Blood Flag: A Paul Madriani Novel (24 page)

He collected himself and looked back toward the hill. The firebreak was ablaze, a straight line of fuel-fed flames pointing like an arrow back up the incline toward the top of the ridge. There, standing at the edge, he saw the figure. Ari knew instantly that he was in trouble. He glanced quickly at the satellite phone on the seat next to him and knew it was useless. The plane and its men were too far away to help him.

He tried to start the engine, fumbled with the key, then looked back up the hill. His eyes searched the ridge and he realized that the dark figure was no longer standing there. He tried again and the engine started. He slammed it into gear and floored it. As he pulled hard on the steering wheel the car spun a doughnut in the dry sand. The rear wheels, struggling to find traction, finally dug in and the car took off. Ari turned on his headlights and sped down the road.

Squeezing the wheel, hanging on tight, he kept glancing over his right shoulder up toward the hill where the road led. His heart was hammering, blood vessels pounding in his head. Ari was almost through the narrow area of dirt road when he saw the glare of the lights coming from somewhere high up on the hill. He tried to push the gas pedal through the floor. The car jumped from dirt onto the pavement as the tires grabbed asphalt. The car rocketed ahead down the road, around a curve racing for the on-ramp to the expressway. Ari could see it in the distance less than a mile away. He looked in the rearview mirror and watched as the halo of light in the night sky behind him faded and slowly disappeared.

By the time Nino reached the fork in the road he realized he was too late. Before he got to the expressway Ari would be long gone. Within a few miles he would be back on the freeway, where he could take any one of a dozen off-ramps and disappear. He looked in the mirror at the glow from the burning wreckage over the hill behind him. He thought about driving over to take a look, but then decided that wouldn’t be wise. An explosion like that could be seen for miles, especially on a dark night like this. Instead he stepped on the gas and headed down the road. That’s all right, he thought. The cadaver can run, but he can’t hide.

THIRTY

H
arry and I are huddled in my office going over hospital records and notes regarding Robert Brauer’s care in the days before he died. The crucial issue is insulin.

According to the conclusions of the medical examiner in Brauer’s autopsy report, “The cause of death is consistent with metabolic encephalopathy resulting from hypoglycemia believed to be induced by the administration of high levels of exogenous insulin.”

In short, somebody shot Brauer up with an estimated eight hundred units of insulin, the daily normal being about fifty. The overdose caused the glucose in his blood to drop like a rock, putting him into insulin shock within minutes. He would have been unable to help himself or call for assistance. If anyone looked in on him they would have thought he was asleep.

According to the literature, insulin, which is sometimes used to attempt or commit suicide, is not considered a particularly certain method of inducing death. On the other hand, though, according to the report, if you’re of a mind, eight hundred units should do it. Because of the volume there is no possibility of an accident. The syringe had to be filled at least eight times to get the job done.

“Whoever did it dumped it into the IV that was plugged into the back of his hand,” says Harry. “The nurse had him on a drip to replace fluids. He was becoming dehydrated. The cops figure he was asleep, probably dozed off when the insulin was administered. The fact that it went directly into the vein instead of being shot into the fatty tissue of the stomach or the leg means it went to work much faster. There was almost no wait time for the effect.”

“Where did they find the bottle?” I ask.

“In the trash can in the corner of the room along with the syringe. The bottle is how they know the dosage. Full, it would have had a thousand units,” says Harry. “According to the nurses’ notes it had nine hundred units remaining when she brought it into the room. There were a hundred units left when they found it in the trash.”

The last hundred units the killer probably would have had a hard time getting out with the syringe. He wouldn’t want to take the time in case someone walked in. He already knew he had more than enough. “Do we have a time frame on all this?”

“Estimates,” says Harry. “It was the night shift.” He paws through the pile of documents stacked on the other side of my desk. “According to the nurse, she worked a twelve-hour shift that night, seven to seven. She came into Brauer’s room with medications and the insulin about seven fifteen. Emma was there at the time. Brauer had a set of tests late in the day. They just rolled him back into his room a few minutes earlier. They were going to bring him a late dinner. That was the reason for the insulin. The nurse had everything laid out on the bedside table and then there was an emergency, a code blue. She got called away. There was only one RN and an LVN on that floor that night. That was it.”

“How long does she say she was gone?”

“According to her notes,” says Harry, “a little over ninety minutes. About ten minutes in, she sent a nursing assistant back to Brauer’s room to secure the meds and put a hold on Brauer’s dinner until they could give him his insulin. According to the assistant she held the dinner tray outside the room and picked up the meds. All she saw were three small plastic cups with pills on the table next to the bed. There was no insulin and no syringe. Because the nurse didn’t tell her what was there, she didn’t look any further. She assumed that was it.”

“And of course no Emma,” I say.

“No, as she already told us, she went home.”

Emma had been with her father all day, waiting for hours and sitting with him while they ran tests. She was exhausted. So when they finally got him back to his room to get him ready for dinner she stayed until the nurse left. She excused herself and went to the ladies’ room, and when she came back, she said her father was asleep. She kissed him on the head and noticed that he was very cold. So she covered him with a blanket on top of the sheet that was already there. Then she left and went home.

“According to the CNA,” says Harry, “Robert Brauer was sound asleep when she got to the room, so she didn’t disturb him. She took the pills and stashed them back by the nurses’ station. When the RN finally freed herself up, she went back, found the pills, and asked the assistant where the insulin was. They went down to the room, tried to rouse Brauer, but by then he was already deep in a coma. They tried resuscitation. Glucose countermeasures. Nothing worked. He died a little after midnight.”

“Who else was on the floor that night? Any visitors?”

“Yeah, people coming and going,” says Harry, “visiting other patients. No sign-in system, of course. They had security cameras but the one on the floor that night was out of commission. According to the staff it was down half the time. And even if it had been working, they said someone had disconnected the cable.” Harry looks at me.

“Whoever did it wasn’t taking any chances,” I say.

“How could they know the camera was out?” says Harry. “According to hospital security they weren’t terribly concerned, because they knew who did it. Emma was there when the meds came. She was gone and so was the insulin by the time the nurse’s assistant showed up. And Brauer had just been given some bad news. He was going to have to get on a schedule with dialysis three times a week because his kidneys were shot,” says Harry. “According to the nurse he was very upset. So was Emma.”

“Why didn’t she tell us about that?”

“Who knows? Maybe she figures, what’s the diff,” says Harry, “he’s dead. It’s the fact that the meds were available on the table along with the syringe, and that Emma and her dad just got the bad news about dialysis that put the hammerlock on the state’s murder case. They’d have an uphill fight trying to show malice or premeditation. So the best they could do, absent other evidence, was a mercy killing—one count, of voluntary manslaughter,” says Harry. “Let’s hope they don’t come up with anything else.”

“That’s the good news. Bad news,” I tell him, “is there’s no way to deal down from here. From their point of view they’re going to be thinking Emma has already gotten all the breaks she’s gonna get. And we still don’t know how the pieces fit. We don’t have a clue as to who killed her father or Ed Pack.”

“Or Sofia,” says Harry.

“Or Sofia.”

“Are we thinking it’s the same person?” says Harry.

“Pack and Brauer are becoming pretty clear. Sofia, I’m not sure.”

“We have a common MO. Somebody injected both Brauer and the doctor with an ocean of insulin.”

“Yes, but we can’t prove it, not with regard to Pack,” says Harry. “We only have Tony’s opinion for it, and that’s not evidence.”

“All right. OK, fine. We know that both men, Ed Pack and Brauer, go back to the days of Adolf in the army, in the same platoon. They each received little boxes with brass keys. We know it scared the crap out of both men. They were together in Munich at the end of the war, along with Walter Jones. We know Brauer’s house was burglarized.”

“Yeah, but Emma didn’t file a report with the police. You can’t produce evidence of the burglary unless you put her on the stand. And trust me, you don’t want to do that.”

“So we have a few holes.”

“That’s not a hole. That’s a chasm,” says Harry.

“It’s a work in progress. We know that whoever did the burglary ripped up the house looking for something,”

“We know about it, but we can’t talk about it in front of the jury until we lay a foundation,” says Harry.

“OK, fine. But you and I know they were looking for the little box, the brass key, and Grimminger’s picture. With Grimminger’s name and background, we discovered the Blood Flag.”

“Assuming we can build an evidence ladder to crawl across and touch the flag, that might work,” says Harry. “But only if.”

“Listen, I grant that it’s an unknown. But everybody loves a mystery,” I tell him.

“Everybody but a judge. You try to mystify some Buddha in a black robe and he’s gonna hit you with his hammer,” says Harry. “What we need is evidence.”

“We have the box, the key, and the ID as well as the return address for the lawyer in Oklahoma City who sent the package.”

“Yes, but did you personally receive that package?”

“You know I didn’t.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I told you. From the safe-deposit box at Emma’s bank.”

“And who put it there?”

“Emma.”

“So we’re back where we started,” says Harry. “Emma was there when her father received the package. She saw him open it. She saw the wrappings with the return address and she can identify the contents, authenticate them as having been in the package when it arrived. With that we can testify to a little judicious research under Grimminger’s name and with that we arrive at the Blood Flag. With the Blood Flag we have a theory, one that perhaps we can sell to a jury. Come to think of it, it’s a hell of a lot better than the theory in the O.J. case. ‘You have to let our client out of jail so he can go chase the real killer.’ The problem is we can’t get to any of it without Emma.”

“Maybe we can.”

“How?” says Harry.

“What if we put Tony Pack up on the stand?”

Harry thinks about this.

“He identified the box and the key as being similar, if not identical, to the one that was sent to his father. He saw it personally, remember?”

“Go on.”

“His father and Brauer were in the same platoon. They were in Munich together at the end of the war. Tony recognized Brauer’s name. He can testify to that.”

Harry shakes his head. “No, I don’t think he can. He never met Brauer. He only knew the name because his father told him. It’s hearsay,” says Harry.

“Fine. We can get army records showing that the two men served together.”

“We can do that,” says Harry, “assuming the records still exist. But the link to the flag is Grimminger, the photo ID in Brauer’s box. Grimminger is the one who carried the flag. Tony said he never got a good look at whatever the paper was in his dad’s box. Without that we can’t get to Grimminger. And without Grimminger we can’t get to the flag. If we can’t get to the flag we don’t have anything. It’s a quest without an object. A treasure hunt without the treasure. Not without putting Emma up on the stand.”

“We may have to.”

“The D.A. will eat her,” says Harry. “The prosecutor starts pounding on her about her father, how much she loved him, how much she misses him, how much he suffered, and whether she saw it. How it made her feel. Go ahead, share it all with the jury. It’s therapeutic. You’ll feel so much better for it when it’s over. Can’t you hear him?” says Harry. “He’ll drive her to tears and then he’ll hand her Kleenex. She’ll be a quivering mass of jelly in the box. That’s when he’ll hand her the syringe and ask her if she knows how it works. And we know that she does because she used to inject him when he was home. And that’s the damage she’ll suffer if she’s able to stay on track. What if she makes a mistake? One little slip. And it’s so easy. After all, the D.A. is only trying to help her. What if she opens the door to the possibility, even the shadow of an admission, that the thought of killing him might have crossed her mind at an earlier date, even if only to put him out of his misery? You know what they’ll do,” he says. “They’ll move the court for leave to amend and they’ll get it. They’ll bump the charges to first-degree murder based on the evidence from her own lips that she premeditated. You can’t put her on the stand,” says Harry. “Because you know what will happen.”

And he’s right. Without Emma we can’t get to the flag, and without the flag we have no defense.

THIRTY-ONE

L
ate yesterday afternoon we received new lab results from Sofia’s autopsy. They included a DNA report on microscopic tissue scraped from under her fingernails. The results came back showing her own DNA, unidentified animal DNA, as well as DNA from another, unknown person. The unidentified human DNA failed to produce a match with any profiles on record with the FBI or the California Department of Justice.