I awoke at seven-thirty and, before getting out of bed, dialed Charlie. Got rolled to voice mail. I left a message suggesting some urgency. After thirty minutes, a lot of coffee, and several more calls, I still hadn’t connected with him.
A slapdash job with my Sonicare, then I ponytailed up and hurried to my car.
No need for navigation. I knew the way and was there in ten minutes.
Charlotte’s city center is ringed by three districts that are largely residential. To show pride in their history, much of which was displaced at the time these low- and high-rise developments were proposed, the populace still refers to the neighborhoods by their original designations: First, Third, and Fourth Wards. Not sure what’s happening in number Two.
I parked on the border between Fourth and First Wards. Walking along Church Street, I couldn’t help thinking that Charlie’s complex was a poster child for Charlotte’s uptown revival. His unit was midpoint in a row of nine uber-modern townhouses. Party rooms and outdoor terraces on four, bedrooms on three, living and dining rooms, kitchens and dens on two, garages and offices underneath. Elevators to avoid all those pesky stairs.
City-center living with beaucoup amenities. And price tags that were an intergalactic voyage beyond my budget.
Hoping he was as much a creature of habit as moi, I checked under a rock beside the foundation to the right of the front steps. Bingo.
The key was obviously a survivor of many seasons in the elements. Rust and corrosion prevented it from fitting into the lock. No matter. The door was open.
That seemed wrong.
So did the dried footprints tracking from the porch into the foyer. Charlie was fastidious about his home. At least he’d been in his public defender years when we’d given dating a short-lived whirl. When we’d occasionally ended up here after a night out.
Had Charlie left that mud? Had a visitor?
“Charlie?” I called out, pausing just inside the door.
No answer.
“Charlie?”
Nothing.
I listened for sounds of a presence.
The place was silent as a tomb.
Call it intuition. Something felt off.
Wishing I had company, maybe a pit bull or a Doberman, I began looking around. The living and dining rooms were as I remembered, done in browns and creams, with artwork a mix of modern and old. An Indonesian mask. An African carving. A George Rodrigue blue dog print.
I moved to the kitchen, all stainless steel, granite, and natural wood. Saw no dishes on the table or in the sink. No garbage overdue for disposal.
It was clear Charlie’s desire for cleanliness hadn’t diminished. The place was spotless and smelled of wood polish and some sort of potpourri diffuser. And something else?
The refrigerator was bare of photos, Post-its, reminders, or lists. I opened the door and checked a few labels. Not a single product was past its expiration date. How was that even possible?
I circled back and began climbing the stairs, noting the photo array as I ascended. Family gatherings. A ski trip. A beach outing. A sailing excursion. In most of the shots, Charlie sat or stood beside a willowy woman with long black hair and nutmeg skin. His wife, a victim of 9/11.
I looked away, saddened. For her. For him. For all the dreams that died that day.
Thinking Charlie might be on the terrace and unable to hear me, I continued up to the roof. No Charlie. He was also not in any of the bedrooms or baths on the third floor.
Was he below in his office, perhaps listening to music through earphones?
Opening the basement-level door released an unpleasant odor. The noxious mix of hydrocarbons was the faint undercurrent I’d been too preoccupied to identify upstairs.
Far from subtle down here, the nauseating scent was strong and coming from the garage. I recognized it immediately as fumes from the combustion of fossil fuels.
Using my scarf to cover my nose and mouth, I entered. The stench was almost overwhelming.
Charlie was at the wheel of his Porsche Panamera. Corrugated tubing ran from the tail pipe into the car’s interior through the right rear window, the only one not tightly shut.
Charlie’s eyes were closed, his head lying sideways on one shoulder. Nasal mucus and saliva crusted one cheek.
Get out! my reptilian brain screamed.
Touch nothing! my higher centers ordered.
Charlie! my limbic system bellowed.
I had to check.
Holding my breath, I used the scarf to open the driver’s-side door. No pulse throbbed in Charlie’s carotid.
My eyes grabbed a few more details. The engine was off, the starter in the “on” position, the gas tank empty.
That was it. Out of breath, tears streaming my cheeks, I fled the garage.
I waited in my car, feeling as dreary as the sky. The day was cold and damp, yet I hadn’t the energy to turn on the heater.
A CMPD cruiser was the first to arrive, bubble lights flashing like fireworks on the Fourth of July. While one uniform positioned himself at the front door, the other hurried inside.
I tucked my fingers under my arms for warmth. Listlessly watched Charlie’s home and its guardian pulse blue-blue-blue.
Next came a CSU truck. Then Hawkins and a tech named Sandford in the van, followed by Nguyen in her Mercedes.
Not far behind the MCME team were the first members of the press. I knew as word spread others would appear, eager to film and report on yet another human tragedy. Maybe get lucky and capture a shot of the corpse.
Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages… I thought bitterly. How many times had I been a player in the grim circus? How many death scenes had I worked?
But this was Charlie. We were to have coffee yesterday.
A tremor built in my chest.
Charlie had killed himself. How was that possible?
I was palming tears from my cheeks when I sensed a vehicle pulled to my bumper. I glanced in the rearview mirror.
Slidell.
How did he know? Didn’t matter. I was in no shape to deal with his attitude.
I stayed put.
Slidell got out and walked to my car. A gloved hand knuckle-rapped the glass by my ear. Resigned, I lowered the window, braced for an offensive Skinnyism.
“You OK?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“You knew this guy, right?” Cocking his jaw toward the pulsating townhouse.
I nodded.
“Sorry.”
I turned to look at him, surprised by the subdued tone. Slidell’s face was drawn, his eyes filled with compassion. I gestured that he should join me in the car. He did.
“What happened?” he asked.
I told him what I knew. Charlie’s desire to meet earlier than planned. The no-show at Caribou Coffee. The unanswered calls. My cruise through the townhouse. Finding his body in the garage.
“It was my fault,” I finished, prepared to be brutal with myself. “I missed the signs.”
“What signs?”
“That’s just it. I didn’t see any.”
“Don’t sound like you.”
It wasn’t. I said nothing.
“You think this could be part of the whole clusterfuck?”
“What clusterfuck?” Having no idea of his meaning. Not really caring.
“You feel up to going inside?”
Oh, God.
“How ’bout we take a quick look, after that we talk,” he urged gently.
Mind a turbulent mess, I nodded agreement. More self-brutalization?
Slidell and I walked to the short, sloping driveway. A gurney had been positioned at the top, body bag unzipped and ready.
The garage door was up now, the overheads on. Ditto every light in the townhouse.
Nguyen stood in the space between the Porsche and a set of wire wall shelves. Hawkins was beside her, shooting video. The metal death scene kit lay on the floor between them.
The Porsche driver’s-side door stood open. Through it I could see Charlie, head slumped, upper arms hanging limp to the elbows, forearms crossed on his thighs, NBA fingers dangling between his knees. The floods on Hawkins’s camera lifted the macabre tableau into surrealistic brightness.
A new tremor threatened. I fought it down.
“Doc,” Slidell’s way of announcing our arrival.
Hawkins kept filming. Nguyen looked over her shoulder, thermometer in one gloved hand.
“Detective, Dr. Brennan.”
“What’s the verdict?” Slidell asked.
“Probable carbon monoxide poisoning.”
I said nothing.
“I’m seeing very little trauma,” Nguyen added.
“Very little?” I managed to ask.
“Abrasions on the forehead, the left cheek and ear.”
“From his head hitting the wheel?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re thinking suicide?” Slidell asked.
“I’ll know more after the autopsy.”
“The garage door was down when you arrived?” he asked me.
“Yes.”
“Was the car hood up?”
“No.”
“The vic have any grease on his hands?” This question to Nguyen.
“No.”
Slidell scanned the small space. “No tools lying around.”
“I agree, Detective,” Nguyen said. “This doesn’t look like an accident.”
“Time of death?”
“Based on body temp, I’d put it at very early morning. But that’s only a rough estimate.”
“Refresh me. How long’s it take to die by CO poisoning?”
“Not long.”
Slidell scowled.
“Death can occur quickly. A level of one to three percent CO is normal, seven to ten percent in smokers. A level of ten to twenty percent will cause headache and poor concentration, thirty to forty percent severe headache, nausea, vomiting, faintness, lethargy, elevated pulse and breathing rates. With forty to sixty percent comes disorientation, weakness, and loss of coordination. With sixty percent, coma and death.”
Slidell sighed. “How ’bout a ballpark?”
“Of?” Nguyen was inspecting one of Charlie’s hands.
“How long you last.”
“Inhaling air with a carbon monoxide level as low as point two percent can produce carboxyhemoglobin levels exceeding sixty percent in just thirty to forty-five minutes.”
“That’ll kill ya?”
“Very dead.”
Slidell pulled a small spiral from his overcoat pocket, jotted something, then gestured with the notebook. “And we got that here?”
“Engine running, door lowered, windows shut. Definitely.” Nguyen continued without looking up. “In as little as five to ten minutes.”
“So he died soon after turning the key.” I’d told Slidell what I’d seen in the car. And inside the townhouse.
“Assuming he turned the key,” Nguyen said.
“Assuming that.”
“And that he was breathing when he entered the car.”
“And that.”
“Which I suspect was the case. See this?” Nguyen lifted one of Charlie’s hands.
Slidell eyed it from where he was standing. “That blood-settling thing? Because the fingers are hanging down.”
“Yes. But I’m talking about the nail beds.”
Slidell bent for a closer look. “They look pink.”
“Yes again. Which suggests he was alive.”
“Carbon monoxide, which is colorless, odorless, and tasteless, is an agent in auto exhaust. Highly toxic, CO combines with hemoglobin to produce carboxyhemoglobin, which blocks the transport of oxygen in the body.”
“This carboxyhemoglobin kills you.”
“Yes. And in doing so it turns your blood and tissues bright red.”
I pictured the organs Nguyen would see when she cut Charlie open. The cherry red slivers of heart, kidney, liver, lung, spleen, and stomach she’d view under magnification.
“Remind me,” Slidell said. “When does the blood-settling thing start?”
“Livor. Within two hours of death. Peaks in six to eight. But it’s cold out here, which would retard the process.”
“The livor in the fingers, that says no one moved the body, right?”
“Correct.”
“And he ain’t in rigor.” Slidell pronounced it rigger.
“I see slight stiffening in the smaller muscles of the neck and face.”
“So when did the guy die?”
“Rigor also starts in two hours. But that’s variable. And the low temperature would slow that as well.” Nguyen straightened. “I’ll run a full tox screen.”
“Looking for what?” I asked, knowing Charlie’s abhorrence for drugs.
“Whatever he’s got in him. People often self-medicate before killing themselves.”
Slidell gestured to me that he was stepping outside.
As he trudged uphill, I took one last look at my friend. Slumped behind the wheel, he looked like a partier after a big night. I fought back the tears burning my lids.
When I exited the garage, Slidell was not on the drive. Rounding the townhouse, I spotted him on the front stoop. Talking to Donna Henry.
Henry nodded, flicked a wave, and disappeared through the door.
“What’s your take?” I asked when Slidell joined me.
“No signs of forced entry. No note.” The bed was made, the TV and radio were off. One set of tracks at the front door, large, probably his. No indications of a visitor.”
I’d given him those details.
“There was a crystal tumbler on the desk in his office, clean. An open bottle of Chivas in one of the drawers.”
I hadn’t spotted the glass.
Slidell looked at his watch.
Cleared his throat.
Spoke words I’d never imagined him saying to me.