Free The Barkeep by William Lashner

reading glasses. In Mia’s experience, cops didn’t smile like that unless they had just opened a box of doughnuts or closed a case. The lack of powdered sugar dusted on Scott’s jacket indicated the latter.
    “I’ve been babysitting Kingstree on the Flynn investigation like you told me,” said Scott. “The forensics just came in.”
    “And you’re smiling like a customer walking out of a whorehouse because I was wrong, and the case is going to be closed as an accidental overdose, and now you get to go back to your quiet little desk.”
    “No, Mia, I’m smiling because every time I step into this office and see the sign that reads CHIEF, HOMICIDE DIVISION , I remember when you first showed up in court. You were so green the sap was still dripping from your elbows. You couldn’t stop your knees from shaking. I never thought you’d last.”
    “I grew up quick.”
    “Yes, you did. And I’d almost be proud as a papa if you weren’t such a pain in the ass.”
    “Are you going to make me wait?”
    “They found a load of different prints around the house, and they’ve logged them. Most are unknown. A few match some known drug users, and Kingstree is running themdown. The place was just a step up from a shooting gallery, so there was probably loads of traffic. Kingstree doesn’t expect the prints will lead anywhere.”
    “Anything indicate Flynn had help getting his last high?”
    “The only partial print they found on the rubber tourniquet belonged to the victim. The autopsy showed no fresh bruising, no signs of a struggle of any kind. Flynn strapped himself up, slipped in the needle, injected himself, and then stopped breathing.”
    “So I was wrong.”
    “It’s hard to take, isn’t it?”
    “Is that all you’ve got?”
    “Well, there is something else. They tested the heroin our boy had bought, the Blue Star. Just as narcotics had told us, it had been cut over and again. The coroner said even something at that strength could be enough to kill—things happen to users, and all their organs weaken over time—but even so, this was a pretty mild brew.”
    “What about toxicology?”
    “More interesting. They found a level of heroin inconsistent with the quality of the Blue Star. He would have had to inject a suitcaseful of the crap he bought to get that level of intensity. But it wasn’t just that. They found something else in the blood. Fentanyl.”
    “Fentanyl?”
    “You remember a couple years back when addicts started dying all over the city and they blamed it on this new superheroin that was coming in from Mexico. They called it ‘Magic.’”
    “I remember. It was a bloodbath.”
    “A decade before, the same crap devastated the addict population of New York under the name ‘Tango and Cash.’ Itcomes in waves, this stuff, heroin with a synthetic additive that makes it way more powerful and way more dangerous.”
    “And the additive is fentanyl?”
    “That’s it. At first I wondered if someone gave him a second shot while he was nodding off from the first, so I had the coroner go over the whole body again. He squawked, but he did it, and said there was only one fresh injection site. Flynn shot this supercrap into himself.”
    “Something pure and deadly, which would be irresistible to a goner like Flynn.”
    “Except,” said Scott, “the guys in the drug lab told me there hasn’t been anything with fentanyl in the city for a couple of years.”
    “So how did Flynn get hold of it?”
    Scott tossed the file onto Mia’s desk and slumped into a chair. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
    “What do you think?”
    Scott leaned back. “I don’t know what the hell to think. I guess either the son of a bitch got lucky and somehow got his hands on this killer stuff, an addict’s dream, or he got a gift designed to kill him.”
    “Anything going on with him?”
    “Other than the Chase case? I sent Kingstree out to interview known associates. He’s grumbling, but he’s afraid of