by Lisa Regan
“Let’s go over this again,” said the Chief, looking directly at Josie.
Josie gathered all the facts in her mind, drew in a breath, and began. “Nysa Somers went to the library on Sunday night. She left but didn’t make it home. Told her roommate via text that she met with a friend. Approximately eight hours went by. She then reappeared along the path between her housing complex and the campus. At some point, she got a calendar notification on her phone that said, ‘Time to be a mermaid.’ She or someone else threw her backpack with her phone in it into the woods. When we recovered the backpack, there was a sandwich bag with what appeared to be brownie crumbs inside and on that baggie was the creepy, cracked skull sticker. Autopsy confirmed that Nysa had brownies in her stomach and that she drowned.”
Mettner interrupted, “She walked into the pool under her own steam, said hello and smiled at the security guard, and called him by name before going into the pool area and drowning.”
Josie picked back up. “Clay Walsh was home playing in the backyard with his granddaughters. Both he and his eldest granddaughter, Dorothy, thought they heard a car in the driveway. Clay went inside. Never came back out. An indeterminate amount of time passed. The girls came back in and he was going around the house setting things on fire and saying, ‘Time to be a match.’ Just like with Nysa’s phone reminder, ‘Time to be a mermaid.’ The younger of the two granddaughters said there were brownies on the kitchen table. At the hospital, he was found to be clutching what we believe is Saran wrap with a partial cracked skull sticker on it.”
“Someone showed up at Walsh’s house,” Mettner said.
“Right,” Josie said. “That’s our theory. Mystery person shows up and gives him brownies. We believe he ate one. Then he started acting weird and set the house on fire. The girls thought he was sick. Bronwyn said that toward the end, before she lost sight of him—after he threw her out of the way of the collapsing floor, he looked at her ‘funny.’ He might have been disoriented. There had to be something in those brownies. We just don’t know what.”
“The mystery person,” the Chief said. “That’s the connection we need to pursue.” He rubbed his temples with his index and middle fingers and blew out a breath. “Where are we with finding the person who was with Nysa Somers the night before she died?”
Noah said, “No one at Hollister Way remembers seeing her the night before she died, or seeing anyone out of place.”
Mettner said, “But we sent paperwork to Nysa Somers’ cell phone provider this morning to have them see where her phone pinged during the hours she was missing. We’re going to cross-reference the area with addresses of all her professors and the swim team’s coaching staff.”
“Right,” Josie said, “Because her sister said she’d been seeing someone older than her and referred to the relationship as ‘inappropriate.’ Also, she’d just broken things off with this person on Friday.”
Chitwood said, “All right, here’s what you’re going to do. All of you but Palmer are going home and getting some damn rest. I want to know the moment those phone records come in and you’ve got your list of possible older, inappropriate men. Tomorrow I want you talking to people who knew Clay Walsh. All of you. I want to know who came to his house before he set it on fire. I know his daughter said he wasn’t feuding with anyone and didn’t have a girlfriend he might have just broken up with, but I want to hear that from everyone he knew before we let that avenue of inquiry go. I also want you to try to find any connection at all between Nysa Somers and Clay Walsh. I don’t care how small it is. Find it. Find something! You got that?”
They all nodded. Mettner tapped notes into his phone.
“I’ll get in touch with my DEA contact and see if he knows anything about this sticker or maybe other drugs we should be looking at,” Chitwood added.
Amber cleared her throat, drawing attention to herself for the first time. Chitwood said, “What are you even doing here, Watts?”
She didn’t miss a beat, offering him a cheerful smile. More and more, Josie admired how unflappable she was when it came to Chitwood. “I’m still getting a lot of questions about the Nysa Somers case and tonight, the reporters are going nuts wanting to know what happened with Clay Walsh. What should I tell them?”
Chitwood grunted. “Nothing. Nothing at all. You press types are good at using a lot of words to say nothing. Do that.”
Mettner opened his mouth to say something, but Josie quickly jumped in. “Both cases are open investigations which we cannot comment on. They’re pending. We don’t have enough information to comment yet.”
Chitwood pointed his index finger and fanned it around the room at each of them. “Not one detail gets out about this brownie or sticker business, you got that? Not until we get a handle on what the hell’s going on in this town.”
Without waiting for an answer, he returned to his office, slamming the door behind him.
Twenty-Six
At home, Josie and Noah took their dog, Trout, for a long walk. It was dark and quiet in their neighborhood, but the streets were well lit. Trout was so happy to be outside, Josie was sure he didn’t care whether it was night or day. Guilt pricked at her as she thought about all the hours he’d been home alone that day. Normally, one of them stopped in a couple of times during the day to walk him and throw his Kong.
Noah walked beside her in silence. She tried to muster the energy to interrogate him about his day, but she didn’t have much left to expend. Her mind replayed the scene at Clay Walsh’s house again and again. The stricken, tear-streaked faces of Michelle, Dorothy, and Bronwyn Walsh floated to the front of her mind every few minutes.
“I’ll take you to get a rental car in the morning,” Noah said. “Did you call to get your car towed from the Walsh place yet?”
Josie shook her head, eyes on Trout as he sniffed a telephone pole, peed on it, sniffed it again, and then repeated the process four more times.
“Josie?”
She looked up at Noah, whose face was illuminated by a streetlight. “What?”
“What’s going on?”
A voice in her brain shot back: I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on? Where have you been lately? But her mouth said, “I’m fine.”
“Josie.”
“It’s the case,” she blurted out, mostly because she didn’t want to say anything that would lead to a fight. Not tonight. Not after two days of horrific death and grieving families.
“It’s always the case,” he said, laughing softly.
“It’s not funny,” she snapped. Trout paused in his walk to stare back at them.
Noah looked down at him. “It’s okay, buddy,” he reassured the dog. Trout resumed his walk. “I’m sorry,” Noah told Josie. “I didn’t mean it like that. Sometimes I just think that there might be other things on your mind, but you talk about work because that’s easier.”
Josie was glad for the darkness so he couldn’t see the flush creep into her cheeks. “If this is another one of your campaigns to get me into therapy, you can just forget it.”
“Paige Rosetti is a psychologist, and you’ve already got an in with her,” he noted, mentioning a woman Josie had spoken with on a previous case.
“Noah, please. Just drop it.”
“I would, except sometimes I don’t think you talk to me either. Sometimes I feel like I don’t really know what you’re thinking or how you’re feeling.”
Josie stopped in her tracks, and Trout’s leash gave a little snap. The dog paused and then trotted back to Josie’s feet, staring up at her with his tongue lolling from the side of his mouth. “I’m thinking that yesterday I pulled a twenty-year-old woman out of a pool, and I tried to revive her and I couldn’t. She died alone, and I had to sit at a table with her broken family and tell them I’d try to make sense of her death even though I’m not sure I can do that. I’m thinking that no sooner did I walk away from that table than I had to rescue a little girl from a burning building because her grandfather—a m
an she trusted—set the house on fire with the kids inside. Then I had to see his burned, blistered body that looked like someone had taken a hot meat tenderizer to it, and after that, I had to tell his grieving daughter that I’d do my best to make sense of what happened to him even though I don’t think I can. What I’m feeling is afraid that we won’t solve this one because it’s too slippery and there are no leads. What I’m feeling is fear that even if we figure out what the hell is going on, we won’t be able to prove anything because what kind of drug makes people do things like Nysa Somers and Clay Walsh did? What I’m feeling is terror at the idea that there’s nothing good in the world anymore.”
Noah touched Josie’s cheek, and it was then she realized she’d twisted Trout’s leash around her fingers so tightly that it was cutting off her circulation. A paw scratched against her shin. Trout trying to get her attention. Somehow, he always knew when she was upset. She supposed Noah did as well, and yet, he’d been inaccessible to her for the last couple of days when she wanted him most.
“Josie,” said Noah. “You are the good in the world.”
She unwound the leash from her fingers and shook her head, trying not to smile. It should have sounded trite or cheesy, but coming from Noah it only sounded sincere. That was the thing about him. He had always seen her in a completely different light than anyone else saw her—most importantly, herself. At first it had made her uncomfortable, but more and more she leaned on it. It felt like emotional progress, but part of her hated herself for needing him so much.
Noah didn’t wait for her to respond. Instead, he said, “I know you’re not going to sleep tonight, so let’s do something.”
“What?”
“About the case.”
“Like what? It’s almost eleven o’clock at night.”
“Come on,” he said. “We’ll go home and call Shannon. She’ll still be up. Ask her what kind of a drug could make someone pliable without incapacitating them. Make them do things they wouldn’t normally do.”
Shannon Payne was Josie’s biological mother. She was a chemist for a huge pharmaceutical company, Quarmark. She lived two hours from them.
“Shannon wouldn’t know street drugs, though,” Josie pointed out.
“Not necessarily,” Noah agreed. “But I’m fresh out of DEA contacts, Chitwood hasn’t yet heard back from his DEA guy, and talking to her would be a start.”
They hurried Trout along the rest of the way. At home, they settled at the kitchen table and put Josie’s phone in the center, on speaker. Josie pulled up Shannon’s number and punched the call icon. Shannon picked up after three rings. After exchanging the usual pleasantries, Josie asked if they could pick Shannon’s brain in her capacity as a chemist for Quarmark.
Shannon laughed. “I’m not sure how helpful I’ll be since I’ve been working on the same cancer drug for the last four years, but go ahead.”
“Are you aware of any drugs that could make a person extremely suggestible? Something that would make them do things they wouldn’t normally ever do? Even something harmful to themselves?”
There was a beat of silence. Then Shannon said, “Are we talking about street drugs? Josie, I don’t have a lot of knowledge about those.”
“I realize that,” Josie said. “But you develop drugs for a living. If you wanted to develop a drug that would make people pliable but not incapacitated, what would you do?”
“Pliable but not incapacitated?” Shannon echoed.
Josie thought about Nysa and Clay. How they’d been functioning perfectly normally by all appearances and yet had taken such nonsensical words to heart: time to be a mermaid; time to be a match. Bronwyn had said that Clay continued setting things on fire until they told him to stop. She said, “Something that if you gave it to a person—in the right dose, of course, because I know that would be an issue—you’d be able to tell them what to do, and they’d do it. Anything at all. But they wouldn’t be sick or disoriented or appear intoxicated.”
“Hmmm,” Shannon considered. “This really sounds like a question for someone on an illegal drug task force, but okay, I’ll play along. Let me think a minute, would you?”
They waited several minutes, listening to the sounds of Shannon typing away on a keyboard while she mumbled inaudibly to herself. Then her voice became sharper and more distinct. “Josie, Noah? You there?”
“We’re here,” answered Noah.
Shannon said, “I’d start with scopolamine, although it’s not a controlled substance. It’s used mostly to treat seasickness.”
Noah said, “Is that the one that comes as a patch? You put it behind your ear?”
“Right, exactly,” said Shannon.
“How did you know that?” Josie asked.
Noah gave a little smile. “I’ve used those patches to go deep sea fishing.”
“That patch is an extremely low dose,” Shannon explained. “It’s released over a three-day period so the absorption is slow. Scopolamine is also known as hyoscine. In small doses, it’s used to prevent nausea and vomiting. Your body naturally produces a chemical compound called acetylcholine, which basically transmits nerve impulses in the central and peripheral nervous systems. It’s the main neurotransmitter responsible for contracting muscles, dilating blood vessels—many things. Basically, it can have an inhibitory effect on your nervous system or an excitatory effect. It causes your nerve signals to go faster or slower. Scopolamine blocks the acetylcholine from the central nervous system. No one is really sure why, but it works on the body’s vomiting center. Like I said, usually as a result of seasickness or post-op nausea. Sometimes it’s used for gastrointestinal distress—like spasms. We’ve used it in some drugs to prevent nausea caused by chemotherapy. In fact, my team developed a very effective drug in that vein several years ago, which is now used for multiple indications.”
Before Shannon could launch into a full description of Quarmark’s drug, Josie asked, “What would happen if you used scopolamine in larger doses? Or if you ingested it?”
“Well, you can ingest it, that’s not an issue. It comes in pill form. In large doses, however, you’d start to see side effects like drowsiness, itching, headache, rapid heartbeat, confusion, dilated pupils. It would very likely cause amnesia. At extremely high doses, you’re looking at psychosis, seizures, hallucinations and of course, death. Side effects would vary from person to person, naturally. Everyone’s body chemistry is different. There are a lot of factors that make a drug effective for one person but not for another.”
Noah said, “You said you’d start with scopolamine. Why?”
Shannon sighed. “Well, I work in pharma, and that was the first thing that came to mind because I’ve worked with it before. Also, as I said, it blocks the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from doing what it’s supposed to do in the nervous system. This would lead to cognitive issues and memory loss. In some studies, higher doses caused docility, extreme suggestibility, almost a hypnotic state.”
Josie asked, “A hypnotic state. Is it possible that a person who had ingested a high dosage—but not enough to cause things like drowsiness, confusion, psychosis, seizures, and such—could appear to be in a normal state but actually be highly suggestible?”
“Sure, I guess,” Shannon said. “The conditions and dosages would have to be just right, but I suppose it is possible. You know, the government used scopolamine as a truth serum in the early 1920s. I believe a country in Europe used it for the same purpose more recently.”
Josie laughed. “I didn’t know that. Oh, one last thing—how long does it stay in the bloodstream? For toxicology purposes?”
“That I couldn’t really tell you. I’m pretty sure the answer is not very long, but you’re better off asking a toxicologist.”
They chatted a few more minutes, with Shannon asking after Patrick. Josie didn’t mention the laundry incident but promised to tell him to call Shannon, and they hung up.
“Patrick,” Josie said. “That’s who we need to talk to. Tomorrow.”
Noah raised a brow. “Is he some kind of scopolamine king? Is there something you’re not telling the rest of us about your little brother?”
Josie laughed. “No, but he’s a student. He lives on campus. Hahlbeck gave us the ‘official’ information. But she won’t know the same things the students know.”
“You mean the things the students don’t want her to know.”
“Exactly.”
Twenty-Seven
The next morning, Josie sent a text to Patrick, inviting him to dinner that evening. Then Noah took her to get a rental car. He left her at the rental company, telling her he’d meet her at the station, but when she arrived at work, he was nowhere to be found. Using her desk phone, she called the hospital and asked for Dr. Nashat, hoping he could give her some kind of an update on Clay Walsh. Relief washed over her when he told her that Walsh had survived the flight to Philadelphia and that, as far as Dr. Nashat knew, he was still alive. Hanging up, Josie remained at her desk, staring at her phone, trying to decide whether or not to call Noah and check on him. Was she overreacting? She couldn’t help but feel he had been strangely distant lately. Maybe not distant, but inaccessible. He was probably just out working on one of the many more minor calls the detectives were responsible for other than homicides. Where the hell else would he be? The stairwell door slammed, and Mettner walked into the great room with a sheaf of papers, including what looked like a rolled-up poster. “Oh good,” he said. “You’re here.” He handed her the rolled-up paper which turned out to be a map. “I’ve got those coordinates from Nysa Somers’ phone.”
Josie put her phone down and grabbed up some tape. She hung the map up on one of the walls of the great room and used a Sharpie to mark the area in which Nysa’s phone had pinged throughout the night. Holding the list of addresses he had compiled of the older males of Nysa’s acquaintance that could potentially be her mystery boyfriend, Mettner watched Josie work. She said, “At ten, her phone pinged these three towers, which puts her here—which includes the campus and Hollister Way.”