“What do you see?” Nicole asked.
Lars walked back to midtable and tapped a photo. “Surgical scarring,” he said. “It has to be. Thin, straight, all the same width and length.”
“Nicely done, right?”
“I’d let this doctor fix my face,” Lars agreed.
He let his eyes drift over the glossy photos, pulling four of them from the pile and arranging them side by side. “Strange, the way the incisions are arranged. Almost like someone is keeping score.”
Yes, on what had turned out to be the hip of the young lady.
“You call MacAulay?”
“Yeah. He confirmed the markings. All surgical.”
The ME had accompanied the body back to the morgue in the early-morning hours and prepped her for storage. Then he had gone home to bed and had approached the victim fresh that afternoon, after his morning office hours. He would get back to them when he was done en suite. Meaning he would do a thorough exam that took a painstakingly long time and then summon her.
She stepped back and took in the photos as a whole. They had come in slowly from the forensic techs, pulled from a locked cache on the victim’s cell phone. Each was dated and time-stamped, so arranging them accurately was not a problem. After wading through the images, discarding those that didn’t seem to have relevance to Beatrice’s murder, they were left with thirty-two shots that told only part of the story. There were gaps, days and weeks of the vic’s life not represented in the pictures.
But the photos made some things solid for Nicole. They showed her the greed and power that had surrounded the girl leading up to her death. Many revealed the same polished, suited men who Nicole believed were players from the Big Pharm round table, and she had sent these photos out to deputies, hoping to find them among the skiers and holiday revelers. But nothing yet.
She moved six pictures so that they were grouped together. Michael King, an older, suited woman, and four men who appeared in multiple shots over several occasions. Each of them posing with their victim. “What do you think of this?”
“The round table?”
“I think so.”
The night of Beatrice’s eighth-grade graduation. What should have been a family gathering to celebrate their victim’s accomplishments had been turned into a pony show.
Nicole tapped the image of the older woman with Beatrice. She had a solid build, with short hair styled away from her face. She wasn’t smiling. Concern filled her eyes.
“Who is she?”
“Someone who refused to play the game?” Lars guessed.
“Why do you say that?”
“They’re posing but not touching.” No arm around a waist, inches of air space between their shoulders. “And the woman’s frowning. She’s worried about something.”
“Maybe this is the woman Joaquin spoke of.” The grandmotherly pharm exec who had dismissed the idea of working with Enrique Esparza. “Maybe she changed her mind when the cards were on the table. When she realized there was too much at stake not to play.
“We need to find her.”
“A priority,” she agreed. “What do you think about this?”
She walked to the end of the table and removed another photo. It had been taken on the mountain four days ago. It showed Dr. Esparza, skis and poles and bright sunshine. He was talking to a couple. Benjamin and Charlene.
Nicole knew that Benjamin was five feet seven inches tall. Charlene towered over him by about eight inches. In the photo she looked at Esparza, neither giving nor receiving any emotion. She didn’t care that Esparza was unhappy, disagreeable, or anything else. Benjamin was smiling. “A meeting of like minds?” Lars said.
“Except Esparza doesn’t seem to be in agreement.”
“No. He definitely looks defensive.”
“I believe Kenny,” Nicole said. “Esparza’s documents were forgeries.”
Nicole had a deputy working on it. The FDA, being a government office, meant a lot of waiting, but she wanted the certainty.
“And that wasn’t the limit of his deceit. What do you suppose they’re talking about here?” Back to the photo of Esparza with Benjamin and Charlene.
“What everyone in their circle was talking about: Beatrice.”
“But what specifically? Why meet with Esparza prior to the proofing and auction?” Was it even allowed?
“Maybe there was a favorite, and it wasn’t King,” Lars posed. “Wouldn’t be the first time a dark horse entered a race.”
Made sense. Nicole knew Benjamin was an easy sell if the money was right and the workload light. “No honor among thieves.”
“If Esparza gave his daughter cancer,” Lars began, “then he cured her too.”
“I’m waiting for MacAulay to confirm that.”
“But listen to this,” Lars said. “Esparza implanted his daughter four times. That keeps with what Kenny said too. And if each time the cancer sample was bigger, a different kind, a tougher-to-beat cancer, that explains why the vic got sicker for longer as the months passed.” As Joaquin had reported and the girl’s diary entries seemed to reflect. “So even if Esparza carried out his medical trials without government approval, he had a viable cure for the disease. A cure that could, potentially, apply to other diseases.” He hooked her gaze, his own hard and penetrating. “Maybe what Esparza has is the base cure for every human ailment.”
The thought was staggering. Improbable. And the discovery perhaps already lost.
“Do you think he wrote it out? Scientists keep journals of their work, right? They hypothesize and test and have to put results somewhere,” she said.
“He made a point of telling us that it was locked inside his mind. One of his precautions. But there’s no way he could come up with something so big without keeping a record of it.”
“So we move this away from the family?” she posed. “We start digging into those who would be hurt the most.”
“Big Pharm,” Lars agreed. “This group.” And he slid the photo of Esparza with Benjamin and Charlene into the pile.
“We need to find the other players,” Nicole said. “At least the two who are here in Toole County.”
“One of them must be the highest bidder,” Lars said.
“And maybe with Benjamin’s help.”
Her gaze lingered on the older woman. She was different from the others. Worried, on edge. Angered? “I’d like to talk to her.”
Nicole passed cold storage for the small suite of rooms that held MacAulay’s morgue.
He looked up as she approached. “I expected you sooner.”
“You take a look at King yet?”
“I did.” He turned and leaned back against the table. “He didn’t kill Beatrice.”
And that gave Nicole pause. “He confessed.”
“He lied.”
“You can prove that?”
“Three-quarters of an inch,” he said. “The pads of the thumbs that choked the life out of Beatrice Esparza measure exactly three-quarters of an inch.”
“But King’s don’t,” she followed.
MacAulay shook his head. “Not even close. King was stocky, with thick hands. The pads of his thumbs measure one and one eighth of an inch. I took several impressions, different angles. There’s no wiggle room there.”
“Damn.”
The killer was possibly male, but not King. The killer was five feet ten to six feet three inches. He weighed no more than 165 pounds. And he had slim hands.
Had it been jealousy or rejection? Either could result in murder.
Or was it fear of financial ruin?
Of their current pool of male contestants, that made their killer either Joaquin or Kenny King.
Or Benjamin and his wife, Charlene, hired by the Big Pharms. Not just broker but executioner too?
“And the perpetrator wasn’t wearing gloves. This was skin-to-skin contact.”
“How do you know?”
“Latent print.” And he smiled. “In the bruise pattern. They’re never admissible in court, and there isn’t enough to provide an identity pool. Just enough so we know the killer used his bare hands.”
“Who am I looking for, MacAulay?”
“A pharm company not in the running,” MacAulay posed. “Or one that wants to keep the status quo. A family member who didn’t believe in what Beatrice was doing. Or was jealous that her altruistic ways outshined the behavior of an average human being.”
“Strangulation is personal.”