TRACE - CSI Reilly Steel #5 (Forensic novel Police Procedural Series) (15 page)

Chapter 27

‘OK,’ said Julius, in the GFU debriefing room. ‘Even without the results from the Worthington autopsy, the similarities in these cases are piling up. Allow me to elaborate.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Reilly.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lucy open a packet of biscuits and offer one to Gary. He looked as though she had handed him the moon. She envied them their uncomplicated romance. They might not think it was, but Reilly would give anything for that kind of simplicity. She could see Chris watching her and wondered what he was thinking. Had she disappointed him already? Probably. He couldn’t expect too much from her though. She wasn’t able to just give herself wholly to someone. Last night … now in the cold light of day she was embarrassed. What would have happened if he hadn’t pressed the pause button? What did he think of her, practically throwing herself at him like that? Yes she was upset but they’d been through some upsetting things before and she hadn’t felt the need to crawl all over him. Man, this was a mess…

‘So. The DNA found at the Cooper and Armstrong scenes matches the one decent sample we got from the Worthington scene this morning. This guy is good. He barely leaves a trace, but as we all know, a trace is all it takes.’ He helped himself to one of Lucy’s biscuits and continued. ‘The bedcovers had the same kind of disruption Gary pointed out before as well. I haven’t been able to test for the same chemical compound that we found on the Armstrong bed yet, but I’ll let you know as soon as I do.’

‘If I may pick up the story from here …’ interjected Gary.

‘All yours,’ said Julius.

‘There is obviously the link with the manner of death: poisoning in both the Cooper and Armstrong cases, and though we haven’t got the results from the Worthington scene, it looks like that was our third meal of death. Naomi Worthington had no real cooking utensils of her own. Her fridge was full of condiments. Which indicates that our perp brought his own utensils again. He just didn’t leave anything behind this time. Except,’ he said, with a dramatic pause, ‘I surveyed Naomi’s chopping board. It seemed absolutely new, apart from some very recent marks that had been made by a knife moving at speed. With great precision. For your information, I actually tested this myself.’ He brought out two chopping boards, identical to the one Naomi Worthington had owned. ‘I went and bought these this morning, when we got back. You can see on this one, I had Lucy chop an onion. You can see that the marks made are from an inexpert and clumsy hand.’ He glanced up for Lucy’s reaction and was rewarded with an eye roll. ‘The second board I took to the café downstairs. Now, the guy in there is only a sous chef, but you can see that the marks on this board are much closer together, much more precise.’

He finished and waited for their response.

‘Very impressive,’ said Reilly drily.

‘You’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty,’ said Chris. ‘So. We’ve got all these similarities. We know beyond a doubt now, that we’re dealing with the same guy. We just have to find him.’

The meeting ended with Gary promising to work on Naomi’s phone and laptop until “his eyes bled”. Julius would analyze the contents of the meal and the flowers and find out what they were dealing with, and Lucy would continue her work in the lab as well, where her sometimes frenetic energy narrowed in on tiny details.

Lucy caught up with Reilly when she was back at her desk.

‘Did you hear anything useful on the tapes last night?’

‘I did,’ said Reilly, cautiously. ‘But I don’t want to go into it just yet. For now, I think you should take a break from hypnotherapy.’

‘Did I do something wrong?’ She looked crestfallen.

‘No, you’ve done great. It’s just I want to focus on another part of the investigation for now.’

‘Ok,’ said Lucy. ‘Keep me posted.’

Reilly breathed a sigh of relief when she left. She had decided that she wouldn’t tell Lucy what she had found until she had a little more information. It was no use upsetting her for no reason. Ethically, it was probably wrong. Lucy had a right to her own memories. But Reilly didn’t want to rip her life apart until she had to.

Karen Thompson was very good at remaining detached from the corpse she was working on. She preferred not to think of the person lying in front of her, but rather as a collection of clues, that when put together, would make a puzzle.

It made her job easier that the bodies put in front of her usually had very little resemblance to the living. They were merely models of the living. Something for her to take apart and put together again.

The truth was, she was completely obsessed by the body and the way it worked. It was like the sea, sometimes it gave up its secrets, sometimes not. She knew what they said about her. That she dug up corpses in the night, that she carried the stench of death around with her. It was all complete rubbish, of course, but she didn’t dissuade the talk. She rose above it.

Death was one of the great experiences of a person’s life. It was just as important as one’s birth, and just as random, but all too often it was ignored. Simply a by-line. Karen Thompson believed that people should prepare for their deaths, should embrace them almost. It was all well and noble, but she had never had a knife held to her throat, or a gun pointed at her temple.

She was no stranger to violence and its consequences, however. Every day, she saw a different method of killing.

She looked at the corpse in front of her now. Another young, healthy person. There had been a few of those lately. She allowed herself a moment of pure anticipation before she began her autopsy. The incision she made into the body was only the first of many steps.

She removed the organs, checked them for the tell-tale signs of discoloration. The contents of the stomach must be neatly scooped out and kept for testing. The insides of the body were as neat as a map, but each showed something slightly different. In this one, Karen found something that made her stop. A tiny something. No bigger than a bee. No more than a rumor. A tiny widening, a slight preparation of the body. Goodness, she thought.

The patient’s liver was discolored and cirrated, a typical sign of poisoning. Her bowels were blocked also. There had been none of the voiding which is common in death. It lead Karen to suspect a particular type of poison.

She would run the bloods and toxicity tests and then tell the investigators what she had discovered. They would no doubt be impatient.

Chapter 28

‘
Atropa Bella Donna
,’ she told the collected faces later that afternoon. ‘More commonly known as deadly nightshade. It is quite perfect really, because it is very sweet tasting. Irresistible to young children. All that is needed to kill a grown man is three to five berries and our killer used far more than that. My guess is that they were pureed and used as a marinade for the pork. Very creative.’

Reilly and Chris exchanged a glance. The doc could be a little gruesome sometimes.

‘No need to bloody well compliment his cooking skills,’ said Kennedy.

‘You would be far better qualified to comment on his cooking than I, Detective,’ said Karen, tartly. ‘Being as it seems that you have actually sampled it.’

Kennedy subsided into a grumpy silence and Reilly suppressed a smile. Things were back to normal.

‘But that’s not all. He used enough deadly nightshade to kill a horse, but still he garnished the meal with
Letticis Moravena,
also known as Imp’s delight. These are the flowers that were found at the scene. They are also highly poisonous, but sold in selected florists, because of course it is expected that people won’t eat flowers. There was no need to include them,’ said Karen. ‘My guess is that they were used as a kind of flourish, a taunt even. A calling card.’

‘Is that it, then?’ asked Kennedy.

‘If you would have some patience,’ said Karen. ‘No, that is not “it”. My estimate is that the time of death was around 9pm last night. From her body weight and the amount of poison used, she would have taken no more than twenty minutes to die. There is one more thing, of interest, though perhaps not relevance. The victim was pregnant at the time of death. No more than three months, but still detectable to me.’

There was a silence in the room as they all paused to take in this tiny double tragedy.

Things had taken a decidedly macabre turn.

Hi there, I see that you asked a question about preparation for long distance runs? I’ve done a few of these myself, and I definitely think you need to put lots of work into your prep. If you try to be too ambitious when you’re inexperienced, then you might be put off running altogether.

My advice is: Make sure you can go at least one and a half times the distance you need to. If you get lost, you will need to have extra stamina.

Always carry snacks and water. It’ll make your load heavier, sure, but it’s invaluable. Just practice with that extra weight so that it won’t feel too heavy on the big day!

Stretch, stretch, stretch. I can’t stress this enough. I know some really good stretches for fast recovery, kind of hard to describe like this, but Private Message me if you want more details.

Run with a partner. Safer and much more fun.

See you at the next run!

My
message to the lovely Constance.

I have my first session with the running group in two nights’ time. They are bound to be a bunch of amateurs, huffing and puffing their way through a mere 10k, but the boredom is worth it. She will be there and I will see her in the flesh for the first time.

Usually I would be left feeling bored and lacking after a success such as I had the other night. But finding out about Constance has given things an extra flavor. I now have a goal that supersedes all others. I will not rush this. It’s tempting to kill her as soon as I can, but it needs to be right.

I will put in all the right preparation.

Rory, the GFU’s true computer maestro, was back. Gary was good, but not quite at the savant levels as Rory. In only a few hours, he had managed to get them unrestricted access to Jennifer and Naomi’s emails as well as their dating profiles and the private messages therein. He had even dug up a few of Rose Cooper’s old emails.

‘He’s a genius,’ said Chris, echoing Reilly’s own thoughts. ‘But with the amount of stuff he’s dug up, we’ll be here all night. I’m going to get some food downstairs. Do you want something?’

‘Yeah, maybe a pizza slice? Or salad. Yes, get me a salad, please.’

He left the room and Reilly continued scanning emails.

“I just can’t commit right now,” she read in one of Naomi Worthington’s emails to her sister. “I love my job, and it takes up all of my time. I can’t seem to manage that AND a serious relationship.’ Reilly sighed. The similarities between her and these women were a little too glaring sometimes. Married to their jobs basically. Unable to handle emotional intimacy. Here she was, after practically having thrown herself at Chris, and then backing off completely. It was the right thing to do though. Particularly since she just wasn’t sure how she felt about anything at the moment. She kept reading emails. The best thing she could do right now was to keep her mind on the job. Glued to it, in fact.

“…don’t know what to do,” read another of Naomi’s emails. “A baby was never part of the plan. At least, not for a few years. But I keep thinking, maybe this is meant to happen. Maybe I want it to happen. I’m starting to love this thing despite myself.”

It was all so sad. Naomi had deserved the chance to see where motherhood took her. It had been snatched away from her cruelly. She was just a woman who like to have a little fun. She like some pleasure in her life. It didn’t mean she was incapable of loving something, or of being a good mother. Reilly could relate to her. Whys should a woman have to go without? Men got to have all of those things: a career, sex, relationships, a family. Why couldn’t she have the same?

Naomi’s email revealed much the same as Jennifer’s. They were mainly about work and the ones that were personal talked about the dates she was going on, or restaurants she had been to. Like Jennifer, she frequented high end restaurants. Reilly noted that she had been to Hammer and Tongs at least twice.

Rose Cooper’s emails were a different story. Mainly pleading messages from her mother, begging her to go home. “You sound so unhappy,” one read. “I just wish you would come home.” If only Rose had listened to her mother, things might be completely different.

Then she saw something that made her heart beat a little faster. An email from Harry McMurty. “I’ve got a little treat for you…not the kind of treat you can put up your nose. Something almost as good though. I know a guy from a big restaurant and he said he could interview you. Wants your number. I gave it to him but thought I should let you know.” Someone must have written it for him, it was far too legible. But this could be the thing they needed. It was too bad he didn’t use any names, but they would definitely need to pay Nico Peroni another visit. So what if he said he met Harry McMurty only after Rose’s death? People lie.

‘Anything interesting?’ Chris asked when he came back. He slid a plate of salad and a slice of pepperoni pizza across the table to her.

‘A couple of things. Another possible link to Nico Peroni. We’ve been slack. We have to get him in for questioning.’

‘We don’t have much to hold him on,’ said Chris. ‘But we’ll get him in. If you think it’s something.’

‘Apart from that,’ said Reilly. ‘It’s mainly just really sad. These women just trying to make sense of their lives – ‘ she picked up the pizza and the spicy scent of the meat overwhelmed her. There was no escaping, it she was going to be sick. She flew from the room, with Chris right behind her. She reached the toilet just as she was ill. He stood in the doorway to the bathroom while she was in the stall to give her a little privacy.

‘This goddamn stomach bug,’ said Reilly. ‘It’s maddening.’

She saw Chris’s serious face in the mirror as she washed her face.