Crescent City Murder

by Alec Peche

  “Yes, I was walking toward the exit when I saw a NOLA number come up on my phone.”

  “Okay, we’ll see you shortly.”

  Jill tried to do a search on the police department while she was driven to their location. It was a large department for the size of the city and they were living with a consent decree which meant they'd had bad leadership at some time in their past. The building was north of the Superdome, located next to the courts, and was a standard issue government ugly beige building.

  Jill found herself in the detective division a short time later. The detectives waved her into a small conference room containing a file and they sat around the table.

  Briggs started, “We’ve been slow to collect evidence and investigate this murder. We’d like to fix that by making use of your services while you’re available.”

  “Did you make any calls and check out my reputation?”

  “Of course. We may have been slow to come on to this case, but we’re not stupid. We didn’t want to make the case worse than it was already was.”

  Jill just smiled, impressed with their diligence She would check out the consent decree if she had time later to get a sense of its impact on the transformation of the department.

  Briggs opened the file saying, “The poisoning is one of the most unusual murder weapons I've come across in my fifteen years on the job. I understand you have a toxicology background. If you were going to poison someone, would this be your murder weapon of choice?”

  “That's a curious question,” Jill said thinking about it for a moment, then she replied, “No.”

  “Why not?” asked Briggs.

  Jill thought about what she disliked about the nutmeg and replied, “It's too slow and inexact.”

  “How so?” asked Heyer.

  “Mr. Cheval was poisoned daily Monday thru Friday for perhaps a month. The murder weapon depended on him drinking water from a publicly available tank on the back of his truck. If I were going to kill someone with poison, I'd use a much swifter agent in a far more deserted location like administering a paralyzing agent in Death Valley. My victim's bones would be picked cleaned by animals long before he or she would be discovered.”

  “Remind us never to anger you,” Heyer said with a slight smile at the doctor's gruesome description.

  “Yes this agent of death tells you something about the killer. My first thought is a female,” Jill said.

  “Why,” asked Briggs. Jill couldn't decipher whether the detective agreed with her or not.

  Jill started to count the reasons, “One, poison deaths are more often female; two, this murder took patience something a female perpetrator is more likely to have, and three, the victim suffered for the past month with nausea and hallucinations and that also speaks to me as female.”

  Briggs looked at Heyer and Jill and said, “Remind me daily not to make you mad in case I forget. I'd rather just take a bullet than suffer for weeks thank you.”

  “Exactly,” Jill said with a smile, “Guys more often think of murder as a task to be done, a box to be checked. We women want you to suffer for your alleged offenses and we want to escape prosecution. So kill slowly and quietly.”

  “You're scaring me Dr. Quint.”

  “Hey, you're a gun-toting detective who has arrested his share of scary and psychotic people over the course of your career, I don't believe you,” Jill replied with a grin.

  With a smile, Heyer moved on to the folder.

  “The crime scene techs are taking apart the work truck. We debated fingerprinting it and in the end we just printed the water reservoir, there were too many prints otherwise.”

  “You might want to print the left and right side of the truck as well about four inches from the reservoir out. I'm a short female and I had to brace my hand on the side of the truck while I stretched to see where the top opening was, assuming our perpetrator is a short female.”

  Heyer wrote that in their notes while Briggs texted something.

  “Have you located a nutmeg expert?” Jill asked.

  “Is there such a thing?” Heyer asked.

  “I'm sure there is perhaps in the Caribbean or Indonesia where the plant is grown. There might be a botanical expert somewhere in the United States.”

  “Why do we need an expert?” Briggs asked though Jill could see he had reasons of his own and was just curious about her opinion.

  “Both Alicia and I were curious about the lack of nutmeg taste in the water. You know how strong nutmeg is for say french toast or eggnog. To be in concentration strong enough to poison, the water container should have smelled like eggnog, but it didn't to me. So beyond the knowledge of how to use it for poison, your perp needed to know how to get the scent out of it. I don't know enough about this botanical plant to know if it changes chemical composition as the scent changes, but I would call the botany department at one of your local universities as a starting point to answer that question.”

  “Are we looking for a nutmeg expert there?” Heyer asked.

  “I doubt if you would find one. The plant is a part of the evergreen family and I'd bet the university has an expert for that plant species,” Jill said and then a thought occurred to her. “If you would like, I could run down that clue for you. There's a university near my home – the University of California, Davis, that has a large botany department. I could speak to those experts about this question or any others you have.”

  “Is there a cost to using their expertise?” Briggs asked.

  “I wouldn't think so unless you need the person for court testimony. I'm an alumnus of the department in addition to my professional standing in the state and I'm pretty sure I can get your answers for free.”

  “I think it's unlikely that we would need this expert for court testimony as we likely have other evidence that would connect our perp. We can cross the bridge when we get to it. Call your expert Dr. Quint.”

  It took Jill awhile to bounce through the school directory to find the expert she needed. Then she had another hour to wait until that person would be available by phone.

  In the interim, she returned to the case file and asked, “What are your thoughts on a motive?”

  “One of the usual reasons – greed, unrequited love, or jealousy. I don't see overwhelming anger here as the murder took too long to be completed. Anyone powered by a murderous rage would be unlikely to sustain it for this four to six-week poisoning effort,” Briggs remarked.

  “I would look at jealousy or greed as I haven't come across unrequited love very often in my cases. What does his social media reveal and have you had time to look at his finances?”

  “We haven't got that far in the case – we've barely had time to move beyond the crime scene. I don't even know where nutmeg comes from beyond the spice aisle at my local grocery store,” Heyer said.

  “When I take on cases officially, I bring a team of experts with me. One is expert at finding finance problems in people and organizations. She happens to be arriving in town this evening and will give us a few hours of 'free' time to scratch the surface of his financial picture as well as those immediate family members, girlfriends, and employers. I have another team member that's a social media maven. She finds all kinds of interesting information on people on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, basically wherever someone has posted. She is not in town, but I'll see if she has time to donate a few hours of her service. My final team member is an expert interviewer; in the kindest method imaginable, she'll have granny confessing to stealing a stick of gum forty years ago. She'll not be able to assist as she's not on the scene. I leave town in a day and a half, so this is just an outline of the resources you'll have for say the next thirty-six hours.”

  “Dr. Quint, as an expert you know that it is improbable that we will solve this case in that time frame,” Briggs said.

  “I know. I was just giving you some details beyond the questions of nutmeg of how I can help. If you like I'll sign a confidentiality agreement so you can give me access to the vic
tim's personal information – name, address, date of birth, social security number, etc. I need that information to start collecting information beyond the poison involved in this case. That’s if you want my help in other areas.”

  The two detectives looked at each other wordlessly communicating as partners sometimes can, then Heyer said, “Let us run that by our Lieutenant and with his approval, I’ll be back with a form to have you sign.”

  The two detectives exited the room while Jill settled back for the call from California on the plant biology of nutmeg. She hoped the professor she’d tracked down would have her answers or could connect her to someone that did.

  Minutes later her phone rang with a call origin of Davis, California showing on her screen. It must be her expert.

  “Hello, this is Dr. Jill Quint.”

  “Hi, this is Ann Watson, professor of plant botany. I received a message I was supposed to call you Dr. Quint. What can I do for you?”

  “I have a B.S. from Davis in botany conferred many years ago. I’m also a forensic pathologist and I’m assisting the New Orleans police with a murder case. The victim was poisoned by nutmeg.”

  “Nutmeg? Wow, that’s unusual. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that used in a TV law and order episode. How does it kill?”

  “It causes hallucinations, vomiting, and eventual heart arrhythmia if you get enough of the acid in the fruit. The plant is a member of the evergreen family and I understand that’s your area of expertise.”

  “I’m the faculty expert on evergreens, yes, but I know next to nothing about nutmeg as it’s not a common evergreen under study by this university. Ask me about coastal redwoods or giant sequoias.”

  “I may ask for a recommendation for another expert, but perhaps you can answer a question for me. The nutmeg that was used to kill our victim was put in one of those standard water jugs you see on the backs of utility trucks that outdoor workers use to stay hydrated. However, the water didn’t have an odor of nutmeg. So my botany question is, do plants or evergreens change chemical composition as they lose their flavoring? We’re trying to figure out how you poison someone with nutmeg in drinking water without the victim tasting it.”

  “That’s a great question. I have a few grad students that I’ll be meeting with later today. Can we research your question and get back to you? We might be able to do a few lab experiments to verify how you would create tasteless nutmeg as I think they sell the whole nutmeg in the spice aisle at our local store. That’s the heart of your question, yes?”

  “Yes, exactly. How does a plant retain its identity to still be called nutmeg without having any flavor to it.”

  “I’ll get back to you and I thank you for asking the most interesting question of my week and really month; I love a good challenge.”

  The two women ended their call having made follow-up arrangements for the answer to Jill’s intriguing question.

  Chapter 10

  The two detectives returned to the conference room with a sheet of paper for Jill to sign on confidentiality. After she signed it, they discussed how they would handle Jo having access to Mr. Cheval’s personal data. Then they tossed out motive ideas but really it was too early in the case to zero in on it. The detectives would interview the victim’s son and his mother to see if they could learn anything from the two of them. Of course, the child’s mother would be the prime suspect, but for some reason Jill wasn’t thinking it was her. The two parents had never lived together and seemed to be sharing their child well based on what the grandmother said. There seemed to be neither the passion nor the sophistication required for this murder. The perpetrator needed to know that nutmeg could be used as a poison, how to use it, and how to make it tasteless.

  “My plant expert is supposed to call me back on the nutmeg taste question. They may buy nutmeg from their local grocery store and do some experiments on it, but at least we've got experts working on the question of how the poison was created. This is a sophisticated murder scenario and I doubt that it's a family member,” Jill said.

  “It's the first place we'll look especially given the victim's mother and child's mother are the closest relatives to the victim and poison is usually a female's choice of murder weapon, but I hear what you're saying about the sophistication of this murder,” Briggs said.

  “What about his job or his hobbies? What do we know about that? His mother didn't mention any hobbies to me as it seemed his calendar was full of work and caring for his son. I believe his job was that of an agriculture inspector,” Jill said.

  “It's on our list to explore. As he was a state employee, there's a job description on the state's website, but we'll need to speak to his supervisor and co-workers as routine detective work,” Heyer noted.

  “It's an interesting connection – an agriculture specialist and a death by poison from a plant,” Jill said. “I think I'll spend some time looking at that connection, and with my botany degree it's an area I have some expertise in. When you interview the co-workers, I'd love to be there. Are you doing that today?”

  “We have to as tomorrow's Saturday and we're not likely to find the people we need at the job site. In fact, we probably should head there now as we have at least an hour drive to Baton Rouge and we need to notify our fellow departments that we're stepping into their territory. Give us fifteen minutes to make arrangements and then you can join us,” Heyer said.

  On schedule, Jill found herself in the back of a patrol unit on Interstate 10 heading northwest. When she lived in Los Angeles, she'd been on this same Interstate just two-thousand miles to the west. The road was in better shape with less traffic than the version she'd driven in southern California. Soon they were out of New Orleans and close to agriculture fields.

  “What kinds of crops does the state grow?”

  “Ah, I don't know,” replied Heyer. “None of my family is into farming and we've never had to know the answer to that question as a part of a crime scene investigation.”

  Jill used her cellphone to look up the question.

  “Hmm, your state website says it's sugar cane. That's followed by rice, soybeans, cotton, and corn for grain,” looking out the window at the passing crops. Reading further she noted that a farm they passed was likely growing sugarcane based on the preparation of the ground and current planting. It was planting time for sugarcane. She wondered what crops her victim had specialized in and hoped they would pass a cotton plant as she’d never seen it growing. Soon the farms were ending and they were arriving on the edge of Baton Rouge. With GPS providing directions they soon arrived at Mr. Cheval’s office building.

  From the front seat Detective Briggs said, “We’re meeting his supervisor, Aimee Fontaine, and I expect she’ll direct us to his coworkers and friends at work. Hopefully, they’re in the office or we might end up making some house calls. We may be later than expected getting you back to the city.”

  Jill nodded as she exited the car, and added, “Feel free to introduce me as Dr. Jill Quint, a forensic pathologist. Ms. Fontaine doesn’t have to know that I’m not your local coroner.”

  “Sounds like a plan, we’d rather not be distracted by explaining your role in this investigation.”

  A short time later they were shown into a conference room by Aimee Fontaine. As they entered, Detective Heyer requested, “Before we get too involved in our conversation we would appreciate you requesting any staff that you would consider co-workers or friends of Mr. Cheval to stay here so we can interview them. It will save us and them the trouble of being disturbed at home.”

  Ms. Fontaine left the room to make the employee notifications and returned saying, “I made contact with all but Keith who is off today but lives in New Orleans. He took the day off to do something at his child’s school so you should be able to find him later.”

  The detectives noted his contact information and moved on to begin questioning Ms. Fontaine after stating that Mr. Cheval was a victim of murder.

  “Were you aware that Mr. Cheval wasn't feeli
ng well over the last month?” Detective Briggs asked.

  “Yes as he took time off to see a few doctors for severe nausea. I think he may have called in sick one day as well. The last time I spoke with him, the doctors hadn't been able to determine the cause of his nausea.”

  “Do you know who fills the water jugs carried on your state trucks?” Jill asked.

  Ms. Fontaine looked sick when she realized why Jill asked the question. She said is a voice that had lost its power, “Do you mean to say he was made ill by the water jug? We have a department procedure that calls for the driver to fill their own jug as well as to empty it at the end of the shift and leave the cap off overnight, so mold or other agents don't grow in the water. Did mold kill him?”

  “No,” replied Detective Heyer. “You seem to know that particular policy well.”

  “I've been in a supervisor position for just over six months. Before that I did the same job Julien did including filling my own water jug. We weren't assigned the same vehicle every day – we have more staff than cars so employees vary their days in the office and in the field so that the cars are always utilized.”

  “Has any other employee reported being nauseated?” Jill asked.

  Ms. Fontaine thought for a few moments, then shook her head, “No, none of my employees have experienced what Julien did. I've had a few absences related to colds mostly in parents of young children and I have an employee who's going through chemo at the moment and doesn't feel good some days due to that.”

  “Can we have a copy of your water jug policy,” asked Heyer.

  “Sure,” replied Aimee. “Does that mean that whatever killed Julien was in the water jug on his truck?”

  “Yes you could assume that ma'am,” replied Briggs.

  “Oh! Was it a quick acting poisoning then?”

  “How did you arrive at that conclusion?”

  The supervisor paused, worrying about the suspicion in the detective's voice, and said with a question in her voice, “Because no one else among my staff is dead.”