There was a smooth, clean ledge under the bumper. Perfect for Zachary’s purposes. He used a rag to wipe it down blindly, making sure that there was no layer of dirt and debris that would prevent a good mount.
Kenzie had said that the doctor’s appointment was nothing. He was going to have to believe her on that count. There was no way to tell what was going on in her life unless he put her under surveillance too.
Zachary pulled out the small black box. He switched it on and made sure that the green LED lit. Then, resting it on his fingertips, he put his hand under the bumper again and bent his fingers to attached the tracking unit to the ledge. It clinked softly. He nudged it with his fingers, seeing if it would slide or shift. It stayed solidly in place.
He stood up and wiped his hands on the rag. He looked around again to make sure that no one had shown up who might be watching him, wondering what the hell he was up to. There was a mother with a child walking from her car into the building, but she didn’t look in his direction. He wondered vaguely if she were sick. Surely there were other kinds of doctors in the professional building as well. A gynecologist or pediatrician. He hoped that neither she nor the child was seriously ill. He hoped that she simply had a routine appointment or checkup.
He went back to his car and sat down before checking the tracking app on his phone to make sure that the GPS tracker was transmitting properly. Now he would have a reliable log of every place she went.
Having taken care of the various surveillance and routine background work that had been languishing on his list, Zachary returned to the medical examiner’s report. He had just about decided he was ready to close the case and give Molly his final report. He would confirm that it had, in fact, been an accident and there was no indication of any outside involvement. He hoped that, as Kenzie had suggested, Molly and the family would feel better knowing that there had been no holes in the police investigation and that everything had been properly handled and could be put to bed. Then they could lay Declan to rest. Figuratively speaking, since his remains were still dangling and swaying restlessly in Isabella’s numerous necklaces and injected into her skin.
Kenzie had said everything in the blood tests had been within normal parameters, but as Zachary read every line of fine print, he could feel his brows coming down. How could anyone who had read the blood test results have come to that conclusion?
Without looking up from the report, Zachary felt for his phone. It went sliding across the table away from his fingers, and he looked up to corral it and to call Kenzie Kirsch.
There was no answer. The call went to voicemail. Zachary ground his teeth. She was probably just helping someone to fill out a form. Or maybe she was in a conference with the medical examiner. Or she had another doctor’s appointment.
Thinking about doctor’s appointments, he switched quickly to the GPS tracker app and found the latest tracker broadcasting its coordinates. A street map and satellite picture were layered over the latitude and longitude grid, and a quick squint at the street showed that she was back home. Zachary wondered briefly if everything was okay, or if she had gone home to cry or compose herself.
As Zachary was looking at the map, a call rang through to his phone, making him jump at the sudden vibration and the call information flashing up on the screen. He answered the call. “Kenzie, hi.”
“Sorry, I was on another call. What’s up?”
“Just looking at the blood test results on Declan Bond’s report.”
“Yes?”
“You said that everything was within normal parameters.”
“That’s right. No red flags.”
“Then why do I see numbers beside alcohol and amphetamines? Surely there’s no ‘normal range’ for alcohol and amphetamines in a child?”
Kenzie laughed. “If you look at the further testing done after that, you’ll see that the amphetamine is actually pseudoephedrine.”
“And what is pseudoephedrine?”
“It is a decongestant. You probably have it in your medicine cabinet.”
“I do?”
“It’s in most popular brands of cough medicine.”
“Oh… he was given cough medicine?”
“Yes.”
Zachary thought about this. “They put alcohol in children’s cough medicines?”
“Some of them. They used to contain cocaine! Or they might have given him a smaller dose of an adult cough medicine. People don’t want to run out to the drugstore in the middle of the night, so they adjust an adult dose for a child. Not recommended.”
“But it wasn’t the middle of the night. It was the afternoon. Can you tell how much he was given?”
“I don’t think they would have worked back to an exact dosage. No need to do that. Probably just checked to make sure it was within normal parameters. There are lookup tables for that sort of thing.”
Cough medicine.
Zachary thought back to the interviews with Spencer and Isabella. Neither one had mentioned Declan being sick. When Zachary had run them through the events of that final day, neither of them had mentioned Declan having a cold or a cough.
“What are you thinking?” Kenzie asked.
“I’m thinking that people give their children cough medicine to make them sleep.”
“If they have a cold, yes. It’s hard for a child to sleep while they’re coughing their heads off or can’t breathe properly. It’s important for them to be able to get enough rest to get over the virus.”
Zachary shook his head, even though she had no way of seeing it. “Not just when they have colds. Some parents do it every night. Or any time they want to go out on the town. Give the kids a dose of cough medicine, and they sleep right through. No danger of them
