Monday, September 9, 2013

Journal Entry #31 - My final journal entry

18:25 pm

My stomach's growling and I check the big clock on the wall, the one that reminds me of Mrs. Copanis's third-grade classroom. It's after six and I'm thinking about getting a burger. Or a salad. Doc says I have high cholesterol. I hate salad.

I been reading the same paragraph in the Harrison report over and over. It just ain't sinking in. Probably because I'm still brooding over the phone message that was waiting for me when I walked in. Looks like I ain't gotta worry about Vecchio anymore.

“Moby, I hate to do this to you, and I hate delivering the news over the phone, but my office has recalled me to San Diego. My flight leaves at 4:30 this afternoon. I don’t handle goodbyes very well, so let me just say I hope you understand, and thanks for everything. I learned a lot from you. Good luck with the cyanide case. Knowing you, it’s just a matter of time.”

Short and sweet, just like I like 'em.

But who am I kidding?  She was beginning to grow on me, like a stray pooch I took in and had to give back. Don't know why I feel like this. Maybe I'm just gonna miss looking down her shirt.

The phone rings and it's Johnson. Tells me there are glaring discrepencies between his autopsy and the offical report from OCME.  Says the cyanide that killed Harrison ain't what's listed in her report. But not only that, the report matches the poison used in all the CK killings. Then he says someone had sex with the body after he examined it and wanted to know how I knew.

Funny thing is, I didn't.

Now I have my work cut out for me so this will be my final entry into my journal until I solve this cased. Besides, if I say any more, I'll give away the ending, and we can't have that, now can we?

Have a Merry Christmas, everyone.
December 23,2015 


bit.ly/AmazonChainofEvidence

Journal Entry #30 - I smell a rat

09:30 am

After I tell Johnson to check Georgia Parsons's autopsy report for mention of her virginity, he puts me on hold while he calls up the file. Atkins’s go-to-hell deadline has come and gone, and the only thing I have now that I didn’t have before is another dead girl. Johnson comes back on the line and tells me there is no mention of a hymen, but I know there should be. 

I'm beginning to smell a rat, so I tell Johnson to perform a follow-up autopsy on Harrison and to do it himself. He ain't happy, says something about his daughter's soccer game. But I need proof there's a problem at OCME, and Johnson's unofficial and unsanctioned findings from the crime scene do not constitute proof. 

I finish getting dressed for work and ponder the discrepancy. Georgia's best friend told me she was a virgin, a status most women no longer brag about, or consider a big plus when shopping for a husband. Johnson said he found a puncture wound on Riki Harrison's body and the specimens he pulled at the scene point to rat poison. But her OCME autopsy and tox reports have no mention of either. 

It might be possible for the medical examiner to miss the puncture wound in Riki Harrison's body if it was small enough, but the tox screens are more exacting. If the screens are legit, then the problem is with the source specimens, and Johnson's follow-up will verify that. But the key to this whole mess centers around the organ biopsys of the earlier victims. If Walters finds matches where there shouldn't be matches, then DNA identification is the next step and I'll get Vecchio on that. 

I don't believe in coincidences, but even if I did, there are too many questions floating around, the biggest of which is who performed Riki Harrison's autopsy....

... and I'm pretty sure I already know.  



bit.ly/AmazonChainofEvidence

Journal Entry #29 - The common denominator

09:25 am

My job, my pention, not to mention the lives of innocent women, hinge on two possibilities: The lab results Walters is running, and Johnson finding something out of the ordinary with Riki Harrison’s body. Something blatant. Something that differs from OCME’s autopsy report—an omission, a variation, a modification of fact, a misrepresentation of evidence … hell, an out-n-out lie. Hunches and gut feelings are fine and they have their place, but they don’t carry the weight of cold hard fact.

Johnson calls me at home. Accuses me of keeping banker’s hours. He says his tests on Riki Harrison points to rat poison as the killing agent. Found a fresh needle mark in her left breast that he never would have seen had I not put him in the body transport with her. Tells me that whoever killed Anya Eiffel, killed Riki Harrison too.  Now I wanna see what the official OCME report shows. If it ain’t rat poison, then the lab is the common denominator. I tell Johnson to keep this under wraps for the time being. Then I ask him to pull the autopsy report for Georgia Parsons.

I wanna know if there’s mention of her virginity.





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Saturday, September 7, 2013

Journal Entry #28 - Outside my authority

04:40 am

Something ain't sittin' right. Walters says there's a mix-up in the tox lab and he's finding duplicate results on separate vics. I don’t believe in coincidence, so I take a big chance and step outside my authority.

Before the transport moves Ricki Harrison’s body to the medical examiner’s, I tell Johnson I want him to take specimens and check for sexual assault, here in the transport, before she leaves for the ME’s office downtown. I tell him to run an independent tox screen on the sly. I want to compare his results against those from the ME’s office. He’s not happy about skirting procedure, not to mention undressing a dead woman in the back of the body transport, so I put a female officer in the van with him to cover his ass.

Mine, not so much.

Then before I hang up with Walters, I tell him to run tests on the baby bottle from the Templeton case since it was not tested. Kara Templeton died from a commercial grade of cyanide. The same water was in the baby’s bottle. I wanna see if the cyanide matches. 


Walters complains about his social life and Johnson thinks I’ve gone nuts.

I gotta think Johnson might be right. 


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Journal Entry #27 - Different vics, identical findings

04:30 am

I tell Johnson to test the specimens from this latest vic and keep it to himself when I get a call from the tox lab tech, Walters. He tells me there's a discrepancy between the test results on two previous vics and their official on-file tox reports. I asked him what he meant by "discrepancy."

He tells me two separate vics have identical tox findings, almost as if they were run on the same specimen samples. He thinks there's been an accidental mix up. 

Accidental mix up? Only one way know for sure.  
I tell him to re-run the tox screens on all the vics. 


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Journal Entry #26 - Breaking the chain

03:50 am

I was not happy when Walters told me he didn't know anything about rat poison on this or any other case because Browing did the chemical testing. I asked if he was a certified forensics specialist, and he said he was. I told him that was good, and then added, "I hope you don't have any plans tonight. You're gonna run a few tests for me."

I set Walters to task, utterly ruining his Friday night. Early the next morning I get the call for a body in a bar parking lot. The vic is one of the bartenders. Young, pretty. Like the others. 

Field ME Johnson is already there. He asks about Vecchio and has a look of expectation. I tell him she's sick and he deflates. Why does everybody think she's so hot?

I tell Johnson that Anya Effiel was killed with rat poison, but the forensics results on all the other vics were industrial grade cyanide. All identical, except for Eiffel. I gotta wonder about that. I ask Johnson to run his own set of tox screens on this latest vic. I want to compare them to the tox lab tests and see what we get. He reminds me that it won't hold up in court. 

"Breaks the chain of evidence," he says.

Yeah, I know. 





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