I set down the phone at the end of the call. HIB. Higor Igano Borsk. Perhaps the most notorious kingpin of the past decade in the big cities. The man who had evaded capture and imprisonment for over a decade. At long last, a piece was sliding into place. It felt insane that Borsk opening up a pharmaceutical company hadn’t raised a red flag on any radars. On the outside, the company might seem legit, but a deeper dive into the audit had showed absolutely no revenue being generate, only funding going into the company. This wasn’t entirely unusual, sometimes it took startups years to produce enough inventory to begin making sales. But in this case, I found it to be rather suggestive.
I dropped Bract at his stop that morning just as a thick layer of clouds moved in over the sun. We both glanced up at the mass.
“A storm,” Bract commented.
“A storm indeed.”
“If you find the girl, please let me know,” Bract said.
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Thank you once again for your help Bract, I am in your debt.”
Bract reached into his pocket and pulled out the pistol I had lent him. I took it back, feeling that we had been lucky not to have needed it.
“Rest easy.”
I drove to the station then at top speed. When I arrived, a bleary looking Oak looked up while Ashley hurried forwards with my coffee.
“You look like shit,” I told Oak as I passed her.
Oak yawned and waved me away over to my desk, but I walked right past it to Meryl’s office. He looked up from his computer as I entered.
“This is it,” I said without preamble. “It’s Borsk and Ulug working together.”
“Be that as it may, we can’t arrest someone for starting up a pharmaceutical company,” Meryl said, rubbing his eyes. “We also have no idea where Borsk or Ulug are, or what they are ultimately doing. Currently we have no evidence that they are doing anything wrong.”
“I’ll get you evidence,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Let me see this through.”
“And Luna? You still think this ends with a child labor ring?”
“I do.”
Meryl frowned but nodded. “If we had any other leads, I’d tell you this has to go on the back burner. But we don’t.” He sighed. “Find me something useful by the end of the day, that’s all I can give you.”
I nodded and stood. But Meryl wasn’t done yet. “This Kivich connection is strange, don’t you think? And what, they are smuggling in this type of tea. For what purpose?”
“It sounds like this capa is a mild stimulant but can be made into a hallucinogen,” I said. “Maybe there’s a market for it.”
Meryl took a sip of coffee. “Hmm. Never heard of it.”
“I’ll look at the records for drug arrests in Melspol County, maybe there’s something there.”
Meryl nodded and I left the office. “Oak, can you get into the database and look up drug arrests in this county. Bring up everything for the past two years.”
“On it,” Oak said.
Ashley wandered over, looking hopeful. “Need any help with the investigation?”
“Sure. Keep searching for anything related to the name Kasorsh. Any record at all. We need to learn more about Ulug and his connections to this area.”
While they did this, I brought up the recorded feed from last night’s adventure. It was difficult to make out much, as most of the shots were quite dark. There was no audio to it, so all I could do was roll through dark, blurry footage for the most part. I froze the screen and took separate shots of the men’s faces when they came into view, little good though it did with the masks they were all wearing. I also took shots of the weapons the Kivich party had been carrying to try to identify them, as well as anything that seemed significant on the ship. I paused and slowed the speed as I came to the section where we had gone down into the cargo hold. The two men in the office type room weren’t particularly clear, but they also weren’t wearing masks. The one that had closed the door had come into sharper focus for just a moment. I snapped a shot, though I couldn’t make out much. Perhaps Ashley’s editing software could help.
“What am I looking for here Senel?” Oak called over her computer monitor.
“Any reports that sound like unusual drug activity, selling hard drugs or where the arrested party was on drugs, but the substance could be identified.”
“Ok.”
“Ash, I’m going to send you some images. When you get a change later on, can you try to enhance them in any way possible. Most of them are probably useless, but we might get something. But this isn’t priority, so keep doing what you’re doing.”
“Sure,” Ashley said.
“I’m going to send the reports I flag over to you as I get them,” Oak said. “There’s not much. Most of these are drunken disorderly. Not a lot of hard drug use around here.”
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I opened the first report, that of a man who had been caught selling speed. I discarded it. The next one was a young guy who had been arrested for driving under the influence, but hadn’t shown a result on the breathalyzer test, leading the officers to believe he had been on something else. It had transpired he had been coming home from some sort of party and had probably been on molly. More reports came in and each one I disregarded. None of these sounded right. But Oak was working backwards from two years ago to now. The more recent reports started to become more interesting. I paused on one which particularly caught my attention. A man described as homeless had been arrested for raging around a neighborhood late at night, attacking the arresting officers with a downed tree limb. The report continued that the man had appeared out of his mind on an unknown substance. Interesting. Then another one. A vagabond had attacked on officer with a knife outside of a local corner shot in a mad rage. Apparently under the influence of an unknown substance.
I recalled that jerk Calloway saying something about nomads disrupting residencies and attacking officers shitface drunk. But had it actually been that they were under the influence of some sort of drug? I thought back to what Lysha’s brother Nilo had said. It was hard to remember, I had thought he said something about jobs with drugs. At the time I had assumed he meant either running the drugs or synthesizing them. Perhaps they had in fact been testing them. It was a chilling thought, but I thought back to the ease with which Pistol Guy had given Bract and myself a dose of some sort of drug. Maybe it wasn’t far out of the realm of possibility. And if so, what the hell was the drug they were making? Perhaps some even more potent or addictive form of crank. I didn’t want to think about what worse could be out there perhaps making it onto the streets of the capital even now.
I stood up abruptly. Maybe there was a way to confirm that line of thought.
“I’ll be right back, got to make a call,” I said to Oak and I headed out front of the station. I dialed Lawrence and he picked up after only two rings.
“Hey Sen, what’s up?”
His voice sounded strained, how it usually did when he was overworked.
“Hey Lawrence, I’m still working this case still, the one with the missing kid and Ulug. Listen, have you heard of any new product on the streets recently. Anything particularly impressive?”
“Naw, not really,” Lawrence said slowly. “Business as usual over here. Smack, crank and speed, the trifecta of nightmares. Some party drugs too but those are the least of my worries.”
“Huh,” I said. If some new drug was out there, it would surely surface in one of the major cities.
“Hey Senel it sounds like you’re getting into some pretty deep water out there. You’re staying safe, right man?”
“Ah, yeah,” I said, deciding not to mention the adventures of the past few days. “What about you? Hanging in there?”
“It’s been a bit rough. We finally made some headway on that case you and I were working though. I can’t really say details, but we’re getting in a good few punches. Not as literally as you did, but.”
I snorted a laugh. I felt a bit relieved that he had made a joke about my fuckup though. I could feel some of the tension built up after the incident easing.
“Hey, you keep yourself in one piece out there,” I said to Lawrence. “Let me know if you hear about any strange new street drugs. Or even party drugs.”
“Hell yeah man. You stay safe too. Melvin will be pissed if he reassigned you to the countryside just to get you killed in some random ass case.”
“Well, at least I wouldn’t be his headache anymore,” I commented.
“He wants you back man. You know that right? He had to do this whole reassignment thing to keep everything kosher with the feds. Make it look like he keeps a clean force, no bad kids, no bad cops. But he’ll take you back the moment he can get his hands on you.”
I swallowed as I hung up the phone. I had hardly thought about rejoining the force at the capital since I had been reassigned. But Lawrence’s words had opened up a door I had been determinedly avoiding since I had arrived here. For the first time in over a month, I allowed myself to hope that my career hadn’t gone to shit and I wouldn’t be stuck in Melspol county for the rest of my life. Melvin had been pissed and disappointed by what had happened. But if what Lawrence said was true, maybe he was just following protocol until such time as I was clean enough to come back.
I walked back inside the station, my head in a cloud it had been denied floating in for weeks. But I came crashing down to earth as Ashley stood up and waved me over. I hurried to her side, as did Oak.
“Senel, I have something. Well, I don’t what this is exactly, but I did what you said and looked up the name Kasorsh. There’s not much out there, so I kept digging around old files. Pretty much nothing jumped out. Except, remember when I told you Limuel Kasorsh was a farmer. And he won awards at the county fair?”
“Yes.”
“Well you said that neighbor guy mentioned he retied the junkyard business about ten years ago? There wasn’t any record of him after that except he kept an entry in they county fair. He won a bunch of rewards from the time he retired until about seven years ago. There’s not been an entry since. But anyways, I found this clip from the paper five years ago.”
She directed us to her screen, where I squinted to make out the words.
“Limuel Kasorsh, five time first place winner of largest squash award, spends a quite life in the countryside outside of Wiggins, Melspol, where he and his wife own a private farm.”
“Ok,” I said, flipping open my notebook and jotting down the information.
“And then I found this. An obituary.”
“Katarina Ira Kasorsh died today at the age of 68. Kasorsh, who had suffered from heart disease in later life, passed away due to a heart attack. She is survived by her husband Limuel Olsen Kasorsh and her only child Limuel jr. Kasorsh.”
“Limuel Jr.?” Oak asked, sucking in her breath.
“The guy that was arrested for out of date registration. We thought it was Limuel Sr. But it was his son.”
“I looked into Katarina Kasorsh, her maiden name was Ulug,” Ashley said. “The death certificate with the county had it on there.”
“The farm, Ash, did you get an address for where the Kasorsh’s retired?”
Ashley shook her head sadly. “I couldn’t find it. It’s not in the registry. Maybe it was owned by someone else?”
“Damn,” I said, more loudly than I had intended. Every time we got a slight breakthrough, it never fully developed into anything useful.
Oak coughed slightly. I glanced around. Ashley was looking distressed. Quickly I amended, “this is great Ash, more than we could ever hope for.”
Ashley brightened a bit. “I’ll work on enhancing those photos you sent me,” she said, and we cleared off, returning to our desks.
“This is getting close. We’ve got strong evidence to suggest that Ulug was in the area recently. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest he’s running some sort of illegal venture. We’re so close,” I said. It was a parching feeling, and yet I could almost taste the windup.
“What do we do now? Drive around the Wiggins Countryside and stop at every farm house in the area.”
“Might be our only option,” I said, shrugging.
“Senel, do you have any idea how many farmers live in the area? That could take us the rest of the week.”
“So it will take us the rest of the week,” I said, again too loudly. I took a breath. “This is the break we’re looking for Oak. Wherever this farmhouse is, we’re going to find answers. And if there’s a god in heaven, we’ll find Luna and Lysha too.”
Oak stared at me for a moment, biting her lip. “Ok, let’s go,” she said, grabbing her things. “We better get moving.”