16th Seduction (Women's Murder Club 16)

“We’re going to make it easy on you,” Claire said to Lorraine.

She ordered the Tuesday Night Special, seven-dollar-aplate spicy shrimp dinner, all around. And then Claire asked me to tell what I knew about the complaint.

But I wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone, right?

“No, I’m under orders from Parisi to keep quiet, so you go ahead,” I told Claire.

“You sure?”

“Start talking, Claire, or someone’s going to beat you to it.”

“Okay, then,” she said. “Get this. One of the EMTs who picked up Sarah Nugent outside the Admiral Dewey Hotel remembered something that didn’t register at the time.”

Claire had our full attention. Forks paused in midair.

“What did he remember?” I asked.

Claire said, “He saw a medical vial in the gutter. So now he and his partner drive over to the hotel and find this empty vial. It’s labeled ‘succinylcholine.’”

Cindy asked, “What’s that?”

“Sux is a colorless, odorless muscle relaxant, a shortterm paralytic used primarily for intubation,” said Claire. “It can be administered intravenously. It can also be injected intramuscularly.”

I said, “I see where you’re going. You think the victims were injected with that?”

“It makes sense,” said Claire. “If used intravenously, sux works within a minute or two. If you’re not on a respirator, you will stop breathing and you will die. Intramuscularly, it takes longer for the paralysis to hit, so you buy another minute or so, but it’s the same issue. Without going on a respirator PDQ, you will die.”

Yuki asked her, “Why didn’t the tox screens pick it up?”

Claire said, “Because sux metabolizes into succinate. That’s a naturally occurring substance we all have in our blood, so—very quickly—it’s undetectable. I think we’ve got our smoking gun, Linds. I’m sure of it. The bottle is on the way to the lab. Let’s pray that CSI finds prints on it, okay?”

I said, “Sure.”

Claire said, “You all think I’m kidding.”

She folded her hands and closed her eyes. Right there in Susie’s raucous, curry-perfumed Caribbean eatery, with the sounds of steel drums and laughter in our ears, we followed Claire’s lead.

We prayed for CSI to find fingerprints on a small bottle that might lead to a serial killer.

We really prayed.

CHAPTER 67

CINDY CAME BACK to the table from the washroom and found that Lindsay had left.

Yuki said, “She said sorry, but she had to get home.”

“Oh, man, I wanted to talk to her,” Cindy said.

“You might still be able to catch her if you run.”

Cindy said, “Be right back,” and bolted out the door and down to Montgomery. She looked in both directions for Lindsay’s car and saw her Explorer coming back toward Susie’s in the opposite lane.

Cindy waved to her. Lindsay slowed to a stop and said, “I’m racing, Cin. Mrs. Rose has a date with her daughter and has to leave any minute. Call you tomorrow?”

“Okay,” Cindy said. “Talk soon.”

Cindy had work to do before she slept. And that was putting her into a panic. She had wanted to let Lindsay know she was going to run a story on the sudden deaths that looked like heart attacks and probably weren’t. She didn’t need Lindsay’s permission. Nothing said at the table was off the record, and besides, she already had a good handle on the piece.