“Metronidazole, the antibacterial used to treat vaginal infections,” said Shockley, coming alive at this suggestion, curious at to what Jessica was getting at.
“Vaginal suppositories. My God, Doctor, at what point do we draw the line? Do you think we can test for every substance in the universe?”
“Flagyl leaves a metallic taste in the mouth,” Jessica stated flatly.
“All right. I'll have Heyward test for it. Meantime-”
“Please, sir, come to some result, some conclusion, and quickly,” Jessica warned, “or else I'll be forced to personally scrape together samples for the FBI lab in Washington for processing.”
DeAngelos busied himself now with stripping off his lab coat, saying he had a luncheon appointment with Sturtevante and Parry. Putting on his regular coat, he said, “As for our little chat. Dr. Coran, do whatever you like. I am, as I have said, constrained by a budget that has seen no increase for over six extremely difficult years. You may want to discuss that with our chief here.”
“Well, then, why in God's name are you hesitant to pack off a sample of everything to the FBI lab? I should think you'd be pleased to get it off your hands. Can you arrange the transport or not?” Nerves frayed, fatigue overcoming her, Jessica no longer played at politics or pleasantries with DeAngelos. In the back of her head, she wondered why Sturtevante and Parry were having lunch with him, and why she had not been invited. Apparently, lunch meant the case.
“I'll put my best man, Dr. Heyward, on it, as soon as I get back.”
“Hold lunch and do it now,” she demanded.
DeAngelos gritted his teeth, stared at his boss and the chief, read the signals, and with his thin mustache quivering, considered his options while Jessica thought about how uncooperative he'd been since the day they'd met, even going so far as to get her name wrong, calling her Dr. Cohen. He appeared to be one of that breed of men who find it difficult, even painful, to take orders from a woman.
“All right, then, go see Heyward yourself,” he said, storming out.
“Good. I'll deal from here on out with Dr. Heyward,” Jessica shouted after the man, then turned and stared at Shockley and Roth, both of whom returned a shrug and a frown.
Dr. Shockley said, “I've never seen DeAngelos forced so handily into a corner, Dr. Coran. Bravo!”
As the chief quietly concurred, Jessica bid them good day and went in search of Dr. Heyward.
Jessica knew Dr. Arnold Heyward only as the even thinner, slightly built shadow of DeAngelos. The man was virtually joined to the other doctor's hip, ready at a moment's notice to do his bidding, a kind of Igor to his Frankenstein. The relationship, while not unusual in a laboratory situation where democratic principles did not apply, seemed to her worse than usual. It reminded her of a nobleman with a serf.
Having bid the chief and Dr. Shockley good-bye, she was about to step on an elevator to locate Heyward when DeAngelos, apparently having undergone a change of heart, caught her in the hallway outside the ops room. “Look here, I'm sorry for the defensiveness. It's just that this case has us all unnerved. I'll get word to Heyward for you this minute, before I go to lunch.”
Taken aback by his sudden reasonableness, Jessica held her tongue while he dialed the toxicology lab from a nearby office. “Heyward!” DeAngelos barked into the phone. “I want you to catalog and box up all items we have on those poison-pen killings for the mail and-”
“No, no!” Jessica interrupted.
“You'll find Heyward quite capable of cataloging and boxing up items for the mail.” He then said into the phone, 'Talking to our FBI expert, Coran, here, Heyward. Seems she thinks her people in D.C. can do a better job than we can, so off we ship everything we have. Got that?”
“Not the U.S. mail,” protested Jessica.
He finally slowed to hear her objection.
Jessica had flushed red by this time. “Don't waste time with the mail. Send it to the Bureau office here in Philly, to James Parry's attention. They'll helicopter it to the FBI lab direct.”
“There you have it,” he said. “Did you hear that, Heyward?”
Jessica heard the disembodied phone voice snap back with, “Yes, sir!”
“So now, Dr. Coran, you see it comes down to the almighty dollar.”
“Pardon?”
“You have a bottomless budget to work with; we do not. My apologies for the municipal legislators and the state legislators, all of whom routinely find it more fashionable and politically useful to spend dollars on AIDS fundraisers, cancer research, tourism, baseball, football, and yet another new sports facility-anything other than the field of death investigation, Doctor.”
“I quite understand, Dr. DeAngelos.”
“Do you really?” He sneered as if there was no way on God's green earth that she could understand. She calmly replied, “Yes, matter of fact, I understand completely.”
“In your rarefied air of governmental budgeting, I'm not so sure you do.”
“I wasn't always with the government, sir. At one time, I was chief medical examiner for the city of Washington, DC.”
“Really? I congratulate you. Then you do understand my circumstances after all, don't you?”
He had her cornered. As much as she disliked the toxicologist's attitude, she knew he was right. The last area for which local government granted funds was death inquiry. It had been so twelve years ago when she worked the trenches of D.C. as pathologist for Washington Memorial Hospital, and it remained so today.
“Not unlike the attitude toward nursing-home laws and improvements in care for the aged,” she agreed, and for the first time, they seemed to fall into mutual civility.
DeAngelos apologized. “I'm sorry for my jaded appearance; one has to develop a thick skin to survive around here. But inside, I am as appalled by these killings, and as upset about them, as anyone on the task force.”
“I'm quite sure of it,” she managed to say, not at all believing him. DeAngelos seemed far more concerned about his department, its political standing, and its financial woes than he was about the victims in the case.
“Although it is hard for me to muster complete sympathy for people who are foolish enough to unwittingly court their own end. People who live the lives of victims, victims to the end. Perfect victims.”
Jessica thought of all the cynical medical professionals she had seen over the years; their number rivaled that of the police professionals she'd known, men and women who, having seen so much of human wickedness, having worked over the bodies of countless victims of trauma and murder, had become apathetic and spent. Dr. Frank DeAngelos needed a long vacation and possibly a career move. Perhaps Philadelphia would do well to promote him to a job where he could do less harm.
Still, in some deep recess of her own being, Jessica, too, hated people who set themselves up for murder, and it certainly appeared that the poisoned Philadelphia children had this in common.
“You have to agree,” he softly said.
“Still, I wonder if such thoughts get in the way of our professional judgment, Doctor.”
Dr. DeAngelos said a curt good-bye and rushed off to the elevator. He moved like a man who feared being late for a rendezvous with a lover.
By five in the afternoon, Jessica had logged in more time in the autopsy area and adjacent labs than was necessary, but it felt good-productive. After the verbal struggle with DeAngelos, the more time she spent with the most recent victims the calmer she became, and the more certain she felt of her ground.
As always in her experience, being in the forensics lab had a calming effect on her; solutions, even minuscule ones, had a way of restoring her. She was doing everything in her power to learn as much as possible about the killer.
After Jessica completed her final protocol on Maurice Deneau and had filled out the last piece of paperwork, she sat down and listed all the similarities she had noticed among the victims. They certainly seemed all of a type. Something in their appearance or manner, perhaps their diffidence, aroused the killer's interest, of this she had no doubt. She knew this to be common among serial killers. Generally speaking, she had found the serial killer to be a creature of habit. This had been so with other monsters she had tracked over the years, and it appeared true here. This need to repeat an experience, to prey on a given type, was often a killer's undoing, and in cases where the killer chose random victims, victims without a scintilla of commonality, authorities had far greater difficulty reaching any definitive conclusion. Often they did not at first see the resemblances among victims, but once these were pinpointed, the information spoke volumes, especially to anyone trained in forensic psychology.