Death by Chocolate by Steven Henry

Author:Steven Henry [Henry, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Clickworks Press
Published: 2020-01-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Despite her run-in with the Mafia, her worries about the O’Malleys, and the accumulating bodies on their case, Erin slept well and woke up refreshed. She’d been feeling better ever since she and Carlyle had gotten together. There were any number of reasons for it, but she figured it mostly boiled down to not feeling alone. It felt so damn good to have someone who understood her, someone she could talk to about anything. It was completely crazy that the guy in question was a gangster, but that didn’t bother her as much as she knew it should.

After her early-morning run with Rolf, she grabbed a croissant from a bakery on her way in to the precinct. Not for the first time, she blessed the coffee machine in the Major Crimes office. It’d been an anonymous gift, but it was an open secret on her team that it’d come from Carlyle, a thank-you for protecting his establishment. Erin poured herself a cup and sat down at her desk. Webb and Vic weren’t in yet, and the place was quiet.

The first thing she saw on her computer was a message from Levine. Lorenzo Bianchi’s bloodwork was done. She bounced right back out of her chair and hurried downstairs to the morgue.

Levine was staring at her computer screen. She was wearing the same clothes as the previous evening. She didn’t look up.

“Morning,” Erin said. “Did you go home last night?”

“No point,” Levine said. “The bloodwork took most of the night. I took the blood sample from the heart. Ideally, I would have liked to have samples from various parts of the body, since drugs have different concentrations in different organs and tissues, but I only had time to collect the one sample. Urine would have been useful as well, along with tissue samples from the liver, kidneys, and vitreous humor. It only takes fifteen minutes to get all the samples. It would have been convenient if the man last night had been willing to wait for me to collect all of them.”

“I think that was the point,” Erin said. “He didn’t want you to have any samples at all. But I’m surprised you’re done already.”

“I’m a qualified toxicologist,” Levine reminded her. “That means I didn’t have to outsource the testing. I have a two-week backlog, but Lieutenant Webb said this one was a priority. The lack of sample diversity is a problem, but it also reduced processing time. I hope you aren’t expecting this rapid a turnaround on all samples. Four to six weeks is standard.”

“Yeah, I know.” That was yet another thing TV shows got wrong about detective work. “But you have answers?”

“Preliminary,” Levine said. “I would appreciate confirmation from an independent toxicologist, and further analysis of the blood sample. That will take—”

“—four to six weeks,” Erin finished for her.

“Correct.”

“You’d better give me the preliminary report, then.”

“Cardiac arrest,” Levine said, handing her a sheaf of papers.

Erin glanced down at them. She understood maybe two-thirds of the words on the first page.

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