicted feelings about Diana. I can’t picture George as a romantic interest of Diana’s.’
‘Darryl Johnson?’
‘That’s tougher. I couldn’t stand him and didn’t think she could either, but … he wasn’t bad-looking, and even horrid men can be surprisingly charming when they want to be.’
‘I can be charming.’
She ignored him. ‘Dr Reese, I don’t see. They did get along, he and Diana – he usually didn’t have a lot of time for people who didn’t have letters after their names, but he made an exception for Diana. Men usually did. His interest seemed more fatherly than anything, but then I’m notoriously naive about these things. I’m sure about one thing, though – if Dr Reese had had an affair with Diana, James would not have been able to beat it out of him. He’d take it to his grave.’
‘He may have.’
‘He had a set of principles that didn’t bend. So, next – Dr Stone? He’d be the most likely, I guess.’
‘Seriously?’
‘This conversation doesn’t leave this room, right?’
He raised three fingers. ‘Scouts honor.’
‘He’s a handsome guy, was more so ten years ago.’
‘Like all of us.’
‘There have been rumors over the years that he doesn’t exactly consider his marriage vows to be rules so much as suggestions, and that may be why a secretary in Records went to Parks and Recs, a pathologist went to work at the Clinic, and a histologist took early retirement. And he had the money to buy a ring like that, even then.’
‘So he’d have been a move up for Diana.’
‘Don’t listen to the cousin,’ Theresa snapped. ‘Diana never struck me as a gold-digger. She wanted stability, not a meal ticket.’
‘Okay. Say she was in it for love – but then he won’t leave his wife. She needs a way to bust him out so one day it’s hey, I’m pregnant, now you gotta do something – they argue, but she’s holding the womb card.’
‘The womb card?’
‘Beats a royal flush, believe me. So he kills her. Makes his getaway – he’s in her own house in broad daylight, not the most discreet move in the world – and then he remembers the ring. But again, why is he so certain this ring can be linked to him? Was it custom made?’
‘I couldn’t tell you.’
‘You can really see your ME murdering one of his employees?’
‘Truthfully? No. He’d be more likely to bribe or cajole his way out of things. He’s a long-time, very skilled political player – that’s how he worked his way up to the top position in record time. He would have fired Diana and found a way to discredit her, or made it well worth her while to get rid of the baby and quietly find other employment. As I said, provided the office gossips are to be believed, he winds up in a similar situation every couple of years. No one else has wound up dead.’
Shephard rubbed the stubble on his chin. ‘Okay. Who else?’
‘Don, as you seem to enjoy pointing out. As a lover, he would be the obvious choice. They were both young and beautiful, and on top of it he was single and sympathetic. But if so then they were extraordinarily discreet. I lunched with her all the time – if she had been interested in Don she would have been pumping me for information about him, what he was like, where he went, what he did.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah. Some things don’t change after high school.’
Shephard laughed.
‘And vice-versa. As it is, I don’t ever remember one of them asking about the other.’
‘Okay, fine, let’s eliminate your little boyfriend. That leaves Mitchell Causer.’
‘Not in any alternate universe would he have been Diana’s lover. Stealing the ring, that wouldn’t surprise me at all. But Diana welcoming him into her bed? Never in a million years.’
‘I see you’re pretty sure about that. But then we’re back to: Causer could have stolen the ring and Allman killed Diana in a drug induced haze, then convinced himself he didn’t.’
‘And that takes us back to James’ murder. Was Causer in the room when Don took the call from James?’
‘Yep. We had been waiting in the ME’s office, and he insinuated himself in there somehow. I didn’t even see him do it. It was as if the guy walked through the wall.’
‘He’s good at that, getting where he’s not supposed to be.’
‘We’re still going around in circles,’ Shephard said. ‘Unless the phone company can actually do something for us.’
‘What about James’ murder? Where were each of our suspects? What about surveillance cameras – at the entrance to the factory, a bank up the street, anything?’
‘We’re checking. Nothing so far. As for our suspects – I saw Causer smoking on the back dock. Your boyf— Don hovered around here clutching his phone. Your esteemed ME did an autopsy – I guess Reese’s death left the place short-handed. But staff popped in and out all morning – coffee, smoke breaks, breakfast run, even me, and that factory is only ten minutes away in good traffic. We could estimate the exact time of the murder within a few minutes and cross-check with your security cameras here, but, oh yeah, you don’t have any security cameras, except the single one on the back dock which any staff member would know to avoid.’
Theresa rested her chin on her knees, closing her eyes for
a moment. She would need to sleep soon, long and deep, but knew it would prove difficult. At least for a while. ‘I’m beginning to see what James meant. We have to find that ring. It’s our only chance for some kind of answer.’
He was studying her again, with a gaze too penetrating to be comfortable. ‘How are you holding up?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Really?’
‘Actually, I don’t know.’ She unfolded herself from the chair and stood up. ‘But I don’t have time to find out.’
TWENTY-NINE
She went back to the file. Elena fussed over her for a couple minutes and even brought her a glass of water, clucking like a woman four times her age, insisting that she didn’t want to ask a word about Theresa’s ordeal as it was too terrifying to think about. Theresa had no intention of opening up such raw wounds even in the face of reverse psychology, and the girl finally went away to wrap up the day’s paperwork and head home.
The autopsy report, upon second reading, did not reveal anything it hadn’t with the first. Diana had no injuries save the rope around her neck and the scratches to her throat. During the day Don had finally analyzed the fingernail scrapings on the off chance that they might belong to James’ ‘real’ killer, but as expected they had come from Diana’s own skin as she fought to free herself from the ligature. There were no other cuts or bruises, save one on her left knee that probably occurred as the killer forced her to the ground.
Theresa checked the reports of the organs once again. Uterus: unremarkable. No other comment. Even a very newly pregnant woman showed signs of her condition. The lining of the uterus would have thickened to form the placenta, and any pathologist who had at least squeaked by his boards would have noticed it. The supercilious Dr Hubert Reese certainly would have.
Unless, of course, he had been part of forming the baby to begin with. Then he may have wished to leave that detail out. Theresa couldn’t see him in the role of Lothario, but he had been a wealthy, accomplished older man and Diana a young woman searching for something in her life without the ability to name it. How many beautiful college students fell for their doddering professors?
If that were true, then the secret had died with him. There would be no way to verify it now. Unless somewhere in that fourteen-room mansion on Fairmount Boulevard there turned up a diamond-and-sapphire ring his grieving widow didn’t recognize.
She went on to the toxicology report she had only glanced through before. As noted, Diana had no illegal drugs or indication of alcohol in her system. She had died stone-cold sober, able to fully appreciate the hopelessness of her situation, feel every agonizing quiver of her starving lungs. Theresa read further. N, N-dimethylimidodicarbonimidic diamide hydrochloride had been found. Gosh, that was helpful.
‘You still here?’
Janice, Queen of the Secretaries, stood in the doorway.
‘I am.’
‘I would think you’d be exhausted enough to want to sleep for a week straight.’ The older woman came in and dropped into a chair across from Theresa – a first in Theresa’s experience. But it had been a stressful two days for everyone in the building.
‘I am that too. But it’s making me a little crazy – James kept insisting that I should know who Diana’s lover was, and I should have. I heard all about her marriage and her latest purchases and her favorite movies. I should have picked up some hint if she had been fooling around with someone who worked here.’
‘Unless she wasn’t,’ Janice said. ‘Unless James made up the whole story to shield himself from the truth of what he’d done.’
‘That could be true. But then I keep coming back to: why is he dead? Did she ever say anything to you, or anyone else here?’
Janice shook her head.
‘Did she seem flirtatious with any of the staff?’
‘She seemed flirtatious with all of the staff. The male ones, anyway.’
‘Do you remember a fancy diamond and sapphire ring?’
‘Do I! She stuck her hand in front of every single one of our faces. Annoyed Patty especially, I remember, since she had just had a ten-year anniversary and her husband bought her a lawnmower.’
‘Any comment on who gave it to her?’
‘As I recall she said she bought it herself, that it wasn’t real, just looked it. I did wonder at the need to show off an admittedly fake ring, but then making copies of reports is not always the most exciting activity in the world, so I let it go.’
‘Did any of her work habits change in the last few months of her life? Quality? Quantity?’
‘Diana was efficient, I’ll say that for her. I didn’t have to stay on her case to get her stuff done, and I don’t remember any problems.’
‘What about hours? Coming in late? Leaving early?’
Janice began to shake her hairsprayed curls, then stopped. ‘Not leaving early. The opposite – she started to stay late. At first I didn’t notice, but then … I’m usually the last one to leave. Everyone else bolts at the stroke of four thirty as religiously as vampires at sunrise – you know, you see them. But she would still be typing fifteen minutes later, saying she just wanted to finish something. She never put in for comp time for it so I could hardly complain, but I thought it seemed strange. If she had been angling for some kind of promotion, or trying to get herself out of a bad mark on her record then I could see … but neither of those situations applied.’
‘So you’re saying her work performance, which had been fine, actually improved at the end of her life?’
‘No, I’m saying she could have been dawdling around until it was time to meet somebody. Maybe he got off work later than her. Because I wouldn’t say improved. I didn’t notice any great increase in her output, and she actually got a little persnickety.’
‘Per—?’
‘You know how LaShonda always burns those scented candles – anything to combat the smell in this building, Lord knows – but Diana decided that she couldn’t stand Vanilla Crème another minute … though it’s not exactly my favorite either. We had a decomp one day, and you would have thought the building was burning down – how could we be expected to work in these circumstances, etc. Same when the A/C went out.’
Theresa nodded, her gaze falling on the crime scene photos and the bottle of metformin. ‘Did she ever say anything about being diabetic?’
Janice thought. ‘Not that I recall. She certainly didn’t avoid LaShonda’s cupcakes or Trina’s Whoopie Pies. And when Christmas came – you know how the funeral homes bring us goodies? We couldn’t keep her out of the chocolates. The girls would have to take some back to their desks or they might not get any at all.’
‘Hmm.’
Janice cocked her head. ‘Why?’
‘Everything I learn about her seems contradictory. She was pregnant, she wasn’t pregnant. She was having an affair, she wasn’t having an affair. Sergeant Shephard called it – we’re going around in circles. We’ve been going around in circles for two days.’
‘Is he married?’ Janice asked.
‘Who? Shephard? I don’t know, I didn’t ask. Why?’
Janice shook her head. ‘You know, for a scientist, you are not always very observant.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Theresa grumbled.
THIRTY
Theresa left Janice to lock up the vault and returned to the third floor, hoping to catch toxicologist Oliver before he went home for the day. To judge from the condition of his workbench, she shuddered to ponder what that home might look like. George Bain’s organized packratness might appear as sleek minimalism compared to Oliver’s abode.
Two counters and the back of one of the chromatographs formed three walls of his fortress. He had nearly created a fourth by lining up the compressed gas canisters as far into the aisle as safety regs would allow. Piles of reports, professional journals, Nalgene jars holding either samples or reagents, no less than three open boxes of disposable glass pipettes, a carton of Alconox, and small Tupperware containers with human tissu
e or perhaps remnants of lunches past hid every available inch of counter space. Only the gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer escaped the clutter. Not even dust had been allowed to pile on its surface.
To call Oliver a friend would constitute a gross exaggeration. To call him enormously useful would not.
As always, he showed the rest of the world his back, hunching over his keyboard with his long, mostly gray ponytail snaking along his spine. His massive frame – which was not all muscle, or even partly – hung over both sides of his task chair. He did not acknowledge her presence even when she knocked on one of the gas canisters.
‘I need your expertise,’ she said, outright flattery being the only approach to show success in past trials.
‘Uh.’
‘Diana’s toxicology report contains some pretty mysterious terms.’
‘Which ones are perplexing you? Blood, perhaps? Or urine?’
‘N, N-dimethylimidodicarbonimidic diamide hydrochloride.’ She had written them down on a piece of scrap paper. Oliver hated nothing so much as inexactness.
‘Metformin.’ He whirled around, beady eyes focusing on her face. ‘I hear you spent a number of torturous hours in the presence of a serial killer.’
She didn’t argue with the adjectives – that would only prolong the line of conversation. ‘Yes.’
‘Who was then killed, but not by you.’
‘Correct.’
He watched her for a while. For a delirious moment she thought he might ask after her health or mental condition, but he seemed to think better of it. A reputation as a curmudgeon required years of work and thoughtful tending – and was not an accomplishment to be thrown away lightly. ‘What other conundrums can I dispel for you?’