104

Jason

“Detective,” says Shauna, “just one final area of inquiry. We talked previously this morning about the fact that Marshall Rivers injected fentanyl in his victims. Did you find evidence at his apartment that he was doing this?”

“Yes. When we searched his apartment, we found over a dozen fentanyl patches, which can be broken down and cooked and then used for injection. We found a pack of unopened hypodermic needles. And we found three used hypodermic needles in a plastic sandwich bag.”

“And back on August second, when you discovered these three used hypodermic needles, did you test them for the presence of fentanyl?”

“We did. All three tested positive for fentanyl.”

“Did you find anything else on those hypodermic needles?”

Austin raises a fist to his mouth and clears his throat. “One of them contained trace DNA of the first two victims in this case, Alicia Corey and Lauren Gibbs,” he says. “The second hypodermic needle contained trace DNA belonging to the fourth victim, Nancy Minnows. And the third needle showed trace DNA of the fifth victim, Samantha Drury.”

“So. . one needle had the first two victims’ DNA, another had the fourth, and another had the fifth.”

Austin nods. “Correct. And as I said before, the third victim, Holly Frazier-the needle used to inject her had broken off and was left at the crime scene. That’s how we learned about the fentanyl in the first place.”

“Sure.”

That was no accident, the needle breaking off at the third crime scene. Marshall Rivers wanted the cops to know all about the fentanyl.

“As for why Rivers used the same needle for the first two victims,” says Austin, “it’s anybody’s guess.”

Except mine. I don’t have to guess. That’s the needle Marshall Rivers stuck behind my framed prosecutor’s certificate on my office wall. At that point, he had only killed the first two women. He needed their DNA on that needle so it would implicate me.

“Now, Detective, did you recently submit those three hypodermic needles for additional DNA testing?”

“Yes, we did. Last Friday, following the testimony of Mr. Kolarich, we decided to have those three needles checked for the presence of Alexa Himmel’s DNA.”

“Did you expedite that testing?”

“We did. Yeah, I think our county lab set a new record. We got the results back last night, Monday night.”

“And?” Shauna turns toward the jurors.

Detective Austin says, “The hypodermic needle that contained trace DNA of the first two victims, Alicia Corey and Lauren Gibbs, also contained trace DNA belonging to Alexa Himmel.”

Check, please.

The judge immediately bangs her gavel, and the additional sheriff’s deputies manning the courtroom rush to silence the roar from the spectators. It takes them a while. This is too splashy for the reporters to resist. Especially when taken with everything else that has come out today-the note on Marshall’s computer that jibes with my story, my house key on Marshall’s key ring. With the possible exception of Roger Ogren and Katie O’Connor, there is not a single person in this courtroom who thinks I killed Alexa Himmel.

That was one busy needle. First, it was injected into Alicia Corey. Then it was sunk into the skin of Lauren Gibbs. Then it was hidden behind a certificate on my wall. Then it was tucked safely away in my bedroom.

Then it was sunk into Alexa’s jugular vein.

But ultimately, it made its way back to the apartment of Marshall Rivers.

It’s kind of ironic, when you think about it. Marshall was using that needle to implicate me for murder. And it ends up being used as evidence that exonerates me of a different murder.

“Ms. Tasker,” says the judge, flushed, after she finally brings the courtroom back to silence. “Do you have any further questions?”

Shauna glances at her notes, then at me. I write something on a piece of paper and show it to her. She looks at it and walks over to me. There is such a looseness to her stride, such a relaxed look on her face, that I almost don’t recognize her.

“You never said what happened to Marshall,” I whisper.

“I didn’t? I guess I didn’t,” she acknowledges. “But everyone knows what happened. Everyone knows all about him.”

We look at each other for a long time. Then she leans in and whispers into my ear.

“He killed himself,” she says. “Right, Jason?”

Shauna draws back, looks me over with a poker face. But she doesn’t wait for an answer. She returns to the podium to address the judge.

Marshall Rivers was found dead in his apartment on the evening of Friday, August 2, nearly three full days after Alexa was found dead in my town house. And two days after his rent was due. His landlord let himself in and found Marshall lying in a pool of blood. The police responded, and it wasn’t long before the search of that apartment led them to conclude that Marshall Rivers was the infamous North Side Slasher. The bloody knife, the hypodermic needles, the packets of fentanyl, all told the story. The suicide note on his computer didn’t hurt, either.

The timing of Marshall’s death was a difficult one for the medical examiner to pin down. The circumstantial evidence helped somewhat. Marshall hadn’t been scheduled to work at the dry cleaner’s on Wednesday, July 31, but he did miss work the next day, Thursday, August 1, so it looked like he died before the morning of August 1. The medical evidence? Rigor mortis had long come and gone by the time he was found that Friday night, so sometime before August 1 made sense to the coroner. The best estimate, from the larvae present, was that Marshall Rivers had been dead approximately seventy-two hours when he was found.

Marshall Rivers, in other words, died within relatively the same window of time that Alexa Himmel died.

“I have no further questions,” says Shauna. “And the defense rests.”

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