Nic spent the early part of the morning at Jim Fate's autopsy. The observation suite was crowded with representatives from an alphabet soup of local, state, and national law enforcement as well as public health agencies.
Even though the air in Jim's studio had tested negative for sarin, the examiners took no chances. The forensic pathologist and his assistant wore yellow Tyvek suits and white helmets with their own air supply hoses snaking up their backs. The helmets made them look like spacemen. They also wore rubber aprons, shoe covers, and heavy gloves. Even with all these layers, they worked as quickly as possible, because the CDC had warned them that sarin could penetrate rubber and be absorbed through skin. To minimize the risk, they had begun by washing Jim Fate's corpse--which looked pale and vulnerable and sadly human--with a 5 percent hypochlorite solution.
Of course, washing the body meant there was also a chance that they would wash away hairs, fibers, chemicals, and other trace evidence. But the FBI still had the package the poison had been mailed in. In balancing risk versus reward, safety won out.
As soon as the autopsy was done, Nic drove back to the FBI Portland field office to head up the first meeting of the hastily assembled task force. The conference room was jammed. As a sign of how seriously they were taking this attack, top brass at the FBI had flown out specialized personnel from Quantico and headquarters to assist and evaluate. Senior officials from Homeland Security were also on hand. For now, the outsiders were taking a watch-and-wait approach. If it wasn't sarin, they would turn back around and fly back to Washington. If it was, then they would already be in place to swing into action.
Most members of the Portland FBI's evidence recovery team were also at the table, including Leif, who was the ERT's leader. There were also representatives from local and regional law enforcement, the Oregon Health Department, the post office, and more. Nic was thrilled to see Allison there, which meant she had been assigned as the lead prosecutor, and the two of them would work the case together. Catching Nic's eye, Allison gave her a smile so subtle that to an observer it might have looked like a simple widening of the eyes. For both of them, this was a case that could be the high--or low--point of their careers.
One question was on everyone's mind. Was this an act of terrorism? Or were they looking at a simple homicide?
Nic started off by explaining the findings from the autopsy to the circle of alert faces. "Unfortunately, the immediate autopsy results were inconclusive. Some evidence points to sarin, but some doesn't. For instance, the first responders reported that Fate's face was dry. Sarin pretty much switches all your systems to a permanent on, so his eyes and nose should have been running like faucet, and he should have been drooling. But there was no evidence of that."
"Have you thought that maybe Fate died so fast that his tear ducts didn't have time to kick in?" Special Agent Heath Robinson asked.
It was a fair question, but one with a more pointed history behind it. Heath had asked Nic out a dozen times, and even tried to kiss her at a party last New Year's Eve. At the time Nic had told him, truthfully, that she didn't date. Since then she had caught wind of a few whispers about her being a lesbian or a man-hater or both. She was pretty sure that Heath was the source.
"That is, of course, a possibility," Nic said evenly. "It's just one piece of the evidence. Another is that Tony--that's Tony Sardella, the medical examiner," she explained for the benefit of the outsiders--"Tony says the corpse had miosis, meaning the pupils were like pinpricks. That is consistent with sarin. Unfortunately it's also consistent with a lot of other poisons. And the lungs were congested, but again that could point to sarin or a dozen other things. The one thing that made Tony wonder was that there was no"--Nic consulted her notes--"no intense postmortem lividity." Lividity was the purplish skin stains seen on the underside of a corpse, where blood settled.
"He says that if it was sarin, the lividity should have been much more pink, but the stains were the typical purple color. Again, not conclusive. We're waiting on the results of the initial tox screens, and we should get those sometime soon. There wasn't enough time for anything to get into his urine, so they're only running tests on his blood."
Nic was beginning to think that the cause of death was going to be solved not with scalpels and saws on the autopsy table, but with microscopes in a lab.
"One thing we do know is that the air in the studio tested negative for sarin. But that test was conducted over an hour after the body was removed. It's conceivable that Fate inhaled most of the dose, and the rest was dispersed when the first responders got there and opened the door to the studio?'