Ecstasy

by Beth Saulnier

  “What? Oh, sorry….Look, I can’t tell you anything. All I know is I got a call from the shift foreman telling me there was something odd in the intake pool. I came running down here and, lo and behold, he was right.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. There’s something foreign in there. The whole pool’s bright red”—he made a sour face—“like blood.”

  CHAPTER11

  The police and firemen stayed at the scene for two hours, during which Melissa snapped innumerable photos of burly guys in space suits. The one that ran on the front page was of two of them emerging from the front door, carrying a black plastic case that looked like it housed some sort of video equipment. As it turned out, what was inside was a sample of the water in the intake pool. When I finally found the scene commander, he told me it was being taken for, quote, “analysis.”

  “Taken where?” I asked.

  “Forensics lab.”

  He kept walking toward his official SUV. I followed.

  “Someone said it might be blood. Is that true?”

  “We don’t know what it is,” he said, and not nicely. “That’s why we’re taking it for analysis. Get it?”

  “When do you think you’ll have the results?”

  “You’ll have to ask the chief about that.”

  “The police chief or the fire chief?” He looked like he wanted to turn the hose on me. “Come on, I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass. I just want to know who to ask, that’s all.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Go bother Chief Hill.”

  Wilfred Hill runs the G.P.D., which makes him Cody’s boss. The guy is occasionally grumpy and he’s no great fan of reporters, but he’s always been fair. He also seems not to mind that one of his men is schtupping a member of the press corps, which goes a long way in my book.

  Once I got back to the paper, I tried calling the chief ’s office, only to be told he was gone for the day. So I asked for the ranking officer on duty, and the next thing I knew I was talking to my boyfriend.

  “Uh… hi,” I said.

  “Hey, baby. What’s up?”

  “Um…I actually was trying to get the chief.”

  “You dating him now too?”

  “Come on, don’t joke. This is official business.”

  “I see.”

  “And I’m officially not supposed to be covering you.”

  The sound he made didn’t quite jibe with his wholesome image. “Sorry to hear that. Having you cover me would be—”

  “You’re awful.”

  “Sorry,” he said, though he laughed when he said it. “What were you calling about, anyway?”

  “I was just out covering this thing at Deep Lake.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that.”

  “Well, do you know what’s up?”

  “You mean on the record?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No idea.”

  “What about off the record?”

  “No idea, either.”

  “The fire lieutenant said I should call Chief Hill to find out what’s going on.”

  “Chief Hill went home.”

  “No kidding. And I’ve got a deadline here.”

  “Look, I’ll ask around and call you back, okay?”

  “Better call Ochoa back, what with the conflict-of-interest thing and all.” I gave him the number. “I’ll give him a heads-up about it.”

  “Ochoa’s not nearly as pretty as you are.”

  “You know,” I said, “I’m sure there’s a compliment in there if I just keep looking for it.”

  I filled Ochoa in on what was up, and when I dropped the problem on Bill’s desk, he decided we should write the story under a joint byline.

  Here’s how it turned out:

  By ALEX BERNIER & CAL OCHOA

  Monitor Staff

  Gabriel police investigators are still trying to identify the substance that contaminated the Deep Lake Cooling intake pool Thursday afternoon. According to fire lieutenant Paul Soper, the fire department was called to the scene at approximately 5:15 P.M. after workers at the Heat-Exchange Facility, located on East Shore Drive, reported seeing a bright red substance in the intake pool. “They called their supervisor and he was concerned enough to call us,” Soper said.

  In a press release delivered via fax to the Monitor newsroom Thursday evening, a group identifying itself as the Mohawk Warriors has claimed responsibility for the contamination. “We will not allow Benson and its corporate interests to rob us of our natural resources,” the statement said. “Mohawk Lake must be protected at all costs.”

  More than a dozen firefighters responded to the scene, including several in full hazardous-material gear. Testing inside the building showed no indication of any dangerous chemicals or gases, Soper said. Although there is no reason to believe that workers are in danger, he said, the facility has been shut down pending analysis of the pool’s water. Drawn directly from the bottom of the lake at a depth of 400 feet, the water remains a constant 38 degrees.

  According to Detective Brian Cody of the Gabriel Police Department, the sample, described as a reddish liquid, is being stored at the police forensics lab and is scheduled for testing this morning (Friday). “Until we know what this is, we’re taking the proper precautions,” he said.

  Owned and operated by Benson University, the Deep Lake Cooling facility provides air-conditioning for buildings and laboratories on campus by drawing chilled water from the bottom of Mohawk Lake. Four years in the making, the project is the first of its kind in the U.S. and only the second in the world. It started operation on Wednesday, when it was unveiled at an open house whose start was delayed by a blockade by about twenty protesters.

  Glenn Shardik, the Benson engineer who designed the system, declined to speculate on whether the contamination might be related to the protests. “The system will be operating normally as soon as possible,” Shardik said.

  We filed the piece around eight, then went back to work on the drug stories. By the time we left, we needed a little chemical consolation of our own.

  “What I want to know,” Mad was saying from our usual window seat at the Citizen Kane, “is what kind of goddamn idiot puts that shit in their body.”

  He said this, by the way, while raising a shot of midpriced tequila to his lips. No one felt the need to point out the irony.

  “Hey, come on,” Ochoa said. “Kids like to try stuff. Always have, always will.”

  Mad turned the glass upside down to demonstrate his successful ingestion of every drop. “You saying you’ve done it?”

  “Tried acid? Yeah, a couple times. In college.”

  “And?”

  Ochoa shrugged. “Everything kinda glowed.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Colors were brighter; textures were richer; that kind of thing. I guess I didn’t take that much. I never saw any sounds or anything.”

  I reached past Mad to the Beer Nuts. “What do you mean ‘saw any sounds’?”

  “It’s this thing they say about acid,” Ochoa said. “Some people feel like they can ‘see sounds,’ ‘hear colors,’ that sort of thing. It’s all about altering your senses. That’s the name of the game.”

  I drank my drink. “And you actually got into this?”

  “Not really. I just dated this chick once who dug it, that’s all. Thought I’d give it a try.”

  “No way I’d put that shit in this body,” Mad said again, rolling up the sleeve of his blue oxford and flexing a bicep for dramatic effect. “I mean, come on. Who needs to mess with perfection?”

  “And speaking of which,” I said, “who needs to mess with seventeen-year-old girls?”

  Mad turned a pair of comically wide eyes on Ochoa. “Oh, hey, perish the thought,” he said. “Who’d ever want to do something like that?”

  “Hey, not me,” Ochoa said. “I insist the chick’s gotta be at least a college freshman.”

  “Too bad, man,” Mad said. “You don’t know what you’re
missing.”

  “Jacob Ebenezer Madison,” I said, “tell me you’re not messing with that girl.”

  “Hey, she’s just called me in the newsroom a couple of times, okay? I haven’t laid a hand on her.”

  “Yeah, and you better not. The kid’s all messed up and grief-stricken. She’s not even thinking straight.”

  Ochoa flashed a crafty smile. “So maybe Madison here can help her feel all better….”

  “Mad,” I said, “Lauren Potter isn’t even old enough to vote.”

  He smiled back at Ochoa. “She will be in a week or so.”

  “Jesus,” I said, “I need another drink. How about one of you two pedophiles go and get it for me?”

  Ochoa rolled his eyes, but stood up. “What are you drinking again?”

  “Maker’s Mark and ginger ale.”

  “Sad waste of good bourbon,” he said, and headed for the bar.

  “Seriously, Mad,” I said once Ochoa had gone, “are you actually thinking about screwing a high-school student?”

  “Nah.”

  “Because this would be a new low, even for you.”

  “I said no, okay? Give me a break. The kid’s half my age.”

  “Two minutes ago, you weren’t making that sound like much of a liability.”

  He shrugged and poured himself a beer from the pitcher. “Guy talk.”

  “I hope that’s all it is.”

  “Christ, Bernier, what do you care?”

  “I have a hard time thinking a roll in the hay would do much good for either one of you.”

  Again with the carnivorous grin. “Might change her political views.”

  I started to stand up. “You’re giving me a headache.”

  “Where are you going? I thought you said Cody was meeting you here later.”

  “I’ll catch him on his cell.”

  “Come on, sit down. I’ll be a good boy.”

  I half lowered myself back into my seat. “You promise?”

  “Cross my heart. Besides, I’ve got a funny story for you.”

  “One that doesn’t involve jailbait?” He stuck his tongue out at me. “Fine. What is it?”

  “The crazy, mixed-up history of lysergic acid diethylamide.”

  “What?”

  “LSD.”

  “Oh. What about it?”

  “I found out some cool stuff today. Thought you might be interested.”

  “Give me a break,” I said. “We’ve been dealing with this stuff all day.”

  “Yeah, but it’s pretty fascinating.”

  “Science stuff?”

  “You bet.”

  “Spare me. I’ve had enough with the Deep Lake Cooling thing.”

  “Speaking of which, what the hell’s going on over there?”

  “You read the story, right?”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t say much. Come on, Bernier, what do you think’s really in the water?”

  “Damned if I know. Shardik said it looked like blood.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “What could account for that?”

  “Honestly,” I said, “I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “Wimp.”

  “Fine. I think it was the goddamn protesters.”

  “Who, what? Sacrificed a chicken?”

  “Have to be more than one chicken. There’s, like, thousands of gallons of water in that pool. And besides, the chicken-sacrificing thing isn’t what you’d call politically correct.”

  Ochoa arrived, carrying my drink in one hand and two tequila shots in the other. “What in the holy hell are you people talking about?”

  I reached for my bourbon and ginger ale. “You’re back fast.”

  “No line at the bar,” he said. “Sweet.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Just wait until the upperclassmen get back.”

  Mad took the shot and dispatched it in one fluid move. “I bet Ochoa here’d like to hear a little bit about where his glowing… whatevers came from.” Ochoa gave us a confused look. “History of LSD,” Mad said.

  “Cool,” Ochoa said. “Lay it on me.”

  “Okay,” Mad said, “the year is 1943. A Swiss chemist named Albert Hofmann is noodling around in his laboratory, working on synthesizing drugs from a plant-based substance called ergot. Now what, you may ask, is ergot?”

  I took a liberal slug of the spiked ginger ale. “I can’t imagine.”

  “Ergot is a fungus that grows on grain, mainly rye. During medieval times it killed a bunch of people—causes gangrene and convulsions, really nasty. Over the years it’s had a few medicinal uses, and Hofmann starts working on it as…how did he put it…a ‘respiratory and circulatory stimulant.’ You following?” We nodded, and Mad stacked the empty shot glass atop the previous one. “So Hofmann synthesizes a bunch of ergot derivatives. One of them, code-named LSD-25, seems to have no use, so it gets dropped.

  “But then, five years later, Hofmann has this hunch that there’s more to it, so he whips up another batch. Somehow, he ingests a little of it, and he gets to feeling all funky. He has to go home because he feels really dizzy, starts seeing weird shapes and colors. He wonders just what the hell’s going on. And, being a scientist and an all-around nut job, he decides to do an experiment on himself. He takes what he thinks is a minuscule dose of the stuff, a quarter of a milligram, and he just completely freaks out. Has your quintessential bad trip, like—this is my favorite part—he thinks the neighbor lady is an evil witch who wants to kill him.

  “After a while, he calms down and starts to enjoy it. Starts seeing the sound of a car driving by, like Ochoa was saying. Anyway, by the time he calms down the next morning, he feels great—says breakfast never tasted so good. And voilà, the birth of LSD.”

  Ochoa raised his beer mug. “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

  “Now you gotta admit,” Mad said, “that’s some interesting shit.”

  “Yeah, you win,” I said. “From rotting rye to freaking in the purple haze. Who’da thunk it?”

  Mack, the bartender, appeared tableside then and told us Bill was on the phone for Ochoa. The phone number for the Citizen Kane is, after all, noted prominently on the newsroom call list.

  Ochoa went behind the bar and picked up the red handset, whose long cord allows it to reach even to the farthest stool. He talked for all of two minutes before he came back to the table and drained his beer. He didn’t look happy.

  “This is the most unbelievable goddamn day.”

  I took my feet off the seat of his chair, but he made no move to sit down. “What’s up?”

  “I gotta get back to the paper.”

  Mad refilled his mug. “Come on, have one for the road.”

  “Better not.”

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Source of mine called the newsroom looking for me.”

  Mad leaned back in his chair. “So the hell what?”

  “Somebody at the coroner’s office. Apparently, they’re finally gonna announce what was in the acid that killed those three kids.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know the whole story. I haven’t even talked to the source yet.”

  “Come on,” I said. “He must’ve said something to get Bill’s knickers all twisty. What’s up?”

  “What this person told him,” Ochoa said, “was that according to the evidence, it’s looking like those accidental deaths were no damn accident.”

  CHAPTER12

  Ochoa’s sentence sent all three of us scrambling back to the newsroom, with me simultaneously jogging and dialing Cody on my cell phone. I told him I had to run back to work and I’d call him when I was done; he said he’d just as soon stay at the station for a while longer. (One of the advantages of dating a cop, by the way, is that they’re in no position to complain about you working crazy hours, since theirs are inevitably even crazier.)

  As soon as we got up the stairs, Ochoa sprinted for his Rolodex.
Mad and I went into Bill’s office, where we found the occupant reading a story and nibbling on a dumpling he’d impaled on a chopstick.

  “Gang’s all here, eh?”

  I eyed his take-out carton. “Those things vegetarian?”

  He shook his head and smirked. “Pork and shrimp shumai.” He finished off the dumpling and impaled another. “Where’s Ochoa?”

  “Went straight to the phone. Who’s this source, anyway?”

  “Damned if I know. Lady wouldn’t give me her name.”

  “What did she say?”

  “To tell Ochoa the coroner’s office finally figured out what killed the kids, and no way was it an accident. Gave him a heads-up on the press conference tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Which blows our deadline but works just fine for TV.”

  “What else is new?”

  Mad reached for one of the dumplings, and Bill warned him off with a threatening chopstick. Mad then announced he was starving, whereupon Bill told him to go over to Schultz’s and get himself a turkey sandwich.

  Mad allowed that this wasn’t a bad idea; he got back just as Ochoa was getting off the phone. The four of us convened in Bill’s office, where Mad made a show of offering around a bag of fat-free potato chips.

  “Some people,” he said, “like to share.”

  “Kiss my ass,” said Bill, and grabbed up a handful of chips.

  Ochoa took some too, balancing them against his chest as he flipped pages in his reporter’s notebook.

  “Okay, it’s like this,” he said. “We’re screwed.”

  Bill scowled and chomped a potato chip. “Screwed how?”

  “She spilled her guts, but off the record.”

  “So we confirm it with another source and run it unattrib—”

  Ochoa shook his head. “I mean off-off. Way off. As in not for publication.”

  “So why the fuck did she even bother telling you?”

  “She wanted to give me a heads-up.”

  “Can’t you get her to—”

  “Said if she leaked it on the record and it got traced back to her, she’d get canned for sure. I had to swear up and down we wouldn’t run anything tomorrow.”

  “Terrific.”