“Look, I can’t stay here and face these people again,” Levi said as he backed away, looking at the trickle of people leaving the funeral home that had now became a stream. His body was in nearly full-blown spasm in anticipation of another conflict with Zoe’s mother or with Janek. As if on cue, Janek and Michael exited the building, and Levi took off in a sprint.
Janek, ever the cop, had of course caught sight of Levi and was shooting daggers in my direction. If he hadn’t had an arm supporting his sister, he would likely have taken off after the man. He, Theresa, and Michael had planted themselves outside the door, saying their goodbyes to guests who were not continuing to the cemetery.
I scanned the faces leaving the funeral home, looking for Dr. Wykell. I hadn’t made any headway into understanding the connection between Levi and the doctor, but Levi’s odd response was notable and not explained by a stint at the Renacido Center, if that had been the rehab he’d mentioned.
Janek had left his sister with her girlfriends and was barreling my way, Michael at his heels.
“What the hell was that all about?” Janek asked, his voice full of disgust. “You and Levi. Are you coddling that piece of shit?”
Accusation burned in his eyes and his voice. He was pushing for a fight, although I knew deflection when I saw it. Hatred of Levi oozed from his body like a fish rotting from the inside. He didn’t see Levi’s pain, didn’t see his love for Zoe. He was blind to everything but his grief. Michael lifted his hand to his partner’s shoulder, trying to defuse the tension.
“Coddling? No, of course not,” I said calmly. “Levi clearly was in love with Zoe. Whatever happened between them, whatever his role may have been in her addiction, he’s reeling. And for all we know, he may have been the last person to see her alive.”
“Yeah, when he gave her her last hit.” Janek’s voice was tight and unyielding. It was the pain talking. He wasn’t capable of being convinced of anything that didn’t fit the narrative he had already built in his mind, certainly not today of all days. I wasn’t sure if Levi had had anything to do with Zoe’s death, but assumptions weren’t going to help us figure out what had really happened.
Michael’s gaze told me he wanted to ask me something, to know more about the conversation and ask questions his partner couldn’t right now, but this wasn’t the moment to question anything.
“We’re going over to the cemetery now,” he said instead, giving me a long look. “Let’s talk later.”
He gave me a quick kiss goodbye, and I turned to Janek. “I hope you can find some peace.” I squeezed his hand and watched the men walk off to their cars for the funeral procession.
Kicking off my heels, I plopped into the desk chair in my office at Link-Media, crossed my arms, and lay my head on the desk. The morning had drained me physically and emotionally, but it had also deepened the knot in my stomach that told me something was not as it seemed. Levi was lying. Wykell was suspect. And the circumstances of Zoe’s death felt staged. My first and only thought right now was to wonder if Levi had been present when she overdosed, gotten scared, and placed her in the chair before he took off to save his own ass.
Frustration was building in my mind instead of clarity, so I lifted my head, shook out the cobwebs, and opened a new document on my laptop. I laid out everything I knew, every thought I had, every question that came to mind in bullet points without any thought to their importance. Somewhere in here was a pattern, a spark. One thought would lead to another, and another, as the tapestry was woven thread by thread.
So much had happened in the last few days that I was having trouble processing. I needed to see the physical manifestation of events so I struck the keyboard with every ounce of energy I had to get a version I could print and evaluate.
“I didn’t think you were coming back today?” Brynn was in my doorway, her shirtsleeves rolled up and looking a little worse for wear herself.
“Neither did I,” I said, motioning her in. “I’m going to need some help with this Flores story. You game?”
Guilt was eating at me that I hadn’t been putting in the time and effort the story needed, but my heart wasn’t in it, not with Zoe’s death gnawing at my subconscious. Brynn was ready for a break. She’d moved past the community service fluff given to the new kids in the newsroom but had yet to tackle a story with real meat. If she could do the legwork, I could supervise from the sidelines. It would help us both out and keep Borkowski off my ass.
“Absolutely!” Her face lit up as she took a seat. “I’d love to help knock this guy down a few pegs. What do you need?”
“Work a lead for me.” I jotted down the address and phone number of the check-cashing shop. “There’s a guy named Darius who works here. I’ve been told he has some inside knowledge of the scheme. Near as I can tell, he’s just a clerk, but I’m wondering if maybe the check-cashing shop served as a pseudo-bank to handle the payoffs and he’s getting a cut of the transaction. He hung up on me when I called, so maybe if you go in and flirt with him, he’ll be more talkative.”
Her face fell. “You want me to flirt? Like a pushup bra and a heavy spray of Obsession? I think I’d rather donate a kidney.”
“I’m joking. No cleavage required.” I laughed. “Just see if you can get him to talk to you.”
She leaned back in the chair. “I really want the chance, but man, not if it means I have to go all bimbo to get the story.” She looked positively nauseous, and I had to stifle another laugh.
“Hey, are you forgetting who you’re talking to? Do you see me running around with my boobs hanging out just to get a story?” This time I did laugh. “Although, if you think about it, it seems a small price to pay in the right circumstances.” I pretended to ponder the idea.
“Cut it out, or I’ll start taking you serious. You’re playing with a neophyte, and this conversation is downright mean.” She smiled but was obviously relieved. “To change subjects, how bad was the funeral?” Her young face twisted with expectation, as if she weren’t sure she really wanted to hear my answer. “It’s so hard wrapping my head around someone younger than me dying. Janek’s gotta be in a whole heap of pain.”
“Well, I’ll put it this way, for a moment I thought we were going to have more bloodshed. It could have been a Doctor Phil episode, complete with a brawl. The dead girl’s mom went after the boyfriend. Apparently, she and Janek blame him for getting her daughter hooked. He was her dealer, so they nearly came to blows. Janek had to physically separate them and if there hadn’t been an audience, Janek would have taken the guy out himself. Family justice minus a trial. It was just flat-out ugly.” I shook my head and hit save on my document before I distracted myself and lost the work.
“How awful. I can imagine Janek leading the charge. In fact, I can’t imagine him not adding his two cents to the fight.”
“Frankly, I don’t know what Janek would do if the two of them were alone in a back alley. But I’m also not sure they’re barking up the right tree.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know exactly.” I sighed, wishing for some explanation that told me I wasn’t just amplifying my active imagination. “There’s something funky going on here. I don’t think this was a straight-up overdose. The boyfriend is lying about something. I spoke to him today. It’s just my gut instinct, but I think he knew Zoe had been staying at the house and is pretending otherwise for some reason. I’m not getting a good vibe from him. He’s hiding something. I can’t tell what, but I think he knew she was at the house and is denying it.”
“Could he have given her tainted product?” Brynn asked. “After all, so much of that stuff is cut with mystery crap. There isn’t exactly a Yelp review site for the drug trade tracing the purity of the of the supply chain. There are a lot of ugly stories about manufactured drugs. Is it possible he knew? Or figured it out later and is nervous about being charged now that she’s dead?”
“You might be right. That’s certainly possible. The ME will have something to say on that,” I said, reflecting on the idea. “I do think he loved her and would never have intentionally hurt her—if you can set aside the harm heroin does—but he’s covering up. Or protecting his own ass. The other weird thing is that the therapist that runs the treatment center I told you about, the one from the pamphlet? He showed up at the funeral too.”
“Had she been a patient?” Brynn asked, looking at me quizzically.
“That’s my question. What other reason would there be for the man to show up at Zoe’s funeral? He didn’t approach Zoe’s mother, or anyone else for that matter, to offer his condolences. It’s odd. When I went to the open house, I thought he was being really vague about his process. Claims these astounding success rates, yet he was cagey about what makes his program different and how he’s getting those kinds of results. Something feels off. I just can’t put a finger on it. Can you look into their ownership history? When they were founded. You know the drill.”
“Of course. But people can create any kind of statistics they want,” Brynn said. “Maybe he’s lying. Or manipulating the timeframe or defining success as staying off the shit for two weeks. It’s marketing, right?”
“Marketing.” My brain was buzzing with a new thought. “The core of marketing is brand recognition, right? So why do people choose one addiction program versus another? It all starts with awareness.”
“Plus the price-to-benefit ratio,” Brynn added. “Whether anyone realizes it or not, we all make decisions like that, even if we’re not aware that we do when we buy something. And this is a product that is being bought. Consumers decide whether they perceive the benefit of the product to be in line with its cost.”
“As far as I know, other treatment centers aren’t quoting success rates,” I said. “I understand why people would want them, but that almost becomes a guarantee. And how in the hell is curing someone of addiction something you can guarantee?”
“You can’t. Can you?”
“I don’t see how. I’ll need to find someone else to talk to. Someone who can educate me on what standard protocol is these days.”
“Wasn’t there a forensic psychologist who specialized in stuff like this? I’m thinking about a case you told me about from back when you were an attorney. He comes up in the news now and then because he does the expert witness thing.”
“Yeah, Dr. Franklin Lecaros. He gets called in a lot to testify. I think he makes more money as an expert witness than in private therapy practice. But he would know what’s considered the gold standard in current treatment.”
“Sounds like a starting point. It would at least give you a benchmark. And if this guy really is an expert in current thinking, he’s probably heard of the center, or the doc.”
“Yeah, I’ll give him a call. But just imagine if Dr. Wykell is right and he really does have an eighty-five percent success rate.”
“The world would beat down his doors.”