Urban Legends
By: Krisdae
Rating:
PG-13
Disclaimer:
I own mothing related to Numb3rs
Warnings: Date rape (Not
described)
A/N: A big thanks to my beat,
marvinetta
for all her work.
Reviews: Please! It's better than chocolate.
A big thank you to those of you have reviewed! More is on the way…promise.
Chapter Six
Charlie Eppes was good at math. There was no denying that fact and most people believed he could do anything with them. But, unfortunately, that wasn't true. Some problems were not solvable, no matter how much you wanted them to be. And the ones that were… well, you had to have enough information to find the answer. And therein lay Charlie's current problem.
At this point, Charlie wasn't even sure what he was looking for. The reports had very little in common. Even taking out the one case from XTC only allowed for one common factor in the rest: Forbidden Sights. Charlie knew he had to be missing something and that knowledge was eating away at him. So, as in all things, when he started to question himself, he went to see someone who could put his thoughts back into their correct perspective.
Professor Larry Fleinhardt was the epitome of the absent-minded professor. Once distracted, he may forget what he was doing. He had trouble connecting with his young students outside of the classroom, and sometimes within it. But, no matter what some people may think about Larry, he was very intelligent and had the experience in some areas that Charlie lacked. And Larry always had time for Charlie. No matter what else was going on, Larry could be depended on to help Charlie focus his thoughts and see what he was doing wrong.
After catching up with Larry, Charlie quickly outlined his problem. "Well, it seems to me that you have already found what the problem is. The data you have is incomplete."
"Yes," acknowledged Charlie. "But I need to try and find some way to help Don find something. Even if it's not a point of origin, I need to help discover a line of investigation."
"Isn't it usually the FBI's job to follow leads and find clues? Maybe you should let them do their job. You've said yourself that your brother is good at what he does."
"But I need to help, Larry. I can't tell you why, but it's kind of personal and I have all these numbers that don't make any sense."
"Charles, you said yourself that the data is incomplete. If you don't have enough information about this case, you won't be able to find any kind of pattern or origin. You don't even have the context of the numbers."
Charlie tilted his head as he considered, "What do you mean by context?"
"I mean that you don't really have a reference for these numbers. The common links are probably things that are located in the club and have little to do with the actual attack. For example, there could be something at the place itself that's causing the attacks to be possible. What if it's picked up at one particular booth? Or through some other contact that has nothing to do with a specific person?"
"Right," Charlie said. "The victims were never asked about anything but what was specific to the attack. But they didn't take the location itself into consideration." And idea began to form in the back of Charlie's mind. "Thank you, Larry."
"Anytime, Charles."
Back at the FBI office, Don and Terry began to look through all the information that Doctor Reeves had sent with them. He promised to find out more, but he had given them a list of the people most directly involved in the program at the hospital. He was going to send a more comprehensive list over as soon as he could. Don had called David Sinclair and asked him to talk to Timmons's girl friend to see what she could tell them about the night before.
"This is interesting," Terry commented, causing Don to look up from the file he was reading. "Brian Wohlmer, the resident who is working on this project, attended medical school at the USC Medical Center here in Los Angeles. But, before that, his pre-med degree was from CalSci."
Don considered for a moment. "That gives him the local knowledge of the area. Our guy would need to know the college hangouts. And Forbidden Sights seems to be the favorite for CalSci students."
"It also puts him in the right age range," added Terry. "We're looking for someone in their twenties or early thirties. He's working insane hours and may not be able to get out much. Maybe he figured this drug could help him get a girl without having to try hard."
"It's definitely something to look into," agreed Don. "We need to find out his schedule and see when he was working and when he may have been at Forbidden Sights. People are creatures of habit. If he went there as a CalSci student, he probably still goes there."
"And he may still have friends from college in the area. We already figure there's more than one person involved. Wohlmer may be supplying his friends with the drug."
"All right. Let's check him out."
He was angry. Well, that was no longer entirely accurate. Last night he had been angry, today he was moving past that emotion and heading into scared. He had killed someone. Well, not him, actually, but he had helped kill the guy in the morgue. Things had been fine until he'd come in yesterday and found that someone had died from a drug overdose. An overdose of the compound he'd been sneaking out of the hospital for the last several months. It was only a matter of time before someone starting putting the pieces together. Now was the time to become scarce. All he had to do was convince the others of that.
"Hey man!" Came the greeting from across the park. The second man sat down on the bench. "What's so urgent you had to get me out of bed before noon?"
The man scowled. "You shouldn't be so cheerful this morning. I told you two weeks ago that you were using too much of that stuff. Now it's gone and killed someone."
The other man stopped smiling, "What do you mean? You told me that stuff was safe!"
"It is! But too much of it can kill someone, as I just found out. And what were you doing giving that stuff to a guy anyway?"
"I didn't give anything to a guy. We've been following your orders exactly. When we dump that stuff randomly, we make sure it's going to a table that only has girls."
"Well, it got into this guy's system somehow. We need to cut it out for a few weeks."
"Oh, come on! You can't be serious. There's no way that they can tie anything to us."
"I'm telling you, you'd better stop. If you don't cool it for a while, there's not going to be any more of this stuff."
"All right, I'll tall the boys. We'll cut it out for now. But you're going to see that you're overreacting."
"Better to overreact than end up in jail." He rose from the bench and headed back towards the hospital. He hated double shift days. He never seemed to get enough sleep and now he had to worry about those bozos messing up his plans.
David entered the FBI office and sat down by Don and Terry. His interview with Mackenzie Miller had been rough. She was very upset over her boyfriend's death and blamed herself because going to the club had been her idea. He sat heavily in his chair, hoping there would be an end to this case before any more lives were destroyed.
"What you find out?" Don asked.
"I spoke with Mackenzie about going to the club on Monday. She said that going out had been her idea. They had plans to meet at 9:00, but Jake was pretty late. Mackenzie had ordered her second drink by the time he got there. She says that Jake didn't order anything. He'd had some of her drink, but nothing of his own. When I asked if he'd been acting strangely at all, she said not really.
"I asked her if she knew about the drug trial Jake was taking part in and she said yes. When I asked about any side effects he may have experienced, she said that they believed he was actually getting the drug because ever since the trials began, their sex life has gotten more active. And last night was no exception. She said before he ended up collapsing, they were talking about going back to her place for the night even though Jake had originally not wanted to go out because of a term paper he was working on.
"Then, as they were coming off the dance floor, Jake suddenly fell to the floor. Someone called an ambulance, but by the time the EMTs arrived, he was already dead."
David stropped his report and watched as Don and Terry exchanged a look. Sometimes it amazed him how well they could communicate with each other and David hoped that some day he'd understand his co-workers that well.
Don reached over and handed a folder to David. David opened it and listened as Don told him what had happened at the hospital the day before and what they were working on now.
"So you think this Brian Wohlmer may have some sort of connection to this?" David asked when Don was finished filling him in.
"It's starting to look that way," Don said. "Terry and I are going to go talk with him. I want you to contact Forbidden Sights and get a list of employees. Find out if any of the waiters or bartenders were students at CalSci."
"I'm on it," David said as he stood once more. At least this time he wouldn't have to look into the face of a girl who'd just lost someone she loved.
Charlie paced in front of the chalkboard. "Amita, I think Larry may be onto something. I mean, what if the reason the attackers were all different was because they weren't the ones who spiked the drinks?"
Amita looked doubtful. "I don't see any reason to just randomly spike drinks. What would they get out of it?"
"Maybe it's for testing," Charlie suggested. "Or maybe it's just some sort of sick joke. But either way it's possible that we're looking at the wrong information."
"Well, what exactly do we need to look for?" Amita asked.
Charlie stopped to look outside the window. The early spring day seemed incongruous with the conversation at hand. Discussions about rape should happen on a stormy day. Or at least at night when it was dark and the boogey man was more believable. "I'm not sure," admitted Charlie. "But I think I know how to find out." He turned to Amita, not wanting to ask too much of her, but knowing that he really needed her help on this. "I need to check out the place. I need to see the place for myself and get an idea of what people may have come in contact with. And I can't do it on my own."
Amita shook her head. "It's a bad idea, Charlie. And your brother would kill you for even thinking about it."
"Well, we won't tell him." Amita didn't look convinced. "Amita, I know you don't really want to go back there, but I'll be there to protect you."
"I'm not the one I'm worried about, Charlie. You've never been to Forbidden Sights,. It can get kind of intense."
"That's why I need you to go with me, Amita. For protection." He grinned at her, knowing that she would cave in eventually. Amita finally nodded. "Thank you," Charlie said. "You won't regret this."
"Yeah. I just hope you don't either."
TBC
