Accidentally Poisoned?

By Dawn Churchill

Detective Jill Perrier is called out in the middle of the night to a dead body in an alley. The body is a biophysics graduate student. It is unclear the cause of death and after several days it is still unclear as to whether the victim was murdered or accidentally poisoned in the lab. Detective Jill Perrier works to put the pieces together to solve the mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dawn Churchill
• Release date: Dec 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465758064

Book preview

Accidentally Poisoned?

By Dawn Churchill

Copyright 2011 Dawn Churchill

Smashwords Edition

Chapter 1

I am always confused when I am awakened by my cell phone in the middle of the night. After I registered that I was indeed in my bed and the obnoxious noise was indeed my phone, I rolled over and fumbled with the phone to answer it.

I said, Jill Perrier speaking.

At that point, I registered car noise in the background and a police sergeant told me that I had been assigned a case. There was a body found in an alley on North Kingshighway. I turned on my nightstand lamp and took down the address and the sergeant’s name. I then asked if the medical examiner had been called and he said yes. He said goodbye and I rolled out of bed.

History had told me that it would be a long night standing around a bad area of town, so I dressed in most comfortable black slacks and men’s blue wrinkle free dress shirt, which is my standard comfortable work clothes. They are not as comfortable as my blue jeans and sweat shirts, but I am not allowed to wear them to work. I think my favorite job would be a job where I didn’t have to wear dress clothes or a uniform to work, but since I have to eat, then I am detective for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. I have been a detective for 10 years and was a patrolman (actually a patrolwoman) for five years before that. I like St. Louis, but as a homicide detective I am kept quite busy dealing with the city’s violent criminals, so I probably have a different perception of St. Louis than most of the population.

I quickly brushed my teeth as I am walking out the door of my brownstone and I realized that I needed to remember to stop this habit, because used toothbrushes in my car are probably not going to help me get a date and it gets expensive to keep buying new toothbrushes. I would guess at any given moment the floorboard of my car contained half a dozen toothbrushes and half a dozen fast food restaurant bags. Someday I was going to live a normal life. I just hadn’t figured out how yet.

My brownstone is in the area of St. Louis called the Hill. It is relatively close to Kingshighway, so it only took me about 10 minutes to get the crime scene at 2am. When I arrived at the scene, there were about 10 St. Louis patrol cars with the lights flashing around the alley. I pulled behind one of the patrol cars and flashed my badge to the patrolman standing at the perimeter of the crime scene. He waived me on and as I got close to the victim, at that point, I realized that the medical examiner had already arrived along with my crime scene detective.

Dr. George Camden was a great medical examiner. I rarely worked with him, because he worked days and most murders that I get called in on happen in the middle of the night. However, on the rare occasion when he is assigned to my case, I am delighted, because he is very thorough, has a personality and can carryon a conversation with a human. People say homicide detectives have strange personalities, but most medical examiners lack any type of social skills. This makes even the capable ones difficult to work with.

As I stand over George, I say Hi, George. What brings you out this late at night?

Dr. Barber is on vacation, so I am on call this week.

Lucky for me. What do we have here?

White female, late twenties, time of death approximately 3 hours ago, dressed like a college student.

Cause of death?

I don’t know.

Evidence of fowl play?

Not really, except that why would a late twenties white female with a $500 dollar watch, an iPhone, and a very expensive necklace be in this area of town at this time of night. And she isn’t exactly old or ill or any other obvious reason for her to just drop dead.

Buying drugs?

I don’t think so. She is in good physical shape and no scent of alcohol or evidence of drugs. When the patrolman first arrived, they thought there was evidence of cocaine on her hands, but it is powder from surgical gloves and not cocaine or at least that is what your crime scene detective says.

With that, I turned around to Randy Reinhard, the crime scene detective, and asked him for an update.

"Well, Jill, this one is confusing. There is no ID, but we should be able to get an ID from the iPhone soon. The evidence of recently wearing surgical gloves would make you think of a nurse