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concluded that there was some evidence of a degenerative change within one of the valves of Kathy’s heart, the mitral valve, which allows blood to pass out of the large muscular chamber on the left side of the heart into the main circulatory system. Dr. Clark’s determination was that the mitral valve degeneration was minimal, however, and was not likely the cause of Kathy’s death.
    Dr. Clark did not immediately list a cause of death. She told Jenkins that she would have to wait until all of the toxicology tests had been conducted on Kathy’s urine and blood samples to finalize her determination.
    When Jenkins followed up with the hospital and examined the medical records that had been generated during Kathy’s hospital stay, he found nothing that could account for an injection that had been made by hospital staff on her left buttock, which corroborated the autopsy findings. In other words, no one at either of the hospitals had given Kathy an injection at the site of her left buttock or even in close proximity to it.
    Based on what he knew so far, Jenkins had the now-frozen urine samples, which had been collected from Kathy on July 8, 2006, forwarded to the FBI’s forensic laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, where it would be carefully and thoroughly analyzed for traces of succinylcholine. Jenkins also took steps to confirm the details of Higgs’s employment at the time of Kathy’s demise and found that he had access to a variety of drugs, as any nurse would, including succinylcholine, as well as the syringes and needles needed to administer them, during his tenure at Carson-Tahoe Hospital.
    As the buzz circulated that Kathy’s husband was somehow involved in her death, many people began asking why Chaz Higgs would want her dead. Jenkins later publicly stated that sometimes a murder doesn’t make much sense until all of the details have been sorted out.
    “Well, if you take the stand that every murder has to be rational,” Jenkins told CBS News, “I think you’ll be disappointed. All we know for sure is that there was a failing relationship, a lot of acrimony between the two of them, and some allegations of infidelity. That’s the ingredients, many times, for violence.”
    At this point of the investigation, with nothing sufficient enough to rule murder in or out, Jenkins knew that he had to dig deeper. Although his nagging cop’s instinct told him that Kathy Augustine had been murdered, off icially he was still investigating only a suspicious death. Thus began Jenkins’s case of alleged first-degree murder, which would become known as Case Number CR06-2876. He had no idea yet where his investigation would take him. But he would know soon enough.

Chapter 3
    Aside from her family and closest friends, Kathy Marie Alfano Augustine was not well-liked by many people, politically or otherwise. She was known to have an abrasive personality, and it was generally known that she frequently yelled at people, particularly the employees in her office at the state capital. She also knew how to play the game of dirty tricks, and many said that she played it well—nearly as well as Richard Nixon, who likely would have been proud of her. She was known around the office as “the bitch,” a term that her husband, Chaz, was also known to use when referring to her, according to witnesses. Confident and positive despite the many obstacles that she faced in the political arena, Kathy recognized that she was tough and she was damned proud of it. Her story was one of power, ambition, and enemies. According to RPD investigators, it was also a story of murder—her own. Kathy’s murder could have been the perfect crime, had it not been for a single slip of the tongue.
    At fifty, Kathy Augustine was tall and attractive, a big-boned blonde with a clear complexion and near-perfect teeth. Although she attempted to smile a lot, as most politicians do, her smile frequently seemed to be forced and, some would say, often did not show in