The Shack: An Unstoppable Man

She thrust the bag at Pamela. "Take it! Quick!"

Pamela staggered back with the bag, and that word - "consequences" - lit up in huge neon letters as Delaney turned back to the door, dropped to her knees and clasped her hands behind her head.

I figured that had to a bad fucking sign if there ever was one.

Two state troopers burst through the door, guns drawn. They brought up short as they saw their prey waiting docilely. Then, to their credit, both officers froze and slowly lowered their weapons as they realized they'd walked into a scene from a zombie apocalypse.

"Do you have Narcan training?" It'd been a long time, but I barked it out in that special tone senior NCOs in militaries all over the world adopt. Nobody ever formally trains you on it, but every senior NCO figures it out.

The smaller trooper straightened up at the tone. Probably a former Soldier or Marine; he was young enough for it to be pretty recent. "Yes, sir."

"Then start helping. Pamela, point cases out in triage order. We need to handle this and get them shipped off to County ASAP before the Narcan wears off on the first few cases, or we're going to have a shitload of dead bodies on our hands."

I looked at my youthful ward, who was carefully keeping her face as neutral as possible. "Delaney, I don't think they're going to shoot you right now. Get a couple doses and get over here. Maybe they can find time to shoot you later."

Delaney stood up slowly and warily, but as the troopers holstered their weapons, she relaxed. The smaller trooper started calling for reinforcements over his radio.

Two more troopers and three deputies showed up within a few minutes, and then the ambulances started rolling in. It still took almost an hour and a half to get everything under complete control and see the last of the patients loaded into an ambulance.

I stood in front of the clinic, watching the last of the ambulances leave and looked over the row of police cars. Delaney walked tiredly out and stood next to me. "That was cool."

"We did some good today. Maybe we balanced out some karma."

She smiled in a very self-satisfied way, and we stood there for a moment.

There was something missing. "Delaney?"

"Yeah?"

"Where's my car?" I didn't even look down at her.

"Oh. Yeah." Her voice deflated just a bit.

"Yeah, what?"

"It's at the sheriff's."

"Does this have anything to do with why I see three deputies but four cruisers?"

"Sally doesn't have lights and a siren." She made it sound completely reasonable.

"I know that."

"And I kinda figured they'd already have a BOLO out on Sally after I blew through the state trooper's speed trap on the way to the department."

"So your answer was to steal a cruiser."

She shrugged, and we watched the sheriff's gold Tahoe slide up to the clinic. He got out and started toward us but was intercepted by his deputies and the troopers immediately. We just stood and watched as he occasionally shot us glances.

"What do you suppose they're talking about?" Delaney managed to keep a straight face.

"You never know. Could be talking about the football game last night. Maybe."

"It's not football season, is it?"

"Nope."

She sighed. "If I go to jail, I should immediately beat up the biggest baddest prisoner, right?"

"Well, yeah, that's one way to establish dominance, but you won't have to. Most of the time, the other inmates can smell the crazy ones and stay away from them."

"Soooo, I should act crazy?"

"Just be yourself, Cupcake. Be yourself."

I could see the sheriff shake his head and give a long-suffering sigh before walking over. He looked down at Delaney. "The troopers are currently disinclined to pursue the speeding, reckless driving, and a half dozen other almost-certainly justified charges. Their watch commander feels that it would probably reflect badly on their department when the whole story came out. And they are frankly uncertain as to whether their radar guns were properly calibrated due to the improbably high speeds recorded thereon."

Delaney gave a disturbingly wide smile.

He shook his head again. "There is the matter of the sudden disappearance of one of my cruisers that we should probably discuss, along with the 'appropriation without authorization' of several doses of a prescription drug. And the replacement of an expensive security lock."

Delaney screwed her nose up. "It couldn't be that expensive; the bolt cutter sliced right through it."

"How did you get in?"

"Through the motor pool door. Your guys never lock it. Nobody would buzz me in at the front door."

He nodded. "They were all dealing with the 9-1-1 system going down. The county should have never bought into that service."

One corner of Delaney's mouth lifted. "I left Sally so you would know it was me."

"I figured that, since you left it in my parking place and put the keys and bolt cutter in the middle of my desk." He closed his eyes. "Jesus, I need to retire; she's starting to make sense."

Delaney tried unsuccessfully to keep her face straight, but she did manage not to say anything.

He looked at me. "How close was it?"

"Too damn close. There are a couple I'm still not sure will make it."

"Any idea what it was?"

"Best guess? Something laced with a lot of fentanyl. Most of the victims were obviously experienced users, so it had to hit hard out of the blue."

Delaney held up a cellophane bag tied shut with a rubber band. "I found this on the floor."

I stared at her. "And you were going to tell me this...when?"

She shrugged. "I wanted to make sure I didn't need to use it in jail to trade for packs of smokes."

"You don't smoke."

"I watch TV. Cigarettes and tater tots are cash money in the joint."

"Nobody calls it 'the joint' anymore..."

"Can you two stop...for just a moment?" The sheriff closed his eyes for a second. He was probably praying. "Give me that..."

"No." I held my hand up. "She has gloves on. You don't." I pulled an extra pair of gloves out of my scrubs pocket and handed them to him.

"Fucking fentanyl." The sheriff pulled on the gloves and took the baggie. "Looks like synthetic THC. There's been a rash of this shit loaded with fentanyl all along the coast. Did you know any of the victims?"

I shook my head. "No."

"One of the guys that brought a couple victims in said something about a rave at Teddy's - wherever that is." Delaney gestured helplessly.

The sheriff keyed his radio. "Dispatch. Get two cars over to Theodore Martin State Park. Check Party Canyon. Send whatever EMS you can round up, just in case. Inform state police. The overdose cases may have originated at a rave there."

He pulled my keys out of his pocket. "Just drop the cruiser off and take your car. You drive, not her."

*****

The Right Thing

*****

"You're not pissed, are you?" Delaney strapped herself into her seat.

"What'd I tell you to do?"

"Get all the Narcan I could and get all the help I could round up." She fell silent.

"You did exactly what I told you to do." I cranked Sally's engine up. "If I don't tell you how to do things, I expect you to do the best you can. We were just minutes from losing some of them when you showed up. If you'd have tried to explain yourself or waited for them to get in touch with the sheriff, we might have lost them."

She leaned back in her seat. "So I did the right thing."

"You did 'a' right thing. There may have been better options, but you chose one that worked. The sheriff isn't grumbling about it because he's damn glad he doesn't have to call some families to tell them one of their kids died. At least not yet. We'll see what they find at the park."

"It was really cool. The cruiser doesn't handle like Sally, but the lights and sirens made up for it."

"I'll bet. Did you have to skim the state trooper's car? I know that wasn't an accident."

She grinned. "I had to get their attention to make sure they'd follow me." She paused, looking a little disappointed. "I also flipped them off and yelled 'try and catch me, wankers,' but they were too busy freaking out over me buzzing them up to even notice."

"You actually called them 'wankers'?" I shook my head. "No more British movies for you."

She snickered, but before she could reply, my cell phone buzzed.

"Sheree?"

"Les, I'm over at the hospital. My cousin...Shelly..." She took a breath. "She OD'd. She's recovering, but it was really close."

"We're on the way, babe."

Sheree had been trying to help Shelly out from under her addictions most of her adult life. We'd seen her temporarily "clean up" then relapse over and over. To Sheree it was a family duty, one she couldn't just quit.

Besides, they'd grown up together, and Sheree would never be able to abandon her. Sheree didn't give up on people.

It didn't take that long to reach the hospital, and we found Sheree standing outside the waiting room for the emergency room.

She strode over as soon as she saw us. "There's no seats in the waiting room."

"Do you know what happened?"

She shrugged. "It doesn't make any sense; she just got off work and headed home; the next thing I know, I'm getting a call from the hospital. She's been clean for a while, and she was due to take a drug test soon."

"Who found her?"

"That's the strange part. She was in the hospital already; they said she was in line at the information desk."

"Didn't you say she OD'd a couple years ago? Maybe she was there because she thought she was overdosing."

"Yes, she drove herself to the emergency room the last time." Sheree paused. "She knows where the emergency room is...if she thought she was overdosing, she'd have gone there."

"So why was she in line at the information desk?

"I don't know, and she's probably not going to wake up for a while."

"Did they say what she overdosed on? We had a bunch of overdoses at the clinic. Probably fentanyl."

She glanced back at the waiting room. "They haven't told me anything. Gotta lot of people in there talkin' about a party goin' really bad, was that it?"

"Probably, the sheriff thinks it was a rave party at Theodore Martin State Park."

"Shelly never liked the rave thing much. She went to one and got about three days of migraines from it, never did it again." I could see Sheree was trying to keep her equilibrium. Shelly had completed her court-directed rehab and seemed to have cleaned up. Sheree closed her eyes for a second, suddenly looking tired. "Dammit, Les. I thought she was done with that...shit."

I put an arm around her shoulders, and Delaney moved up on her other side. I could sense Delaney's annoyance at Shelly over putting Sheree through all this, but she tried to help. "Maybe they made a mistake, and maybe it was something else."

I started to shake my head but stopped. Delaney was trying to help, and maybe a temporary denial would give Sheree time to catch her breath. "Maybe, we can find out when she recovers."

Sheree gave me a sideways look. She knew better, but she also knew what Delaney was trying to do. She gave a terse smile. "We'll do that."

Delaney sat on one of the wide window sills and stared out the window. She slumped a bit, the rush from the emergency at the clinic draining away. There'd been a detached feeling with all of that. None of the overdoses had been people we knew well. We'd recognized a couple from around town but didn't really know them.

Shelly was a problem, though. Sheree saw it too. "How many did you get in the clinic?"

"Twenty. We were lucky. We ran out of everything. Delaney stole a police car."

Delaney perked up and snickered. Sheree gave her a mock suspicious look. "Okay, this I gotta hear."

Twenty minutes later, just as Delaney finished up her tale, the sheriff walked out of the emergency room. He just walked over and sat on the window sill, leaning his head back against the glass.

"All yours look like they'll make it. I don't know about the two we found at Party Canyon yet." He looked over at Sheree. "Shelly's going to be fine, but she's seriously upset. She swears she's clean, swears she hasn't used in almost a year, not even weed."

"She's been testing clean, but if she's not, she goes in for six months. Judge is all out of patience with her." Sheree stared at the floor.

"This isn't really her crowd." He shifted. "I haven't gotten an answer about who was selling. Some skinny blond guy at the Canyon. Nobody seems to remember his name."

Sheree's lips tightened. "I'll ask Shelly."

"Not tonight. She's being admitted for observation." He sat up. "Be better to ask when you're less pissed off at her. They'll let you stick your head in, but just leave it be for tonight." He got up. "I'll walk you back before they take her on up. They probably won't let you in otherwise."

By the time Sheree came back, she had to shake us awake.

She was silent all the way back to the cabin, staring out the passenger window. We'd opted to leave her car there until morning. None of us thought it was a good idea for her to be driving alone stressed out.

By the time we lay down, it was pretty clear she wanted to talk. She didn't wait for me to ask. "Shelly says she didn't take anything."

"She always says that."

"Yeah, but this time..." She shrugged.

"Really?"

She sighed, long and slow. "It's something in her voice."

"Drug addicts are pretty good liars, even to themselves." Especially to themselves, if I remembered right.

"It wasn't that way. She wasn't being 'honest' like every other time. She was..." Sheree paused. "Confused. She was confused."

That didn't sound like Shelly. If anything, she was good at fake self-confidence and earnestness. "That's odd."

"I'm going back in the morning. I told her I'd pick her up."

"We'll drop you off; your car's there."

"Yeah. I was gonna ask if you could do that. I'm so damn mad at her."

"If the judge gets the hospital report and sees a drug-positive result, you won't have to deal with her much for a very long time."

She fell silent for a long time. "Is there any way she could have...you know, accidentally taken it?"

"You think there's a chance somebody drugged her?"

"I don't know. We didn't get to talk too much about what happened, and I was kinda, well, pissed off at her."

"Doesn't sound like she had much time between leaving work and showing up at the hospital. Hard to hit a party and get drugged."

I felt Sheree tense up. "The party was at Theodore Martin Park? She couldn't have made it there and still got to the hospital. It's just too damn far." She settled back against me. "I'm gonna just have to ask her what happened."

*****

Tacos and Dresses

*****

"Tacos."

Delaney gave me a hard stare. "That's my line."

"You turning down tacos?" I turned the rollback toward the interstate.

"I didn't say that." She paused. "Why?"

"Maybe I just feel like tacos."

"Or...?"

"Or maybe we need to talk to Mooky."

She gave a disgruntled scowl. "Mooky wouldn't have anything to do with that shit."

"I know. But he might know who would. People almost died."

"He'd hate that."

She was right; Mooky grew weed because he liked weed. But he also saw it as a near-magical natural medicine.

He was also expecting us.

We'd just gotten out of the rollback when we saw him; he was striding across the parking lot dead at us.

He thrust a large bag at Delaney. "Dude. Twenty tacos. No charge." He pushed a large Coke into her hand and handed me another.

Delaney blinked.

He shook his head, his lips pressed tightly together. "I know about the overdoses. The girl with all the cross tattoos is my cousin, Alexandria."

I remembered her. "She'll be okay; she wasn't as bad as some of the others."

"It's an...abomination." He looked off into the distance, clenching his fists. "I told her to stay away from that... It's toxic, man." He looked up at me. "Do you know what they make that shit out of? Rat poison. Some of it is made with real rat poison!"

"It was laced with fentanyl."

His shoulders sagged. "That sucks."

"She say who was selling it?"

"Alex didn't know him. Some skinny blond dude with a stringy goatee. He just showed up and was selling cheap."

"She didn't know his name?"

He shook his head. "Nooo... it was just some dude."

"You don't have any idea who it might be?"

"I grow prime stuff. I don't want anything to do with those...chemists." I could see the revulsion in his face. "That shit's unnatural." He bit his lower lip for a moment. "You want me to ask around?"

"Maybe just listen to some rumors and see what you hear. Don't ask anyone directly."

He nodded. "I can do that. This is bad. Bad for everyone."

Delaney echoed his nod seriously. "Don't let it harsh your calm, dude."

He blew out a breath. "Dude."

As we pulled out, Delaney started digging a taco out of the bag. I glanced at her. "Harsh your calm?"

"Everybody says learning another language is important."

"Stoner isn't a language."

She held up a taco. "Duuuuude."

I scowled at her.

*****

Sheree was at the yard when we pulled in; even as I parked the rollback I could see she was obviously in an oddly dark mood. Delaney ran the paperwork into the office while I headed over to Sheree.

She scowled as I walked up. "Shelly still swears she didn't use anything. She says there's a mistake somewhere."

I told her what we'd learned from Mooky.

She set her jaw stubbornly. "I wanna talk to this stringy-goatee guy. I want to know if Shelly was buyin' from him."

"We'll keep asking around."

"I will too." She gave a pensive frown. "I just want to know if Shelly is tellin' the truth. She's just seemed so much...better lately, ya know?"

"We'll figure it out."

Sheree nodded, then sighed as Delaney came down out of the trailer. "Now comes the hard part."

Delaney eyed us suspiciously, then the light dawned, and horror crossed over her face. "Shit."

She glanced at the gate, her only escape route. I shook my head. "You agreed to this."

Sinking to sit on the last step, she slumped forward, her face in her hands. 'Oh, God. I forgot."

"Denial isn't just a river in Egypt, you know."

She raised her face to the sky, and I was pretty sure she was praying for a lightning strike to save her. "You cheated; you asked when I was full of Thai food. I'd never have agreed to this otherwise."

Sheree chuckled. We all knew that Delaney had only agreed to it because Sheree was taking her.

Delaney stood up and looked at Sheree. "I'll go change. Jeans and a T-shirt, okay?"

"Wear yer sandals. It'll make it a lot easier and faster if you do."

Delaney trudged back inside the trailer, dragging each foot up to the next step as if she were on her way to her own hanging. We all kept a few changes of clothes at the salvage yard trailer, it just made sense.

Sheree shot me a wink. "She'll have fun, I promise. There's a new brick oven pizza place over by the shops, so I can keep her motivated."

"Make sure you have fun, too."

"I always have a good time with her." She looked up at the trailer with one of those sad-happy looks that women can give, then smiled a little self-consciously. "Besides, I hear it's really good pizza. You get yerself something to eat for supper, okay?"

"I'll grab something. I'd come along with you two, but, you know, I'd rather smash my head against a brick wall."

Sheree giggled. "I know, and you an' her would just feed off each other, and we'd never find a her a dress and shoes." She glanced around. "This is gonna to be tough on her."

"Dealing with Charlotte is a lot to ask."

"That woman's got herself a knack. She's pushed awful hard for this. And she's set it up in a way that will make Delaney feel helpless."

"I have an idea that might help."

She saw my grin and gave me a sly look. "Help or make things worse?"