Irish Throwdown (What Happens In Vegas Book 4) by Matt Lincoln (short books for teens .TXT) 📕

nearly November now and unusually cold for Las Vegas. Of course, this meant that more people were getting seasonal bugs. As I stepped through the front door of my apartment, I desperately hoped that we were wrong about the cough syrup being the source of the new drug.

The traffic on my way to work that morning was slightly lighter than usual since I was heading in two hours early. As a result, I made it to the office with time to spare.

I could feel the tense atmosphere as soon as I stepped into the office. Junior and Fiona were already there and were gathered in the bullpen with Wallace and Nelson.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, though I suspected I already knew the answer.

“Agent Howard confirmed that the bottles both contained illicit substances,” Wallace answered gravely. “The same drugs that were identified in Dominick Evans’s toxicology report, as well as a few others that metabolized before we were even able to detect them. Those bottles are a veritable cocktail of so many drugs. It’s astounding that Simone Montague is alive right now.”

“Miranda did say that she was in really rough shape,” Fiona muttered. “That poor woman.”

I turned toward the door as I heard the keypad’s telltale beep. Miranda and Naomi stepped inside, laden down with cups of coffee and a box of doughnuts.

“Good morning!” Miranda called. “We got coffee.”

“I’m surprised everyone is here so early,” Naomi commented as she glanced around the room. “We thought that everyone might appreciate a bit of caffeine given the early hour.”

“Oh, no,” Miranda scowled as she stepped closer and noticed our grim expressions. “It’s the cough medicine, isn’t it? Damn.”

“It is,” Nelson nodded.

“So, what is this then?” Miranda asked angrily as she slammed the box of doughnuts onto the nearest desk. Naomi did the same with the coffee, though significantly more gently. “Some kind of modern-day version of the Tylenol Murders of Nineteen-Eighty-Two?”

“That is a possibility,” Wallace nodded. “Though it would be nearly impossible. After that case, the FDA put extreme measures in place to ensure it would never happen again. Plastic seals and cotton balls are used now for that very reason. We would have heard by now if people were finding bottles of cough syrup with broken seals.”

“That means the bottles were laced at the factory, then,” Junior asserted. “If the seals were intact, then that means the drugs were added before they made it to the store.”

“Which means that a lot of planning and premeditation went into this,” Nelson replied. “It also means that we now know for certain that there are bottles of over-the-counter medicine circulating around Las Vegas which contain lethal substances. What do we do about that?”

The seven of us fell silent. We needed to let the public know what was happening to prevent them from accidentally taking the drug. To do that, we would need to have the company issue a recall.

“I don’t want to cause a panic,” Wallace sighed. “But I’m afraid that the best course of action here would be to hold a press conference. We need to get this information out as quickly as possible to keep people safe. Chapman and Hills, I’m going to have you head out to each perp’s home to look for and retrieve the bottles as soon as I get the list of addresses from the police. Nelson, schedule a press conference for as soon as possible. Gardner, I need you to begin tracking down the stores the bottles were purchased from and the supplier that each store uses. Patel and Castillo, stand by until we get more leads. I have a feeling we’re going to get busy as soon as word of this gets out.”

After issuing orders to each of his agents, Wallace retreated to his office to make a phone call. Nelson similarly headed into his own office to begin the preparations to hold a press conference.

“Guess I’m off too, then,” Fiona sighed as she plucked one of the doughnuts from the box on her way to her office. “Thanks for these, by the way.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I parroted as I took one of the doughnuts and a cup of coffee. Despite Miranda’s earlier aggressive treatment, they all appeared to be in one piece. The coffee had cooled off a little, but the surge of caffeine was still welcome.

“Why would someone do this?” Miranda muttered as she snatched one of the doughnuts out of the box and began to tear pieces off it. I’d never seen anyone eat a doughnut that violently before. She looked equal parts shell-shocked and furious.

“No one ever figured out who was behind the Tylenol Murders, either,” Junior replied as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Some people speculated that it was a way to murder someone without the police being able to pin down a single suspect. The perp killed his real target, then poisoned a bunch of other people to make it look random.”

“Do you think that’s what’s happening here?” Naomi asked as she delicately took one of the doughnuts out of the box.

“I don’t know,” Junior shook his head. “It was only ever a theory, after all. In the end, no one was ever charged, and the case is still considered unsolved.”

“We can’t let that happen,” Miranda fumed before taking a long swig of coffee. “We can’t just let whoever did this walk away scot-free like what happened in the eighties.”

“We won’t,” I assured her. “We have better technology than we did back then. Fiona’s in her office right now tracing where those bottles came from. And we have better investigative techniques. We’ll find who did this.”

I was so angry I could barely conceal my rage, but I knew I needed to keep it together to do my job.

“Hills, Chapman,” Wallace called as he left his office and reentered the bullpen. “I have the list of addresses here. Go and collect the bottles and get them back here as quickly as you can. The sooner we have all of them, the sooner