Chapter 112

Three weeks had passed since the murders of the Lee couple, and the first of many lab reports were just starting to come back.
Tuesday morning, the pages started pouring onto the shimmering screen of Sgt. Digby’s SEN-ergy 561 fax display.
Dr. Steven Jenks called at the same time, to translate, if necessary.
“I want to point out the tissue damage thing, on Jack, remember?” He said.
Digby watched the pages flip up on her screen. Some was text and some was in chart form, with names of chemicals and numbers.
“Yeah, you’re gonna have to break this down for me, Steve. What did they find about the Warfarin poisoning?”
“Okay. Well, first of all. DNA has shown that each sample submitted has come back as either Jack Lee or Tamara Lee. So, nothing you guys collected, by way of DNA, that actually belongs to the killer.”
“How is that possible?”
“Well… He beat them with weapons… And he was probably dressed in lots of clothing, gloves, hat. It was the middle of winter.”
“Damn. I was sort of counting on something..”
“Well, there is the poison. There’s a summary of the Warfarin test part, on page two. Flip to page two….”
“Okay…”
“Fourth paragraph, Tissue Summary.”
Digby scanned the page. “… C31H23BrO3… Is that Warfarin?”
“Sort of, it’s actually a compound called Brodifacoum, which is a more potent form of warfarin. Super-warfarin. B-R-O-D-I-F-A-C-O-U-M. It’s on that page, somewhere. Antyway, they’re both in the coumarin family, but the difference for your purposes, Digby, is warfarin would come from ingesting too much Coumadin, the medicine- the anticoagulant medicine- but brodifacoum is rat poison, pure and simple. Brodifacoum is the active ingredient in commercial rat poison. Based on the concentration in his liver, it’s hard to know exactly how much he was exposed to, but the estimate is, he was receiving repeated doses, as little as a milligram at a time, to varying amounts, over the past two months or so, which rules out accidental exposure. The poison was having a very, very serious cumulative effect and already caused a number of internal bleeds, which can kill in a matter of hours, or not at all, if you’re lucky…”
Digby felt stunned and light-headed as she listened to him. Her stomach was empty.
“Poisoned? Do you know exactly when he was poisoned?”
“Not really. It was several, several times, over a period of two months.”
“So, someone was slipping Jack Lee rat poison?” She could feel her understanding of the Lee case crumbling down around her.
“Yes. Unless he was taking it himself, and trying to purposely commit suicide, very slowly. At any rate, I have to rule the poison a contributing factor in his death. Without the poison, he wouldn’t have bled and died as quickly as he did. His death concluded February 9, or whatever it was, but it began sometime in, maybe, late November.”
Digby smiled, despite herself. “His death began in late November?”
He laughed. “You know what I mean.”