Why not invite some thug to break in, just send out an engraved invitation? she says, and that’s rather much what she’s doing on live TV. Next, we’re shown images of the big plyboard-covered window at the back of her house, and I would agree that it’s an unacceptable vulnerability.
She’s right to feel unsafe. Were it me, I’d live elsewhere for a while or at least have someone staying with me. For sure I wouldn’t draw attention to my situation by holding a press conference that not so accidentally is accompanied by protesters marching through my neighborhood.
“What she’s doing is really unfortunate. Reckless, actually,” I remark as the coverage plays on my phone. “And yes, that’s too bad about her window. But it’s a sad fact of life that if you want evidence properly tested, it’s usually not going to be convenient or pretty.”
As much crime as the TV journalist covers, she certainly knows that. I speak my mind to Benton even as Dana speaks hers on camera.
“。 . . Meaning some serial killer can come back with a hammer, pull out the nails and let himself in . . . ,” she’s saying.
All to intimidate her into silence or get her murdered, she goes on convincingly until I can’t listen anymore.
“Talk about giving someone ideas.” I end the video file. “And making everything about herself, I’m sorry to say.”
“Just what nobody needs right about now,” Benton agrees.
FOLLOWING THE GEORGE WASHINGTON Memorial Parkway along the river, we’ve avoided Dana Diletti’s neighborhood and the problems that go with it.
We’re just south of the airport, not far from Daingerfield Island, and I text Maggie to e-mail me the Cammie Ramada case. I also want the hard copy waiting on my desk when I get there.
Why, is there a new development? My secretary answers with an outrageous question.
Just do it, please, I text her back, adding that hopefully she’ll still be there by the time I arrive, and it’s more an order than a hope.
“How far out are we?” I ask Benton.
“Ten minutes, knock on wood.”
I pass this along to my overreaching secretary as Rex Bonetta texts me back, and I call him. Right away my chief toxicologist lets me know that we can’t yet identify the presumed opioid that could have killed a lot of people including me. They’ve screened for everything they can to no avail.
“In other words, I’m frustrated,” he says over speakerphone. “And I’m not feeling terribly optimistic, Kay. The testing could take a very long time when there’s no clue what we might be looking for. Or if it’s some new drug we don’t have an assay for, and that’s what I suspect.”
The possibilities for synthetic opioids are as endless as the number pi, as limitless as a chemist’s imagination. All that’s required is changing a single molecule, and fentanyl isn’t fentanyl anymore. The same with carfentanil, methadone and other drugs created primarily for pain relief.
“You lose or gain a hydrogen, a carbon, a nitrogen molecule,” Rex is saying. “Or add an extra bang for the user’s buck like designer benzodiazepines, and the drug screen’s going to miss it.”
That makes continued testing extremely difficult. At times it’s more like a crapshoot as toxicologists try to keep up with the latest potentially deadly spinoff.
“I’m worried that whatever we’re dealing with may have hit in the U.S. and is in the Northern Virginia area,” Rex says. “Possibly the greater D.C. area.”
Three deaths came in today that he’s pretty sure are opioid-related, and this is the first I’ve heard of them. But the drug screen in each was negative except for methadone in one case.
“A recovering heroin addict found dead in an alleyway near a methadone clinic in west Alexandria,” he explains. “I’m wondering if what we’re up against might be the same thing your wine was laced with. A new derivative of something like fentanyl that comes up negative.”
“That’s a disturbing thought,” I reply as Benton turns us inland toward my headquarters, picking up U.S. 1.
“It sure is if your bottle of Bordeaux was tampered with in Europe”—Rex’s voice over speakerphone—“and the same drug has followed you home to Virginia.”
“Or if the tampering was done here to begin with,” I add, a far worse thought for me personally as I wonder how that might have happened. “Some new deadly designer drug.”
I think of what Officer Fruge told me about being at a scene last week, using up all her Narcan reviving multiple people who had overdosed.