Bex Wynter Box Set 2

by Elleby Harper

  “It’s a start! Is a credit card linked to the account?” Cole asked hopefully.

  “Sorry but there’s not. I can tell you the Kirkland account is notable for the number of deposits made into it over a five-year period. We traced exactly fifteen cash withdrawals made from various ATM locations around the city since March this year. I’ve put in a request to the bank to view the ATM security footage to see if we can get a visual match for your POI.”

  “The timeframe fits with when the Dresdens left London,” Cole agreed.

  “How else can I help?”

  “I’d rather not approach QBE directly. Does New York have street cams that cover the entrance to the QBE building? If I could get hold of that footage from April 22 when we know she landed here, it would be a start.”

  “I’ll look into it for you. London’s known to be the most videotaped city in the world, but NYPD has extended its camera reach around Manhattan in recent years, so we may get lucky. Do you want me to email what I find direct to you or your office in London?”

  “Both, thanks.”

  “Does your agency suspect there’s any wrong doing by QBE? For instance, is Tomei working with Dresden? Do you have information that a crime has been committed by an American citizen?”

  “While NCA suspects that Dresden has bankrolled some of QBE’s research, the exact terms of her donations to the facility are unknown. I can’t say if Tomei is involved in a crime from the evidence we have. It’s possible he believes her donations are legitimate, but I’m guessing he hasn’t been inclined to look too closely at her sources. I imagine when you run a medical facility of that complexity you don’t knock back hundreds of thousands of dollars unless you’re forced to.”

  “If evidence comes to light that changes that perspective, let me know. In the meantime, my boss told me to arrange an office for your use while you’re in New York. I’m afraid this room is the best we can do. I can’t spare you any manpower for your enquiries.”

  “I can manage with this nicely. Once I’ve pinpointed Dresden’s whereabouts, NCA will send over other enforcement agents and we’ll make the arrest on behalf of Her Majesty,” Cole said.

  When Eisley left him alone, Cole dialed Bex’s number. There was no indication she was in danger, but he wanted to hear her voice. The call went to her voicemail. He hung up without leaving a message.

  Chapter 16

  Collect Pond Park, Manhattan

  Wednesday, 25 April

  Once outside the confines of the courtroom, Walt let loose a string of invectives against Karen and her sleazebag lawyer, and Bex was too deflated to cut him off. He turned to Marlin Shroeder who had accompanied Walt, Neil and Bex to the Collect Pond Park beside the court building. The small party was regrouping after the emergency hearing.

  “Shroeder, get an appeal ready! It’s obvious as the nose on your face that Zane didn’t intend to leave his money to a woman who absconded fifteen years ago! Falconer’s verdict in favor of Karen shows the man is clearly senile!” Walt’s words exploded in short, sharp bursts of anger.

  Bex slumped on a bench between Walt and Neil, feeling as though all the life had been sucked out of her. Based on her lawyer Dickerson’s evidence, Judge Arnold Falconer’s verdict had come down in favor of Karen’s petition to rescind the publication divorce granted six years ago. The ramifications of that decision meant that Karen was legally considered Zane’s wife at the time of his death, by dint of stripping Bex of Zane’s name and fortune.

  “Don’t go blaming yourselves. It was that son of mine,” Neil said. “Too soft-hearted for his own good. He should’ve had Karen declared dead years ago. But oh, no, he was sure she was alive, out there somewhere just waiting to bring Kristian back into his life. Damn fool! She cleaned out their joint bank account and skedaddled with his son. I don’t think she could’ve made it any clearer she was finished with him!”

  “You can’t blame him for hoping to see Kristian again,” Bex said.

  Neil let out a gusty sigh. “That’s the only good thing to come out of this whole debacle. That I got to see Kristian all grown up before I kick the bucket.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Neil. You’ve got years to go! You come from a gene pool of long lifers.”

  “That was back at the farm. This here city living will kill you early every time.”

  “I don’t know how I’m going to tell the boys I have to kick them out. We’ve got enough money to last until the end of the month but once the utility bills come through…” Walt’s voice dwindled into silence.

  “Hang in there, Walt. I’m going to put my house on the market today,” Neil said bravely. “Selling it won’t bring you such a windfall as Zane’s insurance, but it’ll be enough to keep the halfway house going for the next few years.”

  He dropped into a morose mood. Bex took Neil’s frail hand between both hers. It was ridged with lumpy veins and stringy tendons. He was eighty-six years old and she would rather cut off her arm than render him homeless. Zane had grown up in that house and there was little enough that Neil had left to remember his son by.

  “I appreciate the offer more than I can say, but there’s absolutely no way I will let you sell your house. I want to thank all of you for your support. I’m not sure what my next step will be.”

  “If you want to appeal, you know where to find me,” Shroeder said, rising to his feet. “I’ll leave you to discuss your options.”

  Bex stood to offer him her hand.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more,” he said after a quick shake.

  Bex pressed her lips firmly together, nodding her acknowledgement. She should have retained Zane’s lawyer, Joachim Weiss, instead of saving her pennies by hiring a second-rate lawyer, she thought. Dickerson had been more than a match for Shroeder, outmaneuvering him at every turn in the courtroom. Karen had obviously retained Dickerson with a promised cut from Zane’s money.

  Bex looked after Shroeder as he exited the park, cutting her eyes away from Neil and Walt. She hated seeing them look so beaten down. She had really messed up this time and let everyone down. Establishing the Zane Wynter Halfway House had given false hope to so many people. Walt especially would mourn its loss. It had given him a new lease on life since his retirement.

  “Falconer’s given me a week to get my financial affairs in order and present statements to Dickerson for the settlement. I’m not sure what my next step is, but I need some time alone to think. Right now, I have to take a walk to clear my head, guys.”

  “Your next step has to be an appeal, Bex,” Walt insisted.

  Bex felt Neil’s presence, tall and lean and frail, beside her.

  “Walt’s right. With Karen appointed as executor of Kristian’s trust fund, I fear that she’ll fritter his money on drugs or a spending spree as well as what she claims from Zane. If only I could trust her to put the money aside for Kristian’s education and future.”

  Bex clasped her hands, digging her fingernails into her palms. They were being kind and supportive, and she couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t let herself face Neil’s sad and aging eyes or Walt’s angry ones.

  “I’ll be in touch later today,” she said. Jamming her hands into her jacket pockets, she followed Shroeder’s footsteps through the park gate.

  She watched a young couple scuttle across the pedestrian crossing ahead of a town car pulling up in front of the courthouse. Rooted to the spot she watched as Dickerson ushered Karen and Kristian out of the building and straight into the car. Karen’s face cracked an ear-to-ear grin. It seemed to Bex that Kristian’s expression was darker, more troubled.

  Last night in Karen’s hotel room the two of them had attacked each other like alley cats fighting over trashcan scraps. Karen’s victory had ripped everything from her grasp. Legally she wasn’t even entitled to Zane’s name. She had nothing left of Zane except her memories.

  Dizziness and nausea overcame Bex. Clinging to a railing in the metal fence surrounding the park she couldn’t help retching over
the sidewalk. There was nothing in her stomach to expel except bile that left a bitter taste in her mouth.

  * * *

  The phone in her pocket vibrated, but she ignored it and kept walking. She wasn’t in the mood for talking, especially not to Cole. She turned the phone off and slid it into her pocket. She kept striding past strangers avoiding eye contact and drifting trash rolling with the wind while she concentrated on her breathing. In and out in a regular rhythm that matched her footsteps and kept her thoughts occupied while she walked until Centre Street became Lafayette.

  But the one thought she couldn’t eject from her brain was, why did Zane have to die?

  Her life had split into two separate compartments, divided by Zane’s death. Together their future had been mapped, planned and shaped by their coupleness. Since his death, her life had shriveled. She knew she was to blame for that. Shutting herself off from friends and family, closing down lines of communication, running away from a life filled with nothing but reminders of Zane. That was why she had brokered a new life for herself in London.

  She hadn’t expected to fill that new life with Cole. She couldn’t ignore the heat and intensity they shared together. But it lacked the love and trust, honesty and respect that had always been embedded in her relationship with Zane. Whatever feelings she had for Cole were ambivalent at best. How could Cole, or anyone for that matter, fill the void left by Zane? She couldn’t even bring herself to trust Cole sufficiently to share the truth about her past. Yet, here they were having a baby.

  That thought brought her to a wincing standstill. Dizziness swept over her again. Her hand groped, making contact with the slick glass window of a bodega and she sagged gratefully against the support. People gave her a wide berth, avoiding the woman with the too pale complexion and hollow eyes. She knew they thought she was drunk or having a heart attack, either way best to keep their distance.

  After a moment, Bex pushed away from the support and stepped inside the doorway. She had skipped breakfast this morning and now she was paying the price. Pleased to see this local store served some healthy alternatives to the sugar-loaded quarter waters and snack cakes, she ordered a freshly squeezed orange juice to go with her pastrami on rye sandwich. Hunger made the food taste delicious and she could feel her energy returning.

  Outside the bodega, she took stock of her surroundings. She could walk a couple of blocks north to hit Broadway and follow that back to Times Square and the Crowne Plaza. But what would she do in her hotel room except brood? Or she could continue past Broadway onto First Avenue and the ME’s office. Walt and Neil were right. A good way to take her mind off today’s troubles was to delve into past problems, to give her mind a focus apart from losing today’s court battle.

  Chapter 17

  Medical Examiner’s Office, Manhattan

  Wednesday, 25 April

  Jeanne Prudhomme worked in the Manhattan branch of the forensic pathology unit of the Medical Examiner’s Office. Without her badge, Bex wasn’t shown through to the forensic labs. Instead she waited patiently in the reception area until Jeanne was free to come and collect her.

  Jeanne was a compact hundred and thirty pounds and Bex easily topped her by a good three or four inches. Jeanne’s youthful face was framed by an ice-blue pixie cut. The hand she reached out to shake Bex’s was covered with a delicate tracery of inked marks outlining her metacarpal bones, rising to the long lines of an ulna and radius tattooed along her forearm. The backs of her calves were also tattooed as though looking through her skin at the tibia and fibula bones. Bex could only imagine that under her clothes Jeanne had inked her whole body with a skeletal frame on the outside of her skin. Bex had always interpreted these markings as Jeanne’s larger than life statement that she took her job seriously.

  “No point in asking if you’re busy,” said Bex, settling herself into a plastic chair beside Jeanne’s desk in an office that was little more than an alcove sandwiched between analysis labs. Jeanne had made it homey by keeping souvenirs on her shelves, mostly items in jars filled with formaldehyde. Bex kept her eyes averted from the floating eyeballs, fingers and genitalia.

  “Ballsy of you to think the city’s murder rate went up when you left town!” Jeanne responded with a throaty chuckle, placing a coffee mug in front of Bex. “While New York’s crime rate remains steady, there are enough cadavers piled up to keep me in a job.” She narrowed her eyes. “Walt called yesterday. He said you’d likely be in touch. Still chasing evidence for Zane’s accident. I don’t know what more you think I can tell you.”

  “Actually, I was thinking that I never really delved into the toxicology reports on Zane. When the accident took place I was focused on finding the car that drove us off the road.”

  “The car you thought you saw, you mean?” Jeanne said shrewdly, sipping her coffee. “The police never found evidence of another car, did they?” Having made her point, she didn’t wait for a response before plowing on. “Is that the reason you now want to focus on my autopsy report?”

  Wincing at her harsh assessment, Bex refrained from admitting she had no idea what she was chasing.

  “I’m just curious about Zane’s toxicology report.”

  Jeanne leaned forward, her hands pressed against the cheap laminate of her desktop. “You mean you’re looking for something suspicious? You believe I missed something important?”

  Her concern seemed genuine, and Bex hastened to assure the pathologist that she wasn’t questioning her results, that she really just wanted to settle her own mind.

  Mollified, Jeanne handed over a thick folder. “When Walt called, I pulled Zane’s files out of archives and printed a copy of the tox and autopsy reports for you.”

  Jeanne had worked with Zane on many occasions during his years in forensics, and Bex knew she would have treated his body with appropriate veneration during the post mortem.

  “Can you walk me through what they cover, Jeanne?”

  Bex found the way Jeanne switched from flippant to self-assured seriousness reassuring. Walt was right, Jeanne would never have done a shoddy job on Zane’s report.

  “The top report documents results from blood and tissue samples taken from various areas of Zane’s body. I took tissue samples from Zane’s liver, spleen, brain, kidneys and his eyes.

  “Using immunoassay I did a basic screen test of his blood and urine for drugs to rule out any opiates, amphetamines, marijuana, and barbiturates. A direct injection gas chromatography test ruled out alcohol in his system. Zane was clean as a whistle.”

  “So, there’s no way there could be a drug in his system that might have been missed?”

  Jeanne shrugged. “You have to remember that blood isn’t a particularly clean fluid. It needs some cleaning up before the tests are run. Theoretically, there are thousands of possible drug interactions. Since you indicated Zane wasn’t on any medication and his tox results were clean for the standard illegal drugs, I didn’t order a second round of tests. What are you hoping to find?”

  Bex hesitated, unsure how to answer the question. What she was looking for was an external cause for Zane’s death, something or someone she could hold accountable.

  “Could he have eaten or drunk something that affected him? Caused him to have a heart attack?”

  Jeanne pulled the report towards her, rifling through the pages for several minutes, her finger following the flow of words down the page.

  “I can’t see anything in his tox report to indicate his death had been caused by an overdose if that’s what you mean. Zane’s epinephrine, or adrenaline, levels were excessive and his sodium and potassium chloride levels were high.”

  “Is that normal?”

  “It’s within standard range given that he suffered a myocardial infarction which was the cause of death. You see, your adrenal glands send catecholamines into your blood when you’re either physically or emotionally stressed. And when any muscle tissue is damaged, any muscle tissue not just the heart, significant amounts of potassium are al
so released into the blood.”

  Bex struggled to absorb the significance of Jeanne’s words.

  “Let me get this straight. Even though the results show that Zane had abnormally high levels of epinephrine, sodium and chloride in his system, those results triggered no red flags because they’re naturally occurring substances?”

  “Correct.”

  “So, there’s nothing to indicate his death was anything but natural?” Bex could barely get the words out through her disappointment. “I mean, epinephrine can be administered externally can’t it?” She knew she was grasping at straws when she caught Jeanne’s pitying look.

  “Girl, I don’t know what else to tell you. Epinephrine is in a class of medications called alpha and beta adrenergic agonists that work by relaxing the muscles in the airways and tightening the blood vessels. It’s medically administered usually in relation to life-threatening allergic reactions, while people with known life-threatening allergies carry epinephrine autoinjectors on them at all times.”

  “But doesn’t too much adrenaline in your system cause the heartbeat to speed up and become irregular?”

  “Yes, dizziness, nausea, uncontrollable shaking and definitely an increase in the heart rate and markedly raised blood pressure can be attributed to too much epinephrine. You’ll have experienced some of these symptoms yourself from being in a state of extreme excitement or stress. Did Zane have an enormous shock that might have triggered a surge of adrenaline in his system? Do you know if he had a pre-existing heart condition? These two conditions together could have caused a fatal heart attack.”

  “Zane aced his yearly check up, so he definitely had no pre-existing illnesses. How much of a shock would he need to have experienced? I mean, if he was driving and suddenly saw an oncoming vehicle that he thought was going to crash into us, would that produce a spike in adrenalin?” Bex asked.

  “It most certainly would, except there was no oncoming car.” Jeanne returned to the report, flipping through pages. “No damage was apparent to his heart other than general wear and tear for a man of his age. There have been cases, few and far between believe me, where healthy people have died from excitement, or in other words because of a sudden jolt of epinephrine to their systems. I’d be more inclined to believe excessive epinephrine could have caused a heart attack if the epinephrine had been externally administered, then together with the shock of naturally occurring epinephrine the combined dosage could have triggered a heart attack.”