Chapter 7
The shrill ringing of the phone woke Brand from a sound sleep the next morning and he grabbed it before it woke Carly. “Chambers,” he barked softly crawling out of bed and leaving the room.
“Hawkeye here,” Commander Burns said. “The Medical Examiner has discovered something. He wants to see me in autopsy immediately. I’d like you there as lead on this task force investigation.”
“Negative. Heading there in five.”
“I’ll meet you there in then,” Brand said. “Let me get dressed.”
“Take your time,” Hawkeye said before the line went dead.
Brand pushed start on the coffee maker and went back to the bedroom. The bathroom light was on and the water in the shower was running. Carly came out and she smiled at him. “It should be warm for you.”
“Thanks, babe.” He kissed her temple and rubbed her tummy before she crawled back into bed and the warmth of the covers.
He was in and out of the shower in two minutes, then dressed, shaved and was out the door in three more.
The biting cold of the morning blistered away any remaining weariness and he was glad he filled his insulated mug with coffee before leaving the kitchen.
Inside the vehicle, he thanked the SUV gods for the seat warmer that kept his butt comfortable as he drove through the dark and deserted streets of Chicago to the police department.
When he arrived, he found Hawkeye just getting out of his vehicle and they walked to the elevator taking it to the Medical Examiner’s office.
“Did he give you any indication as to what he found?” Brand asked.
“Not a clue,” Hawkeye said. “He only mentioned I’d never guess in a million years what he’d discovered that I’d have to see it for myself.”
“He obviously has been working all night on Flynn’s autopsy, or he wouldn’t have called you so early,” Brand observed.
Hawkeye nodded as the elevator doors slid open and they got off. “That was my conclusion as well.”
The spell of formaldehyde hung in the air like a bad air freshener and got worse as they walked down the hall.
Hawkeye took out a small screw top container from his coat pocket and offered Brand some and they spread a little of the salve below their noses.
Then Brand punched in the code and the autopsy sliding doors opened, allowing them to enter.
“Morning, gentlemen,” the Medical Examiner called, not bothering to look up from the body he was elbow deep into examining.
“Good morning, Dr. Holland,” Hawkeye said. “You said on the phone you had discovered something I had to see for myself.”
“I did,” the short statured man in his mid-fifties said, stepping off the stool that allowed him to dig inside the body easier.
He stepped on the floor pedal under the free-standing sink basin, turning on the water, and washed his gloved covered arms and hands.
Then removed the soiled plastic covering, tossing them into the trash.
“Follow me over to exam table number three where Officer Flynn has been in residence this evening, although I suppose it is morning now,” Holland said. “I was most surprised when I opened him up and discovered his stomach was nothing but a gut full of brown goo. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“No idea,” Brand declared.
“Enlighten us,” Hawkeye added.
“And it wasn’t only in his gut, but in his small intestines too,” Holland continued.
“Although it wasn’t a solid state by then, it was what medical experts refer to as chyme, a liquid mixture.
He must have lived on peanut butter for it to have still been in his small intestines at the time of death.
” He showed them what looked like a ladle with the goo in it.
Brand took a step back.
Hawkeye scratched his head. “I believe one of the task force collected several empty peanut butter jars from Flynn’s bedroom and a half-eaten jar as well as a full jar from his kitchen. I have the bag in my office.”
“I’ll need to test those,” Holland said.
“Right,” Brand said. “I recall seeing him coming to practice eating from a jar with a spoon one day.”
“Doesn’t surprise me at all.” Holland put the ladle in the goo filled pan.
“That’s proof that he didn’t hide his fondness for the savory treat.
But since we’ve been unable to figure out the source of the blood thinner, I decided to test his stomach contents.
It was a whim. I get them from time to time.
My wife calls them wild hairs. But this one paid off. ”
“And?” Hawkeye asked.
“Pay dirt.”
“Usually when something pays off one assumes that,” Brand said trying to keep his tone neutral, but it was too early in the morning for the medical examiner to be flippant.
“Right. Sorry,” Holland said. “Forgive me. I’ve been up all night for the last two nights now. It’s a busy time of the year. Why is the holidays always a high crime time for murder?”
“I don’t know, Charles,” Hawkeye said. “Tell us, what did you find?”
“Arsenic, but no old lace,” the man said and started to chuckle.
Brand frowned, looking at Hawkeye who only grinned.
“Cary Grant movie,” he explained. “Really funny. Old ladies doing murder and a weird uncle who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt.”
“Ah,” Brand said.
“The kind of arsenic you find in rat poison,” Holland continued.
Hawkeye’s brow arched. “Rat poison?”
“And high contents of it too. And you know what today’s rat poison and Warfarin have in common?”
“I do.” Hawkeye nodded. “They both act as anticoagulants by interfering with blood clotting.”
“Winner. Winner. Give that man a chicken dinner,” Holland sang.
“But wouldn’t he had to have eaten a huge amount of peanut butter laced with the poison to cause this?” Brand asked.
“At least what he recently ingested and then some,” Holland explained. “Enough to cause him not to clot when he was cut.”
“So you’re saying someone mixed rat poison or it’s component into Flynn’s peanut butter” Brand said for clarification. “But that’s murder.”
“Now there’s the lace,” Holland said and laughed heartily.
Hawkeye held up a hand. “Save the humor for another time, Charles. If it’s murder, we need to determine the killers motive.”
“But why would someone do that?” Brand demanded. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Why do people do half the things they do these days?” Holland groused, slipping on a clean pair of latex gloves. “Now if you don’t mind, I have to get back to table number one so I can finally go home to sleep for a few hours before coming back here to do this all over again.”
“Will you send me your full report?” Hawkeye asked.
“I’ve dictated my report and sent it to my secretary to transcribe. I’ve asked her to send you a copy via email as soon as she has it ready,” Holland said. “She should get it with my findings when she arrives at her desk this morning.”
“Okay, Doc,” Brand said. “Thanks.”
“Don’t forget to send me those jars for testing,” Holland said, going back to his unfinished autopsy. “And unless you bring me positive proof that Flynn didn’t lace the peanut butter himself, I’m ruling this death a homicide.”
Homicide.
If Holland ruled conclusively that Flynn’s death was a homicide instead of suspicious then that ramped things up drastically.
“Who’s to blame?” Brand asked Hawkeye, as they stepped into the hallway. “Dugan for cutting him with his skate or whoever put the rat poison in his peanut butter?”
“The rat poison,” Hawkeye said grimly. “But hell if I know how we’re going to find out who that was. Trainor is going to have a field day when he gets wind of this one.”
They walked silently the rest of the way to the elevator. When the doors slipped open, they stepped inside.
Looking grim, Hawkeye punched the button for the elevator for the main level.
“While Dugan’s part was an accident, it was reckless.
If he hadn’t been fighting with Flynn this wouldn’t have happened.
However, from Dugan’s statement we know Rogers was the catalyst. He spouted off, which caused Flynn to react, and Dugan defended himself.
I’m not sure if any disciplinary action should be taken against him or not. ”
“It definitely was an accident. An unfortunate turn of events.” Brand agreed, leaning back against the elevator’s wall. “But there is one thing I should probably tell you that I found out last night and you aren’t going to like it.”
“What?” Hawkeye demanded.
“Dugan and Harley have been secretly dating for the last five months.”
Disbelief narrowed his friend’s eyes. “You’re joking, right?”
Brand shook his head. “I wish I were.”
“Sheesh.” Hawkeye looked down and then made eye contact with Brand. “Can this case get any more twisted?”
The doors to the elevator slid open and they stepped out and walked across the main floor to the connecting corridor that would take them to the police compound and his office.
“Let’s hope not,” Brand said. “I’ve spoken with them both and I genuinely got the feeling that they were being honest about why they kept their relationship secret from Reilly. It was the Monte Adams situation. Of course, Harley didn’t know the full reason why her brother didn’t like Scottie.”
“And yet she chose to date the man?”
“Romeo and Juliet meet present day.”
Hawkeye snorted. “Yea, we all make dumb mistakes when it comes to the heart, don’t we?”
“I don’t know,” Brand said. “I believe I made the right one when I met Carly.”
“As I recall you let her and Simone Reid weasel out of your protection detail easily enough and made you and Don Juan look like patsies from the get-go,” Hawkeye reminded him.
“There was that…”
“Uh-huh,” Hawkeye chuckled.
“Okay. Okay. So we can make dumb moves when it comes to the heart, but do you truly think those two plotted to get rid of Reilly?”