Chapter 4: Cause of Death
The two detectives entered the chill recesses of the morgue, where a middle-aged woman with short dark red hair and a tired-looking, impassive face looked up from the corpse she'd been working on.
"Some case you've brought me," she said in her characteristic bored tone as Goren and Eames approached her. "A cab driver, a lawyer, and a trophy widow: I can't wait to hear the punchline."
Goren smiled at her joke. "Doctor Rogers, this is Detective Alex Eames. Eames, Doctor Elizabeth Rogers."
"We've met," the two women said simultaneously.
"Oh." Goren sounded a little sheepish, then changed the subject. "You said you found something interesting?"
"Craig Hart." She pulled out the late lawyer's body. "The preliminary cause of death turned out to be inaccurate."
"The gunshot wound to the forehead isn't what did him in?" Eames asked.
Rogers looked at Goren. "I'm surprised you missed this one, Detective. If you'd looked as close as you usually do you would have noticed that the gunshot was inflicted post-mortem."
Goren lurched toward the body while pulling on gloves in his haste to see what he'd missed. Roger's folded her arms and watched him. "You're his new partner?" she asked Eames.
"Yeah."
"Lucky you."
"You're right," Goren concluded after a moment. "I didn't even think to look."
"Maybe you were distracted by something," Rogers said a little mockingly.
He examined the man's eyes and mouth. "He was poisoned, wasn't he?"
"Looks like it. No puncture wound or rash, so the poison was probably ingested. The tox screen isn't back yet."
Goren stood back and blinked, thinking deeply.
"The only reason to shoot a dead man is hoping that no one would look for the real cause of death," Eames speculated.
"Someone with no medical background, no background in law enforcement. But it's more than that. Monica Smith was shot first, but Craig Hart had to be poisoned before he got in the cab." His head moved in small, irregular circles as he spoke, like he was a marionette being handled by an inexperienced puppeteer. "They were both targeted. The killer knew both of them. And probably knew the cab driver, too." He looked over at Eames. "If we find out how these three people came to be in the same place at the same time..."
"We might find out who killed them," Eames finished.
They entered Craig Hart's office, which hadn't been touched since his disappearance.
"He had three appointments that morning, a teleconference scheduled for two p.m., but no reason to be leaving the office at noon," Eames said, reading from his planner.
Goren looked over the desk, which was meticulously organized except for a single pen that had rolled behind the computer keyboard, and the chair, which was at an angle and pushed back. "He left in a hurry. He left when he started getting sick." He leaned over the desk with his hands behind his back and sniffed. Then he looked in the trashcan beside the desk. He pulled out a take-out box, with Craig Hart's name and the address of his office written on the top.
"Didn't the secretary say Hart ordered out a lot?"
"Yeah," Eames replied, double-checking her notes.
"Looks like he did on Monday, too, from Kaur's India Cuisine." He opened the box and began poking through the remnants of what smelled like an extremely spicy curry. He fished out a small chunk of a light greyish vegetable. "Can you get me a tissue, please?"
Eames complied, then watched curiously as he daubed the chunk clean, then sniffed it cautiously before putting it in an evidence bag. He turned toward her with an expression she hadn't seen before: a little bit sad, a little bit disgusted. "Water hemlock, one of the most poisonous plants in North America. They need to check for cicutoxin in the tox screen."
"And in the meantime, we should go to that restaurant and find out who poisoned the curry."
Kaur's India Cuisine was a clean, aromatic, extremely busy place. Eames and Goren identified themselves at the front desk, and a minute later they were joined by an attractive older woman with grey streaks in her thick, dark brown hair, and an imperious demeanor and tone. "I'm Kaur, and I assure you myself and my staff will help you with your investigation in any way possible."
"How often does Craig Hart order from your restaurant?" Goren asked.
It wasn't the first question Eames expected him to ask, but Kaur answered it quickly.
"Two or three times a week. He's one of our many regulars."
Eames asked the next question. "Where do you keep the food before it's delivered?"
"Here." Kaur led them to a long table near the back door, where a number of take-out boxes were lined up, complete with the names and addresses of their destinations.
"Anyone could have come in and poisoned Hart's order," Eames noted.
"But why would they?" Kaur retorted defensively. "If we saw anyone we didn't recognize in this room, they would be in trouble, but we can't very well keep this room locked when we have delivery boys coming in and out every few minutes. We're not paranoid, and surely there are easier ways to kill someone."
"Do you have a security camera for this room?" she questioned.
"Not for this room - we don't keep anything valuable in here - but there is one watching the entrance outside."
"We'll need to see the footage from Monday morning," said Goren.
In a room behind the kitchen, television screens showed grainy security footage from the front foyer, the dining room, and the exits. Kaur found the requested video.
"All of my people are in uniform," she explained as she fastforwarded through the tape. "Here. I don't recognize this person."
The time index read "23 07 01 10:54." The person in the video wasn't in any kind of uniform. He or she was dressed in a thick coat with a hat obscuring the face. The person looked resolutely away from the camera, disappeared inside quickly, then left a minute later at a near run.
"We'll have to keep this to examine more closely," Goren told Kaur.
"Right."
Eames added, "And you might want to think about keeping a better eye on your place. This time it was just a murder, next time it might be a lawsuit."
Kaur smiled, slightly irritated. "Of course."
"Anyone could have found out Hart ordered from that restaurant," Eames commented.
"But the killer had to know he'd ordered out that day. Hart arrived at the office at six. Phone records showed he called the restaurant at 10:17. There's no possible way the killer could have gone from his office to the restaurant in that time."
"Are you suggesting the killer wasn't working alone?"
"Maybe."
She shook her head. "I don't think so. The person on the security video matches the description of the killer. If he wasn't working alone, different people would have poisoned the curry and done the shooting. As it was, the killer was taking a chance to get to that street corner in time to steal the cab. But Kaur was right: that's a lot of trouble to go through to kill someone."
"Well, the killer was showing off. It's someone who enjoys challenges, someone who considers himself very intelligent. But...he's also insecure. A loner."
"We might not have a name, prints, or a physical description, but at least we'll recognize him when we see his self-help book collection."
Goren smiled at her, then his smile drained away. He looked distracted. "Craig Hart's secretary said he ordered out when he had a busy schedule..."
"Something like that. Why?"
"The killer knew he would order out. It might have been a client or a coworker: someone who knew he would be busy."
Eames nodded. "I'll find out if anyone in his office or on his client list was missing Monday morning."
