She took out her cell phone and dialed Jake.
He wouldn’t be happy about another body.
Chapter Thirty
The pharmacy was a Rite-Aid on Lincoln. Mary went to the counter and stood in line behind a guy with a walker. She assumed it was going to take awhile.
Fifteen minutes later, a woman peeked around a different window and called Mary over.
Mary took out the bottle of pills.
“I was wondering if you could tell me what these pills are and who prescribed them.”
“Are you the patient?”
“No, they’re for my grandmother. She is having trouble speaking and I can’t find records of these pills anywhere.”
Mary had studied the bottle, seen that any information on the medication and the prescriber was missing. The question was, was it on purpose or a flaw in some printer?
The woman glanced at Mary.
“I don’t see a prescribing physician, which is very unusual.”
“I thought so, too.”
“Let me ask the pharmacist, I’ll be right back.” She slid the window closed as if she didn’t want Mary to hear the conversation.
She wasn’t worried, there wasn’t anything illegal about asking about pills. Trying to fill them, now, that would be illegal.
After a few minutes, the man in line started talking to himself about his favorite Dirty Harry movie and Mary wondered if the woman had gone on break.
But then the window slid open.
“I don’t know if this helps or not, but the medication is something we’ve never seen before. If you can’t find the doctor who prescribed it, you would have to send it to a lab for analysis.”
Great, Mary thought. A dead end.
“But we were able to search through our system and although we couldn’t find a physician, we did get the name of the company who manufactured the pills,” the woman said.
Mary sighed. That would probably do her no good, but she said anyway, “Sure, what do you have?”
“The company is called Synergy Labs.”
The woman handed the pills back to Mary.
“I’ve never heard of them, but that’s not totally uncommon. There are a lot of new ones out there. It’s probably just a division of one of the big ones like Merck or Pfizer.”
Mary nodded.
“Thanks.”
She left as the man with the walker began telling the free blood pressure machine to ‘make his day.’
Chapter Thirty-One
Although Synergy Labs seemed to keep a relatively low profile online, it didn’t take Mary long to find its headquarters.
It was located in Pasadena.
She had been surprised by the lack of a website for the company, as well as any press releases, news stories, or even mentions of Synergy Labs online.
It made her wonder if the company even existed. Maybe the gal at the Rite-Aid was having some fun with her. Then again, were pharmacists known for their senses of humor?
Mary ran through the options in her mind. It was too late to drive out to Pasadena now. She would have to wait until morning, which would also give her enough time to call around and see what else she could find out about the company. She also had to find out how and why Ann Budchuk had a bunch of medications with no labels, but that apparently came from Synergy Labs.
She glanced at her watch. Mary hadn’t heard yet from Jake and she was curious to see what he had found at both the Pitts crime scene and the Budchuk murder. Yes, Mary thought of it as murder, not suicide. These cases were all related, and not just because of the infantilism angle. Someone was killing all of these people who had been going through psychological therapy.
But why?
And who was killing them?
This case was really starting to get under Mary’s skin. She hated not knowing the answers. She took the situation as a personal insult.
She had told Jake she’d meet him for a drink at Skivvies, a dive bar not far from Budchuk’s residence. Once he had finished at the crime scene, he would head there.
Mary got there first and the place was crowded, but Mary was able to wrangle a table in the back corner by flashing her private investigator’s badge and saying she was with the health department.
A half hour and a beer later, Jake walked in and she waved him over to the table.
“What the hell is going on with you, Mary?” he said, sliding his chair out and taking a seat. “Two bodies in one day? That’s a record — even for you.”
“What can I say? I’m on a roll,” Mary said. A waiter brought another beer for Mary and a beer she had ordered for Jake.
Mary drank and enjoyed the taste of an ice-cold pilsner.
“So what did you find?” she said.
“Whoa, whoa,” Jake said, sipping his beer. “I’m not your errand boy. Send me over there and then drill me for information.”
“Since when aren’t you my boy?”
“Since now.”
“Ok, what do you want from me?” she said. Mary understood he was making a point so she decided to let him. Once the little drama was over with, she would get what she wanted.
“First, tell me how you wound up there,” he said.
Mary brought him up to speed with meeting Budchuk, her telling Mary about Pitts, then finding Pitts. She also went ahead and connected the call from Budchuk and subsequently finding her dead, too.
“Someone’s really on this one,” Jake said. “They’re killing faster every time. They must be desperate for something.”
“Okay, prissy boy,” Mary said. “Time to share.”
Jake took a long pull from his beer, set it on the table, and looked Mary in the eye. “The dead man was, in fact, Derek Pitts. Examiner estimated he’d been dead for about eight hours or so.”
He turned his pint glass in his hand.
“That’s it?” Mary said.
Jake shrugged his shoulders. “What can I tell you? He was dead, we’ll get ballistics back eventually but I can tell you there’s not a big rush on this one. No one is convinced it’s related to Craig Locher. Even with the baby bottle. Could be a coincidence, is what someone said.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Jake waved the waiter over and ordered two more beers.
“What about Ann Budchuk? Got just as little information on her, too?” Mary said.
“Even less,” Jake admitted. “Definitely her house, her pills. We’re leaning toward suicide.”
“Even with what I told you?” Mary said.
“We need proof, Mary.” He smiled at her. “You know I always believe you. It’s those others who need more proof.”
Mary rolled her eyes. “Now you’re just trying to sweet talk me.”
“Is it working?”
Mary watched as the waiter put another beer in front of her.
“The beer is, but you’re not.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Alice was watching a reality show where aspiring singers audition for judges.
“Why are you watching that?” Mary said.
“I like to watch people trying to get their career off the ground. They remind me of you.”
Mary went to the kitchen and grabbed a cookie from Alice’s fridge. On second thought, she took two.
She went back into the living room and sat on the couch.
A scruffy looking guy with a guitar was butchering a Bob Dylan song.
“You take a lot of drugs, don’t you?” Mary said to Alice.
“Used to,” Alice said. “Back when I was a hippie, I took all kinds of stuff until I wound up on the back of a Hell’s Angel’s bike headed for Temecula and an initiation. I lost him at a rest stop and never took drugs after that. Except ones prescribed by my doctor.”