“What is all of this?” the officer asked.
“A rave,” Flynt answered.
The officer looked to Flynt, puzzled. He gave Steele the look that he was getting used to: Is this guy nuts?
“Is that…is that quacking?” the officer asked.
While trying to save himself, Steele didn’t even notice that a choir of the kids was quacking in unison. God, he hated that sound.
“It is!” Flynt answered.
With no clear answers, the cop asked again: “What is this?”
“This is what happens when drug manufacturing goes bad,” Steele said. There wasn’t time to explain because two more policemen came in. The music came to a stop. The DJ saw that the party was over when one of the cops pulled his plug.
Steele shook his head and shrugged his shoulders as if to rid himself of the pounding bass.
“Thanks for the save,” he told Flynt.
“Sure. It’s a shame I was forced to do it, though. I don’t like being violent.”
“I know. But thanks all the same.”
Flynt nodded. He was blinking rapidly as if trying to clear away the last remnants of D710 from his system.
“Stay put until you’re one hundred percent, you got me? I’m going to go help these guys get some order.”
One of the officers was calling for backup and requesting a bus for transport.
“Sure thing.” Flynt saluted his partner.
Steele patted Flynt on the back, wondering if the man would ever cease to amaze him. He did his best to hide the grin that crept along his face as he made his way out into the tangle of bodies, fights and, a chorus of quacking.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Even out in the middle of nowhere, deep in the woods in front of some old decrepit barn, Flynt managed to find donuts. Steele was leaning against one of the Roseburg police cruisers working with the lead detective from their precinct to get a better picture of the night’s events. It was 3:26 in the morning and though Steele was both hungry and tired, the idea of gobbling down a donut made his stomach buckle.
“Where’d you even get that?” Steele asked as Flynt joined him.
“One of the guys that just got here says he picked them up from a place right by their headquarters. It’s pretty good.” Flynt took a bite, frowned, then shrugged. “No sprinkles, though.”
The detective that Steele was speaking with squinted his eyes as if he heard the world’s worst joke. Then, with a slight wave of his hand, he excused himself and headed over to a small team of officers that was currently speaking to the DJ.
“What was it like, Flynt?”
“I dunno. Just a donut. Fresh, though, which is good. Really wish it had some sprinkles, though.”
“Not the donut. The drug. I assume you got some of the original batch? Some that Leik cooked up?”
“Yeah. In the lab, that was the last kind that went in. I got lucky.” He chuckled and added: “Lucky ducky.”
“So, what was it like?”
He shoved the rest of the donut into his mouth and thought about it for a very long time. Finally, he said: “Peaceful. It was sort of scary at first but…after that it was nice. I didn’t want to leave. Lots of colors. Strange dripping, swirling shapes. Kind of like if heaven was designed by the bastard child of Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. And the ducks. The ducks were crazy cool.”
“They spoke?”
“Oh, yeah.” Flynt’s eyes widened.
“What did they say?”
“Lots of stuff. I don’t remember most of it. But they made me feel like I was supposed to be there. Like I was welcome. Like I was someone special.”
Steele left it at that. There was a thoughtful look in Flynt’s eyes. Steele decided to let him enjoy the afterglow of his experience. No doubt he’d be hearing more than enough about Ducky in the coming days. Already, just hours after backup arrived, twenty-two arrests were made and transported. In addition, five ambulances took the revelers away with a multitude of injuries and evidence of psychotic breaks. Steele was relieved to find none of the bunch he was forced to take down were injured.
Steele left Flynt to his thoughts and went over to where the DJ was sitting with three officers. Steele spoke with him once already, but he thought of one more question that was bothering him.
“Where are you from?” Steele asked.
The DJ—a twenty-seven-year-old named Bobby (much more fitting than, say, Q)—looked very tired, but he was happy to answer. He was genuinely distraught at all that happened.
“From around here. A little town called Holly Hills, about half an hour away.”
“You heard of Ducky before tonight?”
“Nah, I don’t do drugs. Music gets me off more than anything. Pure sound to the cerebral cortex. Nothing like it.”
“But a lot of the people that come out to these raves do, right?”
“Oh, for sure.”
Steele gave Bobby his business card. “I’d consider it a great favor if you ever hear of anyone that mentions something called Ducky, you give me a call? We’re trying to stamp it out before it really takes off. As tonight demonstrated, it is dangerous. That’s not just cop talk, it can kill, and has.”
“No problem,” Bobby said, taking the card. “But, at the risk of sounding like a downer, you know it’s almost impossible to stop something like that, right?”
“How’s that?”
“If this many kids were on that crap tonight, it means its already out there. Stuff like this spreads fast. It’s like the flu or something. There are probably a dozen labs out there making it already. Next week fifty. These people go where the money is.”
Steele let this sink in as he nodded his thanks to Bobby. He started back for his car, ready to get back to the station and then to Jacki. He wasn’t surprised to see Flynt chatting it up with the man that brought the donuts.
“Time to go,” Steele said.
Flynt nodded, gave a high five to the man with the donuts, and headed over to their car with a fresh, chocolate-covered donut.
Steele started the car. Just as the engine turned over, Flynt said, “Do you think sprinkles make a donut better?”
He almost said no. But he thought about Flynt from the moment they’d met. Flynt, doing that weird thing where he piled the sprinkles up and saved them for last. Yes, it was annoying and gross, but Steele was beginning to understand that one of the reasons Flynt did it was because he enjoyed the smaller things in life.
“You know what? I really do.”
* * *
Steele checked in at the precinct just long enough to confirm that Weidman wasn’t there. He changed from his soiled and torn jacket for the spare one he kept on the coat rack behind his chair and headed for the breakroom for a cup of coffee. He was exhausted but was looking forward to seeing Jacki. He hoped they didn’t need to reinsert the breathing tube, and it would still be out by the time he got there. He breathed a prayer that she’d be able to be discharged in the next twenty-four hours or so.
He knew there was a report to be written. He could do it sometime tomorrow, and if Weidman had a problem with it…well, they’d just have to have some words exchanged. His wife was in the hospital and he’d still managed to make this bust tonight. He thought he deserved a bit of time with his ailing wife.
Steele poured his coffee in the breakroom. It was 4:10 and the place was as silent as a tomb. He felt a little bad for the guys over in Roseburg. They’d be up to their eyeballs in paperwork with all of the arrests, and drugs that were confiscated in their backyard.
As Steele turned to leave the breakroom, he nearly collided with someone at the door. It was Kerrie Luna. She looked tired and more than a little irritated. When she saw it was Steele, she put on a smile.
“Hey there,” she said. “You had an exciting night from what I hear.”
“You could say that.”
“How many arrests?”
“More than twenty.”
“At this hour? Yikes. Poor Ros
eburg.”
“That’s what I was just thinking.”
He smiled at her and nodded, trying to give a non-verbal cue that he wanted to leave. She stepped to the side to allow him through the door. Before he made his way back down the hall, though, Kerrie stopped him.
“Hey, by the way, what was wrong with Flynt tonight?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well…I heard what happened with Jacki. I tried getting in touch with you to see if you needed anything but you didn’t answer your phone. I feared maybe things were bad, so I tried Flynt. When he answered the phone, he sounded, I don’t know, off, I mean more than usual.”
“Oh man,” Steele said with a smile. Then, thoughtfully, he said: “Wait. Was it you that called for backup?”
“Absolutely. You weren’t answering your phone and Flynt sounded like he was in some kind of trouble. I asked around about what you might be onto and there was this interesting fellow with blue hair being signed out.”
“Q.”
“Yeah, him. He told me where you’d gone, so I told Weidman what was going on. Of course, he passed that off to Roseburg as quickly as he could. Which I suppose was the right call.”
Steele chuckled, unable to believe the coincidence. “Don’t let this inflate your head, but you calling Flynt may have saved me from some serious injury tonight. Or worse.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe you can tell me the story sometime.”
“Maybe. It’s a doozy. I’m…sorry, but I’d like to get to the hospital to see Jacki.”
“Sure. I know she doesn’t know me, but send her my best. Tell her I’m praying for her.”
Steele gave another nod; he didn’t trust himself to speak to her. Emotion welled up. She was one of the sweetest people he ever met. Could he have a crush on her? It was innocent, but there was an old familiar feeling. If it were anything more, he would not be in such a rush to get to Jacki…right?
As he walked back by the bullpen headed for the exit, he saw Flynt sitting down at his cluttered desk.
“What are you doing?” Steele asked. “Go home. Get some rest.”
“Figured I’d start writing up the report. Needs to be done so you can be with Jacki. One less thing for you to worry about.”
“I appreciate that. Thanks, Comrade.” Steele smiled as he turned at the double meaning of his partner’s name.
“You look beat. You want a ride over there?”
Steele wondered if the man’s kindness knew any bounds. He also wondered why so many other people were blind to it.
“No, I’m good. But thanks. Oh, and Flynt? When you write up the report, maybe leave out the part where you got high on psychedelics and saw talking ducks.”
“Think I can include the part where I kneed that one kid and yelled ‘quack attack’? That was pretty cool.”
Steele grinned. “It was. That’s your call, partner.”
Flynt smiled and started typing into his laptop. Over his shoulder, he called, “Good night, Steele.”
“Good night Flynt.”
Steele left the building and headed back to the hospital, almost wishing he took Flynt up on the offer of a ride.
* * *
Flynt almost didn’t realize he asked Steele if he needed a ride until he turned down the offer. He supposed some people would consider this automatic concern as progress. Flynt was aware of his eccentricities. He knew that people saw him as odd and he was socially frowned upon. In the past, he would have never made such an offer—not because he was rude or uncaring, but because he’d always assumed people would not want to spend that extra time with him.
But he’d asked Steele and it came naturally. Flynt also knew that Steele was not declining the invitation because of awkwardness or not wanting to be around him. Steele was in a very painful place right now. Flynt saw him at his most vulnerable, with his paralyzed wife. Flynt couldn’t quite put the two together, the determined and hard-nosed man he was getting to know so well, and the caring, patient husband.
It made sense that Steele would want some time alone.
Still, having glimpsed that side of Steele’s life made Flynt feel unique, even special. He’d seen a side of Steele no one else knew about. He supposed it was why he felt comfortable asking Steele if he needed a lift to the hospital.
It made him think of the ducks from his trip. They said all kinds of things that made him feel better about himself—like he was actually worth something. But there was one thing they told him while sliding across that infinite rainbow that stuck with him. He thought of it as he sat there, his fingers poised over his keyboard, ready to start the case report.
“Your time on earth is like a piece of bread, Comrade. A piece of bread that you break apart and toss out into the water for the ducks to eat. But every now and again, a piece goes overlooked, gets too soggy, and drifts to the bottom as a water-logged ball of dough. But that bread is not wasted, for the fish need to eat, too.”
He wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, but it felt heavy. He thought maybe Steele’s life was the bread and his wife and career were the ducks. That made Flynt the fish, waiting at the bottom for what the ducks passed by.
It made him feel sad at first, but he cheered a bit when he realized that he was benefiting from all those missing pieces.
For the first time in a very long time, Flynt thought of his ex-wife. Somewhere in the dream-like memories of his journey into the deepest recesses of his mind, there was the odd sensation that he heard her voice. He closed his eyes. He tried to bring up the sights and sounds of the universe he traveled through.
The memories were no longer in color. The gray shades of a dream or nightmare replaced the technicolor visions. Calling up fragments of what he saw and felt was difficult. It was as if the slate of his trip was wiped clean. He told himself to relax, let his mind wander back to the hours before. Moments later, there she was.
The sight of the woman who shared his bed, then left him for an H&R Block office manager, was like an oscilloscope rendering of her voice. The sound was an image and the image floated within the odd otherworldly place he spent time earlier in the evening.
She stood facing him, draped in a filmy angel-like gown. Her hair was longer than he ever saw it. It shimmered and gave off a golden glow. The thought, for a fleeting moment, seemed to ask him if he still loved her.
“Why have you come here?” That is what she asked Flynt, he remembered now.
In his memory, he knew he answered. The words were not there.
“We could be together. We could be happy. But you killed that child.”
Flynt’s lips were moving but no sound came from him.
“You need to let him go. You have ruined your life and mine.”
A translucent duck exchanged space with her. Like going through her, both images mixed, then separated. In his current state, Flynt realized none of this was possible and couldn’t have happened. Why was he thinking of her? Did he love her still?
He opened his eyes. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. It was his ex-wife he wanted. She betrayed him, probably did before she found the taxman. No, he wanted what Steele and Jacki shared.
Even in her paralyzed condition, she loved Steele. More importantly, he loved her. They shared a bond, Flynt realized it was what he ached to have.
At that moment he realized this is what professor Leik was talking about. The revelation that he no longer loved his ex, or he no longer needed to bear the guilt and grief of an accidental shooting nearly twenty years ago. Did tonight’s freak splashing of D710 on his skin open a new area of his brain? Did he enter that other ninety percent? Was he wiser, freer?
There were so many questions he wanted to ask Leik.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
After helping the police in the lab for thirty hours without sleep, Professor Anthony Leik went home and slept for fourteen hours straight. When he woke up, there were eight missed calls on his phone. Five were work-related, one
was from the lab assistant at the police station, another three were Detective Steele, and one was his strange partner Flynt.
Steele was doing everything he could to get any charges against Leik dropped. He made every effort to help them better understand the drug, and the chemical explanation for the reaction to the stolen formula. His assistance helped stop the spread in Puta Gorda. Steele made it clear, however, that there would be consequences of some sort, maybe as light as community service or a sizable fine.
That was fine with Leik. What concerned him was the college’s response. Going forward, he knew there was no way he would be able to continue his research into D710 on campus. Any further tests would certainly not include any students, eager participants or not, recruited on campus. He knew somewhere down the line he would need to sell the formula to a pharmaceutical company. It would be a deal with the devil, but D710 truly did show the promise of helping treat depression.
It’s a shame that all the tragedy of the past week would now taint all of that.
On Friday night, Leik found himself alone in a bar. He chose a place far from Puta Gorda. The last thing he needed was to run into anyone who would recognize him, especially a student. He found himself in a rundown roadhouse, called the Dew Drop Inn that was an almost comical cliché of a country song. It was a down and dirty honky-tonk. The jukebox was playing a scratchy copy of Garth Brooks singing about his friends in low places. There was a decade’s old sign advertising a one-dollar tap-beer special. The place still reeked of cigarette smoke even though smoking was banned in bars and restaurants twenty-five years ago.
Leik wasn’t a drinker, but he needed something to soothe his mind. He couldn’t get his thoughts to stop churning. Leik found it impossible to make sense of anything that happened in the past few days. He sipped on a margarita. The barman was obviously not accustomed to making a drink so foreign to the tastes of his clientele. Leik sipped the very salty, very strong drink and stared idly at the television behind the bar.
Dead Duck (Flynt & Steele Mysteries Book 2) Page 15
