“Nice pen.” Sister admired the Montblanc.
“If you use the best equipment you have fewer problems.” He stepped out so Walter could come up to help Ronnie on with the shirt. “Walter, you want to tie him up?”
“That doesn’t sound right.” Walter reached for Ronnie’s stock.
Despite the short notice, Cindy Chandler had put together a breakfast. People brought in dishes. Most wanted hot coffee or tea more than anything else at that moment.
As Sister walked to the farmhouse, a little jewel, she had her own epiphany.
So did Ben Sidell when he called back the number displayed on his cell phone. Lyle Aziz was jubilant that the results had come in so quickly on Angel Crump.
“Her death certificate said heart attack. Her heart stopped beating all right, Ben. She was loaded with scopolamine.”
CHAPTER 28
Following hounds on horseback is an early-morning activity. On weekdays people clean their horses, clean themselves, and report to work. In hunt country, many employees use flexible schedules not only for parents but for foxhunters, deer hunters, fishermen. The ways of the place might be altered by modern life but not utterly transformed.
Ben kept Nonni with Betty and Bobby Franklin. He enjoyed tending to his sturdy mare, no beauty basket but honest and wise. Three years ago the sheriff had known nothing about foxhunting. Now he couldn’t imagine life without it, nor could he imagine a day without Nonni. It was a love match.
He changed clothes in the tack room, his uniform crisp, then drove to the hospital. The snow, falling heavily now, worked its magic on the countryside. The brown patches were turning white; tree branches were outlined by a silver-white line on top.
Margaret DuCharme met him in her office.
“Please sit down, Sheriff.”
“Call me Ben.”
“This is an official visit, right?”
“It is.” He sat in the high-tech aluminum chair, the back and bottom a mesh that looked hard but wasn’t.
Margaret walked out from behind her desk and sat opposite him on a duplicate chair.
Noticing his wiggle in the seat, she inquired, “I hope that’s not uncomfortable.”
“No. It’s actually very comfortable.” He noted the décor of her office. “Funny, I would have thought you’d be, uh, I’m not very good at styles and periods, but, you know, traditional.”
She smiled. “Paradise takes care of that. It’s so traditional it’s falling down.” She indicated a slender Italian desk lamp, the dome over the halogen bulb a deep green. “I’m crazy about Italian design.”
“Sleek.” He crossed one leg over the other. “I hope you can help me.”
“Am I under suspicion?” She folded her hands together, leaning slightly forward.
“Technically, yes. Realistically, no. If you were a killer, you’d never be stupid enough to leave the evidence in your vehicle.”
“Thank you.” She smiled, her symmetrical features relaxing. “What can I do to help?”
“How easy is it for a doctor, a nurse, or even an orderly to steal controlled substances?”
She exhaled deeply. “In theory, it’s difficult. Medicines that need to be refrigerated are in locked refrigerators. Those which can be stored at room temperature are in steel cases, locked. Years ago they used wooden cases, but a desperate junkie could pry or smash them open.”
“Do you think things like morphine, say, are taken?”
“Not morphine so much. The drugs of choice are cocaine and OxyContin. Prozac, Valium, mood elevators have a street value, but the real prizes are coke and OxyContin. As you know, all hospitals have some pure cocaine as well as morphine for extreme pain.”
“Steroids?”
She shook her head. “It’s much easier to buy those on the black market than to fool around with the hospital supply, which isn’t that large.”
“Has anyone been caught recently?”
“You would know.”
“Only if the hospital prosecuted. It’s in the administration’s self-interest to let them go quietly, just as it’s in a bank’s self-interest to write off an embezzler. Prosecute; it makes the papers, and the public loses confidence. I may not like it, but that’s the way it is.”
Her eyes leveled on his. “True.”
“So, have drugs been stolen?”
“I don’t know, but common sense tells me, yes.” She smiled. “There’s no wall that can keep out a lover or a cat. If a staff person is hooked on Percodan, they’ll find a way. The higher up they are on the food chain, the more ways they can cover the theft—sometimes for years.”
“Do you think there are doctors who are addicts?”
“Yes. It’s not that uncommon. Do I know who they are? No.”
“What about you?”
“No. I got through my residency drinking enough coffee to float a battleship.” She smiled. “That’s another thing: most doctors drink far too much coffee. The OB/GYNs have the worst of it because babies always seem to appear at three in the morning.” She smiled again.
“They do, don’t they?” His face felt particularly hot. “Another question. Were Iffy and your Uncle Alfred close friends? Do you think it was a passionate relationship?”
She rubbed her chin, an odd gesture that somehow seemed very feminine. “There was a connection there, but I don’t know how deep. It’s not the kind of thing Uncle Al would tell me.”
“An affair? Maybe when Iffy was more attractive, less bitter. Sometimes people can become friends afterwards. Most times not, I guess.” He kept the questioning conversational.
“Iffy?” She pondered this. “I doubt it.”
“Do you know much about your uncle’s business activities?”
Struggling, she swallowed. “He fiddles with stocks. He keeps a few fighting cocks. I stay out of it.” She quickly added, “He seems to be doing better this last year than years prior.”
Ben didn’t press it. “How’s your business?” He smiled broadly.
“Good. People will always tear up their knees.” She laughed.
“Tell me about the drug scopolamine.”
“Commercially it’s called transderm scope. In therapeutic dose, 0.3 to 0.6 milligrams, it’s often used to combat motion sickness. Usually a patient wears a small patch behind the ear.”
“How long does it take to work?”
“Two hours. So if you’re seasick and your cruise leaves the dock at noon, you’d put the patch on at ten.”
“Does it have other uses?”
“Arthritis. Then it’s usually in a cream. And it may be used in combination with other drugs—atropine, for example.” She paused. “I don’t have much use for it. My work generally is on ligaments and muscles. But people have such different chemistries. There may be a patient who responds better to scopolamine for chronic pain than another drug. Why?”
“An autopsy report has crossed my desk. The corpse had extremely high levels of scopolamine.”
She tapped her finger on the chair arm. “It can kill you.”
“How—I mean how could you administer it, and what would be the symptoms?”
“Mix a lethal dose and put it on a patch. Patches come four in a package. Any physician could easily mix up a dose. It’s not difficult at all.”
“Any other way?”
“Sure, put it in a cream. Depending on how quickly you wanted it to work, you’d alter the dose, obviously. But it will kill you in twenty-four hours if that dose is over the line.”
“Let’s say I’ve mixed up cream, arthritis cream. It’s full of scopolamine. What happens to the victim?”
“Depending on their age, current health, they’ll become confused, then sleepy. They can’t keep their eyes open. The heart will beat arrhythmically. Death.”
“Looks like a heart attack.”
“Yes.”
“If the victim were quite old, the heart failure probably wouldn’t arouse suspicion?”
“Probably not. Most elderly people have heart problems. The pump shows signs of wear and tear.”
“Anything else about scopolamine?”