“Hypnotic,” I said. “What’s missing is something to put the crowd into a receptive mental state, something that, you know, works with the music and everything else to make them suggestible in the right way.”
“Marijuana,” Vince said. “It always gives me the munchies.”
“Shit,” I said as a small memory popped into my head.
“No, shit wouldn’t do it,” Vince said. “And it tastes bad.”
“I don’t want to hear how you know what shit tastes like,” I said. “Where’s that book of DEA bulletins?”
I found the book, a large, three-ringed notebook into which we put all the interesting notices sent to us by the DEA. After leafing through it for just a few minutes I got to the page I remembered. “There,” I said. “This is it.”
Vince looked where I pointed. “Salvia divinorum,” he said. “Hey, you think so?”
“I do,” I said. “Speaking from a purely inductive-logic standpoint.”
Vince nodded his head, slowly. “Maybe you should say, ‘Elementary’?” he said.
“It’s a relatively new thing,” I told Deborah. She sat at the table in the task force room with me, Vince, and Deke standing behind her. I leaned over and tapped the page in the DEA book. “They just made salvia illegal in Dade County a couple of years ago.”
“I know what the fuck salvia is,” she snapped. “And I never heard of it doing anything but making people stupid for five minutes at a time.”
I nodded. “Sure,” I said. “But we don’t know what it might do in incremental doses, especially combined with all this other stuff.”
“And for all we know,” Vince added, “it doesn’t really do anything. Maybe somebody just thought it was cool to mix it in there.”
Deborah looked at Vince for a long moment. “Do you have any idea how fucking lame that sounds?” she said.
“Guy in Syracuse smoked some,” Deke said. “He tried to flush himself.” He looked at the three of us staring at him and shrugged. “You know, in the toilet.”
“If I lived in Syracuse, I’d flush myself, too,” Deborah said. Deke held up both hands in an eloquent whatever gesture.
“Ahem,” I said, in a valiant attempt to keep us on topic. “The real point here is not why they used it, but that they did use it. Considering the size of the crowd, they used a lot of it. Probably more than once. And if somebody is using it in quantities that large—”
“Hey, we should find the dealer easy,” Deke said.
“I can do the fucking math,” Deborah snapped. “Deke, get over to Vice. Get a list of the biggest salvia dealers from Sergeant Fine.”
“I’m on it,” Deke said. He looked at me and winked. “Show a little initiative here, right?” he said. He cocked a finger-pistol at me and dropped the thumb. “Boom,” he said, smiling as he turned away, and as he sauntered out the door he very nearly collided with Hood, who pushed past him and came over to our little group with a very large and unattractive smirk on his face.
“You are in the presence of greatness,” he said to Debs.
“I am in the presence of two nerds and an asshole,” Debs said.
“Hey,” Vince objected. “We’re not nerds; we’re geeks.”
“Wait’ll you see,” Hood said.
“See what, Richard?” Debs said sourly.
“I got these two Haitians,” he said. “Guaranteed to fucking make your day.”
“I hope so, Richard, because I really fucking need my day made,” Deborah said. “Where are they?”
Hood went back and opened the door and waved at somebody out in the hall. “In here,” he called, and a group of people began to file in past him as he held the door.
The first two were black and very thin. Their hands were fastened behind them with handcuffs, and a uniformed cop pushed them forward. The first prisoner was limping slightly, and the second was sporting an eye that was swollen almost shut. The cop gently pushed them over to stand in front of Deborah, and then Hood stuck his head back in the hall, looked both ways, apparently spotted something, and called, “Hey, Nick! Over here!” And a moment later, one last person came in.
“It’s Nichole,” she said to Hood. “Not Nick.” Hood smirked at her, and she shook her head, swirling a shining mass of dark and curly hair. “In fact, for you, it’s Ms. Rickman.” She loo