Michaels grinned slightly. He could hear that conversation:
“And where does Net Force come in?”
“We have evidence that the makers of the drug — they call it Thor’s Hammer, by the way — are using the Internet to arrange delivery.”
“If the drug isn’t illegal, then using the net to distribute it isn’t illegal, either,” Michaels said.
“We know. But if we can find them, we can damn well ask the miscreants making it to give us a sample. So to speak. ”
“Believe it or not, Commander, that thought did occur to us, it being our job and all. It isn’t a common street drug. The cost of it is extremely high, and the sellers are very selective about who they sell it to. So far, none of our agents have been able to make a connection.
“We did manage to seize one capsule after the death of one of the people that we know took the drug. Unfortunately, the chemist in this case is very clever; there is some kind of enzymatic catalyst in the compound. By the time we got the stuff to our lab and analyzed, the active ingredients had all been somehow rendered… inert. There is some kind of timing mechanism in the drug. If you don’t use it fairly quickly, it turns into a bland, inert powder that doesn’t do anything but sit there.”
“You can’t tell what the drugs were?”
“Our chemists can infer what they were, sure. There are residues, certain telltale compounds, but we can’t document for certain what the exact precursor drugs and percentages of each were, because they are essentially gone.”
“Huh. That must be frustrating.”
“Sir, you do not know the half of it. The common thread running through all the sudden insanities is money. Every one of the twelve people we feel certain died as a result of having ingested this drug is — or was — rich. Nobody on the list made less than a quarter million a year, and some of them made fifteen or twenty times that much.”
“Ah.” Michaels understood that. You might lean on a criminal street pusher, threaten him, rough him up a little, to get what you wanted from him, but millionaires tended to come equipped with herds of lawyers, and a man with big bucks in the bank didn’t get hassled by street cops who wanted to keep their jobs. Not unless the cops had enough to go into court and get a conviction, and even then, they tended to walk with more care. Rich people had recreations denied to the common folk.
“Precisely. So until we can get a sample before the enzyme is added, or get to one fast enough to beat the decomposition, we’re stuck. We need your help.”
Michaels nodded. Maybe the guy wasn’t that bad. In his place, he could understand how he might feel. And things around Net Force were as slow as he had ever seen them. “All right, Mr. Lee. We’ll see if we can’t run your dope dealers to ground.”
Lee nodded. “Thank you.”
5
Toni smiled at the UPS man as he left — he was late today — then took the latest packages into the garage. Alex had told her she could have half the workbench, though she only needed maybe a quarter of it, and she had already started putting her stuff there. So far, she had the magnifying lamp set up, the alcohol burner and wax cauldron, a couple tubes of lampblack oil paint, and some rags and cleaning supplies. There wasn’t really much else left she needed. The new packages should have the pin vises, some assorted sewing needles, lens paper, lanolin hand cleaner, and a couple of X-Acto knives and some blades. Plus the jeweler’s special wax and some polishing compound. She already had some fake-ivory slabs, some old piano keys, and some little rectangles of micarta, which looked like real ivory but was much harder. She didn’t need the heavy-duty saws and buffing wheels, Alex had a Dremel tool that would work for polishing small stuff. And while the stereomicroscope like the one her teacher used was really neat, she couldn’t justify spending eight or nine hundred dollars on it — not unless she got to the point where she was selling pieces, which would probably not ever happen — especially given she wasn’t sure she even wanted to try that.
Toni had never thought of herself as having much artistic talent. She’d done okay in art courses in school, could draw a little, but according to Bob Hergert’s on-line VR class, while being a world-class artist wouldn’t hurt, it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Given the wonders of the modem computer age, there was a lot technique could do to make up for talent. And given what she’d learned so far, you’d be able to fool a lot of people into thinking you knew what you were doing when you didn’t.
She opened the packages, removed the tools and supplies, and set them out. Being pregnant wasn’t at all like she’d thought it was going to be. Sure, she’d heard about morning sickness and mood swings, but the reality of those things was something else. And it wasn’t as if she were really a whale, not at five months, but she’d always been in shape, her belly flat and tight, her muscles firm, and having to lie around and watch herself balloon up was, well, it was scary. Having something to do that needed concentration and skill, like scrimshaw, might be just the ticket to help her get past this. The morning sickness — which lasted almost all day and any time she was around any food more spicy than dry soda crackers — had finally stopped. Supposedly, the hormone swings got better after the sixth month.
Supposedly.
She had some ideas of what she might like to try first, and for that she needed to go back to her computer. There were lots of places to find pictures in the public domain, and if those weren’t good enough, lots of places where you could license an image for personal use for a small fee. Later on, if she got better at it, she could try some freehand drawings of her own, but at first, she wanted to keep it simple.
Toni looked at her comer of the workbench. The rest of it was covered with Alex’s tools and car parts, all laid out neatly. He was much more orderly than she was about such things. So far, her investment in scrimshaw supplies had run less than what it cost Alex for a good set of wrenches. If it turned out to be a total waste of her time, at least she wouldn’t be out much money.
She sighed. Before she sat down at the computer and went shopping on-line, she needed to go pee again. And that, she understood, was not going to get better as her pregnancy progressed. She sure hoped having Alex’s son was worth all this aggravation.
John Howard bent from the waist and tightened the laces on his cross-trainers, finishing with the double-loop runner’s knot that theoretically kept the laces from coming untied. Finished, he straightened, bent backward and stretched his abdominals, then shook his arms back and forth to loosen them.
Normally, he ran at the base or around the Net Force compound, but today he felt like taking a tour of his own neighborhood. It was warm for early October, and muggy, so he wore running shorts and a tank top, though he did have a fanny pack holding his virgil, his ID, and a small handgun — a little Seecamp.380 double-action auto. The tiny pistol made the Walther PPK look like a giant, it only weighed maybe eleven or twelve ounces and was awfully convenient if you were wearing summer clothes or workout gear. True, the.380 wasn’t exactly an elephant-stopper; the gun didn’t have any sights, liked only one brand of ammo, and it tended to bang your trigger finger pretty good when it recoiled. No way it compared with his primary side arm, the Phillips & Rogers Medusa, but it did fulfill the first rule of a gunfight: Bring a gun. Point it at somebody in your face with a knife or a broken bottle and pull the trigger four or five times, and it certainly would offer them major incentive to back off. With the fanny pack strapped on tightly enough so it wouldn’t bounce around much, it was doable. He used to carry a little can of pepper spray to discourage loose dogs, but realized that if he stopped running and said “Bad dog! Go lie down!” in a loud voice, the
