Kim listened impassively. “All right,” he finally said. “But perhaps you should have contacted the police.”
Lindsey pulled up her mask. “I believe you’ll want to do that after the toxicology report comes back.”
* * *
Frank Deldeo got off the elevator at basement-level two. The strong smell of formaldehyde assaulted him immediately and made him gag. He stopped in front of a room marked: EXAM #2. He pressed his ear to the door and heard voices inside. First it was a man’s voice, then a female voice he recognized.
It had to be her.
Deldeo screwed the silencer on his automatic then turned the door handle. The door seemed to fall open on its own and he found himself looking at an Asian doctor in blue scrubs. Next to him was Lindsey Walsh.
“What is the meaning of this!” The doctor asked.
“Nothing personal.” Deldeo shot Kim through the upper lip and a red cloud erupted from the back of his head.
Lindsey screamed and ducked behind the stainless steel gurney beside her. She thrust herself upward and bolted through the exit door.
* * *
The sound of a muffled gunshot rang out and Lindsey heard the ping of the bullet as it struck a gurney. She sprinted down the hall as fast as she could. Seeing Deldeo again up close had brought the memory of her father’s death back with horrifying clarity. She got about halfway down the hall and stopped, gulping for air as though she’d been under water for too long.
There has to be a better way.
She yanked open the first door she could find and ducked inside. Shelves holding paper towels, plastic garbage bags, boxes of new glassware, and an abundance of other supplies surrounded her. She heard the pounding of heavy footfalls coming down the hall.
* * *
Deldeo came to a screeching halt in front of the morgue refrigerator. He shoved a cleaning cart out of his way and stood looking at the door.
“Come on out, you can’t run. It’s time to face the music. I should have taken care of you back in New York. Just like your sad-ass poppy.”
Deldeo yanked the refrigerator door open and stared down at the neat row of corpses lined up along the wall. As usual, they had tagged all the bodies for identification. He swallowed hard and stepped into the walk-in.
“Come out, come out wherever you... what the hell–“
* * *
Lindsey burst from the janitor’s closet like a battering ram and slammed against the morgue door. It propelled Deldeo backwards and a corpse toppled across him as the door banged shut. Lindsey shoved a gurney against it and wedged it tight.
“Take that you sonofabitch!”
Lindsey heard bullets bounce off the morgue door. But it was a foot thick and well insulated, more than enough to stop them.
The elevators were just to her left and a stairwell to her right. She had no time to debate.
A minute later she got off at the lobby level and hurried past the attendant. “Call the police,” she said. “There’s been some trouble downstairs.”
Outside, she found a van from Imec.
Left there by Deldeo, no doubt.
She gazed inside. Yes! The keys were still dangling from the ignition. She slid behind the wheel and tore off as soon as the engine roared to life.
Lindsey’s mind went into overdrive. They had verified all her suspicions. Vetter had sent Deldeo to the morgue for the Booths’ bodies. Why else would he have come there? He couldn’t have possibly known she would be there.
She debated calling the police, but realized the story was too complicated. She’d rather wait. After they find Deldeo in the morgue refrigerator, her story would be easier to swallow. Now she had to get back to Katherine’s and compare notes. She felt certain the toxicology samples Dr. Kim had taken before Deldeo murdered him would prove her theory. But there was still the question of how?
More horrifying yet, than the death of her neighbors and Teresa Hagen, was what Dr. Collett had said.
Just the tip of a very big iceberg!
The dead woman lay sprawled
in an open drainage ditch along the northeast side of Indian Springs. Standing beside the culvert, Harry Watkins looked at the small corpse, forcing himself to bear witness to his recent personality change.
The sight of the battered body, neck broken, face badly bruised, stabbed and slashed, should have been devastating. Yet, the sight barely offended him. It had been just as easy to kill her. Something that would have been unheard of for him just two months ago.
But he had changed.
Somehow? And that was the bad part. He knew something was happening to him. He just didn’t know what. His inability to no longer feel, and his emotional detachment over the last few months, had once scared him.
Now, he had reached a point where he no longer knew or cared about the consequences of his actions.
Watkins turned away from the dead woman. He walked back along the access road toward his house, which was a few hundred yards south on Yucca Drive. He looked at the neatly spaced rows of houses.
Other people were changing, too.
Indian Springs had become a cauldron of emotional distress.
As a scientist for Imec, he possessed a brilliant mind. But that mind had become increasingly clouded lately.
More than clouded.
Disturbed.
The morgue refrigerator flew open
and Frank Deldeo shot the first cop in the face. The second officer was still going for his service revolver when Deldeo blew the side of his head off. Deldeo emerged from the cooler and watched the attendant running out of the building screaming like a woman.
Deldeo collected himself and went to the elevator. He didn’t bother looking for the attendant, the kid was scared shitless and was probably halfway to Tucson by now. He got off the elevator, went into the lobby and looked out the front door. His van was gone.
“Shit, that fucking bitch.” He jammed the gun into his pants and went to the front desk.
They must have a vehicle of some kind here.
Rummaging through the desk drawer he came upon a set of keys marked: ME car. He grabbed the keys and headed out the front door. The keys were for a Ford sedan, and Deldeo saw it sitting next to the building with: OFFICE of MEDICAL EXAMINER, emblazoned on the door. He slid in behind the wheel and adjusted the seat to allow for his gut. “Skinny ass people,” he blurted.
He rocketed onto the freeway a few minutes later and sped northwest, toward Imec. His time in the morgue cooler had done little to curb his rising blood pressure. He couldn’t believe he’d been done over by that bitch.
When he got his hands on her, he would snap her neck like a chicken!
He knew Vetter was going to raise hell with him.
Too bad.
He’d better not complain too much. Deldeo was in no mood for any shit from him. It was Vetter that had gotten him into this mess to begin with. He should have made him come to the morgue himself.
Once in the suburban sprawl of Scottsdale again, Frank Deldeo cruised through a series of commercial districts, unsure where one community ended and the next began. He was still angry, but also on the edge of dehydration. He sought a convenience store where he expected to find any kind of drink he wanted. Spotting a 7-Eleven, he pulled over at a red curb and left the car running. It was, after all, a medical examiner’s car, which carried certain privileges. On the way in he noticed a newspaper vending machine. USA Today ran a small article on the disappearance of an FDA official.
Deldeo laughed to himself.
They’ll never find him.
After getting a twenty-four-ounce Coke he estimated he’d be back to Imec in twenty minutes.
He made it in fifteen.
After Lindsey finished telling Katherine
about the morgue, the first thing Katherine did, was open a bottle of Tequila. Then, she led Lindsey to the dining room and placed a shot glass in front of her.
“Sit.”
Lindsey lowered herself into a chair, but Katherine remained standing, pacing first one way, then another in front of the table. She stopped, turned, and placed her hands on the table’s edge, then leaned toward Lindsey.
“Now, I have some shocking news of my own.”
Lindsey rolled her eyes. “After what I’ve been through today, nothing would shock me.”
“Don’t be so sure.” Katherine walked around the table, then sat and leveled her gaze at Lindsey. “Your friend, Patricia Watkins. When did you last see her?”
“A couple of days ago. Why?”
“The police found her in a ditch today. Beaten to death.”
Lindsey had a hand pressed to her chest. “Her husband?” she asked, her voice cracking.
Katherine’s expression saddened. “They found him dead at their house. Another murder-suicide.”
“No. No...” Lindsey backed into her chair. “This can’t be. I just saw them, and they seemed–“
”Fine. They weren’t. Nobody in Indian Springs is fine. Vetter is doing something to everyone in there. And I’m afraid I’ve helped him. I covered up a lot for him. Now I have to try and undue the damage, if that’s possible.”
“Wait a minute,” Lindsey said, struggling for answers, “you mean you knew all along. That this entire community... thing was a sham to... to what? I don’t understand.”
Katherine lowered her eyes. “Those monthly blood tests you and all the other employees take. They’re to measure your serotonin levels, not to check for illegal drugs.”
“Why would anyone want to check my serotonin levels?”
Katherine reached across the table and held Lindsey’s hand.
“It’s a long complicated story, Lindsey.”
Lindsey’s gaze fixed on Katherine. “I have all night”
Finally Katherine sank into one of the chairs. “As you know, I stole Meyer’s original files on Bliss when we broke in last night. Everything. And I’ve read them. They contain all the data on Bliss and its side effects. Also, the initial trial results. The ones’ Vetter’s been hiding. Even the animal trials. It’s all on there.”
“And.”
Katherine’s glanced away momentarily. “The side effect profile warranted that they stop research on Bliss immediately. It was too dangerous.”
“And Vetter is still going to market it?” Lindsey’s voice rose in disbelief.
Lindsey’s eyes searched hers with such grief and anger that Katherine’s next words nearly choked her. “He’s using Indian Springs as a clinical trial. You and all the other residents are his guinea pigs.”
Lindsey’s gasp was unlike any sound Katherine had heard before–raw in its emotion, sheer repulsion and horror.
“But how, how is it possible?” Lindsey asked, still not quite believing. “I haven’t taken any pills containing Bliss.”
Katherine paused. “It took me some time to figure it out. He lied to me. Told me certain employees had volunteered to take the drug. But then I started asking around. No one had volunteered for anything. After I read the files this morning, I kept coming across a reference to Monohydrodioxide and its ability to bring the Bliss chemical composition into the microgram range. That may not mean a lot to you, but to a chemical biologist, it means they could put the drugs into anything without detection.”
Lindsey, calmer now, furrowed her brow.
“What exactly is this Monohydro stuff you’re talking about?”
“It’s a little embarrassing. At first I didn’t know myself. I and most other people on the planet know it by its chemical elements... H2O. Plain ole
water.”
Lindsey stood and backed away as if Katherine were somehow responsible. “Are you telling me Vetter is putting Bliss into the–“
”That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
Stephen Vetter threw his pen
across the room when Deldeo walked in his office.
“What the hell happened, I’ve been waiting all fucking morning to hear from you?”
“We have some problems.”
“Seems you always have problems, Mr. Deldeo. What now?”
“The girl, she got away. Stole the van and–“
Vetter’s face reddened. ”I can’t believe this. I knew I should have got someone else to handle this.” Vetter hesitated and took a deep breath. “I think you’ve outlived your usefulness here, Frank.”
Deldeo threw his hands up. “What the fuck does that mean? I got you out of a lot of shit. Took a lot of risks. And now because of one fuck-up, you want to fire me?”
Vetter grinned. “I didn’t say anything about firing you.”
Deldeo heaved a huge sigh and dropped into one of the leather chairs.
“That’s not all of it.” Deldeo said. “I had to kill a couple cops.”
“What! Are you a complete moron?”
Vetter’s face had turned a deep shade of red and his breath came in rapid pants. He reached in his desk drawer and came out with a .38 revolver.
“Mr. Deldeo,” he said, pointing the gun at him, “I told you the day you came to work for me, I allow you only one fuck-up. You’ve had yours.”
Deldeo put his hands up in a defensive posture as Vetter walked over to his terrarium where he kept several exotic amphibians for his entertainment. Inside, four poison dart frogs sat staring out through dark, lidless shark-like eyes. Vetter kept the gun trained on Deldeo whose eyes followed his every step.
“These tiny frogs have the most deadly venom known to man. One bite kills within seconds.” Vetter slipped on a leather glove, keeping Deldeo at bay with the revolver. Reaching into the glass enclosure, he grabbed one of the tiny frogs and gripped it firmly. He walked over to Deldeo whose eyes had bulged.
“Beautiful creature, isn’t it?” He held it a couple of inches from Deldeo’s face.
“Yea, it’s lovely, now could you get it away from me?”
* * *
Before Deldeo got the last word out, Vetter shoved the frog into his mouth. In an instant, he felt like his tongue was coated in burning acid.
“Hee... lp”
he gasped, but Deldeo could barely pull in enough air to let out a whimper. He felt like a giant vise was clamped around his neck. He clawed at his throat, but already his muscles were having trouble responding. His body felt as if a lead blanket had been placed over it. The fear overwhelmed him and his bowels let loose.