by Liliana Hart
“It’s almost time for Callie’s nap, and Katie needs her rest too. I think the baby is going to come early. I’ll see if I can go to Janet’s. She has the biggest bar, and I could use a sedative.”
“Let me talk to her,” Jack said, getting up from the table.
“This doesn’t feel real,” Robert said once Jack had left.
“No,” I agreed. And I knew it wouldn’t. He was in a state of numbness, but it wouldn’t last forever. There would come a time when the reality would set in and the real grief would start.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “What arrangements to make. I need to call his mother. His family. I really don’t want to do that.”
I took his hand just like I would if I were at the funeral home, helping a widow or widower make the final resting decisions for their spouse. “Make the calls and get it done,” I advised him. “Waiting won’t make it easier. As far as arrangements, we’ll help you with all of that.”
“Right,” he said, letting out a breath. “You’re going to take him?”
“I am. I’ve got to do an autopsy. But when I’m finished, I’ll release the body to you. That’s when you can decide what you want to do.”
“Carl wanted to be cremated. We both do. It’s in our estate papers that we’re both to be cremated if something were to happen to either of us. We feel it’s unnecessary to pollute the ground.”
“Whatever he wanted is what we’ll do,” I told him.
Jack came back in and nodded to me and I said to Robert, “It’s time to go to Janet’s now. Call your family and then lay down on the couch and rest for a little while. You’re going to need your energy.”
He nodded and half stumbled his way out of the kitchen. I wasn’t sure if lethargy from the grief was setting in or if it was because of the whiskey.
“Who called it in?” I asked when Jack came back.
“Edna Bright,” he said. “Let’s see if we can find a note. What did you think when you looked at the body?”
“It looks like a suicide,” I said. “There are powder marks around the entry wound. Enough so I’d say the barrel was pressed directly to the temple at impact. And there’s gunpowder residue on his right hand. But I’ve got questions.”
Jack snorted. “When do you not have questions? What about?”
“Just the fact that he came home from work in the middle of the day to kill himself. Why come home? Why not do it in his truck or his office? He’s still fully dressed. He’s even wearing his work boots. This place is pristine, so I can’t imagine him tracking them through the house and dirtying up the floors.”
We checked in with Martinez and then moved farther down the hall to an office area. This must have been Robert’s space. There was a large desktop with the screen still on, and there were a stack of files sitting next to it. It was a small room that was comfortable in its coziness. I guess if you worked from home, being comfortable was probably a priority.
We moved around the room quickly, but there were no notes, nothing in the trashcans, and nothing indicating Carl had been in the room. We moved across the hall to the master bedroom with the same result. But in the bathroom, I found what I was looking for.
“Bingo,” I said, unfolding a crumpled piece of paper from the trashcan. I scanned the note quickly, my brows raising in surprise, and then I handed it to Jack.
“As far as confessions go, it seems pretty convincing,” Jack said.
Carl had addressed the note to Robert.
* * *
Dear Robert,
I’m not strong enough to live this lie, and I feel this is my only way out. I killed Rosie. It was an accident. I swear. She knew I was having an affair. She’d seen us together, and I knew in my heart she was going to tell you. I couldn’t let her do that. You’re the light of my life and I’d do anything to protect you. Which is why I’m saving you the trouble of having to see me go to trial and eventually prison. I’m not cut out for that life, and it would be a financial strain on you. As it stands, you have this house and plenty in the bank to be comfortable. Please believe me when I say I’m only thinking of you. I don’t know if you can forgive me, but I beg that you do. I love you always.”
* * *
“So my dad was right,” I said. “The man across the street was having an affair with the woman next door to the vacant house.”
“Abby Clearwater lives next door,” Jack said.
“I guess Harrison Taylor wasn’t the only one tempted by her beauty.”
When we finally got back to the kitchen to search, I was itching to get back to the body. I don’t know why I opened the kitchen trashcan. Maybe out of habit. But I did and used the flashlight I kept in my bag to look down in it. I was lucky I’d had my flashlight, otherwise I would’ve had a hell of a surprise when my hand grasped at the open syringe laying on the bottom.
“What in the world?” I asked holding up the syringe.
“Careful with that,” Jack said, taking it from me and putting it in an evidence container.
I pulled the entire bag from the trashcan and moved to the counter so I could spread everything else. It was better than taking the chance of getting another potentially dangerous surprise. There were no notes. Just breakfast trash and some junk mail. But there was also a small glass vial, smaller than my pinkie finger.
“It’s ketamine,” I said.
“Special K?” Jack asked, taking the vial. “I’m not seeing either of them as users. And this doesn’t look like what you get off the street. Maybe Carl was nervous about pulling the trigger and decided he needed a little help relaxing.”
“This is more than a little help,” I said, holding up the empty vial. “I’m glad we found this. It never would’ve shown up in the tox screen. But now that I know what I’m looking for I can see if there’s anything in his system. Ketamine will usually trigger a false PCP reading. And now I know to look for the injection site. If he injected this much ketamine into his body he would’ve been out within a few seconds. That’s a hefty dose. And he wouldn’t have been able to pull the trigger at all.”
“Which means someone would’ve had to help him get those powder marks on his hand.”
“Have Chen do a swab of everyone who was home at the time of the shooting,” I said. “The best thing I can do is get him back to the lab and open him up. That’s where all our answers will be.”
Chapter Fifteen
When I came back outside with the body, Floyd Parker was standing there with his camera, blocking the sidewalk so we couldn’t get the gurney past him to the Suburban. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with Floyd. I’d been learning to deal with my anger from my past, but after seeing my father that morning and seeing the promising life of a man like Carl Planter flushed down the toilet, I was at my boiling point.
“You’re blocking the way, Floyd,” I said, coming to a stop in front of him.
Floyd had played college ball more than a decade ago and was one of those men who had the kind of neck that just kind of melted into the rest of his body. He’d had muscles and a brain, and he’d been a sympathetic ear one night when I’d had too much to drink and was just a little too homesick. I’d regretted that one night immediately, but he’d never let me forget it. Let’s just say I was more of an experiment for him than a one-night-stand, and he hadn’t been kind. When my parents had driven their car over the cliff and the FBI had started sniffing around, he really hadn’t been kind.
My body blocked the gurney and he was trying to move around me to get a shot.
“The public has a right to know, Jaye,” he said, smirking. “This is the second body in as many days. Maybe it’s time for a change in our law enforcement leadership if this is what Bloody Mary is turning into.”
“I know you don’t understand the meaning of the word victim,” I said slowly. “But I have one on this gurney who deserves my time and attention. Get. Out. Of. My. Way.”
He dropped his voice down so I was the only one who could hear him. “All
I see is a homo who couldn’t live with his choices.”
I shoved my medical bag directly into his crotch, and while he was bent over, gasping for air, my palm connected with his nose. It gave me great satisfaction to see the blood spattering on his golf shirt. He must’ve been as surprised as everyone else standing around, because I very gently pushed him to the side and he went. Sheldon and I rolled the body past him and into the Suburban without any other issues, but if looks could have killed, I’d be six feet under. I could still feel Floyd’s glare as we pulled away.
“That was intense,” Sheldon said, wiping his forehead with a rag. “I can’t believe you did that. He was bleeding. Do you think you’ll get in trouble? I can run the funeral home while you’re in jail.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I’m not worried about going to jail.” I had much more important things to worry about. Like getting sued.
“I guess that would make things pretty awkward at home if Jack had to arrest you.”
“He was impeding an investigation,” I said. “I asked him to move politely and he refused to do so. I have more authority as coroner than you might think. I can have people arrested, issue subpoenas, and hire my own deputies for my office if I saw fit. I don’t have to do that because of my relationship with the sheriff’s department, but that’s how it works in a lot of counties. Floyd overstepped his bounds. Freedom of the press allows you to be an asshole. It doesn’t allow you to get in the way of an investigation.”
“You said asshole,” Sheldon said, staring at me with his big owl eyes magnified through the lenses of his glasses. “That’s a quarter.”
I turned toward Sheldon, and the look on my face had him shrinking back against the seat. I opened the console between us and dug around for change. Cars were honking behind me, but I didn’t care.
I very deliberately tossed four quarters at Sheldon’s chest, each one thudding against his breastbone, and then I said the three words that came to mind as soon as he said the word quarter.
“I’ve noticed you get like this when you go too long without coffee,” he said, gathering up the quarters and dropping them in his shirt pocket.
Fortunately, we’d arrived at the funeral home, and I pulled under the carport. The two of us unloaded the body and got him inside and into the lab. Once we got him on the table and out of the bag, I sent Sheldon off so I could do the autopsy in peace.
I turned on the stereo and then suited up. The written documentation took me the longest. Cataloging every item of clothing and pulling off stray fibers or hairs that would have to be tested. I couldn’t do that level of testing in my lab, so I’d have to send it off to the lab in Richmond.
Once I got his clothes of and hanging in the curing cabinet, I worked my way from head to toe, front to back, documenting every mark on the body. I found the needle mark I’d been looking for with the help of the ultraviolet light.
“There we go,” I said to Carl. “You had some help with that injection, didn’t you?”
The needle mark was located halfway between his neck and shoulder, on his back. He never would’ve been able to reach that spot on his own. Which meant Carl Planter’s suicide had just become a homicide.
A normal autopsy took me two to three hours, and you couldn’t get more normal that this one. He was a healthy man in his thirties. He’d taken good care of himself. His heart was good. He would’ve lived a long and healthy life under other circumstances. He’d eat a chicken salad sandwich and potato chips for lunch, along with a sweet tea. The bullet I found lodged in his brain was a .22 caliber, consistent with the weapon found at the scene.
All I needed to find now was the drug in his system. If I could get that false positive, then I could add one more nail to the coffin when we finally caught whoever did this.
I put Carl back together while I waited for the drug test, and then I sprayed him down with disinfectant and pulled a sheet over him. I heard the beeps of the control panel on the door, and wondered who was brave enough to come down and interrupt me. I was basically finished, but I found the upset of my dad and Floyd was still bubbling just under the surface.
I let out a breath when I saw Jack appear at the top of the stairs. He stared at me a few seconds and then said, “Is it safe to come in?”
I knew he was taking a chance coming down here at all. Jack was one of the toughest people I’d ever known. He could and had dealt with unimaginable horrors. But the smell of the chemicals I used in the lab made him sick every time. It was mostly the embalming fluid, so I was hoping he would be okay since it had been more than a week since I’d used the chemical. I was so used to it, the unusual smells barely registered anymore.
“You’re good,” I said. “Just be glad you’re not Sheldon.”
His lips twitched. “I’m glad for that every day.” He came down the stairs and I could see the strain around his eyes. “Sorry I missed your destruction of Floyd. Nice shot to the nose. He bled for a long time.”
“That makes me feel a little better,” I said. “Did he make your life hell?”
“Nah, I told him under the circumstances, we wouldn’t press charges for him impeding an investigation. Chen witnessed it and correlated that he wouldn’t get out of the way, thus putting the body in harm’s way. He finally left when he realized no one was going to be sympathetic to his injuries.”
“You think he’ll try to sue?” I asked.
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t worry about it. We can always file the charges against him. But I’d stay out of his way if you can. He’s got it in for you, and I’d hate to have to try to bury his big ass somewhere in the middle of the night. Anything interesting in the autopsy?”
“You could say that,” I said. “I was just about to call you. This is definitely a homicide. Check this out.” I turned on the ultraviolet light and moved it to the area just behind the neck and shoulder. The starburst of bruising around the tiny pinprick of the needle mark came into view. “We’ll have to take DNA from the needle and send it off for comparison, but this is where the killer inserted the syringe and administered the drug. And they didn’t do it easily.”
“Carl is pretty tall,” Jack said. “I can’t think of anyone who could hit this angle while he was standing. Which means he was probably sitting down when they did it. Maybe they called him at work and said there was an emergency of some kind. Maybe it was something to do with Robert. Carl jumps in his car and drives home, meeting whoever it is and inviting them inside. Carl sits down at the kitchen table, just like he did with us, and then they move in behind him, stabbing the syringe into the big muscle of his shoulder.”
“They’d have to move pretty quickly with that big of a dose,” I told him. “He’d start losing control of his muscles immediately. They’d have to get him up and walk him to the bathroom and into the tub. They might have a few minutes tops before he was completely incapacitated. From there, it wouldn’t be hard to wrap his hand around the gun and pull the trigger. Do you know whose gun it is?”
“Robert says it’s theirs,” Jack said. “Robert said he didn’t like having them in the house, but Carl insisted. He’d grown up around guns and was comfortable. Robert opened the safe for us in the bedroom. There were places for three guns. The other two were still there. Robert’s timeline works out. We’ve already checked. He was gone when the gunshot went off, but several neighbors verified him pulling up shortly after since they were all outside.”
“No one saw Carl come home? No one saw him with anyone?”
“Janet said she noticed his truck in the driveway when she went in the kitchen to make lunch for her boys. She’s working from home today. Frank Bright says he was watching the news and Edna was taking a nap. They apparently had a late night last night of stargazing. The Millers were packing. They’re getting ready for a long weekend to go see their grandchildren. JoAnn was about to leave the house. She has a spa appointment because she and Harrison have an event tonight. Katie saw Carl driving down the street, but she said he didn’t s
eem like he was in a hurry. She did wonder why he was home in the middle of the day, but she said she thought maybe he forgot something. No one saw Carl go into the house. No one saw him talking to anyone. This is the most maddening neighborhood I’ve ever seen. Both times it would have been nice for them to be nosy are the times no one saw anything.”
“What about Harrison?” I asked, moving back to the urine sample and test strip I’d collected earlier.
“His secretary says he’s in a meeting, but we haven’t gotten a chance to confirm yet JoAnn says he’s been gone since this morning.”
“Drug test is giving a false positive for PCP,” I said, holding up the strip. “That’s consistent with ketamine.”
I labeled the results and put it with the other evidence I’d collected from Carl Planter. Then I handed everything to Jack and rolled Carl into the freezer.
“Something has been bothering me since I talked to my dad this morning,” I said.
“You think?”
“No, I mean about something he said. He said the vacant house was getting a lot of action, and that the woman next door and the man across the street used the house frequently. He could either mean Frank Bright, or he could mean Carl and Robert Planter. Maybe Carl was coming home for an afternoon romp.”
“Romp?” Jack asked. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”
“Hush,” I said. “I’m being serious.”
“What if Carl had a suspicion that Robert was cheating and decided to come home early to catch him in the act?”
“So now what?” I asked.
Jack looked at his watch. “Ben will be at the house before too long. I’ve got too many things rattling around in my head. Let’s go home and get something to eat. We’re both low on fuel. Then we can decide what’s next.”
Chapter Sixteen
“If I were ever to adopt anyone,” I said as we pulled into the driveway and saw Ben sitting on our front porch, “It would be Ben.”
