Red Mist

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Paydirt,” Mandy says, and I think of Payback.

  A monster most assume Lola made up.

  “Yes, exactly what I’m looking for,” I reply, as I read the form on the screen, a lethal prescription filled by a pharmacist named Roberta Price, the drugs delivered to the GFPW and signed for by Tara Grimm at noon on the day of Barrie Lou Rivers’s execution, two years ago, March first.

  Boxes checked on the form and blanks filled in indicate the sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide were stored in the warden’s office, then moved into the execution room at five p.m. but never used.

  “Mean something? You’re looking like you’re thinking something,” Mandy can’t resist asking, as I hand the computer notebook back to her.

  “As far as you know, these are the only items of clothing belonging to Lola Daggette?” I answer her question with one of my own, as I pick up the evidence bag of prescription drugs, checking labels on the orange plastic bottles. “In other words, no shoes.”

  “If this is what Colin’s got, what the GBI still has stored, then that’s all there was, I feel sure,” she says.

  “As bloody as the killer would have been, impossible to think the shoes weren’t bloody, too,” I comment. “Why wash your clothes in the shower but not your bloody shoes?”

  “One time Colin scraped gum off the bottom of a high-heeled shoe that came in with the body and recovered a hair, then the DNA of the killer. We had T-shirts made. Colin Dengate the Gum Shoe.”

  “Would you mind finding him? Tell him I’ll meet him outside. I’d like to take a ride. Do a retrospective visit, if possible.”

  Lola Daggette didn’t wash her shoes in the shower, because a pair of shoes wasn’t included with the bloody clothes planted in her room. She didn’t murder anyone, and she wasn’t inside the Jordans’ antebellum mansion the early morning of the murders or on any occasion. I suspect the troubled teenager would have had no reason to meet the distinguished and wealthy Clarence and Gloria Jordan or their beautiful blond twins and probably didn’t have a clue who they were until she was interrogated about their murders and charged with them.

  I strongly suspect Lola also didn’t have a clue who to blame, a person or persons motivated by more than drugs or petty cash or the thrill of killing, a monster or a pair of them with a grand plan that a mentally impaired teenager in a halfway house wouldn’t have had any reason to know about. Or if she did, she’d probably be dead, too, just as Kathleen Lawler and Jaime are. I suspect there was an orchestrated scheme that included framing Lola, just as someone is trying to frame me now, and I don’t believe these manipulations are the sole handiwork of Dawn Kincaid.

  I dig my phone out of my shoulder bag and enter Benton’s number as I emerge from the lab building, finding a spot near bottle-brush bushes with brilliant red blossoms where I’m eye to eye with a hummingbird, and the blazing sun is a relief. I’m chilled, even my bones are cold from being inside the air-conditioned conference room surrounded by evidence so obvious it seems to shout its grotesque secrets, and I’m not sure who’s going to respond.

  I can count on Colin, and, of course, Marino and Lucy will pay attention, and I’ve sent both of them text messages asking if the name Roberta Price means anything, and asking what else can we find out about Gloria Jordan? There’s very little about Mrs. Jordan in news stories I’ve read, few personal details and nothing to suggest there were problems, but I’m sure there were, and the timing couldn’t be worse.

  If Benton weren’t my husband, I have no doubt he wouldn’t listen to what will sound like a tale of horror, a sensational yarn, something made up. What I strongly suspect happened nine years ago isn’t going to be of interest to the FBI or Homeland Security right now, and I understand why, but someone needs to hear me out and do something about it anyway.

  “Sounds like your friends from Atlanta arrived,” I say to Benton, when he answers his cell phone, and voices in the background are loud, a lot of people with him.

  I’m about to try his patience. I can feel it coming.

  “Just getting started. What’s up?” Distracted and tense, he is moving around a noisy room as he talks.

  “Maybe you and your colleagues could look into something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Adoption records, and I need you to pay attention,” I reply. “I know the Jordan case isn’t a priority at the moment, but I think it should be.”

  “I always pay attention, Kay.” He doesn’t sound annoyed, but I know he is.

  “Whatever pertains to Kathleen Lawler, to Dawn Kincaid, although that wasn’t her name when she was born and I have no idea the name of the first family who adopted her. Dawn was passed around to a number of different foster homes or families, and eventually ended up in California with a couple that died. Supposedly. Anything you can find that the FBI hasn’t already found, specifically relating to Dawn’s contacting someone. She had to have contacted someone, possibly an agency down here in 2001 or 2002, when she decided to learn the identities of her biological parents. She had to have gone through the same process anybody else would.”

  “You don’t know that what Kathleen Lawler told you is true, and it would be best to discuss this later.”

  “We know Dawn paid a visit to Savannah in early 2002, and we need to discuss it now,” I reply, as I envision Kathleen Lawler in the contact interview room, talking about being locked up in the big housewhen she went into labor, and I keep thinking of her comments.

  Something about being locked up like an animal and having to give your children awayand what was she supposed to do, give themto a twelve-year-old boy, to Jack Fielding?

  “That really hasn’t been proven, either,” Benton says, and when he’s in a hurry and doesn’t want to have a discussion, he gets contrary.

  “Retested DNA places her in the Jordans’ house in 2002,” I say to him. “But you’re going to have to request different testing, and I’ll get to that. Did she come all the way from California to meet her biological mother, or was there another purpose?”

  “I know this is important to you,” Benton says, and what he means is Dawn Kincaid’s alleged visit to Savannah in 2002 isn’t important to him. The Bureau and the United States government, perhaps even the president, are preoccupied with potential terrorism.

  “What I’m suggesting is the possibility of someone else she wanted to meet in addition to her mother.” I go on anyway. “Maybe there are records no one has thought to check into. This is important. I promise.”

  He’s moving around, and a voice in the background says something about coffee, and Benton says thanks and then to me, “What are you contemplating?”

  “How it’s possible to leave bloody fingerprints on a knife handle and a bottle of lavender soap at a crime scene if you had nothing to do with the crimes.”

  “What about the DNA of those bloody prints?”

  “The victims’ DNA and also an unknown donor, a profile that we now know is Dawn Kincaid. But the prints aren’t hers,” I answer. “The Jordans’ DNA and Dawn’s, supposedly. But some other person’s prints.”

  “Supposedly?”

  “Bloody transfers by whoever had bloody hands and touched the kitchen knife, the soap bottle, but the fingerprints aren’t Dawn Kincaid’s. They’ve never been identified, supposedly from contamination, from a lot of people being on the scene, including journalists, maybe walking through blood and picking up evidence, touching it, or even cops, crime scene techs. Apparently the scene wasn’t well contained. That’s the explanation I’ve been given.”

  “It’s possible. If people didn’t have their prints on file for exclusionary purposes and they handled things. I’m going to have to go, Kay.”

  “Yes, it’s possible, especially when everyone involved is eager to accept such an explanation because they’ve got Lola Daggette and aren’t looking for anyone else. That seems to be the problem across the board, overlooking, not questioning, not digging deep enough because the case is solved, the mur
ders committed by someone who was caught washing bloody clothes and told all sorts of lies that bordered on nonsense.”

  “Tell her I’ll call back in a few minutes,” Benton says to someone else.

  I watch Colin walk out of the building. When he sees I’m on the phone, he gestures that he’ll wait for me in the Land Rover.

  “See what you and your agent colleagues can find out about Roberta Price,” I say to Benton, who isn’t saying anything. “The pharmacist who filled Gloria Jordan’s prescriptions nine years ago. Who is she, and is she connected to Dawn Kincaid?”

  “I remind you that if someone is a head pharmacist, their name is on every prescription bottle, even if they didn’t fill it.”

  “Probably not if it’s a script called in by a prison doc or one who’s an executioner,” I reply. “If you’re the head pharmacist and didn’t fill the prescription for sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide, you might not want your name on it. You might not want your name even remotely associated with anything having to do with an execution.”

  “I have no idea what you’re getting at.”

  “Two years ago a pharmacist named Roberta Price, presumably the same person who filled Mrs. Jordan’s prescriptions, also filled the prescription for the sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide that would have been used in Barrie Lou Rivers’s lethal injection, had she not mysteriously died first. The drugs were delivered to the GPFW, and Tara Grimm signed for them. It’s hard to imagine she and Roberta Price aren’t acquainted.”

  “A pharmacist at Monck’s Pharmacy. A small pharmacy owned by Herbert Monck.” Benton must have searched Roberta Price’s name as he was listening to me.

  “Where Jaime shopped, but Roberta Price’s name isn’t on Jaime’s prescription bottles. And I wonder why,” I reply.

  “Why? I’m sorry, I’m confused.” Benton sounds completely distracted.

  “Just a hunch that maybe when Jaime went into Monck’s Pharmacy, Roberta Price kept her distance,” I add, and I recall the man in the lab coat who sold the Advil to me mentioning the name Robbi, someone who must have been inside the store a moment earlier and then suddenly wasn’t. “I don’t guess you can tell me what kind of car Roberta Price drives, and if it might be a black Mercedes wagon,” I say to Benton.

  A long pause, and he says, “No car registered to her, at least not by the name Roberta Price. Could be in some other name. Did Gloria Jordan get her meds from this same pharmacy?”

  “One close to her home. A Rexall back then that’s been replaced by a CVS.”

  “So at some point after the murders, maybe Roberta Price changed jobs, ending up in a smaller pharmacy very close to the GPFW,” Benton says to me, as he tells someone else he’ll be right there. “There’s no probable cause to go after a pharmacist just because she filled prescriptions for Gloria Jordan, for the GPFW—and probably tens of thousands of other people in this area, Kay. I’m not saying we won’t look into it, because we will.”

  “A pharmacy that must not have a problem aiding in executions at the GPFW, possibly the men’s prison, too. It’s unusual,” I point out. “Many pharmacists see themselves as drug-therapy managers responsible for promoting a patient’s best interests. Killing your patient usually isn’t included.”

  “It tells us Roberta Price doesn’t have ethical issues about it or just feels she’s doing her job.”

  “Or takes pleasure in it, especially if the anesthesia wears off or something else goes wrong. They had a case like that here in Georgia not so long ago. Took at least twice the usual time to kill the condemned inmate, and he suffered. I wonder who prescribed those lethal drugs.”

  “We’ll find out,” Benton says, but he’s not going to do it this minute.

  “And someone needs to contact the DNA lab Jaime was using,” I tell him, whether he thinks it’s a priority or not, as I walk in the direction of Colin’s grumbling Land Rover. “I suspect they’re not going to be up to speed with the new technologies being used by the military.”

  I’m referring to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab, AFDIL, at Dover Air Force Base, where DNA technology has reached a new level of sophistication and sensitivity because of the challenges posed by our war dead. What happens when identical twins end up in theater and one of them is killed or, God forbid, both? Standard DNA testing can’t tell them apart, and while it’s true that their fingerprints wouldn’t be the same, there may be nothing left of their fingers to compare.

  “IEDs and the devastating injuries, in some cases almost complete annihilation,” I add. “The challenges of identification when all that’s left is a mist of contaminated blood on a shred of fabric or a fragment of burned bone. I know AFDIL has the technology to analyze epigenetic phenomena, using methylation and histone acetylation for making DNA comparisons not possible with other types of analyses.”

  “Why would we need to do something like that in these cases?”

  “Because identical twins may start out in life with identical DNA, but older twins are going to have significant differences in their gene expression if you have the technology to look for these differences, and the more time twins spend apart, the greater these differences become. DNA determines who you are, and eventually who you are determines your DNA,” I explain, as I open the passenger’s door, hot air blasting out of the blower.

  34

  The man who answers the door is sweating, the veins standing out like ropes in his big tan biceps, as if he was in the middle of a workout when we showed up unannounced.

  He is visibly displeased to find two strangers on his porch, one of them in range pants and a GBI polo shirt, the other in a khaki uniform, an old Land Rover parked in the shade of a live oak tree next to trellises of jasmine separating this property from the one next door.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you.” Colin opens his wallet, displaying his medical examiner’s shield. “We’d really appreciate a few minutes of your time.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “Are you Gabe Mullery?”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “We’re not here on official business, and nothing’s wrong. This is a casual visit, and we’ll leave if you ask us to. But if you’d give me a minute to explain, we’d be most grateful,” Colin says. “You’re Gabe Mullery, the owner of the house?”

  “That’s me.” He doesn’t offer to shake our hands. “It’s my house. My wife’s all right? Everything’s okay?”

  “As far as I know. Sorry if we scared you.”

  “Nothing scares me. What do you need?”

  Quite handsome, with dark hair, gray eyes, and a powerful jaw, Gabe Mullery is in cutoff sweatpants and a white T-shirt emblazoned with U.S. NAVY NUKE: If you see me running, it’s already too late. He blocks the doorway with his muscular body, clearly not the sort to appreciate strangers dropping by without calling first, no matter the reason. But we didn’t want to give the man who lives in the former Jordan house the chance to say no. I need to see the garden and figure out what Gloria Jordan was doing in it the afternoon of January 5.

  I don’t think it was pruning, and I want to know why she returned to her garden very early the next morning, possibly to the old root cellar, possibly because she was forced back there in the pitch dark about the time she and her family were murdered. I have an imagined scenario that is based on my interpretation of the evidence, and information Lucy e-mailed to me during the drive here only strengthens my conclusion that Mrs. Jordan wasn’t an innocent victim, and that’s putting it kindly.

  I suspect that on the night of January 5 she may have spiked her husband’s drink with clonazepam, ensuring he would settle into a hard sleep. At around eleven, she went downstairs and disarmed the alarm, leaving the mansion and her family vulnerable to a break-in that she couldn’t have anticipated would end the way it did. What she probably had in mind was wrong, and most of all it was foolish, not so different from a lot of schemes devised by unhappy people who want out of their marriages and are seduced into
believing they’re entitled to take what they think they deserve.

  Mrs. Jordan probably never meant for her children to be harmed, and certainly not herself, and possibly not even her husband, whom I suspect she’d come to resent deeply, if not hate. She may have been determined to get away from him, but probably what she wanted was a secret source of cash, something of her own, and not necessarily for him to be dead. A simple plot, a simple burglary on a January night after a day of intermittent thunderstorms and chilly blustery winds, Lucy let me know the weather back then. One doesn’t decide to clean up the garden in such conditions, not that there’s any evidence Mrs. Jordan actually pruned so much as a branch stub or a watersprout the afternoon before her death.

  What was she doing by the crumbled walls and depressed earth, what looked to me in photographs like the ruins of a root cellar from an earlier century? Maybe attempting to outsmart her accomplice or accomplices, and the grim irony is she wouldn’t have survived even if she’d been honorable. She didn’t recognize the devil she’d befriended and come to trust, and must have assumed all would be forgiven if a fortune in gold I suspect she’d promised to share was nowhere to be found because she’d decided to keep all of it for herself and had hidden it.

  “Look, I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting to be bothered about this,” Colin is saying on the hot front porch, with its stately white columns and view of a cemetery that dates from the American Revolution. Puffs of hot wind carry the scent of cut grass.

  “Not that damn case,” Gabe Mullery says. “You and reporters, and the worst are the tourists. People ringing the bell and wanting a tour.”