Isle of Dogs (30 page)

“What’s your name? He’s only taking calls from people on his list.”

Possum groped for a way to trick the lady. “I number three on his list, ma’am.”

He heard her checking and hoped Dale Earnhardt’s number would prove lucky. It did, sort of.

“It says Mr. and Mrs. Brutus Custer, so which are you?”

Possum had a high-pitched, soft voice that could easily pass for a woman’s. He was a bit offended but knew he didn’t sound like a Brutus.

“This Mrs. Custer,” he said. “I so worried about my daddy-in-law. I can’t sleep or eat. Tell him if he don’t feel up to talking, I’ll try another time.”

Possum had given the receptionist an
out,
and was getting cold feet himself. Then Ben Cartwright turned around in the saddle and looked sternly at Possum.

“Hold on,” the receptionist said.

“Hello,” a male voice was on the line. “This Jessie? How you doin’, baby? Why ain’t you come to see me yet? I’m going home today.”

“Mr. Custer, this ain’t Jessie, but I just got to talk to you. So please don’t hang up.” Possum’s heart was beating so hard he thought it might break his ribs.

“Who is this?” Moses was instantly suspicious.

“I can’t tell you ’cept to say I’m so sorry for what happened
to you. It was wrong, wrong, wrong, and I didn’t mean it. But I was forced.”

“Who is this?” Moses demanded in an upset voice. “Why you be messing with me? You one of them pirates, ain’t you!”

“Yes. But I don’t wanna be,” Possum confessed.

“The hell you don’t wanna be. I knew quick enough you wasn’t Jessie, ’cause you don’t sound like her.”

Possum took a deep breath. “I can’t talk long. But I just wanted to tell you I sorry for what I done and if I can find a way to make it up to you, I promise I will, Mr. Custer. And you be sure to keep lots of police around, ’cause them road dogs is already talking about finding you and finishing you off. Their leader’s name is Smoke and his girlfriend’s Unique and shot that poor Seven-Eleven lady last night, and Smoke say he kill me if I didn’t shoot at you when we took your truck and the reefer at the pumpkin stand.”

“Sons of bitches! Let ’em show their asses and then they’ll see what trouble’s all about!”

“I do my best to talk ’em out of it.”

“You? Who the hell is this . . . ?”

Moses was yelling, and Possum, beginning to panic, ended the call.

“What the fuck’s going on in here?” Smoke suddenly swung open Possum’s bedroom door. “Who you talking to?”

Possum tucked the cell phone under the covers just in time.

“Just talking to Popeye about our new flag.” Possum thought quickly. “What you think, Smoke?”

Smoke walked in drinking a breakfast beer and looked long and hard at the big flag tacked to the wall.

“What is this shit?” Smoke asked in a hard, mean voice.

“You don’t got a flag, and I was thinking that all pirates got flags, just like NASCAR drivers got colors. So I put this together for you, Smoke, like I said I would. Thought you could put it up in the pit when we go to the race tomorrow night. Then, when we escape to the island, you can hang it up there so everybody will know not to mess with you.”

“If you’re going to talk to yourself, keep your fucking voice down. You woke me up,” Smoke said. “Now I’m going to be tired the rest of the day.”

Smoke calmed down and looked thoughtful as he studied the flag from different angles. He got an idea and tugged it loose from the wall.

“Maybe I’ll just shoot the damn dog and wrap it in this thing. We’ll leave a little present on Hammer’s doorstep,” Smoke cruelly said.

Popeye, who could play possum just as well as Possum could, pretended to be asleep again, and Possum pretended he didn’t care what happened to the dog.

“But that wouldn’t be as good as getting Hammer and that Trooper Brazil,” Possum reminded him because Smoke tended to forget most things these days. “And we need the dog to get them to show up at the race so we can blow them away. Then Cat fly us off in the helicopter, and we live fat lives on the island.”

“And how the fuck do you intend to set up all this?” Smoke said, tossing the flag on top of Popeye, who didn’t budge.

“That easy,” Possum replied. “I send an e-mail to Captain Bonny and get him to do it. We know he got connections, right? So he can get the plan to Hammer and make her think you The Man NASCAR Driver with that pretty girlfriend, Unique, and the rest of us is your pit crew who happened to find Popeye wandering on the road. So we picked her up but ain’t turning her over to no one ’less Hammer and Trooper Brazil can ID her for sure. So they show up at the race and come look for us, and the minute she starts screaming ’cause she’s so happy to see Popeye, we pull out our guns, shoot everybody, run to the helicopter, and fly away.”

“Set it up,” Smoke ordered as he chugged the beer and tossed the can on the floor.

 The chief medical examiner, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, was in her office when Andy knocked on her open door.

“Doctor Scarpetta? Hi,” he said politely and a bit nervously. “If this isn’t a bad time, I’d like to talk to you about the unidentified man who burned up on Canal Street last night.”

“Come in.” Dr. Scarpetta looked up from a stack of death certificates she was reviewing. “Have we met?”

“No, ma’am. But I’ve worked with Dr. Sawamatsu before.”

Andy introduced himself, and then explained that Regina was an intern with the state police, although he did not refer to her by name.

“And your name is?” Scarpetta inquired of her.

Regina stared at her, wide-eyed and tongue-tied. Regina had never met such a powerful woman before, and she was completely taken aback. Dr. Scarpetta was a very handsome blonde, maybe in her midforties, and was dressed in a sharp pinstriped suit. Why would someone who has everything going for her want to work with dead patients for a living? What should Regina say to explain herself, without giving away her identity and causing a stink?

“Reggie,” Regina blurted out.

“Officer Reggie,” Dr. Scarpetta said with a nod from her
judge’s chair behind her big desk. “And you’ll vouch for her?” she said as a bit of a warning to Andy. “I don’t routinely have police interns down here.”

“I’ll take full responsibility,” Andy said, giving Regina a sharp glance.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Regina eagerly spoke for herself. “I won’t talk about anything I see or hear and won’t touch or move anything in any way.”

“A very good idea,” Dr. Scarpetta replied, and she directed her attention to Andy. “The man has been identified by fingerprints. His name is Caesar Fender, a forty-one-year-old black male from Richmond. And we have a full house this morning, I’m sorry to say. Have you ever seen an autopsy?” she asked Regina.

“No, but not because I didn’t want to.” Regina was desperate to impress this legendary woman doctor.

“I see.”

“When I took high school biology, I was the only one in my group who didn’t mind dissecting a frog,” Regina boasted. “Guts have never bothered me at all. I don’t think it would even bother me watching somebody die, like a death row inmate, maybe.”

“Well, I didn’t like dissecting things in high school,” Dr. Scarpetta replied, much to Regina’s surprise. “I felt very sorry for the frog.”

“I did, too,” Andy replied. “Mine was alive and I didn’t think it was right to kill it. It still bothers me.”

“And I certainly am bothered when I’ve watched people die, inmates or otherwise. I guess you’ve never spent any time at scenes or in the E.R.,” Dr. Scarpetta said, and she thought Andy’s name seemed familiar as she shuffled through the papers on her desk and pulled out a report.

Sure enough, the name of the officer who had submitted the poisoned chocolates to the labs was Trooper Andy Brazil.

“I have something to discuss with you,” she said to him. “I think we need a moment of privacy.”

It was her way of politely ordering Regina out of the office.

“Please step out for a minute,” Andy said to her. “We’ll be right with you.”

“How can I be an intern if you’re always making me
leave?” Regina said, a hint of her generally obnoxious personality creeping into her voice.

“I’m not always making you leave,” Andy replied, showing her to the door and pretty much pushing her out. “Stay,” he said, as if she were Frisky.

He shut the door and returned to Dr. Scarpetta’s desk, pulling out a chair and seating himself.

“I just got the lab report for the chocolates,” the chief began. “This is serious enough that Doctor Pond wanted it brought to my attention immediately because I’m quite familiar with poisonings by laxatives. I had a case several years ago of a woman whose kids laced her hot chocolate with Ex-Lax—supposedly as a joke. The woman developed multiple organ failure, pulmonary edema, and went into a coma and died.”

She handed Andy the report as she went on to explain it.

“Tests were conducted with High Performance Liquid Chromatography, and the chocolates in question are, in fact, positive for phenolphthalein, or Pt, in various concentrations. Normal straight Ex-Lax, if taken in the proper doses, contains approximately ninety milligrams of Pt. But just one of the chocolates in the box you submitted contains in excess of two hundred milligrams, which at the very least would, if ingested, cause fluid and electrolyte loss, which is very dangerous, especially if the victim is older and not enjoying good health.”

“Well, that sums up the governor,” Andy said with growing concern. “What about fingerprints? Did the labs find anything on the paper the box was wrapped in? And was the handwritten note really written by the governor?”

Dr. Scarpetta sorted through several other reports.

“They did recover a latent by using the Luma-Lite and fluorescing dyes, and the print was run through AFIS,” she informed him. “They got a hit, and here is the identification number, which you can check yourself with the state police computer.” She wrote it down for him. “As for a documents examination, an exemplar of the governor’s handwriting was inconsistent with the note that accompanied the chocolates.”

“So the note is a forgery.” Andy wasn’t surprised.

“That’s inconclusive because we need to get an official
exemplar. The one we used preliminarily was from a letter the governor allegedly sent to Dr. Sawamatsu.”

“Right. And we shouldn’t assume that the letter is genuine,” Andy agreed with her. “Or that the governor actually signed it himself.”

“Legally, we can’t assume that.”

“Which reminds me,” Andy said. “And I hope this isn’t out of line, Doctor Scarpetta. But it concerns me that Doctor Sawamatsu collects souvenirs, very inappropriate ones, or at least he brags as much to a lot of us. Do you ever go to his house?”

“No,” she replied, her expression turning hard.

One thing she absolutely would not tolerate was disrespect toward the dead. Nor was any member of her staff allowed to even think about collecting mementos, money, personal effects, weapons, drugs, or alcohol from a body or a crime scene.

“Maybe you should drop by unannounced to see him sometime,” Andy suggested. “At his house.”

“Don’t worry,” she answered. “I will.”

“I’ll get on the poisoned chocolates case right away,” Andy promised. “And I suppose the documents examiner needs an exemplar of the suspect’s handwriting, too.”

“I wasn’t aware you had a suspect,” she said. “But yes. Absolutely. If you can get his or her handwriting, that would be a very good thing. And I suggest you get an exemplar from the intended victim, as well.”

“From Superintendent Hammer?” Andy puzzled. “Why?”

“To rule out Munchausen’s syndrome,” Dr. Scarpetta matter-of-factly stated. “Poisoning with Ex-Lax most often occurs when an individual chronically ingests it to get attention—for example, to gain sympathy from a parent or spouse.”

“You’re saying it’s possible Superintendent Hammer wanted us to think the governor or someone pretending to be the governor sent her poisoned chocolates because she wants attention? I can’t believe that for a minute! You don’t know her,” Andy said politely but defensively.

“No, I don’t know her at all,” Dr. Scarpetta replied. “But she’s new in a very demanding position, and if her experience
has been anything like mine, the governor never returns her phone calls or invites her to parties at the mansion. So she may have set up a situation to make it appear the governor was trying to poison her. If he suddenly found himself a suspect in an attempted murder, that would certainly get his attention, I should think.”

“Might I quickly ask you about Trish Thrash?” Andy jumped to that subject. “I know it’s not my case, but I care about it a lot and as you may know, the killer left evidence on my doorstep for reasons unknown.”

“Oh? So that was you?” Scarpetta frowned a little, and it was obvious to Andy that she was upset by the case. “A terribly mean-spirited, brutal death,” she added. “But you were very wise to call Detective Slipper and not handle anything. We have recovered latent prints but have thus far gotten no hits in AFIS, and using STR we recovered DNA from the envelope but have gotten no hit on that, either. As for trace evidence, we did find several very long black hairs adhering to blood on the victim’s clothing.”

“Female hairs?”

“I don’t know,” Scarpetta replied. “But they could be.”

“But no hits? Interesting,” he mused. “I’m wondering if you got no hits because the individual is young with a juvenile record, which, of course, would be sealed. And until very recently, we weren’t allowed to enter a juvenile’s fingerprints or DNA profiles into the databases. So maybe we’re looking for a hardened criminal who is young and has long black hair and might just be a female, who kills for sport and may even be associated with Smoke’s highway pirates, who possibly assaulted Moses Custer and murdered the Seven-Eleven clerk last night.”

“I don’t know.”

Scarpetta got up from her desk and opened the door, and Regina rushed back into the office, her notepad and pen ready.

“I don’t want to take up your time, Doctor Scarpetta, but we are very concerned about this fisherman case,” Andy went to the next item of business. “Especially since it’s being called a hate crime, and I thought it a good idea to come down here personally to give you the information we have and see what you determine in the autopsy. A certain suspicious individual
who witnessed the death claims the fisherman died of spontaneous human combustion that may have occurred when the hot lead and burning powder from a bullet caused synthetic fibers in the victim’s shirt to ignite, thus supposedly explaining why he burst into flames. And let me add, this same suspicious individual is a prime suspect in the other case we were just discussing.”

“How come you left out the part about my being poisoned?” Regina blurted out. Obviously, she had eavesdropped through the shut door and heard at least some of the private conversation.

“We’re not going to talk about that right now,” Andy warned her, knowing full well that if she divulged too much, it would become clear that she was not an intern but the pampered youngest daughter of the governor.

“It was awful!” Regina said to Dr. Scarpetta. “I ate these cookies and all of a sudden, I was doubled over with the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. Well, it wasn’t really all of a sudden. I didn’t feel too bad until I was hiding behind the boxwood in the garden, and then I got cramps and gas.

“Next thing I know, an EPU trooper’s rushing me to the hospital where I was subjected to terrible indignities, like peeing in a little plastic cup and then watching a nurse put a little stick in it. They wanted number two also, but I had nothing left in me after that terrible attack. My pee turned pink and it scared me to death! I thought I was peeing blood, but the nurse said it was a chemical test that made it turn pink, but it meant the worst. Someone put Ex-Lax in my cookies and tried to kill me in cold blood!

“Or maybe someone was trying to kill someone else, but I was the innocent one who ate the cookies,” she continued, clearly enjoying her own story. “The nurse said that pee usually has a pH of four or six, and the Ex-Lax makes pee turn pink if the pH exceeds seven.”

Regina had no clue as to what all this meant, but she reckoned that pH was spelled
pee-h,
and whatever the h-part was, it must be devastatingly affected by Ex-Lax. She was fairly certain her h-factor was still off, since she had been weak and pale when she’d pried herself out of bed earlier.

“I’m just lucky I’m not one of your cases this morning!” Regina said with great drama.

“Yes, you are,” Dr. Scarpetta agreed. “We’re all lucky we aren’t cases this morning or any morning. Trooper Brazil, we’ve X-rayed the fisherman’s body already, and there is no bullet.”

“Then what else might have caused him to burn up?”

“Of course, we’ll test for accelerants and other chemicals,” she said, slipping off her suit jacket and hanging it behind the door. “This is one of those cases when the external examination tells us quite a lot.” She put on a lab coat. “For example, there is a great deal of charring that is more pronounced posteriorly, which is consistent with whatever burned him entering the body at about the midline of the chest. A little left of the midline, in the area of the heart, to be precise.”