‘Well, that kind of depends on what you consider an indication.’
‘Huh?’
Tanzi nodded to the table the body was lying beside and Courtney moved closer. She saw what Tanzi meant more or less immediately. The plastic bottle of pills, several of which were spilled out over the table surface, had been hidden by the back of one of the seats. The pills themselves looked more like sweets. Each was about five millimetres in length and purple in colour. Courtney knew exactly what they were without waiting for a lab test.
‘Crystal Mana,’ Courtney said.
‘That’s a lot of them too. You don’t normally see almost full bottles of the stuff.’
‘That seems to be a trend this year.’ Raising her voice, Courtney called back over her shoulder. ‘Kyle, get this place locked down and get Don over here. We’re going over this apartment with a fine comb.’
From the doorway, Kyle said, ‘On it, Captain.’
‘Now, the question is, what killed her?’
‘I’ll check for signs of overdose,’ Tanzi said. ‘There’s no obvious physical trauma, so overdose seems like a likely cause. Or a severe crash after taking too many in sequence. Thing is, that doesn’t make too much sense either.’
‘Why?’
‘Only idiots overdose on Crystal Mana. About the only people who try taking too many at once are the ones trying to really rush the power-gain process.’
Courtney shrugged. ‘If you ask me, only idiots take it at all, but that does open up the possibility that she didn’t take the pills voluntarily. We might just have a murder case on our hands.’
235/3/34.
‘Death was due to neurological collapse,’ Courtney said. ‘That resulted in a complete failure of the autonomic nervous system and heart failure. The cause of that collapse was an overdose of Crystal Mana. She took around fifteen tablets. Surviving that is just about impossible.’
‘Oh,’ Mitsuko said.
‘That’s terrible,’ Melissa said, her voice almost a whisper.
‘It’s supposed to be a relatively painless way to die,’ Courtney said. ‘Your brain just shuts down. You don’t have time to notice that you can’t breathe or that your heart’s stopped beating. It’s like going to sleep. Anyway, we found a large supply of the drug in her apartment.’
‘How large?’ Darius asked.
‘Large enough to suggest that she’s supplying rather than using. She was a member of the MagiTag Club, which also suggests that she was the one who supplied Siegmar Tate.’
‘She was obviously using too.’
‘No, not really. The tests didn’t show any signs of long-term use. It appears that this was the first time she’d taken any. Or, she certainly hadn’t been using it for more than a day or two and the state of the stash we found suggests that she was supplying more than just Siegmar.’
‘I’ll get the entire club tested,’ Leland said, his tone low and angry. ‘Still, you’ve broken this problem’s back, right? With the supplier out of the picture…’
‘It’s not that easy,’ Courtney replied. ‘No one with a clue takes that much Crystal Mana in one go. If she was supplying, she probably knew what it did. She wouldn’t have swallowed fifteen pills of her own volition and waited to die.’
‘Remorse over what happened to Siegmar?’
‘Suicide? It’s a possibility, but no one I’ve talked to has said she was acting strangely since Siegmar crashed. If she was depressed about harming another student, or worried about being caught, she was a good actress.’
‘You’re saying someone fed her those pills,’ Mitsuko said.
‘Not exactly. The autopsy came up with no evidence of violence. She’d have fought back if she was being forced. Equally, I don’t think she took them of her own volition.’
‘Mind control, then.’
‘It’s a distinct possibility. Yes.’
~~~
‘Okay,’ Nava said, her gaze on Mitsuko, ‘what’s up?’
‘What?’ Mitsuko responded. ‘Nothing’s up. What would be up?’
‘You tell me. It’s probably not any of my business, unless you’re getting tired of me, but you have something on your mind.’
‘I’ve nothing–’
‘Suki, you’re barely interested in what we’re doing.’
‘Oh. Well. I suppose… It’s the Crystal Mana thing. If Courtney’s right, we have a real problem.’
Nava looked away for a second and then turned back. ‘You have a real problem.’
Mitsuko did not have Nava’s poker face. She frowned. ‘What do you know, Nava?’
‘I don’t know anything. I suspect that a couple of people in the Flight Club are using. On Sunday, at the next meeting, I plan to confirm that one way or another.’
‘You should take what you have to Courtney.’
‘Courtney Martell is not my greatest fan. I need to confirm what Mel and I have seen before I go to her with it. Besides, we may be wrong.’
‘Be careful. If this is some kind of larger conspiracy, they’ve killed someone already. I doubt they’ll worry too much about hurting someone else.’
Nava’s lips twitched, a slight curl at the left corner. ‘Worried about me? You have met me, haven’t you?’
‘You’re not invulnerable, you know. There’s a possibility that they used mind control of some kind on Brynn Hermanson.’
Nava gave a small shrug. ‘That just means I have to take them out before they can use it on me.’
235/4/4.
Michelle Yamasaki Sonkei made her way quite quickly into the girl’s restroom in the building attached to the field where the Flight Club met. The members changed there before taking to the air, and it was not uncommon for people to need to use the toilets considering that they were out for most of the afternoon. So, no one batted an eyelid at Michelle heading off there during a rest break from practice.
She was one of the novices aiming to go to the next Shinden Aerobatics Competition. Freestyle aerobatics was her life. Well, maybe it was not quite that important to her, but it was far more than a hobby. Doing well in the competition had become something of an obsession and, were she honest with herself, she was not quite good enough. That, of course, was why she was taking the stuff. It gave her an edge. She would stop as soon as her talents had caught
