Patricia Cornwell - Body of Evidence

"In other words, without this contraption you can't tell the difference between the two drugs," Marino concluded.

"Not in tox tests routinely done," I answered. "Levomethorphan comes up as dextromethorphan because the compounds are the same. The only discernible difference is they bend light in opposite directions, just as d-sucrose and 1-sucrose bend light in opposite directions even though they're both structurally the same disaccharide. D-sucrose is table sugar. L-sucrose has no nutritional value to humans."

"I'm not sure I get it," Marino said, rubbing his eyes. "How can compounds be the same but different?"

"Think of dextromethorphan and levomethorphan as identical twins," I said. "They're not the same people, so to speak, but they look the same-except one is right-handed, the other left-handed. One is benign, the other strong enough to kill. Does that help?"

"Yeah, I guess. So how much of this levomethorphan stuff would it take for Miss Harper to snuff herself?"

"Thirty milligrams would probably do it. Fifteen two-milligram tablets, in other words," I answered. "What then, saying she did?"

"She would very quickly slip into a deep narcosis and die."

— *

"You think she would've known about this isomer stuff?"

"She might have," I replied. "We know she had cancer, and we also suspect she wanted to disguise her suicide, perhaps explaining the melted plastic in the fireplace and the ashes of whatever else it was she burned right before she died. It's possible she deliberately left the bottle of cough syrup out to throw us off track. After seeing that, I wasn't surprised when dextromethorphan came up in her tox."

Miss Harper had no living relatives, very few friends -if any-and she didn't strike me as someone who traveled very often. After discovering she had recently made a trip to Baltimore, the first thing that came to mind was Johns Hopkins, which has one of the finest oncology clinics in the world. A couple of quick calls confirmed that Miss Harper had made periodic visits to Hopkins for blood and bone marrow workups, a routine relating to a disease she obviously had been quite secretive about. When I was informed of her medication, the pieces suddenly snapped together in my mind. The labs in my building did not have a polarimeter or any way to test for levomethorphan. Dr. Ismail at Hopkins had promised to assist if I could supply him with the necessary samples.

It was not quite seven now, and we were on the outer fringes of D.C. Woods and swamps streamed past until the city was suddenly there, the Jefferson Memorial flashing white through a break in the trees. Tall office buildings were so close I could see plants and lampshades through spotless windows before the train plunged underground like a mole and burrowed blindly beneath the Mall.

We found Dr. Ismail inside the pharmacology lab of the oncology clinic. Opening the shopping bag, I set the small Styrofoam box on his desk.

"Are these the samples we talked about?" he asked with a smile.

"Yes," I replied. "They should still be frozen. We came here straight from the train station."

"If the concentrations are good, I can have an answer for you in a day or so," he said.

"What exactly will you do with the stuff?" Marino inquired as he looked around the lab, which looked like every lab I have ever seen.

"It's very simple, really," Dr. Ismail replied patiently. "First I will make an extract of the gastric sample. That will be the longest, most painstaking part of the test. When that is done I place the extract into the polarimeter, which looks very much like a telescope. But it has rotatory lenses. I look through the eyepiece and rotate the lenses to the left and right. If the drug in question is dextromethorphan, then it will bend light to the right, meaning the light in my field will get brighter as I rotate the lenses to the right. For levomethorphan the opposite is true."

He went on to explain that levomethorphan is a very effective pain reliever prescribed almost exclusively for people terminally ill with cancer. Because the drug had been developed here, he kept a list of all Hopkins patients who were on it. The purpose was to establish the therapeutic range. The bonus for us was he had a record of Miss Harper's treatments.

"She would come in every two months for her blood and bone marrow workups and on each visit was given a supply, about two hundred fifty two-milligram tablets," Dr. Ismail was saying as he smoothed open the pages of a thick monitoring book. "Let's see… Her last visit was October twenty-eighth. She should have had at least seventy-five, if not a hundred tablets left."

"We didn't find them," I said.

"A shame." He lifted dark, saddened eyes. "She was doing so well. A very lovely woman. I was always pleased to see her and her daughter."

After a moment of startled silence, I asked, "Her daughter?"

"I assume so. A young woman. Blond…"

Marino cut in, "She with Miss Harper last time, the last weekend in October?"

Dr. Ismail frowned and said, "No. I don't recall seeing her then. Miss Harper was alone."

"How many years had Miss Harper been coming here?" I asked.

"I'll have to pull her chart. But I know it has been several. At least two years."

"Was her daughter, the young blond woman, always with her?" I asked.

"Not so often in the early days," he answered. "But during the past year she was with Miss Harper on every visit, except for this last one in October, and possibly the one before that. I was impressed. Being so ill, well, it is nice when one has the support of family."

"Where did Miss Harper stay when she was here?" Marino's jaw muscles were flexing again.

"Most of the patients stay in hotels located nearby. But Miss Harper was fond of the harbor," Dr. Ismail said.

My reactions were slowed by tension and lack of sleep.

"You don't know what hotel?" Marino persisted.

"No. I have no idea…"

Suddenly I began seeing images of the fragmented typed words on filmy white ash.

I interrupted both of them. "May I see your telephone directory, please?"

Fifteen minutes later Marino and I were standing out on the street looking for a cab. The sun was bright, but it was quite cold.

"Damn," he said again. "I hope you're right."

"We'll find out soon enough," I said tensely.

In the business listings of the telephone directory was a hotel called Harbor Court, bor Co, bor C. I kept seeing the miniature black letters on the wisps of burned paper. The hotel was one of the most luxurious in the city, and it was directly across the street from Harbor Place.

"I tell you what I can't figure," Marino went on as another taxi passed us by. "Why all the bother? So Miss Harper kills herself, right? Why go to all the trouble to do it in such a mysterious way? Make any sense to you?"

"She was a proud woman. Suicide was probably a shameful act to her. She may not have wanted anyone to figure it out, and she may have chosen to take her life while I was inside her house."

"Why?"

"Perhaps because she didn't want her body found a week later."

Traffic was terrible, and I was beginning to wonder if we were going to have to walk to the harbor.

"And you really think she knew about this isomer business?"

"I think she did," I said.

"How come?"

"Because she would wish for death with dignity, Marino. It's possible she'd premeditated suicide for quite a long time, in the event her leukemia became acute and she didn't want to suffer or make others suffer any longer. Levomethorphan was a perfect choice. In most instances, it never would have been detected-providing a cough suppressant containing dextromethorphan was found inside her house."

"No shit?" he marveled as a taxi, thank God, pulled out of traffic and headed our way. "I'm impressed. You know, I really am."