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“Alright then, what do you consider the most toxic or poisonous plant on Earth? And this is contentious.” He turns to the board, marker in hand. The guesses come thick and fast, and he struggles to keep up with the barrage.

“Water hemlock. Deadly nightshade. White snakeroot. Rosary pea. Castor bean. Oleander.” The one I’m thinking of has not been mentioned yet. “Tobacco,” I offer, and he spins.

“Who said that?”

“Aspen,” someone says in a banal tone, while I stare at the doctor.

“Correct. These are dangerous to humans, but tobacco takes the prize with death and disease for tobacco being the direct culprit. We are missing so many though. Did anyone think about Papaver somniferum?”

“Come on now, Doc. Opium poppies get a bad rap when the opiate alkaloids have been important breakthroughs in pain management and sedation. Next, you’ll be citing the dangers of marijuana.”

Bonner turns to Theo, his grin wide. “Opiates are indeed a breakthrough that changed medicine. I can’t fault that logic. Morphine, codeine, and thebaine are staples at any hospital or drugstore. The problem lies in the abuse of dosage, and that’s no fault of the poppy, rather the end user or prescribing professional. Anyway, you know my stance on dope, Theo.”

“I agree, Doctor Bonner. Poppies aren’t the problem; it’s the people that don’t know how to treat them right,” Poppi drawls, and the room collectively snorts. The room sans Merda Ferado, because she’s not in her usual position next to her best friend.

“I am certain you have plenty of stories to share, Poppi. None of which are appropriate during lesson time.”

She nods enthusiastically, biting her bottom lip that’s pouting so far forward she’s almost cleaning the board with it. How is it that I was bullied, ridiculed, and called a thot when girls behave like this in class? How?

We are instructed to identify every toxin related to the species written on the board, and any first aid for treatment to assist anyone unlucky enough to ingest compounds such as ricin and abrin. I’m working my way down the list, moving from white snakeroot to rosary pea when an announcement paging Doctor Bonner comes over the college PA system. Conveniently, an administrator hurls the door open, demanding he come with her because a student was found unresponsive near the fountain. “Please hurry!”

Chapter Twenty

Jackson

DRAWING THE DEADLY NIGHTSHADE

Merda Ferado was loaded into the ambulance with no pulse or respiration, but as per protocol, she’s being raced to the tiny local hospital where they will attempt to restart her heart. Medical staff need to provide all reasonable efforts to salvage a life, even one clinging to the underworld by all fingertips. She’s done.

Had she been discovered earlier, she may have had a slim chance of clinging to some form of life. The odds would be in the single digits, yet loved ones cling onto them like life buoys, regardless. We all want to believe our nearest and dearest are given every available opportunity to wake from that coma and breathe unaided. Merda’s family hails from New Mexico and is currently en route to Anchorage, where they will reunite with their daughter in a morgue, and not a ward.

Classes have been dismissed for the day, while a forensics team scours the fountain and the surrounding area, as well as her dormitory and common areas. Poppi Kuvelic is inconsolable, leaning on her roommate for support while her parents travel from Korea. They are escorting their daughter back home to Korea, not satisfied with the threat level to young females on this campus. Dean Grundy is tearing out the last of his fibrous wisps, and Eli’s jaw has all the hallmarks of a tetanus infection. There’s normal person mad, Elijah Wyldan mad, and Elijah Wyldan furious. I can’t say what the next level would be labeled as, but we’re bearing witness to it. My phone buzzes in my trousers. Pulling it out only enough to glance at the screen, it’s a text from the man himself.

ELIJAH: 2.17 p.m.

Is Aspen okay?

ME: 2.17 p.m.

Since I last saw her in class forty minutes ago, yes, she’s fine.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions, gentlemen. It could’ve been a heart defect, or an aneurysm; it could be anything. There’s no point worrying about causes until we know for sure,” Dean Grundy says. The same Dean is jumping to conclusions about likely causes. Could it be a defect or a burst clot? Sure. Will it be? Maybe. Merda was found face down near the edge of the fountain. Security camera vision had her walking on unsteady feet, clutching at her abdomen while holding a takeaway cup, swaying horribly before heading toward the fountain. She staggers out of shot on the first feed, only to be picked up on the fountain camera moments later. She collapsed, lucky not to end up in the water and die by drowning. It could be appendicitis too, but she’d still be semi-conscious with some respiration, even with early-onset sepsis. Something isn’t adding up here.

Eli continues to pout, the tension in that rigid jaw giving me a tension headache by proxy. When Grundy excuses himself to take another call, Elijah follows behind him at a safe distance and locks the door behind the Dean.

“Fuck!” he bellows, his face upturned toward the roof.

“It’s a difficult time, I understand…”

He drops his head, staring at me like I’ve sprouted a mushroom cap for a head.

“No, not that. Him!” he clarifies, swatting a hand under his nose. “Tell me you can’t still smell his incontinence underwear. I swear the old fuck pissed himself more than the absorbent lining can cope with. How do you not smell piss?”

Now that he’s pointed out the cloying ammonia stench still lingering, we decide the best thing to do is carry on this conversation at the Moose and Goose. The Dean is paid to handle a crisis such as this one: another student death on campus. Just because your surname is part of the signage on the front gate doesn’t mean you have to sit next to the old piss bag while he talks to detectives. Both of us are reachable by cell phone, anyway. Whoever needs us better make contact before we sink too much scotch, and judging by Eli’s mood, it’s a whole-bottle night of the good stuff. We take a back corner table meant for six and shove all the condiments and menus to the other end. He sinks into the chair with a weariness not befitting a man his age; guess a second death can do that to a man.

“Out with it,” I encourage, in no mood for his petulant scowling and drawn-out answers. Elijah internalizes everything, and getting him to breach the dam is almost impossible. Once you’re in the inner sanctum, however, the dike flows well. If he trusts you, he shares. If he doesn’t, he sneers.

“This is connected,” he says, right as our tumblers of honeyed gold arrive. Connected to what? Freudian theory of personality? The El Nino-La Nina weather phenomenon? He needs to be a little more specific. “Connected how?”