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Sure, I had my reasons. My mother would have told me when she was alive that I was fixating on my disease. My brothers would have said it was because I had my heart broken. Once. Only once.
I was smart enough to know the sadistic darkness in me wasn’t normal.
I’d called my brothers on the way to the medical examiner’s office, which was located inside the frigid morgue. I had no idea how anyone could work in a burial home or in a mortuary.
You had to be a little bit twisted to handle the gruesome, dank working conditions.
Both brothers arrived with seconds of each other, the two men as somber as I felt.
Our father had been dead for over a week, but this hit me harder than hearing about his death the first time.
Braxton approached first, not bothering to remove his sunglasses. Gage was only a few seconds later, finding it tough to look at me.
“I assume neither one of you told Gilly.”
“I didn’t,” Braxton answered. “Why hurt her more than she already has been?”
“At least until the person responsible is caught. What did the examiner tell you?”
“Just that it was a slow-release poison.”
“That means someone who knew him.” Gage finally jerked his head up.
“Or something he ate or drank on a regular basis,” I said in return.
Braxton exhaled. “He had a particular brand of coffee, refusing to drink anything else.”
“Yeah, well, he also had tea in the afternoon because Gilly insisted on it.” Fortunately, Gage had more ideas than I did for now.
“Let’s find out what the examiner says.”
As Braxton sighed, he finally removed his sunglasses. It was easy to tell how upset he’d gotten. His eyes were red. Murder was a tough pill for anyone to accept.
We headed inside, forced to ask at the stark front desk where Dr. Carter Reynolds’ office was located. At least the hallway we were instructed to go down wasn’t as dingy as the rest of the building. Even though the equipment was state of the art, the building was ancient, which had always surprised me. It would seem our wealthy city wasn’t interested in updating their buildings for state employees.
His door was open, but I stepped just inside. “Dr. Reynolds.”
I knew the man. We’d gone way back. I’d once considered him a close friend. We’d simply drifted apart. He stood, shaking my hand. “Valerio. Braxton. Gage. I think we can skip the formalities. And so you know, I should be contacting the police at this point.”
“You can do that. All I ask is that you to wait for a couple days.” I gave him a hard look as my brothers piled into his office.
“I need to be careful, or I’ll lose my job.”
“I assure you that I have pull with the department. What did you find?”
He was anxious enough he glanced at the open door. “It took me a little while to find and I had to call a buddy of mine who is a toxicologist for the FBI. Even he was stymied, which surprised me. I considered him one of the best in his profession.”
“And?” Gage pressed.
“The poison used is a very toxic drug called polonium, radioactive with no cure. Before you ask, it’s really only produced in Russia, which means whoever obtained this had connections. And money.”
I sucked in my breath. “How is it ingested?”
“Food. Water. Air. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say it was food or maybe bottled water. If airborne, someone else would have likely gotten ill.” Carter rubbed his eyes. “I had it triple checked and my buddy is trying to see if he can determine the source, but that’s going to be like snatching a rock from the Kremlin.”
“Then how are we going to hunt them down?” Braxton snarled.
“I’m not certain what you tell you, but I can check anything you believe he might have ingested. But from the amount still located in the tissues, the poisoning occurred over a lengthy period of time.”
