Weapons of Mass Distraction (29 page)

I tried to recall earlier that evening. Marnie offered me a drink, but I declined. There was a half full bottle of coconut water on the coffee table, which she kept sipping from throughout our meeting. “She was drinking coconut water right before it happened,” I told them. “She said her mother drank them after running, and there was a shelf full of them in the refrigerator.”

“I doubt a health drink would have caused this,” said the doctor. “If you find anything, let me know. We’ve called her uncle and he’ll be in to sit with her soon. There’s nothing more you can do now.”

“Poisoned,” I said to Solomon as we watched the doctor walk away. “Why would anyone want to poison Marnie Vasquez? If the Simonstech connection is the common factor with our victims, Marnie doesn't fit.”

“Maybe it was an accident.” Solomon took my elbow and guided me over to the windows, away from listening ears. Not that I could actually see any, but he was taller than I, and could easily see over partitions. Besides, he hadn’t just saved someone’s life, so he wasn’t feeling antsy, and I figured it was better if we erred on the side of caution. We leaned there with our backs to the outside world and our butts perched on the sill. From here, I could see through the observation window. Marnie was lying in her hospital bed, the covers pulled up to her waist. She looked pale and sickly in her hospital issue gown. An IV tube led from her wrist to a bag on a pole next to her, and she seemed to be sleeping. “We know that Schwarz's killer knew his routine. The killer could have known Lorena's too, and exactly what she would consume every day like the coconut water after her run. Maybe the poison was intended for Lorena, and when she didn’t die fast enough, the killer changed his plan,” Solomon said.

I looked at Marnie as I answered him with a weak, “Really?”

“I think we need to take a closer look at that coconut water.”

“Shouldn’t we stay? What if Marnie is still in danger?”

“I think she’s collateral damage, but if it makes you feel better, we can wait until the uncle gets here.” Solomon nudged me and inclined his head towards the dark-haired man approaching us. “Coincidentally, I think that might be him. Let’s go.”

We took a few minutes to talk to Marnie’s uncle, Marco, before we left. The doctor had already filled him in on his niece’s condition, but again, I gave my account. I assured him that I was positive Marnie didn’t do this deliberately, and at the end, he hugged me and thanked me for saving his niece. He also expressed his concern for my own health, after being the one who discovered his sister, which I thought was extremely kind of him, considering his own loss. When I asked him who he thought could harm his sister, he shook his head sadly. I tried asking him about Simonstech too, but all he could tell me was that his sister told him she was scared of something. He was pleased, he said, to have her work with him and she seemed much happier.

“Can you find out who tried to hurt my niece?” he wanted to know, after telling me that his sister had mentioned my name a couple of times. He reached into his back pocket, coming up with a leather wallet. “I can pay.”

“We’re already on the case,” said Solomon, waving away the bills the man extracted. “No charge, but it would be helpful if we got your permission to look around your sister’s house.”

“Do whatever you need to do,” Marco readily consented, producing a key from his jacket pocket and pressing it into Solomon’s palm. “I heard my sister called you the day she was killed. Do you know what was worrying her?”

“I wish I knew,” I said. “I’m still trying to find out.”

“Now I think about it, I’ll bet everything I own that it has something to do with that creep at Simonstech,” he said, shaking our hands. “You should try asking them why he scared the shit out of my sister so badly, she had to leave her job.” He pushed through the door and was gone. Picking up his niece’s hand, he mashed his lips together, looking like he was about to cry. I turned away, loath to observe his grief.

Solomon and I looked at each other. “All the roads keep leading back to Simonstech,” I said.

“Too bad Carter Simons Junior has alibis for the murders.”

“How do you know that?”

“It came up at my meeting with your brother and your ex.”

“You could just call them Lieutenant Graves and your former colleague, Maddox.”

“Works either way.” Solomon was silent as we walked out to his car and didn’t speak again until we were on the road. “I want you to stay away from that Simons guy,” he said. “His name keeps coming up and I don’t like it. I have a bad feeling.”

“Is this a bad time to confess Lily and I went by his house?”

Solomon slammed on the brakes and we lurched to a stop. “You. Did. What?” he asked, very slowly.

“It was just a short visit, and I didn’t even go inside!”

“Lexi!” Solomon slammed his hands on the steering wheel and looked dead ahead. Someone behind us honked and Solomon seemed ready to explode. After what felt like forever, and three more impatient honks, he shifted into drive and we took off. “What happened?”

“Nothing much. We overheard a conversation.”

“About?”

“Junior and his wife were talking about a ring. A new one she had made, but it wasn’t right or something.”

“Were you seen?”

I gulped.

“Lexi?”

“Yes.”

“When was this?”

“Right before someone broke into my house,” I said softly, trying not to cringe at how bad that sounded. I darted a glance at Solomon. Yup, he looked thrilled. Really delighted. Perhaps I wouldn't mention the complaint. It would only make things worse.

“Lexi!”

“There’s nothing that ties Junior directly to any of the murders, and you already said he had an alibi… What exactly were his alibis?”

“At Lorena Vasquez’s murder, he was having brunch with his father across town. Simons Senior confirmed it. He has alibis for Jim Schwarz and Karen Doyle too. Both times, he was in meetings with ten other people to vouch for him.”

“Damn.” I let that sink in before I said, “So far, we only know Junior knew the victims when they were alive, but there’s been nothing to suggest he’s seen them since. I mean, yeah, he knew all three of our victims, and he knew Avril Sosa, but there’s no evidence to link him to any of them. Maybe our hunch that he is hiding something was wrong,” I concluded, trailing off. It was a major disappointment. More so, that I suddenly seemed to be defending my number one suspect.

“Evidence can be wrong.”

“Don’t let the writers from
CSI
hear you say that!”

“Okay.” Solomon smiled. “Let me rephrase it. Sometimes, when we don’t have all the evidence, the evidence we do have tells us a different story from the real one.”

“So we need to find more?”

“You got it.”

“Let’s go.”

“Not you, Lexi.”

“But…”

“No arguments. You can help at the Vasquez house, but I want you to stay the hell away from the Simons and anywhere they might be or go. I do not want you pissing them off, and I don’t want you getting hurt. Besides, I told you to take a few days off. Work your pro-bono case. You cannot get into any danger with that.”

I tried to argue, but Solomon refused to debate my insistence that I had to see this through. The more annoyed I got, the less coherent I became, so eventually, I gave up, deciding to work on him again when he calmed down. I hoped some new evidence would be exactly the sort of thing he needed to make him realize that taking me off the case was a bad idea.

More evidence is exactly what we found at the Vasquez house. I pointed to the coffee table where Marnie dropped her bottle. Solomon pulled on gloves before picking it up, while I took a deep breath and went into the kitchen. I tried not to look at the faint stain on the kitchen floor, and had to pinch my nose from the lingering scent of bleach. Instead, I went directly to the refrigerator. “There’re seventeen unopened bottles of coconut water here,” I called out to the living room. “A half full carton of orange juice. The fridge looks like it was cleaned out.”

“Check the trash,” called Solomon.

I did. It was empty except for one bottle, identical to the one Marnie was drinking. “I see one bottle.”

“Don’t touch,” said Solomon.

“I wasn’t planning on touching it,” I said, still annoyed, and now sniffy at his assumption I would make a rookie move like that. As he walked through, his hands gloved, he set the bottle he was examining on the countertop and reached inside the trashcan. He extracted the empty bottle, turning it this way and that until he nodded and beckoned me closer.

“See this?” he said, pointing to the neck.

I peered at it. “Nope.”

“Closer.”

“Okay, but still no. I see nothing. What am I supposed to see?”

“There’s a tiny pinprick hole just here, in the neck of the bottle. It’s barely visible, thanks to the short, fat neck. I think poison was injected into this bottle, just under the cap rim, and the same as that one. Someone planned to make Lorena Vasquez very, very sick. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was enough poison to kill her slowly over time.”

“That’s treacherous!” I bent at the waist, my hands on my knees as I stared at the first bottle. Sure enough, there was an identical pinprick in the neck, again, barely visible. “But Lorena wasn’t drinking the water. She sprained her ankle and hadn’t been running, and I know she only drank this stuff immediately after exercise; otherwise, she said it was too calorific.”

“So she didn’t die as expected,” surmised Solomon. “This stuff just sat there.”

Thinking of how calculated her death was made me sick. Not to mention, imagining how someone planned to kill Lorena slowly. “The killer couldn’t wait. That bastard! She was healthy and wanted to talk to me and he came here to speed up her death. We need to get all the bottles to the lab and have them analyzed. Maybe the killer left a fingerprint.”

“Call one of your contacts at MPD and get him to pick everything up. They’ll need it for building the case. Before we discovered this, the killer could argue manslaughter of Lorena, a heat of the moment kind of killing, but this changes things. This is murder one.”

I made the call to Garrett and told him what we discovered. He agreed to send someone from the forensics lab over right away. Thirty minutes later, we had the unopened bottles packed up in a crate, two tampered bottles bagged and tagged, and one grateful detective in the guise of Maddox himself. I let Solomon deal with him. It was bad enough I had one guy mad at me, never mind two.

“What now?” I asked Solomon when we locked up and returned to his car. Solomon stuck the key in his pocket, resorting to silence once more. “Where do we go from here?”

“Since Maddox just told me about Junior's complaint against you, you are going to take a few days off and keep a low profile. Give some attention to that pro bono case you accepted and dumped Lily with. How many nights of surveillance has she undertaken?" Solomon asked, his voice belaying annoyance. "Your life isn’t in jeopardy on that case.”

I swallowed with a gulp. Was there any point in arguing right now? The easiest thing to do would be to absolutely ignore his advice, but the safest thing to do was follow it. That left me with an impossible decision, one that was probably going to blow up in my face no matter which path I took. “Actually, I meant literally. Where are we going?” I asked, as we passed the exit to my house.

“My place,” he said.

"What about my place?"

Solomon glanced at me. "Let's assume someone thinks you're getting too close to the truth and knows where you live."

I gulped. "They could break into your house too."

Solomon huffed. “Not a chance. You’ll be safe at my house while I get to the bottom of this mess.”

Chapter Eighteen

Although Solomon called staying at his house “relaxing,” it felt more like I was under house arrest. While I poked around his kitchen and rifled through his bookcase in search of some easy reading, he took the opportunity to return to the agency and solve my case. On the plus side, he arranged for my car to be brought over from the Vasquez house. Now it was parked outside his house, so at least, I wasn’t completely housebound.

“Solomon’s solving my case,” I told Lily. “He said, and I quote, ‘Lexi Graves you are off active duty’.”

“The bastard!” Lily screeched.

“I know, right?”

“Like, how dare he? I am incensed, Lexi! I am outraged!”

“Calm down.”

“I can’t! I’m burning with fury. Why did he take you off the case anyway? Is it the psycho? Would Solomon lock himself up if someone broke into his house?” Lily asked, without absolute conviction that no, Solomon would not.

“His house is more secure than Fort Knox. If someone broke into his house, he’d probably offer the guy a job. And no, it wasn’t the psycho. Someone poisoned Marnie Vasquez. I had to call 911.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s in the hospital, still recovering.”

“That's not your fault! Are your really letting Solomon take over your case and solve it without you?”

“Hell no. He might be digging for dirt, but there’s still plenty of work for me to do,” I said, remembering the discs safely ensconced in my bag. “I have surveillance footage to watch.”

“That’s the spirit,” agreed Lily. “That may be as dull as sitting on your ass and watching a bridal store for four hours straight, but you might see the killer!”

“And you might catch a thief!”

“We rock,” said Lily. “We rock hard. Call me if you see anything.”

I agreed I would and hung up. I had just loaded the surveillance disc into Solomon’s DVD player and set it to “play” when Lexi called back. “I need a break. Want some company?”

“I thought you were going to spend the evening with Jord?”

“Me too, but he said he can’t make it as he caught an extra shift. He’s looking at the burglary division. He said if he puts in some hours covering a shift there now, they might request him when one of the detectives retires next month.”

“Good for Jord. Come over.”

“I’ll be there really fast, just as soon as I get some feeling back into my legs.”