Photos, Lies & Cyanide

I watched as Lt.Sissy Van Buren and her team of homicide detectives examined the room, bagged and tagged everything and dusted for fingerprints...Sepia stood by me as I explained to the Detectives that I had been waiting for Ray Fox at the bar and that he never showed up...I stopped by his apartment and found him sitting in the chair dead. It was after all the truth. What I didn't tell them was the nature of my business with Ray Fox.

"So we meet again Kevin." said Sissy Van Buren.

"Yeah, we've really gotta stop meeting like this...people are gonna talk." I joked.

"Kevin...why were you waiting for him?" she asked.

"You get right to it don't you?" I said.

"We were going to have drinks." I added.

"Drinks?, You and Him? I don't think you even knew this man..He was from East Orange."
she said.

"My wife knows him..She's from there..We met casually." I lied again...I had met Ray Fox on three other occassions. Sepia was with me on one of them and she remarked that she knew him.
He barely remembered her, but he knew her mother. Jean Cokely. We were at Josies when we
met...He was drinking heavily and sweating...like he had something on his mind.. Then he began to talk.... Of course I had no intention of telling Lt. Van Buren any of this , not yet

"Okay Kevin...You can go now...Don't plan on taking any vacation anytime soon." she said. I knew that she didn't believe me..but I didn't care...I needed to get back to this apartment, presumably when the police were gone.

Sepia and I left and we drove to a local diner, where we had coffee and donuts.

"Kevin....what did Ray tell you?" asked Sepia.

"He told me that he witnessed a murder about several years ago and that it was the most horrific thing he'd ever seen...he'd tried to put it out of his mind but it kept eating at him.

It was the murder of a woman and it was pretty horific." I said.

"You know Kevin...Ray was a drunk and he was a liar , back in East Orange. His Father was so disapointed in him. You know...him being a surgeon and all." said Sepia.

"I know, but Ray had been a damn good writer at one time...I used to read his sports column all the time when he wrote for the Chronicle." I said.

"Yeah Kevin, but his dad spent a fortune putting him through medical school. He dropped out and wound up writing for a number of little small independent newspapers. He drank and drank and you never could believe a thing he was telling you." said Sepia.

"I believe this story though...Sepia..he was scared..scared of something..scared of someone..He told me it wasn't the murder that spooked him, but the person he believed committed the murder that really through him for a loop." I said.

"Well who did he say committed this murder?" asked Sepia.

"That's what he was going to tell me tonight..only he didn't make it." I said.

A few days later, I ran into Lt.Sissy Van Buren on Broad Street...She smirked when she saw me.

"What's the good word Lieutenant ?" I asked.

"Well Kevin, you always say that I always make everything a suicide right?" she said.

"I never implied that." I laughed.

"Well your boy was definitely helped out of this world. That Jack Daniels was laced with cyanide and he had enough cyanide in his system to drop half a city block." she said.

"What?" I exclaimed in shock.

"Kevin, He knew who his killer was...There was no forced entry....There was two glasses on the table...so that means that two people were drinking the Jack Daniels...though only Ray Fox's DNA is on both glasses.. And there were no prints anywhere in that apartment other than his.
He definitely had a guest...Somebody who knew what they were doing...He drank a quarter of that bottle..yet we found way more cyanide in his body than that. He must have eaten something too that was laced with it." she said.

"Wow , you've got you one hell of a case there Lieutenant" I said.

" Yes, I do. You have nothing to add Kevin?" she said and she gave me a look.

I looked at her as dead pan as I could and lied again-

"Nope." I said.

She gave me an exasperated look and then said simply-

"I'll see ya around Kevin."

"Good luck on your case" I said, smiling....

That night...I got Clerow and Sean Jackson and we went back to that apartment...I had Sean sit in my car with his cell phone..ready to call me if he saw anybody. Clerow was packing and had my back...I quietly picked the cheap lock and broke in... I turned on the lights and began rumaging through Ray's things... I was amazed that the police overlooked this...It was right there for them to see..Why was it not bagged and tagged? It was a wallet...an old fashioned billfold. There was no ID in this wallet, but there were several photos of a nude woman..The woman appeared to be sleep, but she could be dead...There was an inscription of the back of one
of the photos..." Dr. Seward Fox"

We quietly left the apartment and got in the wind... That night I showed the photos of the nude woman to Sepia.

"So Ray was a perve, so what?" she said.

"This isn't Ray's wallet, it belongs to Seward Fox. Who is he?" I asked..

"Oh..That's Ray's Father ,the surgeon...Guess he's a perve." laughed Sepia.

"Why,because he has a photo of a naked woman in his wallet?? I'd have some of you if you'd let
me take em.."I joked.

"Not cause she's naked silly, cause she's dead....look closer at the photo..can't you see that woman is dead...she looks like she's already had embalming fluid in her." said Sepia.

The woman never ceased to amaze me...A closer look at the photos in the light and it appeared that she was indeed dead...

I walked over to the phone....It was time to stop playing games and to call the Lieutenant.

(To be continued........)