Drake picked up the brick of heroin and weighed it in his hand.
“It will end when—”
“Beckett was right about you, Drake.”
Screech’s oddly calm tone drew all of Drake’s attention.
“Yeah? And what, exactly, did Beckett say about me, huh?”
Screech suddenly lowered his gaze.
“He said that no matter how hard you try to do good, everything around you goes bad — everything around you goes to shit. And I’m…” Now it was Screech’s breath that hitched. “I’m afraid that you’re gonna take me down with you, Drake; I’m afraid that you already have. I’m afraid that I’m no longer the person I once was.”
PART II - Overdose
Chapter 21
Sergeant Henry Yasiv brought a cigarette to his lips with a trembling hand. He stared blankly up the street as he smoked, not bothering to even acknowledge the uniformed officers that milled around him.
His only focus was on his cigarette.
Besides, there was nothing he could do now; Yasiv couldn’t do anything until the ME arrived and cleared the bodies.
The sun was beginning to set over New York City, and it seemed that every time it did, there was another body.
And nobody seemed to be doing a damn thing about it.
There were bad people in New York, bad people with more power than they knew what to do with. And no matter how hard he tried to get ahead of them, Yasiv never seemed to make any progress. He was hamstrung by the fact that if he did anything overtly, if he stepped out of line, he feared that he would either become the newest casualty on the 24-hour news cycle, or find himself in a similar predicament to Damien Drake.
Drake…
Yasiv’s thoughts turned to the man, the man whom he thought of as a friend. They’d been through a lot together in the short time that he’d known him, during which Yasiv had gone from a greenhorn detective to sergeant in record time. And he’d learned a lot from Drake.
For instance, he’d learned how to burn a career and get yourself entangled with bad people with the power to ruin your life. All in the quest of trying to do the right thing.
A car suddenly pulled up to the curb and two men hopped out.
Yasiv shook his head and focused his gaze. He took a final drag of his cigarette and then flicked the butt onto the street.
“Dr. Campbell,” he said extending his hand.
The medical examiner with the bleach blond hair shook it.
“Just Beckett, please. It’s nice to see you again, Hank.”
Beckett looked more tired than the last time Yasiv had seen him, even though that had been an incredibly trying time. A time when Boris Brockovich was trying to import women stuffed with heroin, both of which he intended to sell.
“Who’s this?” Yasiv asked, turning his head to the man beside Beckett. He was a young man, young and good looking, with a hawkish nose and shaved head.
“Doogie Houser,” Beckett said out of the corner of his mouth. He snickered. “Naw, this is Dr. Grant McEwing. He’s doing a ride along today.”
Yasiv nodded and then started back up the stairs towards the house behind them.
“What’ve we got?” Beckett asked.
“More of the same,” Yasiv said quietly. “More of the same…”
***
The first thing that struck Yasiv was the smell. There was the undeniable odor of death in the room, an artificial stillness to the air, but there was something else, as well: vinegar. It smelled as if someone had just cracked open a bag of salt and vinegar chips.
He followed the smell to the bodies. There were three of them, all women, all between 30 and 40 years of age.
They were lying on their backs in identical poses: arms out at their sides, palms up, their feet slightly splayed. These weren’t your typical street junkies; they were women who lived in upscale apartments on the Upper East side.
The woman in the middle had short blond hair tucked behind her ears, which were adorned with expensive looking earrings. Rubber tubing was still wrapped around her arm.
Heroin didn’t care about your socioeconomic status: it killed you just the same.
“Got the call about an hour ago; one of the girls was scheduled to work the night shift at a local brewpub and never showed up. Neighbor came over and found the door open. He ran when he saw the bodies.”
Beckett indicated several generic things about the corpses that the young doctor scribbled on his notepad. Then he got more specific; he paid close attention to the women’s mouths, leaning in close with a gloved hand to point at the foam that had formed at the corners. Then he pointed at their lips, which were swollen and moderately discolored.
“Pulmonary edema; indicative of an overdose,” Beckett said. Yasiv wasn’t sure who the comment was directed at.
After a few more comments, Beckett stood and turned to face Yasiv, a frown on his face.
“It’ll take a few weeks to get the tox screens back, but I’m positive that they died from an overdose — all three of them.”
Yasiv nodded. He’d figured as much, but still needed the ME to clear the bodies before he could start with his investigation, as rudimentary as it was likely to be.
“No track marks,” he said absently. “I bet these girls were trying heroin for the first time.”
“They didn’t die from heroin, Hank.”
Yasiv raised an eyebrow.
“No?”
Beckett shook his head.
“They were shooting the stuff, sure, but they didn’t die from it. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on ohmefentanyl as the cause.”
Ohmefentanyl?
Yasiv shook his head. He’d never heard the term before.
Beckett must’ve seen the clueless expression on his face because he quickly clarified his point.
“A drug 25 times more powerful than even fentanyl. And deadlier.”
Beckett’s eyes drifted to the bodies and Yasiv felt a twinge of sorrow for these girls. Sure, they might have made the ill-fated decision to shoot heroin, but he doubted that they knew exactly what they were getting into.
Which evidently was ohmefentanyl, or whatever the hell Beckett had called it.
“You could tell that from the bodies?”
Beckett shook his head again.
“No, we’ll need to tox to confirm it. But these are the seventh, eighth, and ninth victims that I’ve cleared in the last two weeks alone. All previous corpses came back with ohmefentanyl in their system. It looks like there’s a new player in town, Yasiv, one that doesn’t like the competition. Shit, it doesn’t even look like he likes his clientele, given how many he ends up killing.”
Chapter 22
“I’ve got one week,” Drake said with a frown. “One week until I have to be back at Oak Valley to be taken to court. I can’t deal with all your soap opera bullshit and catch Ken Smith at the same time. I appreciate everything that you’ve done for me, Screech, including covering my lawyer fees.” He glanced over at Leroy. “And for helping Leroy out, too. But you need to make a decision; you need to decide whether you are going to help me and if not, you need to get the fuck out of my way.”
Drake hated speaking so bluntly to one of the few people in this world that he could trust. And, judging by his expression, his words had stung the man.
But he forced his feelings aside. They didn’t matter now. What mattered was finding something incriminating on Ken Smith.
“You’re a real asshole, you know that?” Screech said.
Drake didn’t disagree; in fact, he didn’t so much as blink.
Eventually, Screech’s shoulders sagged and he looked away.
“What’s your plan then, Drake? What’s this master plan that will ensnare the man who has everyone on the police force in his back pocket except for you? How do you expect to catch the Mayor of New York City wrapped up in a drug smuggling racket?”
Drake hesitated before answering. Screech had succinctly verbalized the main
issue. He’d tried relentlessly to catch Ken Smith for the past year or so, but everything to date had failed.
They’d managed to get to Boris Brackovich — or at least, someone had caught up with him — but Raul and Ken and the others had managed to slip away unscathed.
Whatever his plan was, it would have to be highly calculated and ironclad.
The problem was, Drake was in too much pain to come up with something like that. He turned to face Leroy, who was staring at the two of them like a child watching an uncomfortable argument between his parents.
“That’s where you come in,” he said.
Leroy blinked and then shook his head as if he had momentarily fallen into a stupor.
“Me? What the hell do I have to do in this?”
The kid glanced over to the items that had been laid out on the table.
“I brought you everything I have… what else do you want?”
“It’s what you want, Leroy; do you want to catch the guys responsible for killing your brother?”
Something dark flashed over Leroy’s eyes, but then they quickly cleared.
“What about those thugs who beat up your mom?” Drake continued. “You want them to pay for what they’ve done?”
Leroy nodded.
“Well, I think we have something else in common, then. And I think we can work together.”
Leroy glanced down at his shoes and started toe digging.
“I mean, I dunno… part of me just wants to put this all behind me, be a regular kid again.”
The man’s words resonated with Drake and he found himself nodding despite himself.
The truth was, he didn’t want to be involved in this shit either. He didn’t want his partner to be dead, his girlfriend to be alone with their newborn child, for half of New York to hate him, to be under indictment for kidnapping, and he didn’t want to treat Screech like a piece of shit.
And that said nothing of his deteriorating relationship with one of his few friends, Beckett Campbell.
He sighed.
“Me neither,” Drake said quietly. “But the reality is, we are involved in this whether we want to be or not. And there’s only one way to stop it.”
Screech’s hand came down on Drake’s shoulder and he turned around. The anger and frustration in his face had been replaced by something more subtle.
Sadness.
“Drake, he’s only a kid. You can’t—”
Drake shook free.
He recalled what Veronica had said when he tried to impose his opinions about prostitution on the woman. Her retort had been vicious and immediate: she was a grown woman who could make her own decisions.
Drake looked over at Leroy then, and although he looked young, especially now when he was trying to avert his gaze, they’d spoken candidly in prison. Leroy had been frightened — shit, Drake had been terrified — and that’s when your truest thoughts came out.
“He’s not a kid,” Drake said out of the corner of his mouth. “Let him make up his own mind.”
Leroy glanced up, fear etched on his face as plainly as a charcoal smear on a slab of linoleum.
“Decide what?”
Drake licked his lips and then probed the missing tooth in the bottom of his mouth.
“Go undercover; I need you to go back to the thugs who killed your brother. I need you to find out what kind of agreement they have with the cops, and how this links back to the mayor.”
“Drake,” Screech snapped. “Are you crazy? He’s gonna get himself killed!”
Chapter 23
“What the hell is it? What the hell is ohmefentanyl?” Yasiv asked as the trio stepped outside and he lit another cigarette.
Beckett opened his mouth to say something before deciding better of it and hooking a thumb at his partner.
“Doogie here can probably tell you better than I, isn’t that right?”
The young doctor’s face, which had turned sullen since they’d examined the three corpses, suddenly changed.
It lit up.
“Technically, ohmefentanyl is known as β-hydroxy-3-methylfentanyl. It’s one of the most potent μ-opioid receptor agonists ever discovered and moderately difficult to manufacture. It has three stereogenic centers and eight stereoisomers. Originally designed as a tranquilizer of large animals, such as elephants, it is so powerful that a single grain can cause cardiac disruptions leading to death in humans.”
Yasiv raised an eyebrow.
Who the fuck is this guy?
“Yeah, I told you,” Beckett said. “He’s a bit of a freak like that.”
Yasiv nodded and was about to shake both of their hands and send them on the way when a thought occurred to him.
“It’s difficult to manufacture? It’s difficult to make this… ohmefentanyl?”
Dr. McEwing nodded.
“Moderately so. It takes about eight steps, including partitioning, drying, and purification using flash column chromatography. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can end up with something completely different, something that won’t be as… uhh… effective.”
Yasiv took another drag from his cigarette.
“Can you do this in the bathtub? Breaking Bad style? That sort of thing?”
Dr. McEwing looked to Beckett first and, encouraged by a nod, turned back to Yasiv.
“No, I don’t think so. You need a degree in organic chemistry and a GMP lab with specialized equipment.”
And there it is, Yasiv thought. Finally a way to find out where the hell this poison is coming from.
After what had happened with Boris Brockovich and the sex slavery ring, they’d gotten a pretty good idea of how at least some of the heroin was getting into the country. But if the ohmefentanyl was being added once it was here, if the additive was being manufactured right here in New York, they might be able to find the source.
“I guess that’s where I start, then,” he grumbled.
“Sounds like a plan,” Beckett said. “I’ll let you know when the tox results come in.”
With that, the ME and his ride along left Yasiv to his thoughts.
He couldn’t go to DI Palmer with this, of course, and the only person he trusted inside the NYPD was Dunbar. But while Dunbar was a good man, he was as green as they came.
No, he needed outside help with this one.
With a heavy sigh, Yasiv picked up his phone and dialed a number.
Chapter 24
“He’s free to walk away, Screech. Leroy has already more than fulfilled his part of the bargain and if—”
A loud ring suddenly filled the room, causing them all to jump.
Drake looked around quickly trying to identify the source of the sound. Eventually he honed in on the front pocket of Screech’s jeans.
“You gonna answer that?”
Screech ground his teeth, but eventually removed the phone from his pocket. He didn’t even look at who was calling, he just answered.
“Yeah?” he said, with Leroy and Drake watching on.
Screech nodded several times and then put his hand over the receiver and turned to Drake.
“It’s Sergeant Yasiv,” he whispered.
Drake nodded and indicated for him to put it on speaker phone, and then placed a finger to his lips, signaling to Leroy to remain silent.
“I need your help, Screech — a favor,” Sergeant Yasiv said.
Drake was grateful to hear another friendly voice.
“What do you need?”
“Man,” Yasiv said with a heavy sigh. “I’ve been dealing with so many deaths from heroin tainted with fentanyl derivatives that it’s making my head spin.”
Screech raised an eyebrow and looked over at Drake.
Drake encouraged him to keep the man talking.
“What do you need me for?”
“Well, I was talking to the medical examiner… to Beckett?”
Once again, Drake’s heart did little pitter patter in his chest. Even though Beckett had saved his life when he’d managed
to slink away from the human trafficking ring with a bullet in his calf, the two hadn’t exchanged more than a dozen words. As Screech had just intimated, Beckett had made his thoughts about Drake clear.
Drug Lord- Part I Page 8
