Cause of Death (Det. Annie Avants Book 1)

by Renee Benzaim

  In front of the fireplace, Annie set up a large white board which she labeled into two columns with the victim's names, 'Gabriela Lozcano' and 'Carmen Gutierrez'. She almost included Maria Ortiz's name, but couldn't bring herself to do so.

  "What can I get you ladies to drink?" Tom said.

  "I think I'll start off with some of Annie's sweet tea," Laine said. "No one makes it better than she does. I drank gallons of sweet tea growing up in Texas, but never could make it to my liking."

  "Me, too, Tom," Annie said. "I'll save the Merlot for later."

  The four friends dug into their eclectic meal while they chatted about inconsequential things. When they had finished for the moment, Annie and Laine moved the food to the table so the coffee table would be clear.

  Annie and Laine then opted for a glass of Merlot. Dessert and coffee could wait. They were stuffed.

  Annie went to the white board and started listing everything they could think of regarding the two victims.

  When she finished her listings, she summarized, "Both victims were young Hispanic females, under thirty years of age. Both had pierced ears, but only the right earring was in place and the other one wasn't found at the crime scenes. Both were nude and weren't killed where their bodies were found.

  "During the autopsies, the forensic pathologist verified that they were both bound with the same type of yellow nylon rope as there were fibers embedded in their ankles and wrists, plus impressions left from the ropes. Traces of duct tape were found around their mouths, and he thinks they were probably gagged most of the time.

  "Neither one had eaten for several days, but the perp gave them water. I guess the murderer realized that a person can only go a short time without water and then they stand a good chance of dying. Dried feces and urine were found on their bodies. Some of it was old and dried, but some was probably released at the time of death.

  "Gabriela was in a state of almost complete rigor mortis and lividity was fixed. Based on that and her body temperature, which was the same as the ambient temperature, Deputy Coroner Schillings and Doc estimate that death occurred approximately twelve to fourteen hours prior to the discovery of her body.

  "Like Gabriela, Carmen's body temperature was the same as the ambient temperature and the estimate for her time of death is approximately five to eight hours prior to her being found. The rigor mortis was only partial, just down to her upper extremities, and her lividity was also fixed. These are just estimates based on what was observed at the crime scene and at the autopsies.

  "Each woman had 13 bites on her lower extremities and Doc has now determined that these were black widow spider bites. We did find two spiders at the first crime scene, one in Gabriela's hair and one underneath her body.

  "Cause of death for Gabriela was the rupturing of an aneurysm in her brain, possibly caused by stress and the fact that the venom of black widow spiders tends to drastically increase blood pressure.

  "Carmen was strangled and fibers from the nylon rope were still embedded in her neck. A piece of wood was found between the rope fibers and her neck and is being analyzed.

  "The only other commonality is that they were both found in the south part of the County. However, we now know that Gabriela was passing through and it was fate that put her in the wrong place at the wrong time. Carmen doesn't seem to have been handpicked because she just randomly decided to go to La Mexicana Market on the day of her abduction."

  "So, we're searching for someone who goes out randomly looking for his next victim?" Jesse said. "Have we asked people in the vicinity of where the abductions occurred if they noticed any unfamiliar vehicle cruising around the area either that day or the days before the abductions?"

  "That's pretty much standard procedure to ask the people we canvass if they noticed any strange vehicles in the area," Tom replied. "However, I think we should talk to everyone again and stress the word 'cruising' instead of just asking about strange vehicles being seen in the neighborhood."

  "Laine has cast tire tracks and boot prints," Annie said, turning to Laine. "What can you tell us, Laine?"

  "Well, as I mentioned before, the boot prints are unusual and special issue military. They can't be purchased through commercial outlets unless they surface at a military surplus store. As for the tire tracks, they're pretty much standard for SUVs and there was nothing about this track that would make it unique or tie it to a particular vehicle. But the tire tracks at both scenes, as well as the boot prints, appear to be the same."

  "All the similarities point to one perp," Jesse concluded. "If this gets out to the media, we may have a panic on our hands. Already they are talking about the spiders, but it's pure speculation based on a comment they overheard at the first crime scene by a deputy who should have kept his mouth shut."

  "Gabriela's body has been released to her family and the funeral is Tuesday, August 28th, at 3 PM in Roseville. Tom and I will be going and, Laine, we'd like Mike Everett to go with us to take as many discrete photos of the people there as he can."

  "Not a problem," Laine said. "I'll have Mike contact you about when you're leaving."

  "Are we missing something - anything?" Tom said. "Will we get more answers focusing on the victims or focusing on the cause of death? I really feel like there's something staring us in the face and we just don't see it."

  Laine handed each of them copies of the reports she brought with her so they could update their Murder Books.

  As Annie looked through her copy, she realized that they still didn't have copies of any of the drawings Sarah had made of the possible suspect.

  Before they broke up their meeting, Annie reminded them that Maria Ortiz was still missing.

  Since there wasn't much else to discuss, the four friends enjoyed the rest of their visit, and left with bags of leftovers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Sunday, 26 August 2012, 1:00 PM

  Noura pulled into the parking lot off L Street that was open on weekends for visitors to the County Jail. She didn't enjoy passing the information she'd received about Tito's arrest to her family, but it was necessary. They didn't normally read the local papers and they hadn't yet seen any of the newscasts when she had gone to their home the previous Friday evening.

  The fact that she had helped Tito's friend, Manolo Alcantar, avoid conviction for robbery in one of Annie's cases haunted her. She had her cousin, a police officer with the Bakersfield Police Department, hide the crucial piece of evidence so it wasn't available during the trial. This led to the verdict of not guilty. Noura's guilt at instigating this was immense. She loved her little brother, believed him when he said that Manolo Alcantar was innocent, and asked for her help.

  Now, she wondered if he was truly innocent of the previous crime. Before she agreed to help Tito, she checked Manolo Alcantar's record and found nothing. He was barely 18, so any juvenile records were sealed and not available to her.

  She walked up the stairs and signed in at the window. While she was there, she put $50 on Tito's "books" so he could buy 'extra stuff' while locked up in County.

  She sat down in the bleak waiting room. No one else was there. A couple of people came in to put money on someone's books, but no one else waited to visit. Maybe more people would come after church, she didn't know.

  Finally, the deputy at the window called her name and she entered the visiting area. The visitors were kept separate from the prisoners by a wall with windows and spoke to each other over handsets. No physical contact was allowed.

  She sat down to wait. After a couple of minutes, a deputy brought Tito in and stepped back outside the door. He looks like hell, she thought.

  "Hey, Sis."

  "Hey, yourself, what the hell is going on? How did you get yourself in this mess? What were you doing in the East Side Crips territory? Do you know what will happen if you go to jail after being there when your little friend killed a Crip?"

  "Hey, we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, Sis, don't get your panties in a snit.
"

  "And you were in the middle of a robbery? What's wrong with you?"

  "They took something of ours when they came to Southgate. We wanted it back. Things just got out of control, ya know?"

  "I want to ask you something, and I want a straight answer. Did Manolo do the robbery that I helped get dismissed? Don't lie to me, brother."

  "Yeah, yeah, he did it. I lied to you, but you're so gullible you would believe anything."

  Noura sat there, stunned. Her little brother, whom she helped raise and loved more than any of her other siblings, had taken advantage of that love and she committed an unpardonable sin - tampering with evidence. Not only could she lose her job, but she could go to jail, as well.

  She couldn't sit there and look at the smirk on his face any longer and got up to leave, barely able to control the tears that formed in her eyes.

  "Hey, Sis, where're you going? Is your fancy lawyer boss gonna get me outta here?"

  "No," she answered curtly. "You can make do with a Public Defender. I don't know you anymore. You're not the little brother I loved so dearly. You can rot in hell for all I care."

  On that note, she turned and left.

  She sat in her car while her heart silently broke into pieces. She loved Tito but she had to open her eyes and see what he had really become. For ten years he ran with the gangs but she closed her eyes to what he did. The rest of her family was no different. He was the big shot of the family and came to family gatherings with his gold jewelry and flashed his money around. He never brought other gang members to the family home and he didn't visit her ever at her home where she lived with her husband and baby.

  She knew she couldn't change him and so she just accepted him and loved him the way he was.

  However, that was over. He had used her and that was unforgivable.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Monday, 27 August 2012

  Annie, Tom, and Mike Everett stood on the lawn in the Catholic cemetery where Gabriela was being interred. They had traveled to Roseville that morning to attend the funeral mass for Gabriela after her body had been released by the morgue and sent to her family in Roseville.

  Not only were they there out of respect for Gabriela, but to observe discretely who else attended. Mike was able to covertly take pictures of most of the people there and they would review them later.

  "It's so sad," Annie said. "All these years the family has been wondering what happened to Gabriela and this is the outcome. At least they have closure now."

  "I didn't see anyone who looked suspicious," Tom said. "Of course, the funeral wasn't announced in Bakersfield so the perp wouldn't have known it was today. There will probably be a notice or news blip about it today or tomorrow.

  "Did you notice anything, Mike?"

  "No, and there aren't that many people here, so it was easy to check each person out. It wasn't hard to get pictures of most everyone as they arrived for the funeral mass. I don't see anyone new here at the cemetery, either. This is where I would expect the perp to show up if he was going to come."

  With a heavy heart, Annie walked with the men back to their vehicle and they headed home to Bakersfield.

  "When is the funeral mass for Carmen scheduled?"

  "Friday at 2:00 PM," Annie said. "The wake is the night before, but like Mike said, the most likely place for the perp to turn up is at the interment, not the wake or funeral mass."

  * * *

  "I'm going to make a couple of calls from my cell phone. It's already 4:00 PM and we won't be back in Bakersfield for a long time. I want to set an appointment with Dr. Lydell Goodkind and I need to update the Sarge," Tom said, as he pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket. "I don't want to put this off any longer."

  Tom opened his notebook to Dr. Goodkind's number.

  "Could you connect me to the office of Dr. Lydell Goodkind?" Tom asked the person who answered the phone at Modesto Junior College.

  "Certainly, I'll be glad to. Whom may I say is calling?"

  "This is Detective Tom Weston from the Robbery/Homicide Unit of the Kern County Sheriff's Office in Bakersfield, California."

  "One moment, please."

  "Hello, Detective Weston. This is Dr. Goodkind. What can I do for you today?"

  "Doctor, I'm hoping to set up a meeting with you to discuss a perplexing case we have that may turn into a serial."

  Tom brought the doctor up to speed on the two murders and Maria Ortiz, who was still missing. By the time Tom finished, Dr. Goodkind was interested in helping any way he could.

  "I'll tell you what, fax or email what you have now so I can review it tonight. I don't have a class tomorrow and plan to take care of some personal business in Fresno. If you're available, we could meet in Fresno for lunch, say at noon at Baja Fresh on North Blackstone, and I could give you my impressions. This way you won't have to travel all the way to Modesto or I won't have to go to Bakersfield."

  "OK, but I'm on the road right now and probably won't be back in my office until after 7:00 PM. Is that too late?"

  "No, that will be fine. I have a lot of work to do and will wait here for your materials."

  "That's great. Give me your fax number and the address of the restaurant and we will meet you there at noon tomorrow."

  Once Tom got off his cell phone with Dr. Goodkind, he called Sgt. Collins to bring her up to speed on what had happened that day.

  "What do you plan to do next?" she asked.

  "We have a conference call set up for Wednesday with Dr. Kavi Bhakta of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. He's their resident expert on all sorts of spiders and the results of their bites." Tom said.

  "Tomorrow we're going to take everything we have, along with the Murder Book - as slim as it is - and meet with Dr. Lydell Goodkind from the Police Academy at Modesto Junior College. He teaches a course in Police Procedure and is a retired FBI Profiler - a Criminal Psychiatrist. We'll meet him in Fresno tomorrow at Noon. I'm going to send him what information we have as soon as we get back into Bakersfield. He'll look it all over tonight, do some research, and see what he can come up with.

  "We won't have the autopsy reports for a while, but we have discussed both cases in detail with Doc Richards. He's given us an estimated time of death for each woman," Tom added.

  "Did the Arvin Police Department send over their initial missing persons report and follow up for the second victim?" Sgt. Collins asked.

  "Yes, and their investigation is ongoing, even though the homicide is ours since the victim's body was found outside Arvin city limits. They're working out a time line to try to determine where she was and what she was doing during the seven days prior to her disappearance."

  "Our main concern right now is Maria Ortiz, who has been missing for five days. As soon as Sarah returned with the sketches provided by the Abeyta sisters of the man Maria was last seen with, she had the PSO give copies to all the deputies and they are circulating them throughout the County, but to no avail," Tom said.

  "That's good. OK, keep me posted. We need to get these solved ASAP before we have a panicked city on our hands. Actually, we already have concern within the Hispanic community and we need to stop it before someone decides to find the killer on their own and take action."

  "Right, the last thing we need is a vigilante group, but I can't say that I would blame them. These are their young daughters who are the victims and that hits close to home," Tom said, as he hung up the phone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Monday, 27 August 2012, 8 PM

  Annie was somewhat surprised when she returned home and had a message on her answering machine from Noura. Noura said to call her immediately, that she would like for the two of them to meet for dinner as she had something important to discuss with Annie. Normally the two women had lunch a couple of times a month, usually on a Friday, so this was very unusual and Annie was curious. She called Noura and they made arrangements to meet quickly at The Olive Garden on New Stine Road since they were only open until 10:00 P
M on Monday.

  When they were seated, Annie could see that something was troubling her friend. She noticed lately, whenever she and Noura were together, that Noura seemed more somber, like something was on her mind. A couple of times she got the impression that Noura wanted to talk to her and share what was bothering her, but she never did. Annie thought perhaps Noura was having problems with her marriage and didn't press her.

  The waitress came and brought bread sticks and a big bowl of salad and took their orders. Noura just ordered raviolis and didn't pour over the menu as she usually did when they ate at The Olive Garden.

  Finally, their food arrived and as Noura picked at her food Annie decided enough was enough and said straight out, "OK, Noura, what's on your mind? Something has been eating at you for a while. You need to just spit it out."

  Tears formed in Noura's eyes and her hand trembled slightly.

  "I don't know how to tell you this, Annie. I have valued our friendship for many years, and I hate to see it fall to pieces."

  "Oh, come on, Noura. What could be so terrible that it would end our friendship?"

  "I'm the one who had the evidence hidden in the Alcantar case so the jury would return a verdict of not guilty."

  "What?" Annie couldn't believe her ears. "Why on earth would you do something like that, Noura, and jeopardize your job and your reputation as a Paralegal?"

  Annie was numb with shock. Not only did Noura break the law, she caused a guilty man - in Annie's opinion - to go free. Now, he was back in jail for committing another crime, this time killing someone.

  "There's a lot about me that you don't know, Annie. I have a brother, Tito, who has been involved in the gangs for many years. I don't talk about him or let any of my friends meet him. He's involved with the Southside Bakers in Southgate, along with Manolo Alcantar.

  "I love my little brother so much and he's always been able to twist me around his little finger. When he came to me, crying, that Manolo was innocent of the robbery you were investigating, I believed him. He begged me to help him get his friend freed. I went to the County jail and talked with Manolo. He, too, seemed sincere.