And he expected there was more to come.
Ehrlich had covered the stomach hole again out of consideration for Henry. Now he flipped back the cloth. “Her stomach exploded.”
“From what?” Henry said.
The ME looked up. “Methanol. Can you guess the form it was in?”
“Windscreen antifreeze,” Peter said. “What you call windshield washer fluid.”
Ehrlich, smiling, said, “Chief Inspector, how ever did you know that?”
“The girl was murdered. Probably finished off out near the spot where she entered — was dumped into — the river. The killer first knocked her out. Then he or she crushed the victim’s breathing passage by pressing both hands straight down with considerable force. But the victim ingested the antifreeze before that moment. Likely she was strangled outside the car, where the vehicle was found. You can’t put pressure straight down on someone sitting in a small car. Next, the scraping of the fingertips must have been done outside the car. It strikes me that it was inflicted at the last minute. We need to examine the ground. Most of the manic aggression occurred in the few minutes before the murderer dumped her. If all this was accomplished in the parking lot of the yacht facility, there was only one last-minute source of methanol.”
Henry Pastern was now sure that Cammon was the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes. Ehrlich let a minute go by. The girl’s body, all three men were thinking, could not possibly seem any more gruesome.
The ME picked up the thread. “The Ford is parked out in the FBI compound. I found a plastic jug in the trunk contained several ounces of washer fluid. Methyl alcohol is highly toxic. In living people it attacks the optic nerve and causes blindness very quickly. It’s one of the reasons they’re moving to ethylene glycol. This was the old kind. The stomach was one of the things that initially drove me nuts. Literally exploded after only three or four days. I at first thought ethanol, which is the basis for booze, but no. Methanol metabolizes fast, causing metabolic acidosis. Too much acid built up in her bodily fluids. Combined with the leaching of blood from her system over the four days, the acidosis imbalance grew even faster, to the point where swelling of the stomach blew out the stomach wall. To make it even faster, the girl suffered from diabetes, and diabetic acidosis was already in progress.”
“You are saying the methanol was ingested before death?”
“Before she was strangled?” Ehrlich said. “Have to be, wouldn’t it? At gunpoint, perhaps? It couldn’t have been much before the point of death, since there was no optic-nerve damage, and it would be devilishly hard to open the throat cavity after death.”
Peter concluded that they might never have the answer. But now he understood that the girl might have been terminated a fourth way.
“Did you perform blood tests?” Peter said, already aware that serology tests were standard procedure.
“You’re asking about race, Peter?” Ehrlich said.
The race of the victim would have been evident in most cases but Peter did not apologize for his question. The woman appeared to be African-American but her head, hands, and feet were so abraded and torn that he could not be sure. Her arms and legs showed lacerations that had swollen and discoloured the epidermis layer. He approached the racial issue delicately.
“We know that Alice Nahri was half-Indian with a white, English mother. We hope to get more pictures of Alice but I can’t tell just from her passport how dark she was.”
Ehrlich went to a shelf by the wall and took an object from a cardboard box. He returned and, respecting Henry Pastern’s status as lead investigator, handed Alice’s passport to him.
“Neither can I,” the ME said. Henry looked from the passport photo to the mutilated face and back again. Did Peter see a tear in the corner of his eye?
Ehrlich launched back into his forensics. “Blood testing for race remains controversial. It may seem offensive to test for characteristics more common in blacks than whites, but we do it. Sickle-cell anaemia, for example, is more common in African-Americans. On the other hand, it is not a reliable differentiation and I seldom bother testing for it. Haemoglobin glycation is higher in black people than white, but we know the girl was diabetic, so glucose would already be heightened in her system. There is evidence of anaemia caused by destruction of her red blood cells.”
“Cause?” Peter said.
“Thalassemia. It’s a blood disorder. But again we were unlucky, since thalassemia is inherited.”
Ehrlich stopped and both Henry and Peter waited for him to complete his account of the forensic tests.
“You’re sure she’s black?” Henry said.
“I’m sure.”
But Peter needed an ironclad conclusion. “And not Asian? Not from the Subcontinent?”
Ehrlich didn’t hesitate. “No, she’s not.”
Peter understood that Alice Nahri had attempted to obscure the race of the victim. She had succeeded to a degree, and now she had several days’ head start on the authorities. But part of the delay in sorting out the racial issue had been due to Alice’s luck. Even with the bloating of the corpse and the destruction of the soft tissues, the blackness of her skin in some areas would have been obvious in other circumstances. Peter looked at her exposed flesh. A cat-of-nine-tails had lashed the entire surface of the body. A web of marks, many of them infected, covered the skin. They resembled henna tattoos or baked-on lace and gave the body a perversely exotic look. Peter thought he knew the cause, not that he could quite believe it.
Dr. Ehrlich caught him looking. “Jellyfish stings. Accentuated by methyl mercury in the water. The Anacostia is a shallow river, and therefore warm in the summer. Some people think jellyfish only inhabit the South Pacific and Australia, but we get armadas of them in the Chesapeake and the Atlantic as far north as Cape Cod.”
“Lethal?” Peter said.
“Not to her. Sorry, don’t mean to be flippant. No, the sting is painful but not fatal to a healthy person. I was stung once. Treated it with baking soda and aspirin. Just more of her bad luck, I guess.”
Bad luck, Peter thought, or a fifth cause of death.
CHAPTER 21
Peter Cammon and Henry Pastern spent an hour examining the Ford Focus, which the Bureau had left in a sequestered zone of the Quantico parking lot. The car was a disappointment. They found two small bloodstains on the headrest on the passenger side but the impoundment report had already noted these. Peter found a crack in the plastic bumper, a confirmation that the vehicle had hit Carpenter with great force. He took note of a round mark on the dashboard where a GPS device might have been secured.
Their visit to the banks of the Anacostia was equally pro forma. They found nothing useful in the yacht club parking lot. The two men stood on the grass fringe and looked out on the forlorn waterway. What hung in the air was the desperation of Alice Nahri, who had been willing to slaughter a woman, a stranger, in a storm of vicious assaults, just to win a few more days of freedom.
Peter had Henry drop him off near the Hoover Building. They pulled over on F Street and chatted. Henry was reluctant to let the chief inspector go.
“Henry, you’ll need to call Inspector Deroche in Montreal. If you want I can telephone ahead and tell him to expect you, but you should be fine. Push him to take the girl seriously. She’s the key to this. I wouldn’t trust his opinion on the Booth letters but he’s a good detective and he needs to know the details on the rental car and the latest forensics. The Sûreté has the lead on this, not Scotland Yard.”
Henry nodded vigorously and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Are you staying on the case?”
The question was simple enough but it startled Peter. He thought for a moment. Later, he told himself that his reply was meant to encourage the novice detective, nothing more.
“To the end, Henry,” he said.
Peter strolled to Ford’s Theatre, which happens to stand
a block or so from FBI Headquarters. He joined a tour of the restored interior, which felt cool and hollow in its solemnity. Booth had chosen this killing ground to take out a president, firing a single derringer bullet into Lincoln’s skull. While the National Park guide narrated the tale of Booth’s attack, Peter hung back by the orchestra seats beneath the horseshoe of the balcony; here he gained a clear line of sight towards the presidential box and the stage below. The Lincolns had sat in the box on the right, which projected almost to the apron of the stage. There was the bunting on which Booth caught his spur. Peter applied his detective’s eye to the scene. Booth’s leap to the proscenium was foolhardy, and it was no surprise that he fractured his shin bone. Escaping through the rear of the stage never was a good plan, and bystanders almost stopped him. But then, melodrama was the young actor’s stimulant, Peter knew. Renaud’s book pointed out that Booth often confused stage drama with real life. In pain, the actor still managed to hit his mark stage front, and couldn’t resist turning and declaiming “Sic semper tyrannis!” to the audience. Lincoln, slumping forward in his chair a few feet away, fell into a coma.
Peter took a minute to visit the small museum in the basement, where Lincoln’s bloody coat and Booth’s derringer and knife were displayed in glass cases. He took special interest in Booth’s diary, the one he had jotted in during his ten days of desperate flight. The volume was more of a logbook, what would be considered a day-timer today, and Booth’s frenzy and desperation, though not remorse, were evident in his scattered scrawl. Peter could see where pages had been torn out. He peered through the glass and looked for a Booth signature on the diary. The actor had not signed his final declaration of innocence.
Despite the searing heat, Peter enjoyed his walk back to the Willard Hotel, but as he lay down on the bed in his silent room, a wave of foreboding, of fatefulness, swept over him. The case was slipping beyond his influence. He had never been given a mandate and he had a slim chance of latching on to one. He was no closer to finding the girl or the letters, certainly not the killer. The pursuit of Alice Nahri, murderess, was entirely in the hands of the FBI, and it would never be Chief Inspector Cammon, retired, who would effect the arrest of the prime suspect, Leander Greenwell.
He was torn about where to head next. He was finished with D.C., but a return to England felt like a full-scale retreat. He was inclined to drop by Montreal on his way to London and visit Renaud for a few days. Deep instinct told him that Alice Nahri would also return to the City of Saints at some point.
And so Peter did what he often did to revive his spirits. He rang up one of the women in his life.
It was evening in England. Sarah picked up her mobile on the first ring.
“Dad! It’s terrific to hear from you. Are you in Montreal?”
“No, I’m in Washington. On business.”
Sarah giggled. Peter was taken aback. His daughter’s laugh was like tinkling crystal. She was twenty-eight years old now but he always envisioned her as a little girl, his youngest child; she was also the one who understood him best. He felt affection sweep over him, a yearning for home, for Joan and the family.
“Sorry, Dad, but I’m never sure where you’re going to call from. But, yeah, good. You’re working again,” she said.
For Sarah’s part, her posture with her father had shifted about four years ago. She would never say so, but she used to fear him. She had grown up knowing that he had killed six men in his time with Scotland Yard. She had no grasp of what that was like. They had never discussed the shootings and as a result her doubts festered. He had been doing his duty, she knew, yet as the years passed she worried that her father had become inured to death. But four years ago, she had helped him on a murder case in Dorset. At dinner one night in the coastal town, he related the story of how he had discovered the body of a murdered girl in the Channel the day before. She listened with growing respect. The story was gruesome but was also permeated with her father’s sadness. Luck had led him to the victim, he claimed, but Sarah noted that no one else had managed to bring the poor girl home.
“Dear, can you tell me something about jellyfish?” he asked Sarah.
Her laughter caused him to hold the hotel phone away from his ear.
“Sorry,” she said.
“What’s so funny?” he said, not really taking offence.
“You always take me by surprise, Dad. But as a marine biologist I am always ready to talk jellyfish.”
“In particular, are there jellyfish in Chesapeake Bay?”
“Ah, well, the Chesapeake is one of the great ecological zones of the world. They have just about everything. Yes, there are jellyfish there. Why?”
“Would they be able to travel up the Potomac River, or a branch of it called the Anacostia?”
He could hear her moving about, presumably towards her computer. “Depends on tidal flow and water temperature. I’m going to go onto a database . . . Here it is. Chrysaora quinquecirrha. Sea nettles. They can be found all up the Atlantic Coast, the warmer the water the better. Classic-looking jellyfish, white or sometimes red, lampshade tops and long tentacles.”
“What will a sting do to you?”
“Well, this kind of sea nettle won’t kill you with its toxins, unless you are prone to anaphylactic shock. It will leave a red mark where its stinging cells inject you, and it will hurt, but you’ll recover.”
“Will they swarm a body, if that’s the right word?”
“That’s the perfect word. Multiple stings, the easier to bring down the prey.”
“What else can you tell me? Would they swim up the river?”
“More likely they would float up on the tides. They’re a serious nuisance on a lot of public beaches. I don’t know about the Anacostia but people lobby to have them culled or eradicated. I wouldn’t go for a dip off Atlantic City, for example. Might meet a moon jelly.”
“Which is?”
“Guaranteed lethal if it stings you. But that’s not your Chesapeake sea nettle.”
“Last thing, dear, would they attack a dead human body?”
Sarah seemed elated that her father had called her, pleased that her dad’s professional interests meshed with hers. She took this question perfectly seriously. “Sure. The jellyfish has no way of telling what’s alive or dead. But it wouldn’t enjoy dead human flesh.”
“Thanks for all this.”
“Call Mum. There’s no change in Uncle Nigel or Aunt Winnie, but I think she’d like to hear from you.”
“Right. Will do.”
“By the way, there are lion’s mane jellyfish in the Chesapeake system.”
To this apparent non sequitur Peter could only say, “So?”
“I’m surprised at you, Dad. There’s a Sherlock Holmes story, ‘The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane.’”
Sarah was laughing as she hung up.
Peter’s gloom might have qualified as a premonition, for Sir Stephen Bartleben called him a few minutes later.
“What’s happening in D.C., Peter?”
Peter took fifteen minutes to describe his journeys around the capital. “The Bureau should track down the girl pretty fast.”
But both men knew all this was preliminary to the key question of next steps.
“Montreal,” the boss said.
“Yes.”
“I’m sending Malloway.”
Perhaps it was the distance from London or Cammon’s pique with the callousness of Bartleben’s approach that made him reply, “That figures.”
“What figures?”
“Malloway works for Counter. Frank would insist it be one of his own.”
Peter’s snideness was offensive. The choice of a Yard representative was the former deputy commissioner’s prerogative, even if Frank Counter had nominal authority. “I need a regular man to do it, Peter. That’s why Malloway.”
Peter understood fully.
There was a touch of sarcasm in the boss’s retort. Bartleben was implying that Malloway could be relied upon to play his role conventionally, offending no one. Dunning Malloway would deal with Nicola Hilfgott with a degree of tact, unlike Cammon. Peter had met Malloway a few times. Peter recalled him as an ass-kisser who was not to be trusted.
“What does Malloway work on otherwise these days?” Peter said.
“He’s on one of Frank’s special squads. Worked on the phone-hacking scandal for a while. Showed good stuff dealing with the Palace on the alleged tapping of Prince Harry’s account. Lately he’s worked on the cricket-fixing incident with the Pakistanis.”
“Just like Carpenter. That’s just great,” Peter said.
Sir Stephen ignored the taunt. “Also did counter-terrorism work a little in the Subcontinent office. I need a regular man, full time, with an international brief.”
The deeper implication was that Peter was no longer authorized to deal with the Americans or the Canadians. Malloway would handle everything going forward. Peter barely held back.
“Stephen, Malloway should work closely with the Bureau here. A special agent named Henry Pastern. And he has to reach Deroche as soon as possible. I haven’t told Deroche about the woman in the river and the ME’s analysis, though Henry may have already called him. We need to square the circle.”
“Peter, crikey, that’s why mutual legal assistance protocols were invented. Malloway can handle Montreal and Washington.”
Peter’s rage grew. He tried one more time. “This isn’t really an international problem. It’s going to be an American manhunt. That’s how we’ll get the woman and, with any luck, retrieve Nicola’s precious documents.”
Prognostication was the wrong way for Peter to go. Sir Stephen paused, the silence implying that Peter had always been the wrong choice to handle Nicola’s ego. “Complete your business in D.C., Peter, then head home. Skip Montreal.”
The Drowned Man Page 21
