T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 02 - Southern Poison

by T. Lynn Ocean

  My headache revved up a notch when another text message appeared on my phone:

  A slow death will allow you to think about what you’ve done.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Too excited to sleep, Peggy Lee had been fully awake since three o’clock, her mind a swirl of thoughts. Chuck hadn’t mentioned a date, but she assumed he’d want to get married quickly, before their baby began to show. Where would the ceremony take place? It would be a small affair, but special nonetheless. Maybe they’d do a short and sweet ceremony on the beach, or maybe Chuck would want to do something wild such as fly to Las Vegas for the weekend.

  Hugging her pillow and flipping over, Peggy Lee wondered how much she could spend on a dress. She’d always wanted a delicate, silky, layered, sequined gown, under which she’d wear a lacy garter belt. Regardless of where they did it and what she wore, Peggy Lee was ecstatic. She would soon be the wife of a president of a research company. An established businessman and chemist. Someone who understood the scientific world. Someone with a vision. Flipping to her other side, Peggy Lee readjusted the pillow and conceded that she didn’t have to wear an expensive gown. She wouldn’t mind getting married in a dress, with Chuck at her side in a nice suit and tie. She knew he would spend lavishly on their honeymoon, even if he hadn’t yet sold the Derma-Zing division. Staring at the rotating ceiling-fan blades, she wondered where they’d live. Virginia, of course. But would she move into his current place? She’d never been there, but knew it would be spacious and open and adorned with beautiful upgrades such as granite and tile and oversized picture windows. All the things she’d seen in home and leisure magazines. Feeling the ever-so-slight roundness of her belly, she thought again of her baby and went through a list of baby names. Restless, she sat up and turned on a light to look at the mobile of stuffed animals she planned to hang over the crib. Deciding she’d never be able to sleep, Peggy Lee headed to the shower. Going to the lab early would give her a jump start and she could leave before the evening rush hour to visit a bridal shop.

  Few commuters were on the road before sunrise and Peggy Lee made it to her lab more quickly than usual. Strangely, the alarm system was off. She could have sworn she’d set the alarm the prior evening. When the fluorescent lights flickered on and flooded her lab with bluish illumination, Peggy Lee screamed.

  Metal tables lay twisted, overturned, and glass vial remains were scattered everywhere. Refrigerator doors stood open, their contents broken. She immediately went to her desk and found the computer on the floor, its casing broken as though it were smashed with a baseball bat. Using a Swiss army knife she’d carried since she was a kid, Peggy Lee removed the hard drive. It took some doing to detach the bent metal cage from the mangled frame and when she did, she couldn’t believe what she saw. Several long nails had been driven through the guts of the hard drive, effectively destroying it. Every bit of her work had been saved on there, and whoever had trashed it knew something about computers. But they didn’t know about her backup disks, which Chuck insisted she keep at the lab instead of in a secure, off-site lockbox. She threw open the bottom drawer, only to find it empty. On her hands and knees, the chemist searched the floor and every single place the backup disks could conceivably be. Nothing. Her personal hard copy files were missing, too. She prayed that Chuck’s set of backups—the second and only other set—were safe and intact. Otherwise, her years of research and documented findings on the wild leafy shiff bush were gone.

  Across town, Chuck parked in a convenience store lot and walked the three blocks to Peggy’s apartment building, carrying a bag of croissants, champagne, and orange juice. She’d be jubilant over the romantic breakfast in bed and she’d drink her spiked mimosa without thinking twice. While she died, Chuck could plant the telling evidence. By the time he reported her missing days later and the authorities found her, the drug that stopped her heart would be long gone from her system. If he was lucky, it might even cause an embolism. Either way, the death would be ruled natural causes and she had no family or friends to challenge the cause of death.

  Whistling, Chuck reached Peggy’s dingy apartment door and, careful not to touch the doorknob, inserted his key. Adjusting his backpack of goodies, he slowly opened the door, touching only the key, when his cell phone rang. The caller ID was the laboratory phone number.

  “Yes?” he answered, incredulous.

  “Chuck!” Peggy Lee cried. “Somebody’s been in the lab! Stuff is strewn everywhere!”

  Damn his luck! She never got to the lab before seven thirty or eight o’clock in the morning. Silently cursing, he told Peggy to calm down and asked if anything was missing, just for something to say.

  “Some files are gone. And the computer is broken. There’s glass all over the place. What happened, Chuck? Who could have done this?”

  Chuck quietly closed her apartment door. “Probably some kids, getting their kicks by vandalizing buildings. Or it might have been a drug addict looking for money. Who knows?”

  “Was the alarm set last night?” she said.

  “I don’t know, Peggy. I guess. We left together and I haven’t been to the lab since. But you were the last one out. Did you forget to arm the system?”

  “I must have.” She sounded uncertain. “When I came in, it was off. And then I turned the lights on and saw all this mess. What should we do?”

  Chuck cursed his luck again. He’d planned to hit a club tonight, someplace with dancing and pretty girls. But now, he’d have to see her for dinner and do the job then. At least he could go ahead and plant the evidence, Chuck thought, so it wouldn’t be a completely wasted morning. Holding the cell phone to his ear, he slipped on plastic shoe covers. “Stay calm, Peggy. It’s okay. The main thing is that you’re safe. I’ll call the police and come right over. Meanwhile, you stay put until they get there.”

  “Okay.”

  Chuck hung up and cursed out loud as he found her dresser. He’d purposely never gone to her apartment but it was a small one-bedroom, and drab at that. The first thing he did was find her journal, the one she called her depression days journal. She’d mentioned it once, after they’d had sex, telling him she no longer needed to write in it. Flipping through the pages, he smiled as he reads clips she’d written years ago: “I’m a failure and my research proves it… I hate to see all the smiling mothers with strollers when I go to the park … why am I being punished?”

  Pleased to find no entries concerning him or Project Antisis, Chuck stashed the diary inside a folder containing her research files and placed the lot on the floor, beneath her bed. Next, he found the freezer and deposited vials of chemicals and a package of frozen plant matter inside a near-empty ice cream carton. Last, he went to Peggy’s tiny bathroom, where he left a self-help book on depression. He’d inserted it into a clear plastic book jacket protector, one he’d removed from a well-used chemistry book that was covered with her prints. When he finished, Chuck put on a baseball cap and mechanic’s jersey, and slipped out, pleased to see that it was barely daybreak.

  Back at the lab, Peggy Lee stopped in her tracks when she spied a crumpled blue seltzer water can lying in the trash bin. She recycled and knew for a fact that there weren’t any aluminum cans in either of the trash cans. Peggy Lee hadn’t bought any seltzer water to restock the refrigerator since she’d emptied the garbage last week. What were the odds that the vandal just happened to drink seltzer water and it just happened to be the same brand Chuck drank?

  Surveying the damage for a second time, more calm than the first go-around, she realized that everything crucial to Project Anti-sis was missing or destroyed. But all the expensive lab equipment sat untouched. Not only that, but Chuck quickly said he’d call the police, when he should have been worried about privacy. The only way he could know they wouldn’t find anything incriminating is if he was the person who had cleaned out the lab. The person who’d hammered nails through her hard drive to ensure its death.

  Not caring that she’d left the lab door wide open, Peggy
Lee ran two blocks to the next street and banged on the door of a gemologist’s building. Despite the time, she knew he worked odd hours and took it as a good sign that his lights were on. She’d met the Israeli once, when he was out for a walk and she’d ventured outside for some fresh air. His was an Internet-based business and he didn’t have a public showroom. He peeked through the door’s small security window and buzzed her in.

  Peggy Lee shoved her engagement ring at him and asked if the diamond were real. Not wanting to get involved, the gemologist didn’t ask questions. The examination took less than twenty seconds.

  “Sorry, lady, is no real,” he said in his thick accent. “Is no even good-quality glass.”

  She didn’t want to believe him. “But it’s so sparkly. Are you sure?”

  His arms went up in surrender. “Like I say, is fake. The gold is worth maybe seventy, eighty dollar. But stone is fake.”

  Sobbing, Peggy Lee stumbled back to the lab. She went straight to the trash bin to make sure she’d really seen the seltzer can and hadn’t just imagined it. Its crumpled form looked like a laughing mouth. The prenatal diet pamphlet lay beneath the can, torn in two.

  “No, no, no,” she said to the garbage, even though her scientifically trained brain screamed the truth inside her skull. Chuck had destroyed the lab. He didn’t want their child and he never planned to marry her. It didn’t occur to the chemist that her life might be in danger until she was strapped behind the wheel of her Honda. Numbed by the betrayal, Peggy Lee drove until her fuel gauge needle hit red. She pulled in to the first motel she found—a nondescript place in Whiteville—and registered with cash under a fake name.

  FORTY-NINE

  My doctor friend called me with Lindsey’s test results and the news was bad. Telling Ox his daughter might not be able to have children was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Especially since I felt responsible. I should have checked further into Holloman’s background when Lindsey first got involved with him.

  “Pam will explain it all to you in detail,” I told Ox, “but Lindsey’s ovaries are a mess. Her eggs are damaged and most likely, she’ll never be able to get pregnant.”

  His face was unreadable. “What about her? The rest of her?”

  “Pam said that Lindsey is the picture of health. Liver functions, kidney functions, heart and lungs—everything is perfectly normal, except for the ovaries. Depending on whether or not her body is still able to produce a reasonable level of hormones, there is a possibility she’ll have to go on a hormone replacement therapy since she’s so young. But we don’t know yet.”

  “And you think this was intentionally done to her and the others?”

  “Yes,” I said and told him why.

  I’ve seen Ox angry before, but now he looked murderous. Had Holloman walked into the Block, Ox may have killed him on the spot. Once he had some time to fully digest the news, we talked some more—mostly about the best way to get the word out. Girls needed to stop using Derma-Zing immediately. Unfortunately, there was no proof that the product had caused Lindsey’s condition. My lab samples of the raw material and shelf samples of Derma-Zing were being tested, but as Pam had warned, results might be inconclusive at best.

  Ox strolled outside and stood against the railing of the river-walk, breathing slow and deep, as if drawing strength from the water. After a time, I followed and stood beside him.

  “You shouldn’t feel responsible, Jersey. Lindsey used Derma-Zing in California before she ever came here, remember?”

  “Yes, but still—”

  “Thanks to you, Lindsey is off the stuff. What we need to focus on now is getting all the other girls off it.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “It rips me apart inside to think that my little girl has been harmed. But Holloman ended up in our bar for a reason.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We will stop the monster. But imagine if he never came to “Wilmington. Lindsey—along with millions of other girls—would continue painting the stuff on their bodies.”

  “If I could swap my healthy ovaries for her damaged ones, Ox, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” I said. “Someday, she’ll want to be a mom. And you’ll want to be a grandfather.”

  Standing tall, Ox closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of the river. His face was serene, calm. “I see a grandchild in my future, Jersey. I see two. Lindsey’s going to be just fine.”

  I asked Ox if he wanted me to tell Lindsey about the test results.

  “As I said, I see grandkids in my future.”

  “But—”

  “Knowing what’s been done to her body isn’t going to help anything.” Our eyes locked and I understood that he meant to protect his child. The news that she might never have children of her own could damage Lindsey even more than the Derma-Zing had. I filled my lungs and acknowledged his concern. I understood.

  We agreed to visit the chemist at her lab first thing in the morning.

  Ox decided to take Lindsey and Spud to the movies but I declined to join them. I had some work to do at the Barnes Agency. And I wasn’t sure I could put on a happy face around Lindsey, at least not tonight.

  Walking to the corpse caddy, I didn’t detect any of Ashton’s people watching. Either they were getting much better at blending in to the background, or else somebody had screwed up the scheduling. As I put the wagon into gear and pulled out, something stung the back of my neck. Responsively, I reached to rub the spot and when I did, a metal cuff snapped around my wrist.

  “Keep driving.” The voice belonged to John Mason.

  My body suddenly felt light, floating off the seat, and I realized he’d drugged me. The other half of the cuffs was attached to a latch in the slider window and my arm remained bent over my shoulder, locked in place through the glass divider. My instinct was to let go of the wheel and grab my Glock from my handbag, but my muscles were leaden and uncooperative. It was stupid to carry a weapon in a handbag. I knew better, but hadn’t bothered to strap on a shoulder holster since I was just running across town. The hearse straddled the center lane and it took every ounce of my concentration to pull back to the right in time to avoid an oncoming truck.

  “I’m going to wreck the car,” I said, my tongue thick.

  “Turn left here.”

  I wanted to shove my foot on the accelerator and go for the Glock, but my muscles obeyed John instead of me. I slowed to turn.

  “Go to the second light and take a right.”

  I did. We drove like this for twenty minutes, John giving sparse instructions, and me struggling to keep my eyelids up. Finally, he ordered me to stop in a pancake house parking lot. When he unlocked me and yanked me out of the car, I grabbed my cell phone off the seat—the government-issued one with the tracker—and tucked it beneath the underwire of my bra. The next thing I knew, I was in the back of a van.

  John dumped the contents of my handbag on the van floor beside me and fished out the Glock and my personal cell phone. He pocketed the gun and destroyed the phone between his foot and the pavement. Trancelike, I watched him pull the bills from my wallet and take my zip-tie plastic cuffs. Bastard probably wanted his pair of steel cuffs back and planned to restrain me with a pair of my own plastic ones. When John finished going through my belongings, he patted down my body with groping hands and found Ashton’s cell phone tucked beneath my bra strap.

  “You little bitch.”

  I threw myself at him, snatched the phone from his hands, and fell to the pavement. With every ounce of mental capacity I could muster, I concentrated on not letting the phone slip out of my fingers while I slid open the battery cover, removed the SIM card, and closed the cover. He jerked me up and backhanded me across the face, sending me back to the ground. The phone flew out of my hands. Wiping the blood from a cut lip, I stuck the SIM card in my mouth, between my gum and cheek.

  John searched the empty parking lot until he found the second phone. He stomped on it until nothing remained but mangled parts.

  “What do you want with m
e?” I asked.

  I don’t think he answered. Moments later, I sensed movement. We were on the road. I’m not sure how much time passed, but when we stopped, whatever drug he’d injected into my system had begun to wear off. Headache pressure behind my eyes felt like dual ice picks stabbing my optical nerves. I looked down to see that my hands were now secured in front of my waist with one of my own disposable zip-tie restraints. He led me through grass and trees and I heard a dog barking in the distance and something nagged at my drunken brain to find a stickpin. I stumbled without meaning to, and when he jerked me to my feet, I remembered why I needed a pin. The disposable cuffs. There was a simple way to get out of them. I fell against his chest, hoping to lift a fountain pen or something else to use, but there was nothing there. Trees grew dense as we walked along uneven ground illuminated only by moonlight. When he yanked me to a stop, I wanted to fight, to deliver a lightning-quick butterfly kick and follow it up with a spinning double-handed fist to his head. I wanted my Glock back. I wanted to kill him. My mind’s eye envisioned exactly how I could do it, but my muscles wouldn’t cooperate. John lifted a piece of earth out of the ground. It was a door to an underground cellar.

  With a shove, he sent me tumbling into the hole.

  “I like your spunk, Agent Barnes,” he said. “It makes me happy to think that you’ll last for a while, while your systems slowly shut down from a lack of water and air. You’ll probably suffocate before you die of dehydration. Either way, you’ll have plenty of time to ask yourself why you got involved. Why you had to be a nosy bitch and interrupt my mission.”