“It’s going to sound kind of crazy.”
“I work Vice in Chicago,” Will reminded her with a wry smile. “Whatever you saw in that alley, it won’t even ping my Strange-o-Meter. Just tell me what you think happened, and we’ll go from there.”
Lauryn still wasn’t convinced, but there was no turning back now. So, with a deep breath, she told him everything she remembered, which was actually a surprising amount. In her experience, trauma victims and people suffering hallucinations both had trouble recalling specifics, and yet Lauryn could remember every stumble and fall and blow of the fight with Lenny so clearly, it made her lingering bruises ache.
But while the physical stuff was easy, describing Lenny’s transformation was a lot harder. Even with a doctor’s vocabulary for describing bodies and how they broke, she just didn’t have the words for the way Lenny’s shape had shifted and changed into something that didn’t even look human. By the time she got to him throwing her around, Lauryn was sure Will thought she was out of her gourd, but the conversation really broke down when they got to her unlikely rescuer.
“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” Will said, his voice locked in that calm “I don’t want you to know how much bull I think this is” voice Lauryn herself used with truly delusional patients. “While you were being attacked, a third party—a man carrying a sword—came out of nowhere and saved you from Lenny using Bible verses and holy water?”
“Yes,” she said, cheeks burning. “He was going to fight Lenny, but I didn’t want him to hurt my patient, so I stopped him. He used the water after that, and then again on my hand once Lenny was down. That’s how I got burned.”
She held out her bandaged hand for him to examine, but Will didn’t give it more than a cursory glance. “I think it’s safe to say you were hallucinating,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “And honestly, given what you touched, we should be damn happy that’s all it was.”
Lauryn sat bolt upright in her chair. “It was the new drug, wasn’t it?”
He shrugged. “Officially, we don’t know anything until we see your blood work. Off the record?” Will sighed and leaned forward in the creaking chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “This is bad, Lauryn. I don’t know if you’ve been following the news, but a new group’s been muscling into the Chicago narcotics business.”
“I don’t need to follow the news,” she said. “I’ve seen the results in the ER. So is it a new gang or something?”
“Not sure yet,” Will admitted. “Whoever they are, though, they’re thorough. You wouldn’t believe how many dead gangsters and cartel members we’ve fished out of the river in the last two months. At this point, these new guys have to control most of the drug business in the city, if not all of it, simply because there’s no one else left. But that’s not even the weird part. Where things really get strange are the drugs themselves. Over the last few months, we’ve had product flooding into Chicago. Meth, heroin, coke: the whole pharmacopoeia. I’ve busted enough stockpiles to make the whole city high twice over in the last three weeks, and I don’t think we’re even making a dent. And that’s still not the worst part.”
“What’s the worst part?”
“The quality.”
“Is it tainted?” Lauryn asked, biting her lip. Laced drugs were even worse to deal with than normal ones. With common drugs, you knew what to expect and how to treat it, but when junkies started shooting bargain drugs cut with who-knew-what into their arms, all bets were off. But while she was already making a mental checklist of complications from compromised drugs to look for, Will was shaking his head.
“The opposite,” he said. “Every cache we’ve seized has been some of the purest stuff I’ve ever seen. I’m talking expensive, pharma-grade dope, and they’re selling it for dirt cheap.”
Lauryn frowned. “Why would they do that?”
“That’s what we don’t get, either,” Will said, frustrated. “Generally cartels take over the drug trade in a city to eliminate competition so they can raise prices, not drop them. But these guys have been pushing cheap pharma-quality drugs on the city like they’re on a mission to get the whole city hooked.”
“That would explain the rise in overdose cases we’ve seen lately,” Lauryn said. “But what does this have to do with Lenny? I mean, he didn’t OD, and certainly not on heroin or coke.”
“He didn’t,” Will agreed. “But I’ve been working this case for a month now, and over the last twenty-four hours, all hell has broken loose.” He stood up and started pacing around the room, his face distant. “It started this morning. One of our informants—a homeless man we were paying to keep an eye out for new dealers in the area—went beserk. Ripped the door right off a patrol car before officers took him down. Not three hours later, another guy we’ve been following did the same. Before he bled out, one of the witnesses claimed he saw the junkie tear two bystanders to pieces like they were made of paper. He also said that his eyes glowed red the whole time, and that his mouth was dripping with green slime.”
“Green slime?” Lauryn repeated, her blood running cold.
“Now do you see why I got here so fast?” Will said grimly. “We’ve had six incidents so far today, all homeless and, except for Lenny, all known addicts connected with the new cartel investigation. As of right now, Lenny’s the only perp who’s survived. All the others were either shot by cops or died from heart attacks at the scene. When we searched the bodies, the one connection we’ve made is finding traces of green slime you just mentioned in your report.”
“And you think that’s what’s making them go nuts?” Lauryn said, leaning forward. “Is the slime a new kind of drug or something?”
“I don’t know,” Will admitted. “But if my hunch is right, you’re damn lucky a wandering swordsman street preacher with magic water’s all you saw after you got it on your fingers.”
Lauryn was starting to get that impression, too. “Well, whatever it is, the drug has to still be in their blood,” she said authoritatively. “Nothing that causes such huge changes can be flushed that fast. Your morgue must have done autopsies on the other cases by now. What was their toxicology?”
Will glanced back down at his notebook. “As I mentioned, all the perps were habitual junkies, so their blood was a cesspool. Since they all seemed to die of the same thing, Forensics’ plan was to look for a common denominator, some chemical they all had in common that we could use as a key. So far, though, they haven’t found jack. The only condition they all had in common was…” He trailed off, squinting at the paper in front of him before turning it around so Lauryn could see. “I can’t pronounce this.”
“Sulfhemoglobinemia,” she read, eyebrows furrowing. “Weird. Sulfhemoglobinemia happens when there’s too much sulfur in the blood, and only in really rare cases. Sulfur’s pretty common, and nontoxic to most people, but an excess in sulfhemoglobin would explain the cyanosis.”
Will blinked. “Could I get that in English, please?”
“Extra sulfur in his blood would explain why Lenny’s skin was discolored,” Lauryn said, getting excited as the pieces fell into place. “I thought I was hallucinating when I saw Lenny turning that ugly blue gray, but that part might have actually been real. Unlike normal red blood cells, sulfhemoglobin can’t carry oxygen.”