Deadly Messengers (28 page)

This morning, Kendall had received an urgent commission for a large health and beauty website:
How to create luscious, movie star lips without plastic surgery
. As much as she wanted to continue her pursuit of the SSRI story, this commission was urgent, and the site always paid within seven days.

Kendall stared at the three lines she’d written, trying to force her muse into a more productive space. Not so long ago, this had been easy terrain. Now the topic seemed like mulch, like something you pack around the base of a plant to keep it moist, something containing a lot of shit.

She’d changed in these past three weeks, her only goal before was paying her rent. She’d never set out to change the world or write a Pulitzer Prize-winning article when she took that first commission and happened upon Beverley Sanderson. She’d just needed the money.

Be reliable. Be no trouble. Get the house-style right.
That was Kendall Jennings, freelance writer. Now she cared about the impact her stories had on people and on the world. She’d lost the desire to write this piece and was about to stand and take a walk to encourage inspiration when her phone alerted her she had a message.

It wasn’t a message, though, but a reminder the rent was due.

She logged into her bank account and stared at the balance. Her car payment had just been automatically withdrawn. So, too, a payment for the MacBook Air she’d bought on credit, telling herself it increased her productivity.

The three-digit figure stared boldly back at her as though it were proud of its impact on her mood. She felt ashamed that, as much as she wanted to believe in morals and changing the world, the reality of life came down to that number and the fact it was so small. That number controlled her life.

She logged out of her account, put down her phone, and began to type. Somewhere out there she hoped lived someone whose life would be changed by luscious lips, because luscious lip tips were all she had for the world. Luscious lips paid bills.

She began to type:

If you’ve ever wanted Angelina Jolie’s lips, you might be surprised how easy they are to attain. Celebrity beautician to the stars, Amber Wakley, shares her secrets—

It was enough to cause depression. After digesting Doug McKinley’s report and even after her own research, she still couldn’t face living each day without her own pick-me-up pills. Occasionally, she needed a little help with the day.

Kendall wished she could close her file and work on sharing Doug McKinley’s revelations, but they would need to wait. He’d waited years to get his message out into the world; a few more days surely wouldn’t matter.

She breathed deeply and continued to type.

The right color lipstick, as well as enhancing your look, can even change your mood. Don’t stay down, get some color in your life …

DOUG McKINLEY WATCHED THE GIRL from across the street. He’d been patient. He’d waited a very long time and what had it gained him? Patience was a price afforded only to the young.

He’d worked at this for so long, he’d almost forgotten what it was he really wanted to happen. Had he wanted justice? Had he wanted to stop the inevitable? Had he wanted to assuage his guilt over the past? After everything, all the sacrifice, the waters had become muddied. With each new headline piercing his skin like a rusty needle, he’d begun to wear each death on his soul as a symbol of failure.

Here, after all his work, was his best chance of forcing them to listen. He’d done everything right. After discovering the drug, creating his plan, he’d chosen his seeds carefully.

Sometimes he wondered at his strength in taking action. While most people dreamed and wished, and paid lip service to a cause, he actually had the courage to move forward.

The police, the media, anyone watching, had all they needed to solve the puzzle and save countless lives. When they hadn’t, he surmised it was the money.
The drug money
, as he thought of it. Even though they were legal drugs, they still spread misery and disaster, as if they were heroin or crystal meth.

If it wasn’t money causing the authorities to ignore the obvious, then it was the population’s desensitization to violence. Murders, now so frequent, rarely made the front page, only remaining headlines for a day or so even if they did. Terrorists, with their beheadings and random urban attacks, now filled the dark imagination of the populace and installed themselves as the modern-day boogeymen. A whole generation took it as normal to be frisked and forced to remove their shoes at an airport gate, to be treated like they were the enemy for simply taking a holiday.

What everyone ignored was a neighbor, a work colleague, a teenager, a parent, or relative could be incubating a time bomb in the form of a chemical reaction to a commonly used drug. Maybe their ignorance stemmed from the perpetrators rarely surviving to face the legal system. Defense lawyers might have put it together, deducing eventually their clients
were
innocent, that it was the drugs that should stand accused, the pharmaceutical giants lining their coffers with blood money, the guilty parties.

Maybe the government did know, but the drugs served a greater purpose in keeping young soldiers fighting. What a perfect scenario, no? Scarred souls, returning from horrors no man should see, needing respite, were instead stuffed full of these anti-depressants and simply sent back. When they were no longer of use, the poor boys were left, addicted to the chemicals, their violence switch resting on standby.

Since Kendall Jennings had found him, the idea luck had intervened inhabited his thoughts. She seemed perfect. Her naive enthusiasm was the polar opposite to the other journalists he’d approached. He’d hoped she would take up the cause and run with his story. He’d prayed for it, in fact.

He’d checked the papers every day. Her articles on the killings ran for over a week. Then nothing. She hadn’t been in contact with him again, no doubt having moved on to something else, like every other journalist he’d met had done.

She wasn’t the first. He’d sent his research to so many, but he’d barely caught a nibble. Some small articles, amounting to sweet nothing, were all he’d managed. One writer, who’d won some kind of award, who could have helped him so much, wrote a malicious story painting him as some kind of obsessed, depressed survivor. Then a keen documentary filmmaker, who couldn’t get funding, came and went. A senator made some noise in the capitol—before his enthusiasm disappeared behind a deal on a medical insurance bill.

A few years ago, a friend’s son built him a simple website. Ever since, he’d posted his research up there. The Internet was the great leveler, the boy had told him. One person could do so much, if their message caught on and it went viral. He just didn’t know how to
go viral
. He was old school from a time when viral was something you caught that put you in bed.

Then the hate emails came.
Anti-depressants save lives,
they wrote.
What did he have against the mentally ill?
Ordinary people needed these drugs just to get through the day. Who was he to judge and cast aspersions?

He wrote responses trying to explain. Fuel on the fire, they just escalated to nastier vitriol. The irony being, he, more than most, understood depression and sorrow and living days that felt longer than a year.

After writing to every drug company selling these killer-makers, he received replies which, ultimately, were variations on:
“Our studies do not suggest your conclusions are valid.
” Or
“All side-effects are listed on accompanying instructions.”

He’d read every label. Not one was stamped with: “May create murderous tendencies.”

There seemed an impenetrable wall around the truth, and no matter how much he threw, he couldn’t dislodge a single brick. Innocent people would continue to die because he had failed to find a way to share the truth.

Innocent people like his son.

Charlie would be thirty-six this year. Every time Doug stood over his son’s grave, his heart still bled. He cried as he stared at the stone memorial that shouldn’t exist. Charlie should still be alive, enjoying his life. Doug might have even been a grandparent by now. Between the tears, he always made Charlie a promise. He hadn’t died in vain and, as his father, he swore to find a way to stop this poison in their midst.

Doug tried hard; he tried everything. But he couldn’t keep his promise. The massacres kept on happening. Every two weeks, somebody, somewhere, went crazy and took four or more people with them. He’d almost given up, except, one day he found a way. Initially it seemed inconceivable.

Once he understood he would need to take lives himself, he’d cried. He didn’t think he’d have the strength to do it. In the end, he consoled himself with the idea innocent people would die anyway. This way, at least, they weren’t dying in vain. The drug companies justified their drugs’ use by stating the good done outweighed the side effects. Ironically, this became his motto.

Three massacre clusters in one city were all he thought necessary to incite an investigation. He’d imagined the police and government agencies stretching their thin red strings across a board, suddenly seeing all roads led to SSRI drugs.

Three had not been the number.

Every time he thought about his failure, his stomach churned. He would need to act again.

He had other problems, too.

The drug, key to his plan, was almost gone. He’d only reckoned on needing three doses. Luckily, his frugality had saved enough for one more dose. This was his very last chance to send his message. This time he couldn’t fail. Failing meant Charlie died for nothing. He wouldn’t have that.

The more he thought about it, the more he trusted his change of plan. It seemed perfect. This time it
would
work. Even though You23 had found a candidate, this would put the odds even more in his favor.

Kendall Jennings hadn’t done her job anyway.
She
should have delivered his message through a story. Now she would deliver it in person.

He continued to watch the writer as she sat sipping coffee, life bustling about her. Had she swallowed her little pill pick-me-ups with her coffee? Little pick-me-ups, she’d called them, when she’d innocently shared her secret; she, also, one of the millions using anti-depressants.

“Don’t tell anyone, I had no idea of the dangers,”
she’d said. Now she would see first hand, how dangerous.

He hoped, no, he
believed
, shortly the headlines would display those same words—danger and anti-depressants. All he needed was to stay straight and true for a short time longer. In reality, he had zero choice. Doug McKinley wasn’t just out of the drug he needed. He was also out of time.

O’GRADY FELT UNEASY AS TRIP and he traveled in the elevator toward the third floor, to Kendall Jennings’ apartment. Trip seemed overly excited to be seeing her again. All O’Grady wanted was to get this done and get back to the real job. Trip wanted to be here and, sometimes, you indulged a partner.

O’Grady planned to ensure this wouldn’t be the casual visit Trip might imagine. He intended to ascertain file author’s name from her without messing around. Then if Trip wanted to play Romeo, he would leave them to it. He hoped this Jennings woman showed her true colors sooner, rather than later, so Trip would see what he saw. She could then go graze in another paddock.

He’d read a chunk of the file, but he wasn’t convinced. It read like
worked
data
, statistics with an ulterior motive. Departmental analysis systems worked in a similar fashion. Solving cases was one part skill and knowledge, one part luck, and one part criminal stupidity. Those in management still liked to make up these screwed-up statistics to tell them how cases
should
run. Departmental stats came down to a stick or a carrot and matching numbers with some hypothetical super cop.

At Kendall Jennings door, they stood in silence, side by side. O’Grady contemplated the odd coincidence this apartment block was so near to the original mass killing at Café Amaretto. Then again, everything was odd about these cases.