Thicker Than Water

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Louis dropped two quarters into the vending machine and punched at the button. The can of Dr Pepper tumbled to the bottom and he pulled it out.

As he took a drink, he looked down the hallway to where Octavius was loading linens into a closet. Louis looked up at the clock, then in the window of the autopsy room. There was a body laid out, but it wasn’t Kitty. Vince must have put her in storage until the Sheriff’s department released her.

Louis walked the hall, slumped down in a plastic chair, then rose again, walking the other way. What the hell was taking Vince so long?

A door opened and he saw Vince coming toward him, carrying some papers. He was wearing jeans and a polo shirt instead of his usual green scrubs, but still had earphones looped around his neck. As he grew closer, Louis could hear the tinny whine of Marvin Gay singing “Ain’t That Peculiar.”

“First you bring me fossilized jism, and now you bring me a snotty Kleenex,” Vince said. “Louis, this has got to stop.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Were you able to type it?”

Vince nodded. “AB-negative.”

A strange mix of emotion passed through Louis. The excitement of knowing he was closing in on Brian was tempered by the knowledge that one more person was going to get hurt by all this. He still had to face Scott.

“Louis, you want this too?” Vince was holding out the papers.

“What is it?”

“Kitty’s updated autopsy report. You want to take Scott Brenner his copy?”

Louis nodded, taking the report from Vince. He opened it, then saw Vince moving out of the corner of his eye.

“Wait a minute, Vince.”

Vince turned, throwing his arms out. “Louis, Louis, Louis. Unlike the rest of the people around here, I have a life. Let me live it.”

“Just tell me, did you find anything new?”

“Yeah, one thing,” he said. “We found clay in her hair.”

“In her hair? Why didn’t the mortician wash it out?”

“Well, she had the blunt trauma wound on the back of her head. I guess whoever did her couldn’t get it all.”

“Clay,” Louis said slowly. “Why the hell would she have clay in her hair? Did she get it in the dump?”

“I doubt it,” Vince said. “It had traces of silica quartz and vinyl acetate mixed in. It wasn’t clay, like dirt. It was like what they use for cement work.”

“Cement work?”

“Yeah, you know, the stuff they use to stick tiles on the wall.”

Louis was quiet, thinking.

“One more thing,” Vince said. “Remember I told you I thought that the head wound was not what killed her? I was right. She died from the stab wounds and she almost bled out. She was very dead by the time the body was moved to the dump.”

“So wherever she was killed, there was a lot of blood,” Louis said.

“It would have left a mess, I would think.”

Vince started away. Louis rubbed his brow, trying to think. This couldn’t be all there was.

“Vince,” Louis called. “If she was already dead when the killer put her in the landscapers’ dump, how did she breathe in the fertilizer?”

Vince turned. “What fertilizer?”

Louis flipped through the report as he walked to Vince. “Here. Right here, the potassium monopersulfate.”

Vince took the report and looked at the listing. “Who told you this was fertilizer?”

“We looked it up.”

“Well, potassium is in fertilizer, but when you add monopersulfate to it, it’s a different chemical compound.”

“What is it used for?” Louis asked.

“Pools. They use it to chemically balance swimming pools.” Vince handed him back the report. “I’d guess your girl probably went swimming just before she was killed and took some water into her lungs.”

Louis ran a hand over his brow. Shit, one little mistake.

Vince mistook his contrition for fatigue and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Louis, give it a rest. Go home.”

Louis nodded, folding the report. He watched Vince disappear down the hallway and leaned back against the cool wall. He was thinking about Brian and he was seeing the Brenner house. Not as the rotting place it was now but as Kitty must have seen it twenty years ago. A beautiful mansion where she could swim in a moonlit pool, pretending she was Lady Kitrina Jaspers.

He knew now what had happened. Now he just had to find a way to prove it to Mobley.