His Love Was My Poison novel · Chapter 6 of 48
Chapter 6: The Empty Vial
Forty heads turned toward me.
The trial evaluator lowered his clipboard.
"Ma'am, this is a scheduled briefing," he said to Eleanor.
"I'm sorry. I truly am." Eleanor pressed a hand to her chest. "But I couldn't sit on this one more minute."
Her voice shook beautifully.
"At half past two this morning, the father of my son called me in tears. He said this woman broke into his quarters in the middle of the night and told him I was poisoning him."
So he had called her the minute I walked out of his trailer.
Before the blood test, before my note, before anything.
"And then I thought," Eleanor went on, "how would she even know there was poison? Unless she put it there."
A murmur went around the tent.
"She's a chemist," Eleanor said. "She carries poison in a case. Everybody knows it. She hasn't seen Royce in seven years, and the first night she's here, she's in his bedroom with his candles."
She turned to the room with tears standing in her eyes.
"I don't care what she thinks of me. I care that my son still has a father."
The CID agent stepped forward.
She was about fifty, with short gray hair and a face that gave nothing away.
"Ms. Sayle," she said. "I'd like to see your calibration standards."
"Of course."
I said it calmly, because I had nothing to hide.
We walked to the contractor lot in a little procession.
The evaluator, the agent, Eleanor, me, Micah, and about half the other teams, who had abandoned their coffee for something more interesting.
Micah unlocked the trailer.
I pulled out the gray hard case from under the bench and opened the latches.
Inside, in foam slots, sat our sealed glass ampoules.
Lead standard. Mercury standard. Arsenic standard, three of them.
Two of the arsenic ampoules were whole.
The third one's neck had been snapped clean off.
It was empty.
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