discernible to some degree since infant hair is typically finer, but that can be a little iffy. With the right equipment you can also map out a dateline of exposure to certain poisons and elements by analyzing the hair shaft in small increments. But while we can compare color, structure, source, and length to determine if a given hair is consistent with a known sample, without a root it’s not as distinct an identifier as say a fingerprint or DNA.”
He walks over to a cabinet, opens a drawer, and removes a small cardboard box labeled with Callie Dunkirk’s name. Inside the box is a paper envelope with a slide in it. “This,” he says, proffering the slide, “is the hair from Callie Dunkirk’s wound.” He carefully removes the slide from the paper envelope and positions it on the left stage of the comparison microscope. He then switches the slide that holds his own hair to the right stage of the scope. After peering through the binocular eyepiece and making some minor adjustments to the focus, he stands aside and gestures for me to step in. “Take a look.”
It takes me all of a second to determine the differences between the two hairs. They look nothing alike; not only is the evidentiary hair thicker and darker overall, its medulla is thicker, too. Plus the scale patterns on the two hairs are noticeably different.
The phone in Arnie’s lab rings and I pull away from the microscope as he answers it. He listens for a few seconds and then mouths
Arnie finally manages to say, “I’ll take care of it,” just before he hangs up. “Izzy said to expect him in a half hour or so,” he tells me.
“What was the rest of that conversation about?”
Arnie hesitates just long enough to make me even more suspicious. Well, that and the fact that he not only won’t look me in the face, he won’t even look at my boobs, something he does like an unconscious tic whenever we’re together for any length of time. “There’s some emergency meeting in Madison today that Izzy wants me to attend so he can get caught up on stuff here,” he says, busying himself replacing the evidence slide in its envelope and box.
“What kind of meeting?” I push.
He shrugs as he puts the slide box back on the shelf and then he continues his cleanup by taking apart the slide he put together with his own hair. “I’m sure it’s just boring business stuff,” he says. “Administrative crap.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You were listening for an awful long time.”
Arnie smiles but he still won’t look at me. “Wow, attractive, smart,
I’m pretty sure Arnie likes just about anything in a woman so I’m not swayed by his flattery. “You’re avoiding the question.”
“Was there a question in there?”
“An implied one,” I say irritably. “You pick up on the subtlest of nuances all the time so don’t try to pretend you didn’t pick up on mine.”
Arnie glances at his watch. “Ooh, look at the time.” He slips out of his lab coat and grabs his parka. “I gotta run. I’ll catch ya later, okay?”
He has to push past me in order to get out of the room and I’m tempted to stop him, something I could do easily enough based solely on size. The walkway is narrow and I’ve got several inches on Arnie in all directions. But just as I’m about to assume my Wonder Woman bullet-proof-bracelet stance, I remember that I have another agenda, one that would be best served by Arnie’s departure.
So I let him go and as soon as he’s gone, I slip Hurley’s hair from my slacks pocket and prepare it on a slide using glycerin the way Arnie did. I position it on the right-hand side of the comparison scope and then retrieve the evidence hair removed from Callie Dunkirk’s wound and position it on the left-hand side.
As I look through the scope, I hold my breath in anticipation for a few seconds. Then I blow it out in a frustrated sigh and mutter, “Crap.” The two hairs are identical in color, width, and structure, meaning that the hair stuck in the dried blood in Callie’s wound is a match to Hurley’s.
Chapter 11
I carefully replace the evidence hair, take apart my prepped slide, and then head for the closest bathroom, where I dispose of the glass slide and the cover slip and flush Hurley’s hair down the toilet. There are plenty more where it came from and for now I don’t want to have it anywhere near me. My next big decision is whether or not to tell Hurley what I did and that his hair is a match to the one retrieved from Callie’s body. Fortunately I need to get everything ready for the autopsy on Harold Minniver, a series of tasks that will give me plenty of time to procrastinate while I try to make a decision.
Izzy arrives as predicted and within the hour he has made the initial Y-incision, done the rib-cracking, and begun the organ removal on Mr. Minniver for examination and dissection. The heart and lungs come out first and, as I originally suspected, there is no external evidence of any acute trauma or disease to any of these organs.
But as I weigh each one and remove small samples from them to store for later reference, I detect an odd, faint odor I’ve never smelled before. There’s only me and Izzy in the room and I’m pretty sure it isn’t coming from one of us. I sniff the containers used to store the organ samples, thinking maybe the chemicals in there have changed, but they smell the same as they always have, and distinctly different from the other odor.
I shrug it off until Izzy removes Harold’s stomach and opens it to examine the contents. As expected, we find food remnants inside that match what he had on the plate that was on the table at his house. The usual sour smells of stomach acid and partially digested food waft up, but underlying it I detect the strange odor again, much stronger this time.
“What is that smell?” I ask Izzy.
“Stomach contents,” he says.
“No, it’s a different odor. I smelled it before when I sampled the lungs and it’s even stronger now with the stomach contents. It smells like burnt, rancid nuts or something.”
Izzy halts his dissection of the intestines, sets down his scalpel, and gives me a curious look. “Would you describe it as a bitter almond smell?” he asks.
I take another whiff. “I guess,” I say with a shrug. “Is that what it smells like to you?”
“I can’t smell it. But if it’s what I think it is, only twenty-five to fifty percent of the population
I’ve either heard or read this claim somewhere before and realize what Izzy is thinking. “You mean cyanide,” I say.
“I do,” Izzy says, sounding mildly excited. “It makes sense given the history and the symptoms you provided. Cyanide poisoning mimics carbon monoxide poisoning by causing the same cherry-red color in the blood and skin.”
We both stand in silence for a moment, staring down at Mr. Minniver’s cut-open, emptied body, which looks like a macabre dugout canoe. Izzy finally breaks the silence.
“If that’s what this is, it’s a brilliant catch, Mattie. It could have easily escaped detection if not for your nose. Though it does complicate things for us since I doubt Mr. Minniver ingested cyanide on purpose and that means our hoped-for natural cause of death has just become a homicide.”
We pause in the midst of our autopsy while Izzy degloves and turns on an extra exhaust fan. He then makes a phone call to the police station to report that Minniver’s death might be a homicide. Once he’s hung up, he dons a new pair of gloves and tells me, “Bob Richmond will be here shortly. Apparently Hurley is still feeling a bit under the weather.”
I nod, trying to keep the guilt I feel from showing on my face. In the past Izzy has read me with a clarity that I find disturbing and I’m hoping now won’t be another one of those times, or at least if he does see something in my
