17
The next morning, Rebecca showed Lt. Eastwood a copy of Candace Carter’s twenty-thousand dollar life insurance policy in which she made Lucian Tully her beneficiary. Given that, Eastwood approved an autopsy on Carter. Medical examiner Evelyn Ramirez agreed to perform it immediately.
She contacted Rebecca that same afternoon.
“Good instincts, Rebecca!” Ramirez said. Rebecca had never heard her so cheerful. “You were right to be suspicious. Candace Carter was killed by batrachotoxin poisoning. Without your insistence, I doubt anyone would have found it. It’s a neurotoxin, but it also has a terrible effect on the heart muscles. Basically, it interferes with a person’s heart conduction, causing arrhythmias, extrasystoles, ventricular fibrillation, and other changes which lead to cardiac
