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CHAPTER 019

Marilee Hunter, the pedantic director of the Long Beach Memorial genetics lab, liked to hear herself talk. Marty Roberts did his best to appear interested. Marilee had a fussy, pinched demeanor, like a librarian in an old forties movie. She delighted in catching errors among hospital staff. She had called Marty to say she needed to see him, right away.

“Correct me if I’m wrong on the basics,” Marliee Hunter said. “Mr. Weller’s daughter obtains a postmortem paternity test that indicates she and her father do not share DNA. Nevertheless, the widow insists Weller is the father, and demands further testing. You provide me samples of blood, spleen, liver, kidney, and testes, although all have been compromised from funeral home infusation. You are looking for a chimera, obviously.”

“Yes. Or an error in the original test,” Marty said. “We don’t know where the daughter took the blood for testing.”

“Paternity tests have a nontrivial error rate,” Marilee said. “Especially in online establishments. My lab does not make errors. We will test all these tissues, Marty-as soon as you provide buccal cells from the daughter.”

“Right, right.” He had forgotten all about that. They needed cheek cells from the daughter to compare DNA. “She may not cooperate.”

“In that case,” Marilee said, “we will test the son and the other daughter. But you realize these tissue tests take time. Weeks.”

“Of course, yes.”

Marilee opened the Weller patient file, which was stamped DECEASED. She thumbed through the pages. “Meanwhile, I can’t help but wonder about your original autopsy.”

Marty jerked his head up. “What about it?”

“It shows here you ran a tox screen that came back negative.”

“We do a tox screen in every automobile fatality. It’s routine.”

“Umm,” Hunter said, pursing her lips. “The thing is, we repeated the tox screen in our lab. And the result is not negative.”

“Oh?” he said, controlling his voice. Thinking: What the fuck?

“It’s difficult to run a tox panel after all the funeral preservatives have been infused, but we have experience dealing with that. And we determined that the deceased Mr. Weller had elevated intracellular levels of calcium and magnesium…”

Marty thought, Oh boy…

“…along with significant hepatic elevation of ethanol dehydrogenase, implying a high blood-alcohol level at the time of the accident…”

Marty groaned inwardly. Who had done the original tox screen? Had fucking Raza sent it out? Or onlysaid that he had?

“…and finally,” Marilee said, “we found trace levels of ethacrynic acid.”

“Ethacrynic acid?” Marty was shaking his head. “That makes no sense at all. That’s an oral diuretic.”

“Correct.”

“The guy was forty-six years old. His injuries were severe, but even so, I could tell he had been in fantastic physical shape-like he was a bodybuilder or something. Bodybuilders take those drugs. If he was taking an oral diuretic, that was probably why.”

“You’re assuming that he knew he was taking it,” Hunter said. “Possibly he didn’t know.”

“You think somebody poisoned him?” Marty said.

She shrugged. “Toxic reactions include shock, hypotension, and coma. It could have contributed to his death.”

“I don’t know how you would determine that.”

“You did the post,” she reminded him, thumbing through the chart.

“Yes, I did. Weller’s injuries were massive. Crush trauma to face and chest, pericardial rupture, fracture of hip and femur. His air bag didn’t open.”

“The car was checked, of course?”

Marty sighed. “Ask the cops. Not my job.”

“It should have been checked.”

“Look,” Marty said, “this was a single-car fatality. There were witnesses. The guy is not drunk or in a coma. He drives straight into a freeway overpass at ninety miles an hour. Nearly all single-car fatalities are suicides. No surprise the victim turned off the air bag first.”

“But you didn’t check, Marty.”

“No. Because we had no reason. The guy’s tox screen was negative and his electrolytes were essentially normal, given his injuries and time of death.”

“Except they weren’t normal, Marty.”

“Our tests came back normal.”

“Umm,” she said. “Are you sure the tests were actually done?”

And that was when Marty Roberts began to think seriously about Raza. Raza had said there was a rush order from the bone bank that night. Raza wanted to fill the order. So Raza would not have wanted Weller’s body to lie in a locker for four or six days while the abnormal tox findings were analyzed.

“I’ll have to check,” Marty said, “to make sure the tests were done.”

“I think we ought to,” Marilee said. “Because according to the hospital file, the deceased’s son works for a biotech company, and the wife works in a pediatrician’s office. I assume both have access to biologicals. At this point, we can’t be certain that Mr. Weller wasn’t poisoned.”

“Possible,” Marty said. “Though unlikely.”

She gave him a frosty look.

“I’ll get right on it,” Marty Roberts said.

Walking back to the lab, he tried to decide what to do about Raza. The guy was a menace. Marty was certain now that Raza had never ordered the tox screen, which meant that the lab report had been faked. Either Raza had faked it himself, Xeroxing another report and changing the name, or he had an accomplice in the lab who faked it for him. Probably the latter. Dear God, another person involved in all this.

And now Miss Prissypants was on the hunt for wrongdoers because of trace ethacrynic acid. Ethacrynic acid. If John Weller really had been poisoned, Marty had to admit it was a clever choice. The guy was clearly vain about his body. At his age, he had to spend a couple of hours a day in the gym. Probably took a ton of supplements and shit. So it would be hard to prove that he hadn’t taken the diuretic himself.

Hard. But not impossible…Ethacrynic acid was a prescription drug. There would be paper trails. Even if he got it from somebody, another bodybuilder, or a web site in Australia, all that would take days to check out. It wouldn’t be long before somebody decided to take another look at the body and discovered the corpse had no arm and leg bones.

Shit.

Fucking Raza!

Marty started thinking about a forty-six-year-old bodybuilder. Guy that age, grown family-works his ass off to get a body like that, there’s only two reasons. He’s gay or he’s got a girlfriend. Either way he’s not humping his wife. So how does she feel about that? Pissed off?

Probably, yeah. Enough to poison the buff hubby? Couldn’t rule it out. People killed their spouses for less. Marty found himself thinking hard about Mrs. Weller, recalling everything that had happened at the exhumation. He saw it in his mind: the tearful widow, leaning against her tall son, with the dutiful daughter standing beside, holding tissues for Mom. All very touching.

Except…

The minute the casket came out of the ground, Emily Weller got nervous. Suddenly the grieving widow wanted everything done fast. Don’t take the body back to the hospital. Don’t take too many tissue samples. The woman who had demanded a thorough DNA analysis suddenly seemed to change her mind.

Why, he wondered, had she done that?

He could think of only one possible answer: Mrs. Weller wanted her paternity test, but she never imagined the body would be taken back to the hospital for examination. She never thought they would take tissues from multiple organs. She thought they would just grab a blood sample, put the body back in the ground, and go home.

Anything more than that seemed to make Mrs. Weller nervous.

Maybe there was hope, after all.

He went into his office and closed the door. He needed to call Mrs. Weller. It was a delicate call. There would be a hospital record of the date and time of the call. So, why was he calling her? He frowned.

Oh, yes: Because he had to collect her DNA, and that of her children.

Okay, fine. But why hadn’t he collected the DNA from the family at the grave site? It was just a matter of cheek swabs. It would have taken only a moment.

Answer: Because he thought the DNA had already been collected by Miss Prissypants’s lab.

Marty considered that. Rolled it over in his mind.

He could find nothing wrong with it. He had a perfectly good reason to call.

He picked up the phone and dialed.

“Mrs. Weller, this is Dr. Roberts at Memorial Hospital. Marty Roberts.”

“Yes, Dr. Roberts.” A pause. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes, Mrs. Weller. I just want to schedule you and your children to come in and give us blood and cheek tissue samples. For the DNA test.”

“We already did that. For that woman at the lab.”

“Oh, I see. You mean Dr. Hunter? I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

There was a pause. Emily said, “Are you, uh, doing the tests on Jack now?”

“Yes. We do some of the tests here, and the lab does some.”

“Have you found anything yet? I mean, are you finding what you expected?”

Marty smiled as he listened. She wasn’t asking about paternity. She was worried about something else they might find. “Well actually, Mrs. Weller…”

“Yes?”

“There does seem to be a slight complication. Nothing important.”

“What kind of a complication?”

“The genetics lab found traces of an unusual chemical in Mr. Weller’s tissues. It’s probably a lab error, contamination.”

“What kind of a chemical?”

“I only mention it because I know you wanted your husband to have his final rest as soon as possible.”

“That’s right. I want him left undisturbed,” she said.

“Of course. I would hate to see his final rest delayed for days, or even weeks,” Marty said, “while questions were asked about this chemical and how it came to be found in his body. Because even if it is a lab error, everything from this point on is required as a matter of law, Mrs. Weller. I shouldn’t even be making this call to you. But I…I guess I feel responsible. As I say, I’d hate to see your husband’s final rest delayed for something like a coroner’s inquest.”

“I understand,” she said.

“Of course I would never advise you to do anything but follow the law, Mrs. Weller. But I sensed that disinterment of your husband was an emotionally exhausting experience for you…”

“Yes…yes…”

“And if you didn’t want the further emotional exhaustion of reinterment-to say nothing of the expense-you might elect a less emotional solution. And less expensive, if you were short of funds…You have the right to order the body cremated.”

“I didn’t realize that,” she said.

“I’m sure you never imagined that taking your husband’s body out of the ground would be so traumatic.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You might decide not to put yourself through it again.”

“That’s just how I feel,” she said.

Marty thought, I’ll bet you do. “Of course, if you knew there was going to be an investigation, you would not be permitted to cremate the body. Certainly I would never suggest you cremate. But you might decide on cremation yourself, for your own reasons. And if that happened soon-later today, or tomorrow morning-then it would just be one of those things. The body was unfortunately cremated before the inquest was called.”

“I understand.”

“I have to go,” he said.

“I appreciate your taking the time to call me,” she said. “Was there anything else?”

“No, that’s everything,” he said. “Thank you, Mrs. Weller.”

“You’re welcome, Dr. Roberts.”

Click.

Marty Roberts leaned back in his chair. He was very pleased with how that call had gone. Very pleased indeed.

Just one more thing, for the moment, remained to be done.

“Fifth-Floor Lab. This is Jennie.”

“Jennie, this is Dr. Roberts down in Pathology. I need you to check on a lab result for me.”

“Is it stat, Dr. Roberts?”

“No, it’s an old test. Tox screen that was ordered eight days ago. Patient name is Weller.” He read off the serial number.

There was a brief pause. He heard the clicking of keys. “John J. Weller? White male, age forty-six?”

“Yes.”

“We did a full-panel tox screen at three thirty-seven a.m. on Sunday, May eighth. Tox screen and, uh, nine other tests.”

“And you kept the blood sample?”

“Yes, I’m sure we did. We keep all tissues these days.”

“Would you check for me?”

“Dr. Roberts, these days we keep everything. We even keep the heel stick cards whenever a child is born. It’s PKU testing required by law, but we keep the cards anyway. We keep cord blood. We keep placenta tissue. We keep surgical excisions. We keep everything-”

“I understand, but would you mind checking?”

“I can see it’s registered right here on my screen,” she said. “We have the frozen sample stored in freezer locker B-7. It’ll be taken to the offsite storage at the end of the month.”

“I’m sorry,” Marty said. “But this involves a potential legal issue. Would you physically check to make sure the sample is where it’s supposed to be?”

“Of course. I’ll send somebody down there and call you back.”

“Thank you, Jennie.”

He hung up and leaned back in his chair again. Through the glass wall, he watched Raza scrubbing down a steel table, in preparation for the next autopsy. Raza did a thorough job of cleaning. Marty gave him that: The guy was thorough. He paid attention to details.

Which meant that he was not above changing the hospital database to indicate the storage of a nonexistent sample. Either he did it, or he had someone do it for him.

The phone rang. “Dr. Roberts? It’s Jennie.”

“Yes, Jennie.”

“I’m afraid I spoke too soon. The sample for Weller is thirty cc’s of venous blood, frozen. But it’s not in B-7; it seems to have been misplaced. I have a trace on it now. I will let you know as soon as it’s found. Was there anything else?”

“No,” Marty said. “Thank you very much, Jennie.”