Hardcore Twenty-Four (Stephanie Plum 24)

“Okay, I feel better,” I said. “I’m starting to relax.”

“Your day was that bad?”

“Not bad. Hectic. Especially at the end. Lula got hit in the head by a drone, and I had to take her to the ER because she kept saying ‘Fudgsicle.’ While she was there I picked up a new FTA. Then I went back and got Lula.”

“Is Lula okay?”

“Yes. Mostly she just needed a bucket of chicken.”

“Where did the drone come from?”

“Lula had an idea to use a drone to look for Slick. It was actually a pretty good idea. The drone was amazing . . . until Lula tried to catch it, and it hit her in the head. It belonged to a friend of hers. Stump.”

Morelli relaxed back in his chair. “Eugene Stump. The scourge of Trenton.”

“I thought you were the scourge of Trenton.”

“That was back in the day. Stump has a drone army. He uses the drones to move drugs and to help him move people.”

“He said there’s a new street drug called Zombuzz, and it turns users into zombies.”

Morelli nodded. “The labs are still working, breaking it down, but we know the basics. It’s a complicated synthetic mix that produces physical and psychological symptoms. Joints become stiff, making walking awkward. Chemical changes take place behind the eyes, and there’s some bleeding involved. Users have no fear, feel no pain, have increased strength.”

“What about the brain-eating thing?”

“We haven’t apprehended a user yet, but from the physical evidence we’ve been able to retrieve, we think they aren’t eating the brains. We think they’re using them to manufacture the drug. We’ve found three underground caves that contain crude labs.”

“So the dirty clothes and dirt-clogged hair, the red eyes, the classic zombie shuffle, all get explained by this drug and the way it’s being manufactured?”

“In theory. We’re still learning.”

“Stump said it’s being distributed by one man. He said the guy was from out of town and weird.”

“It might have been the way it started, but I think it’s moved beyond that now. Everything we’ve found points to multiple players producing product with widely varying degrees of purity.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t been able to round up some of these users.”

“I can’t arrest someone because his eyes are red and he shuffles. We have to wait for one of them to be caught committing a crime, or for one of them to overdose and end up dead or in the ER.”

“What about DNA found on some of the victims? Were you able to identify any persons of interest?”

“Yes. We’ve interviewed two, and they made no sense. We have them under surveillance, and we’re looking for a third.”

I hated to ask the next question, but I couldn’t help myself. “Were you able to identify anyone on the cemetery video?”

“It’s disappeared. I had a tech working on it Friday. When he came in today the camera was gone and his computer had been wiped clean.”

I went numb for a couple beats. Diesel.

“How could that happen?” I asked. “It’s a police station.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s secure,” Morelli said. “A lot of people have access.”

The waitress brought corn chips and queso, and I dug into the chips, hoping to hide the fact that my heart was skipping around in my chest. Who the heck was I harboring in my apartment? Some guy who was able to break into a police station and wipe out a computer. Okay, calm down, I told myself. Maybe it wasn’t Diesel. Like Morelli said, lots of people had access.

“On another note,” Morelli said. “I saw the court docket for tomorrow, and Diggery was on it.”

“I’d love to see him skate and get sent home. I don’t want to be the long-term godmother to a fifty-pound snake.”