Page 76 of Random in Death

“We know a little more about him.”

“Yeah. Start on the labs. He’s got to be young or look it. Maybe he’s a chem major—top grades. Maybe he’s a lab rat or an intern. Pure heroin. Where’s he getting it? Or how’s he making it? Growing his own poppies?”

“You’d need a hell of a lot, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know enough about it, but I’m going to find out.”

She paid the ridiculous parking fee.

“I need a cash machine.”

“It looked like you had plenty.”

“It’s Roarke’s.”

“Isn’t most of the cash in all the world Roarke’s?”

“Sure seems like it,” Eve muttered. “I’ll hit one at Central.”

“I know a little about harvesting medicinals. We didn’t do opium!” she said after Eve’s stony stare. “But I know a little, so I’m looking it up. You need opium poppies,” Peabody began, reading off her PPC. “Okay, a lot of steps. It takes about three months to grow and flower, then the petals fall and you’ve got the pod. The pod’s the ovary, where you get the opium. Then you have to cut the pod a certain way, with this curved knife, and extract the opium. It like drips out, secretes for a few days.”

“Time-consuming. Exacting.”

Down, Berenski said, to the microliter exacting.

“Yeah, and there’s more. So when the sap oxidizes, it makes a resin. You have to collect that with another knife and make it into bricks and wrap that up. And then there’s boiling and drying and more. Finally, you have to make a solution if you’re going to inject it, so you have to liquify it, boil it to get it in a syringe.

“And okay, like ten tons of the raw opium comes down to, after all this, about one ton of heroin.”

“If he’s making his own, he’s got land or a greenhouse and the facilities to go through the long, exacting process. But he doesn’t need a ton, does he? A couple of pounds would more than do.”

“Maybe he’s just buying it.”

“Cheap synthetic baggies. Pure heroin costs a lot more than a good pair of pants. Add the other drugs in.”

Eve changed angles. “Or, if he could afford but just didn’t know better, it’s science—his science. He had to come up with the formula. He knows his science, and can either make the stuff or peel off enough to experiment with it.”

She pulled into the garage at Central. “Start on the lab angle. I’m going to hit a cash machine, then try EDD, see where they stand.”

She drew out the exact amount Roarke had given her and put it in the pocket opposite the one she’d already pulled cash from.

They’d deal later.

She took the glides and thinking time to EDD, and found McNab and Feeney in the lab.

“We may have him,” Feeney said immediately.

“Where?”

Eve studied the screen and pointed before Feeney could answer. “This guy here. You can’t see his face, or much else because he’s keeping behind these two. Taller. And this one broad with it. He’s what, five-six?”

“That’s my take, and we can verify. We just hit. Time stamp’s twenty-one-twenty-three.”

“McNab, see if you can ID any of the group he’s blending with.”

McNab, bony hips twitching to his inner beat, nodded. “Working that now.”

“Black baggies, I can see that. Can’t see the footwear, the shirt. His fucking face. But… brown hair, right?”

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