The forensic lab, less Corey’s meticulous oversight and organization, was becoming a loose configuration of rolling carts and stainless steel trays loaded with beakers and tubes. His annual foray to the sunny shores of Florida was not only proving to be a bumpy ride for the lab, but also for me—and I longed for his return. Still, Blanch was doing the job in between cigarette breaks, and when I walked into the lab for another go round with Phil Carrington’s analysis, she was ready with some heavy artillery and a barrage of details.
And since there wasn’t a body on a gurney this go-round, we didn’t talk in the morgue lab, but in the offices. Blanch’s cubicle, two down from Corey’s, was a rainbow tide of colors. Pinned to a small bulletin board over her desk, assortments of tear sheets from forensic journals, along with family photos and a couple of neatly-clipped Peanuts comic strips, formed a messy diatribe of printed material. Her small desk was littered with papers and, on each corner, glass ashtrays betrayed vestiges of clandestine drags from secret cigarettes, the filters crushed in a hurry—and a couple of outlines of Blanch’s go-to lipstick.
I sat in a swivel chair opposite the desk, my back to the cubicle pressed against a blue swath of crepe paper—a hold out from a recent birthday party, along with a half deflated red balloon.
Blanch, her voice gravelly and deep, seemed eager to discuss the latest trends in forensic science. For a few minutes she regaled me with the new DNA procurement procedures, walked me through changes in the methodology and outcomes. “The thing is,” she said, “we don’t have any way to determine foul play based on DNA evidence. All we have are two bodies, the Listeria, the glints of rock that contain the mercury. It’s all very neat and orderly, or it could be random . . . but that’s something we’ll have to work on or hold in check for later.”
I didn’t think we were getting into fingerprints, either . . . but Blanch reviewed the latest fingerprint database “Prints are basically made up of whorls, loops, arches, and lines. Time was when we had to reach for certainty, but now we have to use computers to establish larger probabilities. So many prints, so little time. It’s dizzying.”
I sat back in the chair and finally interjected a thought. “I guess you’re telling me that without something more exact to go on, we’ve reached a dead end. You didn’t find anything in any of the food samples from the home.”
Blanch dropped the filter of an unlit cigarette onto the sticky, dry surface of her lower lip. It dangled as she talked. “I didn’t say that,” she added. “I’d say I found more than we’d bargained for.”
My eyes lit up. I rocked forward in my chair and waited for Blanch to continue down the road of analysis.
She held up one of the samples I had taken—a plastic vial filled with fruit cake. She held up another one sprinkled with cookie crumbs. “All of the food samples came up empty,” she said. “You told me there were a lot of cakes and pies in the home, but from what I can tell—at least from these samples—everything is clean. There’s plenty of sugar, and baking soda, and flour and salt in these things . . . but not much else. The Listeria and the mercury poisoning certainly hastened the deaths . . . but neither of the Carringtons died of a sugar high. The fruitcake didn’t do it, either. I think one of the cakes also contained a bit of rum . . . but nothing close to toxic.”
I must have looked disappointed. Blanch shot me an odd look, as if I were expecting bad news to confirm my suspicions. “Don’t look so down, Mary,” she said eventually. “That’s just the food portion. I’ve shared that with you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I must look awful, sitting over here like the Grim Reaper, hoping that you’ll give me some bad news. I’m not happy. I’m really not.”
“Just trying to do your job,” Blanch said. “It’s always dirtier than you think. People never understand that part of it.”
“I’m not looking for validation . . . I just thought . . . “
“Well, let me tell you about that water sample, though.”
I perked again, having all but forgotten about the ice I had dropped into the larger vial. The Carrington freezer, oddly, had been stuffed full of it. “It wasn’t water when I found it,” I told her. “It was ice . . . from their factory.”
“That’s a problem,” Blanch blurted out. “That’s a problem.”
“Why?”
“Loaded with Listeria,” she said. “And if we could get a larger sample, I’m sure we’d find significant amounts of cinnabar. There was residue, tiny amounts of a fine powder in the sample you brought me.”
“Good Lord,” I said. “How could it have gotten into the ice?”
“It’s didn’t just fall in,” Blanch said. “As far as I know, no one used cinnabar in ice manufacturing.”
“Where is it used?”
Blanch pursed her lips, massaged the cigarette filter to the corner of her mouth where it dangled, precipitously, close to the edge. “You might want to check on that question,” she added. “But it’s odd that we found both of these elements in the Carringtons. And now I think we’ve located the source.”
“The ice factory,” I whispered.
“We could be facing an epidemic if the ice is tainted,” Blanch mouthed through her filter.
“Is there anything else?” I asked.
Blanch handed me a paper detailed the results of her work. I glanced at the facts and figures—noticed nothing that interested me—and placed the folded paper into my purse. I noticed the one of the photographs on the bulletin board was of a man who looked much like her—a brother, likely. Her computer screen saver, a dancing bear, jumped suddenly to life. I stood up, rocked on my heels. “I’ve got to go,” I said. “I’ve got to tell Lance. There’s got to be some precedence established here that would allow the detectives to get ice samples from the factory. Could be we’re looking at a recall.”
“Or it could be localized,” Blanch said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Could be that the only tainted ice is the supply inside the Carringtons’ home freezer.”
I studied the outcome of that logic. “If that’s the case,” I said, “we’re playing a whole other ballgame.”
“Get those samples from the factory,” Blanch said. “We’ve got to compare.”
“I understand,” I said, steadying my fingers on my cell phone, eager to get a call to Lance as soon as I walked away.
I didn’t have the heart to tell Blanch what I was thinking—nor what my next actions were going to be. Of course I wanted the police to be involved, but I had an obligation, too. I wasn’t going to bury two people and also bury the evidence. I was intent on finding it.
“Thanks, Blanch,” I said, eager to exit the field of death.
“You’re welcome,” she said, staring hard at me, reading my mind.
“I’ve got to go,” I repeated.
“I know,” Blanch told me. “But Mary,” she added, “be careful out there.”