“I’d hate that, too,” said Nikki. “I’d want a week to diet first.”
“Yuh, right,” her friend laughed, “like you’d need to, woman of steel.” Nikki could hear keystrokes and pictured the ME in the cramped dictation office, at the desk that looked out onto the autopsy room. “OK, interesting discovery about that fingernail they vacuumed up in the torture room. It wasn’t a fingernail after all, but tested out as hardened polyester.”
“Plastic? That looked like a fingernail?”
“Exactly like a fingernail clipping. Even the same color. But know what it actually was?” Lauren, always happy to put on a show, said, “Wait for it . . . A piece of a button. Little crescent-shaped sliver broken off a button.”
“So no DNA help.”
“No, but if you find the button, we can always match it.”
The detective didn’t see a lot of hope there. “What else you got?”
“Something inconsistent came out of the ECU sweep at the rectory. I’m looking at the meds they collected from the victim’s bathroom chest. There is a vial of adefovir dipivoxil. That’s a reverse transcriptase inhibitor used to treat HIV, tumors, cancer, and hepatitis-B. The thing is, Nikki, the priest had none of those conditions. And none of it showed up in his tox screening.”
A true odd sock, Heat thought as she finished jotting down the list of diseases. “But it was his prescription?”
“Made out to Gerald Francis Graf, ten milligrams. The pill count says it was full.”
“Who’s the doctor?” Nikki wrote Raymond Colabro on her spiral Ampad.
“And a heads-up,” Lauren added. “The DNA test is still in process on that blood on Graf’s collar.”
“What about that little speck you showed me in that vial?”
“As I thought, a flake of leather from a laminate. But it’s not consistent with any equipment at Pleasure Bound, including the other studios, or any of the devices in their storage locker. I’ve ordered more forensic testing to ID its source. When we get a hit, I’ll call you.” Before she hung up, she added, “And remember, Detective Heat, you show up on my autopsy table? I’ll kill you.”
* * *
The first thing the old lady said when she saw Heat was “Good Lord, is that blood?” Heat had managed to do a commendable wet paper towel job on her coat in the precinct restroom but skipped the blouse. Her neck was wrapped by a scarf, and she had her coat fastened all the way up, but some of her collar must have been visible. Mrs. Borelli seemed less put off by the idea of blood and more focused on the laundry mission. “Give me a half hour, I can get that out for you.”
Career caregiver, thought Nikki, smiling at her. “Thank you, but I won’t be that long.” Heat adjusted the scarf to conceal the stain.
When they reached the kitchen, the housekeeper said, “You’re going to roast in that coat. If you’re leaving it on for me, don’t.” Nikki kept it on anyway and sat at the table where there was a cup of hot coffee waiting for her and homemade pizzelles resting on the saucer.
Ms. B. still seemed fragile, so the detective decided not to jam her right off about the picture. Instead she began by saying, “I dropped by to see if you can clear something up. Yesterday we collected prescriptions from Father Graf’s medicine cabinet, and among them was something called adefovir. What’s confusing is he had none in his system and had none of the diseases it would be prescribed for.”
“I don’t know what he had in that cabinet. I cleaned in there, but personal is personal, and it doesn’t get any more so than a medicine chest.”
Nikki nibbled a pizzelle. It was extraordinary. If heaven were made of vanilla, that is what it would taste like. For Nikki, this was lunch. She finished it off and said, “I wanted to ask if perhaps the adefovir was yours.”