"You're doing it?" Eleri asked.
"I requested it. Initial tox screens are back and so are the DNA preliminaries. I wanted them first this time."
She was glad she’d put a bag of gummy animals into her purse and carried change for the vending machines. Autopsies could go on for hours, especially one like this, where she suspected that there were few clues. She also suspected those few-and-far-between clues would be necessary to solving the case. There was no room to cut corners.
After getting into disposable coveralls, Donovan set his recorder down and started dictating his initial findings. Eleri stood by her with a notepad, both of them looking like paper monsters. Her intent was to take handwritten notes—all the things that didn’t belong in the official report, and all the ideas and questions they needed to follow up on. Anything specific to a NightShade investigation that would never wind up in the official paperwork. Also, she would hold spare organs and act as his assistant when necessary.
She swallowed. It was hard seeing Johanna there on the table. It was harder thinking it was her fault the woman was dead. But Eleri shoved that idea aside. She couldn’t change the past, and the best thing she could do for Johanna and Marat now was to solve their murders and at least get them some justice.
"Tox screens are negative," Donovan said, having looked at the results for probably the third time. He hadn't wanted it to be negative, and neither had Eleri, so he kept looking, she assumed, hoping he would find something new each time, some little quirk or anomaly that led him to something. But even after three times searching and comparing each number to the normal ranges, he'd found nothing.
"You got a hit on the Sodium Pentothal, though," she told him.
"Yes. I'm glad we checked." He was the one smart enough to point out the need for that test, she thought. “We’ll be sure to find and note the injection site.”
"So whoever it was wanted information from Johanna Schmitt," he said. She watched as he nodded, glad they could at least figure that part out. But that was all they could conclude from that one test. So Eleri did some of her own observations, starting at the beginning and walking around the body, looking for physical clues.
The body was still clothed, untouched, as they'd requested. Given that they had no reason to believe there was any kind of bio-agent or anything the CDC should be worried about, the CDC had allowed the unusual request.
Donovan hit the button, turning off the recorder for a moment as he leaned over the body. Slowly, he breathed in. He trailed from head to foot and back up. Then he looked up at Eleri. "I smell something."
She almost asked him, "What is it?" but knew that if he could identify it, he would have said so. Instead she asked, "Can you identify a chemical class that it belongs to?"
He shook his head and looked frustrated. It seemed to be their normal expression for this case. "It smells familiar, but I can't place it."
"So what does it smell like?" she prodded.
"Like dairy. It's like butter," he said, "but a bit chemical-y."
She wrote his comment down, having no clue what it was. At least there was some level of information. "How strong is it?" she asked.
"Faint, very faint."
She leaned over and sniffed the body. "I don't detect it." In human terms, she would have been said to have a “good nose.” She could occasionally smell when a dead body had been diabetic in life, or had an infection. But Donovan made her senses seem pointless in comparison, and she trusted what he said.
Though it was something, it was only a scent. Until they found the next connection to it, it was yet another puzzle piece that connected to nothing. Giving up on getting anything else from the smell, Donovan punched the recorder back on and began working.
They checked first for bruising, lifting arms and legs, rolling her over, looking for what was obvious. She had marks on her forearms. Typical defensive wounds, Eleri thought. When they turned the black light on, far more bruising was visible. Johanna Schmitt also had marks on her legs and shoulders.
Next, they removed the clothing, being as reverent as they could while still doing their job.
“Look!” Eleri pointed and Donovan immediately grabbed for the black light.
What had been a red mark on her shoulder turned into a fairly reasonable facsimile of a handprint-shaped bruise under the special light.
“It’s not enough to make a determination,” Eleri lamented. “Her shirt and sweater must have protected her.” But not enough to save her, she thought. In the end, all the clothing had done was damage the evidence.
“She fought harder than it originally appeared.” Donovan was still looking down at the bumps and bruises that showed under the light. “Not enough to break the skin.”
“Why not? That’s what’s bothering me.” Eleri talked freely as soon as Donovan turned off the recorder again. “She knew her husband was murdered. She even had her hands and feet tied while she was alive, yet she didn’t fight enough to even break the skin. Though she did fight back some.”
When they gave up on this path, declaring it yet another unconnected puzzle piece, Donovan turned the black light off and cut the initial Y-shaped incision. According to autopsy format, he pulled out each organ and weighed it. Not according to autopsy format, he lifted it in his hands to his nose. He opened Johanna’s stomach and reported, to both the recorder and Eleri, the contents of her stomach. "Pasta, red sauce, about three hours before death."
"String theory, red quark," Eleri muttered, and he looked up. She explained. "She ate at The Atomic Diner before her class. We have that in the report." She tapped the end of her pen on the notepad as though to show it to him. "She must have had the string theory pasta with red quark sauce."
Donovan looked at her, and she shrugged. They continued on, slowly, through the paces of the autopsy, stopping periodically. They would turn off the recorder and add in extra steps that made sense to two FBI agents from NightShade. Most yielded nothing of value. When at last Donovan closed the incision, they moved the body aside, but they still weren’t done.
They took the clothing and carefully checked it for blood, fibers, and anything else that might identify Johanna Schmitt’s killer.
“I don’t see anything.” Eleri sighed, though she knew the CDC techs would check it under every light filter and vacuum it for fibers in the morning, now that she and Donovan had concluded their autopsy.
Donovan, still in his gloves and full gown, pulled his mask down under his nose and carefully lifted the clothing to his nose. "It has the same odor as found on the body," Donovan told her.
"Is it the same as what we found on Marat?"
"Maybe."
When they had the clothing bagged and ready for the techs, they turned to the piece they had saved for last. Neither of them had wanted the autopsy contaminated by any prior knowledge of the killer. But the CDC had swabbed the body in several obvious places when she’d been brought in. They’d not been lucky enough to have a bite mark to swab, but her defensive wounds had yielded something. The lab had already run allele matches and Donovan laid the electropherogram maps out on the counter.
The DNA samples from each of the swabs matched to Johanna and faint trace amounts all matched to the same unknown assailant.
“Damn,” Eleri muttered softly, feeling the late hour press in on her. She was going to need those stupid gummy fruits as soon as she was out of the lab. “Not enough clarity to get a match in any known database.”
“No, but we do know it’s a male. And while there’s a lot of drop-out here, we can start collecting DNA from anyone we suspect. We can’t match, but we should be able to rule out at least some people.”
"At least this time," she said, "we don't have jack shit."
24
Donovan had expected to come down the stairs this morning with a renewed vigor for the case, but it hadn't happened.
He’d slept in again, thinking that would help. He’d wandered down here, careful not to wake Eleri. He puttered around
the kitchen for a little bit, making himself first one bowl of cereal then another—different—one, as though that would make everything okay. It didn’t. He could not find any motivation to do anything.
He sat on the couch to eat his frosted flakes and looked out at the backyard, contemplating the small section of grass corralled by the tall fence. He could see the roof of the house that sat directly behind his. Given the single slope of the designs—rather than a normal, pitched roof—he couldn’t see in or even see any windows. He could see a little bit of the sides of the houses caddy-corner to his backyard, but there was foliage in the way.
He liked that the neighborhood here had preserved the trees as much as possible during the building. Not that he would have chosen this chunky-looking, abstract looking design for himself. He didn’t dislike it, but he would have chosen something more organic. Even the way the houses were set on the lots was in perfect orthogonal layouts. From where he sat, he could not see LeDonRic's house next door at all.
Attempting to call eating his cereal "doing work," he did have to feed himself, after all—he tried to think of ways that he and Eleri might collect DNA samples from Curie residents to test against the DNA they had recovered.
The first problem was that the sample from Johanna’s attacker was scrappy at best. A good electropherogram showed sharp bumps where a person had certain alleles in their DNA, but this one, like many bad ones, had places where instead of a nice peak, there was only a little mound. Whether that meant it was there but there wasn't enough to detect, or it meant the duplication system for small samples had randomly dropped it out, or if it meant it wasn't there at all was entirely unclear.
So there were numerous spots on this DNA graph where one would have to look at the allele position and simply mark it unknown. Otherwise, it would be easy to rule out too many people and possibly rule out the killer, or rule in too many. He wondered if it was worth it to run tests on everyone they could possibly gather samples from, and whether Westerfield would fund such an endeavor or not.
Donovan ate his last bite of cereal and, still holding onto the bowl, rested it on his leg as he thought. That was the second problem: it probably wasn’t worth it. Testing that many people that fast would be expensive and time-consuming. In order to have any usefulness at all, they would have to rush the results. They'd rushed the screening on Johanna Schmitt, because any DNA they found on her would most likely belong to her killer and would have hopefully pointed directly to someone and given them an arrest.
What Donovan was pondering now was merely collecting samples from everyone he could. That would be a crapshoot at best. It wouldn't be one test, it would be twenty, or fifty, depending on how good he was at collecting the samples surreptitiously. They would be small samples, much like the kind run from Johanna Schmitt, not the kind people sent in to the hobby DNA places where they were asked to fill a vial with spit. No, this would require a primary step of duplication of the DNA that was found. The PCR process to do that would take time and often created dropouts and errors. It wasn't a huge risk, but it was a big enough one that the expenditure of testing everyone he could gather DNA from was less and less feasible.
Westerfield would certainly rush order a test if Donovan and Eleri had a reasonable suspicion on someone. As of yet, they had no one. Westerfield had called the day before, and would surely call today as well, given that they'd just performed the autopsy, to keep up with where they were in the case. Donovan was not looking forward to saying, once again, that they had done a lot but made little progress. As of right now, they had two dead bodies and zero real suspects.
So he sat there on the couch, looking out the window, until Eleri came downstairs. Though he wasn't sure how long it was, it was probably at least half an hour. She plopped down next to him on the couch, once again looking a little worse for wear.
He'd seen her dressed up for the parties her parents threw. He'd seen her all put together to go out for an interview, but he'd also seen her like this. He probably didn't look any better. The case was wearing them low.
The words out of her mouth were not the ones he expected. "You should call Walter," she said.
"What?"
"You know, your girlfriend. Please tell me she's still your girlfriend." Eleri closed her eyes and squinched her face, as though she would be unable to withstand a negative answer.
Donovan laughed. "Yes, she's still my girlfriend."
"Then you should call her."
"Why?"
"Because you haven't called her in several days, right?"
"We don't talk like that. We're not like you." He was leaning back against the couch too, now.
"No, I get that. But she's your girlfriend. You feel like shit. Well, you look like you feel like shit, anyway."
He laughed, since he'd just been thinking the same thing about her. "And you feel better after you talk to her. I know you don't want to burden her. I do understand that, but what you need to learn about friends and girlfriends, is that that's our job. Like right now, Avery's not available. He's already out at the rink practicing or in some gym somewhere doing thirty thousand squats or whatever that coach makes them do. I don’t know. I could call him, but the coach would get mad, so I'm going to lay this on you: I am so fucking frustrated."
"Yeah, me too," he said, wondering if he should get a third bowl of cereal, even knowing that he didn't have a third type in the house. Sadly, that was the extent of his decision-making ability this morning.
"We should have something more by now," she said.
"We should," he agreed.
"We let Johanna Schmitt die."
"Not so much." For the first time in her little rant, he disagreed with her. "We had no reason to believe she was in danger. They were looking for something of Marat's. Marat seemed to be the problem. The killer had already removed him. She didn't think she was in danger. As soon as we had any idea that there was a danger, we made immediate efforts to remove her from the situation."
"I know," Eleri interrupted, "but I think part of the reason she didn't think she was in danger was because first she'd thought she was hallucinating all of it, and second, when we told her we didn't think she was in danger, she bought into it."
"El, that's plausible," he replied, "but even so, I don't know how we could have assessed it differently." Unless we were psychic. But he didn’t say that out loud, because he knew she probably was psychic on some level. It didn’t matter anyway; she picked up on his thoughts.
"Not without being psychic?" Eleri declared as she sat upright and looked at him, her snarky tone indicating what she thought of that. “Then what good am I?”
"El, you can't blame yourself for not seeing everything. You get whatever information you get, and you didn't get this. When you didn't get the impulse that Johanna Schmitt was in danger, we didn't know to go looking for it. That’s not on you. You did get that impulse later and we acted on it."
She leaned her head back against the edge of the couch again as her stomach grumbled. Having slept in late, and now walking down here and talking to him without eating, he could almost smell the hunger on her.
Still, she'd rather complain, and he understood. He would, too.
"When I thought these things were just hunches that I had, I took them. I ran with them. I did a lot of good, but I didn't blame myself when I missed something, because the hunches were out of my control. I thought of them as things that came to me. Now, I know better. I know that I have some control over it, or I should, and I'm wondering if I shouldn't leave the FBI for three months, go to a retreat somewhere, and try to hone my skills. Because I missed this. Big time."
Donovan thought about that for a moment. What she said made sense, "But," he replied, "by the same token, so should I. I smelled something buttery or dairy-smelling on the body last night. Should I go somewhere for three months and do sniff tests so that I'm better able to classify all the chemicals I might smell? I could have saved her life if I’d identified what was on Marat.
I could still save the next life if I knew what this was."
"Maybe," Eleri replied. "But the problem is, just because you know the chemical compound doesn't mean you could actually save the person."
He paused for a moment, letting that sink in. "Exactly, Eleri," he said. "Even if you had known that Johanna Schmitt was in danger earlier, it wouldn't have necessarily saved her life. These people wanted her. They've been able to get in and out of the house—"
"We could have taken her out of the house!" Eleri protested.
"We could have, but they've been able to get in and out of her house even with a code change, with no problem at all. What makes you think they wouldn't have found her in another house? They found her at work! Should we have taken her completely out of the state, at which point we would have lost all her information about finding these people? We wouldn't have been able to do anything of value. And we didn’t think this would happen."
She sighed heavily, and Donovan at last found the motivation he'd been looking for. "So let's do something now. Let's look up the chemicals, to narrow it down."
Finally pulling his ass of the couch, he extended a hand to Eleri. He sat at his computer while she opened her own and fixed herself a bowl of cereal.
Five minutes later, he got his first hit. “2-acetyl-1-pyrroline. It gives off a buttered popcorn scent. Probably not the right thing, but it should go on the list.”
“Streptococcus milleri,” Eleri said a few moments later. “Smells like butter. I have my fingers crossed that this is not going to be a long list,” then she added, “Butane-2,3-diol.”
“Diacetyl,” he said, but it was almost ten minutes after the last addition to their collection. Fifteen minutes later, they called off the search. “Okay, he said, we know a short list of what it might be. How do we narrow this down?”
25
The problem, Eleri decided, was that Donovan had smelled butter on the victim. “Victim” was how she tried to think of Johanna Schmitt now, rather than as someone who was becoming a friend. So Donovan smelled butter, and they had narrowed it down to three different chemicals. One option had been streptococcus milleri, the bacteria responsible for strep infection, but Donovan had asked the CDC to run a quick test, and the microscope had revealed no strep microbes. They promised to run a culture, but Eleri was calling it a negative.
The Camelot Gambit Page 15