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.
“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
