Chapter 5: Transmission
When Karne didn't start in the direction of my apartment I was confused for a moment, then slightly nervous. McLynn's appropriate suspicions of the sort of man who'd want to work with a young female on an investigation of a dismembered hand had always rested just beneath my more dominant, gut-level trust of Karne. He felt like someone I could trust, so I did. But I didn't trust him enough not to wonder where he was taking me.
"We're going to my apartment, Connell. And stop worrying whether I'll turn out to be a psychopathic killer." Karne spared a glance at me once he finished merging onto the freeway. I shook my head.
"I wish you wouldn't do that."
"What?" Karne raised an eyebrow. Was he really unsure what I was saying, or was he toying with me? Did it matter?
"Respond to things I haven't said." I paused, thinking I ought to explain why it bothered me but wondering if he'd care one iota.
"Connell. You know a psychopath couldn't have resisted the desire to kill you by now." His voice sounded distracted and I wondered if he'd heard me at all.
"I know, all right? You just do a few classic things." I sounded whiny. Good lord.
"Which I would not do if I were pursuing some dangerous agenda with you, knowing that you know the profile. Really Connell, you're beginning to insult me."
"Sorry." I sunk lower in my seat and watched the car next to me. In it a woman on a cell phone was gesturing angrily with one hand.
"You ought not to be. You have every reason to be on guard in your profession." Karne said matter-of-factly. He took an exit into a green residential area with enough mature trees along the streets to prove it had been there several decades. That was ages in LA terms.
"Your profession too," I muttered. The corner of Karne's mouth lifted a bit.
"Here." Karne pulled up in front of a mid-century modern apartment building of the white and blocky type. The three floors of the building were distinguishable by long ribbons of plate glass at each level. The entrance, not immediately apparent to me, was hidden behind a patterned screen of punched metal.
Karne's apartment, by contrast, was a mass of arcane clutter arranged along the walls and on tall shelves. In the front room was a lab-style table made of the sort of matte black non-reactive material found in high school chemistry labs, complete with Bunsen burners and a central light fixture. His large desk stretched around the corner near the windows and was overtaken with drifts of letters and newspaper clippings. I recalled his careful stacks of the case materials when he left my apartment and wondered a little, but turned my attention quickly to a tall set of hardware store metal shelves.
On them were books—piles of them—ranging from hidebound copies of early forensic reference manuals to a heavily bookmarked copy of Gray's. On the opposite wall shelves of matching height held what looked like the contents of a sideshow prop room mixed with a surrealist's collection of nineteenth century oddments. There was a bistro table with two chairs in front of those shelves; it held a French press coffee pot with a generous layer of wet grounds lurking in the bottom. A modern gas-jet fireplace faced in polished travertine tile took up a column of space in front of two 1930s-era chairs, both frayed slightly at the seams. A red couch with tidy squared lines sat between the fireplace and the bookshelves, and what appeared to be a Noguchi coffee table squatted in front it.
Karne had disappeared down a hallway that I assumed led to his bedroom and bathroom. I took a seat at one of the chairs by the fireplace and waited for his return. Apart from the door to the apartment there were only the door to the hallway and one other, which I supposed had to lead to a kitchen. Of course, judging from the looks of him, Karne might not eat. I turned to look out the window. Few people walked down the street, but that was typical for LA. The traffic was sparse. I found myself wondering how much time he spent alone in here.
When Karne reappeared he had a file box full of bottles in his hands. He set it on the lab table and collapsed somewhat dramatically into the chair opposite me. When he turned his eyes on me I had to fight the urge to squirm.
"Well?" He said. His voice had an edge of irritation I didn't understand.
"Well what?" I countered. "What's in the box?"
"Fertilizers, pesticides, some soils," Karne waved a hand in the direction of the lab table. "What did you think of her?"
"I told you. What do you think?" I set my jaw. I could out-stubborn him, I was sure. He looked at me a moment and smirked, then stood abruptly. On the narrow shelf above the fireplace he'd stashed a box of hand-rolled cigarettes and a set of wooden matches. He lit one and held out the box to me. I shook my head. From the smell of his, the strength of his tobacco would give me a killer headache.
"I saw you react to something you saw in the corner of her workshop. What was it?" He threw himself back into the chair and flicked his ash onto the floor. I watched it fall.
"She has a de-fleshing tank." I tried to sound matter-of-fact.
"Indeed?" Karne raised his eyebrows and dragged on his cigarette. "Interesting. You are familiar with the chemicals used in such a tank?"
"I know who to ask." I crossed my legs and slouched back against the cushions, smoothing down my skirt as I went. "And another thing: in some of the bird nests in the greenhouse she had what looked like hair."
"Did she?" Karne raised his eyebrows again. "You noted the color." He gave me a stern look.
"Several. Ranging from dark brown to auburn, but no blond. The texture seemed coarse to me, but I didn't have much time to check it out." I flicked my eyes over to Karne's hand dangling the cigarette off the side of his chair. He'd continued to look toward me, but his eyes seemed unfocused as he thought.
"She uses several products that contain arsenic." He said abruptly. He'd started to look at me again. I picked my nails lightly against the upholstery of the chair arm.
"That's what's in the box?" I peered at him. He nodded. "It's why you want to know about the de-fleshing tank chemicals." He nodded again. I pulled my cell phone from my bag and hit Chad's number on my speed dial.
"Amy?" He sounded utterly puzzled. "You all right?"
"Yeah, Chad. I just have a question." I could see Karne straining to hear the conversation I leaned forward in my chair.
"Shoot." I could hear a basketball game commentary cease in the background.
"You're familiar with de-fleshing tanks, right?" I tried to sound casual. Karne smirked at me.
"Yeah." Chad drew the word out, uncertain. "What the hell are you up to, Amy?"
"Just humor me. Do you know what chemicals are in those?" The silence on the other end worried me.
"I have my old notes somewhere. Hold on." A crackle of static told me Chad was moving through his apartment. I heard the sound of shuffling paper a moment later. "If I even find out you've got a squirrel skeleton collection I'm going to tell everyone we know, Amy."
"You hush." I shook my head. Karne smirked again. "Did you find it?"
"Yeah. So, you going to let me talk to that detective friend of yours now?" Chad sounded proud of himself. I heard myself gasp. "Rumor mill, Amy, rumor mill. So how about it?" Karne nodded and reached out a hand.
"Yeah, hang on." I passed the phone to Karne, who introduced himself and gave a series of assenting noises. I could vaguely hear a few polysyllabic chemical names, but Karne had slouched back into his chair and the volume of the phone hardly reached me. At length he handed the phone back to me.
"Amy?" Chad shuffled a few more papers.
"Yeah," I said. "I appreciate all that."
"Anytime. And listen, I want to meet with you guys about this case. I heard half the story, and I want to know the rest before I head out for samples again." I nodded, then realized I had to talk. Annoying how much that happens.
"Yeah, I hear you. I think Bridget and McLynn are coming down tomorrow afternoon about three. How's that work for you?" I fished in my bag for my planner. I could hear Chad doing the same thing.
"Fine unless something comes up. Oh, and I forgot to tell McLynn: I got a print on Ramos, I think. Don't know if that helps." I sat up straight in my chair.
"Chad, you're a genius. Thank you so much. That does help." I gushed. I could hear Chad chuckling quietly.
"You all owe me lunch, then." He said. We said our goodbyes and Karne sat forward, flicking ash on the way.
"You'll tell me your results?" He gave me another one of his intense looks. I nodded excitedly.
"Soon as I get them, if you want." He nodded sharply, a faint grin lifting the corners of his mouth.
"I believe the arsenic is important. You'll test for heavy metals in the hair samples?" He raised his eyebrows. I squinted at him.
"Mode of delivery?" He grinned a bit more broadly.
"The plants, the plants." He paused to look at me again. "Think, Connell."
"I'm thinking," I snapped. Plants. Why would two secretaries have access to Ms. Grange-Martinson's plants? More importantly, why would they have ingested enough garden chemicals to make a difference?
"I'll aid you." Karne smiled a bit more and leaned farther forward. "I spoke with Mr. Martinson again."
"Karne!" I scowled at him. He waved a hand between us.
"He agreed, he agreed. At any rate, his wife was in the habit of sending her teas with him to work. In fact, that seemed to be her only contact with her workplace." Karne raised his eyebrows at me.
"She sent arsenic tea to the secretaries?" I sat back in the chair.
"So it appears." Karne dipped his chin and settled back as well.
"That's why you want the hair tests. Duration of dose." I dropped the palm of my hand down to the arm of the chair. I looked over to the fireplace, thinking. In the reflection I could see Karne continue to look directly at me. "But what about the husband? She sent the tea with him."
"He was in the habit of repackaging the gifts for his mistresses." Karne took a long drag of his cigarette and carried it to the mantelpiece to stub it out against an incense burner.
"Say she knew that. We still have a big problem." Karne nodded. Of course he would've thought of it. I went ahead for my own sake. "How did she get the bodies, and how did she dismember them? Following that, how did she manage to bury the bones?"
"And why are there no hospital records of the women's deaths?" Karne interrupted. He fell into silence then, having supplied himself with another cigarette. After a while I became uncomfortable and sure I was intruding on his privacy. Our conversation had packed my mind, and I felt a desperate need to talk about it. But this wasn't the place.
"That's a hit." Bridget mumbled at her computer screen. Chad, McLynn and I all pressed closer behind her to see the file. "It's his."
"Sure is." McLynn sighed. "We definitely have Iliver Ramos' hand."
"Nice, Chad." I muttered. He nodded beside me. We backed up to give Bridget room to turn around. We'd been gathered in the corner of my lab near the desks, and I'd locked the door. None of us were saying we were avoiding DuPret until we had a game plan, but we were. And we'd all turned our cell phones on silent. I smirked. Passive aggression in the forensics profession: who'd have predicted?
"So. We've got the missing women's vertebrae and Ramos' hand." Bridget said, referring to her penciled list of case points. "We know the women are dead, but we can't say that about Ramos. We can put Martinson in the same office as all three, but we could do that with anyone else working there."
"So we've got an improper disposal charge, and that's it." I summarized.
"And we've got nothing specific to link to Martinson." Chad added.
"That's it?" Bridget looked at each of us in turn. Chad and I nodded, but McLynn reached for her case file.
"I've got those toxin results." She handed me a packet of graphs. I flipped to the heavy metals screening and nearly fell over backward. "I know," McLynn said. "I near about fainted."
"What?" Chad looked over my shoulder at the chart. "Heavy metals?" Bridget stood to look as well. I tilted the paper toward her.
"Long dose, too." She contributed.
"Environmental?" Chad thought aloud. McLynn shook her head.
"Can't see how. Those levels are just too high. No, that's a poisoning if I ever saw one. And twice." McLynn shook her head again. "That puts us right back to suspected homicide."
"Oh, we all know we never really left." I scoffed. McLynn set the file down on my desk. "So here we are: poisoning suspected for two women, improper disposal for Ramos. No good ideas about how it happened, but we've got when. We also don't know how the bones made it into the office plants."
"So basically, we don't know enough for an arrest. At all." Chad crossed his arms and leaned back against the edge of Bridget's desk. "I don't think DuPret does either."
"The best we can do is be honest when we testify, I think." I let my eyes wander over to the bones still laid out on my table. "Same as always."
"The case'll fall apart on him." McLynn concluded. "It will." I stayed in the lab after everyone had left, hoping to get something more out of the little I knew. I stood over the diagrams of the bones I'd sketched in my notes and reviewed the positioning of each one, thinking the context might tell me more than the vertebrae themselves. Every burial was in a ficus tree pot. I'd known that, but I hadn't thought about it. I'd been too busy thinking about arsenic and Ms. Grange-Martinson. Well. Ficus trees. I strode over to my computer and sat down to research them. The potential medicinal uses didn't help one shred. Strike that. Symbolism, maybe? I put my fingertips to my temples. Isn't this stuff Karne's forte?
On a whim I looked up the origin of the name. Nothing jumped out at me, but at the end of the entry for "ficus" there were a series of quotes to illustrate usage. I set the entry to print and started down the hall to the floor's communal printer. No sense wasting the lab's color ink, right? Wrong. That turned out to be a tactical error, as DuPret showed up just after I returned to the lab.
"Well, Doc? You ready to hand me a homicide determination yet?" DuPret's voice was loud in the room after the long silence. I rested my hands on the edge of my table and leaned toward him.
"McLynn's got new results on her hair samples for the women that point to extended exposure to arsenic." I'd decided to tell him as quickly as possible in the hopes he'd let it drop in a timely fashion. He didn't. He began to pace on the opposite side of the table, gesturing and complaining. I turned away from him to pack my briefcase, and that sent him into a torrent of abuse against Karne. I put my briefcase strap on my shoulder and gestured toward the door.
"What, you're meeting him to talk about the case, right?" DuPret blustered.
"No, I'm going home. Goodbye." I shut the lights off when I reached the door. He hurried out of the room, still complaining. I locked up and set the code, then headed for the elevators. At least DuPret didn't follow me downstairs, I thought.
