I keep my hands in my pockets as we begin to walk around. I tell Sammy Chang the same thing I told him earlier at the prison. I will look and explore as long as he approves, and I will touch nothing without his permission. We start with the master bath.
27
The mirrored medicine cabinets are open wide, their contents strewn over shelves and the granite countertop, in the sink, and all over the floor, as if a storm blew in or an intruder ransacked the master bathroom. Scattered about are cuticle scissors, tweezers, nail files, eye drops, toothpaste, dental floss, teeth-whitening strips, sunscreens, over-the-counter pain relievers, body scrubs, and facial cleansers. There are prescription medications, including zolpidem tartrate or Ambien, and anxiolytic lorazepam, better known as Ativan. Jaime wasn’t sleeping well. She was anxious and vain and not at peace with aging, and nothing she had on hand to relieve her routine discomforts and discontentedness was going to defeat the enemy that confronted her the final hours and minutes of her life, a violent attacker that was sadistic and overpowering and impossible to see.
As I interpret her death through the symbols of her postmortem artifacts and her chaotic clutter, it is clear to me that at some point early this morning she suffered an onset of symptoms that caused her to search desperately for something, for anything, that might mitigate panic and physical distress so acute that it looks as if an intruder pillaged her apartment and murdered her somehow.
There was no intruder, only Jaime, and I imagine her dumping out the contents of her pocketbook, perhaps looking for a medication that might relieve her suffering. I imagine her rushing inside the master bath for a drug that might offer remedy, and sweeping and knocking items off the shelves, frantic and crazed by the torture of what had seized her. Only it wasn’t another person killing her, not directly. I believe it was a poison, one so potent it transformed Jaime’s body into her own worst enemy, and I wasn’t here.
I hadn’t stayed. I’d left earlier, so relieved to get away that I’d waited outside in the dark under a tree for Marino to pick me up, and I can’t stop thinking that had I not been hurt and angry, I might have noticed the warnings. It might have occurred to me that something was wrong, that she wasn’t merely drunk. I was defensive of Lucy, and she’s always been my weakness, and now someone she loves, maybe the love of her life, is dead.
“If you don’t mind.” I indicate to Chang that I want to look and touch as he takes photographs.
Had I been here during Jaime’s crisis, I could have saved her. There were signs and symptoms, and I ignored them, and I don’t know how I will explain that to my niece.
“Sure, go ahead,” he says. “Any reason for you to suspect she might have had something inside this apartment that someone else wanted to get hold of? I notice several computers and what looks like case records and other confidential documents in the living room. What about sensitive information on her computers?”
“I have no idea what’s on her computers. Or even if they’re her computers.”
I could have gotten a squad here. I could have given her CPR, I could have breathed for her until paramedics took over with an Ambu bag as they rushed her to the ER. She should be in a hospital now, on a ventilator. She should be all right. What she shouldn’t be is cold and stiff on her bed, and I will have to tell Lucy I failed Jaime and I failed her. I’m not sure Lucy will forgive me. I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. All these years she has made the same comments to me again and again, repeating the same objections because I make the same mistakes.
I made it worse. I couldn’t have made it any worse, and I’m saying to Chang, “I think you’re aware of what Jaime’s been doing in Savannah, and therefore the nature of the documents you’re referring to. But to answer your question, I wouldn’t know if she had something inside her apartment that someone might have wanted. I have no idea what’s on the computers in the living room.”
“When you were with her, did she say anything to give you the impression she was worried about someone wanting to harm her?”
“Only that she’d gotten increasingly security-conscious,” I reply. “But she didn’t mention anything specific about being afraid of anything or anyone.”
“Don’t know what jewelry and other valuables she might have brought down here from New York, but her watch is still sitting there.” He indicates a gold Cartier watch on a black leather strap on the counter near a glass that has a small amount of water in it. “Seems like that would have been worth stealing. I’m wondering if she started rummaging for medication or something when she was drunk.”
I pick up a box of Benadryl out of the sink, noting that the top has been ripped off as if the person was in a frantic hurry. On the floor is a silver packet with two of the pink tablets missing.
“I’m no longer sure she was drunk. At least not as drunk as she seemed.” I look at the price sticker on the Benadryl box. “Monck’s Pharmacy. Unless there’s more than one, it’s in that shopping area near the GPFW where the gun store is.”
“She bought this since she’s been down here, since she’s been interviewing people at the prison. Maybe she had allergies,” he says. “You have an idea when she first came to Savannah and rented this place?”
“She indicated to me that it was several months ago.”
“Maybe April or May. The pollen was really bad this spring. It was like everything had been spray-painted yellowish green. For a while I couldn’t run or bike outside. I’d breathe in all this pollen and my eyes would swell, my throat would close up.” He is making conversation, being amicable, the good cop chatting with me.
Sammy Chang is being collegial, and I know the game. Loosen up, open up, I’m your friend, and I intend to treat him as my friend because I’m not the enemy. I have nothing to hide. I’ll take a polygraph. I’ll swear to the facts under oath. I don’t care that he hasn’t read me my rights, and I don’t care what he asks. I will admit freely that I feel guilty, because I do. But I’m not guilty of causing Jaime Berger’s death. I’m guilty of not preventing it.
“I’m going to guess she took Benadryl last night based on the torn-open box and the packet on the floor,” I say to him. “If she took two tablets, she must have been suffering significant symptoms, possibly was having trouble breathing. But we won’t know until her tox is back whether she has diphenhydramine on board.”
“Maybe she had a severe allergic reaction to something she ate. Maybe the sushi. Was she allergic to shellfish?”
“Or she thought she was having a severe allergic reaction because she was having difficulty breathing or swallowing or keeping her eyes open,” I tell him, as I pick up other toiletries to see where she bought them. “It’s been reported, as you know from being at the prison a few hours ago, that Kathleen Lawler was having difficulty breathing after she came in from the exercise cage. Supposedly she had trouble speaking and keeping her eyes open. Symptoms one might associate with flaccid paralysis.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
“Nerves are no longer stimulating muscles, usually starting with the head. Drooping eyelids, blurred or double vision, difficulty speaking and swallowing. As paralysis progresses downward, breathing becomes labored, and this is followed by respiratory failure and death.”
“Caused by what? What might she have been exposed to that could do what you describe?”
“Some type of neurotoxin is what comes to mind.”
I bring up Dawn Kincaid. I tell him that Kathleen Lawler’s biological daughter, who is charged with multiple violent crimes in Massachusetts, including the attempted murder of me, experienced difficulty breathing inside her cell at Butler this morning and went into respiratory arrest. She appears to be brain-dead, and I explain that officials there are concerned she was poisoned.
“I’m not aware of Jaime being allergic to shellfish, unless she developed a sensitivity recently,” I continue. “Although an anaphylactic reaction to shellfish could cause flaccid paralysis and death. As could other types of poisoning. It appears Jaime did a lot of her shopping at the same pharmacy, Monck’s. It would be good to pay close attention to anything she might have purchased there, anything from there that’s in the apartment. Any product or over-the-counter meds or prescriptions, including anything she might have gotten in the past that we’re not seeing now. Just to rule out she didn’t do this to herself or that something she bought there wasn’t tampered with.”
“You mean if someone tampered with something on the shelves inside the store.”
