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“I’m going to go for a run,” said Michelle. “Why don’t you come with me? Endorphins are good for the brain.”
“Running! You just did kickboxing!” he exclaimed.
“That was yesterday, Sean.”
“God took a day off, you know.”
“If he was a woman, he wouldn’t have.”
“Okay, you convinced me.”
She looked pleased. “You’re going to run with me?”
“No, I’m going back to the boat to rest. If it was good enough for God, it’s good enough for me.”
CHAPTER
30
THE POST OFFICE WAS
under strict instructions to immediately forward any suspicious letters addressed to the Gazette to the police. The Hinson letter came the day after Bobby Battle had been murdered. It was simply worded.
One lawyer less, who cares? I trust you know who I’m not this time. See you soon.
Meanwhile, Sylvia Diaz had risen from her sickbed and finally performed the autopsy on Robert Battle.
At the moment she was sitting with King and Michelle in her office. Chief Williams and Chip Bailey had both attended the Battle autopsy, she told them.
“I think Todd is now thoroughly comfortable with postmortems, unfortunately simply from sheer numbers,” commented Sylvia.
“So what killed Bobby?” asked King.
“I won’t know for certain until the toxicology screens come back in a week or so, but it looks like someone shot a large quantity of potassium chloride into his nutrition IV bag. In less than ten minutes it would work its way through the TPN solution, into the tubing and then into his body. As soon as that happened, his heart would go into ventricular fibrillation. In his already weakened condition the end would have been quick at least and painless.”
“All that suggests some medical knowledge,” said King.
Sylvia considered this for a moment. “It’s true that potassium chloride isn’t often used to kill someone. However, if the person did have medical expertise, he was a little sloppy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Battle had the standard array of IV lines: the blood thinner heparin, a saline sugar solution, a TPN or nutrition solution bag, an antibiotic to combat the pulmonary infection he caught from being on the ventilator for so long and the drug dopamine to control his blood pressure.”
“Okay, so what does that tell us?” asked King.
“Well, if the person had shot the potassium chloride directly into the tubing instead of into the TPN bag, the same fatal result would have occurred, but it would have been undetectable. You have to understand that the TPN solution already has potassium chloride in it, and thus so did Battle’s system. I was able to determine that someone had placed additional potassium chloride into the bag only by comparing the levels present there to a normal TPN bag mixture. There was over triple the standard amount, easily enough to kill him.”
“So you’re saying if the potassium chloride had gone into the tubing directly and not the bag, you never would have noticed it?”
“Yes. The residue in the tubing would be insufficient to raise suspicion. In fact, it would have only been suspicious if there hadn’t been residue of potassium chloride. And as I said, Battle already had potassium chloride in his body. It’s naturally absorbed, which is why an autopsy alone wouldn’t have resulted in an overdose confirmation.”
“So it was like the person had some medical knowledge but wasn’t an expert?” said King.
“Or else,” said Michelle, “he wanted it to be discovered that Battle had been murdered. As if the watch and the feather weren’t enough.”
“It almost wasn’t enough,” King reminded her. “The feather had fallen to the floor, and the watch was covered under the IV lines and hospital tags.”
“That doesn’t make sense, though,” said Sylvia. “I mean, isn’t the first rule in murdering someone to try and make it like the perfect murder? And if so, how more perfect can you get than by making it look like no murder was even committed?”
