Delusion in Death (8 page)

“Have you had any trouble with anyone? You personally, or at the bar?”

“Nothing, really. I mean, our neighbor gave me some grief a
couple weeks ago. We had a party and he said we were too loud. He’s an asshole. Even his wife can’t stand him.”

“What’s his name?”

“Oh man, he’s just an asshole neighbor.”

“I need to take care of the people who died today, Mr. Lester. So I talk to asshole neighbors.”

He gave her the name, the address, then stared down at his hands. “I’m sorry about before. I didn’t give you respect.”

“You lost friends today. Let’s both respect them, and that’s enough.”

“What should I do?” He looked from Eve to Roarke. “I have to tell the rest of the crew. Should I go talk to them in person? I don’t think this is something I can tell the rest of my people over the ’link. And the families. I’ve got to tell … Jesus, Drew still lives at home with his parents. He’s just a kid.”

“We’re notifying the families,” Eve told him. “Leave that to us.”

“You should go home, Devon.” The quiet tone of Roarke’s voice brought Devon’s gaze back to him. “You’ll want to talk to the rest of your people tomorrow. Do you want me to arrange for Bidot to go with you?”

“I’ll take Quirk. They all know him, and they don’t know Bidot so well. If that’s okay.”

“Whatever you think best. If you need anything from me,” Roarke told him, “you can contact me directly. How did you get here?”

“What? Sorry?”

“How did you come to Central?”

“The subway.”

“I’ll have a car take you home. You’ll have a car,” Roarke insisted before Devon could protest. “At the main entrance. And you’ll have one tomorrow to take you where you and Quirk need to go.”

“Thanks.”

“They were my people, too.”

“Yes, sir. I guess they were.”

Eve let Devon out, said nothing as Roarke made arrangements for transportation. She just sat across from him until he was done.

“I don’t have to ask you your take this time,” she said.

“Then I’ll ask you yours.”

“You may not like it.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“He knows everyone there. We both know managing people means those people can piss you off—hit buttons, cause frustration.”

“So you solve that by poisoning them all with the goal of mass murder? That’s bollocks, Eve.”

“I’ve done a run on him. He’s married to Quirk McBane, an art teacher. Looks clean and tidy.”

“And that’s suspect? The clean and tidy among us?”

“He also has a brother. Christopher Lester. The brother’s a chemist, with a lot of letters after his name, who heads up a fancy, private lab. The incident happened on his day off. He knows the ins and outs of the place, and could have planted the substance at any time. Maybe it was on some sort of trigger, timer. We don’t know yet. Devon’s going to personally notify the rest of the staff, and get a lot of attention. He’s center there.”

“Christ Jesus.”

“Look, notification sucks. Unless you’re telling people when you want the reaction. He spent the day with the art teacher. Nice alibi. I bet we’ll be able to confirm with SoHo galleries, with the restaurant where they had lunch. All clean and tidy again.”

“You see him as a potential mass murderer—of people he worked with every day—because his brother’s a chemist, and he has an alibi?”

“Did you hear Mira? I agree with her profile. The killer knows that bar, works at it or patronizes it. He’ll try to insert himself in the investigation, which Devon Lester just did. His reaction hit all the right notes, sure, and no, it didn’t seem faked. But whoever did this would have intended to talk to the cops, to others, and would have prepared. I have to factor all of that in.”

“You’re right. I don’t like it.” He shoved up, circled the room. “But the fact so many people are dead outweighs that. What now?”

“I want to go by the lab, see if there’s anything new, give Dickhead a push if I have to.”

“A bribe, you’re meaning.”

“I better not have to bribe him for this. But if I do, it’s nice to have my deep pockets with me.” She stood. “I want to talk to Shelby Carstein because I’m going to be giving the hard eye to anybody who walked out of that bar before the infection. Then I need to think. I want to check in with Morris on the way.”

“I’ll drive.”

“Figured.” She pulled out her ’link to contact Morris as they headed down to the garage.

Dick Berenski, chief lab tech, hunched over his station with its series of comps like a gargoyle. His egg-shaped head rose over the shoulders of the lab coat he’d tossed over a screaming orange shirt and plum-colored skin-pants. She sincerely wished she’d lived her entire life without seeing Dickhead in skin-pants.

He sported a gold hoop in his ear—a new touch, and fancy, textured shoes that matched the pants.

He gave her a sour look. “I was at a club. Salsa.”

She made a new wish, that she would never in her lifetime observe him doing salsa. “Gee, sorry for the inconvenience. I bet the eighty-three dead people are a little put out, too.”

“I’m just saying. I’ve been to that bar, you know. They have a good happy hour.”

“Not today.”

“Guess not. Tox screen’s over the roof, every one of ’em we’ve processed. You got that already.”

“Give me more.”

“Sent a runner over to get samples from the survivors so we’d have a mixed group. Had to consider those who made it handled the substance different, or the substance reacts different if your brain’s still functioning, your heart’s still beating or whatnot.”

“Okay. And?”

“Same deal. It’s quick. In and out. Most drugs are going to give you a longer buzz—I mean, what’s the point in a twelve-minute ride?”

“Twelve minutes is confirmed?”

“That’s how long the effects last. Twelve minutes—give or take a minute depending on the size, weight, age of the vic, and how much alcohol or medication, illegals, food consumed. So it’s an eleven-to-fifteen-minute window, but average time is twelve.”

He scooted on his stool, played his long, skinny fingers over a screen. “What I did was mock up the substance. Got pretty damn close. I’m working on synthesizing a couple of the elements more exactly, but we’ve got the base here.”

“You can do that?”

He smirked. “Ain’t much I can’t do. I tried comp reconstruction, but the real deal’s going to give you more data. I put four micrograms
together, infected a couple rats. Those fuckers went bat-shit. It wasn’t pretty either. It was kind of funny for a second or two, then … it wasn’t.”

“They killed each other.”

“They slaughtered each other. Tech I had assisting had to go puke. Mostly I’m going to rag their ass raw over that, but hell. It’s bad shit, Dallas.”

“Explain the bad shit to me.”

“You got your lysergic acid diethylamide—the LSD—as the base. That’s your hallucinogenic. Typically, you’re going to take it orally or inject it.”

“I know what it is, Dickie.”

“Yeah, well, see this isn’t typical. LSD’s pretty potent shit, but this is mega, like, condensed. He, like, distilled it. Kinda genius in a way. Like, ah, LSD moonshine, you could say. Then he sweetened it with one of the synthetics we’re still working on. With Zeus added to it, it’s going to be ugly—hallucinations, delusions, and the energy and violence. Kick in the mushrooms—the ibotenic acid, again condensed. Double hallucinogenics. Add a touch of synthetic adrenaline to pump up the Zeus, condensed testosterone—see everything condensed for more punch. Then a trace of arsenic.”

“Poison?”

“Harpo hadn’t started on the hair when we sent in the tox. She found arsenic in the hair tests. In small doses, and with these other factors, it can cause delusions. Mix it up, and you have bat-shit.

“You’re going to be deluded, pissed off, panicked, strong—for about twelve minutes. We averaged the effect time in humans from the rats. It would take maybe three or four minutes to start to feel the effects, go for twelve, then it would start fading.”

“That’s more,” Eve murmured.

“The good news is, if you live through it, it’s not going to cause brain damage, heart or kidney damage. Bad news, once it’s in you, you’ve got to ride it out, unless you get clear.”

“Clear?”

“It’s condensed, right, so if you get air—new air, fresh air. Get the hell outside, it’s going to dissipate faster. I’m working on how fast, how much.”

“How about an antidote, or a blocker?”

“Can’t say how you’d block it.”

“I thought you could do damn near anything.”

He scowled, then sulked, then considered. “Maybe.”

“I bet he’s got one.” There were bribes, and there were bribes, she thought. And a kick in the ego usually did the trick. “A fucker who thinks this up would think up a way to keep from stabbing himself in the throat if he got a whiff, or contact. He’d need a lab.”

“Wouldn’t hurt, but with a few beakers, tubes, a heat source? Hell, I could make this up in the freaking kitchen if I didn’t mind the risk of blowing myself to hell. The LSD’s a dicey choice. Finding the right combo, amounts—the recipe, say—that was the long, involved part.
That
was the genius. Putting it together, that’s a snap once you’ve got it. I blocked and encrypted the formula, my eyes only. You’re going to want to keep a tight lid on the recipe, or it won’t be safe to go to the goddamn corner deli.”

He’s right,” Eve said when she got back in the car. “If the recipe for this insane stew leaks, somebody else—a lot of somebody elses—will cook it up.”

“There are viruses sealed up in government facilities on and off planet that could wipe out most of humanity.”

“That’s not making me feel any better.”

“The point is, the world is never safe. Nowhere is, realistically speaking. No one is, as you know better than most. But we live day-by-day. Eat, shop, sleep, make love, make babies, and go on with it. It’s what we have.”

“And sometimes what we have sucks. Let’s spread the joy, and go talk to Shelby Carstein.”

Shelby Carstein’s third-floor walk-up boasted a claustrophobic lobby and a stairwell that smelled, not unpleasantly, of roasted garlic. On the way up Eve heard a baby’s fretful cry, the rolling laugh of a comedy on screen, and the weeping notes she thought came from a violin.

She noted the security light blinking red on apartment 3-C, and the lack of palm plate or camera.

“Security’s not a top priority,” Eve commented.

“It’s a decent enough neighborhood.”

“There was an illegals deal going down on the corner.”

“I said decent enough.” He smiled at her. “You didn’t bother to ruin the dealer’s night.”

“Busting up a Zoner push isn’t my top priority.” She knocked briskly, and was about to knock again when she saw the shadow pass over the Judas hole. “NYPSD.” She held up her badge.

Locks clicked and clunked before the door opened.

Shelby Carstein looked like a woman who’d just rolled out of a very active bed. The robe she was still tying hit mid-thigh, and her bare feet sported toes painted pumpkin orange. Her hair, nearly the same color, tumbled around a face lax from sex.

She tugged the robe a little closer, but didn’t cover the stubble burn down the right side of her throat.

“Is there a problem, Officer?” Her voice came out husky and thick as she looked from Eve to Roarke with a mix of annoyance and curiosity in sleepy green eyes.

“Ms. Carstein?”

“Yes. What’s this about?”

“I’m Lieutenant Dallas, and this is my consultant. We’d like to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“The incident this evening at On the Rocks.”

“The—oh for—look, so we had a fight. It’s not like we threw things or broke up the place. And I didn’t punch that stupid slut, even though I wanted to. I just told her to back off before I slugged her. And so I used harsh language, but I never laid a hand on her.”

“What stupid slut was that, Ms. Carstein?”

“I don’t know, just some big tits. Rocky said she was just drunk and silly, but she came on to him. Right in front of my face.” Shelby pointed two fingers at her face, in case Eve missed its location. “I don’t have to take crap like that from some drunk big tits.”

“Ms. Carstein, if we could come in.”

“Oh for God’s sake.” She backed up, temper burning the sex haze off her face. “Rocky! Rocky, you get out here. I’ve got cops at my door because of that blond bimbo from the bar.”

“Come on!” Exasperation colored the voice from a room off the smartly decorated living area. And articles of clothing—men’s pants, shirt, a woman’s skirt, jumbled shoes, littered their way toward that room.

Eve decided she didn’t have to be a cop to detect the scenario.

A man, dark hair standing in spikes, a love bite on his bare shoulder, shuffled out, still adjusting cotton lounge pants.

So Rocky had closet and drawer space, Eve further deduced. “What the hell, Shel?”

“Let’s make this simple,” Eve decided. “Your name?” she asked Rocky.

“Rockwell Detweiler.”

Seriously?
she thought.
Rockwell?

“You and Ms. Carstein were in On the Rocks this evening. You left the bar at seventeen-twenty-nine.”

“Seventeen-twenty-nine? Jesus!” Shelby threw up her hands. “What the fuck? Is this a military state now? I didn’t do anything.”

“She didn’t,” Rocky began.

“You thought it was funny.” She rounded on him, jabbed out a finger. “That bimbo poured herself all over him when Rocky went up to the bar. He thought it was funny. Even when she wiggled her way over to our table, put her fricking number on the table, he thought it was funny.”

“Men have juvenile senses of humor,” Eve offered.

“We do,” Roarke agreed. “It’s part of our charm.”

“Charm my ass,” Shelby muttered.

“I didn’t take it!” Rocky held out his hands in appeal. “I didn’t take her number.”

“You gave her that big, wiseass grin, didn’t you? In my face!” Two fingers again noted the location of said face. “Okay, so I told her where I’d put her number if she didn’t back the hell off, and maybe I knocked my drink over so it splashed on her shoes. But, Jesus, it’s not like I assaulted her. Or him.” Now she jerked a thumb at Rocky. “I walked out!”