Malevolent (Lieutenant Kane series Book 1) (13 page)

He’d been checking on her between naps. Ten hours passed since he’d completed the surgery. Three hours passed since he last checked on her. He rolled from the couch to go see how his girl was doing.

He walked through the house to the master bedroom. The woman lay strapped to the bed. Her driver’s license showed that her name was Anna Smith. She was twenty-seven and weighed a hundred twenty-four pounds. She was smiling ear to ear in her license photo. He hadn’t dosed her with any of the tranquilizer since the operation. He abandoned using the opiate. When the last woman had pulled out the IV, the solution emptied onto the carpet. The only thing she had received was a small dose of Alprazolam that he had just given her. She would wake up soon, and he wasn’t looking for a repeat of the last occurrence. The drug would keep her in a nice, docile fog.

He headed out to the living room and plopped down onto the couch. The room was dark, with the blinds shut and curtains closed. He tossed his feet up on the coffee table. A jolt of pain ran through his left leg. He swatted at a pesky fly that buzzed his ear as he powered on the TV and brought up the guide. Searching through, he found channel six and selected it from the menu.

“Let see what’s on the news.”

He tuned in just in time to catch the end of the replay of J.R. Steele’s report from the press release the police had given the day before. The daytime anchors, Joyce Meekins and Dan Rutton, came back on.

Meekins said, “And that was J.R. Steele reporting from the Tampa police station. It’s just tragic, Dan. A spokesman for the TPD has ensured us they are using everything at their disposal to pursue and apprehend the person or persons responsible for these attacks.”

Dan Rutton responded, “Here’s hoping they have someone in custody soon. Again, the TPD has asked for any support they can get from the public. If you or someone you know has any information about this case, we urge you to please call the Tampa police department. They have a tip hotline where you can remain anonymous, if desired.”

The news anchor rattled off the number.

“I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high about having someone soon.” He flipped the TV back to the guide. A fly landed on the end of the remote control. He shooed it away. He scrolled up and down, looking over his choices.

“Looks like talk shows or soaps. What do you think, babe?” he asked.

There was no response.

He flipped on one of the talk shows and took in a deep breath. The foul smell of decay filled his nose. He shook it off and lay back on the couch. Within a few minutes, he dozed off.

“So what did you think of our profiler?” Hank asked.

We sat in Captain Bostok’s office, going over the suspect profile Agent Beck had handed out.

I browsed the sheet again. “He was a little different, but everything he said had merit. At the same time, we can’t take everything he said as gospel.”

“I agree.” Captain Bostok reached into the mini refrigerator under his desk and brought out a soda. “I’m going to put someone on checking into the libraries and website hits on lobotomies anyway.”

“Are we planning on sending this profile out to the press?” Hank asked.

The captain cracked open his soda and took a sip. “I think we should.”

“Still want to keep the branding thing under wraps?” I asked.

He nodded. “I don’t want to help give this story legs.”

Someone knocked on his office door.

“Yup,” the captain shouted.

Detective Jones took up most of the doorway as he walked in. “Got a little issue here.”

“I’m listening,” Bostok said.

“Well, tracking down these drugs might be a little much for one person to handle. Not that I don’t like a challenge, but this is beyond that. We have pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies, clinics, hospitals, rehab centers, and more with the opiate. The tranquilizer is another story. They use the drug on deer farms, cattle ranches, horse ranches, you name it. The list just goes on and on.”

“Are they found together anywhere?” I asked.

“I didn’t find anything.”

“All right, let’s split it up. Jones, you take the tranquilizer by itself. Find every place that has Xylazine within a hundred-mile radius and see if they have any missing stock. Hank, I want you to stay on the opiate with the clinics and hospitals. I’ll see what I can do to place the two drugs together.”

“Okay,” Jones said.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Hank said.

“You guys get to it,” the captain said.

I walked back to my office and got on the Internet. I searched the drugs and every brand name they came in. After twenty minutes of different combinations of the names, I got a hit for the veterinary field. For the better part of the next four hours, I dialed one number after the other. My search results showed over sixty vets in the greater Tampa area. When you added the suburbs, the number ballooned. Most of the places carried the tranquilizer, yet all of it was accounted for in each circumstance. Only two places out of the group I had already called dealt with the opiate. The FDA hadn’t approved the drug for animal use, but vets could still legally prescribe it. They used it to treat severe pain in felines. Neither clinic had noticed any gone missing. My stomach growled. I took a break and headed for the lunch room with plans to raid the vending machines.

The food machine offered a selection of two sandwiches or a bruised apple. I plugged three fifty into the machine, and it kicked out a sandwich. I peeled open the cellophane bag and gave it a sniff. The label said ham and cheese. It looked like it could pass as such. I stuck another dollar fifty into the soda machine and punched a button. With a little banging, a twenty-ounce bottle of soda hit the bottom of the machine, shaken to perfection. I let it sit for a minute while I ate the sandwich at one of the lunch tables. It wasn’t half bad, but I was still hungry. A single sandwich remained in the entire machine. Unless I wanted a beat-up, two-dollar apple for dinner, I had to buy it. I dug through my wallet and found enough money.

On a whim, I hit the button on the coffee machine for a large Columbian roast, just to see what it would do. It started whirring and making noise, then I heard the water. I grabbed a cup from the rack and stuck it into place. Coffee flowed from the machine into my cup.
Ding!
The machine finished. I took the cup from the spot under the machine’s spout and raised it to my lips. The coffee was steaming. I took a sip through my teeth in case it was filled with grounds. Nothing—the coffee was perfect. I dumped in some creamer. With the bottle of soda and sandwich in one hand and coffee in the other, I walked back out into the station. Hank sat at his desk.

I walked over and sat across from him. “Anything?” I set my coffee and soda down on his desk.

“That’s not from the lunch room, is it?”

I unwrapped the plastic covering the sandwich and started in. “The coffee? Yeah, the machine cooperated today.”

“I know the coffee machine works. They had a repair guy in here this morning. Where do you think the coffee people kept bringing you earlier came from?”

I shrugged and took another bite.

Hank pointed at my food. “I’m talking about the sandwich.”

“Yeah, bought it from the vending machine. Why?” I spoke through a mouthful of bread, meat, and processed cheese.

“There have been two sandwiches sitting in that machine for a week plus. The guy from the vending company must have been on vacation or something last week. He never came. I think someone had it unplugged for a day or two as well.”

I looked at the label on the sandwich’s plastic. It had expired six days prior. A closer inspection of the bread probably would have shown some green specks, but I wasn’t going to go down that road. I tossed the last bite in my mouth and chewed. The mayo did taste a little tangier than it should have.

“You’re going to get food poisoning.”

“Maybe I can sue the station,” I paused to swallow the blob of chewed old meat and cheese, “and retire early.”

“Good luck with that.”

“So, what did you come up with?” I asked.

“I got the main hospitals and bigger clinics checked off the list, for the most part. It’s not looking like we’re going to get anything there.”

“Why is that?”

“Injectable. None of the hospitals or clinics carry it in that form. Either way, nothing has come up missing at any of the places I talked with. I’m about to move on to the smaller places and see what we get. How about you?”

“It’s not very common, but it looks like they can be found together in the veterinary field. I’ve been calling every vet in town. Nothing so far.”

“Should we focus our efforts there?”

“I got it. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Hank slouched back in his chair. “Man, I hate working the phones. The last guy I talked to kept me on the phone for twenty minutes telling me about how Buprenorphine and other drugs are distributed across the country. Would you like to hear how it gets from point A to point B?”

I took a sip of coffee and smiled. “Enlighten me.”

He read from his notes as though he was giving a presentation. “There are two pharmaceutical companies that produce Buprenorphine in the United States, neither of which is in Florida. From the manufacturers, it travels to one of a few main distributors. The main distributors, again not in Florida, sell the drugs to the big hospitals and clinics. Then there is the secondary wholesalers, also called the gray market. They buy the drugs in bulk from the distributors. The secondary places supply the smaller clinics that don’t have enough purchasing power to get medications from the big distributors. The gray market, while still legal, seems to do a lot of shady things with the drugs. They price gouge small hospitals. They repackage it and trade it back and forth between themselves. All that happens before it ever lands in a patient’s hands. Legal drug trade 101.”

“Sounds similar to the illegal drug trade.”

Hank nodded.

I stood and grabbed my coffee and soda from his desk. “All right, keep dialing. Couple hours left.”

He picked up his phone.

I headed back to my office to continue making calls. I thought back to what the profiler had said about this guy being an opportunist. Getting the drugs from the veterinary field made the most sense. The two drugs weren’t found together in any other profession. Plus, the vets used the injectable version. I had fifteen vets still left on my list. The red light on my phone was flashing—I’d missed two calls while out. I hit the button for the messages. The first was Rick telling me that none of the local hospitals had reported a knife wound. I hit the button to erase the message. The second message started. My sister’s voice came through the speaker giving me the third degree because I hadn’t called her the day before, as I’d promised. I hit Erase in the middle of her rant. I didn’t remember promising her that I’d call. Her message did remind me that I wanted to call my father.

I rubbed my eyes and found some resolve to power through the last few calls to the vets. I hammered five out quickly—no leads. The next name on the list was familiar. It was the vet that I took Butch to. I dialed them up.

“Tampa Paws. How can I help you?”

“Hi, this is Lieutenant Kane. Is Doctor Reynolds in?”

“Is there a problem with Butch?”

“No. Butch is good. This is police related.”

“Oh. Okay, I’ll transfer you to the back and let him know you’re on the line.”

“Thanks.”

“Tell Butch we miss him. Hold on.”

I sat on hold, waiting for Doctor Reynolds, wondering if the receptionist was being sarcastic. We hadn’t had a good experience the last time I brought Butch in for his checkup. I put him on his leash and walked him toward the front door. He pranced across the parking lot just as a dog would. I scooped him up when I walked through the door and let them know we were there for his appointment. We were going to have to wait a couple minutes, so I sat down with Butch on my lap. He was being good. He was looking around but just sitting there on my lap. I let his leash drop to the floor and patted him on the head. I had never seen him so civilized, that was, until someone opened the front door. He leapt from my lap before I could get his leash and made a run for daylight. A woman walked through the door with a German shepherd in tow. She stopped in the doorway to try to catch the escaping cat. She should have just let him through. The German shepherd clogged the other side. Butch went for the dog. A flurry of cheetah-spotted fur circled the dog’s face. Butch hissed and gave the dog an onslaught of right and left swats as he stood on his back legs. When he finished his boxing, he started with the biting. Anything that was soft, he sank into. The German shepherd let out a high-pitched yelp when Butch pierced his left ear with his teeth. The dog tried to backpedal out the door while its owner fought to pull him back inside.

It all happened in a matter of seconds. I ran over and pried my hissing, swatting, devil cat from her dog’s face and apologized. She gave me the speech about having him in a crate. I offered to cover her vet bill for the day, but she refused. She was fine with just shaking her head at me every time I made eye contact with her.

Doctor Reynolds came to the phone. “Lieutenant Kane. How are we doing today?”

“Fine. I just wanted to ask you a few things.”

“Sure. Debbie told me this is police related?”

“Yes.”

“Well, anything I can do to help. What do you need?”

“Do you use Xylazine or Buprenorphine there?”

“We use a generic form of Xylazine as an anesthetic on horses. Don’t have the Buprenorphine though.”

“Is all the tranquilizer accounted for?”

“I don’t know why it wouldn’t be. It’s just me and Doctor Ferrin back here, plus Debbie up front. Sometimes my son comes in and helps out after school. He’s here today. We didn’t have any break-ins or anything like that.”

“Is it possible for you to just check for me while I have you on the line?”

“Yeah, I guess. Give me one minute.”

I waited on the line for him to come back. I heard the honk of a truck horn through the earpiece, followed by Doctor Reynolds yelling for someone to get the delivery from the driver. It reminded me of something Hank had said earlier. Doctor Reynolds came back to the phone a minute or two later.