I SAT IN THE CHAIR ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BIG MAN’S BATTERED OAK DESK, which was piled high with stacks of aging manila folders. Hunched over, my chest almost hit my knees, not because he had torn into me—we were still in the trailers before the feature had started—but because no heat from the sun snuck past the iron grating on his windows and because he kept his office at ten degrees. And I’ve never thrived in the cold.
“You’re stepping on toes,” Lieutenant Rodriguez said. He rearranged the collection of Dodgers bobbleheads shadowed by all the dead-people folders. “You’re stepping on toes and you haven’t even had the case for a whole two days yet.”
“She’s half-assing it,” I complained, “and she’s a tattle-tell in addition to being lazy.”
“You can’t compare Chanita’s case to Trina’s, okay? It’s too soon for that.” He twisted in his high-backed chair as his gray vampire eyes burned into mine. “Stay the hell away from Zapata. She’ll bring you down with her ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter’ bullshit.”
My stomach tightened as the Matt Kemp bobblehead on my boss’s desk nodded in agreement. With the only light coming from a desk lamp, the toy’s shadow played on the wall. And I thought of that episode of Twilight Zone, the one that—
Lieutenant Rodriguez snapped his fingers. “Hey. You listening?”
I gave him a practiced smile.
He waited for me to speak, but when I only continued to smile, he asked, “Worried?”
“Not yet, but I’m driving to the station to board the train.”
“You’ve worked harder cases. The eighty-year-old Jane Doe in the alley. That murder-suicide right after Christmas. And then there’s crazy-ass Christopher Chatman and crazy-bitch Sarah Oliver. She still hiding down in Venezuela?”
“Yeah.” In addition to helping Chatman kill his wife and kids, Sarah Oliver had double-tapped her husband, Ben, in their Infiniti SUV, leaving his body and that car in a mall parking lot. Then, she’d scooped up their daughter from Ben’s grandmother’s house and boarded an early-morning flight to South America.
“That case was different,” I now said to my boss. “None of those cases were—”
“Serial?” He leaned forward, elbows on his desk. “Max Crase did your sister Tori, Monique and Macie Darson, the college—”
“But this one just feels …”
“Nasty.”
Ice crackled across my chest. “Girls.”
“I know. And I understand. I got two at Chanita’s age, remember?”
Someone knocked on the door.
Lieutenant Rodriguez pointed at me. “You got this. I’m counting on you.” Then, he shouted, “Yeah?”
The door opened, and Colin’s head popped in. “Dr. Brooks is on the line with results.”
I rushed back out into the bright glare of fluorescent light, back to my metal desk with Colin and Lieutenant Rodriguez trailing behind me. I motioned for Luke and Pepe to join the huddle, then hit SPEAKER on my phone. “Hey, Doc. We’re all here. What’s up?” I grabbed a pen and a notepad and plopped into my chair.
“First,” Brooks said, “the bad news: the rape-kit results came back. They were positive. The good news: he left semen.”
I tapped the pad with my pen. “That’s pretty bold, ain’t it? Not using a condom?”
“I’ll send it out for DNA,” Brooks said, “which, you know, takes time. And I couldn’t find any prints on her body.”
“He’ll leave semen but no fingerprints?” I said.
“The X-rays also showed a recently healed right arm,” the ME reported.
“Chanita’s mother told us that she had been jumped by school bullies,” I offered.
“Would you like to know why there weren’t a lot of bugs?” Brooks asked.
“Yes,” we all said.
“Those needle marks in her thighs,” Brooks said. “He injected her.”
“With?” I asked.
“Bug repellant.”
I gawked at the phone, then at my team. And we stared at each other in silence, confused by Brooks’s words. “Huh?” I said. “Come again?”
“Bug repellent.”
“Before or after he killed her?” Colin asked.
“After.”
“Why?” I asked.
Brooks chuckled. “That’s your job, Detective, not mine.” He was turning pages. “Some other tox reports came back. No alcohol or recreational drugs in her system, but this is a bit strange. There were low concentrations, just traces, really, of atropine.”
No one spoke—just looked at each other and shrugged.
“Umm,” I said, “you’re gonna have to tell us …”
“It’s a toxin,” Brooks explained, “but a nonirritant, which is why her internal organs weren’t inflamed. And you don’t need a lot of it to kill someone.”
“Painless?” I asked.
“No. Bodily fluids dry up first—spit, tears, sweat. Then, after a few minutes, the body numbs. You close your eyes, and that’s that.”
I wrote the word carefully in my notes, as though misspelling “atropine” would cause my own numbness, dehydration, and death. “How is it given?”
“For Chanita, I can’t tell right now,” Brooks admitted. “But in the few cases I’ve worked before, the patient drank it as tea.”
“Atropine,” Lieutenant Rodriguez said, staring at the word on my pad.
“Yes, sir,” Brooks said. “You may know the plant name.”
“Which is?” I asked, pen poised.
“Deadly nightshade.”