in the background are loud, a lot of people with him.
I’m about to try his patience. I can feel it coming.
“Just getting started. What’s up?” Distracted and tense, he is moving around a noisy room as he talks.
“Maybe you and your colleagues could look into something.”
“What’s that?”
“Adoption records, and I need you to pay attention,” I reply. “I know the Jordan case isn’t a priority at the moment, but I think it should be.”
“I always pay attention, Kay.” He doesn’t sound annoyed, but I know he is.
“Whatever pertains to Kathleen Lawler, to Dawn Kincaid, although that wasn’t her name when she was born and I have no idea the name of the first family who adopted her. Dawn was passed around to a number of different foster homes or families, and eventually ended up in California with a couple that died. Supposedly. Anything you can find that the FBI hasn’t already found, specifically relating to Dawn’s contacting someone. She had to have contacted someone, possibly an agency down here in 2001 or 2002, when she decided to learn the identities of her biological parents. She had to have gone through the same process anybody else would.”
“You don’t know that what Kathleen Lawler told you is true, and it would be best to discuss this later.”
“We know Dawn paid a visit to Savannah in early 2002, and we need to discuss it now,” I reply, as I envision Kathleen Lawler in the contact interview room, talking about being locked up in the
Something about being locked up like an animal and having to
“That really hasn’t been proven, either,” Benton says, and when he’s in a hurry and doesn’t want to have a discussion, he gets contrary.
“Retested DNA places her in the Jordans’ house in 2002,” I say to him. “But you’re going to have to request different testing, and I’ll get to that. Did she come all the way from California to meet her biological mother, or was there another purpose?”
“I know this is important to you,” Benton says, and what he means is Dawn Kincaid’s alleged visit to Savannah in 2002 isn’t important to him. The Bureau and the United States government, perhaps even the president, are preoccupied with potential terrorism.
“What I’m suggesting is the possibility of someone else she wanted to meet in addition to her mother.” I go on anyway. “Maybe there are records no one has thought to check into. This is important. I promise.”
He’s moving around, and a voice in the background says something about coffee, and Benton says thanks and then to me, “What are you contemplating?”
“How it’s possible to leave bloody fingerprints on a knife handle and a bottle of lavender soap at a crime scene if you had nothing to do with the crimes.”
“What about the DNA of those bloody prints?”
“The victims’ DNA and also an unknown donor, a profile that we now know is Dawn Kincaid. But the prints aren’t hers,” I answer. “The Jordans’ DNA and Dawn’s, supposedly. But some other person’s prints.”
“Supposedly?”
“Bloody transfers by whoever had bloody hands and touched the kitchen knife, the soap bottle, but the fingerprints aren’t Dawn Kincaid’s. They’ve never been identified, supposedly from contamination, from a lot of people being on the scene, including journalists, maybe walking through blood and picking up evidence, touching it, or even cops, crime scene techs. Apparently the scene wasn’t well contained. That’s the explanation I’ve been given.”
“It’s possible. If people didn’t have their prints on file for exclusionary purposes and they handled things. I’m going to have to go, Kay.”
“Yes, it’s possible, especially when everyone involved is eager to accept such an explanation because they’ve got Lola Daggette and aren’t looking for anyone else. That seems to be the problem across the board, overlooking, not questioning, not digging deep enough because the case is solved, the murders committed by someone who was caught washing bloody clothes and told all sorts of lies that bordered on nonsense.”
“Tell her I’ll call back in a few minutes,” Benton says to someone else.
I watch Colin walk out of the building. When he sees I’m on the phone, he gestures that he’ll wait for me in the Land Rover.
“See what you and your agent colleagues can find out about Roberta Price,” I say to Benton, who isn’t saying anything. “The pharmacist who filled Gloria Jordan’s prescriptions nine years ago. Who is she, and is she connected to Dawn Kincaid?”
“I remind you that if someone is a head pharmacist, their name is on every prescription bottle, even if they didn’t fill it.”
“Probably not if it’s a script called in by a prison doc or one who’s an executioner,” I reply. “If you’re the head pharmacist and didn’t fill the prescription for sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide, you might not want your name on it. You might not want your name even remotely associated with anything having to do with an execution.”
“I have no idea what you’re getting at.”
“Two years ago a pharmacist named Roberta Price, presumably the same person who filled Mrs. Jordan’s prescriptions, also filled the prescription for the sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide that would have been used in Barrie Lou Rivers’s lethal injection, had she not mysteriously died first. The drugs were delivered to the GPFW, and Tara Grimm signed for them. It’s hard to imagine she and Roberta Price aren’t acquainted.”
“A pharmacist at Monck’s Pharmacy. A small pharmacy owned by Herbert Monck.” Benton must have searched Roberta Price’s name as he was listening to me.
“Where Jaime shopped, but Roberta Price’s name isn’t on Jaime’s prescription bottles. And I wonder why,” I reply.
“Why? I’m sorry, I’m confused.” Benton sounds completely distracted.
“Just a hunch that maybe when Jaime went into Monck’s Pharmacy, Roberta Price kept her distance,” I add, and I recall the man in the lab coat who sold the Advil to me mentioning the name Robbi, someone who must have been inside the store a moment earlier and then suddenly wasn’t. “I don’t guess you can tell me what kind of car Roberta Price drives, and if it might be a black Mercedes wagon,” I say to Benton.
A long pause, and he says, “No car registered to her, at least not by the name Roberta Price. Could be in some other name. Did Gloria Jordan get her meds from this same pharmacy?”
“One close to her home. A Rexall back then that’s been replaced by a CVS.”
“So at some point after the murders, maybe Roberta Price changed jobs, ending up in a smaller pharmacy very close to the GPFW,” Benton says to me, as he tells someone else he’ll be right there. “There’s no probable cause to go after a pharmacist just because she filled prescriptions for Gloria Jordan, for the GPFW — and probably tens of thousands of other people in this area, Kay. I’m not saying we won’t look into it, because we will.”
“A pharmacy that must not have a problem aiding in executions at the GPFW, possibly the men’s prison, too. It’s unusual,” I point out. “Many pharmacists see themselves as drug-therapy managers responsible for promoting a patient’s best interests. Killing your patient usually isn’t included.”
“It tells us Roberta Price doesn’t have ethical issues about it or just feels she’s doing her job.”
“Or takes pleasure in it, especially if the anesthesia wears off or something else goes wrong. They had a case like that here in Georgia not so long ago. Took at least twice the usual time to kill the condemned inmate, and he suffered. I wonder who prescribed those lethal drugs.”
“We’ll find out,” Benton says, but he’s not going to do it this minute.
“And someone needs to contact the DNA lab Jaime was using,” I tell him, whether he thinks it’s a priority or not, as I walk in the direction of Colin’s grumbling Land Rover. “I suspect they’re not going to be up to speed with the new technologies being used by the military.”
I’m referring to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab, AFDIL, at Dover Air Force Base, where DNA technology has reached a new level of sophistication and sensitivity because of the challenges posed by our war dead. What happens when identical twins end up in theater and one of them is killed or, God forbid, both? Standard DNA testing can’t tell them apart, and while it’s true that their fingerprints wouldn’t be the same, there may be nothing left of their fingers to compare.
