Page 31 of Craving Vengeance
“Nick,” Shannon whispered as she rose to her feet and stepped toward him.
He zoned in on her big green eyes. She looked concerned. He lifted his hand and stepped back. The hint of hurt that darkened her eyes pierced his heart.
He knew he needed to pull it together or else. He didn’t want to think of the ‘or else,’ but it consumed his mind anyway.
Chapter Twelve
Spinelli and Walkerquestioned Shannon over and over about who would possibly want to set her up. It didn’t look good for her. In fact, if she hadn’t spent the night at Spinelli’s, she would have looked guilty as sin.
Bethany and Debra provided no news about the murders. All they’d confirmed thus far was that all four men had been poisoned with cyanide.
Spinelli’s stomach growled reminding him and everyone else in a half-mile radius he hadn’t eaten all day. He eyed the chocolates on his desk. No time now.
He looked over Marsh’s shoulder as he sifted through the financial records of today’s victims.
Walker was busy Googling cyanide. “I doubt you’ve been poisoned, Spinelli. It says here cyanide induces fatality in seconds following ingestion, especially on an empty stomach. On a full stomach, it could take up to four hours. Good thing you haven’t eaten all day. You never know what could be in your food.”
Spinelli rolled his eyes. “Yeah, good thing. Where in the hell does someone get cyanide anyhow?”
Walker looked back at his computer screen. “It says here that after ingestion, certain chemicals can be changed by the body into cyanide. Products like old artificial nail polish remover or some chemicals found in old solvents and plastics manufacturing solutions contain such, but supposedly they’ve been removed from the market.” Walker shook his head. “Who are we kidding? They probably got it right off of eBay in ready form.”
“Is there anything there about quantity needed to ensure fatality?” Spinelli asked.
Walker nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t know...well...it’s hard to tell. I’m looking at some pathologist’s blog, and he’s got a bunch of mumbo jumbo on there about grams and milligrams and different kinds of cyanide. The only thing I can tell for sure is that if ingested, you’d better have your affairs in order.”
“I think I may have found something here,” Marsh interrupted as he pointed to some paperwork lying on his desk.
Spinelli leaned over his shoulder to get a better look. “What is it?”
“I had the IT Department print out Chad Williams’ Internet records for the past week and there isn’t much activity except for him logging onto the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services website. But on a couple of occasions, he logged ontobackpage dot com.”
“So?”
“Well, the IT Department has a program that can track keystrokes, and they found this,” he said as he pointed to a line in the middle of the text-filled page. “Judging from this, it looks like he logged into his Hotmail account and answered abackpagead for a male entertainer.” Marsh slid his finger down to the next line of text. “It seems he planned to meet someone going by the name of Lady Lily. He agreed to meet her at the Morgan Bank building at 5:00 a.m. today.”
Marsh paused and looked up at Spinelli and Walker. “The flower of death.”
