by Lincoln Matt
“After what happened with your brother, can you blame me?” he quipped back.
“I suppose not,” she relented. “But that’s not why I called. Father, this cartel member we have, he has so much information that could help us. And your policemen and guards, they seem intent on alienating him. He needs some assurances if he’s going to help us any further.”
“And can you blame them?” he asked. “You’ve kept them with you, haven’t you?”
He knew her too well.
“I sent them away, but I have another officer with me,” she said hurriedly. “I’m fine, Father, but there’s more at stake here than just one measly drug dealer. And he’s not even one of the worst ones. He’s just a junkie they roped in with the promise of more drugs.”
“If he’s just a junkie, how can his word be trusted?” he asked.
“Well, he’s not a junkie anymore…” she started, pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration. “Look, Father, that’s not the point. I don’t have time to go over all this with you. Will you at least promise him leniency… say, no more than three years hard time?... and a private cell far away from any other Haitian prisoners? Plus, twenty-four-hour surveillance so none of the guards try to mess with him. He’ll want that, no matter how unlikely it is that they would try something.”
“This I can do,” he relented with some hesitance. “Be careful, Alejandra. The last thing I need is another missing child.”
“I understand, Father,” she murmured before ending the call.
CHAPTER 25
Alejandra
When she returned to the lab, both lab techs were clustered around something against the back wall, with Ricardo hanging close by them. Officer Díaz stood nervously off to the side, watching them closely with his hand on his gun at his side.
He cast a relieved glance over at her when she walked back inside.
“How’d it go?” he asked in a whisper.
“Good,” she said. “It’s always frustrating, talking to him when he gets like this, but I got what we needed. Why are we whispering?”
“I don’t know,” Díaz hissed back. “It just feels like if I talked normally, it would be disturbing them.”
She looked back over at the lab techs. Sure enough, they appeared totally entranced in their work and didn’t seem to have noticed her reentrance at all.
Ricardo was a different story, however.
“So?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at her. “What did you get me?”
She could barely contain her scowl but reminded herself that this man was instrumental in getting them the information they needed to take down the cartel.
“You won’t get a life sentence, a maximum of three years if convicted,” she promised him. “And a private cell with surveillance. No one will touch you while you’re inside.”
“This is good,” Ricardo murmured, rubbing his hands together as a smile spread across his face. “Very good. I am impressed. I was not expecting this much.”
She wished he hadn’t said that. Now she knew she probably could’ve gotten away with asking for less. But then again, he was just an addict who got caught up in a bad situation. He was a self-interested addict, but whatever.
“You’ll cooperate then?” she asked shortly.
“I don’t see why not,” he shrugged. “I have no other options.”
“Good,” she said. Then, turning to the lab techs, “Alright, fill us in.”
When she got no response, she tapped Clyde on the shoulder.
“Oh,” he said, turning to face her, jumping slightly. “I didn’t see you there, sorry.”
The woman whirled around now, too.
“Yes,” she said. “Me neither. We were just going to show Ricardo here the drugs we have that were recovered from the airport bust.”
“Do you have anything new on that?” Alejandra asked.
“Unfortunately, no,” Clyde said. “But we haven’t had much time to work on it. We were going to this morning before you got here, but another victim came in, and that pulled our attention away.”
Clyde pointed to a bag on a table in the corner of the room, and Alejandra realized with horror that it contained a body.
“Oh, dear,” she murmured. “I haven’t seen one in person yet.”
“Here,” Clyde said, walking over to the bag and pulling it open to reveal a boy, probably no older than sixteen. His skin was practically gone, and what remained of it existed in strange patches. His eyes were just two giant dark orbs with blood flowing out.
Alejandra took several steps back and tried not to lose her breakfast. She cast a glance over at the others. Bonnie and Clyde both seemed sad but largely indifferent to the scene. She imagined they were used to it by now, as much as one could be. Ricardo just held his head down and avoided looking at the body, while Díaz stared, stony and ashen faced, his eyes vacant.
“I… I don’t know what to say,” Alejandra stammered, unable to peel her eyes away from the body.
“And this isn’t nearly as bad as some of the other ones,” Bonnie sighed. “Ricardo was just telling us, and Diane said something similar earlier, I think, that these aren’t actually overdoses? They’re just a reaction to the drug?”
“That is my understanding, yes,” Ricardo said with a shrug, still staring at the floor. “But I could be wrong. I was just a dealer.”
“What makes you think this?” Clyde asked.
“As I told them last night, they kept trying to make the death rate go down,” he explained. “I heard them talking about it. Saying it killed too many people who took it. So, I just… what’s the word?… assumed.”
“It’s a natural assumption,” Bonnie reasoned. “And it would explain how the vics overdosed when the drug doesn’t even go through their liver.”
“Yes, it would,” Clyde said, furrowing his brow together as he thought this over. “Though I’m still unsure of how a drug like that could kill you in the first place.”
All eyes turned to Ricardo.
“Do not ask me,” he said. “I have no idea how to answer these questions. I’ve told you everything that I know already.”
“How many more victims have there been?” I asked.
“It’s become an epidemic,” Díaz said darkly. “More than a dozen new cases come in an hour, it seems. Everyone’s panicking.”
“And I bet the press is having a field day,” Alejandra groaned. “All of them are dead?”
“Yes,” Clyde confirmed. “I was speaking with one of the doctors earlier. She said that once they get here, they’re almost always dead. And if they aren’t, there’s nothing that can be done. They’ve tried every medical intervention imaginable, with no success.”
“There’s no coming back,” Ricardo said matter-of-factly, with a small, nervous laugh. “Once you take it, if you are one of the unlucky ones, you’re gone. There’s no stopping it. It will eat you alive. Everyone knows this back home.”
“There has to be some kind of remedy,” Díaz pleaded. “People are dying. Good people.”
“So, what is it?” Clyde asked, throwing his arms up in the air. “We see the elevated enzymes and everything else on the scans, but we still can’t figure out what the drug actually is.”
“I don’t know what it is,” Ricardo shrugged. “I just know how it is stored.”
“You said something last night about knowing how to ‘put it together,’” Alejandra said. “What does this mean? Can you ‘put it together’ for us from the collection of drugs that the Dominican authorities confiscated at the airport?”
“I can try,” Ricardo said. “But as I said, it is not the same as you would think. They split it up differently for the airport run. Much higher stakes there, and no worries about it being too hard for the customers to figure out.”
“Trying is good,” Bonnie said kindly, ushering the Haitian man back over to the back table where she and Clyde had been hard at work. “We’ve been trying to sift through this stuff for hours on end. But it�
�s a no go. We can’t find anything other than garden variety coke and heroin. Plus, there’s whatever this is.”
She held up a Ziplock bag with some kind of clear, gel-like substance in it. Alejandra squinted at it and drew closer, trying to figure out what it was exactly.
“What is it?” she asked.
“We think it’s some kind of protein gel,” Clyde said. “Like something a bodybuilder would put in a protein shake or something.”
“That doesn’t look like any kind of food I’ve ever seen,” Alejandra said skeptically, scrunching up her face at the thought of consuming whatever it was.
“You’d be surprised what some of these guys use to bulk up,” Clyde chuckled.
“Oh, this is nothing that you can find in stores,” Ricardo said, taking a step away from the bag as soon as Bonnie pulled it out. “This is the one ingredient that they cannot hide.”
“So, it is for the drug?” Bonnie asked, sounding a little surprised by this. “We ran some tests on it, and it just seems to be a bunch of antioxidants and other things like that. Nothing too dangerous.”
“Hold on, though,” Clyde said, holding out a finger to pause her train of thought. “What if that’s the point?”
“What do you mean?” Bonnie started to ask, but before the other lab tech had a chance to respond, she realized what he meant on her own, her face lighting up with recognition. “Do you think so? Could that mixture cause the elevated levels in the victims that we saw?”
“Theoretically, yes,” Clyde said, getting so excited that he nearly rammed his leg into the corner of a nearby table. “We’ll have to run some more tests, but it is a possibility.”
“Hold up,” Alejandra said, stepping between them. “Slow down and explain it for us normal people.”
“Right, sorry,” Clyde said apologetically. “So, the problem we were having was that the elevated levels of immunoglobulins and other naturally occurring things in the victims’ systems were unexplainable by anything but the drug, but it doesn’t make sense that those things would be harmful. This gel thing could be causing those levels to rise.”
“Ricardo, you were saying that you knew what this thing was?” Alejandra asked, pointing at the gel. It looked unassuming enough, just sitting there like slime in the ziplock bag. But if it was capable of that… Alejandra’s eyes flicked back to the body bag in the corner, now closed again, but that didn’t stop her stomach from churning at the memory of it.
“Yes,” Ricardo said, eyeing the bag with uncertainty. “You will not make me… touch it, will you? I always hated that part. I do not wish to do it again.”
“Why not?” Bonnie asked, a little sharply. “Is it dangerous?”
“I don’t think so… I mean I do not know,” Ricardo said, his eyes still trained on the bag. “But after what I have seen, I’m not taking any chances.” The Haitian man’s own eyes flicked back over to the body bag now, and everyone in the room knew exactly what he was talking about.
“What is it, then?” Clyde asked, his impatience obvious.
“I don’t know what it is exactly,” Ricardo reiterated. “As I said, that was not my job. But I do know that thing comes from the witch doctor’s personal supply of potions, and I do not like that. I do not wish to be near it. Please keep it away from me if you wish for me to help you.”
“There are people dying,” Díaz snapped, casting Ricardo a piercing look.
“And I do not wish to be one of them,” the gangbanger snapped back.
“Okay, okay,” Alejandra said, holding up her hands to make everyone stop. “Ricardo, we’ll do our best to make sure you don’t have to go near it, okay? Can you try to walk Bonnie and Clyde through everything you know about it?”
“Yes, I will do that,” Ricardo agreed, and the lab techs both nodded their assent to this arrangement.
“Okay, we have a deal,” Alejandra said. “So this gel, it’s the drug? The whole drug?”
“Oh no, it still must be put together,” Ricardo said as if this was obvious.
This was getting frustrating, and Alejandra just wanted to lie down and ice her head. She was nursing a pounding headache at this point in the day, and she was surprised that it hadn’t come on sooner, with everything she had been through in the past seventy-two hours.
“But what does that mean?” she asked Ricardo, trying to sound as patient as she could manage, which she imagined wasn’t all that much.
“It must be combined with the other drugs,” Ricardo said simply.
“Hold up, so this stuff has coke and heroin in it?” Díaz asked sharply, taking an aggressive step in the Haitian man’s direction. “You have got to be kidding me. You people are killing my friends! And for what?”
“Okay,” Alejandra said, grabbing Díaz by both arms and pulling him back from Ricardo. “We’re all tired here, let’s agree on that much. And we all want to get out of here and see the end of this. So let’s not rip each other to shreds in the process, shall we? No matter how much we may want to?”
“Fine,” Díaz scowled, turning away from Ricardo and shrugging Alejandra off of him. “I do apologize. This case is getting to me.”
“It’s getting to us all,” she said, giving him a warm smile and squeezing his shoulder. He was bold, taking this all on at his age.
“Alright, Ricardo, can we back up again for a moment, please?” Bonnie asked. “You said that this substance came from a witch doctor? Like a voodoo witch doctor?”
The drug dealer nodded his assent to this. “Yes, though I never saw him with it myself. I did not go in that place. They would’ve killed me.”
“I understand,” Bonnie said patiently, though Alejandra could see in her eyes that she wanted to get to the answer as quickly as everyone else did. She exchanged a look with Clyde. “Would that make sense to you? I mean, I don’t know much about voodoo witch doctors…”
“Neither do I,” Clyde said. “And clearly I know less than I thought I did, given that I wrote off that Haitian zombie powder nonsense, and here we are. But it would make sense… From what I do know, those guys use a lot of natural ingredients. So, that this would elevate all those levels in the victims isn’t unfounded, though it would be an extreme reaction to any substance.”
“Agreed,” Bonnie said. “But then again, everything about this is extreme. Ricardo, what did you mean about combining it with the other drugs?”
“There were other drugs in the victims’ systems,” Clyde reasoned. “But we attributed that to them partying hard before they took the new one.”
“This is why they use the drug on these young people,” Ricardo said with a shrug. “It is easy to write off like this. You may not find what is causing the reaction since it is hiding in plain sight.”
“The perfect crime,” Clyde mused with a chuckle. “I didn’t think it existed in narcotics work, but I guess it does.”
“Well, it won’t be the perfect crime anymore,” Díaz said, clenching his fists at his sides, and Alejandra patted his shoulder again.
“It’s not a large amount,” Ricardo said. “And it’s not ingested the same. Well, it’s ingested the same as the cocaine, but there’s more to it than that.”
“Clearly,” Clyde said. “Will you show us?”
“I will try to walk you through it,” Ricardo said. “Though, as I said, it may be beyond my skill set. They make it harder to get what you need out of it for the transportation of the drug as opposed to just the dealing.”
“You’re going to have to explain that to me again, but sure, try to walk us through it,” Clyde said, beckoning Ricardo closer to the table.
The Haitian man hesitated but came to his senses momentarily and drew closer. For some time, the three of them discussed the drug and worked tirelessly over the table.
Alejandra’s comprehension of the conversation pretty much ended there, and gathering from the expression on his face, she assumed the same was true for Díaz. So they both stood there and watched, trying to understand at first.
>
She craned her neck to try to see what they were doing, but it didn’t help much. It was just a bunch of random stuff on the table, none of which she had ever come in contact with before. The height of her own illicit activity was trying some weed in college once.
Díaz and Alejandra pretty much gave up on trying to figure out what was going on after a while, at least until an open flame got involved.
The young officer took several steps back and drew Alejandra along with him at that point, holding out an arm between her and the table, not that it would help much in the event of a crisis.
“Uh, guys, what are you doing over there?” Alejandra asked just as the lab was starting to smell rather putrid.
“We’re all good,” Clyde assured her as he placed a set of giant goggles over his eyes and handed another over to Ricardo. “Though you might want to step out for a minute.”
“Good idea,” Alejandra said, pulling Díaz along with her back to the hallway. The young man seemed strangely captivated by the lab techs’ activities.
But just as they were reaching the door, a loud bang rang out, and Alejandra turned with alarm to see Bonnie and Clyde standing amidst a billow of smoke, holding something up in the air triumphantly. Ricardo looked alarmed but frozen. Some smoke drifted up around his hair and his goggles lined with charcoal.
“Is this it?” Clyde asked the gangbanger, holding whatever it was up to his face.
Ricardo took several steps back in alarm, seemingly more afraid of the thing itself than the explosion.
“I believe so,” he said, his voice high-pitched and barely a whisper.
Alejandra squinted and stepped forward to get a better look at whatever it was the male lab tech was holding up. Díaz tried to stop her, but she swatted him away.
Clyde’s dirty blonde hair was now sticking up in several directions around his goggles, which were also lined with charcoal. Bonnie looked equally frazzled, but she was beaming.
It was some kind of powder all right, true to its name. It wasn’t quite white, though. Almost tan. And the grains were larger than she would’ve expected, almost like rice. As she got closer to it, she realized that they were tiny little gel capsules of some kind, small enough to combine to make a powder-like substance.