by Leslie Leigh
“Right, but unless she has done extensive checking, which I’m almost sure she hasn’t, she doesn’t necessarily know what I do or don’t do.”
“If she’s there, you could introduce yourself as a nutritionist for the county.”
“That’s an even better idea. And we’ll get there quicker, too, because for that I won’t need scrubs or a stethoscope,” said Melissa.
“Let’s plan on leaving at eight, then.”
“Seven. It’s an hour and a half away, and if you recall, Corinne’s dad passed away right after breakfast,” she said.
“You’re right, and I didn’t put it together at the time, but most of those other deaths I’ve been looking into have been in the morning, as well.”
“Do you have Howard Foster’s time of death?”
Brian consulted his laptop. “Estimated time was 9:30.”
“We are definitely leaving at seven.”
# # #
Just before closing that day, Kim came into the market, dragging Brandon behind her. They walked over and sat down at the table next to Brian and Melissa.
“Can I get you something?” Kim asked Brandon.
“Sure. Do you have any of those rolls left like you gave me the other morning? This is a better time of day for me.”
Kim smiled. “I’m sure I can scrounge one up. Coffee?”
He nodded. Kim looked over at Brian and Melissa. “Can I get anything for you two?” she asked.
“How kind of you to ask, Kim,” Melissa said. “You can refresh my tea if you like.”
Brian shook his head. “I’m good.”
“Kim,” Melissa spoke up as Kim walked toward the counter, “you probably want to do a pour-over. I’m sure the coffee server is dregs by now.”
Kim nodded and disappeared. Brandon looked awkwardly at Melissa and Brian but then smiled widely.
“Kim tells me if I’m going to hang around these parts for long, I’m going to have to get acquainted with all of you.”
“So, do you see yourself hanging around long?” Melissa asked. Brian glanced askance at her.
“I just might. It’s very different here from Indiana.”
“That’s for sure. Although right now, they’re probably both hot and muggy.”
“True, but the thunderstorms here are like nothing I’ve ever seen—especially the ones that come out of the southeast.”
“It’s very cool how they come up from Mexico, sweep across Sonora, and head up to us right across the Huachucas. It makes it appear as though the storms are originating there.”
“The Whach…what did you say?”
“The Huachucas. That’s the range you see immediately to the southeast here.”
“Oh. I guess we haven’t been down that way yet.”
“You’ll have to. Tombstone, Bisbee, Sierra Vista, St. David, all towns with incredible histories. Then, over toward the border of New Mexico is Cochise Stronghold.”
“Really? Cochise? As in the Indian?”
“Yes, the Native American Chief. If you go down there, you’ll see the rocks and understand why it was their stronghold and why it took the Army so long to capture him.”
Kim came back with Melissa’s tea and a warmed Chelsea bun and coffee for Brandon.”
The momentum she had as she spun around from Melissa’s table, caught her off guard. Melissa saw it and was afraid she would spill the scalding coffee on herself or Brandon, so she jumped and grabbed the coffee from the tray. Unfortunately, the shifting weight from removing the coffee sent the Chelsea bun down Brandon’s front.
He jumped up hard, his chair tipping and falling backwards. “Jesus, Kim! What a stupid….” Luckily, he stopped there or he likely would have ended up with the scalding cup in his lap after all.
Kim, of course, was mortified. She spun, not knowing whether to get a clean cloth or pick up the bun. Melissa set the coffee down and waved her back.
“I’ll get the bun, you get something to clean it up with. The clean dishcloths are... Well, you know where they are.”
Kim nodded, biting her lip, turning, and approaching the counter at a fast walk. Flora met her halfway with the wet cloth. Kim gave her a cursory smile of thanks and ran back to the table.
“Brandon! I am so, so sorry,” she said as she began to dab at his shirt and brush the frosting from his pants.
“You are just about the clutziest thing I have ever known,” he said.
“Actually,” Melissa said, “I’ve seen that girl serve hundreds of these buns, and this is the first time she has ever had an accident. Maybe you just make her incredibly nervous.”
“Me? I think she thinks she has to perform for you,” he said.
Kim was still scrubbing at his clothes, and he pushed her away.
“For the love of Christ, let it go, Kim!” he said, “It’s just jeans and a shirt. We’re going back to your place after this anyway. Then, you can scrub my clothes while I lay around on your couch in my underwear.”
She looked like a zombie at this point, afraid to breathe for fear of falling apart. Melissa knew he was goading her to humiliate her. By treating her this way in front of her friends, he hoped to put some distance between Kim and those who cared about her.
“In fact, let’s just go. I didn’t want that stupid bun anyway.” He noticed that she was still attempting to clean up the floor and the icing on the table, and he clucked in disgust, jerking the cloth out of her hands. “I said, let’s go.”
“Speaking of motives for becoming a serial killer,” Brian said.
The look Kim gave Melissa as the two of them walked out the door would haunt Melissa for a long time to come.
Chapter 9
The next morning, they headed out from Melissa’s place right at seven o’clock. Brian had loaned her his tablet, and she was figuring it out. She had poked around last night and found a cool app that recorded nutrition information and made various calculations from the input. She thought if she had to put on some kind of performance in front of “Rachel” as she was calling herself in Cochise County, she would be prepared.
As they pulled up to the house, they saw that there was no car in the driveway, and Melissa relaxed a bit. They pulled in, and Brian stayed in the car. “I’m right here if you need me,” he said.
She nodded and headed for the front door. She knocked a couple of times, then once quite loudly in case the man was hard of hearing, but there was no answer. Did someone take him for a doctor’s appointment, she wondered.
She tested the door and found it unlocked, so she opened it and stepped inside. Ewww, a smoker. She could smell the stale smoke in the house, but then she realized there was a more active smoke smell, as well.
She walked farther into the house, calling, “Mr. White? Anyone here?” She could hear the sound akin to a small pump motor. She followed the sound.
As she stepped into the room, she saw Mr. White with his eyes closed, an oxygen cannula in his nose. His arm lay across his stomach, and a cigarette smoldered in his hand. She sprung forward, her adrenaline pumping, snatched the cigarette and ground it out in a nearby ashtray.
“Mr. White?” she said, gently shaking him. “Mr. White?” No response.
She pulled her phone from her pocket, speed dialing Brian. “Mr. White is unconscious. Call 911 and get in here as quickly as you can!”
Brian appeared in the doorway of the room in just a few seconds.
“She is escalating,” Melissa said matter-of-factly. “She wanted to cause an explosion to hide her tracks this time.” She pointed to the cigarette and the oxygen.
“Ye gods!” Brian exclaimed.
“I realize I just destroyed evidence by grabbing and grinding out the cigarette. I reacted. My first thought when I see a cigarette and oxygen is explosion. I realize now, though, that the cigarette was out, so there wasn’t much danger.”
“No worries,” Brian said.
She felt for Mr. White’s pulse at his wrist and then in his neck. She turned to Brian an
d shook her head.
He closed his eyes and put his fist to his forehead. She knew he was feeling culpable for the third death.
“Brian,” she said quietly.
“We should have moved quicker. I should have let the sheriff handle it.”
“And how do you think they could have handled it any differently? They would have waited, like us, hoping to catch her red-handed.”
“Well, somebody could have saved him. So what? We have more to charge her with? But we didn’t catch her, and now, we have no idea where she’s going next.”
“But when she is caught, she’s going away for a long, long time. She expected the cigarette to set his clothes on fire and cause an explosion.”
“How do we know he just wasn’t smoking, died, and the cigarette went out?”
“My intuition. We’ll make sure this one goes to the coroner and specific substances are looked for.”
“Well, why didn’t your intuition tell you to leave at 6:45 instead of 7:00?”
“I think we missed her by a hair’s breadth. I mean, how long does it take a cigarette to burn when nobody’s puffing on it? It’s my understanding that now days, there’s some sort of cigarette additive that causes it to extinguish itself when nobody’s puffing on it. He had to have already been dead, and she puffed on the cigarette herself, and then left it to smolder. Apparently, this is the first time she’s tried this and didn’t know about new cigarettes. It was smoldering, though, so I know this didn’t happen days or hours ago. It happened minutes ago.”
Brian shook his head. “She must have been going down the road the other way just as we pulled in. Unbelievable.”
They heard the sirens approaching. A fire truck and an ambulance arrived. Brian met them at the door and showed them the way back.
“He was dead when we arrived,” Melissa said.
The EMTs spent a moment assessing that for themselves but quickly agreed. One said, “The body’s still warm, though.”
“I think it happened in the last hour,” Melissa reported.
The EMT who was examining Mr. White stood up. “I think that’s a pretty good assessment.” He bent over the body again and saw a tiny burn hole in the man’s sweatshirt. “This is new,” he said. “Was he smoking when you came in?”
“He had a smoldering cigarette in his fingers. I grabbed it and ground it out because I was afraid it was about to ignite.”
“Good plan,” said the EMT. He shook his head. “These guys who smoke on oxygen; it’s unbelievable.”
“Well, we don’t know that he did. We think this was a plant,” Brian said.
“And you are…?” a fireman asked, as he walked into the room.
“Detective Brian Byrne,” he said. “We’ve been trying to track down a nurse who is allegedly killing her patients. Mr. White was a former patient of hers.”
The fireman’s eyes shifted from Brian to Melissa. “And you are…?”
“Melissa Michaelson. I’m a holistic practitioner. I believe this man has been poisoned, so he needs to go to the coroner.”
The fireman nodded—although he looked as though he wasn’t sure he believed her. He got on his radio and said, “Four-one, I need you to contact the sheriff’s office and have them send somebody….”
“Detective Muller, please,” Brian said.
“Uh, have them send Detective Muller.”
The EMTs brought in a gurney, but Brian deterred them. “You should probably wait until Detective Muller has looked at the scene.”
They nodded. Everyone crowded into the living room and kitchen where it was cooler than outside in the sun. The firemen removed their coats.
Muller arrived forty minutes later.
“God damn,” he said when he came into the room. “When I heard it was emergency calling and heard the address, I just knew. You two discovered it?” he asked Brian and Melissa.
They both nodded.
“We were hoping to catch her—since several of her alleged victims have died around the same time—right after breakfast. At the very least, we wanted to check on Mr. White.”
“The door was open?” Muller asked.
“Yes,” Melissa said and then explained what she thought the woman’s plan had been.
“Why wouldn’t she lock the door, then, to prevent someone accidentally saving him, like you two, for instance?”
“She wouldn’t have necessarily had a key,” Melissa said, “and besides, although I think she had an idea that somebody was on to her, I don’t think outside the city she would have expected anyone to come upon it. I’m sure she knew that he had no next of kin and no visitors, and she certainly wasn’t expecting us.”
“Why do you think she knew somebody was on to her?”
“Her behavior is escalating. We don’t know the details yet of all of the deaths for which she has possibly been responsible, but we’re pretty sure she has never set a fire or staged an explosion to cover her tracks before,” Brian said.
“And you’re sure that’s what happened here?” Muller asked.
“No, we’re not sure. However, we want him taken for an autopsy with a request to look for specific poisons,” said Brian.
Muller nodded.
One of the firemen came forward and asked, “So is this going to become a crime scene?”
“I guess it needs to be until we have some answers. I’ll seal it off and up the patrols out here,” said Muller.
The EMTs re-entered the room and one asked, “Can we take the body yet?”
“Let me get some pictures first,” Muller said.
They nodded and waited.
“Go ahead,” Muller said when he had finished. He turned to Brian and said, “We’d’ve had to wait another hour or so for a photographer.”
“That’s fine, I’m sure,” Brian said.
“Look, can I talk to you two?” he asked, implying that they go somewhere private.
“Sure. We’ll have it to ourselves once these guys are gone,” said Brian.
“I’ll call for some deputies to come help seal the place up,” Muller said, stepping away to use his radio.
Brian and Melissa looked on as Mr. White’s body was hoisted onto the gurney. Someone turned off the oxygen, and a relieved silence returned.
Melissa saw Brian’s knitted brow. She touched his arm. “He didn’t have long anyway, Brian, and his death wasn’t painful. If she used the oleander, there would have been a little bit of anxiety, but no pain.”
“It’s just the circumstances. I almost wish now I’d never contacted his son.”
The body was wheeled out and loaded into the ambulance. The EMT walked back and said, “We’ll transport him into the coroner in Sierra Vista.”
“Thanks,” Muller said, “I’ll contact them with further instructions.”
Suddenly, everyone was gone except the three of them. It seemed strange to walk into a stranger’s living room and sit down, especially when that stranger’s body had just been whisked away.
“Before anything else, Melissa, I want to write down what you want them to search for.”
“Elevated levels of digoxin,” she said, spelling it for him, “and foxglove or oleander.”
He nodded as he took notes, then he pulled out his cell phone and called the coroner’s office. “This is a suspected homicide,” Muller said last. “We need the results stat, and if they’re positive for the herbal stuff, a homicide ruling from the coroner.” When the call was completed, he put his phone down and looked at them in silence for a few seconds before he said, “You know we’re going to have egg on our faces.”
“Yes,” Brian acknowledged. “I’m afraid so.”
“Partly because we brought so many people in on it, and then failed to catch her,” said Muller.
“But if we hadn’t brought so many people in on it, and they discovered we had prior knowledge, it would have been even worse,” Melissa said.
“I’m not sure it would have been worse. There’s going to be hell-to-pay
no matter what,” said Muller.
“I don’t know how we could have done anything different. Would being here yesterday have helped, or an hour earlier today? No. She would have either waited us out or gone on to another victim,” said Melissa.
“The reality is, though,” Muller said, “that no matter what logic we use, they will be looking for heads to roll, and ours are the ones that will be on the chopping block. I’m not sure who they will go harder on—the trained police detective, or the citizen PI and the non-medical medical practitioner.”
Melissa wanted to argue, but, unfortunately, she knew he was right. She just hoped the fact that she and Brian had been right in their suppositions would mitigate some of the anger.
“You have your patrol logs to show, right?” asked Brian.
“I do,” Muller said.
“Well, then, you should be in the clear,” Brian said.
“What they’ll say—and I don’t know that they won’t be right—is that—instead of being focused on catching her red-handed, we should have been focused on catching her—period.”
“The problem with that is that we’re all forced to play by the rules while the criminal is not,” Brian said.
“Ain’t that the truth?” Muller said.
“The only hard evidence we would have in these cases would be catching her red-handed with the oleander serum, which is what we were trying to do. Otherwise she’d have gone to prison for fraud and impersonation, probably out in five, to start all over again,” Melissa said.
“To do anything differently than we did would have compromised the investigation,” Brian added.
Muller looked at the floor. “Then, we better hope we catch her red-handed soon. That’s the only way we’re going to make it out of this with our careers intact, or, in your case, your reputations.”
Two deputies arrived, and Muller went to instruct them regarding the crime scene.
“Are you ready, Melissa?” Brian asked. “They’ll want us out soon.”
“Just one second,” she said. She looked until she found Mr. White’s bedroom and his meds. The digoxin bottle was on his nightstand. She picked up a tissue from a tissue box nearby and picked up the bottle. From the looks of the bottle, the dosage and when it was last refilled, it didn’t look as though he had been given an overdose of it. She put it back down on the stand and pocketed the tissue.