Chapter 65

CHAPTER 65

D EVINE GOT BACK TO THE hotel, where Campbell was waiting for him. He told Devine that Odom was asleep.

Devine went through the plan as told to him by Agent Saxby.

Campbell snapped, “They’re risking the life of a child on a half-ass plan like that?”

“They claim they have it under control. That she’ll be protected.”

“You know as well as I do that when the shit hits the fan, no one is in control. And their plan has more holes than the targets on a sniper range.” He paused. “You still taking her back to her home?”

“I think it’s safer than staying here. At least there I can take some precautions, put up some defenses, and see them coming. Unless the government wants to stick her in a cage surrounded by an army for the next twenty years.”

“What else did you learn?”

“Pru Jackson was waiting for me after Saxby left. She worked with Mercedes King, real name Anne Cassidy, at CIA. The two got into it, Cassidy tried to kill her, so Jackson reciprocated and left her for dead. Next thing she knows, Jackson’s being tortured in a foreign prison. She had thought her agency had screwed her, like I said before, only I think it was Cassidy.”

“I just got something you might find interesting. Camera feed from Ricketts on the day the Odoms died.”

“You do?”

This didn’t come from Devine, but from Betsy Odom, who was standing in the doorway of her bedroom.

The two men glanced at her. Devine said, “Are you up to looking at it, too, Betsy? You might be able to see something helpful.”

Devine could tell by the girl’s stricken features that the thought of seeing her dead parents very much alive on the screen was horrifying. But then she seemed to steel herself and nodded. “Sure, if it’ll help find out what happened to them.”

Campbell brought the feed up on his laptop screen and then fast-forwarded to the relevant section.

Devine watched on the screen as the Genesis pulled up to the curb in front of the restaurant. The car doors opened and the Odom family climbed out, Betsy from the backseat and her parents from the front. He shot Odom a glance and saw her lips start to quiver.

“You okay?”

She didn’t look at him. “Yes.”

He gripped her hand and Odom didn’t pull away.

Alice Odom was dressed in jeans, boots, and a parka. Her long auburn hair splayed out over the back of the jacket. Her smile was wide and infectious.

Dwayne Odom’s hair was far shorter than in the image Devine had seen of him before. He was thin with a shallow chest and no hips and glutes to speak of. A stiff wind looked like it would bring the man down. He came around the car, his smile as broad and as inviting as his wife’s. It was right then that Devine could see what a happy family they had been. And it wasn’t the new car or the trailer in the woods. They just truly seemed to love one another.

It was hard to fathom that in a short time two of them would be dead.

They continued to watch as the Odoms walked into the restaurant.

Devine kept his gaze on the car to see if anyone passing by paid it more than casual attention. Or whether a police cruiser was in the vicinity showing heightened interest.

Neither happened.

With one eye on the screen, Devine said, “Betsy, can you run through what happened inside the restaurant again? I mean, everything you can remember, from beginning to end.”

“I don’t remember much.”

“Just try, please.”

“How about a Coke?” said Campbell. “Lubrication for the throat might free up the mind.”

“Sure, okay.”

He got one from the minibar, poured the can’s contents into a glass, and handed it to her. She took a sip and said, “We sat at our table. Mom and Dad were across from me. Then the waitress came over and asked us what we wanted to drink.”

“Older woman, husky voice?”

“Yeah, that’s right. She didn’t look too… healthy. She smelled smoky, like Agent Saxby.”

“Okay, drink orders?” prompted Devine.

“I had some hot chocolate and Mom and Dad had coffee. It was a chilly day.”

“Did you drink from their cups?”

“No. I don’t like coffee.”

“What next?” said Campbell.

“The waitress brought us menus and we took a few minutes to order.”

“Your dad had a tuna sandwich with a side of berries, and your mom had waffles and scrambled eggs,” noted Devine.

She looked at him curiously. “Yeah, how’d you know that?”

Devine wasn’t about to reveal it was from the autopsy report on their stomach contents, so he just said, “The police told me. What did you have to eat?”

“A barbeque sandwich, coleslaw, and fries.”

“Did you eat off each other’s plates, share any food at all?” asked Campbell.

“No, we never did that.”

“Okay, and then?” said Devine.

“My dad paid the bill when it came, and we left.”

“Anyone use the bathroom?” asked Campbell.

“Mom did. Dad and me didn’t.”

“Anybody come up other than the waitress? Shake hands with your parents? Anything like that?”

“No. I don’t think they knew anyone there.”

Devine sighed and sat back.

They watched the rest of the video. No one had touched the Odoms’ car. They got into the vehicle exactly as they had exited it. Then they drove off, Alice and Dwayne Odom to their deaths, and Betsy to becoming an orphan.

Odom looked at him. “Did that help any?”

He forced a smile and said, “We know more now than we did before, so, yes, it was a big help.”

“When are we going to my home?”

“Tomorrow. You better get some sleep.”

Devine watched her head off to bed and then turned to Campbell. “The poisoning had to happen when they met the men and got the duffel bag presumably with a payoff inside.”

“But how are you going to prove that or find the men?”

“Glass said it wasn’t him. And CIA said they paid nothing to the Odoms.”

“And you believe them?”

“I’m not sure I believe anybody anymore.”

After Campbell had gone back to his room, Devine sat there staring at the ceiling, but the usual mental images that normally trooped across the space in neat linear sequences didn’t materialize this time.

He gave up on that and thought back to what Coburn had told him. He pulled up the notes he’d taken of their conversation. Cyanide poisoning combined with DMSO, which accounted for the garlic smell she had found. Inhalation was the quickest death, ingestion the next fastest, and absorption the slowest, but sped up by the DMSO kicker.

According to his shorthand notes, she had explained: If cyanide was combined with DMSO and was absorbed through the skin, it could kill more rapidly than typical in an absorption case.

Now he focused on the last sentence he’d written.

But even with DMSO, still not as fast as inhalation or ingesting it.

Devine assumed that was because of the way the poison was broken down in the body and dispersed. Going into the lungs directly, or into the gut, the damage would no doubt be faster than it sneaking into the body through the skin, where it would have a long way to go to have a fatal impact.

He scrolled back to the notes he’d taken from his conversation with Betsy Odom.

She’d said that a few minutes after leaving the two men, her parents started showing signs of poisoning. And then soon after that they were dead.

He went online and looked up cyanide poisoning. In cases of inhalation the person could, depending on the exposure level, concentration, and environment, experience symptoms within seconds and be dead minutes later. With ingestion, symptoms could start in about three minutes, unconsciousness could result in less than six minutes, and death would be in under twenty minutes. But the article Devine was reading also said that depended on how rapidly one’s gastric juices broke down the cyanide and turned it into the lethal hydrocyanic acid, commencing a body-wide organ shutdown due to lack of oxygen.

He then looked up absorption of cyanide through the skin. Time to death via that mechanism could be well over two hours depending on various factors. However, sodium cyanide combined with DMSO was labeled “L IQUID D EATH ” by a couple of websites he visited. Yet even after cutting the time to death down by 80 percent when combined with the DMSO, Devine still couldn’t account for how fast the Odoms had perished, which was pretty much right in the timeline with inhalation of the poison. But how could they have inhaled it when meeting with the two men without Betsy seeing something? Or the men being exposed, too, if they had used some type of aerosol? And Coburn said she had seen no signs of cyanide being ingested in either of the Odoms’ bodies. So that left absorption, unless Coburn had been totally wrong about that particular poison being used.

Then Devine realized he had made a critical assumption that had not been corroborated.

I’m assuming that the Odoms were exposed to the poison during the meeting with the two men. But there’s no proof of that. So what if it happened earlier ?

He did a timeline run-through based on what Betsy had told him, the driving distance from the restaurant to the spot where they had met the two men that had been in the autopsy reports. And then Betsy’s information that her parents had fallen ill minutes after driving off. So roughly twenty-five minutes after leaving Ricketts and meeting with the two men, they started to experience symptoms, with death quickly following. That would be a reasonable time to death via absorption of sodium cyanide, when combined with DMSO.

Devine sat back as the truth sank in. They were poisoned at the restaurant. Their last meal.