Death in Her Eyes (A Mac Everett Mystery Book 1) (26 page)

She shrugged and made a face.

“That’s OK. It may come to you,” I said.

She knew exactly who the woman was, and so did I. I read it on her lips.

“Go on with your story,” I encouraged.

“Sharon and her partner got in an argument by the end of that evening too. They were screaming at each other. It was a bad scene. I left early again.”

“Do you know what it was about?”

“I thought it was about me again, but then I heard them talking about a lot of money and something about the woman’s husband. They were both two chardonnays past their limit.”

“Did Sharon say anything to you after the party?”

“A few days later I noticed she was down so I asked her what was wrong. She said she and her partner were cooling it.”

“Do you know why they broke up?” I asked.

“They’d been together for years, since college, maybe before. Her friend got married, but they promised each other they’d stay together.”

“Why did…”

“Why did a lesbian get married to a guy? Apparently, her husband’s super rich at least that’s what Sharon told me. Sharon wanted to mess with her partner and had pictures taken of the woman’s husband with his girlfriend. Well, when Sharon’s partner found out her husband was having an affair she wanted him back. She was all sorts of possessive. The woman vowed to get her husband back, no matter what and dumped Sharon. That’s why they were fighting. The funny part is Sharon started it by showing her friend the pictures.”

“Do you remember her partner’s name?” I cajoled.

“She lived near downtown. Oh, wait…her name was Stephanie!”

“You’re sure?” I asked. I tried to sound calm, but my excitement was palpable. I’d uncovered Stephanie Hunt’s lover, a suspect, and a motive.

“Yeah, her name was Stephanie,” she said with assurance.

This seemed to be true. I was getting such a strange vibe though. This woman only had a passing acquaintance with the truth.

“What happened next?”

“Sharon and I went out for drinks a few a more times. She started coming by my lab practically every day and we started seeing each other,” Nancy said. “I enjoyed being with her. She was so assertive.”

I’d experienced a little of that assertiveness. Sharon Greer had quite a temper too.

“Go on,” I coaxed. “How did the harassment complaint come about?”

“It was exciting to have her attention. She was sweet, but very masterful and, well… I fell for her. We’d been seeing each other about six weeks when one Saturday night we drank a bit too much. I went home with her. It wasn’t the first time.” She paused, gathering her courage, and then continued, “I’m not inexperienced, but it was terrifying.”

“Can you explain? If you can’t…”

“It’s OK. Remember, I said how commanding and masterful she was?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

“Well, there’s an ugly side too. She pushed me through the door then made a show of locking it. She kissed me hard then laughed at me. She stepped back and told me to strip while she watched. It was hot, but then it got vicious. She kicked my legs out from under me knocking me off my feet. Then she grabbed me by the hair, and dragged me to her bedroom. She pushed me down on the bed, ordered me to do things, and then…”

I could see the fear of the experience returning. She shook ever so slightly. She was twisting the cloth napkin in her hand. “It was very rough, angry sex. She was seriously drunk and I was terrified. She held me down for a while, and then she got this huge curved knife out of the nightstand and waved it around while she screamed at me. She was yelling she’d cut that bitch up into little pieces.” Her voice cracked as the fear flooded back.

Her fear was genuine, but there wasn’t a word of the truth in what she said. She was looking to her right the whole time, telling a fake story. It was as if she was retelling a dream. Maybe she’d practiced the story enough times that it seemed real.

“You alright?” I said.

She took a sip of water and nodded.

“She screamed at me and called me vile names when she finished with me,” she continued. “As soon as I could, I ran out of there with my clothes in my arms. I was so ashamed.”

“You have to remember what happened to you wasn’t your fault.” I tried to sound consoling, but what I wanted was to her to keep talking. Every word she’d told me about the rape was a lie. Now I just had to prove it. With some more rope, maybe I could hang her.

“I have a Ph.D. I know it’s not my fault here,” she said pointing to her head, “but I can’t seem to get it here,” she pointed to her heart. “I’ve had a few lovers in the past, but no one ever brutalized me like that. It’s always been so loving before.”

Oh, she was good. She was misty eyed, her voice cracked in just the right places. I was supposed to feel sorry for her, but it wasn’t working. I was putting on an act too. This one was a pro grade liar. If I’d run up on her in Iraq we’d still be at war.

“You seeing anybody, professionally?” I was amazed I’d suggested it, but I had to keep her talking. “It helps to talk to someone you know will listen and won’t judge you. You’ve not told anybody about this, have you?”

She slowly shook her head. Tears trickled down her face. She squared her shoulders and said, “I’ve wanted to but…”

“It can be healing to voice your worries and feelings,” I said. I was only repeating what the VA shrink had told me. I didn’t believe it either. “You’ve told me and the world didn’t come to an end.”

“No it didn’t. Thanks, I do know that but…”

She smiled a little and took another sip of coffee to steady herself. “I guess once I’ve told one person there’s no reason to avoid counseling, is there? Then she frowned and said, “Is it me or does this coffee suck?”

She put her cup down.

“It’s not you,” I chuckled. “It’s pretty bad. Go see someone soon. Are you up to talking a little more?” I asked.

She nodded, head held high. “Thank you for listening to me… and not judging me. I decided I wasn’t going to report what happened for my own reasons.”

“You went back to work?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.

“Sharon left me a couple of messages the next day, but I deleted them. She was waiting in the parking lot Monday morning. She apologized over and over. She said she was angry with Stephanie, she was drunk, and out of her mind. They’d been together for years and she told me all about their time together,” she said.

“Do you think she told you those details about her other relationship because…”

“She was trying to apologize for raping me,” she whispered. “I told her she had no right to do what she did. It was like because she’d been hurt it justified her hurting me. She stopped coming to my lab. Rumors about financial mismanagement began to surface. Two weeks late HR called me in and asked about my grant account. They said there was a problem with it and they were investigating. I told them about the rape, but I could see they didn’t believe me. Ten days later, I had a special evaluation and a month later I was fired.”

“So you sued, I understand there was a settlement,” I asked, playing dumb again.

“It was a directed verdict. I was awarded some money, but I’m not allowed to discuss it.”

“Dr. Greer was fired?”

“Yeah, that happened not long after the verdict.”

Funny, her lawyer hadn’t mentioned any of that to me
, I thought.
Was it a lie? Was it Nancy or Ashton who was stringing me along?

“What were you doing at the institute, Nancy?” I asked.

“It was essentially cancer research. I irradiated toxins to morph their properties targeting specific cell types, like tumor or cancer cells. Different exposure rates result in different mutations in the toxin. Denaturing the neurotoxins dilutes their effects and they can be used to carry radiation to the cancerous cells. They can even destroy the cells in certain circumstances. The work was progressing really well. I’m still working on it.”

“What neurotoxins did you use?” I asked.

“There’re a couple promising ones,” she said. “Several related animals use their toxins for defense or to paralyze their prey. Their toxins include tetrodotoxin, cardiotoxin, and ostracitoxin. They come from some of the most dangerous aquatic life. That’s why being at the institute was so important. They had access to all these species and the expertise to extract the neurotoxins. The process is laborious and potentially dangerous.”

“Which one did you use most often?” I asked, betting I’d knew the answer.

“Oh tetrodotoxin by far,” Nancy replied.” It’s the most promising of all the ones I’ve tested.”

“Could some of the neurotoxins, maybe some tetrodotoxin be missing?” I asked.

“Well, yes there were two vials unaccounted for when I left,” she answered. She looked startled. She hadn’t expected that question. “I would get the purified samples in one ml vials. I’d do a 1 to 10,000 dilution then either test or irradiate the sample. I had ten one ml vials, used seven, but there was only one left when I was fired. It was so humiliating to be escorted from the building like that.”

She looked left, recalling actual memories.

“Was Dr. Greer or anyone else around at the time that stuff went missing?”

“No, not really, the place wasn’t exactly a tourist spot.”

“Think about it. Was there anyone…”

“There is one other person who could’ve had access, but she’d have no reason to…”

“Who is it, Nancy?”

“My lawyer, Ashton Hunt, was there the day before I noticed the toxin missing. Sharon had shown her my lab and explained my work to her. I had just finished an inventory of the refrigerated drawer the missing vials were in when she showed up. I could have left the drawer unlocked.”

“When was this, Nancy?”

The middle of April or early in May,” she replied. “It was just as all the trouble started.”

“Did you tell her about the neurotoxin, what it would do?” I asked. My guts were cramping. I wanted to tell her to stop.

“Well sort of, she asked a lot of questions. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but now it seems odd,” she replied.

“Was she alone in your laboratory?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” she said, “but it was a big place with shelves and equipment down the center. We could be in the same room and been out of each other’s sight.”

I tried to remember what’d I told Ashton and when. Had I screwed up? Was Nancy spinning a yarn to get herself out of hot water and put the blame on Ashton? The signals she put out were confused. She was mixing fact with fantasy.

“Nancy, does that stuff lose its potency?”

“Eventually it’ll break down, but I’ve kept it refrigerated for up to a year. What’s this all about Mac? Has it been located? It’s terribly toxic,” she said.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you,” I said, “just my idle curiosity.”

“Are you sure?” she said.

“Don’t worry.” I gave her my disarming smile. “As I said on the phone, I think your information could have bearing on several crimes. You just wait. I’m thinking things will work out pretty well for you.”

Nancy Cameron was going to get exactly what was coming to her.

“All right Mac. I’ve trusted you this far, no sense going half way. Thank you for being such a good listener.”

“It’s what I do, Nancy. It’s what I do.”

I left Dr. Cameron in Verna’s capable hands. She was going to have an early comfort food dinner, skip the gym for once, and make it an early night. Those sounded like good ideas to me. She promised she would find a counselor and I promised to follow up with her in a few days. We were feeding each other a pack of lies.

The interview with Nancy Cameron put a whole new spin on things. Less than half of what she’d told me felt like the truth, but it was critical information. There were nuggets of honesty mix in with her BS. She worked with the deadly poison used to torture and kill Stephanie Hunt. She’d met Mrs. Hunt, who’d had a long standing affair with Sharon Greer and most troubling of all, she met her lawyer, Ashton Hunt, through Sharon Greer’s friends. Whose lies ran deeper, Nancy’s or Ashton’s?

I’d faced some deceptive people before, but no one quite like Nancy Cameron. Her looks and her innocent air made her dangerous. Usually, a lie comes wrapped around a nugget of truth, but if I was right, Cameron had reversed that concept. I was betting she was covering her own ass. So as I waited across the street in the Home Depot parking lot, behind a low scraggly hedge, with my 20 x 100 binoculars I wondered how I was going to prove any of what I suspected.

My phone rang shaking me out of my funk.

“Everett,” I said.

“Mac, its Stan,” my friend said.

“Hey Stan.”

“I got the ballistics reports back.”

“They’re all .45s right?”

“Yeah, the lab says all the slugs are .45s with a left hand twist. That makes the weapon a Colt. The only problem is Rad Wozninek and Kristin Wagner were killed with one gun, and Luck Taylor was killed with another one.”

“What?”

“The lab says two different guns, both .45s. I still think they’re connected.”