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“We’ll just have to hope he comes back,” Arnett said. “I need food.”
“I need caffeine,” Jo said. “I meant to order coffee before we left Starbucks.”
“Sal’s has Diet Coke.” He threw her a sideways glance. He was supposed to be cutting back on his meatball-grinder intake, and he knew Jo knew it.
“You can always get one of their grilled-chicken salads,” she said.
“You can always get a tall ice water,” he retorted.
“Hey, you don’t have to get nasty about it.” She laughed and threw up her hands in surrender. “I just have to be able to tell Laura I tried.”
After a satisfying half hour with their sandwiches and sodas, they headed back to HQ, beelining for Marzillo’s office in the lab.
“Any updates?” Jo said.
“By which you mean, have I had time to look at the Lyndak file you sent me?” Marzillo said, eyes on her monitor as she entered something via the keyboard.
“We know you have a thousand things on your plate,” Jo said. “No pressure.”
Marzillo half-smiled, finished what she was doing, then pulled the file up on her monitor. “I noticed you were uncharacteristically vague regarding what you wanted me to look at, so I assume you want me blind to whatever hypothesis you have about Louisa’s death.”
“Can’t get anything by you.” Arnett eased himself down into one of Marzillo’s empty chairs.
“Standard disclaimer. I’m not an ME—”
“But you worked with them closely enough for long enough to be helpful,” Jo short-circuited.
Marzillo raised her brows. “I double-checked a couple of things with one of the MEs I used to work with back in the eighteen hundreds. For the most part, it looks like Louisa died of an overdose. Heroin laced with xylazine.”
“For the most part?” Jo asked.
“There’s this.” She pointed to one of the numbers on the toxicology report. “The level of xylazine is much higher than I’d expect to see in this sort of an overdose, where street drugs are laced with tranq. Of course, the levels we see vary from month to month, so I verified with my contact. She agreed, even given the variation she’s seen over the last year, this is much higher than what she’d expect.”
“Which means what?” Jo said.
“That’s where it gets even trickier. Could be she took several hits, and that drove the level up. Could be she was playing with xylazine on her own, and took too much. Either way, it’s strange.” Marzillo turned from the monitor. “So, what is it you think happened?”
“We had an informant insinuate she was murdered. Possibly related to Mob activity,” Jo said. “If she’s right, that would mean somebody purposefully administered a dose of xylazine that was meant to kill her.”
Marzillo wagged her head. “The results here are consistent with that. The problem is they’re consistent with several other possibilities, too.’
“Understood,” Jo said. “Thanks for taking a look at it when you’re already so busy.”
Marzillo gave a quick nod. “Whatever it takes to catch this killer.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-EIGHT
Julia stepped on the gas pedal as soon as the crosslight turned red. She absolutely could not show up late.
A notification buzzed the burner phone. She glanced quickly at it, keeping her eyes off the road for only a second. A text from Rick. Thank God—she needed a little positivity right now. What she really needed was to feel his arms around her and his heart beating under her cheek, but for now fleeting texts would have to do.
At the next red light, she grabbed the phone and read the text.
I have a plan so we can see each other.
Her heart sped, but she clamped down on the response—there wasn’t any point getting worked up about something that couldn’t happen. She tapped the screen to put through a call to him.
“Hello, my love.” His voice brimmed with optimism. “I didn’t expect you to call, but I’m glad you did.”
