“The first experience is called Flyte. That’s F-L-Y-T-E. It’s like ecstasy times a thousand. You want to fuck all night, this is the drug you use. We believe this is the experience that was doing the rounds at this secret club. The second experience is called Fyte. That’s F-Y-T-E. And, it’s as it sounds. It’s an adrenaline overload, makes the user think they are as strong as Superman. They become aggressive, violent assholes who are itching for a fight. It’s meth on steroids. Right now it’s speculation, of course, but we believe this drug may be the reason for the spike in homicides being reported.” She looked around at them all. “We were hoping to stomp out these drugs on the quiet before they became widespread, but we are on the verge of failing. Word is getting ‘round, and people are wanting a piece of the action. It’s moved from these secret elite clubs, and has now hit the streets in an altered form. We believe someone has taken the expensive Flyte drug, reverse engineered it, tweaked it, and created Fyte. If we don’t stop it now, it will soon be made accessible to all. Which means we’re about to have a serious problem on our hands.
“From what I’ve heard, the effects of each drug lasts several hours, depending on how high a dose they take. We believe those in this secret club, were taking Flyte via an injection, in its purest form. How the Fyte is being taken, we don’t yet know, but we’ll be looking through your homicide cases carefully to see if we can identify track marks on any perpetrators you may have found, in or out of the morgue. Either way, we have some souped-up freaks out there fighting or fucking their way to the extremes. We need to find who’s dealing it and follow the trail all the way to the head of the organization, so we can cut that head off. We also need to find out if the Chief’s daughter was caught up in this, and if so, what happened to her. And, of course, we now need to find who killed Caine…” She swallowed hard and looked around. “Any questions so far?”
“Why was this kept quiet until now?” Beggs asked.
“Caine was undercov–”
“I get Caine being undercover,” Beggs cut her off. “Why’d you keep quiet on these drugs?”
Kara took a moment, glanced at the Chief who gave her a subtle nod to continue. She looked back at Beggs.
“Because we believe that some fairly influential people may be involved. When we say elite circles and secret clubs, we mean the very elite. The very rich, and possibly, the very powerful. We weren’t sure who we could and couldn’t trust, so we kept things quiet.”
Salvi wondered whether that was the truth, or whether it was kept quiet because the Chief’s daughter was involved – to protect both their reputations.
“Who?” Beggs demanded. “Name names.”
“Beggs,” Ford said firmly with a stare to match. “Maybe if you shut up and let her finish you’ll find out.”
Beggs scowled and stuffed his hands into his coat pockets.
“Alright,” Kara said. “So before Caine came onto the case I had narrowed down one club as the potential source of the original Flyte drug. The club is ‘Floor to Ceiling’.”
Salvi felt her spine straighten. Her mind instantly wandered back to the image of the women in Barker’s Studio; raising their glasses, flicking their hair and ‘dancing on the ceiling’.
“Like the Chief said,” Kara continued, “it’s exclusive. The whole point of the joint is that you enter on the ground floor and work your way up to the Ceiling. And when I say work your way up, I mean that you need a pass to enter each floor and you cannot get that pass until you make the right friends or impress the right people. There’ve been wannabees going there for almost a year and they can’t get past the ground floor. It took me a couple of months to make it to the second floor, but thanks to my dealing, I made some new friends who helped me rise up. I’ve now made it to the third floor. The fourth floor is the Ceiling.
“Caine progressed quickly with his looks and that perfect smile of his,” she smiled sadly. “He’d been on the case only seven weeks and he overtook me and made it to the Ceiling. On his way up he’d heard whispers of a place beyond the Ceiling; that apparently once you made the Ceiling, you then got the keys to the ‘basement’. We didn’t even know about the basement’s existence until Caine was on his way to the Ceiling. Only certain Ceiling folk know about it, and even then, it’s apparently incredibly difficult to make it inside.” Kara stared at them. “We think Caine made it into the basement. We don’t know what he saw in there, but whatever it was, it got him killed.”
“How do you know he made it to the basement?” Mitch asked.
“Because,” Eli Sorensen spoke up, “the last message we received from him was that he’d met some new friends, that he was off to get down and dirty and have some extra fun. Down and dirty was the code. It was his signal that he was heading for the basement.”
“Why can’t we just get a goddamn warrant and take a look?” Beggs asked.
“When I say ‘basement’ it’s a metaphorical term,” Kara said. “I don’t mean the literal basement of the club. It’s just a reference to an underworld that we don’t know about yet. A club or membership so exclusive, almost nobody knows it exists, let alone where it is. And those that do can’t decide if the place is just an urban legend.”
“You didn’t give Caine a tracking device to see where he went that night?” Beggs asked.
“We did,”
