Evidence of Murder (30 page)

Christine rolled her eyes. “Sure. And maybe he teleported Jillian to the woods when he was done. I ran all the poison assays. Even if we couldn’t identify it, there would be some sign of one. Elevated levels of amines or metals.”

Theresa recalled the miles of electrical cords that had snaked across the concrete floor of the factory building. “Electric shock?”

“It would leave burns and signs in the heart. Come on, you know that as well as I do.”

“I’m grasping at straws here. The only thing we’re relatively sure of is that she stopped breathing.”

“Yeah. Everyone stops breathing. Just before they die.”

“But no one cut off her oxygen.”

“Not by strangling, smothering, or putting a plastic bag over her head, no,” Christine confirmed.

Behind the plastic reality ball and the electrical cords, behind the group of spectators, there had been tall metal cylinders, high and round, like small grain silos. They had been painted the same color as the walls and therefore blended into the background, obviously left over from the factory’s previous owners, the carbon makers.

“What if they—he—removed the oxygen from the air?”

“Come again?”

What had the chipped paint on the side of the tank read? She closed her eyes and concentrated.

N
₂
. The cylinders might be empty. Then again, they might not.

“What about nitrogen? He has rows of gas tanks there. What if he filled the air with nitrogen?”

Christine frowned. “I’m not following you. Like he opens all these air valves and floods the room with nitrogen? It would have to be an awful lot, and why wouldn’t it kill him and the baby?”

“They weren’t there.”

“It isn’t like gas, you know, like putting your head in the oven. Nitrogen won’t kill you in and of itself. Only if the oxygen content of the air fell too low to sustain life.”

“But that would kill her?”

“Sure.”

“Without leaving any signs?”

The doctor plucked a bayonet off her desk and balanced its two ends between her hands as she thought. “I’d have to check the literature, but as far as I know, yeah. Nitrogen is a natural component of the blood, so the toxicology would seem normal. But how do you get an apartment airtight enough to flood it with nitrogen? It wouldn’t chase the oxygen out…though I suppose it would be no trick for him to rig a timer to the tank. He could take the baby and leave, come back when the gas has been turned off, and open the doors and windows. It wouldn’t leave any sign in the apartment. Or the car. A car would make a handy little gas chamber, almost completely airtight.”

“It works well enough with carbon monoxide,” Theresa agreed, wishing she’d taken a closer look at the windows on Evan’s Escalade or Jillian’s car. She could have swabbed them with a little alcohol, run the swabs on the FTIR to look for adhesives. But—“The tanks I saw aren’t portable. Maybe it wasn’t done in the apartment. Maybe he took her out to the factory.”

“Again, how does he turn her atmosphere anaerobic? Set up some kind of oxygen tent? And why is she—”

Theresa had a vision of the clear plastic frames over the assembly table. “He already has one. Big enough for a body to fit, and it already has piping outlets built into it. Damn, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.” She explained the factory setup to Christine.

“Great. So Jillian lies on this table while Evan attaches nitrogen at one end and a vacuum at the other and reduces her oxygen levels until she passes out.”

“Right.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“Why does Jillian go along with this? She didn’t struggle. Aside from those vague bruises on her forearms, she’s got no defensive wounds. She didn’t break her nails clawing at the glass. She just laid there and died.”

“You said she had a sleeping pill in her system.”

“I can’t believe it would be enough for her to sleep through being carried to another location and placed in a gas chamber.”

Theresa shuddered. “How long would it take?”

“Not long at all. Once the amount of oxygen in the air gets under twenty-five percent, she’d be unconscious in seconds and dead in minutes.”

“And no chance that she’d sleep through that.”

“I can’t see how. Once her lungs began to gasp, she’d wake up, unless she had way more narcotics in her system than we found.”

Theresa stood up, dying to act on the information and no longer able to withstand the handle of the ammo locker pressing into her bottom. “But suffocation by nitrogen would produce your autopsy findings. Or lack thereof.”

“I’ll need to do a little research, but I believe so. What, you think your cousin’s going to give you a search warrant based on an educated guess?”

“Maybe. Now that I know what to look for.”

“And what would that be? A tube leading from the nitrogen tanks to this hood you were talking about?”

“No, I’m sure he could explain that, and if he couldn’t he would have gotten rid of the hookups by now. No, I mean hairs, fibers, fingerprints, anything that would show Jillian Perry died while stretched out in that Plexiglas cocoon.”

Frank answered on the second ring. “Where are you?”

This seemed like an odd way to open a conversation. “At the lab, of course. Look, I know you’re sick of hearing about Jillian Perry—”

“You have no idea how sick. You haven’t heard?”

The coffee floating around in her empty stomach began to boil. “Heard what?”

“Drew Fleming kidnapped Cara.”

She nearly broke off the phone’s flip top pressing it to her ear, as if proximity might make his words more sensible. “What?”

“He went to the apartment and pointed a gun at the nanny. He made her pack a diaper bag for him with stuff for Cara, bundled up the baby, and left.”

She noticed the wind behind Frank’s voice, whining across the surface of his phone. “Is he on his boat?”

“We’re there now. He says he’ll shoot anyone who steps onto the dock.”

“Is he trying to get away?”

“That’s going to be a little difficult with a foot of ice on top of the water. He could ice-skate a good distance, but that boat ain’t going anywhere.”

She sat down in a task chair; not the best choice as its wheels started to scoot away and she nearly slid off. “So he has no way out.”

“Best case, he figures that out and realizes that he loved Jillian too much to kill her child. Worst case—”

“He decides to take her with him. There’s not a lot of difference between those two choices, Frank, when you realize that the only reason he took Cara is because he believes Evan intends to murder her.”

Silence on the other end, save for the bitter wind. “That’s not good.”

“I’m coming down there.” She flipped the phone shut before he could protest.

Of the knot of cars in the otherwise deserted parking lot, at least half had their engines running, patrol officers taking advantage of the tradition that their vehicles must be ever ready for action by keeping them ever warm. But Theresa had lived through the gas shortages of the late seventies and couldn’t bring herself to do that. Besides, Leo would have killed her if he’d found out.

She took nothing but her ID, her cell phone, and her ChapStick, and followed the chaotic trail of the shoe prints in the snow. At the crest of the hill, she saw figures conversing in pairs or triplets, standing by the marina entrance, the gas pumps, and lined up along the pier. The fifty-foot finger of dock that led to, among others, Drew’s houseboat remained clear.

As she grew closer, she noted Frank out on the pier and Evan standing with his lawyer near a group of what looked like plainclothes police officers. She meant to walk past the man without speaking, but he felt differently.

She had never been a physical girl, taking on running and scuba diving for their calorie-burning qualities only; otherwise, she never joined pickup games of baseball or touch football. But now she learned what a flying tackle was. Or at least what one felt like.

Evan struck her from the side, his momentum carrying them several feet before dropping her to the frozen ground. The snow provided very little cushion as his full weight flattened her, and her head managed to find the one narrow strip of concrete sidewalk in the area. The air left her lungs and threatened not to return. She could not comprehend his words as his face appeared above her, framed by the sky, which, she only now noticed, had turned blue.

With breath came hearing. “You bitch! You put him up to this! He’s going to kill my baby and it’s all your fault!”

A scuffling sound, and at least four men, including his lawyer, pulled him from her, which would have been better if he hadn’t stepped on her shin at least twice while getting to his feet.

Then hands levitated her up as well, much less gently than she would have thought her age, sex, and general innocence in the matter warranted. One set belonged to Frank.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m all right, thanks. Even the back of my head where the sidewalk put a dent in my skull.”

“I can see you’re all right. What are you doing here?”

She staggered toward the dock, putting some distance between herself and Evan before answering. “I can talk to Drew. He thinks I’m the only one on his side.”

“Maybe not after that custody hearing yesterday, huh? I heard you didn’t help him out so much. And what did you say about the back of your head?”

“Sidewalk. Concrete. It’s okay, brains still inside the cranium, I think. I gave the custody hearing my best effort, and Drew would have seen that. Let me talk to him.”

“SWAT’s got control of the scene.”

“But he’ll listen to me. He knows I agree with him about Jillian.”

“You agree that Evan wants to kill Cara? Yeah, that’s going to make him put down the gun.”

She paused with him, away from the other men, next to the snow-covered rocks and the weirdly silent sea at the edge of the land. “Maybe it will. I didn’t get a chance to tell you, but Christine and I might have figured out how Jillian was killed.”

“Christine?”

“The pathologist.” When he continued to look blank, she added, “The pretty one.”

“Oh. Her.”

She gave him the scenario entitled Death by Nitrogen, in twenty-five words or less. She kept the technical parts to a minimum since his attention always returned to the motley houseboat dangling over the ice, as if it might explode any second.

“So you want to go out there and say, it’s all over, I’ve got the goods on Evan, turn Cara over to the authorities and she’ll be safe?”

“Something like that.”

He walked along the water’s edge toward the pier. “It’s not a bad idea. Problem is, this is a hostage situation now.”

“Yeah?”

“So I’m not calling the shots. They’re going to have to bring in the whole team.”

“Don’t tell me Chris Cavanaugh—”

“—will be here in ten. I don’t know why you don’t want to see the guy.”

The planks of the wooden dock vibrated only slightly under her feet, held stiffly in place by the frozen water. “Maybe because, fairly or unfairly, almost dying with him last year sort of put me off his company.”

“Maybe. Remember how you had such a crush on that kid in my band who came over to practice one day and said hi to you, and you ran outside and made your mother drive you home because you were too scared to say hi back?”

“No,” she lied.

“I can’t believe you could forget that.”

“I can’t believe you called that a band.” She flipped open her cell phone, scanning the list of incoming calls. Drew had called her to come to court, but she had been on the line with Leo and hadn’t picked up. Now she highlighted his number and pressed Talk.

“What are you doing?” Frank asked.

“Everyone thinks I started this, and maybe I did. Now I’m going to finish it.”

Drew picked up on the third ring. “Uh—hello?”

“Drew? This is Theresa MacLean. Are you in your houseboat with a gun to Cara’s head?”

“Of course not! I would never hurt—I mean, not yet. But you understand why I had to do this, don’t you? Of all people, you know.”

“Yes, Drew. I know. Look, you’re going to need a go-between. I’m coming out there.”

“No,” Frank said.

“Yes! Please!” Drew said. He gave a little huff of exertion, as if he had shifted a twenty-pound baby in his arms. “We have to do something or they’ll give Cara back.”

She switched ears, sliding her free hand under her arm to keep it warm. “What are you planning to do, Drew?”

“Just come out here, and we can talk. You’ll have to jump onto the deck, I took the plank down.”

“Absolutely not,” Frank said. The group of heavily bundled-up cops farther down the pier began to show more interest in her conversation with Frank. Their faces, pinched with cold, turned toward her.

She stepped onto the dock that led to the back of the
Jillian,
covered the receiver with a gloved hand, and told her cousin, “I’m the only person he’s going to trust, Frank.”

Drew’s voice sounded much farther away than sixty feet, coming from the tiny phone. “I can’t let him take her back. He’ll kill her. You know that. Besides, you had a baby, didn’t you? I’ve never tried to take care of one before. I might need some help.”

Cara chose that moment to start crying, her peeved mewls quite close to the phone.

“Absolutely not,” Frank repeated.

The SWAT commander materialized next to him. “This isn’t our policy—”

“Come down here,” Drew demanded.

Theresa spoke to her cousin, again covering the receiver. “He’s surrounded by big men with big guns and he’s got a baby in his arms. I’m a lot more afraid of what you’ll do to him than what he’ll do to me.”

“What if he bears a grudge against you for your family court appearance?”

“Come on!” Drew’s voice floated up from the phone in her hand. “Get out here and help me, or I’m leaving with Cara.”

She took another step along the dock.

“Wait. Take this. It’s a mic with a GPS.” The SWAT guy used her to block himself from Drew’s line of sight and tucked a thin rod about the size of a pencil into her coat pocket. He clipped it to the flap so that the tip stuck out.