Do No Harm by Christina McDonald

Author:Christina McDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2021-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

NATE HUNG up after updating Agent Hamilton on what he knew about the case so far, which was damn near nothing. Hamilton and Greene weren’t happy, Chief O’Neill and Dyson weren’t happy, and Mayor Walker sure as hell wasn’t going to be happy when she heard that he had basically zilch on this case.

He leaned back in his chair and stared at the computer on his desk. The clock said 8:45 a.m. Fifteen minutes until his meeting with the mayor. Dread lodged firmly in his throat.

Muriel Walker was a former district attorney who’d won that office on the strength of a campaign to reduce homelessness back in 2012. She’d ridden the success of that campaign up the chain to become mayor last year, promising to fix the oxycodone problem in the region.

Now that there’d been four more oxy overdoses in the last two days, it had become a priority to find out why there’d been such an increase on the streets, who was distributing it, and how fentanyl had gotten introduced into the mix. Nate had to deliver an update on Santiago Martinez’s murder and how it fit into the wider drug distribution in the area. If only he had something new to tell her.

Nate unwrapped his eighth Bit-O-Honey. He savored the honey-flavored taffy, enjoying the tug and pull on his teeth. He let it dissolve in his mouth before slugging it down with a mouthful of lukewarm coffee. Ahhh, sugar and coffee. The breakfast of champions.

When Nate was a kid, his dad used to keep a bag of Bit-O-Honey in his police car, sneaking them to Nate whenever he’d come on a ride-along. He felt horrible that he hadn’t kept his recent promise to his mom to visit. He didn’t want to tell her how difficult he found it.

His dad had been a good man, a larger-than-life father and husband, an honorable and noble cop. Once Nate remembered seeing Matt coming out of a motel parking lot in Seattle. Matt had told him he was checking on a woman and a little girl after a domestic. Nate had felt proud that his dad went the extra mile for victims. That he cared.

Seeing him the way he was now, a shriveled ghost of his former self, sickened Nate. Self-loathing howled inside his head.

You’re a bad person.

You’re cowardly. Weak.

Nobody can trust you.

Nate looked at his bloodied fingernails and longed for the familiar sharp thorn of the toothpick. The phone on his desk rang.

“Detective Sweeney, this is Dr. Kathi Morris at Cascade Regional.”

The pathologist. “Yes, hi, Dr. Morris.”

“I received the tox screen back from Violeta Williams. I’ve emailed you the results, but thought I’d give you a call as well. The cause of death was ruled combined toxic effects of fentanyl and cocaine. The chemical structure of this particular type of fentanyl is quite unique, however. The precursor chemical is something called NPP, N-phenethyl-4-piperidinone, but there’s also a small amount of MDMA mixed in.”

Nate flipped through the files on his desk and pulled out the autopsy report he’d received on Santiago Martinez a few days back.

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