They Sought Vengeance, page 14
“Well, he may be back to the drawing board now. You may as well wait until he’s had a chance to review the case.”
“I’ve already asked for a copy. I’ll take a look just in case there is anything that jumps out at me. Sometimes I can work things out.”
Garcia frowned at him. “You have a medical background?”
“Uh, no. Just a bit of experience in reading coroner’s reports and some friends with experience that I can tap when I need to. You never know. There might be something there.”
He thought it best not to tell Garcia that his partner was in the medical examiner’s office. She might think that there was some kind of conflict of interest.
“It was not an extensive autopsy. There was no reason at the time to think that there had been any foul play.”
“Right,” Zachary agreed, keeping his tone casual and nonchalant.
“All right. Thank you for this information,” Garcia opened the door and picked up the box of papers. “I guess I’ve got a bit of reading to do.”
Zachary nodded and bid her farewell, then returned to his car. It was only a couple more hours until Kenzie got home, and he had a number of things that he hoped to get done before then. If she brought him the medical examiner’s report, they could go over it together to see in what direction Zachary should direct his investigation.
29
When Kenzie got home, Zachary was finishing up with some billings and sending them out via email. Pretty early in the evening for her. She often ended up working late on one thing or another. He smiled a greeting.
“Hi, Kenz. How was your day?”
She looked at him for a moment, then dropped a large envelope onto the kitchen table with a slap. Zachary’s gut tightened. He did not like the expression on her face. She was pretty good at masking when she was upset about something, but that very mask told him that there was something wrong. He stood up from the couch and walked into the kitchen to be closer to her and show his support.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen at work?”
There was an infinitesimal headshake that gave him the answer before she managed to get any words out.
“Are you okay?” Zachary went on immediately, his mind jumping to the kidnapping and how jumpy she had been even though several months had passed. Had something happened to trigger a memory? To scare her? Had someone made a threat or tried to hurt her? He hated that her name was still on the official Medical Examiner’s Office website, even though they had finally gotten around to taking her picture down. People could still see her name and figure out who she was. Get her picture with a web search, social media, or an internet archive. He grasped her by the shoulders, looking into her face to try to discern the slightest change in expression, halfway to a comforting hug, if she made any move toward him.
Kenzie jerked back from his hands, and he didn’t attempt to re-initiate contact. He might have triggered something by touching her, and he would leave it to her to decide if she wanted any contact. She ignored him, took off her shoes, and put down her bag. Zachary waited.
“I’m going to have a shower and change,” Kenzie told him curtly, and brushed by him, heading toward the bedroom.
Zachary watched her go, his mouth open to ask her another question, but he was not sure what to say. Needing a shower immediately after work might mean that it had been a more physically demanding day than usual and she had been sweating. Or that she’d been dealing with a particularly pungent corpse and needed to get the smell of decomp out of her hair.
Or it might mean that she was stressed about something or angry with him, and she didn’t want to look at him until she’d had a chance to work things through.
Zachary sighed and looked around the kitchen. It would be best if he had something ready to eat when she got out of the shower. If she was just sweaty, it might only take her a couple of minutes. If she was upset, it could be an hour or more. Make something too soon, and it could be cold by the time she got out. Take too long, and she could be hungry and irritated that he hadn’t bothered to start on anything.
After some waffling, Zachary ordered from their favorite Thai restaurant, got out a bagged salad and bottles of salad dressing, and started cutting up some fresh vegetables to add to the salad. He had learned that while a bagged salad was adequate, he got more points if he added something to liven it up a bit.
If she had a two-minute shower, the salad would be almost ready to eat and she could have some while they waited for the takeout. If she took an hour, then the Thai food would be there, still warm, and she could have salad to go with it, which would not suffer from being too cold. If she wasn’t in the mood for salad, it could be sealed up and put away in the fridge, and he still got brownie points for trying.
When the Thai food arrived, Kenzie was still in the shower.
Zachary sighed. He put plates and forks on the table, filled a jug with water, and lowered the lighting. A few flickering candles—electric, not real flames—hopefully set a comforting, romantic atmosphere that would make her more likely to forgive him for whatever he had done.
Eventually, the shower was turned off and Kenzie put in an appearance, skin flushed pink, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts set that she used as pajamas in the summer. She looked around at the food and candles and didn’t smile. She folded her arms in front of her, displaying typical “closed” body language.
“This is nice. What’s the occasion?”
“I just… You seemed like you could use a break tonight. Something nice, intimate… a chance to relax.”
She stared at him, waiting for more, but Zachary didn’t know what else to add.
“And… you have no idea what I’m upset about.”
He had been hoping against hope that it was something to do with work or her anxiety following the kidnapping. Not something that he had done. But her tone and her question and everything else about her that evening told him that it wasn’t. He was in the doghouse.
“I’m… sorry…”
“For what?”
“For… being so dense about this. I did something wrong. I missed or forgot something.” He mentally checked the day of the week to make sure that he hadn’t missed couple’s therapy. But there hadn’t been any messages or missed calls on his phone from Dr. B indicating that he had missed an appointment.
Kenzie snorted and sat down at the table. She started to dish up, reaching for her favorite noodles first. Probably no salad today. Zachary could put it away for another day. Kenzie sighed heavily and got up again to get a couple of glasses out of the cupboard.
“Sorry, I could have done that,” Zachary apologized again. It wasn’t the first time he had flaked out when setting the table and missed something vital. It was more common than not, if he were to admit the truth.
She settled back in at the table, and Zachary made his way tentatively over to his chair and sat down. She wouldn’t want him hovering over her, or refusing to eat when she had decided to. They were quiet for a long time. Each time one of their forks clinked or scraped along the plate, Zachary gritted his teeth. He could usually ignore the noise. When they were talking or doing something else, it was more muffled. But not when the room was dead silent.
“You look like you’re in pain,” Kenzie snapped. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Everything is fine.”
“Everything is not fine.”
They continued eating. Zachary looked around the kitchen for things to distract him from the lack of conversation and the noise of their cutlery. The flickering candles, which looked real behind their frosted glass or cut crystal cups. Kenzie’s shoes, misaligned where she had dropped them when she came in. The large envelope was still on the table. Homework? She usually tried not to bring anything to do at home. Once she got there after work, it was her time for relaxation and unwinding. For spending time with Zachary or by herself.
He realized that his name was written on the front of the envelope in Kenzie’s neat printing.
Then everything fell into place.
What else would she bring home from the medical examiner’s office for him but the medical examiner’s report on John Godfrey?
The report that he had been so eager to get from her that he had said he would come by the office to get it instead of waiting until the end of the day.
That he would take Kenzie out for lunch so that they could go over it together.
Thinking back over the day, Zachary was pretty sure he hadn’t even eaten lunch. He had certainly not gone to the medical examiner’s office and taken Kenzie out.
Instead, he’d spent the day with Detective El Garcia and hadn’t even called Kenzie. Then acted oblivious when she got home, looking for brownie points by ordering in, just aggravating matters by either thinking he could make up for his mistake by buying her supper or remaining clueless that he had done anything wrong in the first place.
Zachary swore.
Kenzie looked up from her meal and followed his gaze to the envelope. She shook her head. “You really had no idea.”
Zachary smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Kenz, I’m so sorry! I completely forgot that we were going to get together for lunch. The whole thing slipped my mind. I am so sorry.”
“Where was your head? I thought you were all into this case and couldn’t wait another minute to get your hands on that report.”
“I was. I mean, I am. I was working on this case. I just… the whole day got away from me. I was with Detective Garcia, and—”
She leaned back in her chair, eyes closing partway as she studied Zachary. “Detective Elena Garcia?” she asked.
“Uh… I guess so. She was introduced to me as El Garcia. I thought it was short for Ellen.”
He knew that her name wasn’t the point.
“You spent the day with her.”
Zachary nodded. “Yes. I needed to go over those papers with her…” Zachary motioned to the living room where they had been the previous day but were no longer. “And then, there were interviews with the staff and reconstructing the evening, and a security sweep outside…”
“She’s very pretty, hey?”
Zachary swallowed, recognizing the trap. If he said she was pretty, he would be in trouble for noticing. If he said he hadn’t noticed, she would know he was lying and be angry about that. There was no right answer.
The fact was that Garcia was a very attractive woman, and he had enjoyed working closely with her and admired her face and figure when she wasn’t looking in his direction. He was not supposed to notice how beautiful she was?
“It was work,” he told Kenzie firmly. “And it’s pretty rare to even find a cop who will talk to me, so I wasn’t going to turn down the chance to work with her on the case.”
“She was very accommodating, was she?”
“It was work,” Zachary insisted. He licked his dry lips. He did not want to be having this discussion. He had no desire to have an argument with Kenzie or to fight over anything that had happened or not happened that day. He hated arguments, and a fight with his girlfriend was the worst kind of all.
He almost preferred his ex-wife Bridget’s screaming, swearing, and imprecations to Kenzie’s quiet, civilized words. She would act as calm as if they were just discussing the weather. A polite, even, understanding voice. Like it was any other day, having any other conversation. But it wasn’t just any conversation.
“You can call her and ask about it,” Zachary told her. “It wasn’t anything inappropriate. We were just going over evidence together. Working a case. There was nothing else involved.”
“I’m sure there wasn’t,” Kenzie agreed. “Not on her side. But that doesn’t mean you weren’t hanging all over her like a dog begging for a bone. Making puppy dog eyes and admiring her high cheekbones and sleek black hair…”
Zachary’s cheeks burned and he knew his face was getting red. “I wasn’t attracted to her. I’m not interested in anyone except you. You work with other men all day, but I don’t worry about you flirting with them or starting something. I know it doesn’t mean anything.”
“You don’t worry that I might be flirting with Dr. Wiltshire?” Kenzie demanded. “Or George? I’m so glad, Zachary. You must really think a lot of me.”
Zachary tried to remain focused on the actual issue and keep his emotions under control. “I’m sorry I forgot we were getting together for lunch and didn’t even call you. I completely forgot to even eat.”
30
Great. Well as long as you are sorry, all is forgiven.”
“Can I take you out for lunch tomorrow? I know that doesn’t make up for forgetting about our date, but…”
“No.” She shut him down. “I’m busy tomorrow.”
“Okay. Is there any way that I can…”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing. I know by now how you can get hyper focused on a case and forget everything else. It would have been nice to have had a call warning me that you wouldn’t be able to make it, or even to have you remember when I got home, but I guess I can’t compete with Detective Garcia for your attention.”
“It wasn’t anything to do with Detective Garcia.”
“You spent the day with her. You can’t tell me it was nothing to do with her.”
“Not with her personally. It was to do with the case. The case that I’m working on at a higher-than-usual billing rate. The case that Dr. Wiltshire decided was natural causes, but his family thinks was murder and there were written threats against his life. People following him around. Maybe someone on the grounds that night.”
Kenzie tilted her head slightly, taken aback by this. “What?”
“Detective Garcia will be talking to Dr. Wiltshire tomorrow. She wants him to take another look at it.”
Kenzie frowned and twirled noodles around her fork but was no longer eating. “She thinks there was reason to believe that he might have been murdered? There was no violence, so is she thinking poison?”
“That’s the standing theory, until we come up with something better.”
“Routine tox screens were done, and nothing came up.”
“But it could easily have been something not on a routine tox screen. There are a lot of things that you wouldn’t test for unless you knew to look for them.”
Kenzie nodded her agreement. “We take the lead from the police on the case. We can’t know what to look for without their direction. If there aren’t signs on the body, I mean.”
“Would there be anything? If he was poisoned?”
“In a lot of cases, yes. Vomiting, cyanosis or other changes in color, scratches or other signs that he was in pain or distress. But in other cases, no. Some can act very quickly and quietly. You know about insulin. It could be a paralytic, succinylcholine or botulinum, batrachotoxin, tetrodotoxin, plenty of things that wouldn’t leave any sign unless we knew to test for them. Or it could have been something that should have been there, but they gave him too much. Digitalis can be toxic, but I would expect vomiting with an overdose. We’ll need to know any prescriptions or non-prescription medications he was on. It could have even been an interaction. Two drugs that should not be taken together.”
“I have that,” Zachary told her. He pulled out his phone and unlocked it, then tapped and swiped through his phone until he found the pictures of the drugs in John Godfrey’s medicine cabinet. He handed it across to Kenzie. She zoomed in and slowly panned through the rows of medications in each picture.
“Some of these could be dangerous if someone double-dosed him. Or they can’t be taken with Tylenol or alcohol.”
“He had been drinking. He shouldn’t be taking those with alcohol?”
“It’s a risk factor, for sure. He might be able to get away with a glass of wine with dinner a few hours before, but severe liver damage could result if he was mixing them.”
“He had at least three scotches and a glass of wine in the hours before bed. Probably double that, if I’m not mistaken.”
“I’ll check his BAC levels. I remember there was alcohol in the blood but not how much. Send me these pictures. I’ll make sure they’re logged into the file. We’ll need to look for signs of an overdose or toxic interaction. He wasn’t jaundiced, which is a good thing,” she mused, more to herself than to Zachary.
“Yellow?” Zachary verified.
Kenzie looked at him briefly, and nodded. “Yes. That’s the word that means that he had too much bilirubin in his blood, which would make his skin and especially the whites of his eyes look yellow.”
Zachary nodded. He was relieved to have her focus on the case and what they had found so far instead of on his failure to show up for lunch that day. If he kept her talking about medical stuff, she might forget her ire and give him a break.
“Do you mind if we go over the medical examiner’s report?” he asked tentatively.
Her eyes went to the envelope and her irritation at him returned. “No, not tonight. It’s useless anyway, with this new information. A revised report will be issued after Dr. Wiltshire has a chance to look at the new information and order more tests.”
“You still have the body?” Zachary asked. “I thought it had been released to the family.”
“It was. But we kept fluid and tissue samples. So we can still do some more testing. And I assume that if the family is intent on finding out what happened to him, they will not object to an exhumation of the body if we need to do further tests.”
“It’s kind of morbid, but I guess they would agree to it. They all want to know what really happened to him, more or less. And if it turns out that it was not someone inside the family, they’ll be even happier.”
“They think it was a family member?”
“That’s why they came to me. They thought one of them might have done it to get their inheritance faster.”
Kenzie shook her head. “That would be hard. Most families would have just let it go and lived with the suspicions. It’s easier to keep secrets than to expose a family member and send them to prison. Most siblings have been raised to be loyal to and support each other. Protect each other from bullies and other outside sources. When something like that happens inside a family, they just keep following that principle, protect the family, instead of going to the police to seek justice.” She gave a nod to Zachary. “Or to a private investigator. What were they going to do if you discovered it was one of them? Go to the police? Or put him on a plane to some non-extraditing country?”
