Guidry had tightly crossed his legs while she talked, and his forehead had a glassy sheen. His voice went up an octave too. “For all practical purposes?”
“For sexual intercourse, for sexual pleasure. Stevie Ferrelli couldn’t have children, but in every other way she was a woman.”
Guidry turned to me. “Did you know this?”
I shook my head. “I had no idea.”
Dr. Corazon said, “In terms of a homicide investigation, it has no bearing whatsoever. Stevie Ferrelli was the wife of Conrad Ferrelli. She died early in the morning, probably between five and six A.M. She died of respiratory failure the same way her husband did. There was no indication of sexual assault. It took less time to pinpoint the cause because we were ready for it this time. Somebody gave her a massive shot of succinylcholine, also known as suxamethonium chloride. Trade name Scoline.”
She turned to me and said, “You’ve probably heard of it as curare.”
I didn’t know why she thought I needed that explanation, but she was right. I’d heard of curare but not those other names.
She said, “We found the same needle puncture in her gluteus that her husband had. Spectrographic analysis found four hundred milligrams of the drug in her tissue. That’s exactly the same amount found in Conrad Ferrelli. To give you an idea of how much that is, the amount of Scoline used to temporarily paralyze lungs during surgical procedures is one milligram for every kilogram of body weight, somewhere around fifty milligrams. The amount of succinylcholine in either of the Ferrellis’ tissues would have paralyzed a thousand-pound animal.”
I said, “Why do you say animal? I mean, why animal instead of person?”
She nodded at me as if I were a student who had asked a smart question. “Because the drug in large amounts like that is sometimes used to restrain animals during transfer or medical treatment.”
“Like elephants?”
“Most veterinarians don’t use succinylcholine with elephants anymore because it’s so cruel. About the only time it’s used with animals now is for restraining crocodiles and alligators during capture.”
“Could it have been in a dart instead of a hypodermic needle?”
“Possibly. The puncture wound would be the same.”
Guidry said, “Is the drug sold in darts already loaded with certain amounts?”
The ME shrugged. “You’d have to ask a veterinarian that question, but it certainly could be, and it would be safer for the person using it. Not that it’s ever safe. Four hundred milligrams would temporarily paralyze a thousand-pound alligator, but if you accidentally stick yourself with that dart, you’re dead.”
Guidry spent a few more minutes getting forensic details of studies done, of liver inflammation as a sequela of the drug, but I didn’t pay attention. My mind was on the fact that I had just met a man who made his living capturing snakes and alligators. A man who used a dart gun loaded with a drug to paralyze the alligators he caught. A man who was out to kill me.
I knew when the conversation ended only because Guidry stood up. I rose to my feet as well.
Dr. Corazon gave me a curious glance, probably wondering why Guidry had brought me, and gave Guidry a manila envelope containing her report. We said our good-byes and went out to the parking lot. Both of us were silent. I didn’t know about Guidry, but the day’s accumulation of shocks was making me punchy.
He said, “You want to get something to eat?”
Now that he mentioned it, I realized I was hollow as a barrel.
We walked across the street to a place where hospital personnel can get breakfast all day and slid into a booth against the wall. A waitress was at our table almost before we were settled, standing with her order pad ready.
I ordered a chef’s salad; Guidry ordered an omelet with hash browns and bacon.
After we’d stipulated caffeinated coffee, not decaf, and gone through the routine of choosing salad dressings and crispness of bacon—oh, my gosh, do I love bacon, but I have to draw the fat line somewhere—we sat without speaking until the waitress brought our coffee.
I was thinking how beautiful Stevie had been, and how she’d started life as a man. It put a different light on the project she and Conrad had financed to transform children born with disfiguring birth defects. Stevie had probably identified with the children and wanted them to have the same opportunities she’d had. I wondered how old she’d been when she had the surgery that allowed her to live as the person she truly was. It could not have been a decision her family supported, since she seemed to have cut all ties to them. Perhaps Conrad had been the one who made it possible for her. Of all the people in the world, Conrad would have understood how easily identities can be changed.
The waitress gave us coffee, and Guidry emptied two little containers of cream in his mug and leaned back and looked at me.
“With the Ferrelli house on the water like it is, anybody in a boat could have come down the Intracoastal Waterway and docked at one of the houses closed for the summer. It would be simple to slip through the trees to the Ferrelli house, kill Mrs. Ferrelli, and go back the way you came. With all the traffic on the water, nobody would notice another boat.”
“Reggie would have attacked anybody who came in.”
“My guess is that she got up and turned off the alarm, walked the dog, and then came home and got in the shower. There was no sign of struggle in the bathroom, no water splashed on the floor. The killer probably came in while she was in the shower and put the photo on the bed for her to see. We think she dried off, hung her towel up, and came out of the bathroom. She saw the photo and leaned over to see what it was, and he shot her with the drug.”
I said, “If he came in the house while she was walking Reggie, Reggie would have sensed him when they came home and gone to find him.”
“She wouldn’t have put the dog in the laundry room while she took a shower?”
“Why would she? Reggie was always either in the house or in the breezeway. She wouldn’t shut him up in the laundry room. Somebody else did that, and whoever it was knew the dog, or Reggie would have attacked him. Everything points to Denton Ferrelli again, Guidry.”
“You’re assuming that Denton Ferrelli is the only person in the world who knew their house and their dog. Did you know them well enough to make that assumption?”
I slumped back against the seat. He was right, of course. I had not been their close friend, I had just been their pet-sitter.
22
The photograph was of Stevie, before her surgery,” I said. “The person who killed her wanted to remind her of the unhappy young man she once was. Who else except Denton Ferrelli would know about the monkey’s broken legs and also know about Stevie’s past?”
Guidry said, “The fact that you and I don’t know of somebody else doesn’t mean there isn’t somebody else.”
I considered sticking my fork in his eye, but the waitress chose that moment to bring our food. My salad was nicely chilled, with plenty of gloppy Roquefort dressing. Guidry’s bacon was stretched out like thin brown slats, a little black on the tips the way I like it, with no icky white bubbles.