“And who’s doing the stamping?”
“Some outfit out of Lowell. Not to pick on Lowell and Lawrence, our distressed neighbors to the south, but they’re currently the Axis of Evil when it comes to distribution up here.”
Lowell, I thought. Where Felix went last night, talked to a gang that had its members at Maggie’s place the night of her murder, and where they apparently had left a souvenir behind …
“Lewis?”
“Sorry, I was daydreaming. What did you say?”
She shook her head. “What I said was that when that little envelope of heroin was found, it was ‘Katie, bar the door.’ The Feds are pouring money and resources to help us local yokels do something, when the real temporary solution right now is to stop arresting people and getting them into rehab. But allocating money for rehab centers isn’t sexy enough for our elected betters, so most of the money is going to law enforcement.”
“They took the Maggie Branch case away from you.”
“The state most certainly did,” she said. “Including one handsome, young, and energetic assistant attorney general named Camden Martin, who’s hell-bent on making a name for himself. He has a special task force set up with the authority and ability to go anywhere and take over any case that has a connection to heroin.”
“One little packet doesn’t seem like much of a connection.”
“Ah, but what’s more fun for our handsome young Attorney General Martin: meeting with local police chiefs to try to track down the midlevel dealers, most of whom live in distressed housing and are addicts themselves, or diving into a case that will tug at the state’s heartstrings?”
“A lonely elderly antiques dealer, murdered by a shotgun blast to her head, connected to the opioid crisis.”
“Yep. So they have it, and are being polite, but the Tyler Police Department has officially been shoved out. Even though it’s my case, damn it.”
A right foot snapped out, kicking my coffee table a few feet. “My case, damn it!”
I paid special attention to a pile of history books near me, all written by the famed British historian John Keegan, and Diane reached over and patted my arm, shaking her head in dismay.
“Sorry. Not enough sleep and I lost it there. You and your furniture and books don’t deserve it.”
“Don’t worry about it. Forgiven and forgotten.”
“Thanks.” She moved on the couch to get a better look at me. “How are you doing?”
“Doing all right.”
“And how are you when it comes to painkillers?”
“I took one prescription pill. Made me constipated for three days, gave me crappy dreams. That was it.”
“Good for you,” she said. “You know, if there was a blame game on this situation, I’d blame big pharma and the doctors. Big pharma for making these powerful painkillers and making it seem like your Constitutional right never to experience a twinge, and the doctors who go along for the ride, writing scripts for their patients because they’re tired of hearing them whine about how it hurts so much. And when the scripts run out, and they can’t get them refilled by any doctor, then the patients go another route. Just to satisfy the craving that hadn’t been there in the first place.”
I wanted to change the dreary subject so I asked, “How’s Kara?”
That brought a smile to Diane’s scarred face. “My honey is doing fine, thanks for asking. The Internet is a wonderful and dangerous thing, but Kara knows to keep on top of things. When a company or a person has a problem with their websites, Kara can dive right into the mess and make it right. I have no idea what the hell she’s doing, but it makes her happy, so that’s great with me.”
Diane said, “Oh, crap, here I am, talking about my woes and worries. How are you doing? Any more mysterious visitors?”
“If there are, they’re not making themselves visible.”
“We’ve got an Explorer unit at the police department. I could arrange to have a husky lad or two spend the night, just in case.”
“Any husky lasses?”
Diane smiled. “Not at the moment.”
“Thanks, but I’ll be all right.”
“Good. Hungry?”
I made a point of looking past her. “I am, but I don’t see anything with you.”
Diane got off the couch. “I got a cooler I dumped on your steps before coming in. I was getting tired of the damn thing and I didn’t want to trip and dump it all over your nice clean floor. Hold on and I’ll got get it.”
She took three steps and then glanced down at my floor, and stopped. “Your floor’s not that clean, Lewis. Everything okay?”
“What is it?”
“This,” she said, squatting down and picking something up, and then holding it out to me; I tried very, very hard to keep a friendly, bland expression on my face.
For “this” was a wad of bloody gauze, from when I had fixed up Felix earlier.
Long seconds dragged on for a long time. I held out my hand. “Thanks,” I said. “Guess I missed that one.”
“An accident?” she asked, giving me the dry and brown-looking piece of gauze.
“You could say that,” I said. “Sometimes … well, sometimes you just don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“Turn around.”
“What?”
“Turn around.”
I did as I was told, before she went from using her friendly-but-concerned voice and slid into hard-ass police-detective-sergeant voice, lifting up my T-shirt. I felt her strong fingers poke around back there.
“Mmm,” she said. “Your two bladders are definitely filling up. You want me to empty them before I leave?”
“Paula might be by … but if not, that would be nice.”
“Ah, Paula Quinn. Glad to see the two of you making a go of it.”
“Trying,” I said. “Did you run into her this morning?”
“About the burglary at the Chronicle? Nope, letting a patrol sergeant do that. Give him some experience if and when we ever get another detective hired.”
Her fingers still gently traced my skin. “When do you hear about the pathology results?”
“Any day now,” I said.
“Meaning what?”
“Any day now,” I repeated.
“Huh,” she said, fingers still
