A widower suffering from dementia, he has kids who don’t live here or care, it seems. Delusional and paranoid, he believed the government was after him, and had tried to escape multiple times in the past.
“Well, I think you may have figured it out,” I say to Andy. “And that would explain why his DNA’s not in CODIS.”
“What’s really bad is the barn where he was found isn’t even two miles from the nursing home.” Taking off his gloves and mask, he walks over to me, his blue eyes tired behind his glasses, the stubble on his chin salty white. “I’m getting the impression nobody looked all that hard. What it sounds like is he wandered off in his confused state and sought shelter.”
“What time of year was it?”
“February during a cold snap,” he says, and how terribly sad. “Do you think you’ll sign him out as an accident?” he asks, and I don’t answer.
I won’t be around to do that. The next chief will have to but I act as if business will go on as usual.
“We’ll see what else we find out,” I reply.
“I have a feeling this is going to end up in a lawsuit.” He takes off his lab coat.
“Yes, I’m sure the kids who had no use for him will go after the nursing home,” I reply, walking off.
CHAPTER 38
WHERE I’M HEADED IS in a wing of its own for good reason.
The lab is windowless, its walls, floor and ceiling thick concrete reinforced with steel to minimize vibrations or anything else that might interfere with highly sensitive instruments. When I walk in, Rex is seated at the scanning electron microscope （SEM） with trace evidence examiner Lee Fishburne.
“She’s never been known for her modesty,” Rex says instantly, and I don’t know what he’s talking about. “Greta Fruge,” he explains. “I was on the phone with her a little while ago.”
“She can be a showboat but is one hell of a toxicologist,” Lee volunteers, and I remember him from my early years when I was in Richmond.
His thick black hair is now a white crescent around the back of his head, and he’s thinner, a little stooped.
“She’s going to work with us, supplying assays,” Rex says, his attention lingering on me, and he knows.
I can see it in his eyes.
“Hopefully, we can find better ways to identify what’s hitting the streets, bad stuff like iso,” he says. “And that might be what was used to poison the wine you carried home from France.”
“What we’re looking at right now is microscopic evidence that was in samples we took from the bottle.” Lee indicates the images on flat screens above a console as complicated as any cockpit.
At a magnification of 2000X, he’s identified trace evidence that includes multicolored paint pigments, copper, lead, silica, bat hair and periwinkle pollen grains that look like pinkish-yellow coral.
“Periwinkle?” I inquire, and while it’s not indigenous to Virginia, the creeper vines had overtaken the garden when we moved into our new home.
The perennial is native to Europe, and was brought to America in the 1700s, the very time our house was built. Without a doubt there’s an abundance of periwinkle pollen on the property inside and out. There would be paint pigments and everything else I’m seeing. Even bat hair, I suppose.
How distressing if it turns out the wine was tampered with inside our own basement. Could I get more things wrong? I’m plagued by doubts that are growing by leaps and bounds.
“What can you tell me about the paint pigments?” I look at them on the video displays.
“They’re old, real old,” Lee lets me know. “The green pigment has arsenic in it, and that’s not been used for centu ries. The white paint you’re seeing is made of lead. The blue is lapis lazuli, one of the most expensive pigments long ago, usually reserved for important works of art like painting the Madonna, for example.”
“I’m wondering if what we’re finding means anything to you,” Rex says to me.
I think of the trace evidence that we’d discover if we started analyzing microscopic samples from my own place. The house was hung with valuable old art while the former ambassador to the U.K. lived there. From what I gather, he collected rare paintings, sculptures and tapestries during his travels, and had them throughout the house.
I don’t let on that what Lee is finding on SEM and X-ray diffraction might have anything to do with me personally. Even Rex doesn’t know the whole truth about the poisoned wine, only that it was given to me overseas, and I made the mistake of tasting it. At least I can be grateful that Elvin is none the wiser about that, not yet at any rate, and it’s time to go home. I’ve done enough damage for one day.