Brand took a step back.
Hawkeye scratched his head. “I believe one of the task force collected several empty peanut butter jars from Flynn’s bedroom and a half-eaten jar as well as a full jar from his kitchen. I have the bag in my office.”
“I’ll need to test those,” Holland said.
“Right,” Brand said. “I recall seeing him coming to practice eating from a jar with a spoon one day.”
“Doesn’t surprise me at all.” Holland put the ladle in the goo filled pan. “That’s proof that he didn’t hide his fondness for the savory treat. But since we’ve been unable to figure out the source of the blood thinner, I decided to test his stomach contents. It was a whim. I get them from time to time. My wife calls them wild hairs. But this one paid off.”
“And?” Hawkeye asked.
“Pay dirt.”
“Usually when something pays off one assumes that,” Brand said trying to keep his tone neutral, but it was too early in the morning for the medical examiner to be flippant.
“Right. Sorry,” Holland said. “Forgive me. I’ve been up all night for the last two nights now. It’s a busy time of the year. Why is the holidays always a high crime time for murder?”
“I don’t know, Charles,” Hawkeye said. “Tell us, what did you find?”
“Arsenic, but no old lace,” the man said and started to chuckle.
Brand frowned, looking at Hawkeye who only grinned.
“Cary Grant movie,” he explained. “Really funny. Old ladies doing murder and a weird uncle who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt.”
“Ah,” Brand said.
“The kind of arsenic you find in rat poison,” Holland continued.
Hawkeye’s brow arched. “Rat poison?”
“And high contents of it too. And you know what today’s rat poison and Warfarin have in common?”
“I do.” Hawkeye nodded. “They both act as anticoagulants by interfering with blood clotting.”
“Winner. Winner. Give that man a chicken dinner,” Holland sang.
“But wouldn’t he had to have eaten a huge amount of peanut butter laced with the poison to cause this?” Brand asked.
“At least what he recently ingested and then some,” Holland explained. “Enough to cause him not to clot when he was cut.”
“So you’re saying someone mixed rat poison or it’s component into Flynn’s peanut butter” Brand said for clarification. “But that’s murder.”
“Now there’s the lace,” Holland said and laughed heartily.
Hawkeye held up a hand. “Save the humor for another time, Charles. If it’s murder, we need to determine the killers motive.”
“But why would someone do that?” Brand demanded. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Why do people do half the things they do these days?” Holland groused, slipping on a clean pair of latex gloves. “Now if you don’t mind, I have to get back to table number one so I can finally go home to sleep for a few hours before coming back here to do this all over again.”
“Will you send me your full report?” Hawkeye asked.
“I’ve dictated my report and sent it to my secretary to transcribe. I’ve asked her to send you a copy via email as soon as she has it ready,” Holland said. “She should get it with my findings when she arrives at her desk this morning.”
“Okay, Doc,” Brand said. “Thanks.”
“Don’t forget to send me those jars for testing,” Holland said, going back to his unfinished autopsy. “And unless you bring me positive proof that Flynn didn’t lace the peanut butter himself, I’m ruling this death a homicide.”
