On to the bathroom. There’s something in the sink, specks of a dried material that looks plantlike. I open the medicine cabinet. Tylenol. Benadryl. I open both and find only what the labels proclaim. All Roy’s toiletries are as neatly arranged as his food. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then, on the top shelf, I notice the edge of a baggie. I tug it down to find dried mushrooms. They match the color and consistency of the specks in the sink.
I lift the bag and consider the contents. Then I use tweezers to put a few sink specks into a vial. I label both and tuck them into my kit. I search the rest of the bathroom but find nothing.
Back to the main room. On my way to track the bacon smell, I’d passed Roy’s clothing. I return now and consider the story it tells. It’s in a heap, like someone might leave before getting into bed, letting his clothing fall as he sheds it. That heap sits in the middle of the floor.
I look around and see nothing—
No, that’s wrong. The living room is otherwise so tidy that anything out of place stands out. On the coffee table sit a book of word searches, a pen, and a wineglass. I’d seen the bottle in the kitchen. While liquor is strictly regulated, we allow demi—or half-size—bottles of wine to be taken home, and that’s what I’d found in the kitchen—an empty bottle in the recycling bin. I return to the kitchen and check it. Drops of red wine linger in the bottom, and when I lift it to the light, I see dampness along one side, where the contents were recently poured out. I tuck the bottle into a paper bag.
Back to the living room. The wineglass has been drained to the dregs. I pour those last drops into a vial and take the glass. I’m lifting the puzzle book when Dalton comes in. He raises his hands to show that he’s already wearing gloves, like me.
“Do I need to watch where I step?” he asks, looking around.
“Only in the kitchen, though I haven’t checked the bedroom.”
“You want me to do that?”
I shake my head. “I’ll be done soon, and I’d rather just keep going.”
“You want me to take notes?”
I smile. “Sure, though I know you’re offering only as a roundabout way of asking me what I’ve found so far. But since you offered, you are now my secretary. First, while watching your step, go into the kitchen and tell me what you see?”
He steps through the door. “Shit.”
“Incorrect.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m glad it’s not shit, considering this is the stuff he put into his hair.”
That sparks a memory, but it flutters past too fast to grab, and he continues, noting what I did and making notes as I dictate. I send him into the bathroom next. He barely gets through the doorway before saying, “What’s the stuff in the sink?”
“I believe it’s mushrooms.”
“What?” He leans out.
“For your notes: Detective Butler noticed specks of an unknown substance in the sink. She collected samples. She then found a bag of dried mushrooms in the medicine cabinet, which may be the source of the substance.”
“Dried mushrooms?”
“Continuing … She also notes that Roy has never taken any interest in the forest and seems unlikely to be a forager. He may have purchased the mushrooms. If so, and if they are a hallucinogen—or he believes them to be—it would seem safer to have stored them with his food. His icebox and cupboards suggest he prefers cooking to purchasing ready-made food, and if the mushrooms had been stored in there, they would have appeared to be part of his larder.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Which does not rule out the possibility that he simply never thought of that. You are writing this down, right?”
He does as he walks into the living room.
I continue, “A second potential source of the intoxicant is a glass of wine found by the sofa. The glass was finished, the bottle in the recycling and still damp. This suggests he drank it just before his episode. Also, while he may have drained the entire demi in one sitting, it’s more likely it was left, opened, in his kitchen, where it would be susceptible to tampering.”
Dalton writes.
I continue, “There is also a word-search puzzle, which he seemed to be doing while drinking his wine. He was halfway through a puzzle and then…” I turn the book around. The pages are ripped, shredded by a very heavily wielded pen, used to scrawl obscenities across the page.
“Tough puzzle, huh?” Dalton says.
“Evidently.”
I bag the book and head into the bedroom. Dalton follows and stays in the doorway. After I look around, I open drawers.