Chapter Five
The Sierra Vista Rehab Center was located on a busy intersection only one block from an affluent residential enclave that included a country club and guarded gates . . . not quite what Grif had expected. Other than the nurses’ station and the white-tiled halls, the interior wasn’t what he expected, either, and skewed toward homey rather than institutional, or at least like an exclusive private school. As Grif and Kit followed a nurse to the head administrator’s office, he wondered how many of his preconceived notions were taken from the cinema, black-and-white flickers where wild-eyed patients were wheeled from room to room by stoic attendants, their straitjackets crisp, gazes empty, mouths slack.
He saw no such examples now, though they hadn’t been allowed into the patients’ ward, and were instead being led to the administrator’s offices, presumably for last-minute instructions on how to interact with the patients in general, or at least with Mary Margaret. It wasn’t until they were seated across from Ms. Lucinda Howard, with a wide, glossy desk looming between them, and her certificates and diplomas splayed across the wall behind her, that he realized something was wrong.
“How did you say you knew Ms. DiMartino again?”
Kit and Grif looked at each other. They hadn’t, though Ms. Howard had their visitor’s request form squared in front of her. They’d submitted it five weeks before, but had obviously left out the part about Grif’s having known Mary Margaret fifty years earlier.
“We’re old friends of the family,” Grif said instead. “Mary Margaret’s nephew, Ray DiMartino, told us where to find her.”
Ms. Howard dismissed the familial bond with a sniff. “You understand this is highly unusual. It’s rare that people outside of immediate family are allowed to interact with the patients. At least while they’re under direct care.”
“Mary Margaret doesn’t live here full-time then?” Kit posed it as a question, but she, too, already knew the answer. She was just reminding Ms. Howard that they could, and would, eventually talk to the woman. Within these walls, however, the outcome of that meeting could be observed and controlled.
“No,” Ms. Howard answered, with a tight smile. “Mary Margaret is a high-functioning patient. She had great results with our psychosocial rehabilitation program and had been living independently for over twenty months before this latest . . . incident. Your paperwork indicates you’re already aware of this, which raises the question: why?”
“Why what?” asked Grif.
“Why disturb her with questions about her past? You’re aware of her history. Yet you’re not doctors, so you can’t deal with the feelings and possible fallout that raising these issues outside of therapy might cause. Is there any particularly good reason that you might disturb the mental health of an individual who is already teetering on the brink of yet another breakdown?”
“We certainly don’t want to cause Ms. DiMartino any distress,” Kit said, leaning forward. “But we’re looking for someone who disappeared a long time ago, and she might be able to help us locate their whereabouts.”
Ms. Howard’s lips tightened like a string, and she glanced back down at the paperwork, but the top sheet gave explicit familial permission for their visit. Mary Margaret had been consulted, and accepted the appointment when Kit called the facility five days earlier, so no matter what Ms. Howard’s reservations were, there was little she could do about it now.
“Very well,” she said, standing so that Kit could see straight up her narrow nose. “I’ll see that she’s ready. You’ll be visiting in the atrium, our common area. There will be nurses there to assist you, and her, if needed.”
And she strode from the room, spine ramrod-straight, without a backward glance.
“Was that a warning?” Grif muttered, when she’d gone.
“Do we look that threatening?” Kit replied, glancing down. Grif didn’t bother looking at himself—he’d been stuck in the same clothing for more than fifty years—but since they were waiting anyway, he took the opportunity to give his partner a good once-over. They’d stopped at home after leaving the abandoned tract house, and she was now wearing a navy Japanese kimono dress that wrapped tightly across her chest and flared into an A-line skirt trimmed in red. Her bag and hoop earrings, both bamboo, matched the wedges on her feet, and the crimson flower behind her ear contrasted boldly with her onyx hair, currently tucked into a black snood pinned behind her bumper bangs.
She’s like living, breathing origami, Grif thought, studying her from toe to head. She took a new delicate shape every day.
“Well?” Kit said, when his gaze finally reached her eyes.
One corner of Grif’s mouth lifted. “I’m not scared.”
Kit snorted, but sobered quickly as Ms. Howard reentered the room. She’d been gone less than two minutes, and though Kit and Grif automatically stood, she returned to her position behind the desk, and took a seat.
“I’m sorry,” she said, folding her hands, not looking apologetic at all, “but Ms. DiMartino seems to have had a change of heart. She no longer wishes to see you. In fact, her preference is to have no visitors at all for the remainder of her stay.”
Meaning, Grif thought, don’t have her nephew call and try to convince her otherwise. The speed of Ms. Howard’s return indicated she certainly hadn’t tried.
“Did she say why?” Kit asked, hands clasped.
“She doesn’t need a reason,” Ms. Howard said, lifting her chin. “Here at Sierra Vista, we teach our patients ‘no’ is a complete sentence.”
“Of course,” Kit said quickly, though her voice was tighter now. She tried clearing it. “It’s just that we’re . . . disappointed. We were hoping she could help.”
“Ms. DiMartino’s first priority is to help herself. Frankly,” said Ms. Howard, looking pointedly at Grif, “I was surprised she agreed to see you in the first place.”
Maybe he should have given himself a good once-over, Grif thought, frowning. “Why’s that?”
“She’s not that fond of men, Mr. Shaw. She doesn’t trust them, will never abide being alone in their company, and certainly doesn’t consider them friends.”
“Strange,” Grif muttered. “She wasn’t like that when I knew her.”
“Excuse me?” Ms. Howard said, eyes narrowing sharply.
“Nothing,” Kit said quickly, and Grif shifted uncomfortably. Looking all of thirty-three years old, same as when he’d died, he certainly couldn’t explain to Ms. Howard that he’d known the now sixty-two-year-old woman when she was only twelve. “We’re just surprised her nephew didn’t say as much.”
Ms. Howard shrugged. That wasn’t her problem. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”
“Well, thank you for your time,” Kit said warmly, though Grif just stood and left.
“Why do you bother being polite to such people,” he said when Kit finally caught up to him halfway down the sterile hallway. He gave the double door leading outside a violent push. “You can’t sweeten up vinegar.”
“Because it’s not about the war, darling. It’s about the win.”
Grif stopped dead and looked at her.
Kit stared back. “That means being surly doesn’t help our cause.”
“And being polite does?” he said, resuming his stride, though his anger had deflated and his shoulders slumped.
“Of course. Ms. Howard said Mary Margaret doesn’t like men. That’s you, not me. So being polite keeps the dialogue open. She’ll be out from under Ms. Howard’s eye and thumb in just a few days. I’ll try again then.”
“I don’t know, Kit,” Grif said, reaching the passenger’s side of the car. “Maybe we should let her be. I have no idea what happened to her in the last fifty years, but some people got a reason not to remember the past. Plus, seeing me, like this . . .”
He gestured down the length of his body, indicating all of it—the suit, the shoes, the face that hadn’t aged a day in half a century.
Kit paused, the car door half-open. “Honey, she’s locked up in a mental-health facility, and drugged up to her eyeballs. And that’s when she’s not trying to drown her memories in a bottle. You really think she’s forgotten anything? Take it from someone who’s been there. Mary Margaret’s past is chasing her down.”
Kit began to climb in, but Grif held his hand up over the roof of the car. “Back up. What do you mean you’ve been there?” He pointed back at the sterile building. “You mean . . . there?”
Squinting up into the sun, she sighed. “Not Sierra Vista, but yes. One like it.”
“But you’re . . .” Grif couldn’t help it. He made a face like he’d just swallowed a bitter pill. “Cheery.”
Kit barked out a dry, humorless laugh. “Yes, and I had to make a conscious decision, and do a lot of work, to get that way. Starting when I was seventeen.”
“After your father was killed.”
Kit just nodded as she climbed in the car. Grif was slower, but only because he was putting it all together.
“That’s when the rockabilly thing started, too, right?” he said, once he’d pulled his door shut, angling his body toward hers.
“Yes,” she murmured, and Grif knew the memories were bad, because she didn’t chide him for calling her lifestyle a “thing.”
“Locked up, drugged up . . . shut up.” Though the car was silent, her hands were propped stiffly on the glossy wood of the steering wheel as if it was holding her in place. She finally looked over at him. “That’s not how I wanted to live, you know? So being cheery, as you call it, being rockabilly, and being a damned good reporter is my way of keeping the dialogue open.”
“With whom?” he asked.
She blinked at him, then said, “With the world.”
Grif simply reached out and placed his palm against her cheek.
The transformation was instant. Her hands fell to her lap, an enormous smile bloomed on her face, and a blush sent color rushing to her cheeks. He’d never met anyone who laid her emotions bare more easily than Kit. It made him want to cover her up, mostly, though lately it had started making him feel naked. So, for them both, he drew her close, held her tight, and rested his lips atop hers. He kept her there until they both were steady again.
“Don’t worry,” Kit said, glancing back to the building where Mary Margaret was hiding. “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s getting people to talk.”
As if on cue, her phone rang. Checking it, Kit smiled, then flashed him the number. Detective Dennis Carlisle’s photo flashed with it. “See?” she said cheerily, before answering it.
Grif just shook his head. Looks like they were headed to the dead house. Maybe, he mused, her communication powers extend to the deceased.
Then again, that was Grif’s beat.
The coroner’s office was housed in a building that was better-looking than most of its last-minute guests, though not by much. The brick face had clearly been laid decades earlier, though it’d been painted over so many times it looked like it was shedding its skin in the Vegas sunlight. The doors were steel, and the security guard inside had eyes of the same material. They didn’t warm even when Kit gifted him with her brightest smile.
However, he did let them pass. “Second door on the left,” he said, without emotion, and Kit mentally thanked Dennis for coming through yet again as they made their way down the peeling linoleum hall.
“Look,” she told Grif, who was back to being annoyed with her after leaving the Sierra Vista facility. “What does it hurt to ask a couple of questions?”
“Depends on who you’re questioning,” he muttered.
Kit knew he was just worried for her safety, but his tone made her want to hiss. “I seriously doubt the coroner will whack me for wanting to know what happened to some street kid in an abandoned home. But I’m so glad you’ve got my back. Just in case.”
Grif grunted, still annoyed, but held open the door to a small anterior room with the most uninspired desk she’d ever seen. A buzzer sounded behind the door opposite them, in what was likely the autopsy room. It opened a moment later, and in backed a man with fierce red hair, both too long and too short to be of any purported style. They’d obviously caught him in the middle of his work, because he was wearing scrubs, gloves, and a paper mask that cut deep indents into his flushed cheeks. His blue eyes stood out brightly against his skin, making him look wild.
“Sorry. My assistant went for coffee.” The words were wry, and Kit sympathized. Budget cuts all around. The paper was experiencing them, too.
“You the coroner?” Grif asked.
“Medical examiner.” The man stripped off a glove, held out a hand. “Dr. Charles Ott.”
Grif shoved his hands in his pockets. Kit merely brightened her smile.
Ott laughed. “They’re fresh. I’m just back from lunch.”
Kit couldn’t imagine downing a burger and then coming back to this job, but maybe that was what kept Ott so skinny. If the budget at the paper got cut too much, she might consider a career change. The autopsy room could be her key to being as svelte as Dita Von Teese.
“I’m Kit Craig,” she said, finally taking the hand, “and this is Griffin Shaw. I believe Detective Carlisle told you we were coming?”
“He did, but you should know that I prefer to work alone. Don’t like newshounds or detectives looking over my shoulder, you know?” He said it with a wink, but the words were clear enough. Don’t question my work.
“Of course,” Kit said.
The mask widened as the coroner smiled. It didn’t make him look any less crazed. “But then I got a load of the deceased and thought a little tit-for-tat might be in order.” He didn’t wait for them to agree. “I’d love to know where the hell this kid learned to make krokodil.” He pronounced it like “crocodile.”
Kit looked at Grif.
Ott motioned to the door behind him. “Come with me.”
“Should someone look that laid-back about death?” Kit whispered, edging close to Grif as they followed the coroner into the autopsy room.
“Not on this side of the Everlast,” Grif muttered, and drew her even closer.
“Excuse the mess,” Ott said, leading the way to a sheet-covered body in the room’s center. “Nobody around here cleans up after themselves.”
Har, har, thought Kit, swallowing hard as she neared the body. She averted her eyes, as if staring at the dead would be rude, her gaze scanning the long counter opposite them, and the sink rising in its middle. It was as cold and unwelcoming as Kit would’ve thought, if she’d ever really given thought to the workings of a morgue. Though the drains beneath the autopsy table were scrubbed clean, and the scale next to the body gleamed under the bright lights, Kit shuddered. Feeling her tremble, Grif gave her hand a little squeeze.
The doctor checked his hanging clipboard. “Jeap Yang . . . what kind of name is that anyway?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Age nineteen, sixty-eight inches tall, and he’s a featherweight. You know anything else about him?”
Kit looked at Grif, who shook his head, so she said, “He wanted to be a chef.”
“Well, the only thing he’s been cooking lately is poison. There are traces of heroin in his system, probably the gateway drug for this one, and a quick-and-dirty hair sample shows residual cannabis, but any cash he had lately, and I guarantee there wasn’t a lot of it, went into this drug. He’d have died even without the last few doses.” Niceties over, Ott yanked back the sheet, and pushed at Jeap’s white, mutilated arm with his fingertips. “Blood poisoning had already set in. Gangrene in several areas—the arm is only the most obvious. His groin, probably his first and most oft-used injection site, is the worst.” He rolled the sheet back even more. Kit cringed. “The drug certainly lives up to its name. It’s a f*cking beast.”
“What the hell is it, Doc?” Grif stared at the infection site, his voice tight, and his face so pale that his freckles stood out like constellations against his skin. Kit gave his hand a squeeze this time, and he glanced at her gratefully.
“Don’t feel bad,” Ott said, seeing it. “Even I haven’t seen a green scaly groin before.”
Kit blew out a hard breath. “I had an infected hangnail once, and that alone had me screaming for antibiotics.” She couldn’t imagine having an open wound on her body. Or in it.
“It’s called desomorphine,” Ott said, pushing the rotted flesh aside with his thumb. “The street name is krokodil, or ‘crocodile’ to us English speakers. It’s a Russian street drug.”
Kit drew back. “Russian?”
“I know,” he said, shaking his head. His hair bloomed like a troll doll’s. “I never thought I’d see it in my life, certainly not stateside. It’s incredibly powerful and brutally addictive.”
Kit’s own vices didn’t extend past caffeine and smokes, but she had friends who’d tried to shake off addictions before, some more successfully than others. “More powerful than heroin?”
The doctor scoffed. “A heroin substitute, but it makes powder look like a sugar high.”
“No kidding.” Grif’s mutter made him sound more like himself.
Ott shoved his fingers someplace they shouldn’t be, and the fetid smell of rot bloomed in the room. “It’s not just the symptoms, though. Necrotic skin is bad, but the withdrawal is what ambushes the user. One hit and you’re hooked, but try to quit and that’s when it really takes hold.” He glanced up. “Ever experiment with drugs?”
“No,” Grif said.
Kit shook her head. “I don’t like the feeling of being out of control.”
“Big surprise,” Grif muttered. She elbowed him.
“Well, I did,” Ott said, bending to peer at places not meant for the human gaze. He was so intent on his search that he missed Kit’s surprised frown. “Started popping pills right after med school, then gradually moved on to X, coke, heroin, meth. That’s why they don’t let me work on the living anymore, and it’s how I got into this business. Personally, I know what it’s like to be addicted. Professionally, I know what the chemicals are doing to the addict.”
“You’re very lucky to have that sort of perspective,” Kit said softly.
“You’re lucky you’re still alive,” Grif said, and Kit caught him studying the air around Ott’s body. He’d once told her that he could see the imprint near-death left on those who’d narrowly escaped it, and he read those etheric outlines as easily as a palm reader scanned a hand.
Ott’s must have been bad for Grif to mention it, and the man confirmed it with a dark, drawn nod. “My last hit was eleven years ago, and it put me down hard. The withdrawals lasted about ten days, or so they told me. I lost count.”
“I bet even an hour is like a lifetime when you’re in that kind of pain,” Kit sympathized.
He moved his shoulders, as if the memory made him uncomfortable. “And all you have to do is shoot up to make it all go away.”
“So how is krokodil different from that?” Grif asked, as Ott covered Jeap’s chest cavity.
“Other than a desperate need to keep using it even after your flesh starts decaying?” Dr. Ott blew out a breath. “Imagine that painful week of detox being extended a whole month.”
“After how long of using?” Kit asked, eyes gone wide.
“One hit,” he said grimly. “And that month of agony is non negotiable. You can’t tough it out. A colleague of mine went to Russia, did a paper on it. He said they had to tranq the patients just to keep them from passing out.”
Kit let out a low breath, gaze flicking back to the scaly sites on Jeap’s upper body. “Now the name makes sense.”
“The Russian doctors call desomorphine addicts ‘the walking dead.’ ” Ott shook his head, staring at the remains of what had once been a whole, if not perfect, boy. “The drug literally eats you alive.”
“C’mon, Doc,” Grif said, tone round with disbelief. “Surely word spreads on the street about a drug like that. If people know their flesh is going to fall from their bones, and their mind will break if they try to quit it, why would they still do it?”
Now the doctor looked amused. “Because they’re poor, Mr. Shaw. Making illegal drugs more expensive doesn’t result in fewer junkies, just more desperate ones. Come here.” He motioned Grif closer to the corpse, and when they were all as tightly gathered as they were going to get, the doctor bent low and sniffed. “Smell that? It’s acrid. Like ash if it could still burn.”
Grif looked at Kit, and she knew he wasn’t going to be sniffing anything. Kit wasn’t exactly excited about the prospect, but she was curious despite herself. The more she learned about this drug, and what it’d done to Jeap, the more ammo she had to chase down its supplier. She sniffed, and immediately pulled back. “Irritating.”
“Think how it felt to him,” the coroner said.
Hands in his pockets, Grif finally leaned over as well. “What the hell is that?”
“Iodine,” the doctor answered evenly. “And some lighter fluid, maybe some industrial-strength cleaning oil, and—most important—some over-the-counter codeine.”
Kit waved a hand like she could rewind the conversation. “Like in cough syrup?”
“Over the counter?” Grif tilted his head. “Sounds harmless.”
“That’s just the thing,” Ott said, inhaling deeply, though he appeared more fascinated than repulsed. “It’s only over the counter in Russia. You need a prescription here. And it’s not harmless once you put those things together. Then you’ve created a poison the body can’t resist.”
He gestured again at Jeap’s body, and Kit’s gaze followed the movement. The white bone of Jeap’s elbow lay exposed, perfectly formed and almost pretty through the tattered tissue.
“It’s cheap.” Kit closed her eyes to fight back the tears. And Jeap had been poor. And desperate. And in the end? Alone.
“Heroin has to be grown,” Ott said, covering the body. “Someone has to plant poppies, convert them to opium, turn that into heroin. Then they gotta transport it. None of that’s necessary with krok. It’s a synthetic, so anyone with the recipe can whip it up. Ol’ Emeril Lagasse over here probably did all this with a kitchen spoon, a lighter, and a syringe.”
“You do know a lot about it,” Grif commented.
“I wasn’t just an addict, I was an addict with access to the medical library.”
“And would you have ever done something like this?” Grif asked, jerking his head at Jeap’s destroyed remains.
“I’m lucky I didn’t have to make that choice,” Ott replied, frowning. “Krok’s relentless. Thirty minutes to cook, but only a ninety-minute high. Using this shit is a full-time job.”
One you couldn’t quit, Kit thought, breathing out again.
“See that?” Ott said, pointing at a wound that had oozed openly on the corpse’s neck.
“Least of his worries,” Grif muttered, though Kit cringed at the open sore.
“The last in a long line,” Ott confirmed. “His hands would have been shaking, either from the withdrawals or the pain. He missed the vein. That creates an immediate abscess.”
Grif fell silent. The lunch Kit forgot to have rose in her throat. Dita’s dress size, she thought dizzily, might not be out of reach after all.
“What really stumps me,” Ott went on, “is where the hell did he get the recipe?”
“Good question,” Grif said stiffly.
“Well, let me know when you get the answer.” Dr. Ott was replacing the sheet over Jeap’s face, but paused at Grif’s pointed look. He gave a humorless laugh. “Don’t worry, it’s the professional in me that wants to know. Because personally?” The doctor’s face darkened, the crazed look fell away, and his face went as dead as Jeap’s. “I’d check myself into rehab the moment I even thought about doing that.”