Tabula Rasa

Chapter 23

Matt spent the rest of the week trying something new.

Instead of scouring the city for dealers and information about the new drug, he started searching for victims instead. He followed ambulances and cop cars as they raced to the scenes of crimes; he scoped out hospitals and psychiatric facilities. He even visited morgues in the dead of night.

And he let his nose guide him.

If there was no sign of the drug, he moved on. But if there was a sign - if he picked up the tell-tale acrid sent of the mystery compound - he detailed the nature of the crime or the medical condition of the person affected.

And a pattern began to emerge - at least, according to Karen.

"There's a clear clustering of cases," she explained. The three of them - Matt, Karen and Foggy - were bent over a map of Hell's Kitchen laid out on the conference table in their office. She'd marked all known incidences of the drug on the map and coded them with coloured pins: green for self harm, red for aggression or violence, and blue for medical illness. "You first started coming across this drug along the pier. But then it moved inland. Margaret was dosed near Balsley Park, but then the next set of victims were south of 49th street."

Matt tried to visualise the spread of cases as Karen talked. He only ever viewed Hell's Kitchen from the street level - or more accurately, the rooftop level. The city to him was a vertical jungle, a labyrinth of towers and negative spaces spread out before him.

So he flipped that view 90 degrees, until he was looking down, the maze becoming an orderly grid. And he started to see the pattern. "It's almost a rectangle."

"Yes!" Karen replied. "I mean, apart from a few outliers, that's the way it's looking."

"Which means, the next set of cases will be in the vicinity of the convention centre." Matt's heart started pounding with anticipation. After weeks and weeks of fruitless searches and dead ends, he finally felt like he was on to something.

Until Foggy dumped a bucket of metaphorical cold water over his theory. "Or it could be further south, outside Hell's kitchen. Or west. Or somewhere completely random. We don't have enough information to make that call."

"Foggy's right," Karen said. "We need more data."

"More victims, you mean," Matt growled. "More innocent people being dosed against their will." He slapped his hands against the table in frustration and started pacing. "How long am I supposed to just stand around and catalogue all this without doing something."

"You are doing something," Foggy protested. "Because of all this cataloguing - as you call it - we're miles closer to solving this thing. And it is we, Matt. You're not in this alone."

It was true. While he was finding cases by hunting through the city at night, Karen and Foggy we're trawling through news reports and hitting up their sources in the police precinct and emergency departments.

Calina was helping too. She was using her considerable intellect and research skills to learn about biochemistry and something called pharmacodynamics in order to try to determine the nature of the drug.

Maybe it was time to bring the whole group together on this.

"We should continue this at my place tomorrow. Calina...she's, um, been working on this too."

He sensed Foggy and Karen exchange a look, but he didn't know how to interpret it. Were they apprehensive about spending time with an ex-Widow? Or were they looking forward to meeting her - Karen for the first time, and Foggy for the first time properly?