“Why are you here, Agent Yarrow?”
“To offer my support,” the slender man said. He wrinkled his forehead. “But now I’m part of the myth, aren’t I? I’m the bad cop. The evil FBI agent who thinks he knows everything. I’m simply asking you, Detective Gates, if you think this case relates to your brother. I’ve asked you simple questions. I’m sorry to have offended you.”
Yarrow took a step back and walked away down the hall.
“I do,” Dana said, catching up with him. Yarrow stopped, met her gaze. “At least, I haven’t ruled it out,” she said. “My brother was found five miles from where Sonia Taylor was found. It could be significant or it could be nothing.” She was speaking quickly now, all the things that had been going through her head over the past twenty-four hours, things she hadn’t even told her partner. “Until this case, eleven people had drowned in the past twenty-five years in this county. Five of them were suicides. Five accidental. That leaves one unsolved. And now we have two more. So whatever it is you’re trying to suggest, I admit it; as a detective, I’m thinking about it.”
Finished, she looked away from him. The hallway had fallen silent. There was the last echoing bang of a door closing. Hamill remained sitting on a heater in front of the windows, soda hanging in his grip, watching.
“Do you feel guilty?” Yarrow asked.
“What?”
“For your brother.”
She hesitated. “No.”
“Are you happy?”
Yarrow’s line of questioning was once more so off-putting that Dana felt like this was happening to someone else. Ten years, and no cop, FBI or not, had ever spoken to her so directly. Cops wore invisible armor. Hamill had his life and Dana had hers.
It made Dana think of what Wayland Kimball had told them about the study. What the girls had participated in, being secretly evaluated. How much did Yarrow know about that? Dana was reporting into the captain as often as the captain asked, but he knew to give his detectives room. Still, Bouchard must’ve been feeding Yarrow some details.
“I’ve been happier,” Dana said at last.
Yarrow nodded, as if this admission had great significance. If it did, it was lost on Dana.
“Why?”
“Feeling compulsive? Driven more by emotion than reason?”
“What? I’ve been keeping—”
“Where are you going next? In your part of the investigation.”
She blinked, momentarily stunned. “Waiting on the paperwork to search Perry Brady’s apartment. We’ve got him on a twenty-four hour hold, but the warrant should come through quickly enough. Just has to go through the owner, since Brady only rents. In the meantime, we’re going to pay a visit to George Lambert. He was the caretaker at the house the girls rented.”
“I want you to consider something. Something that’s not a myth. You’re right to think about people’s emotions. About what they see, what they desire. Or fear. If this is a serial killer, there’s a psychological need being met here. You have a psychological need, something driving you. So does he.” Yarrow narrowed his hard gray eyes. “I’ll ask you again. Do you experience guilt?”
“I answered you. No.”
“In general. Guilt if you cheat on your taxes. Guilt if you fall out of your faith. If you’re not spending enough time at home. With your family.”
“Sometimes. Yes.”
“He lacks remorse, or guilt. He is impulsive, likes to have control over others, sensation-seeking. These traits and behaviors are consistent with the psychopathic personality disorder. It’s what we think of as predatory behavior.”
“Is that what they taught you at the symposium?”
It was a childish remark, Dana knew, a reaction to the way Yarrow had knocked her off balance, but the agent smiled.
“Yes. But I have my feelings about this, too. Just like you do.” He gave her one more look. “Good luck, Detective.”
Yarrow turned and continued swiftly down the hall, his trousers with their perfect creases. Hamill’s head swiveled as the agent moved past, a dog glowering at an intruder. Then he ambled towards Dana.
“I really think he wanted to kiss you,” Hamill said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN / Poison News
On the way to George Lambert, the detectives stopped to meet with Janine Poehler and a forensic toxicologist named Eli Shuman, who taught at Plattsburgh State. The more they knew, Dana figured, the more they could rule out, the easier it would be to get a confession from Brady if he was guilty. Hamill was getting frustrated, though, she could sense it.
They met in the cafeteria at the college, the four of them seating themselves in a corner of the room. Quite a few students were lining up for food, looking hungover.
Shuman was in his sixties with downy white hair and a crinkled, kind face. “Here’s the problem,” he said. “Chemicals change once ingested into the body.”
“You mean even when you get confirmatory testing, you probably won’t know for sure what they were given.” Hamill leaned forward and put his head in his hand. Dana stayed sitting back, quiet after her bout with Agent Yarrow.
“That’s right.” Shuman put a loose fist to his lips and coughed into it. “Which is why I allowed Ms Poehler to persuade me to meet with you. I’ve done this before, I know how it works. All laboratory procedures and analyses must be done under scientifically sound and legally defensible standards or the defense will tear it up in court.” He cleared his throat. Dana wondered if he had a cold. “But I know that time is essential for you. And this is what I’m telling you: in long-term substance abuse cases, we can find usage recorded in the hair follicle, which can give us a timeline. But not in these cases. Blood samples are typically a better indicator, but only for common types of intoxicants. So I’ve turned to the gastric contents of the deceased, but so far found nothing partly digested.”
Hamill itched at his neck. “Even with Taylor? She was found yesterday.”
“I realize that,” Shuman said looking at Hamill. His voice never rose, even though Hamill was being prickly. “We’re doing what we can. We’re going to examine the vitreous humour.”
“Their funny bones?”
Shuman was not amused. “The fibrous layer of the eyeball and the eye socket of the skull protects the sample from trauma and adulteration. We’re also going to examine the spleen, the liver, and the brain.”
“Are we going to be able to get an exact time of death? We’ve been running on ‘midday,’ but this is a college. The more specific we can get, the better we can zero in on possible suspects. And it’s got us wondering, you know, who kills someone at midday, in broad daylight? Or did they? How great is the disparity between TOD and being dumped in the river?”
“I understand. Unfortunately, the stomach and its contents are not an exact indicator. So far nothing we’ve seen, including the last meals of the victims, which gives us pinpoint accuracy. But . . .”
Dana strained closer, “But what?”
“On the clothing,” Poehler interjected, “on Holly Arbruster’s clothing . . . her pants. We found a small concentration of something in the urine. Less than one microgram of jesaconitine.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s an alkaloid of aconite,” Shuman said.
Dana had heard the word before. “Poison?”
“Or,” Poehler said, stressing the word, “a medicinal herb.”
“Monkshood,” Shuman said. “Usually used by the Chinese, but, you know, it’s a global village these days.” He grunted, his windpipe rattling.
Dana felt her hairs standing on end. “But it’s something.” If the girls had been drugged, possibly poisoned, then that meant the cops could track where the substance had been bought. The more exotic, the better.
Yet Poehler seemed dismayed. “This is why we . . . listen, please, Detectives. I know you’re eager. We’re all eager. But we can’t rush this. The metabolism of aconite and its alkaloids have not been studied in humans. We know it can be detected in th
e urine six days after ingestion . . .”
“That’s when she was killed.” Dana’s voice betrayed excitement. She glanced at the students pushing their trays down the track. She thought of Holly Arbruster. Killed first, a week before.
Poehler was shaking her head. “It’s still possible that the deaths occurred earlier, or later.” She leaned forward. “I’m going to be honest. With Sonia Taylor, I can say with a bit more confidence, time of death between early Thursday morning and early Friday afternoon, while in the water. Holly Arbruster, it’s harder to say. She was in the water for longer. She could have expired between the previous Thursday morning up until sometime Saturday afternoon.”
“Jesus,” Hamill said. He stood up and started pacing.
Janine Poehler said, “If there was a drugging, and you want time of ingestion, I’m nowhere near able to produce that right now. I’d need several things, like quantity of initial doses. The initial screening confirmed the compounds used, but not the quantity.”
“Let me get out my doctor-to-cop translation guide . . .” Hamill said from a distance.
Dana spoke up, “They’re saying it appears the girls were drugged by an aconite alkaloid, but they can’t give us the exact time, or specific substance used. Even though they found this jesaconitine in the urine. Is that right?”
“We’re doing everything we can,” said Poehler. “I told you up front that these are estimates. But you guys can’t put everything on us . . .”
“. . . and then go off half-cocked.” Dana finished for her. Poehler opened her mouth to reply, but Dana’s phone rang.
“Thank you, doctors. I’m sorry to cut this short, but I have to take this.”
Dana stood up.
“Gates.”
“Detective, I have that address for George Lambert. The maintenance man from—”
“Okay. Let me have it.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN / Anger
George Lambert lived alone in project housing outside downtown Plattsburgh, to the south.
The detectives pulled up across the street. They had ridden in silence, and now Dana had to confront her partner.
“What was the point of that back there?”
Hamill was staring out the window, picking at something in his teeth. “What?”
“Your bad attitude. We’ve got to keep everybody sweet. They start resenting us, it’s not good.”
“Bad attitude? What the fuck is this? Preschool?” Hamill jutted a thumb up in the air. “All that noise from uptight Dr Doolittle and her half-dead associate, and we don’t have anything to go on from pathology. We walked away from our Professor Perv because he called our bluff, threatened to get a lawyer, and we’ve got nothing concrete to bring charges. And we’ve got pretty boy Perry Brady on ice, the clock ticking away, waiting for the fucking judge.” He put his hand to his temple and pulled an imaginary trigger. “Boom,” he said.
“And maybe,” Hamill continued, “just maybe . . . you don’t like Perry Brady for this because he reminds you of David.”
That was harsh, absurd, even for Hamill. “Rob,” she said coolly, “back down. I’m telling you. You acted like you wanted to bite off Poehler’s head back there. Shuman’s too. Why? For giving you bad news? And now you’re bringing up David? What, have you and Yarrow been pillow talking?”
“Fuck Yarrow. Fuck the docs, too. I’m pissed because we have him. We fucking have, him, Dana. We’ve got Perry Brady in custody and we’re out here with our thumbs up our asses. Captain is going to have us kick Brady loose by the end of the day, names in a book or not. But Brady did it. That’s what my gut is telling me, and I don’t give a shit if that hurts the feelings of the two doctors with twenty years of medical school between them who can’t give me a goddamn time of death. And I don’t care if you can’t see it; when you should be caring about the victims, you’re caring about some punk fucking kid!” Hamill was yelling now. He slammed his fist into the glove box.
“You’re missing the point,” Dana said. They were stressed, they were frustrated, and here it came. It had to. She glanced at the dent Hamill had just created in the plastic console. “If the drug — or poison — used on the girls was exotic, and it seems to be, since two of the smartest doctors we know haven’t been able to figure it out yet in prelim testing, that’s good for us.”
“How is that good for us?” Hamill rubbed his knuckles.
“Because when they can verify what was used, and they will eventually, it will be highly specific and will give us the killer.”
“Or, like they said, the blood dilutes it all, and we get nothing.”
Dana opened the door and stepped out into the cold air. She leaned against the car, inhaling deeply. Hamill got out the other side.
“Hey,” he called.
Dana cut him off. “You gotta be top dog, huh? Big detective Rob Hamill. But the doctors have knowledge we don’t, and so that bruises your ego? You feel stupid around them, that’s why you don’t like them. And now you’re telling me I’m off my game, I’m lenient on a suspect because he reminds me of my brother?”
They were making a scene, but she couldn’t stop herself. “You’re forty years old, Rob. I know you think you’re a swinging bachelor, but you’re single because you still act like a child.”
That hurt him; she could see the muscles in his face twitching. He spoke through clenched teeth. “You’re just pissed because your marriage has sucked wind for a year. Your husband thinks you’re fucking someone else, but you couldn’t pull that off if you tried. Least I’m getting laid.”
“Fuck you.”
“Hey, you grow corn, you get corn. Fuck you, too.”
Dana strode across the street towards the projects, where three teenaged boys were watching. They quickly moved off.
* * *
Lambert’s unit was number 552. Dana followed the numbers around, moving deeper into the cluster of two-story buildings until she found it, halfway towards the back. She pounded on door, anger still surging through her.
“George Lambert?” Her voice was loud, the words crisp in the cold. This was stupid, a pointless waste of time. They were only interviewing Lambert because everything else had turned into a blind alley. Yet she didn’t think it was a good idea to rush in and lean on Perry Brady without more to go on. Why? Had this become a pissing contest with Hamill? Or were he and Yarrow right that she was somehow conflating a murder suspect with her own dead brother?
“State police,” Dana announced. She ducked her head towards the window beside the door. There was an inch gap beneath the curtain. She squinted to look through and caught movement — someone hurrying to do something.
“Oh shit,” she managed in a choked voice. She unsnapped the thong on her holster. Her fingers closed around the grip of the gun. “Lambert!” she yelled. “Open up!”
Hamill came hustling up behind her. “What’s going on?”
“Saw someone inside.” Dana’s heart thumped in her chest. In ten years she’d only pulled her gun twice. “He was running, covering something up, maybe.”
Hamill stepped up beside Dana and pounded the door with a fist. Dana ducked back down and looked through the window again. “Think there’s a back door out of this—”
The glass burst outward as something crashed through. Sudden, needling pain burrowed into her skin, like wasp stings, and Dana fell backwards. She landed hard on her ass and then started scrambling backward. At first, she thought it was a bullet. Then she looked down, where a large remote control was sitting on her chest. A TV remote control.
Hamill pulled his gun and looked at Dana and the remote. His mouth opened. He darted in front of the broken window for a look. He turned to Dana again. “You okay?”
Her face stung in several places. She realized she had glass embedded in her flesh. She closed one eye, then the other. Both eyes were fine, so that was something. She felt a wave of nausea and paralysis. Like that day long past.
Hamill was looking at her, then he squared his shoul
ders with the door, and started kicking at it.
The paralysis passed, replaced by determination. And enough anger to make her little dust-up with Hamill feel like a lover’s tiff. Still on her backside, she kicked out. Her boot broke through the rest of the glass. Then she got to her feet, down in a squat, and took her gun out at last.
“Dana!” Hamill barked, but he sounded far away.
She used the barrel to knock away the remaining shards clinging to the frame, and then grabbed hold of it. She must’ve missed a small triangle of glass or two because she felt them bite into her palm as she pulled her body through. She was dimly aware of Hamill still whaling on the door, yelling at her to stop, but by then it was too late. She was inside the dark apartment. Hamill stopped kicking. She heard him outside calling for backup.
* * *
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. A large fish tank gave off a glow, revealing a living room with some faded, outdated furniture. Striped couch with worn cushions, faux-wood furniture; end tables sagging beneath the weight of oxidized brass lamps. The fridge hummed, a sink dripped. A hallway led away from the open wall of the kitchen.
Dana ran to the partition in a crouch and used it to shield herself. Just because someone had thrown something instead of shooting at her didn’t mean they weren’t armed. She stayed quiet behind the counter, listening. Just the noise of the appliances. She heard a voice, high-pitched, and then a second, much lower, utter a phrase that sounded like, shut up.
Dana steeled herself to move. Gripping the gun in both hands she ran, bent over, to the wall across from her. From there she could get a look into the hallway. She pressed her body against the wall, feeling her spine against the hard surface. Her other senses were starting to register; there was a familiar odor in the air. Marijuana.
“This is Dana Gates, state police, I’m armed, and I’m coming back there. Let’s de-escalate this situation right now. If you’re carrying a weapon, toss it into the hallway.”
She peeked around the corner. She was only exposed for a second, but she saw three doors, two on each side and one at the end. The one at the end was ajar, with a pale yellow light behind. She waited against the wall, listening for the thump of a firearm or other weapon tossed to the ground.
DARK KILLS a gripping detective thriller full of suspense Page 10
