Deadly Messengers (27 page)

“Okay. This is fascinating, but what good does it do us?”

Trip’s face lit up as though he was a kid on his first fishing trip having just snagged a wriggling fish on the line.

“I already checked our perps in these three cases. Every one of them was prescribed one of these drugs. I’ve been on the phone all morning. Just had the last one confirmed. Every one of our killers was taking a SSRI.”

Trip grew somber and thoughtful.

“I think there’s something to it.”

O’Grady exhaled a long breath. Even if there were something to this, his brain, his very tired brain, was having trouble processing it all.

“I hear what you’re saying. But I don’t get how it could really fit our cases. Even if they were taking the drug, isn’t that something for the FDA to investigate? They’re the ones who approved these things. Surely they need to investigate.”

“I know. I know. It seems like that, right? What if this person, who wrote the report, worked out something else with these drugs? You know the FDA, or any of these bullshit departments that are meant to check on these things, they don’t always get it right.”

O’Grady opened his mouth, ready to say, “But it’s still not our problem,” when Trip silenced him, raising his hands as though he were about to speak at a podium.

“Okay, just stay with me here. The report-writing person is really vested in this. I mean look at the work.”

Trip pulled the folder back, turned it to face himself, and then whipped more post-it-noted pages from within. The folder was now a brightly colored patchwork of notes, with green, blue, yellow tags everywhere. He pulled out a few more pages and shoved them toward O’Grady.

“Look here and here, at the research on all these different drugs. This guy, who takes all this time to create this, seems to know a hell of a lot about what is going on with these crimes. Maybe—”

“Wait, a second,” interrupted O’Grady. “You keep saying,
this guy
.
Who
is this guy?
Where
did you get this file anyway?”

“Ah-ah-ah, let me finish, before I tell you. Okay, so he’s an expert now on these drugs. He has an agenda, too. So I figure, maybe, he’s got something to do with our mass-killings.”

O’Grady furrowed his brows. “You figure that, how?”

“Maybe he’s a chemist or something like that, and he’s worked out a way to convince these people to do what they did. It could be a cult or terrorists, or something we don’t even know. Who knows, right? Why else would these killings happen now, here, in this short space of time?”

“I agree, it’s a weird coincidence, but that’s quite a stretch to call them terrorist attacks. We’ve found no evidence to connect the three crimes. No demands. No threats. Nobody has claimed them. So I think that rules out terrorists. What would they hope to gain anyway?”

Trip pursed his lips and sighed.

“Yep, you’re right.” He stopped and scratched his forehead. “I hadn’t actually worked through that, yet. It just kind of made a weird sense. Nothing else makes sense, so I thought, let’s get weird.

“If we’re dealing in science fiction, then I’d be with you. I just can’t get my head around the
how
. Then you’ve got to emphatically answer the
why
, too.”

O’Grady picked up the pages Trip had foisted toward him and dropped them back on the top of the folder. Trip’s theory read like something out of an FX Channel series. O’Grady enjoyed conspiracy theories as much as the next guy, but he really needed to get some sleep. If his partner was taking this as seriously as he seemed to be, then Trip probably needed to get some sleep, too.

“Now, who’s this guy? Something tells me, by your reticence to share that detail, I won’t like it. Where’d you get this from, anyway?”

“You’re right. You won’t like it.”

“Yeah? Try me.”

Trip held up his hand in a
don’t-shoot-me
fashion. “Kendall Jennings, the writer—she gave it to me this morning.”

O’Grady immediately felt something ignite inside him. He knew she was trouble! Now she’d gotten into Trip’s ear and filled his head with hocus pocus speculation.

It annoyed him that because of her he was here listening to this and looking at this file, when he had other more important things on his agenda, like sleeping and real detective work. For all he knew, this was made up. His first instinct—that this was a document to further someone’s agenda—looked even more right now. Trip was easily wound around a pretty woman’s finger. Kendall Jennings was playing him.

Trip jumped in and continued.

“Kendall called me last night.”

Overly familiar already.

“She’d already spent several days studying the file. I’ve only read some of it. She’s convinced there’s some validity to the link between these SSRIs and mass killings. Maybe the drug companies had something to do with the killings? Maybe one of the victims was a whistle-blower? The rest of the victims, a cover up?”

O’Grady laughed. “I think that’s a plot from a Jack Reacher novel—mass killings as a cover-up. I wouldn’t give any credence to what a journalist thinks.”

“Look, I know you don’t like her.”

“It’s not her, in particular. It’s any of them. If she was a fifty-year-old chain-smoking, overweight journo, I doubt
you
would like her, either.”

Trip smirked. “Low blow, man, but you might be right. There’s something about her. I know you like things buttoned up and straight, but—”

Trip stopped and pushed the folder back to O’Grady. “Take the file. Read it. Then tell me you don’t think there’s more going on here. I know it sounds crazy, but what’s been happening is crazy, anyway.”

O’Grady picked up the file, shaking his head. “Okay, okay. I’ll give it an hour. You haven’t answered my other question. Who
is
the author? Who’s this expert on mass killings?”

“Slight problem there. Kendall won’t tell me.
Yet.
Says she’s protecting her source. Told me to get back to her, once
we’ve
done some investigation. And, ah, she has some conditions, too, if we want the name.”

O’Grady raised a quizzical brow.

“Conditions?”

“She has to come along to any meetings with
the guy
.”

Annoyance lodged in O’Grady’s throat. Miss
my-morals-are-in-the-exact-right-place
Jennings!

“That’s just perfect. We’ve got an outrageous theory about insane people, who turn crazy, while taking a drug to stop craziness. We can’t interview anyone, because the one person—who given half a chance will take this department down in a hail of accusations—has us chasing down conspiracy theories instead of doing our jobs.
And
she wants to come to our interviews. That will go down
so well
with the boss.”

“I hear you, but what if it’s even half true?”

“How could it even be half-true?”

The massacres couldn’t be connected. Yet, since the Kate Wilker killings, it had occurred to O’Grady the three crimes
were
connected. The lack of evidence had caused him to dismiss his instincts, but what if he followed those instincts and approached this study seriously, regardless of who had brought it to their attention?

If the theory was correct, what did that mean? Millions of people took anti-depressant drugs, these SSRIs. Could it be the drugs
were
randomly activating murderers? If so, then why now, and why Danbridge City? If SSRI’s turned people into killers, then surely mass murders would be suddenly occurring all over the country.

O’Grady picked up the folder and walked back to his desk. If there was some veracity to this, Kendall Jennings had vital information. That gave her power. He didn’t like that. The question mark floating over her head, since her first dubious phone call, was dangling high and bright. Was she trouble with a capital
T
, or was she a fortuitous messenger setting them on the right track? Or was she involved, somehow, and possibly dangerous, playing a game with them? These were questions requiring some thought. If he believed this drug theory.
Which he didn’t.

First, he needed to examine this file, even though his eyes were telling him what he actually needed was sleep. O’Grady opened the folder and began to read. Nearly three hours and three strong, black coffees later, he still had no answers to the question marks above the journalist. Although, one thing he did know for sure.

Kendall Jennings and he needed to talk.

Immediately.

KENDALL SAT AT HER FAVORITE table, situated on the sidewalk outside the small, bustling café bar two doors down from her apartment. She found the noise and atmosphere of the place sometimes helped inspire her. She enjoyed writing amid the type of people who might read her work. Besides, the owner knew what she wanted without asking—cappuccino and chocolate muffin.

She tapped away at her laptop, attempting to craft an article. Her thoughts hadn’t left Doug McKinley. Since reading his file, she’d thought about nothing else. It didn’t make sense to her at first. How could a drug turn a normal person into a killer?

So far, she’d investigated six massacres in which the perpetrator had not lived. Most died during the event, either by their own hand or by the police. Kendall had contacted the nearest relatives of the killers. Most were very willing to talk over the phone, with only two insisting they would only speak with her in person. One woman, whose son was shot dead by the police in a siege, refused to discuss anything, telling Kendall, before abruptly hanging up, she just wanted to put it behind her and never hear her son’s name mentioned again.

Kendall had also found some detailed corroborating studies validating McKinley’s research, some of it highly disconcerting. A study on the army’s use of anti-depressants, Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil correlated with an increase in soldier suicides. As recently as 2009, a massacre had occurred at Fort Hill military base in Texas. Illinoisan Raymond Pedroza, a 28-year-old corporal, killed fourteen people and injured eighteen. Here, the report suggested, was a perfect example of a cover-up.

On the day after the killings, in answering a journalist’s follow-up question, commander Lieutenant General Andrew Miller reported the military doctors had prescribed Pedroza with the anti-depressant Zoloft (an SSRI) in treating him for depression. Other reports, subsequently published, only listed him as taking Ambien to help him sleep.

It wasn’t the only case, although it was the most famous in the military. Where the perpetrator had been using an SSRI, it was minimalized in all the reports. Twenty percent of army soldiers took some form of anti-depressant. From this subterfuge, it seemed the army knew a correlation between SSRI use and escalating violence in those prescribed the drugs was real.

To Kendall, this seemed a disaster. Was the army feeding these soldiers the drug to increase their violent tendencies? Or was it just fictional speculation?

Even more puzzling was the lack of coverage on the violent side effects in general. Drug companies, psychologists who prescribed the drugs, the FDA, must have all known something wasn’t right. Yet they seemed to have ignored it. Where were the journalists, the hounds that covered these types of story? There seemed a band of white noise surrounding any direct link between SSRIs and mass killings. How could it be that two and two together hadn’t added up to “something’s very wrong?”

This story seemed big. No, make that
huge
. Much bigger than her ability to write or research it. She’d never done work for the type of magazine or newspaper section editor who handled this type of content. Kendall didn’t write articles with the potential to change the world. Hers, at best, merely changed shopping or eating habits.

She couldn’t do it justice. She needed help. Doug McKinley deserved better than her. Kendall had decided, when she’d finished reading the report, the best thing to do was get the information into the hands of someone who could do something with it.

Fortunately, Trip
had
shown interest in reading the contents of Doug McKinley’s report. She suspected it wasn’t just about the revelations, that the detective was also using it as a way to stay connected with her. She’d take the help, however it came, and worry about how to extricate herself later.

Kendall held something magical in her hand. Something frightening and dangerous, too. Could this research really have discovered a way to minimize massacres or maybe predict them? At the very least, it opened the door to take an in-depth look at the drugs’ side effects.

Her first thought after leaving the file with Trip was to contact Doug McKinley and let him know she’d given his work to the police. She’d decided, though, to tell him in person. She wanted to assure him, at least, she took him seriously.

Kendall sipped her cappuccino, the sugar and caffeine, sweet and energizing. She’d hardly slept the past few days, what with reading through the hundreds of pages of information in the folder, and then following up with her own research.

Kendall felt as though a countdown clock hung over her, ominously ticking down. To what, she didn’t know. The more she read, and the more she dug deeper into the files, the faster it seemed to tick. Maybe it was the look in Doug McKinley’s eyes when he’d handed her the folder, as though he were handing a baby over to her care. Maybe it was the misery detailed in the files. Or maybe it was her inability to shake the thought that with three mass killings in their city in such confined time, there might be a fourth.