Death in Her Eyes (A Mac Everett Mystery Book 1)

by Nick Vellis

  Chapter 5

  I got the names of his wife’s friends, but not much more out of Cary Hunt. I promised him I’d find the truth. As I watched the corrections officer take him away, I gathered my thoughts. I was sure Cary hadn’t killed his wife and he didn’t believe his girlfriend, Kristin, had either. I had to find out who Stephanie Hunt’s lover had been. I checked my phone and saw I had a text from Stan, so I dialed his number.

  “Stan, you have something for me,” I said when the homicide detective answered.

  “What do I have for you? Am I’m some flunky for the PI now? Don’t give me that crap.” Stan was pissed about something. I hoped it didn’t involve me.

  “I’m sorry Stan. You texted me,” I said, trying to smooth things over.

  “Oh, right. Sorry. Aha – oh…Doc Wilson called. He wants to see me and I asked if you could come along. He can see us this afternoon. He was none too happy about it, but he’ll talk to us this afternoon.”

  “OK.” I didn’t understand why the Medical Examiner would want to see Stan, but whatever it took to get the job done. “Thanks Stan. Do you have the victim’s address book and phone in evidence? I’d be interested in her emails and texts too if you have them,” I asked, hoping I wasn’t pushing an already strained friendship too far.

  “Would you like a beer with that too? Who do you think you are?”

  “I’m on the wagon these days remember,” I said wishing I wasn’t. “Come on Stan, I’m trying to work this thing. What’s wrong?”

  “Be at the Medical Examiner’s Office at four. We’ll both get an explanation then,” he said.

  “An explanation? I’ll be there,” I replied.

  “That’s what he said, an explanation. Oh you wanted the name of the guy that found Mrs. Hunt…”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “His name is Randy Cetera. He’s with Ace Pest Control.”

  “Thanks Stan,” I said. “I’ll check him out. Can you see if there is a record of Cary Hunt calling for a wellness check on his wife? He says when he couldn’t reach her he called her friends, and then the police.”

  “That’s new. I’ll check it out. Remember, Mac four o’clock. Don’t be late,” Stan said as he cut me off.

  I called Marco next.

  “Hey buddy,” he said. “I was getting ready to call you.”

  “What do you have?”

  “Word around the county jail is your client’s a straight guy. No beefs with anybody, he’s real quiet.”

  “Any word on his wife?” I asked.

  “Check out Hunt’s country club bar. I hear Mrs. Hunt was real popular there.”

  “Steeple Chase, right?”

  “Right.”

  “It’s on my list. Anything else?”

  “You know a guy named Luck Taylor?” he asked.

  “Heard the name, what’s the connection?” I asked.

  “I’m still checking, but I hear the dearly departed Mrs. Hunt was a regular Action Jackson.”

  “A gambler? What was her game?” I asked.

  “What wasn’t, casinos, poker, the ponies, sports- you name it, spread real thin too according to my source. A little birdie tells me she was working as an agent for Taylor to pay down her marker,” he said.

  “Anything on Cary Hunt?” I asked.

  “He checks out clean.”

  “That either means he’s a boy scout or hasn’t been caught yet. What do you hear about my client, Ashton Hunt?” I asked.

  “Not much, she lives in New York City, spends some time here staying with her father or using a condo in Vizcaya Heights.”

  “Whoa, that’s high rent country. Do you have any idea who owns it?”

  The gated community on the southwest side of town was on Lake Sheen, and known for its publicity adverse residents.

  “I’m not sure. It could belong to her law firm. I’m still checking.”

  “Look for bad habits on these people too. Thanks Marco. Keep on it and I’ve got another name for you,” I said.

  I gave him Randy Cetera and Ace Pest Control to check out and told him I’d call him later.

  The District Nine Medical Examiner’s Office new facility was on East Michigan off of South Bumby. Surrounded by county offices, a self-storage center and a strip club or two, it was a swell part of town. The building looked more like an office complex than a morgue, and Dr. Abraham “Doc” Wilson ran it with an iron fist.

  I’d met Doc Wilson when I was still with the Sheriff’s Office. I’d scored an off duty foot patrol gig around the downtown bars. It was easy money. One night, sometime after two, I heard shouting in the direction of the Orange Avenue parking garage. I jogged toward the garage and found a flabby working girl they called Sweetpea laid out on the pavement. She usually wore hot pants and red and white striped tube top two sizes too small. Tonight, she wore nothing but a smile and bled from her nose and ears. It looked like she’d taken a naked swan dive off the top of the parking garage. The hooker survived the initial fall, but died ten days later. Doc Wilson classified it a suicide, but along with the victim’s clothes, I’d found skin, blood, and hair were on the victim’s dented car door, evidence of a struggle. I told the ME that if the girl was crazy enough to beat her own head against the car door maybe she did decide to jump. The old guy reported me and I got a reprimand for insubordination, but that’s another story.

  A week later, a couple Patrol guys arrested a dirt bag for disorderly intoxication. In his drunken confusion, he confessed to throwing a naked hooker off a garage. He claimed he dickered for a good price outside the garage, and then they went up to the top to get it on. When he saw the heavyset woman naked, even potted, he couldn’t do it. He wanted is $5.00 back and they fought. He beat her, bashing her head against a car then threw her off the top of the garage. Doctor Wilson amended his findings and I hadn’t seen him since.

  I picked up a phone by the door; I identified myself, and immediately heard the electronic lock buzz. Stan was waiting for me in the lobby.

  “On time today, I see,” he said.

  “What’s wrong with you, your cat die since we last talked?” I wasn’t going to put up with a pissant.

  “Come on. He’s waiting for us,” Stan said as he led the way through a glass door.

  Doc Wilson’s office was a mess. There were piles of books, bankers boxes labeled with case numbers and stacks of journals everywhere you turned. Pictures and plaques covered the walls, and most of them were askew. An old wooden desk, covered with files and papers, sat to one side of the room. Visitors could look past the Medical Examiner sitting on his throne, into a pleasant center courtyard. There sat the great man himself, King Wilson. I didn’t know what to expect. The florid faced rotund man rose, came out from behind his desk, and extended a beefy hand as his round face broke into a big grin.

  “MacDonald Everett, it’s good to see you,” he said as he pumped my arm. “Haven’t seen you since you set me straight on that jumper a few years back, good to see you. Hello, Sergeant Lee, I regret what I have for you, but we follow the evidence, don’t we.”

  Stan didn’t look good. Maybe his cat had died.

  “Well, Mr. Everett it seems I’m in your debt again,” Doc Wilson began. “I should offer you a job since the S.O. didn’t seem to appreciate your talents. Sit, sit both of you, and let me tell you a bizarre tale.”

  For the first time in years, I was speechless. I just looked at Stan, but he was clueless as well.

  “When Sergeant Lee called me about the puncture mark you thought you discovered I wrote it off as a knife wound or a hesitation mark,” Doc Wilson began.

  I gave Stan a sour look. He’d jumped on me for saying something about that mark, and then called the ME about it. How do you like that?

  “That is until I received the toxicology report this morning. I pulled the photos. Mr. Everett, the injury you identified and that my office missed is indeed a puncture wound. It changes everything about this case and explains the toxicology finding I have ju
st received.”

  “What’s in the tox screen?” Stan asked.

  “Something so unusual we’ve never seen it here. It’s outside my experience as a medical examiner. Have you heard of tetrodotoxin?” Dr. Wilson asked.

  I looked at Stan, who shrugged, and then I said, “It’s either a cough syrup or animal venom.”

  “Very good. That liberal arts education wasn’t wasted on you after all Mr. Everett,” Dr. Wilson asserted. “It’s a virulent toxin found in the puffer fish, the blue ringed octopus, and some other aquatic animals. It’s a hundred times more lethal than potassium cyanide.”

  “What does tetrodotoxin have to do with this case? I thought the woman was stabbed to death,” Stan asked.

  “Our victim was injected with enough tetrodotoxin to incapacitate her,” Doctor Wilson said. “The puncture wound on the neck is from an injection,” Dr. Wilson paused to let the gravity of his statement sink in. “From the size of it I’d say it was, oh, an eighteen gauge needle, perhaps smaller. The victim would have been conscious, able to feel pain, and could have lived several hours. We originally listed the cause of death as cardiac arrest due to exsanguination. With this new evidence, we will amend that to cardiac arrest associated with high volume blood loss and tetrodotoxin toxicity. She was drugged, then tortured. This was a particularly gruesome crime.”

  Stan sat in stunned silence. My mind was racing, thinking how this could help or hurt Cary Hunt.

  “What’s a poisonous fish got to do with this case?” Stan asked.

  Doc Wilson laughed and said, “I’m sure I don’t know, but you’re mixing up your terms sergeant. There is a difference between poisonous and venomous. If you bite it and you die, it’s poisonous. If it bites you and you die, it’s venomous.”

  Doc threw his head back and gave out a belly laugh. He was pleased with himself.

  Stan and I exchanged a glance. Doc was trying to make a joke, but it didn’t work or we just didn’t get it.

  “Dr. Wilson, how does this toxin affect the time of death estimate?” I asked.

  “You’ve cut to the heart of the matter, Mr. Everett,” Dr. Wilson replied.

  “The presence of tetrodotoxin would raise the body’s normal temperature as much as twelve degrees, perhaps more. The literature is unclear on this point. I’ve called some colleagues on the west coast and may be able to narrow that range somewhat but,” Dr. Wilson continued, “if we had discovered the corpse within hours of death we would have made erroneous assumptions, but that’s not the case here. Because the victim was deceased for some days, an exact calculation is impossible.”

  “What was the stage of decomp Doc?” Stan inquired. “Was there any insect activity?”

  “The body was entering the early stages of purification and there is evidence of both blow fly and…”

  Stan interrupted a second time. “Christ!”

  “Sergeant Lee, Mr. Everett is correct in his assumption. The time of death estimate in this case will be problematic, if not impossible. We may never get an accurate estimate because the unusually high body temperature caused by the toxin skews all possible calculations. Decomposition, insect activity and the other longer term markers are essentially useless in this case. Based on the information I currently have I can say only that the victim expired between when she was last seen in public and when her body was discovered.”

  “Our case assumed the victim died the day her husband left town.”

  “That could be the case, but we cannot confirm that from the available evidence.”

  “You’ve unraveled my case, Dr. Wilson,” Stan said.

  “I know Sergeant. I’m sorry, but the available evidence doesn’t leave me any choice.”

  “Dr. Wilson,” I interjected. “You’ll revise the death certificate and the particulars?”

  “Yes, right away,” he replied.

  “Do you have to release that information right away? You’re still investigating, after all.”

  Stan’s look cut right through me.

  “What are you suggesting, Mr. Everett, that I withhold information?” Doc Wilson was incredulous.

  “No, not withhold the information; just wait until you have gathered all the facts. You still have to hear back from the experts, don’t you?” I asked.

  “Yes, but…”

  Stan joined my play. “Doc, whoever committed this crime thinks they’ve gotten away with it. If they think they’re still in the clear, they may make a mistake.”

  We made a good team, Stan and I. He had picked up on where I was going instantly.

  “But an innocent man may be in custody,” Dr. Wilson protested.

  “And if he’s released in a few days he will be free and we may have his wife’s killer to put in his place,” Stan said.

  “I don’t know…” Dr. Wilson said.

  “Dr. Wilson, I’ve been hired by Mr. Hunt’s family,” I said. “Holding the information until you have a definitive answer will eliminate any perceived error on the part of your office.”

  I knew Doc Wilson was all about doing the right thing, but his reputation was important too. I could see the wheels turning.

  “Alright. I’ll wait until I have answers on the tetrodotoxin, but please keep in touch with me on the progress of your investigation.”

  Stan agreed to give the ME daily updates and in return Doc Wilson agreed to hold any release of information until we had all discussed it.

  Stan and I thanked Doc Wilson and headed to the parking lot. We leaned on our cars and tried to come up with a plan.

  “You know you’ve destroyed my case in less than 24 hours,” Stan said. The lieutenant is going to string me up by my thumbs. This is high profile and…”

  “It was shaky to begin with. You had your doubts, remember,” I replied.

  “Don’t remind me. What do you propose we do?” Stan asked.

  “We?” I raised and eye brow. “So now it’s ‘we’?”

  Stan looked sheepish.

  “We do what we always do, go back to the beginning,” I said.

  I told him about Cary suspecting his wife was sleeping around, but left out the bombshell about his own main squeeze being a cop. There would be time for that later, besides I wanted to talk to Kristin Wagner before Internal Affairs got to her.

  “Are you going to tell his lawyer his client is in the clear?” Stan asked.

  I liked Cary Hunt, but his mouthpiece was a shyster and that personal assistant, Alan, well they could both go to hell.

  “No, not yet, I still need his cooperation. I’ll try to fill in the missing pieces while Doc Wilson gets his evidence straight.”

  Stan pulled a notebook from his shirt pocket and flipped through it until he found what he wanted. “There was a call to the 911 center asking for a wellness check on Mrs. Hunt. There were two other requests from people we’ve identified as her friends too. Hunt’s call came from his cell phone on the day he says he left town, August 5th. The call came from Salt Lake City. He made half a dozen calls to people around town apparently looking for his wife. He kept it up until he returned to town.”

  “He was telling the truth about that,” I said. “Have you questioned the deputies who went out to the Hunt home? How thoroughly did they check?”

  “You know how that goes Mac,” he grumbled. The deputies go to a location, look around, and maybe look in the windows. They went out there and didn’t see anything. There wasn’t any more they could do.”

  “I get it. Hindsight is twenty/twenty, isn’t it? Can we go over the victim’s address book and transcripts of her emails, texts?”

  “Yeah, I should have those later today. Let’s meet at your place this evening,” he said.

  “Sure, come on by when you get off,” I said. “Can you check on his hotel records in Salt Lake as well as the OIA airport garage records and surveillance video?” I asked.

  “That should have already been done, but I’ll check on it. I’ll be there by seven,” he replied.

  I c
alled the Orange County Sheriff’s Office switchboard, asked for Detective Kristin Wagner. They transferred me to the Property Crimes Division. I asked for Detective Wagner and got her voice mail. I left a message.

  My next call was to the Steeple Chase Country club tennis pro. The country club receptionist answered on the first ring and connected me to the tennis shop. I got a voice mail there too and left a message. I had some time to kill so I headed over to the Hunt condo. Cary had said he’d seen a dark car with no plate parked near his condo. It was a long shot, but maybe I could catch a break.

  All the townhouses on the north side of the alley had garages and patios concealed by privacy fences. The ones on the south side were a mix of garages and concrete pads, but none had the view-blocking fence. I parked in front of the Hunt garage then took off on foot. Sure enough, just as Cary had said there was a condo on the south side a few doors down with a for sale sign in the window. I checked the parking area and was about to leave when I noticed a handful of cigarette butts at the edge of the concrete, like they’d been washed into a neat little pile by the rain. I stooped to look them over. I counted ten soggy butts. They were all the same, narrow, shiny black paper with a white ring and the words Djarum Black. There was a solid red triangle in place of the letter ‘a’ in the word black. I’d never heard of the brand but it was certainly distinctive. I pulled out my phone and snapped a couple of pictures, first establishing the location with a shot that included the for sale sign in the window and the house numbers, then a long shot of the driveway. I finished with some close-ups showing the brand name on the butts.

  I looked up the company on my phone’s browser. Djarum Black was a European brand. The butts I was looking at were the company’s ‘slims’. They had sixty percent tobacco and forty percent cloves. I got an empty Wendy’s bag from my car, returned to the driveway, and picked up the butts.

  I looked over the pictures I had taken and noticed a dark stain on the concrete. I looked around and found the spot. A car parked here recently had been leaking oil. I took a couple pictures of the oil stain and decided it was time to move on.