I WAS JUST PULLING AWAY FROM THE CURB WHEN I PICKED UP A CALL from Sampson. “Psych ward, hold please?” I answered with a bad joke.
“Alex, you heard the latest?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I was just talking to Jerry Winthrop.”
“He say anything about when they’re going to start the autopsies?” John asked next.
The word autopsies stopped me cold. “What are you talking about? What autopsies?”
“Two more bodies found. At the Harmony Suites on Twenty-second. I’m on my way there now. Appear to be Saudis. What are you talking about?”
“Not that. Keep going. Who was found, exactly?”
“It’s another couple. Middle Eastern. Two empty glasses on the floor. Nobody’s saying suicide yet, but I’ll bet money there’s going to be cyanide in the coroner’s report.”
I pulled back up against the curb. I needed to try and absorb everything for a half second. Coincidences like these are usually a leg up in an investigation, but the more this thing folded in on itself, the scarier it got, the more bizarre and unpredictable. And definitely unprecedented.
“It’s getting too weird around here, Alex,” Sampson said. “I keep thinking what they always say about the next big attack, you know? Not if but when?”
“I know,” I said. “I know.” It was starting to feel a whole lot like when. “I’ll meet you at the bodies.”