Page 40 of Juan

When Amber finished, Grace took a moment, no doubt sifting and sorting through the information, before speaking. “At the heart of it, in addition to the things he did to you and Zoe, which I’m sorry you went through, you think he’s somehow responsible for the deaths of nearly a dozen people? And that those deaths are drug related.”

Amber pursed her lips and nodded. “That about sums it up.”

Grace kept her eyes on Amber, but Juan sensed she was more inside her head than in the room. Then on a breath, she turned to Juliana and Kara. “And you two have some ideas about the drug?”

The women nodded, and Juliana motioned for Kara to explain. “The behavior of each of the victims—and we’re going to call them that for simplicity’s sake, even though, arguably, we don’t have proof yet—was erratic and unpredictable. As a doctor, my gut says some sort of hallucinogenic drug was introduced to their systems. A hallucination, or something edging close to it, like extreme disorientation, could explain all the behaviors. Except, possibly, the man who robbed the bank. That behavior indicates extreme suggestibility. Assuming we agree with the supposition that he neither needed the money nor had any real motive.”

“Meaning he did it because someone told him to?” Juan asked, disbelief lacing his question.

Kara inclined her head. “It’s not as far-fetched as it might seem. There are drugs, natural drugs, that leave a person awake and functioning, but not, for lack of a better phrase, operating in the real world. There are several cases in South America where substances derived from nightshade plants have been used to influence people to commit crimes.”

“Isn’t that the zombielike drug?” Mantis asked.

Kara nodded. “Not like the modern zombie drugs you’re probably used to seeing, Agent Perry—”

“Grace.”

“Grace,” Kara said. “But more ‘old-school,’ if you will. Traditionally, forms of nightshade, in tiny doses, have been used for medicinal or ceremonial purposes for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Now, scopolamine, the drug found in nightshades, is used to treat nausea.”

“And nightshade could cause these deaths?” Grace asked.

Kara shook her head, then paused. “Well, medically, it is possible to OD from the scopolamine in nightshades, but I think the deaths we’re looking at were caused by the victims’ reaction to the hallucinations.”

“In other words, the drug caused a hallucination, and the hallucination caused the victim to drive off the road or jump off the bridge. And that, rather than the drug itself, is what killed them,” Adrian said.

“That’s my belief, yes,” Kara said.

“So Anthony is getting his hands on high doses of scopolamine?” Juan asked. “From what Amber’s told us about him, I doubt he’s extracting it from the plant himself.”

“Scopolamine isn’t the only option,” Juliana said. “Plants in the datura family, which is a subgenus of nightshades, have atropine, a substance that can cause similar effects. Being nightshades, they also have scopolamine, making it a double whammy.”

“And the triple whammy is henbane, also in the nightshade family. It has scopolamine, atropine, and hyoscyamine. Each of which can have those effects at the right dosage,” Kara added.

“What’s the dosage required to cause the kind of extreme hallucinations you’re thinking? Or the suggestibility required to convince someone to rob a bank?” Juan asked.

“Small,” Grace replied. “I don’t know much about those drugs. They aren’t controlled substances, so not ones we focus on. But I remember studying them in college. If I recall correctly, less than a gram of any would do the job.”

Kara nodded. “You remember right. They are highly toxic.”

“If they aren’t controlled substances, does that mean they wouldn’t show up on a standard tox screen?” Dulcie asked.

“Standard postmortem tox screens focus on illicit or controlled substances. You’d have to specifically ask to have a test run for any of those three,” Kara replied.

“Which I’m going to take a wild guess and say didn’t happen,” Hawkeye chimed in.

“Not based on what Leo found today,” Callie replied. “He sent me what he dug up, and I can confirm that only the standard screening happened.”

“All those drugs leave the system relatively quickly, too. Although metabolism stops at death, obviously,” Kara said.

“If we were able to test one of the bodies, would we find traces?” Grace asked.

Kara’s lips thinned. “Drugs redistribute after death. It’s not a metabolic process, but a sort of dissemination of what’s left of the drug throughout the system. Whether we’d find anything depends on how much they took, the length of time between ingestion and death, and how long ago they died. Hair is the best testing option, if you can get your hands on some.”

“I doubt any of the families will let us disinter their relative. Especially not if they were involved in the death,” Juan said.

“I agree, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get evidence,” Callie said. All eyes turned to her. “The police collected all sorts of evidence after the death of Rolly Masterson’s mother. They weren’t sure if it was a crime scene, so treated it as one. I’ll ask Leo to see if they collected anything we could use.”

“We?” Grace asked.