Reilly 04 - Breach of Promise (41 page)

In the van, he paused for a moment to consider his options. Nina for lunch, that was a given.

He would be heading home tonight. A little Monday morning gambling? Too decadent. A run in the thin mountain air? It would be good for him, but . . . it would be more interesting to check on the silly little thing that was nagging at him.

From the bin between the two front seats, he removed a Lake Tahoe telephone directory he had permanently borrowed from a motel a couple of years before. Flipping to the county government offices pages, he browsed for El Dorado, finding the office he wanted on Johnson Boulevard.

He dialed a number, asking for directions and a fifteen minute appointment, which was, a little to his surprise, granted.

The medical examiner had his office in the same complex as the courthouse where he needed to meet Nina later. How convenient.

“Nice to have things quiet again,” said Sandy when Nina finally climbed down from the Annapurna of papers on her desk for a midmorning cup of coffee. “Everyone’s coming in late.” She stood in the doorway of Nina’s office, her own fresh coffee in hand.

“Everyone’s pooped,” said Nina. The last months had been hell. They deserved to sleep late. “Did I thank you for holding this place together while I was so swamped?”

“Yes, but feel free to thank me again.” The long line of Sandy’s lips extended slightly.

“And you’re due for a big bonus when my fee comes in.”

A quiver of her eyelid suggested that Sandy found this very exciting news. “Should we start looking for bigger offices?”

“No.”

“Why not? You’ll want to expand a little. Not enough to upset our little applecart here, of course, but a little. Since the trial ended, you look like a ghost rattling her chains. You need a project.”

“There’s always a letdown after a trial but I’m not sure expanding the business is what I should do.”

Sandy stared at her. “You have some other plan you forgot to mention?”

“Maybe I’ll take some time off. Maybe a year.”

Sandy sucked in her breath. “So it comes to this,” she said.

“Comes to what?”

“Money. That’s what it does . . . it gets inside people. They forget who they are.” She seemed to be recalling something unpleasant. “I should have known. Since the beginning of this case, you’ve been compromising like crazy.”

Right there was a reason to close up shop and move on: Sandy’s big nose. “Don’t be silly,” Nina said, trying to be patient. “The money only makes it possible for me to examine my options.”

“You would miss work.”

Nina could think of many good reasons not to work today, tomorrow, or ever again, but in the hard light of Sandy’s dark eyes they appeared rather insubstantial to her at the moment. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just don’t want to make any sudden decisions.”

This time, Sandy studied her without anger. “Well,” she said finally, “if you’re looking to keep things small and invest your windfall temporarily, say the word. I’ve got this ex-brother-in-law with Charles Schwab. . . .”

“When the money comes in, it will seem more real to me, Sandy. Until then, I’m just spinning spiderwebs.” She looked at the papers on her desk and thought, I can’t believe it really will come in. That’s the trouble.

“Something else is on your mind, isn’t it?” Sandy asked. “Is this about the juror that died?” She had an unerring ability to press on the sore spot, a talent she shared with Paul.

“No, there’s nothing else,” Nina lied. She rustled a few papers and took a final drink from her cup, setting it down on the desk ceremoniously. “I want to touch base with Lindy. We’ve hardly talked since the verdict. Try to reach her at her friend Alice’s or at her message number, okay?”

Sandy shrugged and went back to her desk.

Nina returned to her work in a state of emotional clutter. The weekend with Paul had been good, but things were never easy with him. He was so closely tied to her in every way, physically, emotionally, and even at work. She hoped he would forget about the juror. Wright was dead and the trial was over.

She hadn’t even had time to miss Bob, who had gone on a field trip financed by his grandpa to the East Coast on Sunday and would be visiting the Bureau of Engraving with his classmates sometime today. A cup of coffee gave her back the illusion of clear thinking, and she concentrated on some pending files that needed her attention. With Lake Tahoe spread-eagled out the window in front of her, she allowed herself five luxurious minutes to weave images in her mind of exotic lands and freedom from financial worry before she needed to pack her bag, resume her normal duties, and head back to the courthouse.

“You’re the fellow here about Wright,” said Dr. Clauson, studying Paul through Coke-bottle lenses. A skinny, balding man, he wore a wrinkled, short-sleeved shirt over trousers that were shiny at the knees.

Paul had never seen the medical examiner’s office before. In his mind, Doc Clauson forever loitered in the basement morgue at Placerville, where he had first seen him.

Clauson stepped behind a battle-scarred oak desk littered with gum wrappers, wadded-up bits of trash, and a hundred file folders. “Do I know you?”

“We’ve met. I work with Nina Reilly.”

“Her?” said Clauson, inserting a piece of Juicy Fruit into his mouth. “She gonna drag me into another mess? She send you?”

“I’m here to satisfy my own curiosity. Nothing to do with her.”

Clauson liked that answer, Paul could tell. Having survived a few run-ins with Nina himself, Paul could empathize.

“Well, it’s just a run-of-the-mill thing,” said Clauson, pulling a file out of a stack on the floor beside his desk.

He read for a moment, then scanned further as he spoke. “One of the bailiffs dialed nine-one-one. By the time the paramedics arrived, Wright had suffocated. They tried intravenous epinephrine, but it was too late.”

“Dr. Clauson,” Paul began.

“Call me Doc.”

“Okay, Doc. I’m curious about what it says on his death certificate.”

“Anaphylactic shock“—Clauson nodded—”with an immunologic component. That means as opposed to anaphylactoid shock related to nonspecific release of mediators.” He tipped back in his chair, as if relishing the chance to go over the case, and spoke in the choppy sentences Paul remembered. “Only the second case I’ve seen. First one was a woman; died from kissing a man who’d just polished off a bag of chocolate-covered peanut butter candies. Dead in a couple of minutes. Killed by a kiss. Sounds incredible, I know, but it happened.”

“Would you mind telling me in general terms what anaphylactic shock is?”

“Sure. Basically, you introduce a foreign agent, an antigen, into an organism, and the organism begins an all-out war against itself. Shuts down breathing or shuts down circulation, or both.”

“What causes it?”

“In this case, legumes. Peanuts are the most popular legume. A peanut is not a nut, properly speaking. We think some people become allergic because they are exposed to these tricky foods before an immature system can handle it properly. Probably mothers shouldn’t be eating peanuts while they nurse their babies. Kids under three shouldn’t eat peanut butter.”

Paul mentally totted up the thousands of peanut butter sandwiches he had eaten as a boy. “But not everyone who is exposed young develops an allergy.”

“True. Most don’t.”

“Are there other allergies besides the one to peanuts that can be deadly?”

“Of course, in susceptible people. Spider venom, pollen, antibiotics, vitamins. Most of his life, my father couldn’t eat apples. We now know that an apple reaction can be related to a birch pollen or ragweed allergic response. During pollen seasons, similar proteins in fresh fruit cause reactions in a compromised immune system. But that’s an odd one. And you’ve heard of allergies to bee stings, right?”

“Sure.”

“Can be life-threatening. Good idea to watch what you eat from the time you’re very young,” said Clauson, patting a stomach that had thickened slightly since the days when he sucked on Camels as if they were M&M’s.

“You did an autopsy on Wright?”

“Yep.”

“Mind going into detail for me?”

“Classic case of anaphylaxis. Laryngeal edema, hoarseness—he was still calling out when the medics got there, but not for long. Stridor—that’s harsh breathing. Angioedema, that’s a deep edematous cutaneous process. But look here, I’ve got a picture.” He handed a large, glossy color photo over to Paul.

“Man,” Paul said. “What a way to go.”

Clauson laid the picture on the desk in front of him and turned toward Paul. He crooked a thin finger and pointed.

“It’s the most characteristic external feature of this condition—giant hives.” He looked at his report and read, rolling the medical terms officiously around in his mouth. “Cutaneous wheals with erythematous, serpiginous borders and white centers.” Putting the sheet aside he said, “Discrete borders, but you can see here, so rampant he swelled up head to toe. The eyes are the worst.”

“How fast could that develop?”

“In this case, minutes. In some cases, people die in seconds. If he’d lived to get treated, those big red clumps would have disappeared over the next few days.”

“He say anything?”

“Throat too swollen. Now, there’s two ways to die with this thing. The angioedema—which he’d feel like a lump that blocks his breathing passages—can kill by causing respiratory insufficiency. Second way is vascular collapse, which can occur with or without hypoxia. The angioedema did him in. Way I could tell was the visceral congestion without a shift in the distribution of blood volume. Also, the lungs showed hyperinflation—that’s something you can see with the naked eye and with a microscope, common in fatal cases with clinical bronchial obstruction. I’ve got a photo here.”

“If he had gotten his kit and given himself a shot, what would have happened?”

“He would have calmed down all over and gone on with the show.”

“This is what I don’t understand. If he knew he was so dangerously allergic to peanuts, why wasn’t he more careful? Why did he eat them?”

“Obviously, he had no idea he was eating peanuts.” Clauson read from his notes. “Last meal was lunch in the jury room. Vegetable chow mein, egg rolls, and fortune cookie. Didn’t make it far into the cookie part. Only a trace in the stomach.”

“They put peanuts in chow mein?”

“Nope.”

“In the egg rolls?”

“Nope.”

“The cookie?”

“Nope.”

“I assume you talked to the caterer?”

“A restaurant on Ski Run Boulevard. Owner swears there were no peanuts in the food. Wright called there before to check with them and ask them particularly not to use any in his meal.”

“I don’t get it.”

If eyes as colorless as apricot pits could be said to twinkle, Clauson’s did. “I said the same thing to myself a few days ago. Then I went home. I go home at night, not much is happening. Tube, bed, let the cat out. I’m a bachelor. Women don’t like my work.”

“Yeah?”

“Used to smoke like a fiend. Not as good as a wife, but Mr. Butts kept me company of a sort.”

Clauson chewed his gum ruminatively. Paul waited for him to get to his point.

“Took a course at the college on cooking Asian food to meet some women. Didn’t find a wife, but learned to cook.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Decided to make myself some Szechuan chicken and homemade egg rolls.”

“Yes?”

“Looked at the bottle in my hand. Peanut oil. Lots of people cooking Chinese use peanut oil when they pinch the egg rolls shut.”

“But . . . isn’t it the protein in the peanuts that causes the reaction?”

“Oil will do it for some people.”

“Ah-hah!”

“What I said,” said Clauson.

“Did you ask the cook?”

“Swears she didn’t.”

“You think she’s lying.”

Clauson’s shoulders shook slightly, as if he had been tickled. “Gotta be. The food wasn’t bad enough to kill otherwise.” He chuckled at his joke, then looked sober. “Here’s negligence that caused a death, but nobody’s gonna pursue it. Guy with a time bomb in his system like that should have always brought his own lunch.”

“You think they’re afraid they’ll be sued.”

“That’s right, but I’m satisfied I know what happened. Done in by egg rolls.”

“You sure the cook was lying?” Paul said

Clauson sighed. Paul had apparently tried his patience just a bit. “There’s no question about the cause of death. You take the history of the patient before making a diagnosis. He’s been allergic since he was about three.”

“But this time he died.”

“That was almost a predictable outcome of another exposure. Just a couple of months ago, he took a trip to the hospital after eating ice cream that listed almonds in the ingredients, but had sneaked in peanuts as filler and flavoring without changing the labeling. Now that was a hard source to trace. This one is obvious, whether or not the restaurant takes responsibility.”

Paul had had his fifteen minutes. Doc Clauson jumped up, saying he had to go.

“Enjoyed talking with you,” he said. “Nobody takes much interest in death by natural causes, even interesting causes, except maybe the insurance people, and they’re only interested in how much they’re going to owe the grieving family.”

“It’s fascinating stuff, how many paths lead to death,” said Paul. “Oh, Doc,” he said, as Clauson put a hand on the door, “just one more thing.”

Clauson had to check his notes one last time for an address.

Nina waited for Paul on her favorite bench in the yard outside the courthouse where she could soak up sun, listening to the wind lifting the branches of the trees around her, insects buzzing, and the distant din of the highway a mile away. Closing fluorescent-scarred eyes, she drifted in dark, mindless bliss for several minutes.

“Waiting, waiting,” a voice said. The teddy bear had come back, the one Paul had given her when he proposed a long time ago, the one that spoke with his voice. But how could he be here? He lived in her front closet with her ski boots, his nagging tone for the time being smothered under a down jacket. “Wake up, sleepyhead.” A hand, not a furry paw, took hold of her side and shook.