Tuesday Tales: From the Word MUD

Good day, and welcome to this week’s Tuesday tales, the blog post where a small but select group of authors share scene from their works in progress with you. Each week, we are given a word or picture prompt to use. This week, that word is MUD and we are limited to 400 words.

I continue with The White Dahlia, Book Four of the Harvester Files.

“Could you be more cryptic?” Beth’s voice was laced with sarcasm. She stood and paced as Al had done.

“I’m not trying to confound the issue, but so far the findings are as clear as mud. I need to be sure before I say anything. There was scopolamine in her system, dating back maybe two years,” she added, the weight of the word forcing Beth to sit.

“Are you saying he used the same method to get her to go with him that James Colchester did?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying, but it’s possible—and if he did that, then maybe he did the rest of it, too. We both know there are still people out there who know James’s M O better than BPD and the FBI did. Someone had to provide him with the drug. Chad promised they would keep looking for the missing Colchesters, but it’s been six years … The victim also had other drugs in her system, some I haven’t been able to identify yet and others that I recognize from those confiscated from White Iris Pharmaceuticals. Do you understand what that means? It means someone who worked on developing those drugs is still out there. They weren’t stolen from a warehouse or misplaced. I helped the DEA and the CDC inventory that place. Those drugs were destroyed. I watched the batches go into the incinerator myself. So how the hell did they get into her system?”

Beth swallowed, her blood turning cold.

“Are you sure? Is it possible some other drug company discovered them, too?”

“Believe what you want to. Drugs have unique signatures. I compared my findings to my old files. They match perfectly, and that doesn’t happen when drugs come from different companies. There were drugs in that place that most of us had never seen—drugs designed to keep someone in a coma far more potent than what we currently use, and I found some of those damn things in Rachel’s hair analysis. There were lots of vitamin supplements, including folic acid, and some coagulants as well as warfarin and other anticoagulants. It’s as if she was someone’s damn science experiment. Even Dr. Mengele, the Angel of Death, didn’t go this far. I’ve taken a slice of her brain to analyze for fetal microchimerism.”

“My God!” The words exploded from her as her stomach churned. “You think it’s them, don’t you?”

That’s it. Stay safe and don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales.