Depraved Heart
Page 31
I flip on the lights and I’m a specter, a quiet vengeful presence working my fingers into a pair of black nitrile gloves. I don’t move from the doorway as I look inside at the messy antique bed ornately carved with animals that watch over the room like gargoyles.
CHAPTER 38
THE COVERS ARE PULLED BACK AS IF CHANEL GILBERT just got up and will return any second. That’s assuming she was the one sleeping in here. That’s assuming she was sleeping alone.
She—or someone—didn’t bother to make the bed or even straighten it. She didn’t get dressed. What happened? Did someone unexpected appear at the door? Was her killer already inside the house? The questions are landing fast, one after another, and I wonder if it was Chanel’s habit to sleep nude. Did she get up and put on the black silk robe she was wearing when her body was found? Was she naked for some other reason?
I smell the stench of decomposing flesh but it’s an olfactory phenomenon like a phantom pain. It’s remembered. It’s imagined. The odor has dissipated and I can’t really smell it in this remote part of the house. But the thought of it is a reminder of an unavoidable fact that has gnawed at me all day. The advanced rate of decomposition argues that Chanel Gilbert didn’t die late last night and definitely not this morning. Postmortem artifacts don’t lie even during a heat wave when the air-conditioning has been turned off.
But the meaning of such morbid phenomena can be misinterpreted if we’re given bad information, and I believe we have been, and that thought leads me to her gastric contents. The shrimp, rice, onions and peppers had barely begun to digest. A seafood creole or stew would be an unusual choice for breakfast but that doesn’t mean much. People eat all sorts of things at whatever time suits them. What I can say with certainty is she ate lunch or dinner or a snack, she possibly had a beer or a glass of wine, and very soon afterward something happened. She died. Or she was so traumatized and distressed that she went into fight-or-flight mode and the blood rushed to her extremities. Either way her digestion completely stopped.
This could suggest she ate a meal with her assailant, possibly inside this house, possibly at the kitchen table that now has been set with a collector’s plate taken off the wall. Possibly Chanel got up after her meal and moments later was beaten to death. Had she been out to dinner and was attacked at some point after she returned home it’s likely her digestion would have been further along, and next I think of the missing kitchen trash bag. I play out a scenario of someone bringing take-out food to the house. It might have been Chanel. It might have been her killer—it might have been Carrie Grethen.
I imagine Chanel eating and possibly within minutes being attacked or dead, and I find it curious that evidence of her last meal isn’t in the kitchen trash. It isn’t in the supercans at the side of the house. There’s no restaurant receipt anywhere either. But I don’t really need evidence like that no matter how helpful it might be. Chanel’s stomach contents tell me what she ingested before she died. I don’t know if her killer correctly anticipated what we would find on autopsy. Perhaps even Carrie isn’t well versed in the nuances of digestion.
Were it not for what the housekeeper claims I would place Chanel Gilbert’s murder a good twenty-four hours earlier than we’re supposed to believe. Not this morning or yesterday but possibly the midday or night before. In other words as early as Wednesday. The same day Bryce had our CFC vehicles washed and detailed. Possibly the same day the truck’s taillight was tampered with.
The housekeeper is mistaken or lying.
“What really happened here?” I mutter to the empty room.
The wide board flooring is centered by an Oriental rug, the ceiling beamed. The ivory silk drapes are drawn, and behind them are blackout shades pulled down.
“Uh-oh.” Marino is right behind me. “When you start talking to dead people it’s time to call it a day.”
I walk inside and smell flowers and spices. I follow my intuition and my nose. The scent leads me to a chest of drawers.
“I’d like to open these,” I say to Marino.
“Be my guest.”
“Did you look when we were here the first time?”
“I didn’t have a reason to go through all her personal stuff, not that there was time. She was just an accident. Then we had to rush to Lucy’s place.”
“Well we’re back.”
“Yeah no shit.”
I FEEL HIM STARING AT ME. I sense his heavy mood, his edginess as I find what I’m looking for in the first drawer I try.
It’s empty except for a ceramic ball-shaped pomander. I pick it up and recognize the perfumes of lavender, chamomile, lemon verbena and something else I don’t expect and can’t pinpoint. It’s subtly pungent and that’s odd for a household fragrance.
“They could have had something together.” Marino doesn’t take his eyes off me. “And I think you know what I’m talking about, Doc. I don’t want to get into it more than that.”
I do know what he’s talking about and he doesn’t need to get into it. I intuit his meaning not from what he says but from the way he says it. Marino is suggesting that Chanel and Carrie might have been acquainted. They might have been more than that. He’s coming around to this point of view on his own.
“The pomander is an antique but the potpourri definitely hasn’t been it in very long. It’s fresh.” I verify to him that it appears someone in addition to Chanel has been using the house.
This suggests more of the same unpleasantness to put it mildly. If Carrie knew Chanel and Chanel knew Lucy then that links the three of them. Chanel has been murdered. Carrie’s existence can’t be proven. That leaves Lucy hung out to dry by the FBI. I worry that might be the reason for everything but I can’t fathom why.
“A pom-what?” Marino sets down the scene case.
“A container used to hold potpourri, scent pellets, sachets.” I open other drawers. “This pomander is old. It’s not a reproduction and looks about the same era as when this addition was built, around the time of the Civil War, possibly earlier or a little later. I can’t say for sure. But definitely not seventeenth century. And certainly not modern.”
I walk my gloved fingers through neatly folded athletic clothes, maybe half a dozen tank tops and pairs of tights. Ladies size small. Some of them still with the tags. None of it inexpensive.
“Mid-to late eighteen hundreds is my guess.” I continue to tell Marino what I see and think. “The important point is the dried herbs, flowers or oils used are fresh or they wouldn’t smell this potent.”
“Do you want it to go to the labs?” He flips up the clasps on the scene case.
“Yes …” My thought is stalled by the sudden sensation that I’m inside a pub.
I stop everything for a moment and concentrate. Then it occurs to me.
“I smell hops,” I say to Marino and whoever else might be listening.
“As in beer?”
“As in the brewing of it.” My voice is strong and audible, and I realize I sound aggressive.
Maybe two can play your game.
“Sounds like wishful thinking. I sure as hell could use a couple beers right now,” Marino says.
“Hops has other uses, including medical,” I explain blandly, as if I have no feelings about it.
He sniffs the air near where I’m standing. “I don’t smell it but that’s nothing new when I’m with you. I think you were a bloodhound in another life. It will be interesting to see if Chanel had something wrong with her. If she might have been sick.”
“I don’t believe so. At least there was nothing evident on gross examination. We’ll see what shows up on histology but Luke would have mentioned it if he’d found any sign of her having a disease or some other serious problem.”
“Well not that I’m an expert,” Marino says, “but a lot of the stuff we’re seeing in this house is what I associate with someone worried about bad luck or bad health or dying.”
Carrie made a pact with God that she wouldn’t suffer a similar fate.
“Possibly what we’re seeing indicates a health concern or a disabling problem of some sort, possibly one that causes discomfort, pain or some type of embarrassment such as a tic, a tremor or a deformity,” I continue to explain to Marino but it’s directed at her. “We might infer that this person has an atypical belief system—in other words delusions—about the healing power of plants and other things that occur naturally such as metals.”
Copper.
“The hops plant is actually a cousin of cannabis and has been used to shrink tumors, to help with sleep.” I set the pomander on top of the dresser. “I suspect Chanel or someone staying here has suffered from insomnia, anxiety, depression or some other mood instability.” I imagine Carrie’s reaction if she’s listening.
She’s not a good sport about narcissistic injuries. She handles them poorly. Usually with murder.
“But medical marijuana doesn’t fit with that. It’s not a superstition. It’s not quackery,” I add. “Is that where it’s been kept? Not exactly a foolproof place to hide it.”
Marino has the small closet open and I notice very little hanging inside, just a few shirts and jackets and cedar planks to discourage moths. He’s lifting a mahogany apothecary box by its tarnished silver handles. He sets it down on the rug and opens the faded red-velvet-lined lid. It’s not locked. It doesn’t appear there was a concern about someone possibly stealing Chanel’s medication assuming this was hers.
Inside the box the wooden partitions and tiny drawers are filled with eyedropper bottles of cannabis tinctures and infused chews, and plastic containers of bud. Indica. Sativa. Various blends of cannabidiol (CBD). I pick up a bottle. The company name is Cannachoice. There’s nothing on the label that might tell us where it was manufactured but I agree with Marino’s earlier assessment.
“This isn’t from around here.” I return the bottle to its proper drawer. “I’m pretty sure there are no dispensaries in Massachusetts selling anything like this, and there’s no way caregivers are getting access to tinctures of such high quality. I seriously doubt you could find anything like this on the entire East Coast. Maybe someday but not now.”
“I’m guessing California.” Marino is back to assuming the wealthy well-connected mother is the source.
“It could have come from there or Colorado. Possibly Washington State.” I pick up another bottle, a blend of fifteen parts CBD to one part THC, and the plastic seal around the neck is broken.
I unscrew the cap and pull out the dropper. The tincture inside is thick and golden. It smells sweetly herbal and is nothing like some of the home-brewed extracts I’ve seen, black tarry pastes that are too bitter to hold under your tongue or mix with food or drink, and the memory of why I researched all this is jolting. It catches me by surprise swiftly, sadly, powerfully.
Not that long ago I learned more about medical marijuana than I ever thought I needed to know, talking to experts, scouring the Internet and ordering what legal products I could when I learned that Janet’s sister was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. I talked to physicians who specialize in alternative medicine. I read every journal article I could find. Nothing I could procure legally was going to help Natalie, and I felt absolutely awful about it. I still do when I remember the late-night discussions, the unfairness, the distress, and Lucy’s combative language when I said we’d done as much as we could. Legally we had.
Fuck ’em. Watch what’s next, was her answer, and I remember when she said it she and Janet were sitting on the circular bench around the big magnolia tree in my backyard. The sun was going down and we were drinking a small batch bourbon, and they were talking about the chemotherapy. Natalie couldn’t eat. She could scarcely hold down water. She was in pain, anxious and depressed, and what she needed was medical marijuana. It isn’t legal in Virginia. It is here in Massachusetts, but to date there’s no appropriate product available. Just bud, which is riskier to bootleg according to Lucy.
Weed is harder to hide from drug dogs and disapproving people, she pointed out.
We were having dinner at my house when she said this after the conversation had turned angry. Lucy made threats and I don’t want to be asked about it under oath. I can imagine the likes of a Jill Donoghue ripping into me:
Doctor Scarpetta, does your niece ever make statements to you about having no respect for the law?
Only when they’re stupid laws.
That’s a yes?
Partly.
What has she said exactly?
Which time?
How about recently?
She said that she doesn’t obey stupid laws made by stupid corrupt people. That wasn’t very long ago.
And a red flag didn’t go up?
Not literally.
Logistical and legal technicalities aren’t going to stop Lucy if she’s made a decision, and by her way of thinking the end justifies the means. Always. Without fail. It doesn’t matter how she gets to that point, and I can imagine what she did these past few months when Natalie was dying. Lucy has never told me. I’ve never asked. She flew her private jet to Colorado. She flew it and her helicopter in and out of Virginia but she didn’t tell and I didn’t ask, and ordinarily I could call her and we could talk about it.
I would ask her about Cannachoice and if she knows where it came from. Because she might and it’s important information since there are bottles of it here at a murder scene possibly masterminded by Carrie Grethen. Ordinarily I would be on the phone with Lucy asking a lot of questions. But things aren’t exactly ordinary, and if a trap has been set then I intend to make sure it isn’t my niece who’s caught in it. I don’t know if the FBI is still on her property. I don’t know if Erin Loria is right there trying to question or Mirandize her or who knows what. I don’t want to make matters worse.
Besides, I tell myself, pretty soon we’ll have an embarrassment of riches when it comes time for chatting while she’s staying at my house. Lucy, Janet, Desi and Jet Ranger will be with Benton and me, and we’ll have Sock, our rescued greyhound, with us too. All of us will be together for quite a while, and I’m comforted by the thought with no substantiating evidence whatsoever that it will come to pass.
I’m not obtuse. I’m not naïve. But it’s as if I’m hovering over my destiny, looking down at the awful dark shape of something I can’t bear to get close to or identify, and I know I’m fooling myself. I’m in denial about what matters most, and that’s Lucy and Benton. It’s Marino. It’s everyone I care about.
“Let’s take all of this in to the lab,” I decide about the contents of the antique apothecary chest. “We’ll have it analyzed and see exactly what’s in it.”
I move closer to the bed and smell the same spicy floral scent over here but something has been added.
Peppermint.
CHAPTER 39
BOTH PILLOWS LOOK SLEPT ON. UNDER THE left one closest to the bathroom is a drawstring black satin pouch.
It appears to be a homemade sachet, and it seems more of the same. I’m reminded of the cold-pressed juices, the candles in the living room and the clocks being wound. Someone is industrious, working with fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs and homeopathic remedies but there’s no evidence any such concocting has gone on inside this house. Not any area we’ve searched so far.
It’s a skin regeneration preparation … Just use something so you don’t completely destroy your sweet tender skin, Carrie filmed herself saying.
She’s obsessed with her health, her youth and most of all her power, and she’s skilled at ranging about freely without leaving a trace. Unless it’s a trace we’re supposed to find. Like the recording device inside the silver box.
Like latent blood that reacts to a reagent, and she knows I’d look. She knows how I think and work, and I’m suspicious about what all of this means and how dangerous it could be to remain inside this house.
She wants you here.
There can be no doubt about it.
You should leave now.
I pull the bedcovers back farther and look closely at the linens, a high-thread-count polished off-white cotton with a pale gray duvet. I pull the covers down the rest of the way and find a black silk pajama top inside out. Chanel was nude because she took her pajamas off. Or someone did, and where are the bottoms? They weren’t in the drawers or with the body. I ask Marino to remind me what the housekeeper Elsa Mulligan said. She claimed Chanel left here yesterday at around three or three-thirty P.M. I recall Marino telling me this and he confirms it. He says that’s what Hyde told him when we responded to the house the first time at around eight-thirty this morning.
“Like I already told you the housekeeper and Hyde talked for a few minutes,” Marino says. “That was it.”
“And then she was gone by the time we got here.” It seems an increasingly important detail. “What happens if you try to call her? Do we know if you can really reach her?”
“I haven’t tried yet. We’ve been a little busy. Allegedly she mentioned Chanel was staying in and working last night,” he repeats the same story. “Allegedly there was no indication she might be expecting anyone, and allegedly she’d broken up with a boyfriend last spring. Allegedly she and Chanel met in New Jersey a couple years ago.”
“That’s a lot of allegedlys.”
“Hell yeah there are. You got that right. At this point I don’t trust a goddamn thing.”
“Has anybody talked to her alleged former boyfriend? Do we know for a fact there’s a former boyfriend?”