A Year At The Opera

Chapter 13: The Beginning Of The End, Part 2

A/N: Part 2 is here! Sorry it was later than expected!

Word Count: 5K words

Joe

It was a slow day at the precinct today. Joe slaved away, writing up all the paperwork for the last few days. He read through the reports, signed them and moved onto the next. He was planning on spending the whole day checking through his portion of the alibis — having handed some of them out to Detective Morton to double check because he was free — and getting all the people crossed off their list of suspects.

As he slogged his way through everything, signing basically every other piece of paper that he looked at, his thoughts wandered. With each name he crossed off, the list of suspects grew shorter and shorter than it already was. Which always felt wrong to Joe. A small amount of suspects usually meant he wasn't looking big enough. But, he soldiered on.

The maid and the CCTV footage from the Justice house had both cleared the wife. The maid was cleared too because she was on her way home at the time as corroborated by her phone and car's GPS. From the financial division, Joe hadn't found a single person to be suspicious of in the slightest. Everyone that knew Carson liked him. Those that didn't know him were all new and had no motive.

At the end, this left Joe with only five suspects. The four kids that found the body and that receptionist Maya. She seemed shifty when Joe mentioned Carson. There was just something off about her. As Joe made a mental note to check up on her, Detective Morton called out Joe's name. Joe looked up to see Morton making his way across the room, waving around a folder.

"What is it?" Joe asked.

"Final report's here." Morton placed the folder on the desk. "Carson's autopsy."

Joe quickly scanned through it.

COD was still blunt force trauma. Possibly a spherical rock. Nothing distinctive in the fractures. TOD was around 8-10pm on the 3rd. Nothing unusual in his stomach but—

"What's that?" Joe pointed at the blood report.

"What?" Morton asked.

Joe turned the file around. "There was something in his blood."

Joe felt giddy as he picked up the phone and called Jeanie. He could finally have an actual real lead. But beyond that, he hadn't had a case this exciting in practically forever.

"Hey, Dr. Smith? This is Detective Vega. So, I was just wondering, what exactly did you find in the blood reports for Carson Justice?" He asked.

"Uh, well, it took a while to find — almost didn't find it because I wasn't looking for it, but there were traces of a rare poison in his blood." Jeanie said. "Only found it because of a slight discoloration and unusual coagulation of the blood. From what I could find, the poison... it's a mutation of a foxglove plant. Slows your heart, causes seizures, strokes, severe blood coagulation. But from the little bits of damage it did to him, I doubt it would have been injected long before his death."

"But the COD is blunt force trauma, correct?"

"Right. Two straight hits to the back of the skull."

"So, they poisoned him, then killed him and buried him? Why?"

"I believe that's your job to figure out, detective." Jeanie said.

"Could the poison have been injected after he was hit?"

"Well, I doubt there would be much point but yes, it's possible but not very plausible. The amounts of damage to his cells heavily suggest it was injected before he was hit — or more accurately, before he died and his blood flow shut off, thus stopping the spreading of the poison. So if it got into his blood after he was hit, it would have had to spread before he died and based on how hard he was hit, I doubt that was very long."