Bitter Business (25 page)

The security guard who occupied the grimy booth at the entrance to the parking lot waved us in without question, recognizing either Detective Blades, his official white Chevy Cavalier, or both. We parked behind the building across from the loading dock, where two men in orange coveralls lounged in front of the overhead doors, lifted and gaping, no doubt awaiting the mortal remains of Violet Kramer. I fell into step beside the homicide detective, who greeted them both by name as we passed.

Inside, the building was a maze of hallways and stairwells that seemed to have been connected at random in a clear case of municipal architecture gone wrong. The walls were painted the exact same depressing shade of mossy green I’d noticed at police headquarters; the city must buy the paint in quantity, probably from some alderman’s brother-in-law in the paint business. The sickly smell of formaldehyde hung in the air. Beneath it lingered the suggestion of unbelievable stench.

Blades, obviously at home, led the way up a flight of stairs and down a long corridor punctuated by bulletin boards and office doors. From behind a few of them I heard voices, but no ringing of phones, which struck me as odd until I remembered that it was Sunday. The homicide detective stopped and knocked on one of the doors at the far end of the hall. Beside it on the wall was a brown nameplate that read DR. J. GORDON, ASSISTANT MEDICAL EXAMINER.

As we entered, the doctor looked up from a file on the desk in front of her and smiled.

Dr. Julia Gordon was a small woman, tiny in fact, with a short cap of blond curls and translucent skin that made her look, despite the authority of her lab coat, more like a novice in a convent than a person who made her living taking dead bodies apart with a surgical saw. She reached over the top of her desk to shake my hand and pronounced herself grateful that I’d come to see her.

Her office was small, crammed with books and periodicals. Even though it was only forty degrees out, an ancient air conditioner clanked in the window. Behind her on the wall hung diplomas and a framed photograph of two pretty blond girls hugging a Labrador retriever. Beside them was a large poster of gunshot wounds made by bullets of various calibers, illustrated with color photographs.

“I’m the pathologist who performed the autopsies on Cecilia Dobson and Dagny Cavanaugh,” she said, after

Blades introduced us. “As you know, when the toxicology reports came back both women had lethal levels of cyanide in their blood.”

“Were the levels similar in both cases?” I asked.

“They were slightly higher in the Dobson woman, but I’d say both cases were in the same range—very high.... Cyanide poisoning is actually quite difficult to detect on autopsy,” Dr. Gordon continued. “The signs are easy to miss. The blood that normally pools in the chest cavity after death is a very bright, cherry red in the case of death from cyanide poisoning. But you also see that same red color after a body has been refrigerated for more than a few hours. Unfortunately, last week we were very busy and both bodies were stored for some time before autopsy. You may also have heard about the scent of bitter almonds being present in the case of cyanide poisoning. The smell is much less pronounced in real life than it is in fiction, and indeed, not everyone can smell it. There’s usually only one person in any medical examiner’s office who’s good at picking up that smell. In our office that’s Dr. Margolick, but last week we had two cases going in the decomp room, and to be perfectly honest, it would be a miracle if anyone could smell anything else.” She clasped her hands on the desk in front of her like a schoolteacher. “So, Detective Blades tells me that you were present at the time of both deaths. That’s quite a coincidence.”

“Not really. I’m the attorney for Superior Plating and Specialty Chemicals, the company where both women worked. I had a meeting with Dagny Cavanaugh the day that Cecilia Dobson died. The two of us were meeting in a conference room in another part of the plant. We went to pick up some figures from Dagny’s office. When we got there we found Cecilia on the floor.”

“And she wasn’t breathing when you found her?”

“No. I also checked for a pulse. There was none. Now, of course, I realize that she was probably already dead when I started CPR.”

“Yes,” Dr. Gordon agreed matter-of-factly, “with the level of cyanide we found, I’d be surprised if death didn’t proceed very quickly. If she’d taken a lower dose, you’d see a much more gradual progression of dizziness, gasping for breath, headache, nausea, and vomiting. Then, when blood pressure dropped, there’d be a period when the victim would experience unconsciousness and convulsions. But at the level of concentration that we detected in both victims, I’d be surprised if either of the two women was conscious for more than a minute or two after being poisoned.”

“Dagny Cavanaugh was alive when I got there,” I said, suddenly struck by the realization that if I’d gotten out of the car and gone looking for her a few minutes earlier, I might have found her... found her doing what? Taking poison?

“There’s nothing you could have done,” Dr. Gordon assured me, as if reading my mind. “With the amount of cyanide that we found in her bloodstream, even if you’d immediately administered amyl nitrate—which is the first part of the antidote—I doubt you could have saved her.”

“But that means she must have taken the poison right before I got there.”

“Yes. That’s why I wanted to speak to you. I was wondering whether you noticed anything in the room. It was an office of some kind, I believe?”

“It was her office—Dagny Cavanaugh’s.”

“Did you notice anything unusual? Especially anything that might have struck you as being the same both times. A smell of some kind perhaps?”

“No,” I said, trying hard to remember. “I honestly don’t recall anything out of the ordinary.” Except for the bodies on the floor, I thought to myself.

“Was there anything to eat or drink visible in the room either time?”

I thought before I answered. “No. But I can’t say that I would have noticed the first time. With Cecilia Dobson, it was all a blur. I was so focused on trying to resuscitate her. I also went to the hospital with her, so I didn’t have that much time to notice anything in the room. After Dagny died, I stayed at her office, but I honestly didn’t see anything other than what you’d expect.”

“A cup of coffee? A glass of water perhaps?”

“I didn’t notice,” I replied, chafing with frustration. “Do you think that maybe the poison was in something she drank?”

Dr. Gordon pursed her lips, raised her eyebrows, and let out a long sigh.

“Frankly, Ms. Millholland, I don’t know what to think. The stomach contents of both women have been tested for cyanide. In both cases the tests came back negative. Detective Blades will tell you, when I do an autopsy I’m very thorough. I go over every inch of skin with a magnifying lens, and in both cases I found no cuts or abrasions and certainly nothing that even remotely resembled a needle puncture. I’ve got to be honest with you. I have two women who without a doubt died from a lethal level of cyanide in their bloodstreams. But I have absolutely no idea how that poison came to be in their bodies.”

21

I asked Joe Blades if he’d be able to drop me at the office. He asked if I’d mind if we made a stop on the way at Superior Plating and Specialty Chemicals. He explained that he had some questions he wanted to ask me about the way things were when Cecilia Dobson and Dagny Cavanaugh died. Besides, he added smoothly, Elliott Abelman was going to be there. Leave it to a homicide detective to play Cupid at a crime scene.

The Superior Plating parking lot was empty save for the crime-lab van and a couple of Chevy Cavaliers, both identical to the one Blades was driving. We followed the sound of voices into the administrative wing of the building. Just outside the door of Dagny’s office a crime-lab technician was taking down the yellow police-line-do-not-cross tape, wadding it up in his hand as he yanked it from the door frame. Inside, it looked like a cop convention. Elliott Abelman stood in the middle of the room deep in conversation with a burly man with a salt-and-pepper mustache and dark eyes that looked like they’d seen it all.

“What the hell do you expect?” complained the man.

“No matter what we do, the physical evidence is going to be fucked up. Hell, this room wasn’t even sealed until after the second death, and even then the paramedics probably trampled anything that might have been of use to us. And if that wasn’t enough, I just finished talking to the janitor, who tells me that a cleaning crew went through here every night as usual until the Cavanaugh broad turned up dead.”

“Well, they sure as hell didn’t do much,” someone else observed from across the room, a heavyset man in a crumpled raincoat who was examining something in his latex-gloved hand. “We’re still finding the Dobson woman’s prints all over everything today.”

“So what’s the good word from the delectable Dr. Gordon?” demanded the plainclothesman with Elliott as he spotted Blades.

“Nothing new. They both definitely died of cyanide poisoning, but nobody has idea one how it got into them.” In the bright light of the office Joe Blades looked, if anything, more exhausted than he had earlier that morning. His skin was so pale the freckles seemed to fairly leap off of it. “Kate Millholland,” he said, turning to acknowledge me, “I’d like you to meet Tyrone Hackner, the department’s ace physical-evidence expert and resident curmudgeon. Elliott Abelman you already know.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Hackner grumbled, enfolding my hand briefly in his enormous paw. From Elliott I received a wink and a smile.

“Miss Millholland is the witness I was telling you about. She’s the one who was present at the time of both deaths.”

“Okay, young lady,” Hackner rumbled, “then what I want to hear from you is how the bodies were lying when you saw them.”

“They were both facedown, with their heads toward the desk—”

“I know that. What I’m curious about is the angle.”

“What do you mean?”

Tyrone Hackner looked me over, no doubt assessing my flannel trousers and cashmere pullover for what he was about to ask.

“Could you get down on the floor and show me the exact position in which Cecilia Dobson was lying?”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Elliott interjected quickly. Blades flashed him a look, but it passed so quickly I didn’t have time to decipher it.

“That’s okay,” I replied. I was willing to do anything that might help. I walked toward the desk, gauging the distance, and then got down on the floor. “I think this is where she was lying.” I turned over on my stomach and arranged my arms and legs. “She was wearing a short skirt and it was hitched up over her left hip. Her underwear was showing.”

“Any evidence of sexual assault?” Hackner asked Blades.

“No. Not in either case,” Blades replied.

The rough nap of the carpet pressed into my face. I smelled the acrid stench of old vomit. Once the police had sealed the room, no one must have been allowed in to clean. When all of this was over they’d probably have to replace the carpet.

“Are you sure that’s the direction she was facing?” Hackner demanded.

“Yes,” I replied. Elliott got down on his haunches and held out his hand to help me up. “Why is it so important?” I asked, brushing the lint from my sweater.

“It’s not so much a question of where they ended up,” Blades answered, “but where they came from.” Tyrone Hackner was already out in the hall giving orders to the crime-lab techs. “From your initial statement it was clear that both women were trying to get to the desk when they collapsed—presumably to use the telephone to call for help. But up until now we’d all assumed that they’d come into the office from the hall. Assuming that Dr. Gordon is correct and only a very short time elapsed between the time the poison entered their bloodstreams and the moment they collapsed, it makes a big difference in narrowing down where they might have been poisoned. From what you just showed us, it looks like both women were coming out of the bathroom, not the hall.” Two evidence technicians appeared with their gear and went into the small bathroom at the end of the office opposite Dagny’s desk. I hadn’t noticed it before. From the open door I could see them methodically taking every item from inside the medicine chest above the sink and putting them, one by one, into individual glassine bags.

“It’s too bad,” Elliott remarked. “From what Tyrone says, the bathroom is the one place the cleaning crew actually did anything. When they dusted for prints, the only ones they found were Dagny’s.”

“So you think the poison was in the bathroom?” I demanded.

“It’s as good a place as any to start looking,” Blades replied, stroking his beard. “Do you want to show Kate where the bulk chemicals are stored, Elliott?”

“Sure,” said Elliott as his friend the detective tossed him a bunch of keys.

“You don’t have to worry about touching anything,” said Blades as we went out the door. “We’re all done dusting for prints.”

Elliott led me out the door and down the hall.

“How was your grandmother’s birthday party?” he asked.

“Very nice.”

We walked through the reception room and through the doors that Eugene Cavanaugh had first taken me through on my tour of the plant. On the other side of the wall that separated the manufacturing floor from the administrative offices, Elliott stopped at what looked like the door to a broom closet. It was covered with the same crummy plastic paneling as the rest of the wall and had a cheap brass doorknob, the kind with a lock in the middle.