by Tom Lowe
SIXTY-FIVE
The next morning I drove over to Memorial Hospital. Sometime earlier in the night, Elizabeth had gained consciousness, clearing her by morning to be transferred to a private room on the seventh floor. It was a floor, I later learned, especially equipped to handle mental health and suicide patients. They told me to keep my visiting time down to a half hour.
When I walked into the room, Elizabeth was sleeping. I stepped to her bed and reached for the hand that didn’t have an IV stuck and taped to it. Her eyes fluttered open. “Sean… thank God you’re here.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I was hit by a train. Give me a second. My head hurts so badly.” She looked around the room, her eyes squinting.
“Can I get you something?”
“My memory would be nice. I feel like Rip Van Winkle. The last thing I remember was taking a sleeping pill. I awoke very sick. I literally crawled into the bathroom and vomited until there was nothing but air coming out. I lay on my back on the bathroom floor, dialed 911 then called my neighbor, Marge. She held me until the ambulance came.”
“I should have stayed the night.”
She smiled. “I wasn’t exactly miss hospitality, though. I didn’t know sleeping pills would affect me so adversely.”
“They pumped your stomach.”
She said nothing, glancing at the window where the late morning sun spilled inside the room. Elizabeth looked up at me. “Do they think I tried to kill myself?”
“Yes. Did you?”
“No. I’m depressed beyond comprehension, but I don’t think we have a right to take our own lives any more than we have the right to kill someone.”
“How many pills did you take?”
“One. I don’t like the tone of this conversation. You sound like a detective. ”
“I sound like someone who cares deeply about you. Listen to me. You came damn close to death. News media normally don’t run stories about attempted suicides, but because they’ve connected your trip to the hospital to the deaths of three people, maybe the potential work of a serial murderer, this has generated interest.”
“So this is all over the TV and newspapers?”
I said nothing.
“I’m sorry. God, I’ve got to brush my teeth. My mouth has the horrible taste of metal, or some weird kind of garlic. I’ve never used sleeping pills before, and now I know I won’t try them again.”
“Is it a prescription?”
“Yes.”
“When did you get it?”
“Two days ago.”
“Where did you keep the pills?”
“For the first day they were in my car in a Walgreens’ bag. The next day they were in my home, on the kitchen counter.”
“Breathe normally, but through your mouth.” I leaned down close to her.
“Why? What are you doing? Don’t, Sean, please.”
“I’m not trying to kiss you.” I smelled her breath. “Did you have diarrhea, too.”
“Can you tell that from my breath?”
“No.”
“I did have some diarrhea. What does that mean?”
“It means you’ve probably been poisoned.”
“What?”
“Arsenic.”
“Are you certain?”
“A quick test and we’ll know.”
“Did they treat me for it?”
“I don’t think they were looking for it.”
“Can you pee?”
“What? Yes. Why?”
“Don’t. At least not yet. The hospital needs to get a sample, and check it for levels of arsenic.”
Elizabeth tried to sit up. “Oh, my head feels like it’s about to fall off. Who would poison me? How?”
“Where are the sleeping pills now?”
“On my bathroom counter.”
I looked around Elizabeth’s room, opened the closet and found her purse. “Are your keys in here?”
“They should be. I always drop them in my purse after I come home.”
“I’m going to your house. I’m calling the Seminole County Sheriff’s office. Maybe Detective Lewis will meet me there. He can run tests on the pills in the lab. The hospital can do a urine analysis.” I reached over and punched the emergency call button.
“Sean, I’m so scared.”
I touched Elizabeth’s hand. “You’ll be fine. Do you understand that?”
She nodded, her eyes wet.
A nurse and a doctor came into the room. He was almost my height. His perfectly combed hair was as dark as his black-framed glasses. “I’m Doctor Patel,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Not so good. I have the worst headache of my life.”
I said, “Doctor Patel, I believe she was poisoned.”
He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Poisoned?”
“I worked homicide with Miami-Dade for thirteen years. I’ve seen a few of these cases. She had the symptoms: vomiting, diarrhea, blurred vision. And her breath has the metallic, garlic-like odor. A urine analysis, testing for arsenic, will tell us.”
“Per the police report, we thought it was an overdose of prescription sleeping pills.”
“The important thing is that she’s alive.
The doctor nodded, made a note on the chart and turned to the nurse. “Let’s have the urine test done immediately. Get it to the lab stat. Then begin pumping a lot of fluids into Miss Monroe. We’ll detox fast as possible. Miss Monroe, do you have any idea how you may have consumed arsenic?”
“I was fine until I took the new sleeping pills I got from Walgreens.”
I said, “Someone must have tampered with her pills.”
Doctor Patel nodded. “We’ll get you well. At this point, though, the hospital must notify the police.”
“Okay. Dr. Patel, I authorize any of my records to be released to Mr. O’Brien.”
He nodded and I said, “I’m going to meet the police at Miss Monroe’s home. Here’s my cell number, Doctor. Call me as soon as you get the tox results. One thing more, don’t allow any visitors into this room.”
SIXTY-SIX
Detective Lewis met me at Elizabeth’s house. He brought three CSI people, two men and one woman. He nodded. “Looks like a lot has happened since we met in that Walmart lot.”
“I don’t think it’s over,” I said, letting them in the front door. “Someone either broke into Elizabeth’s home and tampered with the sleeping pills, or they got to them in the front seat of her car. I have keys to her car. The pills she took are on the bathroom counter.”
The CSI people nodded and went to work. “At this point, who’d want to kill Elizabeth Monroe?” Detective Lewis asked.
“Probably the same people who killed her daughter and boyfriend.”
“Why?”
“I believe the perps think Molly and Mark knew the location of a large marijuana farm hidden somewhere deep in the Ocala National Forest. Molly had innocently snapped a lot of pictures trying to document the locations of rare plants for her butterfly release. I think she snapped a shot, and the perps believe she may have captured them in the picture.”
“Did she?”
“One picture captures Frank Soto before he tried to abduct Molly and Elizabeth. The guy next to him could be the man in this composite. Do you recognize him?”
“No. Looks like he might have some Hispanic in him.”
“Maybe. The witness said he had darker skin.”
“Who’s the witness?”
“Luke Palmer.”
Lewis chuckled. “The suspect Sheriff Clayton has jailed?”
“That’s the one. He sketched this.”
“He’s a damn good artist, I’m wondering if he’s a damn good a liar.”
“I believe he’s telling the truth. I met with him, listened to his story. The guy’s been wandering the forest looking from some lost treasure, but by default, he’s become a witness to two murders and finds the body of a murdered teenage girl in a grave.”<
br />
One of the CSI members, the woman, came around the corner. She said, “It looks like the sliding glass door lock was compromised. Scratches at the base of the lock. I’ll dust for prints. The door leads into the kitchen.”
I said, “You’ll find my prints in the kitchen. I was here after the funeral. I doubt you’ll find prints near the lock. This guy’s a pro.”
She nodded and continued her work. Detective Lewis said, “Why haven’t I seen this composite before now?”
“Sheriff Clayton hasn’t released it to the news media.”
“Why?”
“He calls it jailhouse art and says Palmer is trying to shine the spotlight off him. The real reason, I think, is because of the intense media coverage of the deaths in the forest. The sheriff thinks he has enough forensics to make the charges stick. Look, Detective, Elizabeth was on death’s door. This is much bigger than Frank Soto. Can your office release the composite?”
Lewis inhaled like he hadn’t breathed all day. He looked at the image and slowly released the pent-up air in his lungs. “This is Marion County’s deal. The guy they’ve got locked up was captured there. The killings happened there. I’d be out of line. But you can run it by Sheriff Olsen, see if he disagrees.”
I said nothing.
“We’ll let you know if we find anything.”
One of the investigators entered. He held out a sealed plastic bag with the bottle of pills inside. He said, “We’ll get these to the lab today. Arsenic is easy to find.” He joined the others in the kitchen. Detective Lewis waited for me to leave.
I started to turn and walk away. Then I thought of Elizabeth and how arsenic poisoning shuts down organ after organ. I said, “Whoever investigated this house last night, when Elizabeth barely managed to call 911, assumed she tried to OD on sleeping pills. She didn’t, Detective. And she almost died because of it. Had the hospital known or suspected poison, they could have given her a different treatment. If we assume this composite is a figment from Luke Palmer’s imagination, we make the same mistake.”
He looked at the picture, and I saw his eyes dilate a notch. He made a dry swallow and touched the tip of his nose, his thoughts distracted.
It was at that moment, I knew Detective Lewis was the investigator on the scene when Elizabeth was taken by ambulance in what was later determined a suicide attempt. I said, “Now’s the time to place a guard outside Elizabeth’s hospital room.”
SIXTY-SEVEN
I looked at Elizabeth’s car, checked all doors and windows for any sign of a break-in or small scratch marks that can be made by the sloppy use of a Slim Jim bar. I found nothing. Maybe the point of entry was through the sliding glass doors.
I left and called a local florist, ordered a dozen red roses and had them sent to Elizabeth’s room. I heard someone beeping in on my phone. I answered as Doctor Patel was leaving a message. “I’m here, Doctor. What do you have?”
“The patient, Miss Monroe, tested positive for arsenic. We found three parts per million. It takes less than a gram to kill an average person. She’s very fortunate in that she only consumed one of those pills, assuming the rest were tampered with arsenic.”
“When can she go home?”
“I want to keep her one more night for observation.”
“Has anyone attempted to visit her?”
“I don’t know. The nurses’ station would know. They’re diligent in enforcing the no visitors’ policy. Except for the police and you, no one else has access to her room.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” I disconnected and called Detective Sandberg in Marion County. “Did you get a match on the two bullets?”
“You must have radar, O’Brien. That information was just delivered to me.”
“Was there enough DNA from the bullet in the tree to match with Molly’s DNA?”
He said nothing for a few seconds. “You know, O’Brien, I don’t have to reveal anything to you.”
“I know that, and I appreciate your willingness to share information, just like I’m trying to do with you. And I understand the dynamics with the sheriff. I’ve been there, but catching the perp or perps is what you and I both want.”
“The bullet in the tree carried a very small amount of body tissue. It matched Molly’s DNA.”
“How about the DNA on the cigar?’’
“Didn’t get a match from CODIS. Whoever smoked that cigar isn’t in the system.”
“Palmer is certainly in the system. So it didn’t match his DNA?”
Sandberg was silent. Between his breathing, I could hear someone being paged. He finally said, “No. Oh, we did find some pot growing in the national forest. But it looks like the photo might be a little deceiving.”
“How so?”
“We found a dozen plants, all growing out of plastic gallon milk jugs cut in half.”
I asked, “How tall were the plants?”
“A good six feet each.”
“Were they next to any coontie plants?”
“Our team looked for them, but didn’t see any. Remember, O’Brien, in the photo from Molly’s camera we could only see a few plants.”
“It’s a decoy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Big time pot farmers don’t grow marijuana to that height in plastic milk jugs. They may start the plants off like that, but once they begin to shoot up, they’ll transplant them to the ground, fertilize and water them. Someone’s trying to steer you away from the real growing area, the place where Molly and Mark first stumbled upon it.”
He sighed. “We’ve called off the search. Sheriff Clayton believes the plants we found, pulled and destroyed are most likely the ones in the photo because the surroundings are similar if not the same.”
“It’s staged. These guys are good.”
“Got to go, O’Brien.”
“Please remind the sheriff that you have a rifle bullet removed from a tree, which is the bullet that went through Molly’s body, and you have one from Palmer’s backpack. That one went into a deer and never came out until Palmer cut it out. So whoever killed the deer killed Molly and Mark.”
“What if Palmer cut the damn bullet out of the deer before he buried it with the bodies, knowing there wouldn’t be ballistics comparison if we found the murder weapon?”
“Then why keep it in a backpack? Palmer’s not dumb. You haven’t found the rifle. But you do have the bullet from the tree.”
“I need to meet with the sheriff before his next news briefing.”
“Before you go, here’s something else you can tell him — someone tried to kill Elizabeth Monroe, Molly’s mother.”
“How?”
“Arsenic poisoning. The perp broke into her home. It looks like he filled her sleeping pill capsules with arsenic. Elizabeth is hospitalized, and the man Sheriff Clayton thinks is tied to her daughter’s murder is sitting in his county jail. The media will have a field day with that.”
“Talk with you later, O’Brien.”
“You know as well as I do that this attempt on her life is not coincidental. The perp is trying to eliminate Elizabeth just like he did Molly and Mark.”
“That’s a possibility, but at this point we don’t know that.”
“We do know that you’ve got a man locked up and that there is no way in hell he could have done it. This should tell you that the wrong man is being held as a suspect when the real killer tried to kill Molly Monroe’s mother. One last thing.”
“What?”
“The first body, Nicole Davenport. You said you found two hairs on her. Did you get a hit from them?”
“I told you they didn’t have roots. The lab said it looked like the hairs may have been from a fresh haircut. One was found on the vic’s neck, the other on her stomach. ”
“Could your lab tell whether or not the hairs had been dyed?”
Detective Sandberg cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “O’Brien, you got some kind of clairvoyant thing going on? How’d you know they were d
yed?”
“I didn’t for sure. Now I do. Palmer has all white hair.”
Sandberg said nothing.
I said, “Let me know when the sheriff plans to release the Palmer sketch to the news media.”
SIXTY-EIGHT
I started to drive back to Ponce Marina and then remembered Luke Palmer was to be arraigned on triple murder charges tomorrow. I turned my Jeep toward Ocala and hoped I could make it in time for Sheriff Clayton’s four o’clock media update. I called Elizabeth. “How are you feeling?”
“Much better, thanks. My flowers are so beautiful! You’re a very thoughtful man, Sean O’Brien. Thank you. The nurses say it’s been a long time since they’ve seen an arrangement that lovely. Your card was sweet, too. I’ve never been sailing, but I think the salt air would do a world of good for the soul.”
“Don’t forget your body.”
She laughed. It sounded good. Then she said, “Dr. Patel says I can go home in the morning. The tests are coming back fine. Will you be able to come get me?”
“I’ll be there.”
“They found arsenic, you know.”
“Someone had picked the lock on your backdoor and entered your home. I suspect the perp found the pills and then laced a few with the poison.”
“Do you think it was Frank Soto?”
“Maybe. It’s not Luke Palmer. Could be the mystery man in the sketch.”
“Why can’t they find this man?”
“They’re not in any hurry to look for him. But all that’s about to change.”
“What do you mean?”
“Is there someone you can stay with for a few days?”
“I have a couple of friends who have spare bedrooms.”
“Good. Call them and make arrangements.”
“Sean, when is this nightmare going to end?”
“Soon. Trust me, Elizabeth.”
* * *
I pulled into Ocala a few minutes before four o’clock and drove toward the county courthouse complex. I spotted the TV satellite trucks, cables and wires strung toward a small podium with the Marion County Sheriff’s office in the background. Reporters stood in the shade of two large oaks as they waited for Sheriff Clayton to give them a briefing. An American flag on a pole, near the entrance to the office, fluttered in the breeze.
