Chapter 74
CLAIRE WASHBURN CONSIDERED herself a working medical examiner. One who spent equal time in the lab and even occasionally at crime scenes. She enjoyed interacting with other professionals, like cops and prosecutors.
But sometimes she needed to do paperwork. She looked at a recent lab report. It was a drug and chemical scan for Tina Barnes, the Golden Gate Park victim. Claire felt a particular connection to this victim, since she and Edmund had been there when the body was found.
She read through the drug test first. It was about what she had expected. Marijuana, a trace amount of cocaine, an anti-inflammatory, and an over-the-counter weight-loss drug. The weight-loss supplement was really just a form of legal speed.
On the next page she read the analysis of a scraping taken of the odd material she’d noticed on Tina’s face.
She’d suspected that a homemade pepper spray or mace was used on Tina before she was struck in the throat.
The analysis confirmed it. Capsaicin oil made from chili peppers and a few other over-the-counter chemicals.
One of them she noticed was lecithin, an emulsifier.
Whoever had mixed the concoction probably used the lecithin to make sure the capsaicin oil stayed well mixed with the water and stuck to whatever it was sprayed on.
Something pinged in Claire’s brain. She stared at the report for a full ten seconds silently. Then she leaned down and opened the bottom left drawer on her desk. That’s where she kept all her hardcopy notes on active cases.
She rummaged through the drawer. Under a dozen other files was a fourteen-inch manila folder Claire slid out.
The folder’s typed label of UNIDENTIFIED WHITE FEMALE was crossed out, and “Donna ‘Missy’ Harris” was handwritten in blue ink over it.
Harris was the girl who’d been found washed up on Marshall’s Beach, another potential victim in Lindsay’s wide-ranging investigation into some missing girls.
Claire turned immediately to the drug scan on the right side of the folder. There hadn’t been much in the report because of the length of time the body had stayed in the ocean.
The body’s deterioration by the elements hadn’t stopped Claire from taking scrapings anywhere she could. That included the insides of the eyelids. She was being wildly cautious to send in scrapings like that to the lab.
But she remembered something from that report. She just had to verify it.
She flipped through the drug scan pages and found it.
“There you are!” she shouted to the empty room.
It was a reference to lecithin. She hadn’t really thought much of it when the results of the scan had first come in.
But it was from the scrapings she had taken of the eyelids.
Somehow the salt water hadn’t managed to wash it all away.
What were the chances of an emulsifier like lecithin being found on the bodies of two different homicide victims?
It was a physical link between poor Missy Harris, who’d washed up on Marshall’s Beach, and Tina Barnes, who’d died in Golden Gate Park.
Claire grabbed her phone and started dialing Lindsay Boxer.