Outlier: One mistake can destroy everything. (3 page)

Sunday, 9 a.m.

He’d showered, shaved, dressed, and drank plenty of strong coffee. He barely remembered the night before.

“Agent Long, this is Detective Lovac. You got a few minutes?”

“Hey Sean, how you doing? You’re calling me on a Sunday, so it must be important!”

Sean explained what had happened—the unexplained and significant intracranial pressure.

“Jesus, man, I’m sorry. That’s horrible. You sure you’re up for this? I mean, maybe you should take some time off?

“No, Alan, I need this. It’s the only thing I want right now.”

“All right, Detective; remember your training. Think objectively. If somebody did this, they had a reason. They had a method. A plan. They had to implement that plan. Start from the scene. Look at everything fresh. First, look through the lens of motive. Then look through the lens of method. Then look through the lens of plan implementation. Take your time. She live alone?”

“Yeah.”

“You got access?”

“Yeah. Far as I can tell, they checked it, and they’re done. The big mystery, for now, is at the coroner’s office.”

“OK. Go back to the house. Take your time. Make zero assumptions. Separate the two. Scene and body. You sure you can deal with this objectively?”

“Yeah. I got this.”

“OK, Detective. Let me know what you find. I got your back on this. Anything you need.”

Thirty minutes later, he was at Sheryl’s house.
No. The victim’s house. Objective. Data. Facts. Logic. Reason.

He looked at the house. First, motive. Look at everything through the lens of motive. He started around the side, reaching around and unlatching the fence. He walked down the dirt path, looking at the ground. Nothing. Came to the backyard and walked the perimeter. Stopped in the middle of the back fence. Looked at the windows. The yellow paint. The roof. The shingles. Nothing.

He walked back to the front, on the other side. Little bit wider. Three trash cans. Recyclables, burnables, everything else. He looked in all three. Nothing conspicuous. Back to the front of the house. Manicured lawn. Forcing the experience from only two days ago to an off-limits part of his brain, he walked up to the window and looked inside. Backed up. Walked to the front door and looked under the mat. In the mailbox.

He put on a pair of gloves and ran his fingers along the top of the doorjamb. Opened the door with his keys and slowly walked inside. Looked at where she had lain, remembering the scene. He sat where she would have sat. Went from where she had sat to where she had been on the floor.

She had gone toward the living room, toward the door, not toward the kitchen or the sink. She didn’t feel sick. She didn’t think drinking water would help. She didn’t feel like puking. Her hand was on her phone. He pulled his phone out. Went from the chair to the floor several times until he could reproduce exactly the spot where the phone had been when he’d found it. Duplicating the placement was difficult. The only way was to carefully go down to the floor. Not a fall or collapse; almost like lying down on purpose.

Was somebody here? Did somebody tell her to lie down? He sat down again, imagining somebody behind him with a gun, telling him to lie down. Plausible. How could he tell somebody to lie down and then create a sudden and significant amount of cranial pressure? Syringe maybe? He activated his voice recording app.

“Check for small puncture wounds, back or base of skull.”

He looked at the blood stains. They were not far from where her head had been. Blunt force would have sent splatter a lot further. A syringe might produce what he had seen. How would he do it? Slowly insert. Maybe. Why would he do it?

He walked in the front room. Sofa, two chairs, an entertainment center. Pictures, framed, about fifteen with various people he knew. Relatives, friends from school, his friends, and coworkers. He looked at each one and thought hard.
Would you do it? If so, why?
He couldn’t come up with any answers.

He walked down the hall. First bedroom on the left had been converted into an office. There was a desk, computer, and a filing cabinet. There were more pictures of her and her kids. Would her kids do this? High school sophomores and juniors. He looked, but nothing jumped out.

Back out to the hallway. Second door, right side. It was the half bath. Shampoo and other toiletries were neatly lined up around the sink. Not sure what they were, but everything looked legit and store-bought. No medical kits. He checked the trash. No syringe tips.

Back to the hallway; this time he entered the master bedroom. There was a queen-size bed, which he’d slept in many times. It was very soft and fully made. The closet contained lots of clothes and shoes. He’d seen it hundreds of times before, and nothing seemed out of place. There were also a couple of his shirts. The thoughts in that off-limits part of his brain screamed to be let out. He forced them back.

He went back to the office and fired up the computer. Entered her password. Checked her Facebook. No messages from mad scientist criminals. Nothing angry; mostly friends and teacher stuff. She’d been tagged in several pictures. He opened her email. It had been a couple days since she had checked it last. There were about forty messages. He recognized most of them. A few spam. He didn’t delete them.

He looked through her old emails—the ones she hadn’t deleted. Methodical. Painstaking. There were a few from him; most were from teachers, and a couple from students. He read them, only finding questions about assignments—no love notes or hate notes.

Well, there were a few clumsy love notes from that guy Jay they both went to school with. He hung around in her room sometimes after classes were over, trying to make small talk. Poor guy was harmless enough and kept to himself. He didn’t talk to the other staff much, except for Sheryl. She worried about him sometimes.

Sean remembered that there had been a painful event—for Jay, at least—back in junior year. Sheryl seemed to be the only person to ask if he was OK. Nothing that went as far as bullying—at least, nothing physical. But he was pretty embarrassed, nonetheless.

Sean kept scanning through the rest of the saved emails. Finally, one stood out. Not spam. Not personal. It had been opened two months ago. Not deleted. He clicked it.

Dear Ms. Paimen,

Thank you for your inquiry into the clinical trials for LoZiet, a stress-reducing medication now in clinical trials. To complete your application, please call the number below between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Please have the following information available:

              Date of Birth

              Brief Medical History

              Drug and Alcohol Use

              Tobacco Use

              Estimated Level of Stress

              Current Methods of Reducing Stress

              Availability (Nights, weekends, etc.)

Please note that only fully qualified candidates will be able to participate. Thanks again for your interest in BioGyn Pharmaceuticals.

He wrote the number down. This was something. A medical test gone wrong? He didn’t know much about clinical trials, but he suspected there were plenty of forms they made you sign, including one indemnifying them of any responsibility. Well, this wasn’t going to stay quiet, that’s for sure.

He printed out the email and started to dial Alan. Then he thought better of it.

He’d do this himself. Somebody was going to pay.

Sunday, 11 a.m.

The first thing Bethany noticed when she woke up was that she was alone. She had expected that. Poor guy had been going out with that girl since school, and she suddenly dropped dead. That had to suck. But last night— despite the drunkenness and all those feelings she knew he had to be holding back—was a dream come true.

She’d been crushing on him since she first saw him back in high school. Perfect face, perfect body. She tried to get him to notice her, but he only had eyes for Sheryl. That was the thing. Sheryl was just too nice to hate. But she was gone now, and Bethany was here. She got up and looked around, hoping for a note telling her how wonderful the night had been. Maybe a promise to call later. She found nothing, but she wasn’t disappointed, because the competition was gone. Was she bad for thinking like this? Maybe. She wouldn’t push it. She didn’t want him thinking she was like that.

She’d had her share of guys since school.
Damn, ten years ago? More?
She didn’t like counting. She’d passed the halfway mark to fifty, the quarter-century mark, all alone. Nobody had helped her celebrate. She didn’t talk to her parents much, despite the fact that they still lived in Rockport.

Bethany knew that everybody would be talking about Sheryl. She was a teacher at Rockport-Fulton High, about to get engaged to the town detective, and BAM! Suddenly she was dead. The gossip would be juicy. Much juicier than when they had found that bloated body on the beach a couple years ago. These were good people. There was nothing like bad things happening to good people that fired up small-town gossip.

Shit. What if she DID have competition? She wouldn’t let that happen. After all, she was there first after Sheryl died, right? She was there to comfort him. He’d remember that. She had to check. She scrambled for her yearbook, all three of them. They were in boxes at the bottom of the closet in her spare bedroom. Why’d she have such a big place? Sure, she made enough tips, but she wasn’t saving anything. In fact, every month her credit card debt was getting bigger and bigger.

How much did detectives make, anyway? Probably a lot. She knew one of the teachers and thought she remembered him telling her how much he made. Wasn’t as much as she thought. But a detective?
Sean’s got to have a decent salary.
She chastised herself—only slightly—for thinking like that. But as they say, every cloud has a silver lining, right? She’d take her time. She would be sure to call him and make sure he was OK. Try not to come on too strong.

“Found it!” She pulled out all three years. Quickly flipped through the pages. Tried to see if any of the pretty girls were still around. She went through twice. Once to check which girls were still in town. It took her only a few minutes, because not many were. Some were in Houston or here in San Antonio; others were out of state. She checked the ones still in Rockport or San Antonio. Then she checked them again, to see who was married and who wasn’t. She didn’t think Sean was the type to fall for a married girl, but you never know. Something like this happens to a guy like him, and the ladies come out of the woodwork.

She spent the rest of the morning scrutinizing the three yearbooks. She’d marked them on four corners of each picture. Here or gone. Married or divorced. Pretty or fat. She X’d out all of the ones who were disqualified. Only the ones that were here, single (divorced or never married), and not fat she circled. Luckily, there were only a few. She’d make a point to find out everything she could about those four bitches. Nobody was getting between her and Sean.

She didn’t think Sean would go for a fatty. She stood up and checked herself in the mirror. She had learned long ago that if she kept her figure and made sure she didn’t let her boobs sag, she earned a lot more in tips. She still looked pretty good. She’d have to look better, just in case. She took off her shirt, checking her profile. Checking her ass. Yep, she could do better. A lot better.

Whatever he needed, she’d find a way to help him and be there for him. It must have been fate that he had come to her bar the night before.

She had a lot of work to do.

Dr. Anthony Nguyen sat back in his worn leather chair, the documents spread out in front of him. None of it made any sense. Most of what Dr. Nguyen saw was simple. Gunshot wounds. Stabbings. Blunt force trauma. Once in a while something exotic like a poisoning. Nothing that took more than a couple hours to determine the cause of death. Dr. Nguyen didn’t like puzzles that weren’t made to be solved. Or anything that couldn’t be explained by science.

He’d come to the United States when he was eight. He had escaped Vietnam with his mother and two sisters shortly after the fall of Saigon. His family was originally from the north and had moved to the south when the communists took control. They knew they were bad. So when the south fell, they knew they had to get out. Getting out wasn’t easy. They’d spent their life savings bribing their way onto a small fishing boat, sneaking away at night.

Many families did the same, only to find that the boat had left without them or had gone to another harbor to swindle another family, desperate and willing to do anything to leave. All of their plans were the same. Find safe passage out into international waters, and then wait. If they could last long enough, not run out of food or water, and not be killed or kidnapped by pirates, they would be picked up by an American vessel. Tony, his mother, and his younger sister, then three, made it. His older sister, then 14, did not. She was the prime age to be sold into sexual slavery.

When the aircraft carrier had hauled them out of the ocean, they felt a mixture of happiness and utter despair. So much lost. Life savings, their home, their family member. Tony had promised his mom he’d take care of them, somehow. Some way. They had spent two months on the USS Coral Sea. The sailors were big and friendly. Tony watched them exercise and run laps around the ship. He tried to keep up, but he couldn’t. They were kind and gave him encouragement. On their third night, they watched Star Wars in the ship’s theater. Tony was amazed. Surely this new country would offer him and his family something. Some way to make things right. Some way to heal his past.

They’d ended up in a refugee camp near Houston, where they’d stayed for three months. Then Tony’s mom got a job through a distant cousin cleaning houses. Tony went to school and learned English as fast as he could. He was a natural in math and science. He studied medicine, as that proved to be the easiest path to get his education paid for by the US Government. After graduating at the top of his class from Baylor College of Medicine, he interned at University General Hospital. He received many offers, but accepted a meager position and a meager salary as a coroner, and he’d been there ever since. He despised those who flaunted the system. Those who worked angles to get ahead. His experience with the heavy-handed North Vietnamese Government left a lasting impression, as did the pirates. He felt his calling was to protect. To help find criminals, rather than heal innocents.

Which is precisely why this case bothered him so much. There was zero scientific explanation for this. Zero cases in medical history. Sure, a sudden increase in blood pressure would cause an aneurysm, which happens when the walls of the blood vessels in the brain rupture. But this wasn’t a simple aneurysm. Those are local and only affect certain areas. This affected the entire brain at once. Not just the vessels and arteries. All parts of the brain seemed as though somebody had injected some foreign fluid into them, forcing the fluid and the brain matter to find the path of least resistance. In this case, it was the eyes and nose. Yet there were no marks. No signs of puncture or even the smallest gauge.

Theoretically, a sudden and significant increase in overall blood pressure could cause such trauma, but there would be signs of that everywhere. The only sign of any trauma was in the inner cranium. No evidence of heart valve rupture, no evidence of micro-abrasions elsewhere. How was this possible? Perhaps a localized microwave or sound wave device? That would require the victim to remain stationary in order to allow such a device to be applied. Something like that could not be effective at a distance greater than a few centimeters.

He began to theorize. To think in terms not of science or medicine but of fantasy. What did the character Holmes say? When the obvious is excluded, one must consider the non-obvious? When the rational is excluded, one must consider the irrational? Yet everything had to be explained according to the laws of chemistry, physics, and biology. Perhaps under hypnosis, one could remain silent and passive while such a device was applied? Possible. Perhaps under hypnosis, a syringe could be inserted under one eye, and the brain filled that way? Not all drugs were known. Perhaps a drug that made the victim passive while such a microwave device was applied.

If that were the case, what would be the motive? Why her? Why that way? Why in her home? Just then the phone rang, stirring him out of his uncomfortable uncertainty.

“Dr. Nguyen,” he answered.

“Hey Tony, this is Bernie over at Memorial. I just looked over that file you sent me. Any ideas? Cause I got nothing.”

“Hey Bernie; yeah, I’m just wondering about that myself. Nothing I can think of outside of the outlandish. Anything I’ve come up with requires some kind of externally applied force, either direct injection or some kind of externally applied microwaves of some sort. Which would mean that the victim was somehow pacified for the duration. At least a few minutes. Which means this was a very involved event. It took planning, and it took time. I don’t know what I’m going to say to Sean—Detective Lovac, who’s also the fiancé. I can’t see any reason to justify this being a spontaneous event, despite having told him otherwise. I’m kind of in a pickle here.”

“That’s a tough one, Doctor. I really wish I could help. I’ve called a few people, being as vague as I could, like you asked, and nobody has heard of anything like this. There have been some similar studies done on primates, but like you said, that was all involving externally applied forces. Nothing spontaneous.”

There was a pause as both doctors hoped the other would speak first. Neither liked puzzles like this. Especially one so close to home.

“There is one thing. I doubt there’s any connection, but I suppose it may be better than nothing,” Dr. Bernard Roth said.

“Yeah, I’ll take anything at this point, Bernie.”

“Well, you didn’t hear this from me, but one of the other, uh, persons I asked about this told me—obliquely—that BioGyn was interested in using Rockport as one of their study targets.”

“BioGyn, huh?” he said, searching his memory. BioGyn made a whole range of common, over-the-counter remedies. Dr. Nguyen couldn’t think of any prescription- based medication that they were involved with. But there were so many, he would have to verify to make sure.

“Any idea what they were looking at?”

“Well, all I heard was that it was some kind of all-purpose stress reliever. But I didn’t get many details. In all honesty, it was from somebody who heard from somebody, so I’m afraid I can’t be of much help.”

“Oh, no, Doctor; that’s at least a start. I was starting to think Star Trek theories.” They both laughed.

He stared at the documents again after hanging up. He’d have to check everything BioGyn had on the market. Finding out what they were working on may be difficult, as no company developing any kind of drug would reveal the precise structure until they released it.

An over-the-counter, all-purpose stress relief drug. What would be the composition of that, and how in the world would it be involved in creating a forcible exit of brain matter through the eye sockets?