by Matt Lincoln
“Would you like some coffee?” she asked quietly. Her hair was up in a tangled ponytail, and she was wearing a rumpled set of pajamas.
“I think we’re fine,” I smiled. Charlie nodded in agreement.
“You can have a seat on the couch,” she replied. “Sorry, it’s kind of messy in here.”
There were pizza boxes and takeout bags scattered around the living room, along with tissues and a half-melted tub of ice cream. It was pretty clear from her appearance and the state of her living room that Clara hadn’t left her apartment in a while.
“It’s fine,” I smiled reassuringly as I took a seat on the proffered couch. “Would you mind going over what happened that night as best as you can remember?”
Clara pursed her lips together and looked like she might be sick.
“You said this will help you stop other people like the guy who attacked Mel, right?” she asked quietly.
“That’s our goal,” I nodded. “You’re the most recent witness, so anything that you can tell us will help.”
“Okay,” she sniffled as she sank heavily into one of the chairs opposite the couch. “I was out with my friends, four of us. We were having a really nice night. Mel had a little too much to drink and was acting all dumb. This guy came up and tried to convince her to go with him. He started getting really pushy, then this guy came out of nowhere and started beating him up. I was so relieved at first, thinking he had come to save us, but then…” She cleared her throat and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.
“That’s when he attacked you?” I prompted.
“Not me,” she sighed. “Melanie. All she did was ask if he was okay, and he went crazy on her. Some people tried to stop him, but he just threw them all off. It was like he had super strength or something.”
I frowned. Erratic behavior and increased strength were definitely both signs of drug abuse.
“Did he say anything?” I asked.
“No,” Clara shook her head sadly. “Not a word. He just kept attacking whoever caught his attention, even that cop. It was so surreal. He was wearing a bathrobe, too.”
“A bathrobe?” Charlie asked.
“Yeah,” Clara sniffed. “Like, one of those fluffy robes that people wear around the house. He didn’t have any shoes on either. I kept thinking this had to be some kind of nightmare. None of it made any sense.”
“I’m really sorry you had to go through that,” I responded sympathetically, though my mind was racing. The detail about the perp’s clothing wasn’t mentioned in the report we got from Wallace. That was certainly odd.
“So did it help?” she asked. “You think you’ll be able to investigate better now?”
“I’m sure we will,” I reassured her. “You’ve been a huge help to us, Clara.” She smiled, and I could tell that she was relieved at the thought that her testimony might help someone else.
“We should head to the attacker’s house, then,” Charlie suggested. “We might find something there.”
“Alright,” I nodded. “Thank you again for everything, Clara.”
She nodded jerkily but didn’t actually respond as she stood stiffly up off the chair. She saw us to the door and then quickly shut it behind us. I heard the latch click shut on the other side.
“That was nice of you,” Charlie commented. “Saying that she was helpful, I mean. She didn’t actually give us any new information.”
“She told us about the bathrobe,” I countered. “That’s kind of weird. And it made her happy to think she helped with the case. It doesn’t cost anything to be nice, Charlie.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” he shrugged as we climbed back into the car.
According to the GPS, Evans’s house was only about a ten-minute drive from Clara’s apartment. The neighborhood he lived in was marginally nicer, consisting of large, Colonial-style homes with large front lawns. Wallace had said that Evans was a lawyer, so it made sense he’d live in a luxurious area.
“No cops here,” Charlie remarked as we got out of the car and headed toward the front door. “That must mean they haven’t gotten the warrant yet.”
“Let’s just knock then,” I replied. “They said they weren’t able to get in contact with Mrs. Evans. She might be home now.”
“Stop,” Charlie suddenly interrupted me. He was staring at the door in front of us. I turned to follow his gaze and realized why he’d suddenly spoken up. The front door was slightly ajar.
“Didn’t Wallace say that nobody answered when the cops came by?” I asked.
“Yeah, he did,” Charlie responded thoughtfully. He unholstered his gun as he made his way toward the door slowly. He pushed the door open tentatively before stepping inside. I drew my own weapon as I followed him in.
“I’ll take the right,” Charlie whispered before moving toward the right side of the house. I nodded as I moved to the left. The place seemed quiet and mostly undisturbed. Finding the front door hanging open wasn’t a good sign, though, so something was definitely wrong. I was in the middle of clearing one of the rooms when I heard a clattering noise a few feet ahead of me. I approached the source of the sound cautiously. As I moved closer, I realized that the noises were coming from the kitchen.
It was dark inside, but I could see the light of the refrigerator illuminating part of the room. A figure was hunched over and knocking things out of the fridge and onto the floor just beyond the open door.
“Hello?” I called cautiously. I couldn’t be sure if whoever was leaning into the fridge was hostile, but I didn’t want to let my guard down.
The figure stood up straight and peered at me with blank, hazy eyes.
“Oh, hello,” she replied distractedly. “I didn’t realize Dom had a guest over. And me in my pajamas, how embarrassing.”
The woman was wearing a fluffy pink robe and looked a little unsteady on her feet. She spoke to me casually, which obviously wasn’t a normal response to finding an armed stranger in your home.
“Ma’am, are you feeling alright?” I asked as I holstered my gun and pulled my phone out of my pocket to call for help. This woman clearly needed some kind of medical attention.
“Oh, I’m just a little under the weather,” she coughed. “Seasonal bug, I think. I was just looking for something to eat. Oh, dear, who made this mess? Was it you?”
Before I could respond, Charlie called out from somewhere else in the house.
“It’s all clear on my end!” he called. “Everything okay?”
“Oh my word,” the woman began to shake. “What is that?”
“It’s just my partner,” I assured her before calling out to Charlie. “I’m over here! There’s someone in the kitchen.”
“No!” the woman suddenly screeched as she pulled a long kitchen knife out of the knife block. “You’re trying to trick me. You made this mess, didn’t you?”
“Ma’am, calm down,” I responded as I reached for my gun again.
Before I could get to it, she lunged toward me. I used both hands to grip her arms and push her away. Despite being smaller and thinner than me, she was surprisingly strong and started biting at me when she couldn’t get her arms free.
I pushed her away as hard as I could, and she fell to the ground, directly on top of one of the various containers she’d pulled out of the refrigerator just a moment before. I winced as I heard something shatter beneath her and was shocked when she immediately shot back up and ran toward me again. She’d only taken two steps before Charlie burst into the kitchen and tackled her from behind.
“Help!” the woman screamed as Charlie forced her to the ground and pulled her hands behind her back. “It’s killing me! The monster’s killing me!”
“I think she’s hallucinating,” I said as I leaned down to help Charlie apprehend her. She was still thrashing around, and I was worried she might hurt herself with how forcefully she was fighting against Charlie’s grip.
“Call for backup,” Charlie gritted out as he struggled to maintain his hold
. I did as he instructed and called for police units as well as an ambulance.
“There are no monsters,” I said soothingly to the woman once I finished calling for help. “No one is trying to hurt you.”
The woman lifted her head off the ground and looked around the room to confirm what I was saying.
“No monsters,” she repeated sluggishly. She finally seemed to be calming down, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“You’re bleeding,” Charlie said once the woman finally fell silent and still and he could lessen his grip on her arms. I looked down and was surprised to discover that he was right. There was a spot of blood on my sleeve near my wrist.
“She must have gotten me with the knife,” I grimaced. The adrenaline of restraining her must have kept the pain at bay, but now that I was cooling down, I could feel a distinct sting where she’d cut me. “It’s not too bad.”
Backup arrived shortly after that, and Charlie handed the woman over to the paramedics while I got my wrist patched up. As soon as I was done, I walked over to join him. She was still mumbling about monsters when the paramedics started strapping her into a gurney.
“She looks like she’s under the influence of something,” one of the paramedics noted as she was being loaded into the back of the ambulance. “Do you know if she took anything?”
“No,” I replied. “She was acting kind of weird, though. She was knocking things out of the fridge and onto the floor when I found her.”
“Did she say anything?” the man asked.
“Not really,” I muttered as I tried to recall exactly what had happened. It had all gone down so fast. “She was talking about someone named Dom. She probably meant Dominick Evans. He’s the owner of the house. She was speaking normally at first if a bit fidgety. Then suddenly she just started screaming about monsters and came at me with the knife.”
“Monsters?” the paramedic repeated with a frown. “Might be some kind of hallucinogenic. Okay, thank you.”
He moved away from me to climb into the ambulance.
“That was weird,” Charlie remarked once the man had closed the ambulance doors.
“That’s an understatement,” I scoffed as I lifted my wrist to examine the bandage there. The paramedic had assured me that it wasn’t serious when he patched me up. I could still feel a dull throb, but the worst of the pain had ebbed away.
“I’m gonna call Wallace and let him know what happened,” Charlie informed me as he pulled his phone from his pocket.
“Okay,” I called over my shoulder as I stepped back into the house.
I decided to have a look around the house while Charlie called Wallace to report what had happened. The home was just as lavish on the inside as it was on the outside, tastefully decorated with expensive furniture and unique art pieces. It wasn’t unheard of for wealthy people to indulge in drugs, but typically people with money tended to stick to familiar classics like cocaine or MDMA. It was unusual for a wealthy couple to overdose on a little-known designer drug like this.
I wandered into the living room. The coffee table in there was laden down with bottles of cough syrup, painkillers, and two half-eaten bowls of soup. Used tissues were scattered around the table and on the floor, and a movie was playing on the television.
I remembered what Mrs. Evans had said about feeling under the weather and was struck with a dreadful thought. Wallace had said that none of the perpetrators had anything in common aside from the intense violence in their actions. What if the drugs found in Dominick Evans’s system were just a coincidence, and this was actually a viral issue? A sickness would explain how so many seemingly unrelated people could suddenly display the same symptoms. The idea of a disease that could cause people to become violent was too fantastic and too horrifying for me to accept, though, so I did my best to banish the thought as I returned to the kitchen to speak with Charlie see what Wallace wanted us to do next.
6
Miranda
Naomi and I had gone down to the police station to speak with the cops about what was going on. So far, it didn’t seem like anything was connecting the cases aside from the fact that all the attackers had suddenly gone nuts without any warning or provocation. There was always a chance that we’d notice something they’d missed, though, so we needed to review precisely what had gone down in each case. So far, we hadn’t learned anything new.
“It seems as though no one had any real motive,” Naomi sighed as we looked over the case files with one of the investigators assigned to the case. We had set up our things in one of the conference rooms along with the Detective that had been assigned to the original attack on the Strip, a man named Daniel Grover. Detective Grover seemed like a nice guy and had patiently gone over everything with us and answered every question we had.
“That appears to be the case,” Grover agreed as he flipped through the case files as though new information would suddenly appear there. “In almost every case, the perpetrator suddenly began acting aggressively, and in half the cases, they attacked complete strangers. It’s pretty obvious that drugs were the main cause of their erratic behavior. We did observe a curious change, though.”
“What do you mean?” I asked as I flipped the manila folder I was holding shut. I was so used to the ease of the tablets we used at the MBLIS office that I couldn’t imagine why they hadn’t yet upgraded from paper.
“We initially thought that the attacks began a month ago,” he explained. “After further investigation, though, we realized that there was a slew of similar attacks three months ago. The police didn’t initially make the connection because the attacks from three months ago were all perpetrated by drug addicts. It was brushed off as being an unfortunate consequence of abusing drugs.”
“But now you think it’s related?” Naomi asked.
“Yes,” Grover confirmed as he shuffled through some of the files he was holding. He plucked one from the pile and slid it across the table toward us. “The MO is identical to the other cases. What’s peculiar is the month-long gap between the cases. First, we have a cluster of violent attacks perpetrated by drug addicts, then a lull, and then suddenly, we see the same thing occurring within ordinary people. It made sense when drug-fueled crimes were happening among people who regularly abuse drugs but among normal folks? That’s strange, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Naomi nodded as she glanced through the case files. From what I could see, they did seem similar to the ones we were currently investigating. “Do you think the attacks that broke out among the drug addicts were some kind of trial run? It wouldn’t be the first time that vulnerable populations were targeted or used as guinea pigs.”
“That’s one possibility,” Grover nodded, though I could tell by the frown on his face that he was unconvinced. “There’s more, though. Almost all the perpetrators are dead now. Although some of them were killed by police officers during their altercations, the majority just died on their own, apparently of an overdose. What’s odd about that is that we could not find any signs of drug use on any of the corpses. No needle marks or bruising, so we aren’t even sure how the drugs got into their systems.”
“It almost sounds like some kind of terrorist attack,” I suggested. “Drug people to the point that they go crazy and cause havoc, then they’re either killed by police or keel over on their own. Great way to cause a lot of damage and fear without ever lifting a finger.”
“I certainly hope that’s not the case,” Grover frowned. “If the ultimate goal here is just to cause as much terror and panic as possible, then it’s unlikely we’ll be able to reason with the culprit responsible for all this.”
I felt a chill run through me at his words. He was right. Typically, terrorists couldn’t be reasoned with. All they wanted was to cause destruction, so there was usually nothing the authorities could do to convince them to stop.
“It also ensures that few traces are left behind,” Naomi sighed. “If all the perpetrators die after their attacks, then there’s no way for us to speak to th
em to figure out what happened in the time leading up to the incident.”
“We do have one surviving attacker,” Grover corrected her. “Her name is Simone Montague. We didn’t connect her case to the rest until this morning, when we started seeing similarities between all the separate attacks, but the pattern is there. She’s a thirty-two-year-old housewife who suddenly attacked her two young children. Her husband claims that she was acting unusually right before the attack. She was in a coma for a few days, but she’s awake now, at Sunrise Hospital.”
“We should go see her as soon as possible.” Naomi glanced at me. “She might be able to tell us where she got the drugs.”
“I agree.” I nodded as I gathered up the folders to hand them back to Grover.
“Alright,” Grover replied as he stood up, the metal chair he was sitting in grinding across the ground with a squeak. “I’ll give the hospital a call and let them know to expect you.”
“Thank you,” I responded as I got up as well. “And thanks for all the information, as well.”
“Not a problem,” he smiled. “I’ll let you know if we find anything substantial that we believe might help with your investigation. And feel free to contact me if you need anything as well.”
I thanked him once more before making my way out of the conference room and back toward the police station’s lobby with Naomi in tow. I was hopeful that speaking to Simone would give us some insight into where the drug originated.
The drive over to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center went by in a flash. There wasn’t a lot of traffic that time of day, and being the largest hospital in Las Vegas, it was located right in the heart of the city.
I parked in an area far from the entrance where there were plenty of open spots available. I had no problems walking, and I would rather walk a little farther than waste time winding through the rows of parked cars trying to find a space closer to the front.
I stretched as I got out of the car. After spending over an hour sitting in that conference room and then another twenty in the car, my body felt stiff. I couldn’t imagine ever giving up my position as a field agent for one behind a desk. Sitting still just wasn’t for me.
