The drive home took hours, but she was grateful for the lighter than normal evening traffic. The coroners from five counties, a team of state investigators, and every available person from the small county's sheriff's office was working on the case. Judge Kilman refused to give Mr. Langston bail on the tampering with evidence charge. He was remanded into custody of the county after D.A. Nolia pointed out that each person at the conference paid over twenty thousand dollars to be there. He was sitting on millions of dollars according to his own media propaganda, including the two million from the event that killed forty-one and sickened one-hundred and sixty-three. Joan was one of the fortunate eleven who did not eat anything from the buffet. Her single bite of a crab cake had been from the one food item that wasn't tainted because it was so overcooked.

In the last seventy-two hours, Joan and Nolia managed to get statements from several surviving interns that they were ordered to re-cook the seafood in a spicy Cajun sauce and told it was safe to serve the guests. The stories of the dumped over coolers and melted ice in sloshing around the back of the hot panel truck made Joan cringe. The truth behind the food sourcing was horrifying. The two interns who drove up the catering from another state, revealed that it was the leftover from a much larger conference and that Langston himself rented the truck and ordered it taken in coolers over the caterer's protest.

It was a food handling negligence case unlike any she had seen, because it was so purposefully done and so pointless. Her boss was glad to loan her to the small county after hearing about Paul's death. He filed a 'motion to delay' on both her cases to the end of the month. NYC D.A. Jack Ford also sent Sam, one of their top investigators, to New Orleans to find the caterer and the seafood wholesaler.

Parking in the garage at the city municipal building, Joan squeezed the steering wheel of the Lexus lease she shared with Paul. She would have to call the dealership on Monday. There was no way she could afford the beautiful SUV alone. Going inside, she smiled at the guard as she swiped into the building.

Carl gave her a sad smile in return, and she knew he knew before he spoke. "Ms. Hannah, I'm so sorry for your loss."

Inhaling a deep breath, she put on her bravest face. "Thank you, Carl. We got the bastard, and he is going to pay for killing Paul and forty others."

"You get them, Ms. Hannah."

"I can't practice law out of state, but I am making sure their D.A. has the use of every bit of knowledge I have. He's gonna rot in jail," Joan revealed as she gave him a nod. "I'm headed up to see the boss. See you later, Carl."

"Yes, ma'am."

As she rode up in the elevator alone, she dabbed her eyes. Her emotions were on the roller coaster of grief. Stepping out, on the floor for the District Attorney's office, she waved at several coworkers. Some came and hugged her, offering condolences, while others promise to help her in any way she needed.

Sam, her favorite investigator, was waiting for her. He was wearing a look she hated. "I got something for you."

"That bad, huh?"

"Depends." He nodded as he held the doorknob to D.A. Ford's office. "Boss wanted to tell you himself." Then he opened it and let her enter first.

"Joan, I'm glad you made it back safe. You look like hell," Jack declared then he hugged her, uncaring of the H.R. rules. He had been her mentor and friend since law school. "I am so sorry about Paul."

"Thank you." Joan answered, trembling for a moment as she fought the urge to cry or rant; she couldn't decide which.

"Sam found a problem with your case in Appalachia. It seems the gentleman who provided the shrimp may have held a vendetta against Mr. Langston."

"That won't change the fact that he drove leftover seafood and egg products from one state to another in an unrefrigerated panel truck and then told his interns to recook it in a spicy sauce to hide that it went bad," Joan objected.

"It might. You know that people who eat shellfish contaminated with red tide can experience gastrointestinal and neurological distress. They start with nausea, and diarrhea, then progress to dizziness, muscular aches and spasms, vertigo, and numbness or tingling in the face and throat, and loss of motor control in their extremities."

"I know all this. Botulism causes the same symptoms," Joan snapped.

"Yes, but your victims, including Paul, and most of the survivors tested positive for exposure to red tide as well," revealed Jack.

"What?" Joan demanded, "How could you possibly know?"

"I had the State D.A.'s office send samples to our lab to check. Their office sent me an email confirming our findings. They were so certain it was botulism that they didn't even look for red tide until Sam went to Louisiana." Jack pulled his bottle of single malt out and poured three glasses.

She took one with a shaking hand as Sam started speaking, "The guy whose boat supplied the majority of the shrimp has lost almost everything after investing in Mr. Langston's Punch Your Way to Wealth program. The banks have taken his house and all but one of his boats. He's divorced and has become a violent alcoholic. The day before the seafood was sold through a wholesaler, Mr. Beautrie's boat was seen shrimping in an area closed because of a red tide bloom. He asked the wholesaler to make it available to Mr. Langston's people at below market price as a favor to his friend."

Joan swayed on her feet and then sat down as Sam continued, "There were over three hundred cases of it in New Orleans by the morning after the conference. No one knew what happened to the shrimp and assumed it was thrown away. Twelve people died, but most Louisianians know the symptoms and headed to the hospital."

"The caterer said she didn't know where the shrimp came from, only that it was fresh caught, never frozen," Jack added.

Joan gulped the whiskey as tears leaked down her face. She looked at Sam and Jack with anguished eyes, "Did Mr. Beautrie intend on making people sick?"

"We think so, but we can't ask him," Jack answered.

"Well, why the hell not?!" Joan yelled at them.

"The Coast Guard can't find him, sweetie," Sam murmured gently in stark contrast to his thick Brooklyn accent. "They think after the conference, when the reports of the red tide sickness hit the papers..." He hesitated.

"What?" Joan twisted in the chair, dropping the empty glass.

"He went out on his last shrimp boat and skuttled it. There was the report of an explosion and the next morning a fuel slick and some debris was found identifying the boat but not his body... I'm sorry, Joan, it's my fault," Sam apologized. "He left harbor after I talked to him but before they could arrest him."

Joan put her face in her hands and wept, then she sat up suddenly, "Does the defense know?"

"Not yet but you will have to tell them." Jack put his glass of scotch in her hand, and she stared at the smoky amber liquid, remembering something Paul said before she went jogging then she gulped it. He insisted, "It's still murder, and you can still get Langston on negligence for the botulism illness, he will have to compensate the victims because he served recooked spoiled food, sought to hid it and..."

"Paul knew."

"What do you mean, Paul knew?" demanding clarity, Jack and Sam exchanged puzzled looks.

"I thought he just had food poisoning." She cried, "He wouldn't go to the E.R., I asked him if I could take him, and he yelled at me because we were out of network. He wanted to listen to the Alabama game, so I turned it up and worked on my case load. Gawd dammit! If he weren't so damned stingy, he wouldn't have died." Joan laughed in a self-deprecating way, ending with a sob.

"What are you saying?" Sam asked worriedly. "It's not your fault."

"It is. An hour later, he said something about red tide while he was sick. I thought he was talking about the Alabama Crimson Tide game on the TV, but he wasn't, he said red tide, not Crimson Tide. I got him a Gatorade and then I went jogging and sat at the top of the mountain for an hour or so." She hiccupped in her grief. "When I came back there were ambulances and first responders everywhere. We found him dead in our room." She wiped her eyes and revealed, "When he said, go now, then red tide... He wasn't telling me to go jogging and asking for the score, he was telling me to take him to the hospital because he knew what was wrong with him. I left him there to die, alone in the bathtub covered in his own filth."

"You couldn't have known."

"Anyone would have thought the same, knowing Paul and how he is."

Joan stood up and reached across Jack's desk for the bottle to pour another glass as both Jack and Sam refuted her, but she didn't listen. The case was blown, the defense would argue that a disgruntled investor, Mr. Beautrie poisoned not only the people at the Appalachian conference but at the New Orleans one as well and since there was no way to differentiate between the symptoms of the two contaminations, then it would be unfair to blame Mr. Langston for all the deaths just because he tried to save some money and give his Eastern Mountain attendees the luxury of fresh gulf coast shrimp. His lawyers would get him off. 

Paul had known. Paul knew and she hadn't listened because she was so used to his usual answers and attitudes. She was so angry about how he paid for the stay or rather didn't pay that she just left him to go run around in the wilderness. Her guilt beat her up, lashing her with a litany of every time she begrudged him for being frugal. The alcohol burned as she gulped it.

"Joan... Joan!"

Blinking through the buzz of the alcohol she stared at her boss in numb grief and self-loathing.

"Joan, Sam is going to drive you home. I'll call Nolia and give her the heads up. I am putting you on bereavement leave, okay?" Jack looked so worried for her. "Joan? Do you understand? You're off with pay for the next two weeks."

Joan just blinked at him. Her eyes burned, they felt swollen, but she didn't have anymore tears. "It doesn't matter, Paul died for nothing and Langston is going to get away with it."

 As Sam carried her out of the office, she didn't care if her coworkers saw her nervous breakdown. Paul knew what was killing him and had asked her for help, but she left him to die alone. She heard Jack calling everyone to the bull pen. She hoped he and her coworkers would figure something out to save the conviction but she wasn't hopeful. Sam tucked her into his SUV and drove her home. She got out and walked inside without looking back. On the seventh floor, she stared out at the city through the window of her apartment. It wasn't fair and now the man who killed Paul and forty others might get away with it.