The Grim Ripper (A Ripple Effect Mystery, Book 8) by Jeanne Glidewell

Author:Jeanne Glidewell [Glidewell, Jeanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ePublishing Works!

TWELVE

Although the idea of dumpster-diving didn’t sound too appealing to me, I knew it had to be done before the bin was emptied. Dr. Murphy had told me the trash trucks both came on Thursday mornings and it was currently Wednesday afternoon. I walked out the front door and turned right to follow the sidewalk around the clinic. The concrete walkway stopped on the east side of the three-story building constructed out of Austin limestone and a well-worn path in the grass took its place. The Kentucky bluegrass lawn was in need of mowing, I noticed.

I continued to follow the path around to the back of the structure. It didn’t take me long to find the dumpster Dr. Murphy had mentioned. The trailer it was stashed behind was huge and had “Mobile MRI unit” spelled out across its entire side. I was discouraged to discover the only way to see what was inside the dumpster was to climb up the side of it and lower myself down onto a mountain of rubbish, which I reluctantly did. The contents amassed in the trash bin were a disgusting mixture: used bed pans, uneaten food from patients’ meal trays, a dirty diaper I stepped on. At that point, I nearly added fresh vomit to the dumpster’s nauseating contents.

Just as I was about to call it quits because I wasn’t sure locating the cookie bag was worth what I had to go through to find it, I spotted a paper bag. Confident the bag would have “M.M.” scribbled on the front of it, I grasped it with my right hand. When a brown, furry spider crawled out of the bag within an inch of my index finger, I flung the bag as hard as I could at the inside wall of the metal trash container. Just a nanosecond before the bag made contact with the dumpster’s interior wall, a bottle flew out, shattering into a zillion pieces. The dark inky liquid inside the bottle spewed out like a carbonated drink that’d been violently shaken up before the tab was pulled back. Startled, I yelped in reaction to the exploding glass container and ensuing fountain of black fluid.

Clearly, it was not the brown paper bag I’d been searching for but I was concerned about the black inky liquid now covering the front of my red and white shirt. I saw that most of the label previously attached to the bottle was still intact and picked it up to read it. The label read, “Gadolinium Contrast Medium, 50 ml.”

I decided I’d better utilize the internet to find out what “Gadolinium Contrast Medium” meant. I was startled to find out the bottle had contained fifty milliliters of a toxic chemical substance found in the dye used to add contrast in magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI scans. Undoubtedly, it’d been pitched into the dumpster by someone working in the mobile MRI unit parked in front of the dumpster. Perhaps the substance had expired, or been compromised in some way.

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