Shocked 2) from the depths: a mystery

Part three: from the depths

The next day, Clavia Lombarre had still not responded to the treatment administered by

Emergency Room nurses, and was in the Intensive Care Unit of Weston Medical Center.

The police had reported their findings and the diagnosis was shock due to electrocution from high voltage electricity. Clavia was alive, but in a coma.

She breathed with the assistance of a nasal cannula due to two plummets in her oxygen level during the first few hours of her stay.

The burn on her right hand and wrist was severe, and appeared to have been caused by a voltage much greater than the hundred volts used to run an appliance.

But what in a kitchen had higher voltage than a wall socket?

No one could answer that.

Her students had been instructed to care for the electric eels that she researched.

Since it was a relatively easy job, they simply went in once a day, dumped food into the tanks and left.

Tuesday, two days after Clavia’s initial collapse, Officer Osenwald visited the house to again review the evidences that were still present on the scene.

He looked again at the sink, and then at his clipboard with the evidence report, he realized that the drain in the sink had been unplugged.

The paramedics wouldn’t have undone the drain, and the detectives that reported to the site as assistance were trained specifically not to erase evidence.

Who had done it? Both doors to the kitchen had been padlocked.

There was simply no way anyone would’ve accessed the kitchen after the police had set up the perimeter.

And no one would’ve done that between the woman collapsing and the arrival of the authorities.

So who was it?

It had to have been Clavia Lombarre.

The next day, he reported to the station, and showing his detective’s identification badge, he went into the evidence room.

The blender in the plastic bag had remained untouched, no one finding any reason to so much as look at it.

Now, with latex gloves, Officer Osenwald opened the bag and took out the blender’s base.

If he could get this to the forensics department, they’d have a field day. “A blender. Really?” his friend, James, an expert in the genetics section would say, his eyes rolling incredulously behind his protection goggles.

That was precisely what happened. “A blender. You can’t be serious.” James was always one to be blunt.

Frank Osenwald knew that, but it stung just the same.

“Well, if it isn’t Detective Osenwald.” Helen, James’s co-worker in the electronics department commented as she stepped up to the table where they sat conversing.

“What is it? You know I am trained in electronics. I’d be glad to investigate this.” She pulled up a chair beside Frank.

“Brilliant,” was the only thing Officer Osenwald could say to that. He was confident that an extensive examination of the appliance would tell the tale of the college professor’s injury.

Yet he did not know where the lead would end.

Part two: Through the Mixture

That evening, when he was eating dinner, the phone rang.

It was Helen, at the lab. “Frank, I tested the blender, looking for particles and water molecules, whatnot, like what would be in dishwater, and there is nothing. Nothing, at all.”

“What? There have to be particles of water in the blender, otherwise, where’d the shock come from?” Officer Osenwald asked.

“Frank, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but the results were quite clear. There was no dishwater residue in the electronic components of the blender.”

“ A woman collapsed, sometime last week, and a visitor saw her through the window. The paramedics came, got her. She was unconscious, with a severe burn on her right hand. She fell directly behind the sink.

The woman’s been in a coma since then, so far as I know. And that’s the only theory that is at all supported by evidence.

Shock to the system, nervous system instability, as well as the burns, indicate that it was due to high voltage, at least from what I’ve heard.”

“I’m sorry to ruin your lead, but now you know the truth,” the woman encouraged him.

“Yes, thankyou for testing it for me. Goodbye.”

Part five: unbidden visitors

Janice Taylor, Clavia’s nextdoor neighbor, visited her at five o’clock, bringing along her eight year old son Harker.

Janice stood over the hospital bed, seeing the numerous tubes of fluids and various sorts of medications that were inserted in a PIC line in Clavia’s arm.

Her skin was pale and yellowish, her hair lay limp and tangled on the pillow. Everything smelled of antiseptic, and the world was composed of sterile white.

Heart and oxygen monitors beeped and flashed, but the unconscious professor sensed none of it.

She was somewhere else, decided the eight year old Harker, maybe inside her mind; maybe Heaven, but definitely not in the room, where her body was.

He stared at his neighbor, perturbed by these wonderings.

“But mommy,” he said, “What happened to Ms. Lombarre?”

“She doesn’t hurt any, it’s like she’s asleep, in a coma. But we don’t know how to wake her up. She..went to sleep when her blender fell in the sink and shocked her. That’s why I always tell you to be very careful with electricity.”

“Oh,” he began, but was cut off by the shrill alarm an oxygen monitor emitted. A nurse rushed in and flushed out the visitors, telling them to visit again later.

Early the next morning, Janice was getting up to let the dog out, and heard a bang coming from Clavia’s yard.

The floodlight in her back yard revealed a dark figure with a large object aimed at the window.

Without hesitation, she grabbed the house phone and dialed the police station.

“Hello, I’d like to report a break in, at 1985 Araon Street, Weston. The landowner isn’t home. She’s actually in a coma. Oh, yes, the scene. I just got up and saw a figure trying to break open the window. Thankyou, goodbye.”

By the time the patrol car arrived, the burglar had vanished, leaving a flapping windowscreen in his wake.

The officer, Jim Core, noted this, and radioed his superior for advice.

“…Yes, the window’s open, that’s where they got in. Small rear one, all the glass broken out. Oh, I believe I’m capable of fitting through, thankyou for the advice.”

His superior wasn’t superior in his degree of solemnity.

The fit was tighter than he’d anticipated. Nevertheless, after thirty nine seconds of worming his shoulders and arms through, he managed to slip his legs through the frame.

Standing in the interior of the college professor’s house, he turned on his flashlight.

The police tape stood out neon yellow in the beams, and then he nearly fell to his knees, slipping in something wet.

It glowed red in the dark, and he let out a little yelp. Blood? Whose?

The owner was supposed to be in the hospital, in a comatose state! No, he decided noticing the distinct smell of solvents; it was paint.

Standing up, he saw a red sheet of paper on the table, and couldn’t help reading what it said: “Life will shock you.”

Then, glancing back at the paint on the floor, he saw that it too revealed letters.

He viewed a startling message. The splotches read “Didn’t it?”

And there appeared to be crudely painted lightening bolts around the phrase. Shock? The note…red..dated Saturday the seventh-the day before the landowner had been found, collapsed, according to files he had pulled up on his laptop about recent calls to the residence

Something strange was going on.

Jim pulled out his radio and dialed Detective Osenwald’s house number.

Officer Core felt a little pang of guilt in his gut… he’d sort of overheard a conversation between the chief and Osenwald on Monday.

Part six: an elucidating discovery

“What!”

“Calm down, Frank, it’s not so much of a huge deal. Wait awhile before you come. I mean, it’s just four, barely.”

“Wait awhile? Core, have you ever watched paint dry? Of course, I suppose it won’t go much faster even if I was there. Look, this woman, I think she’s got somebody after her. Honestly. You see….”

He went on to spin Clavia’s story, or as completely as he knew it.

“So they didn’t find anything in the blender to prove that it was the source of her..electrocution?”

“Precisely. However, it’s not that simple. Wonder if we could lift any fingerprints from the paint? And dust that note, for Heaven’s sake.

Photograph the painted prints. Bag the note as evidence. And this time, try not to destroy all the evidence. Photo all of the paint, and collect the note as evidence. I’ll talk to the chief about this one.”

“Yeah, I will, Osenwald. But I won’t be smearing it again, I can tell you that. It did scare me, though, seeing red..thought for a minute it was another homicide.

I honestly…” Officer Core broke off, a bitter memory hindering his ability to speak.

“I don’t think any of us will ever forget that,” Osenwald agreed grimly.

He shuttered, remembering that particular case, the likes of which he hoped never again surfaced in Weston. A personal, heart and gut wrenching case… but one that he compared to this…for a reason even he couldn’t fathom.

What he felt as he hung up the phone didn’t make sense. A flicker of dread, something elusive, something foreboding. A sort of dark presence. Of course, an accident turned assault case could easily do that.

So who dunnit?

That question was beyond apparent. Someone who knew where and how to strike, a very methodical person.

Not to mention someone who knew what she did.

But what on earth was the weapon? No bullets, only symptoms of shock, hypoxic brain injury and a very severely burned hand to go on.

And the fact that it fit in the sink, a wet environment, unsuitable for a normal weapon. That was when he called back to Helen in the forensics department.

“Hey, can you analyze the outside of the blender for traces of chemical components, acids, or some sort of chemicals that could trigger a reaction that would have an output of electricity?”

“I don’t see why not, but you realize that would mean asking James, who had the course in chemical components.”

“I know. And tell him, before he laughs, we found graffiti that held threatening messages on the site. I don’t think this was just an accident…”

“I’ll give it to James. From what I’ve heard him say, he’s got today clear after lunch.

He should get the analysis back to you at five or so, being that these things take a little time, the molecular analysis and the typing of chemicals and so forth.”

“Thankyou, Helen.”

He hung up the phone, sitting back on his mattress, feeling the empty spot beside him that had been so since the worst case he’d ever had five years before.