Snakebit

by Linsey Lanier

  “That’s what Parker said. He’s right. It could be just ordinary teenage angst.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  Miranda felt a chill go down her back. “But what?”

  “Sooner or later she will find out. You should tell her before that happens.”

  Miranda hadn’t thought about that. The idea made her ill. “It will destroy her, Fanuzzi. Maybe when she’s twenty or thirty she can handle it, but not now. I’ve already messed up her teen years enough.”

  Fanuzzi reached over and squeezed her hand. “It would never mess up a kid to know her real mother. Not one who loves her as much as you do.”

  That was comforting. Miranda hoped it was true.

  Fanuzzi turned her head. “Listen.”

  A bell rang and kids began shuffling out of the building. Some headed for the yard for sports, some of the older ones to the parking lot for lunch at the local greasy spoon.

  Fanuzzi gave her a nudge. “There she is now.”

  Mackenzie strolled out of a door and down a set of steps all alone, her clothes looking ragged, her long dark hair hiding her face and shoulders. She seemed sad.

  She turned and ambled toward a shadowy recess near a far wall. Miranda could still see her, but she had to squint.

  Fanuzzi peered through the windshield. “Isn’t she supposed to be playing soccer or something?”

  “I don’t know.” Miranda didn’t know her schedule. The girl had been close-mouthed about school.

  After a moment, a boy joined her at the wall and they began to talk together.

  Fanuzzi sat up to get a better look. “Is that that Timmy kid?”

  “I don’t think so. I thought she and Wendy were done with him.”

  For a moment she considered getting the binoculars out of the glove compartment, then decided she could see well enough for her purpose. The guy had on a backwards baseball cap and was dressed in dirty jeans and a denim jacket. Not the type Mackenzie used to hang around with.

  Miranda eyed the large brown spots all over his pants. They were on the jacket, too. “Has he been rolling around in the dirt?”

  “Mud jeans,” Fanuzzi said flatly in her Brooklyn accent.

  “What?”

  “It’s a new style. Charlie wanted a pair and I said no way. You should have seen the price. I wasn’t paying that much for my kid to look like I didn’t do the laundry.”

  Sheesh. What was the fashion world coming to?

  Miranda watched Mackenzie and the boy. They talked and laughed. It seemed innocent enough. Miranda’s stomach tensed when the boy leaned his arm on the wall near Mackenzie’s face. After another moment he reached into his pocket and took out something that resembled a small narrow canister. He fiddled with it a moment, then lit it with a lighter and lifted it to his mouth. He took a big drag and blew out an enormous cloud of smoke. Mackenzie laughed and poked a finger through it.

  Ignoring her, the boy began to create thick smoke rings in the air.

  As if not to be outdone, Mackenzie took the contraption out of his hand and put it to her mouth. She attempted to imitate the boy, but her smoke rings weren’t as impressive.

  Miranda stared at her daughter in pure shock. “What the hell are they doing, Fanuzzi?”

  “Vaping.”

  “What?”

  “Electronic cigarettes. It a new fad. Very hot, you should pardon the pun. Haven’t you seen the vape shops cropping up?”

  She hadn’t been paying attention. She would now.

  “It’s supposed to help smokers quit, but the health risks haven’t been determined yet. I don’t think it’s good for kids that age.”

  Good grief.

  The boy was puffing on his contraption again, his smoke cloud now so huge, Miranda could barely see her daughter’s face. Then Mackenzie took the pipe and attempted a cloud like the boy’s. Again it wasn’t as big. She gave him a sour face. And then she started coughing. She coughed and coughed, as if she couldn’t stop.

  She bent over, hacking, her long hair hanging down to her knees. The boy patted her back, but it didn’t seem to help.

  Miranda reached for the door handle. “I’ll put a stop to that.”

  Fanuzzi grabbed her arm. “You can’t, Murray. She’ll never speak to you again if you run out there and embarrass her. Look. She’s better.”

  Miranda sat back as Mackenzie straightened and started laughing with the boy again as if she’d just been putting on an act. Then she flipped her hair over her shoulder and sauntered across the walkway to where some of the other kids were doing calisthenics and joined them.

  Apparently her lung capacity was still good.

  The boy gazed longingly after her, making the hair on the back of Miranda’s neck stand up.

  “How do we know what’s in that pipe—or whatever it is?” she muttered under her breath.

  Was her daughter so upset she was becoming a drug addict? She couldn’t live with herself if that was true.

  “You should probably tell Colby about it. I hate getting in the middle of something like that, but I can tell her if you don’t want to.”

  “No, I’ll tell her.” She just didn’t know when. Or how.

  Not knowing what else to do, she started the car and drove off. She’d come here for answers, but now all she had were more questions. What in the world was going on in her daughter’s head? Maybe she’d never figure that out.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Miranda took Fanuzzi to the new place she wanted to try on Peachtree.

  It was French and pricey, but Fanuzzi was there to get ideas for her upcoming catering gigs, so Miranda didn’t mind. She shared a smoked salmon pizza, which sounded weird but wasn’t half bad, while Fanuzzi tried the black truffle white bean soup, and a ham-and-mushroom quiche. She offered Miranda a taste, but Miranda told her she was only eating for one, so it was okay.

  When she got back to the office she found her team wiping their mouths and tossing sandwich wrappers in the trash. She’d missed the team-bonding lunch.

  Overall, everyone looked pretty glum.

  She waited until they all were seated and looking up at her like she was their school teacher. “So. Have we made any progress?”

  Holloway set his cane on the floor and stretched out his injured leg. He had on a dark brown Pindot suit with a pair of sunglasses hanging from the breast pocket, as if he wanted to look intimidating to the folks he and Becker had seen.

  “We’ve talked to more people,” he said. “If that’s what you mean.”

  The sneer in his voice told her he was determined to be a pain in the butt. She turned to Becker. “What can you report so far?”

  Holding a stack of papers in his lap, Becker looked neater than he usually did, in a green polo shirt and nice jeans. His hair was even combed back. Holloway must have insisted he clean up a bit before they went out.

  “Dr. Charmaine had colleagues from all over the world,” he told her, looking down at the floor. “We’ve talking to PhDs in London and Singapore. A lot of professors at Emory. Plus PhD students and office staff members.”

  “And?”

  He raised his palms. “Everybody loved her. They thought her husband was great, but they didn’t know him very well.”

  “We did confirm the victim and her husband were apart a lot of the time,” Holloway added.

  “Right,” Becker said. “She was absorbed in her work, spent a lot of time in the lab. He often went on expeditions overseas looking for exotic reptiles.”

  “That’s what Dr. Quigley told us this morning at the zoo,” Wesson added before Miranda could. “He worked with Dr. Boudreaux.”

  She scratched at her hair. “So how many people have we talked to so far?”

  “Here.” Becker got up and started passing out the papers in his lap. “I typed up a list of all the possible interviewees. I put a check beside everyone we’ve contacted.”

  He handed Miranda one. It was a spreadsheet with color coding and everything. He was a real nerd, but a
helpful one. “Thanks. This is good.”

  They were almost at the end of the list, but there were a few names to go. A lot of data to process.

  “Okay. Let’s make a chart.”

  She pulled out a whiteboard that was stored against the wall everyone was facing, found a pen and some tape. She set her case file on a nearby desk and pulled out Charmaine Boudreaux’s photo—the one from when she was alive—and taped it on the far left side.

  For a moment she studied the image. The doctor’s healthy chin-length blond hair, her outdoorsy freckles, her nice blouse, her eyes and smile so full of life. Then she taped Clarence Boudreaux’s photo beneath it, the young herpetologist in his lab coat with his dark ringlets and wide-set eyes, his round cheeks, his beaming copper-toned skin and winning white smile.

  She gestured toward the photos. “So here we have a couple of professionals, both doing significant work in their respective scientific fields.”

  Becker raised a hand. “They worked in conjunction with each other. Dr. Clarence Boudreaux supplied Dr. Charmaine with venom for her research.”

  “She was working on the development of drugs for heart disease and epilepsy,” Holloway added.

  Miranda drew a vertical line from Charmaine’s picture to the other side of the board. There she taped the crime scene photo of her body. “So how did she get from there,” she pointed with her marker at the first picture, “to there?” She pointed at the second picture.

  Everyone studied the board in silence.

  Miranda drew a line from Clarence’s photo. “When was the herpetologist’s last trip?”

  “The one where he got Ozzie?”

  “Right.”

  Wesson consulted the notes in her phone. “Dr. Quigley said Clarence returned from his trip to Australia about five weeks before Charmaine’s murder.”

  Miranda jotted the date above the line. “Now let’s focus on the week before the murder.”

  “When did Charmaine leave for her conference?”

  “That Wednesday morning,” Becker said.

  She drew a vertical line and marked it, “Wednesday.”

  “Three people saw Charmaine the day before she left for the conference,” he added. “We’ve confirmed she was on her flight to Dallas with the airline.”

  “That wasn’t easy, since it was ten years ago,” Holloway smirked.

  Ignoring Holloway’s tone, she drew more lines toward the couple, using colors matching the spreadsheet to represent Charmaine’s friends and colleagues, and jotted down names as Becker read them off to her.

  “Judith Gilroy. She’d been a lab assistant Charmaine had mentored,” he explained. “She’s a professor now. Said she owes her success to Charmaine. She got really broken up talking about her.”

  Charmaine was well liked, so it seemed. “Did Charmaine mentor a lot of students?” There might be more people to dig up and question.

  Holloway studied his notes. “She seemed to on a regular basis. It’s a hard field to get into, and she gave them a leg up if she thought they were qualified.”

  Miranda thought a moment. “What if she thought they weren’t qualified?”

  Becker looked at Holloway. “Nobody said anything about that.”

  Miranda tapped the end of the marker to her chin. “What if one of those students thought he or she had been passed over by Charmaine and had a grudge against her for it?”

  Becker stared at her. Holloway picked at a piece of lint on his pants, as if frustrated with himself for not thinking of that.

  “After we’re done go back and see if you can find anything to support that idea.”

  Becker nodded. “Will do.”

  She turned back to the board and began filling in lines for Clarence’s neighbors.

  “Okay. When did Charmaine come back from the Medical Research Symposium in Dallas?”

  Again, Holloway consulted his notes. “She was supposed to return home early Monday morning. Instead she took the 11:01 am flight from Dallas on Sunday morning, and arrived at Hartsfield shortly after two in the afternoon our time.”

  “Okay, so allowing for traffic we can assume she arrived at her house around three.” Consistent with what Spring Fairchild had told them. She drew another vertical line and wrote down the time. Then she took in a breath. “The neighbor across the street saw Clarence’s car parked in his driveway at four o’clock that afternoon. Wesson and I confirmed that yesterday.”

  “How can she be sure of the time?” Becker asked hopefully.

  Miranda turned to him. “She was watching a TV show. She remembered all the details.”

  “I confirmed the show was on at that time,” Wesson added. “Martha Stewart. Lamb shanks with okra.”

  Okay, then. Miranda drew another line. “Finally, we have Dr. Clarence in the bar of the Hilton on tape at 3:00 pm. It was a Happy Hour before the final presentations. Parker showed me the tape last night. You can all review it, but it doesn’t help us much.”

  Miranda stood back and studied the board.

  The timeline fit perfectly. The hotel was only a fifteen minute drive away from the Boudreaux house. There was enough time for Clarence to come home from his conference, screw his wife, toss Ozzie on her and head back to the hotel. If Spring Fairchild hadn’t seen his car in the drive, it would have been a pretty good alibi.

  But if you’re that smart, why leave your DNA behind? Why not admit you made love to her and claim it was an accident? The data was making her head ache.

  Behind her she heard Becker murmur. “‘Distraction, diversion and division’.”

  Slowly she put a hand on her hip and turned around. “Is that another A-Team reference?”

  “It’s how they caught the bad guys in the movie. I was thinking maybe one of those students of Charmaine’s might have…” his voice trailed off.

  Nothing made sense. Miranda was just about to send everyone back out to the field when, Fry emerged from the lab with computer printouts in his hand.

  In a wrinkled brown sweatshirt and worn jeans, with his hair and beard barely combed, he looked like a bear cub coming out of hibernation. He’d been in the prep room, the area in the back of the lab that was pressurized against contamination of evidence. At least she hoped that was where he’d been, working on what Chambers had sent them.

  “You have results, Fry?” She dared to let her hopes rise a little.

  “I do.”

  “And?”

  He drew in a breath. “First, after unfreezing the sample, I did a Christmas tree stain.”

  “A what?”

  He rolled his eyes. “The standard test for the presence of semen.”

  She folded her arms. “Okay. How’d it go?”

  “It lit up, well, like a Christmas tree. The heads were red and the tails were bright green and blue.” He stared at her as if expecting her to know what that meant, then let out an exasperated huff. “The tails were pretty much intact. That’s the first part to deteriorate. So yes, the victim was inseminated a short time before her death.”

  “How short?”

  “An hour at most.”

  The news just got worse and worse. “Go on.”

  “I also noted the donor was oligospermic.”

  “Which means?”

  “He had a low sperm count,” Becker supplied.

  Fry waved a hand. “But that’s immaterial in this case. I merely mentioned it. There was plenty to work with. Next, I extracted the DNA from said specimen and ran it through the analyzer, using the standard quanitation procedures. You’re familiar with those.”

  The ones he’d used on the last case. Not that she understood a thing about them. “And the results of that?”

  “Both profiles are full. There were results for all STR markers from both the crime scene and the reference sample. They were consistent at each locus.”

  She waited for more, but Fry just stared at her through his thick glasses.

  Finally Becker piped up again. “That means it’s an exact match
to Dr. Clarence Boudreaux’s profile from the sample he gave police the night he was arrested.”

  Her stomach sank. “Are you sure?”

  “If I weren’t sure, I wouldn’t have said it.”

  She wanted to give him a shove. Instead she turned back to the board. Everyone stared at it together as if willing the data to tell them something else.

  The room was dead silent, until Holloway piped up in a snide tone. “Looks like all we’re doing is proving Dr. Boudreaux is guilty.”

  He was right. But she was doing this for Parker and his instincts. And it was Wednesday already. They only had five days left before Dr. Clarence Boudreaux was gone.

  She spun around. “There’s got to be something here. We just can’t see it yet. We’ll keep working this case until something cracks.”

  “Or we do,” Holloway muttered under his breath.

  Becker gave him scowl. “We’ve got more calls to make to the people Charmaine was with at her conference in Dallas before she came home.”

  “Might be something there. And don’t forget to check out the other students Charmaine mentored.”

  “Will do.” Becker rose, turned to Holloway. “C’mon, Hopalong. Let’s get going.”

  Holloway shot him a scowl as he reached for his cane and followed Becker out of the room.

  “What have you got for us?” Wesson asked.

  Feeling empty Miranda gazed at the board. “Who have we got left to look at?”

  Wesson studied Becker’s list. “Curt and Dave haven’t talked to Charmaine’s sister yet.”

  Miranda recalled the testimony of the victim’s sister from the trial. She hadn’t said anything more than what they’d already learned. But it was a stone left to turn.

  “Let’s give it a whirl. Where do we find her?”

  As she checked the paper, Wesson’s lips curled into a sly smile.

  Chapter Twenty

  Charmaine’s older sister, Donna Jacobs, turned out to be part owner of Elegant Ensembles on Peachtree Street—the fancy-schmancy dress shop where Parker had insisted on buying Miranda’s clothes ever since they met.

  Apparently Ms. Jacobs conducted most of the business for the store out of town, so Miranda had never met her.