The Lethal Helix

by Don Donaldson

  “What do you think?” Holly asked on the way back to their car.

  “About them doing anything? We’ll see.”

  ONE RING . . . TWO . . .

  “Detective Newsom, please.”

  “I’ll transfer you.”

  “Newsom. What can I do for you?”

  “This is Holly Fisher. Susan Morrison and I—”

  “I remember.”

  “What have you learned?”

  “The fellow who was killed in the wreck was named Palmer Garnette. He wasn’t from Dallas. He lived in Madison, Wisconsin.”

  Well, score one for the post office and one for interdepartmental police communication, Holly thought. She waited for more, but Newsom didn’t continue. “And?” Holly prompted.

  “And when I went over to the clinic this morning, it was out of business.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t just closed for the day?”

  “All the equipment was gone.”

  Anger and frustration waged a pitched battle in Holly. If Newsom had moved faster, this wouldn’t have happened. Now what? She said it aloud. “Now what?”

  “I don’t mean to be insensitive, but this is no longer a problem that concerns our department. Even if the operators of this clinic were violating some local or state ordinance, and it’s still not clear that was the case, the issue is resolved.”

  “So, I guess then that your interest in bank robbers ends as soon as they leave the building.”

  “That’s hardly the same thing.”

  “Theft is what we’re talking about.”

  “Maybe so, but not in Dallas.”

  “Your sense of justice overwhelms me.”

  “I’m not paid to police Jackson, Mississippi. According to your story, that’s where the theft took place. I’m sure the Jackson police would love to help.”

  Seeing this was getting her nowhere, Holly swallowed her anger and shifted to another tack. “Were you able to locate Garnette’s next of kin?”

  “We don’t think he was married. At least no one answered the phone at his home address. We’ve got the Madison police looking for relatives.”

  “Did you try . . .” Holly was about to ask if they’d checked out the phone number on the scrap of paper Susan had found, but realized that then they’d know who had mailed the wallet. “Has it occurred to you that if you hadn’t let an entire medical clinic slip away right under your nose, you might have learned who to contact from the people who worked there?”

  “Do you find that this righteous indignation approach generally works for you?” Newsom said. “Because it sure does nothin’ for me. Now I’ve got work to do.”

  Holly hung up and sat for a moment reflecting on the situation. The clinic had fled Dallas, the operators apparently unnerved by Garnette’s death. But why? The rest of them couldn’t have known what had led up to the accident . . . unless that’s who Garnette was talking to on his cell phone when he’d seen her and Susan. He could have told the operators then what was happening. Was it possible after this that they’d appear in another city, run an ad there? And if they did, how would she know? She only had access to papers from a few places.

  She opened her bag and located the grocery receipt bearing the things she’d written down while Susan had gone through Garnette’s wallet. On impulse, she reached for her cell phone and looked up the area codes for Wisconsin. She then set her phone to hide her number from the person she was about to call and punched in 1, then 6-0-8, the code for Madison. She added the number from the scrap of paper Susan had found, and waited for someone to answer.

  “Midland Dairy,” a cheery female voice said.

  Forging ahead on pure hope, Holly requested the manager.

  While waiting, her mind raced, trying to figure out what to say next. At this point, she just wanted to find out if Garnette had any real connection to this dairy . . . not that she could see how that would relate to the clinic he was involved with. But if the dairy was part of this somehow, they probably wouldn’t admit knowing him.

  “Hello, Don Lamotte.”

  “Mr. Lamotte, I have a collect call from Mr. Palmer Garnette. Will you accept the charges?”

  “Is this a joke?” Lamotte said angrily.

  Heart pounding, Holly hung up.

  Not only did this guy know Garnette, but he was obviously aware he was dead. And the police hadn’t even tracked down Garnette’s nearest relative to inform them, which could only mean the people who’d fled Dallas had told him.

  Though she was very much in the dark about the big picture here, Holly believed she’d learned something significant.

  Her next call was to Susan, who came to the phone within seconds after her receptionist let her know who was on the line.

  “I just talked to the Dallas police,” Holly said. “They blew it. By the time the detective got over there, they’d closed the clinic and apparently left town, taking all their equipment with them.”

  “Damn it,” Susan said. “I don’t understand why criminals should be more organized and responsive than the cops.”

  “They got the wallet, but haven’t done much with it. Haven’t even found Garnette’s nearest relative yet.”

  “The successes just keep piling up.”

  “But I think I’ve got a lead. I called the phone number from that scrap of paper you found in Garnette’s wallet, and reached a dairy, of all places. Instead of asking the manager if he knew Garnette, I pretended I was a long distance operator and asked if he’d accept a collect call from him.”

  “Inspired idea,” Susan said. “What did he say?”

  “He got angry and asked if this was a joke.”

  “So he knew Garnette was dead. And the cops hadn’t even told his relatives yet.”

  “There has to be some connection between the people at the clinic we saw and the dairy.”

  Susan grew silent.

  “Susan . . . are you there?”

  “You know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “We need to pay this dairy a visit.”

  9

  “THINK HARD, DENNIS,” Richard Heflin urged. “In what ways did your routine at the house differ from Ronnie’s and Skye’s?”

  When Richard had received Faulk’s call in the EEG lab, he’d been reluctant to believe that Ronnie and his wife had contracted the same illness. It just seemed too unlikely. But five minutes after he’d begun to examine her, she had a seizure that began in her right arm and spread, so that Richard had to face the truth. And just like Ronnie, her brain had not responded when Collins tried to stimulate it with pain and sound.

  Ronnie had died first, several hours after his blink and gag reflexes deteriorated and he was put on a ventilator. Skye followed Ronnie the same afternoon. And Richard had no idea what had damaged them so horribly.

  Neither of them had shown any abnormalities when their brains were scanned with the MRI Bruxton had donated. Nor did the differential cell counts on their blood reveal anything. Their spinal fluid contained the usual amount of protein, no red cells, and only a few white cells. The chem 24 results on their blood were likewise normal in all respects. Nor was anything found in their drug screens. Samples of blood and spinal fluid had been sent out for bacterial and viral cultures, but Richard was certain they’d grow nothing.

  That seemed to leave only one possibility: Ronnie and Skye had been killed by some sort of toxin. But Dennis, Skye’s brother, who lived with Ronnie and Skye and who was now sitting across from Richard, looked perfectly healthy.

  The circumstances had required that the bodies be taken to Madison for a forensic workup. Neither the autopsies nor the toxicology analysis of either victim’s blood had produced anything useful. One phase of that examination, however, was incomplete. Because the brains would
have to harden in formalin for at least a week before they were cut, the neuropathology findings would be significantly delayed.

  Richard had sent the bodies to Madison because his job as coroner had dictated that he do so. But he had believed from the beginning that it was unlikely to be a forensic case. Even so, he would have wanted the information that kind of scrutiny provided, for he felt that he had failed Ronnie and Skye Johannson so badly when they needed help, that he couldn’t just close the books on them and move on, as the cops in Boston had done with his wife. He had to find the cause of their illness . . . for them, for himself, and for the community, where others might be at risk.

  Since toxicology screens are designed to look for certain classes of relatively common substances, they can miss things. That negative report, therefore, hadn’t changed Richard’s opinion that a toxin might be responsible. But where had the toxin come from? And why had Dennis survived?

  “What about meals?” Richard said to Dennis, trying to get Dennis’s mind working. “Did you all eat together?”

  “Just breakfast and dinner,” Dennis replied. “But not lunch. ’Cause Ronnie and Skye were at work then.”

  Dennis was in his late twenties, but his chubby face with ruddy cheeks, smooth complexion, and soft brown hair, which he wore long, made him appear much younger. When seen on the street by someone who didn’t know him, he could have been mistaken for an overweight young woman.

  After talking with him for just a few minutes, Richard found it obvious that what he’d heard about Dennis was true. He was moderately retarded, a condition that seemed to blur the death of Ronnie and Skye into an abstraction for him rather than reality.

  “Did Ronnie and Skye take their lunches from home or buy them?” Richard asked.

  “Almost always took them. Ronnie said it costs too much to buy.”

  “What did they usually take?”

  “Leftovers from dinner . . . when there was some.”

  “Did they ever eat at restaurants?”

  “Almost never.”

  That line of questioning seemed to rule out the possibility that the toxin had been acquired in food. If it had, Dennis should also be ill. Richard decided to take a different approach. “Any exterminators been in the house lately?”

  “No.”

  “Did Ronnie use anything to keep the bugs under control?”

  “Once in a while Skye would use a red can from the cupboard.”

  “Has the house smelled differently in the last month or so?”

  “Same as always, which is to say, no smell I ever noticed.”

  “Did Ronnie or your sister have any hobbies in which they used chemicals of any kind?”

  “Ronnie’s hobby was watchin’ TV. And Skye’s was . . .” He shrugged. “Cookin’ and cleanin’, I guess.”

  “Are there any pets in the house?”

  “Skye has a parakeet.”

  “Is it okay?”

  “Hard to tell with birds. But it’s still eatin’. I know ’cause I been feedin’ it.”

  “How long has she had it?”

  “Ever since I been there.”

  “How long is that?”

  “Six months.”

  “Did Ronnie and Skye do drugs?”

  “Uh-uh.” Dennis shook his head vehemently. “They thought it was stupid, somethin’ losers did.”

  “Dennis, what are you going to do now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where will you live?”

  “I dunno. My folks are dead. And Ronnie’s parents . . . they get to decide what happens to the house. They said they’re gonna sell it. So I gotta move out soon as I can. A lady from the Lutheran church is tryin’ to find me a place and a job. She said I’ll be gettin’ some money when the house sells, but it probably won’t be a lot on account a there wasn’t much somethin’ built up. I don’t remember the word.”

  Richard had thought while he was explaining to the Johannsons why an autopsy was ordered on their son without their permission, that they seemed like hard people. Their treatment of Dennis confirmed it.

  “I know this is difficult for you, but maybe you wouldn’t want to stay there even if you could.”

  “Why not?”

  “We don’t know what caused Ronnie and Skye’s illness. It was a very unusual sickness, and to have two people in the same house get it at the same time suggests that something in the house may be responsible. So, until you find a new place to live, you shouldn’t change any of your usual routines. By that I mean don’t do anything different than you did when Ronnie and Skye were there.”

  “Or I might get sick too?”

  “I don’t know that the house is the source of the problem. Your good health suggests it’s not. But just to be on the safe side, take my advice.”

  “Okay.”

  “In the meantime, I’d like to go over there and look around.”

  “When?

  “How about right now?”

  Exposure to the putative toxin that had killed the couple could have occurred either through cumulative or acute exposure. The former would be the most difficult to pinpoint. But even if it was the latter, Richard knew the odds were very long against him finding the answer. Dennis had come to Richard’s office from home on his bicycle. For the trip back, Richard loaded the bicycle in the trunk of his car so Dennis could ride with him.

  The Johannsons lived in a small one-story house in a neighborhood of similar dwellings where individuality was achieved by the owner’s choice of yard statuary. For their statement, Ronnie and Skye had chosen three waist-high Holstein cows standing on a bed of pea gravel enclosed by a ring of white painted bricks.

  Dennis unlocked the door, and Richard followed him into the living room. Contrary to what Dennis had said, the place did have a smell. But it was merely a faint, musty odor that set off no alarms in Richard’s head. Considering Dennis’s limited mental capacity and the fact he’d been living alone for a couple of days, Richard expected to find the house a mess. But it was actually quite tidy.

  The furnishings had the look of things that had been in the family for a long time, probably inherited from Skye’s parents: overstuffed, upholstered pieces draped with antimacassars on the backs and arms; an assortment of small tables of yellow oak with lots of doilies. The top of one table was covered with a collection of crystal balls that make snow when shaken. Except for a framed rectangular piece of lacy fabric with “God Bless Our Happy Home” embroidered on it, the ivory walls were bare. Between the area rugs, the oak flooring matched the tables. An integrated decor . . . harmonious . . . that is, if you didn’t see the big-screen TV with the large black eye and sleek dark chassis . . . Janis Joplin appearing with Lawrence Welk.

  Richard’s prime objective was the medicine cabinet. With only one doorway off the living room, he didn’t bother asking Dennis for directions.

  Beyond that doorway there was a bedroom on each side of the hall, one distinctly smaller than the other. Just past the smaller one, Richard found the bygone-era theme in the front of the house repeated in the bathroom, where there was a claw-foot tub and a commode whose tank was an oak box mounted high on the wall. Among the usual items in the medicine cabinet, Richard located a prescription vial labeled Synthroid, with Skye’s name on it. So she had apparently been hypothyroid.

  He looked inside the vial at the tiny yellow pills. Were they really Synthroid? Could they be something else? Sharing of medicine was not unknown between couples. Ronnie’s feeling tired . . . he decides to take some of Skye’s thyroid pills . . . But they’re not really Synthroid. Or maybe they’re contaminated with something toxic, like tryptophane was a few years ago.

  Richard recapped the vial and showed it to Dennis. “I’m going to take this with me.”

  “Sure, go ahead if you
want.”

  Richard slipped the vial into his pocket and pulled out a drawer in the oak vanity. There, among a clutter of disposable razors, combs, toothpaste, bobby pins, tweezers, and bandages, he found a small snap-top plastic container of the type commonly used to store leftover food. Inside was a cache of gelatin capsules containing a brown powder.

  “Do you have any idea what these are?” He held the container so Dennis could see inside.

  Dennis shook his head.

  “Have they been in there a long time?”

  “A few weeks maybe.”

  “I’ll need to take these too.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Richard went from the bathroom to the kitchen, which was pleasantly decorated with a red-and-green floral wallpaper and a simulated-brick floor. The sink was full of dirty dishes.

  “I’m gonna clean those up today,” Dennis explained. “You shouldn’t blame Skye. It’s my fault. If she was here, she wouldn’t have let me get away with that.”

  Richard stepped to the refrigerator, opened it, and looked inside, a bit disappointed that he didn’t immediately detect the odor of spoiled food. When he took the plastic wrap off a dish of tuna he found on the middle shelf, he smelled only a faint hint of fresh fish. A zip-top bag of shaved ham likewise seemed fresh. But next to the ham, there was a block of cheddar cheese spotted with green mold. He added this to the items he was taking.

  In his rummaging through the refrigerator, he noticed that the Johannsons were big fans of tofu. It wasn’t anything he would eat, but that didn’t mean it was the source of the toxin that had killed them. And he couldn’t take everything.

  “Hey Dennis, do you eat this tofu?”

  “All the time.”

  So it wasn’t that.

  Under the sink, Richard found a spray can of Raid. Though he knew the active ingredient couldn’t produce the symptoms he’d seen in Ronnie and Skye, he added the can to the cheese and the container of gelatin capsules he’d put on the kitchen table.

  Across the rear of the house was a small sunroom with wicker furniture and a couple of hanging ferns. Here, Richard found the parakeet, chattering away at its reflection in a small mirror in the cage. In one corner, only partially concealed by a bamboo screen, stood an upright freezer. Richard moved the screen, opened the freezer, and glanced briefly at what were obviously packages of meat wrapped in butcher paper. He then closed the door and put the screen back in place.