1 Death Warmed Over

by Kent Holloway

  “Tell me, Linda.” He nodded to the officers wearing the long sleeve shirts. “Aren’t they allowed to wear short sleeves in this weather? Their subordinates can. Why not them?”

  Linda looked up from her computer screen and turned in the direction of the men he’d indicated. She smiled. “Oh, yeah. The chief allows all the officers to wear short sleeves. Some of them, when on bike patrol, even wear polos and shorts. But those guys can’t. They’ve got tattoos.”

  “Huh?”

  “Tattoos. Department policy says that any tattoos must be covered while on duty. It’s unprofessional. The citizens around here are kind of conservative. Older. They’re still pretty suspicious of anyone who has things like tattoos or piercings.”

  Silas let that information sink in for a minute as he watched the two supervisors heading out the door.

  “And how many officers here have tattoos?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’d say more than a handful.” She pointed over to Becca, who was standing next to Sgt. Tanner. “Even old timers like Jeremy are all tatted up these days though. Won’t be long before the old long sleeve policy goes the way of the dodo, if you ask me.”

  Silas looked at the senior officer. He’d never noticed it before, but he too was decked out in the more formal, long sleeve uniform.

  As he stared, Becca glanced over at him and waved him over.

  “Pardon me, Linda,” he said, getting up from his chair. “But the boss is beckoning.”

  He walked over to the chief and sergeant, pondering what he’d just learned about the office policy. Tanner gave him a casual, but suspicious, nod of hello, then turned to Becca.

  “Okay,” he said to her. “I’ll have her brought into the interrogation room now.”

  With that, the sergeant walked away toward the holding cells, leaving Silas and Becca to themselves.

  “Bring who to the interrogation room?” Silas asked.

  For the first time since he met her, Becca offered a full-blown grin. He would never consider her a dour woman, but for the most part, she was deadly serious. As she smiled, he took her in, not for the first time, and decided he rather liked this look on her. He hoped he could continue to see it more often.

  “Well,” she said. “While you’ve been lounging around here distracting my employees with your impressive displays of yo-yo tricks, I’ve been busy.”

  “You mean the search warrant for the newspaper and Blakely’s home?”

  “That. But also, I had Elaine Shepherd picked up just as she was leaving for work. The sheriff’s office just got here. I figured you’d want to be part of the interrogation.”

  “Oh, trust me,” he said, rummaging through his pockets and finding a Warhead candy he’d nabbed from Becca’s candy jar earlier. “It’ll be a pleasure to be on the other side of that table this time.”

  “Good.” She started walking toward the interrogation room. But before she could walk inside, Linda waved her over.

  “Chief,” Linda said, holding up a telephone. “It’s the medical examiner. Line two.”

  “Thanks. I’ll take it in my office.” A moment later, she pressed the speaker phone button so Silas could listen in. “What can I do for you, Doc?”

  “Actually, it’s what I can do for you,” he said. “I’ve examined all of Ms. Alvarez’s pill bottles, as well as the pills you found in her trash. I think I have a pretty good handle on what happened.”

  “Really?” She looked over at Silas, who had raised one of his eyebrows with interest.

  “Yes.” She heard papers rustling around on the doctor’s end of the line, as if he was sifting through a file. “It’s just a working theory, mind you. We’ll know conclusively when we get the toxicology screen back. But it looks like someone has switched out some of her Ativan, a benzodiazepine, for Eldepryl.”

  “Okay.” Her mind raced to process why that tidbit mattered. “I’m not sure exactly what that means.”

  “Of course. You see, Eldepryl is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. Like the benzos, it’s an antidepressant, but it’s fallen out of favor by most doctors because of some pretty serious side effects.”

  “What kind of side effects?”

  “Well, first of all, if mixed with other medications, it can cause serious complications resulting in something called Serotonin Syndrome. Too much of the stuff can cause it as well.”

  “Serotonin Syndrome? Isn’t that a dangerous increase in Serotonin?” Silas asked.

  “Serotonin?” Becca asked. She’d heard of it before. Knew it was some type of hormone, but that was pretty much the extent of it.

  “Serotonin is the chemical that’s released when people sleep,” Silas explained. “It’s what causes dreams and things like that.”

  “Exactly. Serotonin is what helps give us a sense of well-being. Helps ease our minds. And can increase our imagination. But an increase in the hormone could cause serious problems. Someone suffering from Serotonin Syndrome would experience a wide variety of symptoms from heart palpitations to paranoia. They’d get chills, fever, elevated blood pressure. And in extreme cases, hallucinations.”

  “Like what Andrea was having the weeks before her death.”

  “Yes.”

  “But would this kill her? Would someone with this Serotonin Syndrome die from it?”

  “It depends on how it was ingested.” Dr. Lipkovic cleared his throat. “Like I said, if she took the monoamine oxidase inhibitor, or MAOIs as they’re more commonly called, it would pretty much just increase the amount of Serotonin in the brain and cause the side effects I already mentioned.”

  “What kind of drugs would need to be mixed?” Silas asked.

  “Oh, there are too many to list. But for our purposes, any of the SSRI’s would do. For instance, Lexapro, which our victim was taking regularly. Her Lexapro wasn’t switched out, so I assume she was still taking them anyway. Mix an MAOI with Lexapro and you’d develop a hyperpyrexic crisis. In other words, Serotonin Syndrome.”

  “And that can be lethal?” Becca asked.

  “Oh, in extreme cases, yes. But it’s easily identifiable and treated, which is what happened at the ER on the night she was Baker Acted.” They heard more shifting of papers on the other end of the line. “However, certain foods eaten while on an MAOI like Eldepryl can cause almost instant death. The food will mix with the drug, causing a hypertensive crisis, which most often leads to a myocardial infarction.”

  “Which is what you saw in her autopsy.”

  “Precisely. I only wish her stomach contents had revealed more, but unfortunately, nothing remained. I have a feeling she regurgitated her food just before she died. Emptied her stomach entirely. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  There’d been no signs of vomit in her bedroom or bathroom, making Becca think someone must have cleaned it up. But then, why leave the overturned nightstand? The empty glass on the floor?

  “What kind of food are we talking about, Doc?” Silas asked.

  “Oh, alcoholic beverages would do it. As you remember, I did detect the smell of alcohol on her blood during autopsy. Also, several types of cheeses, cured meats, and anything with soy in it. The reaction comes from tyramine in the food, which plays havoc with blood pressure.”

  “And you believe someone’s been switching her regularly prescribed benzodiazepines with these mono…mono…”

  “Monoamine oxidase inhibitors. Yes. The pills you found in her trash can were Ativan. When I looked in her bottles of Ativan, I found the Eldepryl instead.”

  Silas looked at Becca. “When we searched the house, there was a block of cheddar cheese and an empty bottle of wine in the kitchen. You’re saying…”

  “Absolutely. If Ms. Alvarez ingested any of that, she would most definitely have suffered some type of hypertensive crisis, which could easily lead to death.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Becca said. “That helps a lot.”

  “You’re welcome. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you,” he
said. “And I’ll be sure to send you my final report when I get the toxicology results back.”

  She hung up the phone. “Well, looks like we have our cause of death.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” Silas said. “Seems to me there are plenty of easier ways to kill someone if that’s what you intend to do.”

  “Unless you wanted to make it look like a death curse had finally taken its victim.”

  “True.”

  Becca let out a breath and began making her way to the door. “So, I guess there’s nothing else to do right now other than interview our suspect,” she said.

  The two began making their way once more to the interrogation room and a sudden surge of energy for the case rushed through Becca’s veins. She finally had a probable cause of death. She had two excellent suspects. And at that moment, she was very curious to find out just what business Elaine had with Blakely and why she’d failed to mention their early morning rendezvous when they spoke yesterday. It was bad enough that she had attempted to have Jacinto Garcia place a death curse on their victim—a woman Elaine claimed to be ‘like a sister’ to her. But the fact that she had been having secret meetings with Ms. Alvarez’s current boyfriend was a twist almost too delicious not to enjoy.

  32

  When they entered the small twenty by twenty box of a room, Elaine Shepherd looked up at them with wide eyes. Tears streaked her cheeks. Her mouth opened to speak, her lips trembling wildly, then she closed them as if uncertain what to say. Her wrists were shackled, chained to the table. The clink of metal echoed within the interrogation room with every nervous twitch she made.

  “Mrs. Shepherd, thank you for coming,” Becca said, taking the seat opposite their new suspect. Silas, for his part, moved over to the corner of the room, just out of view from the one-way mirrored glass and doing his best to look menacing.

  “I…I don’t think I had much of a choice, did I?” she asked. “They arrested me in front of my kids.”

  “I’m truly sorry about that, but some things have come to light in our investigation that warranted it.” Becca set a manila folder down on the table in front of her, the same tactic she’d used when interrogating Silas, as well as just about any other suspect. She wasn’t certain why, but the official nature of the innocuous folder carried with it a great psychological power when questioning people. It was a trick she’d learned when first starting out that now had become a habit.

  “What do you mean? What has come to light?”

  “For starters, the fact that you weren’t very honest with us yesterday,” Silas said. He was now leaning against the corner of the room, his arms crossed over his chest and one foot up against the wall. “Actually, I’m not sure how honest you are with anyone…including your so-called best friend, Andrea Alvarez.”

  Elaine’s eyes darted from Silas to Becca.

  “W-what’s he talking about?”

  Becca sat quietly, studying the woman across from her. Silence was another invaluable tool in interrogations. People tended to abhor silence. It’s why most people could rarely go ten minutes without the radio playing in their car as they drive to their local grocery store. Why public speakers tended to insert ‘um’ in the space between pauses in their sentences. Silence, she’d learned, had the same screeching effect on a person’s psyche as nails going down a chalkboard.

  “We have a BOLO out now on Mr. Spenser Blakely,” Becca finally said when she felt her silence had conveyed the necessary affect she was going for.

  “Huh?”

  Interrogation Trick #3. Try to throw a suspect off balance by saying the most unpredictable thing possible as your opening salvo. It created confusion. Built tension. And made it difficult for them to deduce what direction the questioning would take.

  “A BOLO,” Becca reiterated. “Means ‘Be On the Look Out’. Essentially, Spenser Blakely is about to be arrested for Andrea Alvarez’s murder.”

  Elaine’s eyes lit up. “But…that’s wonderful. You’ve found her killer!” Then her brow furrowed. “Wait. Then why am I here?”

  “I’m curious, Mrs. Shepherd,” Becca said. “What do you suppose Mr. Blakely will say about you once we get him in this room?”

  She stared back at the chief, unable to move. Unable to speak.

  “Mrs. Shepherd? What do you think he’s going to tell us about his relationship to you?”

  “I…we…we don’t have a relationship. I don’t even know the man.”

  “You’re lying, Elaine!” Silas was suddenly standing at the table, slamming the flat of his hand down on it. The percussive force of the blow echoed through the confined space of the room. Elaine flinched at the outburst. “Lies. Lies. Lies. That’s all you seem to know to do.”

  “I’m telling the truth!” she shouted. “I don’t know him. I only know about him from the things Andrea told me.”

  “Mrs. Shepherd, we have a witness who puts you with Blakely several times in the last few weeks,” Becca said. Her voice was calm. Even. Soothing. “These meetings were always in the dead of night when the rest of Summer Haven was asleep.”

  Their suspect stammered. Fidgeted in the metal seat bolted to the concrete floor. “I…um…maybe your witness is wrong. Maybe they’re the one who’s lying. I’ve never so much as seen Blakely in person. I swear.”

  “Swear?” Silas leaned in with a salacious grin stretched across his face. “Cross your heart and hope to…die?”

  “Silas!” Becca barked, grabbing the man by the wrist and squeezing. “Enough.”

  Elaine was sobbing now.

  “Mrs. Shepherd, do you really think that Blakely will corroborate what you’re telling us when we have him in custody?” Becca continued now that Silas had moved back to his corner. “Do you really trust him that much not to turn over on you? Now’s the time to come clean. We might be able to work out a deal.”

  “I’m telling you…I had nothing to do with Andrea’s death!”

  “Then tell us about your relationship with Spenser Blakely. If we’re satisfied, you might be able to go home.”

  Elaine sniffed, looking up pitiably at Becca. “I…I think I want my lawyer now.”

  The words out of the woman’s mouth, Becca glanced back at Silas and stood up. The interrogation was over.

  33

  THE SUMMER HAVEN CHRONICLER

  FRIDAY, 10:35 AM

  “We have a warrant to search the premises,” Becca said, holding up the signed document as they strode into the front office of The Chronicler.

  Mrs. Hamilton, Blakely’s receptionist, stood from her desk with a gasp.

  “W-what?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m going to have to ask you to vacate the building while we conduct our business.”

  “But, I need to call…” She reached for the phone on her desk, then pulled her hand away a moment later.

  “Call who, Mrs. Hamilton?”

  “I-I-I’m not sure.” The old woman blustered about, indecision painted on her face. Becca was sure she had been in touch with her employer and would probably know where he was. She’d be sure to sit her down for a chat when they finished their search.

  “Mrs. Hamilton, this is Sergeant Tanner.” Becca gestured to the senior officer. “He’s going to walk you outside and sit with you until we’re finished. Is that okay?”

  The way she’d emphasized the word ‘okay’ could leave little doubt that she was only being polite. The woman really had no other choice. To leave now would make her an accessory to murder if they found enough evidence to convict her boss.

  Shaking, Mrs. Hamilton nodded and shuffled across the tile floor over to Tanner, who led her outside. After she was gone, Becca, Silas, and four uniformed officers made a quick sweep of the building to ensure no one else lurked inside—including Spencer Blakely himself. But the place seemed to be deserted.

  “Okay,” she said to her officers. “We’ll do a systematic search of each room. Ellis, you and
Wood take the main lobby and reception area. Robinson and Gilmour, you handle the print shop, and Silas and I will take Blakely’s office.”

  As the teams of officers split up to carry out their assignments, Becca handed Silas a pair of latex gloves. “Put them on before you touch anything.”

  She waited until he’d complied, slipped a pair on herself, and the two entered Blakely’s office before heading straight to the glass display case. Silas frowned the moment he looked inside.

  “I don’t understand.” He looked at her. His forehead creased in confusion. “They’re both here. Both daggers are here. I thought for sure he was the one who’d broken into Alvarez’s condo and clocked me in the back of my head.”

  “He might still have,” she assured him. “Maybe it has nothing to do with the daggers themselves. Maybe he was there for some other reason.”

  He stood staring at the display case, his jaw slack as he puzzled over its contents. He hadn’t heard a word she said.

  “All right. You just stand there gawking at that case. I’ll search the rest of the office.”

  She left him and turned around to survey the room. Not much had changed since she’d last been inside its polished cherry-wood walls. She walked over to the bookcase, perusing the numerous books ranging from classic pieces of literature to Julius Caesar’s writings on the Gallic Wars. Becca removed a few books at random, looking for anything that might have been tucked within their pages. Many of them were old. Some were first editions. None of them contained anything remotely useful.

  She moved over to the desk, obviously a matching set with the bookshelves, and sat down in Blakely’s chair. She hoped to get a feel for the man simply by occupying the same space as he. From the height he’d set his chair, she suddenly realized just how short the man was. The chair itself tilted slightly to the left and the cushion squished at an odd angle that often occurred with overweight people.

  What on earth did Andrea see in the guy? She chastised herself for being so shallow, but she still couldn’t get over the vast age difference between the two. Andrea herself had been a fetching woman. Perhaps not a head-turner, but attractive nonetheless.