chapter twenty

A couple hours later, the vibration of my Nokia Handy woke me. It was Shin with the official report from the Devonshire autopsy, complete with the toxicology follow-up. As expected, massive amounts of Green Ice were found in her blood, but not her urine. That was typical for fatal overdose. The deceased had died before the drug had been metabolized.

“Blue Lotus in her system too,” Shin said. Ice and spice was as lethal as it was popular.

“Any evidence of Gabriel Lee on or in her person?” I scanned through the report.

Shin ran his free hand over the stubble on his head. “It wasn’t his semen in her, but SID matched his thumbprint to one on the light switch in her bathroom.” Shin’s gap-toothed grin beamed. “Captain Tatum already reopened the case herself—suspicious death, possible homicide. We’re canvassing neighboring buildings for surveillance footage to lock down times for Lee’s entrance or exit. And I sent a copy of the crime scene’s microbial cloud to the coroner doing Lee’s autopsy.”

“Thanks.” I should have felt a wave of relief. The thumbprint put Lee at the scene. His admission that she’d blackmailed him established motive. More would follow. And the fact that my hunch had played out in the reopening of the case gave me additional cover for the IAC hearing.

But when Shin hung up, I didn’t feel relieved. My head was stuffed with thoughts of Frank and cancer, and the signs I’d missed. His wheezing and the ashen skin. His recycling the golden oldies on an endless loop and tossing protocol.

I forced my thoughts back to the case. Straddling a chair opposite the motel bed, I stared at Britney Devonshire’s autopsy report. Questions kept multiplying, but the two people I was sure had the answers were both dead.

It was 5:00 a.m. when I drove to the Clara Vista morgue. Even if the autopsy on Dr. Lee wasn’t done yet, I could at least pick up Frank’s things for Ruth.

A full moon still hung in the dark sky, the image of a Nike Swoosh projected on the lunar surface. I could just barely remember what the moon looked like before it became a billboard for athletic shoes and glove phones every month. But that image was already ancient history. Easier to imagine the city at night without electricity.

My footsteps echoed as I walked down the hallway of the Clara Vista morgue. Hard bright light chased shadows from the corners. Ten feet away I heard strains of Mack the Knife, in German, bleed through the door to the autopsy room. There could only be one forensic pathologist who played that during an autopsy in the wee hours.

Pathologist Dr. Sidney Heller, elbow deep in a charred corpse, looked up. He was a pale New England variation on one of those rough-hewn faces you see carved on totem poles. Gaunt to the point where he was all gristle and sinew, Heller was oddly graceful with his long hands and fingers, and the stretched legs of a spider. He moved slowly, but deliberately.

“Hey, Sid,” I said. We’d worked together on the Sphinx case.

“Well, well, well.” He turned that lined face with its deep-set eyes to me. “Been a while, Eddie.”

Sid took his gloved hands out of Lee’s charred corpse as if to shake hands, but dropped something on the metal tray at his elbow instead. The hands were coated in blood.

“Yeah.” I took a deep breath and regretted it. The air reeked of disinfectant and charred human hair. “Ruth sent me for Frank’s effects.”

Dr. Sid Heller took a deep breath too. Almost a sigh.

“Over there.” He gestured towards the box of items on the table opposite. “I’m truly sorry, Eddie. I gave Frank VIP treatment. You knew he had cancer?”

I nodded, walking over and picking up the box of Frank’s personal effects. Such a small box for the man.

I turned to the other body Dr. Heller was currently working on. Dr. Lee’s corpse was a charred mass barely identifiable as human, utterly unrecognizable as the man who only hours before had spat out his last words in a river of blood.

“Anything you can tell me so far?”

“His cloud’s degraded and fire-scorched,” Dr. Heller said, “but it’s compatible with the bacterial cloud your partner sent over.”

Everybody who entered a crime scene left detectable, and identifiable, traces from skin and gut bacteria behind. This was additional evidence that put Dr. Lee in Britney Devonshire’s apartment the day of her death.

“Could you verify if Lee had a vasectomy?” I said, nodding at the corpse on the table. “Or check his DNA against this blood spot? I need to rule him out on paternity.”

Pulling up a picture of the fetal partial prelim from the file, I held my phone out for Heller’s inspection. “I’ll pay to expedite.”

Heller leaned close and peered at the partial prelim. “Save your money.” He pointed to the blood type listed on the corner of the page with the fuzzy barcode. “I can tell you right now Dr. Lee isn’t the father. Blood types are incompatible. And yes, he did have a vasectomy.”

I let that information rattle around in my brain for a second. “Father”—that was one of the last words out of the dead man’s mouth, but Heller’s findings confirmed what Denver had told me earlier. Lee had to have known he wasn’t the father of any stripper’s kid when she tried to blackmail him.

According to his boss, Lee had been under a lot of strain from work and the protestors targeting him. Maybe when he’d confronted her with the truth about his not being the father of her child, they’d argued, and things had escalated. Next stop—murder and a panicked run. I called up the Devonshire autopsy results on my glove phone next and held them out for Sid’s inspection. “What about her? Is she the mother?”

“Her blood type doesn’t rule out maternity,” Heller said, craning his neck. “But you’ll need a DNA scan to confirm. No equipment to do that here, Eddie.”

Thanking Sid, I picked up the box of Frank’s effects. The pathologist’s choice of music continued to play in the background. The torch singer wailed like she had glass shards and blood in her throat. I couldn’t understand the German lyrics, but rage and despair needed no translation. The door swung shut as I left to drive back to my motel in the murky dawn.