Damn it, what was missing?
Talk to Kitty.
Louis looked around the room for the autopsy report and saw it lying on the floor near the dresser. There was water dripping from the ceiling right over the top of it.
He snatched it up and shook the water free. He moved back to the bed, crawled up against the pillows and reached for his glasses.
At the lung analysis he stopped.
Potassium monopersulfate. He had tripped on it the first time he read the report but had forgotten about it. Ahnert said to look for something that was missing, so this couldn’t be it. What else had Ahnert said? Something is there that shouldn’t be. Was this it?
He looked at his watch. It was almost dawn. He couldn’t call Vince Carissimi, the ME, for a couple hours yet.
He crawled off the bed and went to the closet. He had not fully unpacked, even after a year, but he knew he had a dictionary somewhere. He rifled through a box of books. College texts, old notebooks, a yellowed police manual from Ann Arbor and his high school yearbook. Nothing.
Well, his generic dictionary probably wouldn’t have the sulfate thing in it anyway. He looked at the phone, hesitated, then walked to it. He dialed Susan’s number.
It rang once and he was surprised she picked up so quickly, but she was probably used to getting late-night calls.
“Hello. .” She sounded drugged.
“Susan, I need you to look up something for me.”
“Huh?”
“This is Louis. That big dictionary on your dining room table-”
“I. . what time is it?”
“It’s almost morning,” Louis said.
“The hell it is. Wait a minute. .”
He heard her sheets rustle, then she came back to the phone.
“Tell me first what you said to Mobley.”
“I didn’t say anything to him.”
“You swear?”
“I swear.”
There was a pause. He could hear her breathing.
“Susan, I swear.”
“Okay, what do you need a dictionary for?”
“There was something in Kitty Jagger’s lungs that wasn’t explained. Look it up for me.”
There was a long pause. Then a sigh. “Kincaid, I thought you were going to find Candace’s girlfriend.”
“Come on, Susan. Please.”
“Hold on.”
The phone went down with a clank in his ear. A minute later, she was back.
“Spell it.”
Louis read off the letters.
He could hear pages turning. “Okay. Here it is. All I see here is potassium sulfate. . no mono-thing.”
“Okay, what is potassium sulfate?”
“You’re not going to like this, Kincaid.”
“What is it?”
“ ‘Potassium sulfate: A white crystalline compound used especially in fertilizer’.”
Louis closed his eyes. Who more likely to use fertilizer than a damn landscaper?
“Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Maybe she got it from the dumpsite.”
“It was in her lungs, Susan. Dead people don’t inhale anything.”
Susan was silent for a moment. “Maybe she wasn’t dead when she was dumped.”
“No blood at the dumpsite. She bled and died somewhere else.”
Susan sighed tiredly. “Sorry, Kincaid.”
“Not your fault.” He tossed the autopsy report to the bed. “Thanks anyway.”
“No problem. I know what it’s like.”
He stared at the puddle of water near the dresser. “Sorry I woke you.”
“Don’t worry about it. I think better on five hours sleep.”
“Thanks for understanding.”
“I’m not understanding, I’m just groggy. I still think you’re chasing ghosts. Get some sleep, Kincaid. You’ve got to go lezzie hunting tomorrow.”
“Right.” He hung up.
He started to gather up the files, then stopped, looking again at the autopsy report.
There’s something missing that should be there. Damn, what was he looking for?
Louis took the report back to the bed. Issy was curled up on the pillow, giving herself a bath. He started to move her aside, then stopped. He eased himself in next to her.
A bird had started up somewhere outside his window. The light was graying up. He put on his glasses and started reading again.
Chapter Nineteen
The tape player was going. It was the Doors, but it took Louis a moment to recognize the song “People Are Strange.” The autopsy room was empty. Not even a corpse on the table.
The smell of brewing coffee defused the room’s normal must. Louis’s eyes went to the Mr. Coffee on the counter, dripping out a mud-black stream. He was about to help himself to a cup when the door opened and Vince Carissimi came in, tying an apron over his green scrubs.
“Hey, Kincaid, long time no see,” he said, smiling. “What brings you down here so early?”
“I need help,” Louis said.
“Looks like you need coffee.” Vince pointed to the coffee pot. “If that doesn’t jumpstart the ticker, nothing will.”
Louis poured a cup and went to a desk, where Vince was looking at a clipboard.
“Okay,” Vince said. “I got some time before I have to start on Mrs. Piccoli. What you need?”
Louis held out Kitty Jagger’s autopsy report. “I need you to take a look at this for me.”
Vince took it, pursing his lips. “Kitty Jagger. Wow, moldy oldie. This have anything to do with the Cade case? I heard you’re working for his defense.”
There was a slight coolness to Vince’s voice. Or was Louis just hearing something that wasn’t there?
“It might,” Louis said.
Vince was looking at the wound chart, shaking his head. “Man, I haven’t seen one of these in years. This one looks a little like June Allyson.”
“Vince. .”
“Sorry, what did you say you needed?”
“The detective who worked the case told me there is something missing from this report that should be there. He told me to ‘talk to Kitty.’ ”
Vince gave him a weird look.
Louis took a sip of the coffee and tried not to grimace. “I was up all night looking at the thing but I can’t see it.”
Vince was already flipping the pages. Jim Morrison had moved on to “I Can’t See Your Face in My Mind.”
“Looks pretty standard, Louis,” he said. “No anguis in herba that I can see.”
“What?”
“Snake in the grass. Nothing weird lurking.”
Louis let out a tired sigh. “You sure?”
“I am always sure.” He hesitated. “Wait, here’s something interesting. Look at this.”
Louis moved closer.
Vince had flipped back to the first page. “Cause of death: cerebral hemorrhage due to blunt trauma. Not possible.”
“Why not?” Louis asked.
“Because according to this, she lost most the blood from her body. Dead people don’t bleed like that.”
“So the stab wounds killed her?”
Vince nodded. He was reading something else.
“Was she hit or stabbed first?” Louis asked.
“I’d guess hit and knocked out. She had a skull fracture. Then someone stabbed her. The pathologist got it backward. Humanum est errare.”
Louis shook his head. “The detective didn’t say something was wrong. He said something was missing. Missing.”
Vince ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair and flipped back a page. He was silent for a moment. The Doors had moved on to “When the Music’s Over.”
“Whoa,” Vince said softly.
“What?”
“According to this, they took two semen samples, one from the panties, the other vaginal. Standard procedure,” Vince said. “See this? This is the lab report on the sample from the panties-blood type O positive.”
“Yeah, I know about that.”
Vince looked up.
“What?” Louis asked.
“There’s no lab report from the vaginal sample,” Vince said. “The lab would routinely type all samples to eliminate the possibility of multiple perpetrators or partners. You know, in case she was having sex with a boyfriend.”