Page 82 of Wild Fever

“You’re under arrest for the murder of Lance Wentworth and his wife,” I declared.

His face wrinkled with confusion.

“Put your hands behind your head and move away from the desk slowly.”

“There’s obviously been some kind of mistake,” he said as he complied.

Once around the desk, I told him to eat the floor. He did, and I clamped the cuffs around his wrists, then yanked him to his feet. “You have the right to remain silent…”

I marched him out of the office and down the hall, past stunned coworkers.

“I want a lawyer,” Elias said.

He may have been a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them.

Outside, I stuffed him into the back of a patrol car. He was taken to the station, processed, and printed. He’d asked for his attorney and wouldn’t be answering questions.

JD and I headed to Elias’s Stingray Bay mansion, where another team of deputies executed a search warrant. They had collected laptops, tablets, phones, and file cabinets of records. His wife looked on, horrified.

With all that evidence, Elias was surely cooked.

From there, we headed to the station and filled out after-action reports.

I got a strange call from Dr. Parker.

52

“This is going to sound weird, so bear with me,” Dr. Parker said.

"I've got a patient in here. Mid-30s, fit, otherwise healthy. He's got elevated cardiac enzymes, and liver enzymes have spiked. He's going down fast. We ran a standard tox screen and did every test in the book. I can't figure out what's going on. We had a patient a few days ago. Female, mid-20s, same thing. Couldn't figure it out. She walked out of here. In the condition she was in, she's probably dead now."

I knew exactly where this was going.

"Is there some new kind of drug on the streets? Something I'm missing?”

"There is a new drug on the street," I said, “but that's not what this is.”

"If you know what it is, please tell me, ‘cause I'm stumped. And this guy doesn't have long."

"Is the patient six feet, bald, with a face like a boxer?”

“How’d you know?”

“I'll be right there." It sounded like the guy Doug had described.

I ended the call and gave Jack a quick overview. We hustled out of the station and sped to the emergency room.

The waiting room was packed. The sickly green fluorescents cast an ominous glow over the would-be patients. There were broken bones, runny noses, and nasty coughs. The air had the antiseptic smell of bleach, alcohol swabs, and misery. This was not a place where you wanted to spend an inordinate amount of time.

I flashed my badge at the front desk. "Dr. Parker's expecting me.”

The receptionist made an announcement over the loudspeaker. "Dr. Parker to the front desk. Dr. Parker to the front desk."

A few moments later, Dr. Parker burst through the double doors and stepped into the lobby to greet us. He wore teal scrubs, and his surgical mask hung around his neck. "Care to tell me what's going on?”

“I need to see the patient’s blood work and toxicology,” I said.

Parker balked. "No. That's protected health information. I can't share that with you. I've already shared too much with you about this patient, but I'm afraid he's gonna die if I don't get some answers.”