and I need one of you able to swear to that.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He stares at me as if he’s not quite sure what I might do that requires watching or swearing to.
“I was in here last night. Not in this room. But in this apartment, and it’s likely I’m the last person to see her alive.”
“That’s the thing about this kind of work.” He leans against the doorframe, his duty belt making scraping sounds against wood. “You never know who or what you’re going to encounter. I’ve rolled up on scenes before and it turned out I knew the victim. Not that long ago, a guy killed on his motorcycle was someone I went to high school with. That was kind of weird.”
My impulse is to move her body, to cover her, to reposition her so she isn’t bent like a hairpin, her arms and head hanging over the edge of the bed. Her face and neck are suffused a deep purplish-red from blood settling due to gravity after her circulation quit, and her lips are parted, her upper teeth bared, one eye closed, the other open to a slit. Death has made a mockery of Jaime Berger’s perfect beauty, contorting and distorting her obscenely and grotesquely, and I don’t want Lucy to see her, not even a photograph, and I notice the overturned glass again and the empty phone charger. I get down on the floor to look and discover the handset several inches under the bed, as if Jaime might have been groping for it and knocked it off the table. I don’t pick it up. I don’t touch anything.
“I was in the living room and kitchen from around nine o’clock last night until close to one a.m.,” I inform Officer Harley. “I was in the guest bathroom once not long before I left. I handled a number of things while I was here. Paperwork. Items in the kitchen. I’ll make sure Investigator Chang is aware.”
“So you came down from Boston to meet up with her.”
“No. I came to Savannah for another reason. She asked to see me while I was here.” I’m not going to explain any more than that, not to a uniformed officer, a first responder who won’t be investigating this case. “We have a long, rather complex history that I’ll be happy to go over in detail with whoever I need to talk to when we get to that point. In the meantime, if you’ll just stay nearby so I have a witness to what I do or don’t do in here.”
“Sure. Or you can wait outside if you’d rather …?”
“I’m already inside this apartment, and I intend to help if I can,” I say firmly.
Under ordinary circumstances I would have left already, but I refuse to consider what some in my profession might deem an act of self-preservation. I ignore the part of me that is arguing I should get out of here now. I shouldn’t compromise myself further. No medical examiner would want to be in the position I find myself in, but if I can help determine what happened to Jaime, I feel morally obliged; in fact, I must. This isn’t just about her. I can’t save her. I am worried about others.
Homicidal poisonings are rare and greatly feared because there isn’t always an intended victim, and even when there is, it might not be that person who dies. Barrie Lou Rivers apparently didn’t care who ate her arsenic- laced tuna-fish sandwiches. Whatever cruel and coldly calculated point she intended to make didn’t necessarily involve a specific individual, and take-out food from her deli could have ended up with anyone. Poison doesn’t leave fingerprints or DNA. It almost never has a size or shape like a bullet or a blade, and it rarely leaves a track that can be measured like a wound. I’ve worked only a handful of homicidal poisonings in my career, and they were frustrating and terrifying. Stopping the perpetrator was a race against time.
Chang is back, setting his crime scene case on the bedroom floor. He gives me gloves as if we are partners, and I pull on two pairs. I slip my hands into my pockets as more footsteps sound in the hallway.
“The phone’s under the bed.” I indicate where, and then Colin walks in, dressed in street clothes, a plaid shirt and light gray slacks, his dark blue GBI Windbreaker and glasses speckled by rain.
He carries the same hard case he had with him at the prison earlier today, and he sets it on the floor and says to me, “What we got?”
“No obvious injuries, but I haven’t examined her, and I shouldn’t. Looks like she might have fumbled for the phone, perhaps knocking over her glass,” I answer. “Scotch, I think. She was drinking Scotch when I left her very early this morning. The phone’s under the bed.”
“She pour the Scotch herself?” Chang bends over and holds up the bedcovers with a gloved hand.
“Yes. And the wine.”
“Just want to know whose prints or DNA might be on what.”
“You guys don’t need to be in here now,” Colin says to Officer Harley. “Thanks for your help, but the fewer people in here, the better, okay? Don’t be eating or drinking anything in here, needless to say, and be careful what you touch. We’ve had several victims possibly exposed to something, and we don’t know what it is.”
Officer Harley says, “So you don’t think it’s drugs? I didn’t notice pill bottles or anything, but I didn’t open up any cabinets or drawers. I haven’t looked around because I’ve been in here with her the whole time.” He’s letting them know he’s kept an eye on me. “I can check out the bathroom, for example. I could check out the medicine cabinet, if you want.”
“Like I said, I don’t know what it is,” Colin answers. “Could be drugs. Could be something else. Could be a damn ice bullet.”
“There’s not …?”
“We really don’t know what we’re checking for.” Colin scans the room. “And the fewer people, the better.”
“There’s really no such thing as an ice bullet….”
“Not in this heat,” Colin says.
“We can handle it from here,” Chang tells the officer, “but it would be really good if one or both of you stay outside, keep the perimeter secure. We don’t want anyone walking in. Hard to know who else might have keys, for example.”
“When Marino and I had dinner with her last night, there was a sushi delivery,” I begin to tell Colin and Chang, as I stay near the window, out of the way of photographs, out of the way of Colin opening his sturdy plastic scene case as he prepares to examine the body in situ. “It would be a very good idea to check with Savannah Sushi Fusion. If you’re uncomfortable with my being here …?” I will leave if that’s what they want, regardless of my preference. “The reason is pretty glaring. I was with Kathleen Lawler late yesterday afternoon, and this morning she’s dead. I was with Jaime last night, until about one a.m., and now she’s dead.”
“Well, unless you’re going to confess to something,” Colin says, as he pulls on gloves, “it’s not crossing my mind you’re the reason people are dead, and I’m just happy as hell that you’re okay. And that Sammy, Marino, and I are. Normally I’d suggest since you know her and were with her last night, it’s not a good idea for you to be present. But you’re here. You might have helpful observations. It’s up to you if you’d be more comfortable leaving.”
“My biggest concern is another victim,” I reply. “Especially if we’re dealing with poisonings, and I think you know that’s what I’m worried about.”
“You and me both.”
“You might be the only one who can say if anything looks out of place,” Chang says to me. “So it would be helpful if you look around with me.” His camera flashes and the shutter clicks as he photographs the handset under the bed.
The help he wants from me is something else entirely, and I know what he’s doing. I recognize his approach and that it is the correct one. Sammy Chang has earned my respect as the day has worn on, and I don’t underestimate him or what he is considering, and I don’t blame him. In fact, I expect it. He’s a shrewd investigator, bright and observant and highly trained, and his job is to be objective and relentless, and no matter what he’s come to think of me, he would be foolish not to get every scrap of information he possibly can. He would be negligent if he didn’t observe me carefully, and he has no choice but to eye me with suspicion even if there is no hint of it in his professional interactions with me.
“So far I’m not noticing any indication that someone other than Jaime has been in here since Marino and I were with her,” I start with that.
“Anything going on between the two of them?” Chang asks. “Beyond work? Not that I know of, and it would be hard for me to imagine. He took two weeks off from the CFC to come down here and help her with the Jordan case. As I understand it, he’s been working with her in this apartment.”
“What about at an earlier time? They ever have more than a professional relationship?”
“I can’t imagine it,” I repeat, as Colin sets a digital thermometer on the bedside table.
He manipulates the body’s stiff right arm until he can bend it and tucks a second thermometer into the
