Autopsy (Kay Scarpetta, #25)(37)
Marino was barking orders, throwing around his new title of forensic operations specialist. He paced the kitchen while I watched from where I sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, overhearing every word. He would stop by my chief toxicologist’s house to drop off the evidence personally, and Marino warned not a peep about this to anyone.
What’s happened is extremely confidential, and there will be an international investigation, he promised, rather much threatened. Gathering up his brown paper bags sealed with red evidence tape, he reprimanded me again for being foolish. Next, Dorothy jumped in, the two of them quite the interrogators.
Why would I accept a gift that’s consumable and could be tampered with? How could I think for a moment it was okay in this day and age? It doesn’t matter if the bottle was from the president or the pope, how could I be that na?ve? As if it’s my fault I was exposed to a deadly opioid likely intended for the secretary general of Interpol.
At least I’m assuming it was an opioid since the antidote was successful. Two hits, and the effects were reversed. But I don’t know what we’re dealing with yet, and most of all if it’s an isolated incident.
“What if the bottle I was given isn’t the only one?” I fight back another wave of nausea.
“You can rest assured it’s being followed up on,” Benton says.
I was in Lyon the end of October, and a month is a long time when there could be other deadly vintages waiting to be uncorked. There could be deaths we don’t know about in other parts of the world.
“More important at the moment is getting you back up to speed,” he replies kindly, gently. “You need to eat. That will be the best remedy. We’re going to get to the bottom of who’s responsible, I promise. Assuming anyone’s to blame, that it was deliberate.”
“What other explanation could there be?” I’m dismayed by another flare of impatient indignation.
“If it were an allergic response to something like tannins.” He patiently offers a remote possibility. “Anaphylaxis, in other words.”
“Hypothetically yes. But not in my case.”
I explain that a severe allergic reaction to tannins or anything else would have closed my airway, requiring epinephrine. Not naloxone, and I have the unsettling sensation that we’ve been through this before.
“Had you tried an EpiPen, it wouldn’t have worked,” I add. “I knew I was reacting to a powerfully intoxicating drug that was depressing my breathing, causing me to lose consciousness.”
“You don’t remember saying all this last night when I put you to bed, do you?” he replies.
“Some things are coming back slowly,” I answer with an edge, and I hate that I can’t control myself better. “A lot is lost. I have big empty gaps and disconnections. Hopefully it’s temporary. But I don’t know. I’m sorry, Benton. So terribly sorry for bringing the wine home, for opening it, for being in a foul mood, for everything.”
“There’s nothing for you to apologize about, so please stop,” he says. “The good news is you may have saved Gabriella Honoré’s life. Probably the lives of those closest to her too.”
“For which I’m very thankful, couldn’t be more thankful.” All the same, I was as careless as I’ve ever been.
“You can imagine the intense investigation already mounted,” Benton says, informing me that he talked to the secretary general earlier this morning.
The Bordeaux was a gift from a police chief in Belgium whom she knows well and trusts. As I recall from my visits over the years, it’s not unusual for distinguished guests to arrive with fine wines, liquors, cheeses, tins of caviar. It’s France after all, I remember the secretary general saying while I was with her late fall.
“Amusez-vous, Kay. Bonne santé” were her exact words when she handed me the bottle wrapped in brown paper, still inside its elegant gift bag from a shop with a Brussels address.
We were having lunch inside her corner office with its sweeping views of red terra-cotta roofs, and the Pont Winston Churchill spanning the river Rh?ne. The autumn foliage blazed against a deep blue sky, Interpol’s headquarters of metal and glass glittering like a space station across from Parc de la Tête d’Or.
“De l’espace à la terre à six pieds sous.” From space to ground to six feet under, Gabriella Honoré said during our discussion of emerging technologies and the risks they pose to humanity.
There was no lack of worst-case scenarios for us to offer and ponder. It’s not hard to imagine what happens when psychopaths get hold of nuclear weapons. Just as dangerous is what doesn’t necessarily meet the eye in the invisible world of poisons, viruses and cyberattacks on anything one can think of including orbiting satellites and habitats.
“Life and death, good deeds and bad will go where people go whether on Earth or above,” the secretary general said dramatically, speaking on and off in English while opening a bottle of Chablis. “The moon, Mars and beyond, there’s no limit to les actes monstrueux people are capable of.”
Then she shifted her attention to the grand cru she was pouring. After all, one must remember what’s important, she said with her charming smile, serving the wine in simple bistro tumblers. Crisp and clean with hints of citrus, it was in perfect harmony with an entrée of raw oysters.