Point Blank

by Catherine Coulter

  Ruth lightly patted her arm. “Thanks for your help, Helen.”

  Helen said, “Erin didn’t have any roommates. She lived alone.” She handed Dix a card.

  They watched her walk into Dr. Holcombe’s office and speak quietly to him for a moment as they left. The air outside felt heavy, and cold.

  “What’s on the card Helen gave you?” Savich asked Dix when they’d climbed back into the Range Rover.

  “Gloria Brichoux Stanford’s cell phone number and address. We’ll visit her tomorrow. Let’s take thirty minutes now to stop by Erin Bushnell’s apartment, see if we can find anything.”

  “Some torn-up love letters, signed, might be nice,” Ruth said.

  “I’ll settle for some nice clear fingerprints,” Dix said. A couple minutes later he turned onto Upper Canyon Road, only three blocks from campus. It was an old neighborhood lined with brightly painted wooden houses, some of them Victorians. Ancient snow-laden oak trees filled the deep yards.

  “She lives on the second floor. There it is,” Dix said.

  There was no answer when Dix rang the bell. He knocked, waited, and knocked again. He yelled out his name. Still no answer. He tried the doorknob, and it opened.

  He said over his shoulder, “This trust in your fellow man is good for us. Let’s go.”

  It was a large house, an apartment on each of three floors. There was no number on the second-floor apartment. He turned the knob. The door opened. “I can’t believe she didn’t lock her door,” Ruth said. “The front door’s one thing, but this is asking for trouble of a bad kind.”

  Sherlock said, “Maybe the killer took her here and he was the one who left the door unlocked.”

  They walked into a large, high-ceilinged living room with cushioned window seats lining a turret to the right, facing the street. The living room connected to a dining alcove and a kitchen on the other side of a long serving counter.

  Even though no lights were on, it was bright and made brighter by colorful throw pillows and pastel walls covered with huge posters, mostly of Brad Pitt.

  “Okay,” Dix said. “Let’s split up and check it out quickly. My deputies will be here to check for fingerprints when they’re done at the crime scene.”

  They all knew what they were doing, and in ten minutes they were together again in the living room.

  “She needed to go food shopping,” Ruth said. “There was a packet of carrots and a carton of nonfat milk in the refrigerator. I didn’t want to smell it. Only junk in the junk drawer, no memos, no notes.”

  The living room, the single bedroom, and the bathroom looked almost unlived in.

  But not Erin Bushnell’s music room. It was shuttered and small, but they could tell this was the room where the young woman spent all her time. There were piles of neatly arranged musical scores for violin and orchestra. On a chair sat an open violin case with her violin tucked snugly inside it. Sherlock eased it out of its case, held it in her open hands. She said, “It was made by Hart and Sons in London in the nineteenth century. You rarely see these. It’s exquisite.”

  Sherlock glanced through the music, didn’t see anything that didn’t belong.

  There was no address book, no diary, no stray pieces of paper with notes or names for appointments. She did have a small laptop and Dix took it with him. “I’ll have our resident Weenie check it out.” At Ruth’s raised eyebrow, he smiled. “His name is Allen. Everyone calls him Weenie. He actually likes it.”

  Ruth closed Erin’s apartment door behind them. “The only thing really personal about the place was her music and her violin.”

  “I think we’ll have to look elsewhere for why she died,” Dix said. As he pulled away from the old house, he added, “Okay, we’ll have to knock off for the night. The boys will be wondering where I’m hiding you guys. I hate to have them at home alone for too long after school. They’re beyond excited that you FBI agents will be at the house again.”

  “Yep, I guess they’re the Big Dogs now at school,” Ruth said. “Bet they promised all their friends they’d dig secrets out of us tonight.”

  Dix honked his horn to alert a car turning in front of him. He said to Ruth, “Be careful Brewster doesn’t pee on you again.”

  Ruth grinned. “I know to be careful now. I couldn’t go out to dinner with any of my admirers if he did. And I may be wearing the last of Rob’s clothes.”

  Dix’s cell rang as he was negotiating the Range Rover through a three-foot pile of snow blocking the middle of Stumptree Lane. Someone had put a ball of snow on top of it with a carrot for a nose. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Rob and Rafer were involved in that stunt.” He answered, “Yeah? Sheriff Noble here.”

  He listened for a moment, pulled the Range Rover to the side of the road, and said, “Tell me you’re kidding. I really need you to.” He listened awhile longer, rang off, and slid the phone back in his jacket pocket. He said, “That was the medical examiner, Dr. Himple. He says Erin Bushnell had a drug in her system that he identified with his spectroscopy unit. He thinks it’s a chemical called BZ, and it may have incapacitated her. Then the murderer slid a thin blade or a needle into her chest.” Dix drew a deep breath. “But it’s what he did to her after he killed her—damnedest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

  Ruth leaned over and touched his arm. “What, Dix, what did he do?”

  “He embalmed her.”

  CHAPTER 15

  SAVICH SPRINKLED SALT on his corn on the cob, bit into it, and sighed with pleasure. “Rob, we liked the snowman you guys built in the middle of Stumptree Lane. That old carrot was a good touch—it would have brought most cars, except your dad’s, to a humiliated stop. He plowed the Range Rover right through it, probably would have eaten the carrot if it hadn’t looked so gnarly.”

  The boys exchanged looks before Rob cleared his throat. “Well, it was a whole bunch of us, you know? A lot of kids from the sophomore class walk home near there,” he said with a look toward their father. “It really wouldn’t be fair to single any of them out, Dad. The thing is, they closed down school at three and none of us wanted to go sledding again. The snow on Breaker’s Hill is really trashed, you know?”

  “You guys want another hot dog?” Dix asked them, and both boys smiled at him, limp with relief.

  Rob asked carefully, a potato chip suspended an inch from his mouth, “You’re not pissed, Dad? You’re not going to ground us?”

  “Hey, Earth to Dad,” Rafe said, and snapped his fingers toward his father.

  “What? Oh sorry, the snow pile. I remember we did the same thing once only it was in Queens, and the beat cop took half a dozen of us down to the precinct house to scare us. My dad tanned my butt. You know, you guys aren’t too old for me to hide.”

  Rob said, “We’re too old, Dad, really. Besides, you always say that then never do.” He grinned. “If you really want to teach us a lesson, why don’t you toss us in jail for a night? That would be the ultimate punishment, you know?”

  “Punishment as in really cool?” Ruth asked.

  Dix rolled his eyes. “You were lucky I was the first one through your little snow fort and flattened it out for everybody else.”

  “Bummer,” Rob said around a hot dog loaded with French’s mustard and sweet relish.

  “We had our test on Othello today, Dad,” Rafe said. “I think I did really well. I think I knew the answers to all the questions.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Dix said. “I’ve told you you have your mother’s brains.”

  “Yeah, well,” Rafe continued, “if I get at least a B minus can I take that after-school job at Mr. Fulton’s hardware store?”

  Dix’s cell phone rang, and he stepped away to answer it. When he returned, he pointed his finger at Rafe. “No part-time job until you have at least a B in biology and a B in English, as we agreed. Not a B minus, a good, solid B. Your report card’s out in three weeks, so you’ve got a goal. And don’t whine about it. Sherlock and Savich have a little boy a lot younger than you guys,
and we don’t have to show them what’s in store for them.”

  “We’re not that bad, Agent Savich,” Rob said. “Dad just pretends we are.”

  Rafe shot his brother a look, then leaned forward, his eyes on his dad’s face. “We heard about you finding that murdered student in Winkel’s Cave. Everyone’s talking about it—first those two guys who tried to kill Ruth on Saturday night, and now this girl. What’s happening, Dad?”

  His father said, “Yes, we found a body in Winkel’s Cave. It wasn’t pleasant.”

  “You sure are lucky you’ve got FBI special agents here to help you,” Rob said.

  “Yeah,” Dix said, his voice dry as a bleached bone, “I’m very lucky.”

  “Do you see dead bodies all the time, Agent Savich?” Rob asked.

  “Not all the time, no,” Savich said easily. “Actually I do a whole lot of work on a computer, a laptop named MAX. He and I have tracked down a good number of bad guys over the years.”

  “As for us,” Sherlock said, “Agent Warnecki and I have noses like bloodhounds. They set us on a trail, and we sniff the bad guys right out.”

  “Dad, this is pretty scary,” Rafe said. “What happened to that girl?”

  “I’ve got to keep some things close, boys. I don’t want the media to get ahold of everything I’ve got.”

  “But—”

  Dix shook his head. “I’ve got some questions for Ruth about treasure hunting. Are there clubs, newsletters, that sort of thing?”

  She nodded, more to the boys than to their father. “Yes, there’s all of that. Have you guys ever heard of the buried treasure at Snow Hill Farm, about a mile south of the village of New Baltimore, right here in Virginia?”

  The boys, who’d been sprawled long and skinny in their chairs, sat up and leaned toward her, Rafe’s chin on his hands. “Silver coins,” she said, “gold ones, too, valued at about sixty thousand dollars.”

  “Who buried it?” Rafe wanted to know. “Did you find it?”

  “A Scottish pirate named William Kirk buried it back in the 1770s for safekeeping. But when he died, there was no sign of the treasure, and his widow sold Snow Hill Farm to Colonel William Edmonds, whose heirs still own the property. People have searched over the years, but still no sign of it, only an occasional eighteenth-century coin.”

  “I could find it,” Rafe said, “not just one or two stupid coins.”

  Rob punched his brother in the arm. “There isn’t any treasure, Dumbo. It’s a myth, otherwise someone would have dug it up by now.”

  “But that’s the thing about treasure,” Ruth said, her voice dropping low, “sometimes you wonder how all the talk of a treasure even got started. An old guy in a tavern two hundred years ago spun a story so he could get a free mug of ale? And then you sometimes wonder if it isn’t all magic. When you think it’s magic, you’re ready. You go to Fauquier County and find William Kirk’s will that’s still there, and read that he not only left his wife a large property, he also left her a big bundle of currency. Where is it?”

  Rafe said, “Didn’t the wife know her husband was a pirate? Everyone knows pirates always hide their gold, like Captain Kidd did somewhere on Long Island. She shouldn’t have sold the farm, she was stupid.”

  Ruth grinned. “Maybe. Or maybe she didn’t believe there was a treasure, like Rob. Or maybe she believed, she simply didn’t know how to find it.”

  Dix said, “Knowing Ruth for only three days, boys, you can already tell the most important quality of a successful treasure hunter: You’ve got to believe. You’ve got to be the eternal optimist, and you have to be able to stand lots of disappointment.” He cocked his eyebrow at her.

  Ruth stared at him, lounged back in his chair, his fingers laced over his lean belly, his long sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

  She started to say something, but found she had to clear her throat first. “Well, yes, that’s about it,” she admitted.

  “So you think the gold’s still there, Ruth?” Rob wanted to know.

  She nodded. “Oh yes, it’s there. I think it was in leather pouches, a number of them, and some of them have split open, scattering the coins. But the big cache is under there, still waiting.”

  Dix rose. “With that, it’s time for some carrot cake from Millie’s Deli. You can each take a piece, then it’s off to do your homework. We’ve got some work to do down here ourselves.”

  Rob stopped long enough on the bottom step of the stairs to tell Ruth that Billy McCleland had come by today to fix the window frame in his bedroom. “No more cold leaks,” he told her.

  When the boys were out of earshot, the four adults moved into the living room, taking coffee and tea with them. The house was warm and quiet, except for Brewster’s snoring from his seat of honor on Ruth’s lap. Savich began, “So Dix, you told us the doctor at Loudoun County Community Hospital did a toxicology screen on Ruth when she was admitted. You hear from him yet?”

  Dix nodded. “Actually, it was the ME who called earlier. He ran what was left of your blood sample, Ruth. You had the same drug in your system that Erin Bushnell did—a drug called BZ.”

  Sherlock said, “I don’t know much about it except I think it’s a gas they used in Vietnam that affects the nervous system. Did he tell you more about it, Sheriff?”

  Dix paused for a moment, smiled at her. “Actually, Sherlock, while Savich’s corn on the cob was boiling, I googled it on the Internet. I printed some of it out, so you can look at it later. It’s officially called quinuclidinyl benzilate, but for obvious reasons it’s known simply as BZ. It’s a colorless and odorless gas that’s usually delivered as an aerosol and was developed for the military in the 1960s. It works fairly quickly, causing increased heart rate, blurry vision, lack of coordination. The unusual thing is that it’s what they call a psychochemical—it affects perception and thought, causes hallucinations, confusion, forgetfulness, and eventually stupor.

  “BZ didn’t turn out to be much use in war, though, because the effects are unpredictable, ranging from overwhelming fear and panic to all-out rage that led exposed soldiers to attack without regard for their own safety.

  “The Russians used an agent similar to BZ against the Afghan guerrillas during the eighties, and get this—it’s possible they pumped this gas into that theater during the hostage crisis in Moscow, probably in really high concentrations because they ended up with hundreds of people dead.”

  “But Erin wasn’t dead when she was stabbed,” Sherlock said.

  “No, but there was a lot of it in her system, more than in yours, Ruth. From what you told us about how terrifying it was for you in that cave chamber, how you were imagining God knows what coming after you, I hate to think what Erin Bushnell went through.”

  Ruth let out a long breath. “So I guess I didn’t just go crazy. But how does anyone get ahold of a gas like this?”

  Dix shrugged. “The ME said chemicals like this are available from pharmaceutical companies and on the Internet. Apparently they have some legitimate uses for research. It’s unusual enough to warrant looking into but it’s unlikely the BZ is from a nice, clean local source that would identify our killer.”

  Savich nodded. “Since you got a lower dose than Erin, Ruth, you probably got the residue from the gas he used on her. Maybe he came back later to check on his handiwork and found you, freaked out, maybe unconscious. Maybe he bashed you on the head or he found you already injured, and hauled you out of there.”

  “But why not simply kill me and leave me in there with Erin?”

  Savich said slowly, “Because that was her tomb, Ruth, not yours. All hers.”

  “That would be really sick, Dillon.”

  “Yes,” he said, “it would be.”

  Sherlock sat forward, her teacup balanced on her knee. “So you think this tomb idea has something to do with his embalming her?”

  Dix said, “Dr. Himple said he didn’t actually embalm her. He said it was the strangest thing he’d ever seen. I’ll try to explain this corr
ectly.” Dix pulled a sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket, perused it for a moment. “Okay, when a funeral home embalms a body, they make small incisions in the carotid artery and the jugular vein, thread a tube into the carotid to pump in the embalming fluid, and drain the blood out through the jugular vein. It takes about three gallons of embalming fluid to thoroughly disinfect and preserve a body. They also put fluid in the body cavities, a mixture of formaldehyde, methanol, ethanol, and other solvents.

  “The thing is, our murderer didn’t do a thorough job of it. He made the small incisions in her carotid and jugular, pumped in about a gallon of embalming fluid, let a bit of blood drain out the jugular vein, then called it a day.”

  Sherlock said slowly, staring into the fireplace, “So he either didn’t know how to do the procedure correctly or it was some kind of ritual, enough to give him the taste of the process, to give him the satisfaction.”

  Savich nodded. “Yes, and he posed her. He may have considered it part of a ceremony, probably done with a good deal of gravity on his part, almost reverence. He may have wanted to preserve the body for a while before he buried it somewhere.”

  Dix said, “I don’t like the sound of that. A ritual? I was thinking this guy may have done this before, but I was hoping you’d disagree.”

  “We don’t know for sure, Dix, but it’s got all the ear-marks,” Ruth said. “Did Dr. Himple tell you if the incision sites were sutured?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But he did mention that the stab wound in her chest had no blood on it; it had been swabbed clean.”

  “Part of the ritual then,” Ruth said. “He did a thorough job. So, Dix, are there any funeral homes in Maestro?”

  “Of course. Tommy Oppenheimer is director of Peaceful Field Funeral Home, on Broadmoor Street. He’s my deputy Penny’s husband, a good guy, a bit high-strung, overprotective of Penny, but okay. I’ll ask him if he’s had anyone asking questions about embalming, or if he’s heard anyone in his business mention any strange employees they might have now or recently fired.”