Tess Gerritsen: Peggy Sue Got Murdered

Once again, she tapped on the window. He rolled it down a few inches.

"Hey, honey," she said sweetly. "You lookin' for me?"

"I'm looking for Maeve," he said.

"Don't know any Maeve. What about me?"

He smiled. "I don't think so."

"I'm open to anything. Indulge your fantasies."

"I'm really not interested. Thank you." He rolled up the window.

At once her smile transformed to a scowl. She muttered an obscenity, audible even through the closed glass, then she turned and walked away.

He watched her blue jean-clad hips sway as she headed down the street, saw her pause by a gathering of young men. Automatically she tilted her head up in a smile. No interest there either. With a shrug, she kept walking.

Something about that young woman-her raven-colored hair, perhaps, or that walk, announcing to the world: I can take care of myself , reminded him of someone. Dr. Novak, the woman with no first name. She had hair that color, a thick and glossy black, just long enough to lap at her shoulders. And her gait, what he'd seen of it in the dim basement corridor, had that confident spring to its step. He suddenly wished he'd told her the truth, about the matchbook, about Maeve. He knew she knew he'd been lying. It was necessary, to hide the truth, but he felt uneasy about it. And it troubled him that Dr. Novak now considered him some sort of miscreant, whose word was not to be trusted.

Why should it bother me? I'll never see the woman again.

At least he hoped he wouldn't. A trip to the city morgue wasn't the sort of experience he cared to repeat. He wondered how she could stand it, dealing every day with death, probing the contents of those ghastly refrigerated steel drawers. How did one live with the images? He himself was having trouble dealing with just that one image he'd confronted an hour ago-the dead woman, the one who'd been clutching the matchbook.

Thank God it wasn't Maeve.

He reached for the car phone, dialed his office, and told Greta he wouldn't be coming in. She sounded surprised; it was unlike him to skip work, even for a day. "Let Hal hold down the fort," he told her. After all, what were senior vice presidents for?

Outside, a police car slowly cruised by and continued down South Lexington. Children, just out of school, skipped along the pavement, kicking glass. Adam told Greta he'd see her in the morning, and hung up the phone. Then, grim-faced, he settled back against the seat and resumed watching the street.

Dr. Davis Wheelock, the chief medical examiner, had an office on the fourth floor, in a distant corner of the facility. It was about as far as one could get from the grim day-to-day business of the morgue and still work in the same building. The brass plaque on his door was a gift from his wife, who had been distressed by the cheap plastic version provided by the city of Albion. If one must be a public servant, so her reasoning went, at least one could do so in style.

Dr. Wheelock shared his wife's view, and his office was a reflection of his expensive and eclectic taste. In various places of honor were displayed Kenyan masks, Egyptian papyruses, Incan statuettes, all acquired during his travels. The office faced east, toward the river. On this overcast day it was an unremittingly depressing view. The gray light through the window seemed to cloak Wheelock and all his primitive artwork in gloom.

"Drug ODs are a fact of life in this town," said Wheelock. "We can't chase them all. Unless you're sure it's something new, I can't see getting distracted-"

"That's just it," said M. J. as she sat down in the chair across from him. "I don't know if it's something new. But I think you should notify the mayor. And maybe the press."

Wheelock shook his head. "Aren't you overreacting?"

"Davis, in the last twenty four hours, I've had two come in, young women, no signs of trauma. Both found in the South Lexington area. Since they both had tracks on their arms and recent needle punctures, I was ready to call them ODs."

"Heroin?"

"That's the problem. I can't identify it. I've sent blood, urine, and vitreous to the state lab for immunoassay, but that'll take a week."

"What have you run here?"

"Thin layer and gas chromatography. Subject One had a positive ethanol. Subject Two turned up salicylates, probably just aspirin. Both subjects had the same peak on gas chromatography-it looks like a narcotic."

"There's your answer."

"Here's the problem. It's a weird peak, biphasic. Not quite an opiate, not quite cocaine. I've never seen it before."

"Impurities. Someone cut two drugs together."

"Maybe."

"Wait till the state IDs it. It'll just take a week."

"And in the meantime?"

"You've only got two victims."

She leaned forward, on his desk. "Davis, I don't want any more victims. And I'm afraid we're about to get more."

"Why?"

"After the second woman rolled in, I got on the phone. Called around town to all the hospitals. I found out Hancock General admitted three ODs yesterday. Two were obviously suicide attempts. But the third was a young man brought in by his parents. He had a cardiac arrest in the ER. They managed to pull him back. He's in the ICU now, still unconscious and critical."

"Hancock's a busy ER. You'd expect ODs to show up there."

"I spoke to the hospital lab. They ran a routine gas chromatography on the man's blood. It turned up a biphasic peak on the narcotics screen. Not quite an opiate, not quite cocaine."

Wheelock said nothing. He simply sat there, frowning at her.

"Davis," she said, "We're seeing the start of an epidemic."

Wheelock shook his head. "It's too early to call," he said. "Too early to go to the press. You've only got three vics-"

"Guess where the young man lived? South Lexington. Within five blocks of where the two women were found. I'm telling you, there's something new, something that's killing off junkies. And South Lexington seems to be its point of origin. Here's what I think you should do, Davis. Get on the phone to the mayor. Call a joint press conference. Get the news out before we get more John and Jane Does cluttering up my basement."

"I don't know."

"What don't you know?"

"It could be a single batch. Maybe that's all it is."

"Or maybe there's a whole ton of the stuff sitting in some pusher's warehouse."

Agitated, Wheelock sat back and ran his hand through his gray hair. "All right. I'll talk to the mayor. It's a bad time to be bringing this up, what with the city bicentennial and all. He's launching his campaign this week-"

"Davis. People are dying ."

"All right, all right. I'll call him this afternoon."

Satisfied that she'd made her point, M. J. left Wheelock's office and headed down to the basement. In the corridor, two of the overhead fluorescent lights flickered like a strobe flash. Everything seemed to be wearing down, wearing out. The building. The city.

And there they were, celebrating the bicentennial. What are we celebrating exactly, Mr. Mayor? Two hundred years of decline ?

Back in her office, M. J. considered drinking the last dregs of the coffee pot. No, she wasn't that desperate. Two files lay on her desk, files she couldn't complete, perhaps would never be able to complete. One was Jane Doe's. The other was for Xenia Vargas, the second woman from South Lexington. She, at least, had been found with ID in her purse, though they hadn't yet confirmed Vargas was really her name. Nor had they been able to contact any relatives.

Two dead women. And no one who could tell her how-or why-they had died.

Off in a corner of her desktop was a notepad, with the name Dr. Michael Dietz scribbled on it. He was the ER doctor she'd spoken to earlier, the one who'd admitted the male overdose victim at Hancock General.