Umm, body order, beer, and cheap perfume. Why hadn’t I anticipated the foul cocktail that assaulted my nose?
It had easily been a decade since I’d walked into a club, and the reasons why were on full display—the lights, the unyielding beat of the bass, the stench of stale alcohol, the stickiness of the floor, the crush of bodies around me. I shuddered, feeling like I’d just landed in a foreign country and was decades older than everyone around me.
Immediately after my conversation with Dr. Lecaros, I’d phoned Michael but had yet to hear back from him. Lecaros had mentioned a drug called ibogaine being used for addiction treatment outside of the US. Had that been the drug Owen Mosier mentioned? The coincidence was too strong not to investigate. There was enough information online about the substance to be concerned, particularly the heart-related deaths associated with the chemical.
Ibogaine was a naturally occurring psychoactive alkaloid that came from the bark of the Iboga plant. Although used in a number of countries for opioid treatment, the science wasn’t settled on its safety, its contraindications, or its effectiveness, so I’d need the full participation of the ME to move forward. From my light research, it wasn’t clear if or how long the substance could be detected postmortem. In situations where death had been reported, all seemed to include either poorly screened recipients, drug interactions, or existing but unrevealed medical issues. But again, that was territory for the ME.
What also wasn’t clear, was how Wykell could make money off its use. Plant-based products, at least in their natural form, weren’t profitable from a drug standpoint. There was no ability to patent them without chemical modification. And then there was the small issue of the FDA. To make this pay off, Wykell was either going to have to hide the ingredient under another mantle and try to work around the legality or promote the entire process as a package deal, perhaps coming up with a brand name for the process versus the drug. He flat-out couldn’t publicly disclose the ingredient, but if it was layered with enough steps, he could probably get away with selling the success of the protocol. Provided pesky things like dead bodies didn’t get in the way.
With my progress on the ME front hampered for the moment, I was making another run at Levi to see if ibogaine rang any bells for him. And if I could settle my nerves on his involvement.
Levi worked somewhere behind the scenes setting up equipment and organizing the tools necessary for the show. And if it was anything like most bands, that meant he was a jack-of-all-trades—fetching drinks, adjusting mic’s, anything and everything to make sure that the show went on flawlessly.
I squeezed through a throng of people at the bar holding their bottles and plastic cups close, and I felt the unwanted gazes of men on my body. A hand grazed my ass as I passed, and reflexively I turned around to tell the asshole what I thought of his cowardly move, but in the crush I couldn’t tell which idiot had done it. Just another reminder of why I hated the environment.
Snaking my way through to a spot between the stage and the bar, I found a step where I could get about twelve inches above the heads of the crowd. I wedged myself onto the narrow berm hoping to get a decent viewpoint of the stage and, more importantly, any comings and goings.
There was a smoky haze near the stage where the lights lit the group of musicians currently performing. Lost in their own revelation, they stomped and swayed to the beat as the crowd echoed their movements. From my vantage point, I could make out a few individuals huddled just beyond the stage near the edge of a black curtain, attending to equipment. Levi wasn’t with them, but it was as likely a place as any to watch for him.
Already the beat of the heavy metal band was drilling into my brain in a way that I didn’t want. It thumped in with its repeating bass causing a throb in the base of my skull and threatening to work its way around to my temples. I fished in my bag for a bottle of water and some Advil, knowing this was only the beginning of the discomfort.
I should have corralled Cai, or maybe Brynn, to come with me.
After about fifteen minutes, I caught sight of Levi. He was adjusting a speaker that seemed to have lost its juice on the left side of the stage. Luckily, right in my line of sight. I watched him do his work, debating whether to approach immediately or wait for them to finish the set. After fiddling with the equipment, he made my decision easy and moved toward me, likely on a mission to make a pit stop for drinks. What fun, I’d get to wade back through grabby-hands territory.
“Levi,” I shouted, following him to the right side of the long bar. Initially he didn’t hear me over the roar, so I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. He looked at me, confusion in his face for a moment.
“What are you doing here? This doesn’t seem like your crowd.”
“It’s not. I need to talk to you.” His hair was a sweaty just-got-out-of-bed mess. And his light gray T-shirt was stained at the neck and the pits. I didn’t even want to think about how bad the guy would smell by the end of the night.
“Yeah, well, I’m working, and in case you haven’t noticed, this is hardly the place for conversation,” he shouted back at me. “I need to get drinks for the guys. Sorry you wasted your time.” He continued moving forward, lifting three fingers to the bartender, while I stuck on his heels. The volume was a little lower now, and the bartender had already started to pour.
“What kind of drugs was Zoe using?” I said, loud enough to make sure he could hear.
“You already know the answer to that. Your cop friend, he’s got it all figured out, right? Knows what she did. Knows it was my fault. Blah, blah, blah. You come all the way down here to ask something you already know? Please, give me a fuckin’ break. I said, I got work to do.”
The bartender handed him a bottle of beer and three plastic cups full of ice, lime, and something clear. Levi tipped the bottle back, finishing a third of it in one fell swoop.
“I’m not talking about those drugs,” I said. “I’m talking about the truth. You were around her, you know what she was really using. And you know, at least I think you know, what she was being given at the treatment center.”
“I told you already. No point in repeating myself. Nothing else to say. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m working here. Get off my case.” He chugged the balance of the brew like a man stranded in the desert. “You enjoy the music. The next set is really killer.”
“You’re going to want to talk to me, Levi. A new toxicology report is being ordered,” I said, playing the odds that I could get Michael and Janek to take the next step. “They’re going deep. So this, whatever it was she was taking, it’s going to come out. Why don’t we make this easy and you can tell me what they gave her at the center.”
“Why do you think I know that? They don’t tell the patients what they’re on, and I wasn’t there when they shot shot her up.”
“Interesting choice of words, ‘shot her up.’ You knew enough to walk in to the treatment center and accuse Dr. Wykell. I heard you say, ‘What did you give her?’ So don’t stand here and tell me that you don’t know that they’re using a pharmacological product in some fashion. You wouldn’t have said that to him. You would not have made those accusations if you thought nothing other than talk therapy was going on. So why don’t we cut the bull and you can tell me what you meant by that.”
“I gotta go,” he said, but his tone had gone from arrogant to nervous, and he looked over at the stage for an escape route.
“Did you think it was an adverse reaction?” I said, trying to give him an out, a way to soften the blow of the truth if it would get him talking. “Maybe something that she was taking before she went into the center, coupled with something they gave her? Surely you have some suspicions? Don’t you think it’s time you spoke up? Or do you want to wait for CPD to make sure you talk? You’ve got a chance to fess up, to explain what you know.” I softened my tone. “If you know something and you’re holding back, CPD is not going to be all that happy with you when those tox results come back. You seem like a smart guy. Don’t you think that it’s time to be honest?”
He motioned to the bartender for another beer.
“I don’t know what they gave her,” he said, his voice cracking. “I know they gave her something. But I, I can’t answer what it is. Look, I’m really messed up over this. All I ever wanted to do was the right thing by her. And instead she’s dead.”
“What are you getting at? What does that mean, you wanted to do the right thing?” I asked, aware that he was swinging the question back to his own behavior. I could see the fear and hurt in his eyes, as if he wasn’t sure whether to collapse in grief or to sprint off.
“We were both messed up, but we knew we needed to get off the shit. We were trying. We were trying really hard. But those withdrawals, they kill you. And before you know it, you gotta use again just to feel human. You need something to end the pain. So we tag teamed. I went first, broke through the sweats and the fever and the vomiting and all that shit while she nursed me through it. It was the worst thing I’d ever experienced.
“I didn’t want her to go through that,” Levi said. “So when I’d detoxed enough and it was her turn, I wanted to help her out. This guy I know, he had some stuff that helps take the edge off. Helps you ease down. So I gave her some.”
“What was it?”
“Kratom. It’s not illegal. Doesn’t really get you high. It just knocks you down a bit off the edge. She was nervous, wanted to go cold turkey, but it was bad. It was so bad.” Tears ran down his cheeks as he looked at me, pleading. “I just couldn’t stand it, so I took some, told her we’d do it together.”
“And what happened after that?”
“I don’t know exactly. It was the last time I saw her. We were at that house on Pierce. I fell asleep, and she was gone when I woke up. That was the night before she went into the treatment center. All I’ve been able to think about is what if that was it? What if the shit I gave her, the kratom, what if it killed her? How the hell can I live with myself? I’ve been sick about it every day since. I can’t stand to even look at myself in the mirror. And that’s what I think about every night. Did I kill her?”