The Three Way Murder

"I looked and looked at the cork because the only way I could think of to get something through the foil and inside the bottle without taking out the cork was a long hypodermic needle like hospitals use for epidural injections. It would take a needle at least three inches long, and a needle that length would be probably eighteen gauge. It would leave a hole I could find, I thought. The problem was the corkscrew the guy used to pull the cork tore up the cork bad enough if there was a hole there, I couldn't find it."

"So you still don't know how the drug got in the wine?"

Karen grinned.

"I know how it got in the wine and it was a hypodermic needle like I first thought. When I couldn't find a hole in the cork, I filtered the wine left in the bottle. For the most part, when the needle went into the cork, it must have just separated the cork like a knife would, but when it came out inside the bottle, it cut out a little plug of cork. When the cyclobenzaprine was injected into the bottle, it pushed the plug out of the needle and into the wine. I found the plug on the filter paper. It's the right size to have been cut by an eighteen gauge needle. Somebody used an epidural needle and put the cyclobenzaprine in the wine before the bottle was opened."

I asked Karen where I could get one of those needles and she said I probably couldn't.

"Medical supply houses only sell specialty needles like that to doctors and pharmacies. Your local drugstore probably wouldn't have them because they're only used for epidural injections and only doctors can do those."

I patted Karen on the shoulder.

"Karen, I owe you a beer. You just proved my case to be a homicide and not a suicide."

Karen smiled back.

"I don't think my husband would like me having a beer with you. Maybe a cup of coffee?"

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When I went back to my desk, I was thinking that what Monica had said about cops was true. We look for three main things in any murder case -- means, method, and motive. Karen had just given me the method -- injection of the drug into the wine bottle with a hypodermic needle, and any pharmacist could buy the needles. That gave Monica a grand slam of all three. I asked for two patrol officers to bring her to the station for questioning.

When they brought her to the station, I put her in an interrogation room and left her by herself for half an hour. The reason for doing that is people guilty of something have probably already put together a story that proves they're innocent, or at least they think they have. If they sit in an interrogation room by themselves, they start going over their story now that they're going to have to tell it, and they'll make little changes.

When they're interrogated, those little changes will confuse them and the interrogator will catch them lying. Once the interrogator points out the lie, they'll start telling more lies to cover for the first. At some point they'll have come full circle and have to admit to what they did.

When I walked into the interrogation room, I was carrying a folder with the evidence I had so far, including Karen's report about the method of getting the drug into the bottle. I sat down and looked Monica in the eye.

"Monica, before we start, I have to inform you that whatever you say to me can be used against you in court, and I have to inform you that you have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you can't afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you have any questions?"

Karen didn't look shocked and she didn't look mad. She just looked sort of neutral.

"I take it you're going to charge me with killing my husband."

"No, I'm just going to ask you some more questions. You are what we call a person of interest though, and telling you what I just did is standard procedure."

Monica put her hands on the table.

"Well, you can ask me all the questions you want and I don't need a lawyer. I didn't kill Jack."

"OK, Monica. Here's what I know. Your husband died because he drank wine laced with a drug called cyclobenzaprine that stopped his muscles from working. Basically, he stopped breathing and suffocated.

"I know the drug was in the bottle of wine before it was opened and I know how it got in there. The drug was injected through the cork with a long hypodermic needle, the kind doctors use for epidural injections and the kind any pharmacy can buy from a medical supply house.

"You already told me that you had motive - retaining ownership of the business and your husband's insurance. All that adds up to making you a person who could have killed him."

Monica smiled.

"I notice you said 'could have' and not 'did'. You're expecting me to make a confession now, like on the TV shows. You must not have proof I did any of those things.

"How do you know the cyclobenzaprine came from one of our pharmacies let alone that I took it? I'm not even sure we stock it since it's only used in hospitals. It's the same with the epidural needles. We stock syringes and needles for insulin and other drugs you can inject yourself with at home, but the hospitals all buy from their own pharmacy so they get the profit."

Well, she had a good point. I wasn't convinced, but a defense attorney would make the same argument.

"If one of your pharmacies had bought the drug and the needle, you'd have a record of it, wouldn't you?"

Monica nodded.

"The drug inventory is logged in as soon as it's unpacked, and it's kept under lock and key. The pharmacist is the only one who can access the drugs. The needles would have been logged in as inventory and held behind the counter. You don't need a prescription for a needle anymore, but they're not on the shelf like condoms and foot powder. You have to ask at the counter for them. If the pharmacist let anyone, even the store manager, behind that counter, the pharmacist would have been fired and we'd have seen to it that their license was revoked."

I asked Monica if she'd turn over her receipts and sales for the past six months and the current inventory of all the drugs and hypodermic needles in all the stores. She laughed.

"That's a lot of records, but if it'll make you feel any better, go for it. I'll call my store managers and have them send it to you in an email. The officers took my cell phone before they brought me to you. Can I have it back? All the numbers are in it."

I brought Monica her cell phone and then sat there while she called the managers of all six stores. When she ended the call to the last one, she said I'd have everything by noon the next day. Then she asked if she could go home.

I thought about that for only a second. Monica had been very cooperative, but she also had enough money to be gone somewhere by the next morning if she wanted to. She was still the only person who was a viable suspect.

I shook my head.

"I'm afraid you'll have to spend the night with us, Monica. I can't find out tomorrow morning that you're on your way to somewhere else. I'll have a police woman come to get you booked and your clothes changed."

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Monica was right about the reports from her pharmacies. They started filling up my email about eleven and the last came in at just before twelve. All in all, there were some six hundred pages of attachments that would take me months to go through. Since financial people seem to be good a looking a columns of numbers, I recruited Suzie and three other people from her department to look for any orders for cyclobenzaprine and epidural needles and if there were, were the cyclobenzaprine and epidural needles still in inventory.

Just after four that day, Suzie called me.

"We found what you were looking for. The pharmacy in Nashville ordered one bottle of cyclobenzaprine and a dozen epidural needles on the first of last month. They were delivered on the third and entered into the pharmacy inventory the same day. They were sold on the tenth to some doctor named Harold Phiser."

I brought Monica out of holding and back to the interrogation room. I didn't mince words with her this time.

"Monica, the pharmacy in Nashville, ordered one bottle of cyclobenzaprine and a dozen epidural needles on the first of this month. They're not in your inventory now. They were sold on the tenth."

Monica frowned.

"Can I see the order?"

I showed her the printout Suzie had given me. Monica ran her finger to the purchase order number and then looked up at me.

"Jack made this order. That's what J8954012 means. If I'd ordered it, the number would start with an M. We set that system up when we first started so we wouldn't duplicate orders. Jack was working the Nashville store and I was working the store in Lebanon. It didn't make sense to have duplicate orders for drugs that don't move very fast, so we set up a system. Before he ordered a drug, he'd look to see if I'd ordered it and vice versa. If that was the case, we'd just transfer part of the inventory from one store to the other.

"That system worked to keep our inventories as low as possible, so we never changed it. I didn't order the cyclobenzaprine. Jack did. Let me see the order for epidural needles."

I gave her the order for epidural needles. The order number started with a 'J' also. I asked Monica why Mr. Mitchell would order those items, and she said she didn't know.

"We wouldn't sell either of those things in a thousand years. I already told you why. Clorobenzaprine has a shelf life of only about a month, and since we never sell to hospitals, we'd end up dumping it down the sink. The same with the epidural needles. You said they were sold to somebody. Who bought them?"

I looked at the other paper Suzie had given me.

"They were sold on the tenth to a Doctor Harold Phiser."

Monica chuckled then.

"Jack, you son of a bitch, you used my grandfather's name, didn't you?"

She looked up at me then.

"Harold Phiser was my grandfather's name. The only person who would know that other than me was Jack. You check the registry of all the doctors in Tennessee. I'll bet a thousand dollars you don't find a Doctor Harold Phiser.

"There's another way you can check. There are security cameras at the desk at the pharmacy. That's so we have a visual record of everybody filling a prescription. There are some people out there who forge prescriptions for opiates, fill the prescription, and then sell them on the street. The pharmacists on duty know the signatures of most of the doctors at the nearest hospital, but doctors come and go. We don't want to be accused of selling drugs to drug dealers. If one of our prescription bottles turns up on the street, we want to be able to show the police who bought the drugs.

"Tell you what. I'm sure you don't believe me, but the sales receipt has the date and time on it and the employee number who made the sale. The employee number on the receipt is Jacks. We keep six months of security camera video. I'll have the store manager send over the video for that date and time and we'll see who was standing at the counter then. I can guarantee it wasn't any Doctor Harold Phiser. My grandfather's been dead for fourteen years."

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Half an hour later, I got an email from the Nashville pharmacy with the video attached. It took a while to go through it because the video was all the video from three cameras for the whole day. When the time of the sale, 4:35PM popped up on the screen header, I recognized the person standing in front of the counter. The other two cameras gave me a profile of Mr. Mitchell standing behind the counter. I stopped the video and printed off the still frame on my screen and then went back to the interrogation room.

I laid the picture in front of Monica.

"Do you know this woman?"

Monica looked at the picture and then shook her head.

"No, that's Jack handing her the package, but I've never seen her. She looks like a tramp. Why would Jack be giving her cyclobenzaprine and epidural needles?"

I shook my head.

"I don't know, but that's what it looks like he did. I think I can find out though. I'll have to put you back in holding."

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I'd recognized Hillary in the security camera video, and on my way back to the interrogation room, I asked the desk to have a couple uniforms pick Hillary up and bring her back to the station.

According to her driver's license, Hillary was living in a cheap motel just inside the city limits. When the officers knocked on her door, nobody answered. One stayed by the door while the other radioed in for a warrant so they could enter the motel room. He was sitting in his patrol car when he noticed a woman at the bus stop half a block down with a suitcase. He checked the picture the station had sent with the request, and the woman at the bus stop looked a lot like Hillary. After radioing his partner and the station, he walked over just as the city bus was pulling up, touched her on the arm and said her name.

Hillary swung the suitcase at him and then ran -- right into the arms of the other patrol officer. When they brought her back to the station, she was still fuming. I let her cook in the interrogation room for an hour to cool off. It didn't help.

As soon as I walked in, Hillary frowned.

"I knew back at the club that you were going to arrest me sooner or later. So what if I fuck a guy when I'm giving him a private dance. He gets his rocks off and I get paid. Nobody gets hurt. Everybody wins."

I smiled because I thought I had Hillary dead to rights.

"Hillary, the officers brought you in for resisting arrest, but I'm going to add murder to that. You killed Jack Mitchell."

Hillary spit out the words.

"You can't fucking prove that."

I smiled again.

"Oh, I think I can. I have your face on a security camera on the day and time Mr. Mitchell gave you a package containing drugs and hypodermic needles. You used a hypodermic needle and a syringe to inject the drug into a bottle of wine. I'm not sure how you got the wine into Mr. Mitchell's house, but you tried to run the day after I talked to you about Mr. Mitchell's death. That makes you look pretty guilty of something. Right now, there are techs from our Crime Lab searching your motel room. I'd bet they're going to find something that ties you to Mr. Mitchell's death."

Hillary broke down then.

"It wasn't supposed to be Jack. It was supposed to be his wife."

I had to stop her then. If she was my killer, I didn't want some lawyer explaining to a jury that I'd coerced a confession out of Hillary.

"Hillary, before you go on, I have to tell you that you have the right to have an attorney present and if you can't afford one, the court will appoint one for you. I also have to tell you that anything and everything you say from now on can be used against you if you go to trial. Do you want a lawyer?"

Hillary said she thought she'd better have one but didn't have enough money. It took another hour for the public defender to get there, and I left him alone with Hillary for another hour.

When I opened the door to the interrogation room, I asked if they needed more time. The lawyer said Hillary was ready to make a statement if I'd charge her as an accessory to murder instead of premeditated murder. I said I'd have to go talk to the DA, but depending upon what Hillary told me, he might agree.

I didn't think I was going to have to convince the DA of anything. The Crime Lab techs had found the bottle of cyclobenzaprine and the rest of the epidural needles in Hillary's motel room. Both the bottle and the package of needles had both Mr. Mitchell's and Hillary's fingerprints on them. They'd also found an empty box from a wine club that they use to protect wine in shipment. The box had fingerprints that matched Monica, Hillary, and Mr. Mitchell.

I explained what I knew so far and the DA agreed to the reduced charges. All the evidence was circumstantial and proved Hillary had something to do with the murder, but not that she'd planned it. It looked more like Mr. Mitchell had, and Hillary's statement to me, while not admissible in court, indicated he'd intended to kill Monica.

I went back to the interrogation room and told the public defender the DA had agreed to the reduced charge if Hillary wrote down the truth of what happened and then signed that as her confession. The lawyer whispered something to Hillary and she nodded. I handed her a pad of paper and a pen.

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The gist of the confession was that Mr. Mitchell had approached Hillary with a way she could make ten thousand dollars by helping him.

The story he gave Hillary was that he was going to drug his wife enough she'd sign the divorce papers and he'd be free of her then. He promised Hillary that after the divorce he'd give her a place to live as long as she slept with him. To Hillary, that was a dream come true, so she agreed.

A week before the murder, Mr. Mitchell met Hillary at the club where she danced. When she got off work, he walked her to his car and gave her a hundred-dollar bill and two empty wine boxes. He said he'd call her and tell her what to do with the money the next morning. When he called, he asked Hillary to buy a particular bottle of wine and he sent a picture of the wine bottle to her cell phone. He said when she had the wine to call him back.

When she did, he told her to come to the pharmacy counter. There, he gave her a package and told her to call him when she got home. When Hillary got back to her motel room, she called him. He told her that in the package was a drug that would make it easy for him to get his wife sign the divorce papers, some needles and a syringe, and a pair of latex gloves.. She was to put on the gloves, wipe down the bottle of wine with water with a little dish soap in it, then use the needle and syringe to inject the drug into the wine. Once she'd done that, she was to put the bottle into one of the boxes, and then place the box on the porch of their house sometime during the day.

Hillary read the label and warnings on the bottle, but said since Mr. Mitchell was a pharmacist, she thought he knew what he was doing. She put the drug into the wine, put the wine into the box and sealed the box with packing tape. Then she took a bus to the Mitchell house at about noon, and put the box on the porch. When she got back home, she called Mr. Mitchell again and asked what she should do with the rest of the bottle and the needles. He told her to keep them and he'd come get them.

Hillary said she knew it was probably not legal, but she had no idea she was involved in killing anyone. Based upon what I knew, I thought she was telling me the truth. Mr. Mitchell had talked her into doing what she did. Hillary should have suspected something was wrong, but I suppose ten grand and a place to live even though she had to let Mr. Mitchell use her still looked too good to pass up.

When Hillary signed the document, I turned her over to two female officers for booking and then got Monica out of the holding cell and took her to interrogation. There was still one question I didn't have an answer to. When she sat down, I asked her if she belonged to a wine club. She nodded.

"Yes, they deliver a bottle or two when I order them. Why?"

"What kind do you order?"

"I always order a wine I tasted in Italy. It's called Rocche Sorí."

"Did you order a bottle to be delivered the day before your husband died?"

Monica shook her head.

"No. I found a delivery from the wine club on the step when I got home, but Jack must have ordered it. It was a bottle of Rocche Barbaresco. That's what he likes. He tasted it in Italy and has liked it ever since. I just put the box in the wine cabinet with the other wine."

"Do the bottles look similar?"

Monica nodded.

"Sure they do. They both come from the same vineyard. The only difference is the second part of the name. It's smaller than the Rocche name, so you have to look for it. Why does that matter?"