Read Fatal Reaction for Free Online Page A

like she had tried to make herself throw up the pills.”
    “Why would she do that? Second thoughts?” Mike operated under the assumption of suicide, whether or not he wanted to believe it.
    Kim shook her head. “I don’t think so. There are a couple of things that make determining death by overdose difficult. One is tolerance level. What is lethal to some is normal for others. It makes it hard to standardize a fatal level. There’s also the possibility of postmortem distribution.” Mike shrugged and held out his hands. “Drugs contained in fatty tissue are released into bodily fluids after death. The postmortem result might have been skewed.”
    “So you don’t know how much was in her system?”
    “I have an idea. In a fatal acute overdose, one would expect to see zopiclone levels in the 0.4–3.9 milligrams per liter range. Sydney’s were at ninety micro grams per liter, which is less than the usual therapeutic dose. If she did take thirty pills, she got them out of her system before she digested them.” Kim set Sydney’s arm back under the white sheet. “Take a look at this.” She lifted Sydney’s eyelids to show him the smattering of tiny red and purple spots in the whites of her eyes. “Same as here.” She pointed them out in the skin around Sydney’s mouth. “Petechial hemorrhaging around the mouth could be caused by forceful vomiting, but I’m not sure that’s the case here. Her heart was significantly enlarged, and there was foam in her airway from mucus in her lungs mixing with air as she struggled to breathe. Cause of death is asphyxiation, not drug overdose. Sydney suffocated.”
    Mike took a moment to absorb what he was hearing. Ana had been right . Someone staged Sydney’s death to look like a suicide. His mind went immediately to the scratches on Misty’s face. “Anything come back on her nail scrapings?”
    Kim pulled the sheet up. “I don’t see anything in the reports, but I’ll check with the crime lab.” She peeled off her gloves and threw them into the garbage. “Do you have any idea who would want Sydney dead?”
    Mike shook his head. “It’s a very short list.”

CHAPTER 9
    Marco Prusak rolled up the sleeves of his collared shirt and scrubbed his stained hands at the bathroom sink of his modest, one-bedroom apartment. No matter what he used to clean them, the dye from his protest refused to come off. The fake blood faded to a shade of pink not easily noticed against his olive skin, but the guilt of what he’d done had him unable to ignore it. He’d gone too far, and being suspended at a time when he was so close to his goal had him anxious to get back to his lab.
    He splashed a handful of water on his face and stared at his reflection.
    Dark circles formed beneath his near-black eyes. His recent, extreme weight loss caused his skin to sag and made his age lines more visible. Fifty-seven hard years, most spent preaching the word of Jehovah door to door and walking for hours in the sun, had him looking at least fifteen years older.
    Grief compounded his advanced aging.
    His life seemed an endless timeline, each milestone punctuated by tragedy; losing his infant daughter, Jasmine, had been the worst of it.
    At six weeks premature, Jasmine’s first days were filled with complications. She weighed only four and a half pounds and was slow to gain weight with only a feeding tube nourishing her. Days turned to weeks, and a list of new symptoms heralded something worse.
    The color of her skin deepened in its yellow tone, her urine became dark, and her belly swelled. Doctors put her on phototherapy for jaundice, but when her condition didn’t improve, a battery of tests confirmed their suspicions. Jasmine was diagnosed with complete biliary atresia, a congenital, and if untreated, fatal, abnormality in the opening of her bile ducts.
    Marco and his young wife, Faith, prayed for Jasmine’s improvement, spending all of their time in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and suffering