"How did you know I was just about to call you?", Nancy greeted him cheekily as she got up from her chair and wrapped him in a quick embrace, more cordial than personal this time around.

Mike figured that the case was getting the better of all of them at this point. And maybe she'd even heard about the unceremonious end to what was supposed to be their night to get some rest.

"What did you find out?", Mike pried hurriedly, only to watch her stick her hands in the pockets of her white lab coat and shaking her head.

"Always to the point, aren't you Michael? Not even apologizing for sending me a hunk of meat with skid marks all over it to do an autopsy on this morning. That wasn't the most pleasant piece of evidence I ever had to work with."

"I am sorry.", Mike apologized candidly and crossed his arms, trying to contain his anxiety and impatience but failing to do so, "The sooner I know what you found out, the sooner I might be able to stop you from having to do autopsies on human bodies resembling a hunk of meatloaf."

"I get it, believe me. Sorry, this…this mangled mess got the better of me this morning. It will take me all day to give you some sort of answers on that one. To make matters worse, I haven't had my fourth cup of coffee yet. Here, sit down for a second while I grab the file…"

Mike slid into in her guest chair and watched the petite doctor reach for a thin green file that was lying by her phone, before putting the distinctive purple rimmed glasses back on her face.

"See, this took me a bit longer because Steve's body metabolized the drug surprisingly fast. You might want to have one of those fatherly sit-down meetings with him to find out what he was smoking in his younger days to condition his body like that. Typical Hippie Vice cops, I swear…", Nancy smirked and opened the file, her eyes scanning over the results as she continued, "The good news is that despite this little setback, I did find the culprit. Phencyclidine."

"English please?"

"PCP.", Nancy explained and handed the file over to him, "Also known as rocket fuel or superweed. It's an old anesthesia drug from the 50's that hit the market for recreational drugs when it was replaced in the mid 60's. These days it's mostly smoked or taken in pill form, sometimes sprinkled on cigarettes or joints even. If injected intravenously however, the cheap high gets replaced by complete loss of consciousness and amnesia. It's fast. It's cheap. It's effective. But it is hard to come by in injectable form these days, unless your guy manufactures his own, and I am pretty sure he is."

"PCP…", Mike breathed, his mind navigating the many files of past cases inside his head, "I could swear have come across this before…how ehm…how hard would it be to manufacture the drug? What kind of equipment would have to be used? Could we go out looking for a specific lab setup in this town?"

Nancy slowly shook her head as she took the file back, before sitting down and placing her reading glasses by her phone.

"You could make it in a lab as small as my office, to be perfectly honest. But here is what's far more interesting. PCP was made illegal in 1965 because of its many mind-altering effects, and licensed for veterinary use only. Depending on the dosage taken, it can cause changes in personal image and boost somebody's ego to unhealthy levels…"

"I work with a guy with those problems…", Mike muttered under his breath and smiled faintly, Nancy mirroring his gesture.

"All joking aside though, in extreme cases, it will cause hallucinations, suicidal behavior, paranoia and complete uncharacteristic mood changes. People have been known to commit murder and even cannibalism while under the influence."

When she sensed the worry behind his careless features, Nancy shrugged, before sipping on her cup of tea.

"Being that Steve doesn't appear to have tried to murder you, go on a rampage or gnaw on your forearm throughout the night, it gives us two more pieces to this puzzle. First of all, my guess is that he was injected with around 0.01–0.02 ml/kg intravenously. At such a low dose, it takes somebody extremely knowledgeable to gauge his weight precisely and administer just enough PCP to render him unconscious without overdosing him and causing these severe side effects. So that's a yes on the mob doctor theory. Secondly, the PCP you find on the streets is typically produced under very uncontrolled conditions. It's dirty, really. Being that its primary uses these days is to cause mind-altering hallucinations, there's not much emphasis given on creating clean stuff, if you know what I mean."

"As far as I understand, he had no side effects whatsoever.", Mike added intrigued and watched Nancy nod.

"Mostly, yes. I spoke to the ER doctor who was on call yesterday and other than dilated pupils and low pulse, blood pressure and body temperature, he had no side effects- even after they injected him with the drugs to counteract it. Which means, this was some very, very clean stuff. You can't even get this high quality from a veterinarian. He's definitely manufacturing his own, in a very sophisticated way. That or whoever hired him supplies him with it."

"Is…Steve going to be alright? Or is there a chance that some of the side effects could show up at one point? He mentioned something about having nightmares. If he is…if there is a chance that something still isn't right, I…I can't jeopardize this investigation."

"One of the primary reasons this drug was taken off the market was because of its long terminal half-life. The good news is that there were hardly any traces of the drug left in his system less than a day after it happened. He will probably have issues with those nightmares until his body completely metabolizes the drug or, what's more plausible, those nightmares might just be his brain trying to recreate what he saw, not necessarily the aftereffects of the PCP. Just make sure he stays hydrated, gets his 8 hours of sleep, eats 4 meals a day and all of the other stuff you cops never do anyways. Personally, at this stage, I don't see this affecting his work any worse than a killer who leaves accessories of murder victims at your door step."

"Norm told you that?", Mike pried and watch Nancy nod, her expression turning serious.

"I barely have time to get to know you again and here I am fretting about your safety like an aw-struck teenager. That Mike Stone charm is a curse."

He smiled warmly but the cheer and lightheartedness he tried to maintain stayed one-sided this morning. Mike cleared his throat, wanting to say something to assuage her worries, when Nancy reached into her drawer and pulled out several pairs of rubber gloves.

"Take those with you.", she insisted, unwilling to meet his eyes as she reached across her desk to hand over the gloves, "PCP in its liquid form will get absorbed through your skin on first contact. It could even be sprayed in your face and you will get high, or worse. Wear those when you two Cowboys think you found what you are looking for. The last thing I need is to hear about you walking the tightropes on the Golden Gate Bridge reciting the Pledge of Allegiance backwards."