A Taxing Death (Jill Quint, MD, Forensic Pathologist Series Book 5)

by Peche, Alec

  "Okay I'll meet you there and thanks for the invite to observe," Jill added the last words for emphasis as she wanted him to know that she did indeed consider herself a guest.

  Jill checked in with the Lieutenant and gained no new information about the crime scene. There was nothing more for her to do at this victim's house and so she said goodbye to him with the promise that she would be at his meeting tomorrow morning. The coroner's office was about twenty minutes away which gave her forty minutes to sit with her thoughts on next steps. She really needed to work out of her home office and so once she was done observing the autopsy she would head for home, stop by Nathan's and pick Trixie up, and let him know of her plans for this evening and the next morning. She had the eight o'clock meeting with the Highway Patrol task force and then an autopsy for Placer County in the early afternoon. She would make plans to dine at Nathan's house tomorrow but she saw herself driving into Sacramento to attend the task force for at least the next week.

  It was too hot to sit in her car or even outside and get some work done, so in the end she drove to the coroner's office, checked in with the receptionist on the time of the autopsy, settled into the comfortable chairs in the air-conditioned lobby, and composed a brief note to Anna Valencia, and a longer note to her teammates with her impressions about the case and her thoughts of how she might use them long distance. At this point, she didn't see a need for them to leave Wisconsin and travel to California simply to do internet searches. With ten minutes left, she decided she would do her first search about people who hate the Department of Revenue. She visited two chat rooms and found loads of hatred for the department. She was glad to take a break from the hateful dialogue and have the receptionist call John Garcia to let him know she was there to observe the autopsy.

  Minutes later she wore protective clothing over her street clothes and observed as John and an attendant removed the clothing from the victim. The attendant left the room with the victim's belongings so they could be bagged and tagged as potential evidence or examined by the crime scene staff.

  The coroner began his search of the victim's skin and once they turned him over he found a spot between the shoulder blades that looked like the mark of a Taser gun. They hadn't seen that at the victim's residence as the clothing had been in the way.

  "It looks to me like it is a stun mark not a kill mark as I don't see any burn there," John noted. "I'll have to see what the organs look like inside, but at least we have our first physical evidence that this may not be a natural death, although we still don't know what actually killed him."

  Finished examining the skin, John asked for Jill's assistance in turning the body back over and proceeded with his examination of the internal organs beginning with a Y incision in the chest. Jill listened to John dictate, "The heart was filled with dark red liquid blood. White froth was revealed in the lumens of the trachea and both bronchi."

  "So those are the signs of someone who has died from asphyxia and it must be a gas or chemical agent as there are no signs of mechanical suffocation. He has no broken blood vessels or bruises to indicate any kind of struggle. Even if you were stunned with a Taser, I think you would still fight a little, but we have nothing here. Mind if I take dual samples of the blood, heart and lungs? I have my own toxicology lab at my home and I may be able to process some specimens faster than you."

  "Wow, Jill, you have your own lab? What a dream job! Do you need an assistant? Wait, I forgot, I'm not ready to retire and I love my job here. Yes of course you can take duplicate samples. Give me your specimen tubes from your kit and I will fill both sets of tubes at the same time."

  "John, since we may be dealing with a gas, I would love to get an air sample from inside the lungs. I would think any gas has by now dissipated, but you never know if you don't look. When do you think he died?"

  "Based on what the crime scene folks collected, he was alive as recently as forty-eight hours ago, but given his temperature and the condition of his body I think the time of death was thirty-two to thirty-six hours ago as putrefaction is just about to start with this body. Is that the conclusion you came to as well?"

  "Yes I agree with you and it would be so much harder to determine what killed our victim here if it was a day later that they found him. I'm anxious to see what testing yields as the causative agent as it's pretty diabolical. The mistake the killers made was the Taser injury. That's enough to make any coroner take a second look at their autopsy findings."

  "Okay, Jill, here are the samples you requested. Do you want to stay for the remainder of the autopsy or were you planning to run off to your home lab and satisfy your curiosity as to what killed our victim?"

  "John, you know me so well because yes I do want to run the samples home. Given the victim's blue fingernail beds, I'd really like to know what the agent was that killed him. I know it's not carbon dioxide or cyanide or chlorine. It might be a gas that I've never come across like helium or argon. If I get any results today, how should I reach you? I know my findings can't be used by you as I don't operate a state approved lab, but they will give you the evidence to put pressure on your own lab to get results back if you're interested in that."

  "Absolutely, I'd like to know. Once I finish with this autopsy and its paperwork I'll be back in my office, which I have to leave on time this evening as my wife and I are entertaining company. I'll be looking for an e-mail from you with the results whether I am here or at home."

  "Sounds good. Thanks for inviting me to observe and I hope I have some amazing news for you soon."

  Jill left the autopsy suite, disposing of her protective outerwear, and rolled her autopsy kit out to her car where she prepared to leave Sacramento for home. A quick glance at the e-mails that had arrived while she was in the coroner's autopsy room verified that she had no urgent reason to stay in the city rather than heading home. Fifty minutes later, she arrived at Nathan's house and studio to pick up Trixie and chat with Nathan for a few moments. Since she was itching to start processing specimens in her lab, she was thrilled that Nathan had an appointment with a client a few minutes after she arrived to pick up her dog.

  Jill was pleased to turn in the gate to her home, always a welcome sight of peacefulness and serenity. Trixie was excited but held in place by her harness in the seat. Jill knew the moment she parked the car and let Trixie out of her harness, she would take off at full speed for a large oak tree that always harbored squirrels.

  She changed into casual clothes, grabbed a diet Coke, retrieved the autopsy kit from the car trunk and rolled it into her lab. Despite the hundred degree day, her autopsy kit contained a battery-operated refrigerator so that her specimens did not further decompose while in transport to her lab. Two hours later, she had her answer as to what killed Mr. Rossi, victim number four.

  Chapter Eight

  Nitrogen gas.

  She had completed a cursory search on nitrogen gas deaths which seemed to fall in three categories: diving accidents, suicides, and accidents in an area using liquid nitrogen. It was the suggested gas for the Death Chamber as people fall asleep before death takes them and there is not a feeling of suffocation as diatomic nitrogen molecules replaced diatomic oxygen molecules binding to hemoglobin in the blood system. All things considered about death, it was a reasonable way to die.

  The air sample from the victim's lungs was heavier on nitrogen than one would expect. Blood samples also displayed a lack of oxygen. She dropped an email to John Garcia asking him to pass the information on to law enforcement as a preliminary cause of death. Nitrogen gas was easy to obtain as it was used in diving, in laboratories in the liquid form for refrigeration, and also in the manufacture of some beers in lieu of carbon dioxide. Thus obtaining a gas cylinder would be relatively easy.

  Jill tried to visualize the scenario. The victim opens the door to the killers, and he invites them in and gets the shock to the back; or they push their way in, and shock his back. They then carry him to his bedroom, lay him down on his bed, put a mask of nit
rogen gas over his face watch him drift off to sleep then die. They might have worn oxygen masks themselves to avoid inhaling the nitrogen and also falling asleep. Once decomposition set in, it would have been harder to detect high levels of nitrogen. Another twelve to twenty hours before he was discovered and natural decomposition might have provided the perfect cover for murder.

  She finished her testing and moved on to putting together some overall thoughts about the case. She pulled up the emails from her team members as they always provided ideas on how to research the case and developed an outline of how to find this killer. Each clue they had about the murderers became a path to follow on how to track them.

  What she really needed was the video surveillance matched to the facial recognition software as the easiest and fastest way to identify these killers. She had the video feed provided by Detective Chang but that was a small piece of all the feeds available. She dropped an email to Lieutenant Moss reminding him that she would like to view the video feed his office had already collected. Then she called George Fellows at the city maintenance yard. She had momentarily forgotten that Detective Chang had suggested this person as the man who had the video footage of all street cameras in the city. She didn't know how she would be able to limit her need for a wide range of footage, the many streets in and around the Capitol, so maybe she could drive to the site of the computer managing the camera footage and follow the trail on the screen. Before she did that she sent the video feed she already had to Jack to see if he could do anything with the image - make it good enough that they could use it for facial recognition.

  George had been alerted by Detective Chang that Jill might call. They set up an appointment for the next day for her to take a look at the footage of the street cams around the Capitol. She also planned to get the address of where the other two victims were killed to see if there were street cams close to those restaurants.

  Jill did a summation e-mail for Anna Valencia. Anna was fine communicating through e-mail as she was happy to see that there appeared to be sufficient resources applied to this murder investigation and she felt confident that someone would soon figure out who the killers were.

  Next Jill composed an e-mail for Henrik. She described her situation here and the fact that one of the law enforcement agencies had facial recognition software. If that software failed to provide her with the answer, she was asking for his approval in advance to use his technology. She mentioned her conversation with Lieutenant Moss and the question as to whether it was legal in the United States. The last sentence might ruffle Henrik's feathers as he worked very hard to do everything the right way. He would get the last laugh when one of these law enforcement agencies purchased the software as it was so superior.

  Afternoon was fading into evening and it occurred to Jill that she had not been out running for the past three days. She changed into her running clothes, braided her hair, and grabbed the dog's leash and the two of them set off on a run. Trixie was having the time of her life, bred to be a carriage dog, somewhat frustrated with Jill's slowness. Jill on the other hand liked to exercise in the morning and so a run was much harder on her mentally in the late afternoon. She had always found that running cleared her head and so she was able to think about the case and more specifically about the killers. She had to laugh to herself that no sports magazine would ever print a story that 'deciphering who was a murderer' was a motivation to run.

  An hour later, she had finished her run and taken a shower to wash away the sweat. She had a frozen pizza that was her go-to meal when she was deep in a case and not interested in doing more than hitting the microwave buttons to prepare dinner. She would eat that a little later, but at the moment she wanted to study the online community chat rooms where people who hated the Department of Revenue conversed. She had been shocked earlier over the rage she had found with this group. She was convinced that the motive for these murders resided in the heart of someone who really hated the state tax organization. These two killers had murdered four people so far and if they ever discovered where the employees had been moved, they would all be in danger.

  She managed one more glance at her e-mail to see what information was being shared. She found that one of the agencies had sent the video from inside the restaurant. The video was not focused on where the victim sat; rather, the cameras were aimed at all entrances and all cash registers. The two men involved in each restaurant were the same as the two men recorded walking down the halls of the Capitol before killing Manuel Valencia. She sent the video off to Jack to see what he could do with the facial images of the two men.

  Jill tried to guess at their age, height, and weight. It was clear that they were sharing the uniforms of a paramedic and emergency services technician as one of the killers was a paramedic on the first video but not on the second. There was no picture of the ambulance captured in any of this footage. She wondered if they had even used it for some of the murders. They certainly hadn't needed to.

  There was also the issue of the medical condition knowledge. Where had these killers found private medical information on the victims? The killers had very specific information that allowed them to spin a story that was believable by each of the victims. Had some insurance company been hacked? Was it medical alert? Jill tried to think of who might have this information and then she sent off an e-mail to Jo to see if she might have some suggestions.

  She created her own murder board and instead of adding suspects she added traits of the suspects: intelligent, able to acquire personal health information from somewhere that likely required computer hacking skills, some medical knowledge, funding since they had purchased a defibrillator among other equipment, one Caucasian, one African-American, both 30 to 45 years of age, patient as they had been able to stalk their targets, and a desire to disrupt and destroy the Department of Revenue perhaps with the purpose of stopping state taxation. It really helped seeing all those traits up on the board. She would take a picture of it and share with the group tomorrow to see what any of them could add.

  It was time to take a break and fix dinner. She dialed Nathan while the frozen pizza was heating.

  "How's it going? Did you find your killers yet?"Nathan asked.

  "You really are the most supportive partner a girl could have with that opening question. Alas, no I haven't found them yet. I was doing my murder board listing the traits/skills the killers need to possess and it is a strange combination of skills. Maybe instead of looking for all skills in one person, the two of them have synergistic skills with a combined mentality of hating the state tax folks."

  "When I think of the array of killers you have chased since we've been together, personally, I have found all of them to have weird skills, and in fact each of us humans probably has an array of weird skills."

  "That's true. You have skill at cooking and I don't. I guess we'd call the two of us in the kitchen synergistic - you cook, I eat. I'm heating up a frozen pizza at the moment and then I'm going to dive into some chat rooms or communities where people clearly have a hate for the taxing authority of the state. I looked into it briefly earlier in the day and it's a very toxic group of people so I'm fortifying myself with pepperoni pizza and wine before spending a couple hours seeing if I can sense any killers lurking anywhere in there."

  "Sounds like a nasty group of people. What's your schedule for tomorrow?"

  "I have the 8a.m. meeting at Highway Patrol headquarters with the task force and then I have an autopsy for Placer County sometime tomorrow. In between the two scheduled events, I'll be dropping in to the city of Sacramento maintenance headquarters to view what they might've caught on camera of the departing ambulance. I wish I had Jack here for that as he's so much faster at viewing what I think is boring film footage. Oh well. Most of my cases seem to be about looking for a needle in a haystack and there's always some boring component of doing that. What's your schedule like and how did your meeting go with the client today?"

  "I don't have any meetings scheduled tomorrow so
I'll mostly be catching up with work. Let me know by mid-afternoon whether or not you'll be coming over for dinner tomorrow night, okay? I'll likely run to the store for supplies. The client I met with today was very amusing and I hope our working relationship continues in that vein. He is new to the wine industry and understands how important the label is to attract attention and buyers of his wine. He is growing the Viognier grape over on the central coast. That's a tough grape for a novice winemaker. I don't know what his background is, but it isn't in vintology. I advised him of a few people he could talk to and get help and advice on the grape. The conversation with him reminded me of a dry sponge soaking in water. He knows enough to worry about this grape, so he gave me a budget for the label and then he told me to just do it; there was no need for him to provide input as I knew more about the topic than he did. I wish all my clients put their total faith in my designs."

  "He does sound like an interesting client. Are you afraid your label will end up on a bottle of wine that tastes awful?"

  "Actually he is self-teaching himself everything there is to know about growing grapes. I imagine him out in his vineyard with the textbook in hand. Probably talks to the grapes, strokes the vines, and hand waters the entire crop trying to make up for the lack of knowledge. He's got the work ethic to make this vineyard work. The real question is whether he has the taste buds to understand what he's producing. I'm thinking about mentoring him and setting up some wine tastings to help him understand what he doesn't want to grow. He has no ego which makes him easy to get along with."

  "Sounds like the perfect client. Hey, my buzzer just went off for my pizza. I'll chat with you later and hope to make our dinner date tomorrow. Love you," Jill said and they ended their call.

  Nathan at times, through his conversation, could provide brain cleansing for lack of a better descriptor. She felt better after talking to him and if she could get him on the subject of wine which usually wasn't too difficult then her brain seemed to relax and focus on winemaking rather than murder. Maybe it was just talking to someone she loved that was so soothing to her soul and yet had the ability to clear away the cobwebs in her head.