Unbearably Deadly (Roger and Suzanne South American Mystery Series Book 9)

by Jerold Last

  “Bottom line again,” finished Suzanne, “a few so-called experts looking at photos can’t possibly reliably identify the source of bite marks or claw marks on a human body. You don’t have any forensic evidence that will stand up in a court of law whether the wounds found on the Roberts were inflicted by a bear. There won’t be any meaningful and reliable forensic evidence until you get another autopsy performed on both bodies by a competent forensic pathologist who can conduct the new autopsies and examine the wounds carefully. And I suspect that will require a more highly trained pathologist than you’ll be able to find in Alaska.”

  The meeting ended on this slightly pessimistic note.

  ********************************************************************************

  Gretchen phoned us the next afternoon. “I thought you’d like to hear the preliminary findings from the new autopsies on the Roberts’ bodies. The FBI flew one of the best forensic pathologists in the United States up from Los Angeles to perform the autopsies first thing this morning. You’ve probably heard of him, Matsuhura Goldberg. He’s the Los Angeles City and County Coroner, an adjunct faculty member at the University of Southern California Medical School, and the pathologist the media likes to call ‘The Coroner to the Stars’. The FBI really went all out on doing this right after the lousy start we had on handling this case. They gave the ‘Coroner to the Stars’ the complete star treatment.

  “The Bureau flew him up here from Burbank early this morning on an FBI jet. It’s about a 4-hour flight, and just about as far as the Learjet 45 can fly on a regular tank of fuel with a good tailwind, which we had. They picked him up at his home about 4:30 AM. With the change in time zones they had him at the morgue here in Anchorage by 8. He started to repeat the autopsies on both bodies right after he got there. Dr. Goldberg had both of the autopsies completed before lunch, and was back in his office in Los Angeles before 6:30 PM, just in time to give a press conference about where he’d been and what he’d done. He got a good fee at taxpayer expense and a lot of positive PR, as well as lots of sleep on the two flights. Not a bad day’s work for our Coroner to the Stars!”

  There were sounds of paper rustling in the background as Gretchen scanned her notes. “He found drugs in the blood and liver of both victims consistent with the kind of compounds used to tranquilize big animals and render them unconscious with darts from a rifle. The specific drugs found were acepromazine and etorphine, the active ingredients in Immobilon. Careful inspection of the skin from the inside showed deep narrow holes in both of their backs consistent with their having been shot with tranquilizer darts. The puncture wounds were obscured by the slash marks, which is why they’d been missed in the first autopsies. The first autopsies were clearly done a lot less carefully than they should have been. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything we can do about the sloppy work since the first pathologist works for the Borough of Anchorage, not the Federal Government.”

  Suzanne had put our phone on speaker. We could hear the sounds of rustling paper again as Gretchen turned a couple of pages in the report before continuing. “The pathologist’s opinion is the slash marks are too straight vertically and too regular to have been made by a real bear randomly attacking with their paws. He suggests that someone apparently rigged real bear claws at the end of a club or baton to inflict the wounds we found. It would have been all too easy to do if the Roberts were unconscious at the time, which is consistent with the tranquilizer dart wounds and the drugs found in the bodies. Dr. Goldberg is already ruling both deaths are homicides. He’ll have the final autopsy results for us by tomorrow morning, pending some additional toxicological screens, which will take longer to run.

  “Bottom line: you were completely right, Suzanne. Thank you for pointing us in the proper direction.”

  “So, what comes next, Gretchen?” asked Suzanne.

  “You can share this information with your friend Vincent, whose instincts were right on target. We have to get a good forensics unit back to the scene where the bodies were found, even if they’re just going through the motions this late after the fact. Maybe with this new information about how the Roberts were murdered they’ll find something they overlooked when they searched the site previously for evidence related to a killing by a real bear. Then we have a lot of plain old-fashioned detective work to do, much of which will be done for us by the local police. If you guys can join us for dinner, I’d like to ask you to volunteer to help our investigation.”

  I had a couple of thoughts. “Hey, Gretchen,” I said loud enough to be heard over the speakerphone, “getting together for dinner tonight sounds good. You choose the place and let us know where and when to meet. And maybe between now and then you might want to think about something. Those tranquilizer guns and the prescription drugs for the darts are probably tightly regulated and impossible to get hold of legally unless you’re a veterinarian or a Park Ranger. Why don’t you see if you can get a lead as to where our killer got the weapon?”

  “I’ll get Barbara working on the answer as soon as we hang up,” she replied. “Maybe we’ll have something else to talk about over dinner.”

  After hanging up I called Vincent Romero to bring him up to date on the news. It was an hour later in Los Angeles, but he was still at our office. I told him what Gretchen had shared with us about the new autopsy results. “You were right. It was murder. The FBI is investigating. The current agents looking into this are from San Francisco and are very good. They’re the two sisters we met in Quito and the Galapagos Islands a few months ago. What do you want Suzanne and me to do now?”

  “Thanks for calling with the update, Roger. It isn’t going to bring back my friends, but I’d like to see them get some justice here. Why don’t you spend a few more days seeing if you can get any ideas about who did it and the why of the killings?” he replied.

  I looked at Suzanne who nodded yes. “OK, Vincent. I’ll call again if we have any more news.”

  We spent the next hour catching up on e-mail and learning as much as we could about Denali National Park on the Internet.

  Chapter9. Where there’s a crime, there’s a plan

  An hour later we met Gretchen and Barbara Kaufman near our hotel for dinner at a seafood restaurant a few blocks from the FBI headquarters. The restaurant was on the ground floor of a clean modern building. It had its own entrance, which was easy to find. As we went in a cheerful hostess greeted us, asking whether we had reservations.

  “We’re supposed to be meeting a couple of friends here,” replied Suzanne. “If they made a reservation it would be in the name of Kaufman.”

  “Of course,” answered the hostess cheerfully. “Please follow me to your table.”

  We walked towards a small row of booths in the back, near the door to the kitchen. The ceiling and walls were paneled in some kind of rich brown wood with discreet lighting. The place was full, but didn’t feel crowded and wasn’t at all noisy. The smells were wonderful and the huge plates the various diners we passed were eating from looked excellent and elegant. Steak, seafood, and fish seemed to be the popular main courses to order. This place was a large step up from the salmon sandwich and beer of our first night in Anchorage!

  Gretchen greeted us warmly. “I hope you like this place. It was highly recommended by one of my colleagues in San Francisco who spent a few years assigned here before he was transferred to The City. He’s usually pretty good about restaurant recommendations.”

  We sat down at a table for four in one of the booths, a nice touch to ensure our privacy. The full restaurant was usually a good sign. We ordered drinks, glanced at the menu, and got through the rituals before we discussed the case. Suzanne and I both selected a combination dish of salmon, halibut, and Alaska King Crab. The four of us shared a bottle of Washington State Riesling wine to go with our various fish dinners. Over the first glass of wine Gretchen turned to Suzanne. “I have a feeling we’re all going to be good friends after this case is over, Suzanne. You two know just about all there is to
know about Barbara and me from when we first met each other a few months ago in Ecuador and Mexico. We really don’t know anything about either you or Roger except what’s in his FBI file, which is almost completely about his career as a PI and has almost nothing personal in it. Where did you grow up and what are your families like? How did you end up living in Beverly Hills?”

  Suzanne looked at me. I nodded, so she answered Gretchen’s question. “Roger’s a native Californian, born and raised in San Diego. He has an older sister and a younger brother, both of whom stayed in San Diego. His Mom was a full-time mother while he grew up, while his Dad was a career Navy officer based out of San Diego. His father was actually a cop in the Navy, first as a Shore Patrol officer and later on in Naval Intelligence. Roger’s biggest concern growing up was when and where the surf was up so he could go boarding. He went to college at UC San Diego, majoring in chemistry. Then he went to law school at UCLA where he became a patent attorney. After passing the bar he discovered that he didn’t like either lawyers or crooks, and that patent law was extremely boring, so the law was a bad career choice for him.

  “After his extremely brief career as a lawyer Roger became a cop in Los Angeles. He worked his way up the career ladder to homicide detective, but got tired of the bureaucracy and politics and switched to being a private detective. He likes being his own boss. He stays in shape mostly doing martial arts, his favorite being Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He keeps the law license paid up, so can always go back to patent law if he gets tired of being a P.I. That hasn’t happened yet.”

  Suzanne paused to sip some of her wine. “I’m a native Californian too, born and raised as an only child in Northern California in Davis, a small college town you probably know along I-80 near Sacramento. I grew up as a tomboy who liked to play all kinds of sports, and had a great childhood. My mother died during my first year at college. Dad moved to Los Angeles and bought a nice house in Beverly Hills right after my mother died to be nearer to his business. I went to college at the University of California in Davis and majored in biochemistry. From there I got a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Berkeley followed by three years on a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford. I’m currently an associate professor of biochemistry at UCLA. I teach and do research on some very strange proteins we isolate from tropical plants, so I get to travel for my research work and can get away on short notice like now. As you already know, I’ve been married to Roger for a couple of years now and we have a 1-year-old son, Robert.

  “I share Roger’s interest in martial arts and have a first-degree black belt in Tai-Kwando karate. Work keeps me too busy to try to get better competitively, but I work out frequently enough to try to stay in shape. When my father died I inherited his house in Beverly Hills and a whole lot of his money. There are a few very high-powered lawyers who worry about family trusts and all that stuff. I don’t really know, or care about, the details.”

  We relaxed and waited for the food. Barbara turned to me and mimed tipping a non-existent hat. “Good call on the tranquilizer gun, Roger. You were right about the sale of those rifles and darts being tightly controlled. I had a hunch and called the Chief Ranger at the Park. They had one of their dart guns and a box of a dozen darts containing Immobilon disappear from a locked gun safe in the Park headquarters some time in the last month. That points another finger at a Park Ranger, one of the staff, or one of the concession employees. They’d be the only people with access to the restricted area where the gun safe is kept.”

  I had a random thought. “How about the local FBI agents, Barclay and Culpepper? Would they get around Park headquarters often enough to be added to your list?”

  “Hmmmm,” murmured Gretchen. “There aren’t enough felonies committed at the National Park for them to be at the Park often, but they’d have access if they wanted it. Are you just being logical or do you know something you should share with me about one or both of them?”

  There was a short break while the waiter came and placed our dishes in front of each of us and refilled our wine glasses. In addition to the two types of fish and the King Crab legs, our full platters also contained baked potatoes and a couple of vegetables covered with interesting sauces prepared in the French style. A basket of freshly baked bread and butter, and a rack containing bowls of sour cream, more butter, and chives to decorate the potatoes completed the meal. He left our table, restoring the relative privacy of our booth.

  “Just trying to consider all the possibilities,” I replied. “No, I don’t know anything to suggest that either should be a suspect. On the other hand, Ed Barclay did a fairly spectacular job of messing up the original investigation, which makes me wonder more than just a little bit.”

  Gretchen looked over at her sister with an inquisitive expression. “Speaking of considering all the possibilities, Barbara had an interesting idea this afternoon after we talked. Maybe she should explain what she thought and how far she’s been able to get following up on it.”

  Barbara, seldom if ever at a loss for words, paused for a few seconds to gather her thoughts before directly looking at us and beginning to speak. “I thought about what you said about Roberta and Francis Roberts having the kind of history in Chile that could have provided a motive for someone to kill them. Then I started worrying some more about how hard it would be for us to get the kind of prompt cooperation from other federal agencies we’d need to solve these murders. It occurred to me that we needed to find out whether there were any Chileans here in the National Park just using our own resources or we might never get an answer to that question. So, I had an idea.” She paused, dramatically.

  Suzanne played straight woman to Barbara, who obviously was waiting for the next question. “What did you think of, Barbara?”

  “Easy,” she replied. “What kind of paperwork did you have to do when you checked into your hotel in Denali and when you bought your train tickets?”

  “They asked for a credit card and some kind of official I.D. with a photo,” I replied. “Good thinking, Barbara. Unless, of course, they paid cash.”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “It turns out a couple of them did pay cash for the train tickets, but they all used credit cards and passports as I.D.s at their hotels. I hit all the hotels in Denali, which was a lot less work than it sounds since there are only a dozen or so that take reservations by phone or through travel agencies. Three tourists with Chilean connections showed up, a couple and a single male.”

  She reached in a pocket for a small notebook, flipped to a marked page, and continued. “The couple is named Correa, used their passports as I.D at the hotel and train station, and gave a home address in Santiago on the passport that matched the address on their credit card. The single male is named Carlos Gutierrez. He paid cash for the train and has a passport address in Concepcion.

  “I did a preliminary check of all three of them for legal entry into the US with a proper visa. This is where it starts to get very interesting. Neither the Correas nor Carlos Gutierrez seems to have a legal visa to be here in the US. We have no way as yet of knowing whether their passports are real or forged. I need to call Washington D.C. during normal business hours on the East Coast to get more information. Finding out as much as I can about the three Chileans is at the top of my to-do list for tomorrow.”

  The waiter cleared the dishes and asked about dessert. We all ordered coffee and different types of fruit pies, which were supposed to be the restaurant’s specialty. Barbara turned to her sister to ask, “Is it time now?”

  Gretchen nodded to her before turning to Suzanne. “OK,” she said, “I’m about to ask you two for a big favor. Please think about it before you say no, or tell me you can’t.”

  We looked at her, waiting for her to ask about whatever it was she wanted.

  Gretchen appeared to be lost in thought for what seemed to be a long time, but was probably less than a minute. “How would the two of you like a great vacation in the National Park? I have an idea.”

  “What are you thinking?” asked
Suzanne.

  “It’s obvious to both Barbara and me we’re not going to solve these murders by investigating a crime scene that’s been sitting around unguarded for more than a week. Whatever evidence we find there, if we can find any at all, will be subject to rebuttal by a good defense attorney. Any competent lawyer would claim it got there before or after the murders, not during the crime. The only chance we’ve got to solve this case is to plant somebody undercover to snoop around and try to make the killer try again. And you two seem to be the obvious people to ask for that kind of undercover help.”

  We were interrupted by the waiter’s arrival. He brought us dessert and coffee, delivering two apple pies, Suzanne’s strawberry-rhubarb pie, and the one whose name had fascinated me so much I’d ordered it, a Razzleberry pie. Suzanne was obviously mulling over Gretchen’s not so generous offer of a vacation while the dessert ritual was going on.