Killer Physique Page 18

  Eileen nodded and took the scissors from her. “I’ll have that done, right away. Though I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”

  Savannah continued to examine the empty packet, comparing it to the other ones and finding no differences. Her excitement began to wane a bit. So what if they had discovered how Jason Tyrone opened his medication there in the hotel room? That proved nothing, one way or the other.

  Finally, she laid the envelope aside, more than a little discouraged. She was about to abandon the whole exercise when she remembered the tops of the packets that had been cut off and put into the box.

  She walked over to the table, retrieved them, and brought them back to the magnifying lamp.

  One by one, she patiently held the ends up to her empty envelope. The cuts hadn’t been made exactly straight. Each one varied slightly; the lines were a bit crooked, every one unique in its own way.

  At last, she found the one discarded end that lined up perfectly with the empty envelope.

  Sticking her face so close to the magnifying glass that her nose was nearly against it, she examined the cut-off end as closely as she had the envelope. Again, just looking for something, anything extraordinary.

  And she saw it.

  A tiny, tiny hole near the edge. It was so small that at first she thought she was seeing things. But the closer she looked, the clearer it became.

  She could feel her pulse rate quicken even as a surge of optimism, mixed with dread, flooded her system.

  “Hey, girl, look at this!” she said to Eileen. “If I’m right, we’ve got us a puncture, right there, plain as the nose on your face.”

  “What do you mean a ‘puncture’?”

  “A nice, even, little hole. So little, in fact, that I have to say it was made by a needle. Nothing else is that tiny.”

  “Let me have a look at that.” Eileen practically snatched it out of her hand and pushed her out of the way, so that she could use the magnifying lamp.

  It didn’t take her long for her to agree with Savannah. “That’s exactly what it looks like,” she said. “Let’s get it over here underneath the microscope, so that we can tell for sure.”

  A few moments later, they were bending over the microscope. Eileen was looking through it, and Savannah was practically dancing with impatience as she stood next to her, waiting her turn.

  “Well?” Savannah said. “What have we got?”

  Eileen moved aside so that Savannah could take a look. And when Savannah bent over and looked through the lens, there was her evidence staring her right in the eye. The evidence she had been looking for that proved what she had known all along.

  Finally, she pushed away from the microscope and looked at Eileen. In the laboratory director’s eyes was the same gleam of triumph and exhilaration that she was feeling.

  “You know what that is, don’t you?” Eileen said. “That’s product tampering.”

  “Oh, it’s way more than that, darlin’,” Savannah told her. “That there is murder.”

  Chapter 19

  The moment Savannah left the laboratory, she took her phone out of her purse and called Dirk.

  He sounded slightly out of breath and definitely out of sorts. “Yeah?” was his curt greeting.

  “I’m on my way to the morgue to see Dr. Liu,” she told him, as she hurried across the parking lot toward the Mustang. “Meet me in the parking lot there ASAP.”

  “I’m kind of in the middle of something here—”

  “Then drop it. Seriously, get over there as quick as you can.”

  “If you must know, I’m working on this stupid bathroom floor like you asked me to. And it ain’t going well at all.”

  She unlocked the Mustang’s door and slid inside. “Dirk, forget the floor. Forget everything else and haul ass over to the morgue, pronto.”

  She clicked the phone off, stuck her key in the ignition, fired up the Pony, and took off like a horsefly from a swatter.

  Savannah was waiting for Dirk in the parking lot, as promised, when he pulled the Buick into the space beside hers. She jumped out of the Mustang, the small, brown paper bag clutched tightly against her chest.

  The Buick had barely stopped rolling when she jumped into the passenger seat.

  Taking one look at her face, Dirk dropped all signs of pissy-ness and said, “Wow, this is the most excited I’ve seen you since our honeymoon night. What’s up?”

  She shoved the paper bag into his hand.

  He looked at it and said, “An evidence bag? Ol’ Eileen let you leave the laboratory with evidence? What about the chain of custody?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I’m a civilian now. So as far as you and Eileen and I are concerned, she handed this directly to you. Right?”

  He smirked as he opened the bag and looked into it. “Craft and corruption, right here in little San Carmelita. Go figure.”

  “I think that’s ‘graft’ not ‘craft.’ And illiterate or not, your terminology’s a bit harsh. I prefer to think of it as creative, harmless sneakiness that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in the overall scheme of things.”

  “Okay, okay. So this bag went directly from Eileen’s hands to mine. What’s inside here? It looks like one of those envelopes the patches came in.”

  “That’s exactly what it is,” she said, with a grim smile. “And the end that Jason cut off with scissors right before he applied it to his chest.”

  “And you’re so excited about this because—?”

  “Because somebody poked a needle through it.”

  Savannah could tell by the look in Dirk’s eye the instant that the significance of her news registered on him.

  “No kidding?”

  “Sugar, I might pull your leg about a lotta things. But cold-blooded, premeditated murder ain’t one of them.”

  “We ain’t signing your damned clipboard now, Bates,” Dirk told Officer Kenny, as he and Savannah strode through the reception area, past the check-in counter.

  “But you can’t do that! Everybody’s gotta sign in or else I’m gonna call the chief on you, Coulter. I’m going to tell him that you’re letting civilians in here right and left and—”

  Savannah paused just for a moment, long enough to blast him with her infamous blue lasers. “You go right ahead, you peckerhead. While you’re at it, you remind the chief that since this department fired me, I’ve solved more homicide cases for him than anybody on the job in this town. Except for Dirk here.”

  Dirk piped up, “Yes, and most of those I solved because she helped me out. So call the chief right now if you wanna. Hell, I’ll even dial it for you.”

  Bates just stood there fidgeting, staring down at the floor, clearing his throat.

  “That’s what I thought,” Dirk said. “Go back to lookin’ at your dirty pictures on the Internet and leave us alone. You’re interfering with a police officer in the lawful discharge of his duties.”

  After searching for Dr. Liu in the autopsy suite and not finding her, Savannah and Dirk finally located her in her office. It was rare to see the energetic coroner sitting behind a desk, doing paperwork. They were more accustomed to seeing her standing beside her autopsy table, wrist deep in gore.

  Savannah was always surprised at how feminine and demure Dr. Jen looked when seated at a desk—unless you looked down and saw her fishnet stockings.

  Deep in thought as she studied one of the folders spread out in front of her, the doctor didn’t notice them until Dirk rapped on the half-opened door.

  “Oh, hi,” she said. “Come on in.”

  As Savannah took the seat closest to the desk, Dr. Liu gave her an intense, searching look, and said, “Do we have good news or bad news?”

  Savannah glanced over at Dirk, who shrugged and said nothing.

  “Well, now,” Savannah said slowly, “I reckon that just depends on how you look at it.”

  Dr. Liu’s autopsy suite contained many of the same pieces of equipment that Eileen and her CSI lab used. So when the coroner
took Savannah and Dirk into the suite, Savannah headed straight for a magnifying lamp on the counter.

  It took only a couple of minutes for her to show the doctor the puncture hole in the cut-off end.

  Dirk leaned over the doctor’s shoulder, peering at the evidence through the lens as best he could without giving away the fact that this was his first time seeing it.

  Savannah couldn’t tell if the coroner was pleased or upset by this new development. The expression on her face as she stared down through the lens was both interested and grim.

  “Eileen ran a test, just now, on the inside of that envelope,” Savannah told her, after she had explained Jason’s habitual method for disposing of his patches.

  Dr. Liu looked up from the lamp. “And? Well, speak up. What did she find?”

  “Lido-Morphone,” Savannah replied.

  Liu looked disappointed. “Oh. That was to be expected. That’s what she found on the patches. Just like the rest of the medications, they were exactly what they were supposed to be.”

  “Lido-Morphone at twelve times the standard dosage,” Savannah said. “Twelve times the levels found in the other envelopes.”

  Dirk let out a whistle. “And the patch he was wearing that night came from that envelope. Or at least it’s a safe bet, considering that it was the only one without a used patch in it.”

  Dr. Liu shot him a quick, questioning look, and Savannah held her breath. He had to be careful to hide any surprise about this evidence which he supposedly had received directly from Eileen’s hand.

  “So, Doc, what do you think?” Savannah asked, creating a diversion. “Would twelve times the standard dosage of that stuff kill a person?”

  “Absolutely,” was the reply. “In fact, two or three times the standard dosage could have been fatal. Lido-Morphone is an extremely potent drug, a powerful opiate. When the pharmaceutical company first started distributing the patches, there was a slight flaw in the manufacturing. And it cost several people their lives before they figured it out.”

  “But you said all of the drug levels in his blood work came back within the normal range,” Dirk said. “Did the lab blow the test?”

  “No, I don’t believe they did,” Dr. Liu replied. “But the test was done on blood levels. With those falling within normal, nonlethal ranges, I had no reason to order a tissue test.”

  “Do you think a tissue test would’ve shown the elevated level?” Savannah asked.

  The doctor nodded thoughtfully. “It’s very possible. Especially a tissue specimen taken from the area where he placed the patch.”

  “Can you, um,” Savannah gulped, finding it difficult to even make the suggestion. “Can you do those tests, um, now?”

  “To get a tissue sample, the body would have to be exhumed.”

  “That’s an ugly thought,” Dirk added.

  Dr. Liu looked like she was going to be sick. “It certainly is—very painful for the loved ones. I never do it unless absolutely necessary. Where did Ryan and John say he was wearing the patch?”

  “Right over his breastbone,” Savannah said. “He had a condition called costo . . . costro . . .”

  “Costochondritis?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Okay. Then I’d need to excise the tissue in that area and have it tested.”

  The three of them stood, silently, as each considered the dark possibility of removing Jason Tyrone from his so-called eternal resting place.

  Finally, Dirk said, “There’s just no gettin’ around it. It’s gotta be done.”

  Savannah nodded. “There’s no logical, innocent reason why that envelope would have a perfect little hole in it.”

  “And twelve times the dosage as the other packets,” Dr. Liu added. She reached over and flipped off the lamp. “Yes,” she said. “It has to be done. Nobody’s going to murder a young man like that and get away with it. Not on my watch.”

  As Dirk drove the Buick down the tree-lined street that led to Leland Porter’s house, he told Savannah, “We really could’ve just made a phone call and asked him, instead of driving all the way out here. You know I don’t like the valley.”

  “I also know, just as you do, that there’s nothing like questioning somebody face-to-face. You catch all sorts of things you can’t see on the phone.”

  He grunted.

  “And besides, if he has that patch or some other bit of juicy evidence, do you really want him putting his ungloved mitts on it?”

  “Back in the old days, we all used our ungloved mitts when handling evidence. I remember when we didn’t have to put on a pair of hot, sweaty, sticky gloves just to blow our nose.”

  She chuckled. “Oh, right. The good old days—when we’d search for a subject for weeks or even months, trying to track down the DNA left on a murder weapon, only to find out it was the sweat from some rookie patrolman who’d played around with the bloody tire iron before the lab techs got there.”

  They pulled up to the front of Leland’s house, which now had a FOR SALE sign posted in the front yard.

  Glancing quickly up and down the street, Savannah said, “That’s the fourth house for sale on this block alone. Looks like the neighborhood’s going downhill.”

  “I thought it was already at the bottom of the hill, facedown in a ditch,” he said. “Pretty hard to go deeper than that.”

  They got out of the car, and not seeing Leland in the yard or garage, they walked up to the house.

  As they neared the front door, they could hear the distinct sound that cops know all too well—a man and woman arguing inside.

  Dirk elbowed Savannah. “Hey, been a time since you and me’s responded to a ten-sixteen. Years, I think.”

  “And I could’ve gone a few more years without one,” she replied, thinking back on nights when, as partners on the SCPD, they had responded to one domestic disturbance after another.

  “I don’t hear any furniture breaking.”

  “No crashing glass or screams.”

  “Just your average feud, I’d say.”

  “Not unlike the one we had today,” she said.

  “We had one today?”

  She gave him a flirty grin and a wink. “If we didn’t, we will . . . a couple of feisty old farts like us. It’s inevitable.”

  “Naw. You’re the feisty one. I’m the farter.”

  “Sadly, that is so, so true.”

  They had stepped up onto the porch, and Dirk had raised his fist to knock when the door flew open and a woman emerged.

  Her face was red, and so were her eyes. She was carrying a duffle bag in one hand and a small suitcase in the other. As she stomped past them, she didn’t even acknowledge their presence, but she shouted back at the house, “Do not call me, Lee! I mean it! And if you set foot on my mom’s property, I swear, I’ll call the cops on you!”

  She marched across the yard to a run-down sedan, got into it, and laid rubber peeling out of the driveway.

  As the car made its squealing retreat down the street, Savannah saw Leland Porter through the screen door. He was standing there, shirtless, wearing boxer shorts and a forlorn expression on his face.

  When he saw them, the depressed look disappeared, replaced with one of embarrassment.

  He grabbed a pair of jeans, slipped them on, then slid a tee-shirt over his head.

  When he opened the screen door, he gave them a sheepish nod and said, “Hi, guys. So-o-o, what’s happenin’?”

  In unison, Savannah and Dirk turned and looked over their shoulder at the now deserted street.

  “Oh, nothin’ much,” Dirk said in his best pseudo-jolly tone. “You?”

  Leland shrugged. “Oh, same ol’, same ol’. You know.”

  They all three chuckled. A little.

  “You wanna come inside?” he asked.

  “If you don’t mind,” Savannah said.

  “I don’t mind if you don’t mind the mess.”

  “We’ve seen messes,” Dirk replied, as Leland held the door open for them.


  Once they were inside and Savannah had looked around, she could see that it was, indeed, a disaster. But not in an untidy, dirty house way.

  Leland and his wife were moving.

  Stacked against the wall, cardboard boxes with their lids fastened with packing tape were labeled “living room” and “bathroom cupboard,” as well as “pots and pans.”

  Savannah didn’t envy them. It had been years since she had moved from one house to another. But she would never forget the aching muscles, the frazzled nerves, or the terrible mental anguish of not being able to find your salt shaker or your underwear.

  No, when you were moving, life was hardly worth living.

  “Moving, huh?” Dirk asked, stating the obvious.

  “Yeah. The bank foreclosed on us. My wife lost her job, and the limo business is in the toilet right now.”

  He glanced toward the door where his wife had just made her ignominious departure. “Financial stress—it’s hell on a marriage.”

  “That’s a tough break, man,” Dirk said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you married?” Leland asked.

  Dirk smiled from ear to ear. “I sure am. To her.” He pointed to Savannah.

  Leland seemed surprised. “Oh. I didn’t realize that. I thought you were partners, like cop partners.”

  “I’m a cop. She used to be,” Dirk explained. “And when she was, we were partners. Now we really are.”

  “But your last names are different.”

  Savannah gulped. That was one little issue that, so far, she and Dirk had managed to not quite discuss. She had decided to keep her maiden name. And although Dirk must have noticed that she was still using it, he hadn’t complained.

  “Um . . . we don’t want to keep you if you’re busy packing and all that awful stuff,” she said, “but we have a couple of questions, if you have time. It won’t take long.”

  “Sure. I’d like to get my mind off my moving—and my pissed-off wife—for a while. Fire away.”

  “We have a couple of questions about your garbage,” Dirk said.

  “My garbage?”