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“I mean that I’d chosen half a dozen clean photos of the victim’s face to be uploaded with this report. The mark on her cheek did look like the indentation of a ring.” Alicia looked troubled. “Let me go back into my own files and see what I can find. It wasn’t that long ago. I keep copies of all the photos I take. I’ll let you know.”
Whoa. It could have been a simple mistake. Someone could have accidentally uploaded the wrong photo, but Batra was meticulous to the point of being obsessive about it.
“Who did the uploading?”
“One of the clerks. I’ll have to check to see who.”
Kit exhaled quietly, wondering if this was a simple error or if there had been a cover-up because Maria Mendoza’s boss was wealthy and well connected. If so, that would be her boss’s responsibility to sort. “Thank you. Full disclosure—I met the victim’s daughter over the weekend. Navarro probably won’t let me take the case, but I’m hoping he’ll assign it to someone else if there’s new evidence. Or old evidence that was somehow... missed.”
“Missed,” Alicia repeated flatly. “I have a bad feeling about this, Kit.”
“So do I. Let’s figure out what’s what before we gloom and doom, though.”
“You know me so well.” Alicia closed the file and took another big bite of cake. When she’d swallowed, she asked, “What’s the second favor?”
“The drug screen for Colton Driscoll.”
Alicia turned to her computer screen. “I don’t get to look for fast-acting sedatives too often. Either too much time has passed when the body’s discovered, or the detectives don’t suspect the victim’s been sedated until well after the drug’s worked its way out of their system. Your results weren’t back when I checked first thing this morning, but they might be now.” She glanced up at Kit. “If you’re right, you’re not going to be Navarro’s favorite child. Not after he went public with the news of Driscoll’s suicide.”
“I know,” Kit said with a sigh. “But if Driscoll didn’t hang himself, that means someone else did it. Doesn’t mean that Driscoll didn’t kill those girls, but it does mean that someone else wanted him dead. So there could be other players involved.”
“Well, your results are back, and here comes trouble.” Alicia printed a page and handed it to Kit.
“What is zaleplon?” Because Colton Driscoll had apparently taken a shit ton of it.
“It’s a sleeping pill. I see it occasionally in victims who’ve slit their wrists in a bathtub, but never with a hanging.”
“What does this level mean? How out of it would he have been?”
“Give me a minute or two to do some calculations.”
Kit watched as Alicia did her thing, typing the numbers into some sort of computer software along with Driscoll’s height and weight. Finally, she looked up, her expression grim.
“Your guy had taken enough that I sincerely doubt that he would have been able to climb up on the stool he used to reach the noose.”
“Can you translate ‘sincerely doubt’ into percentages?”
“Ninety to ninety-eight percent sure that he didn’t climb up on it alone. I’m basing this on the level that remained in his blood at the time we took the sample.”
“It has a short half-life.”
“Exactly. So I ran the numbers at both ends of the time-of-death estimate.”
“As early as three a.m. and as late as seven.”
“Yes. If he died at three, there would have been even more of the drug in his system at that time, and I’d put my guess at ninety-eight percent. But even if he died at seven, there would still have been more than enough to render him non-ambulatory.”
“That’s the ninety percent. Got it.”
Coupled with Driscoll citing only five victims in his confession note instead of six and that his shoes were brand new and the footprint was that of a worn shoe...
This case was shaping up to be not as straightforward as they’d hoped.
Shit. Kit was going to have to tell Navarro right away. He was not going to be happy.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SDPD, San Diego, California
