Lanie's call had broken up their collective brooding, sending the team minus one down to the morgue in hopes of finding more evidence.
Beckett didn't hold out too much hope, knowing how meticulous their killer had been before. But they did have a body and by the sounds of it, one littered with an interesting drug cocktail.
"What'd you do with Javi? He taking a nap upstairs?", Lanie greeted cheerfully, the off-the-cuff comment making her stomach churn.
"He…", Beckett began, trying to give herself some time to come up with a fitting answer, but Ryan was faster.
"He didn't feel well."
"Didn't feel well? He caught that stomach bug that's going around?"
"No, the other kind…", Castle added, placing a hand over his heart that caused Lanie to nod hesitantly.
"Oh…I see. Well, that'll teach him to keep chasing every woman with a pulse.", the ME mocked with an indifferent shrug, then pointed to their victim laid out on a nearby autopsy table, "Now, this guys here…"
"You said you found some abnormalities in his system?"
Beckett stepped closer to the body, resting her hands against the stainless-steel sides.
"You can say that again. As far as I can tell, he died pretty much the same way Harrison did. There was a quick scuffle, then our killer broke his neck. When I checked his stomach contents, I found the chewed up remains of a Jimmy John's."
"Did he eat the Club or the East Coast Italian?", Castle asked and joined them at the table.
"That I couldn't discern but he was hungry enough that he ate a piece of the wrapper, which helped me identify the food group."
Drawing in a deep breath, Lanie walked over to her computer and pointed at the assortment of charts and numbers on the desktop.
"So, once I sent some blood and tissue samples of our starving friend here to the lab, I got this back. They showed unusually high traces of both sedatives and stimulants in his system. We narrowed it down to the drugs you said were stolen from the hospital. They're marketed under the names Sofidia and Nodant. Both have been off the market for several months due to health concerns. And this poor little guy right here was loaded up to the eyeballs with both them."
Next to her, Castle gasped as their theory slowly but surely took on shape.
"I was right. Lafayette is conducting experiments on these guys."
Upon his comment, Lanie frowned and approached the group again.
"I don't know what sort of experiment this would be. These drugs in the concentration we found in Anderson's body here would have led to a heart attack, stroke or renal failure shortly. They also compound in the body, meaning-"
"Meaning that patients need to take more and more of them to reach the desired results. Eventually they will stop working altogether.", Castle replied with a proud smile, making the ME nod.
"So, if I were a patient suffering from severe PTSD, what would be the benefit of taking a combination of these drugs?", Ryan asked from the back, still several shades too pale for Beckett's liking.
"This is where it gets tricky.", Lanie said and crossed her arms in front of her chest, "I can't tell how much of them he took or even how often. But under the circumstances, I am guessing he took them at least once a day. It might have helped with anxiety attacks, trigger episodes, even depression. But the Nodant Lafayette stole was a high dosage pill, making it a very strong sedative. Under the circumstances, depending on his mental illness, it could have turned our dead friend here into a walking zombie, barely able to enjoy life."
At the mention of zombie, Beckett looked over at Castle, expecting his usual excitement considering the topic, but surprisingly, the writer's expression was that of deep concentration when he opened his mouth to ask another question.
"What about doing it the other way? What if he took more of the Sofidia than the Nodant? Say…two or three Sofidia for every one Nodant?"
"Well, he would have been fidgety, anxious perhaps, having a hard time sitting still. It's really difficult to tell because every patient reacts differently to these drugs."
"What are you getting at, Castle?", Beckett pried, intrigued by his unusual question.
"I am just thinking…let's look at our friend here. He lost his job, lived in a men's shelter, no family that cares about him…the perfect target for Lafayette, obviously. So, what would be the goal for our psychiatrist's experiment with a guy like Anderson? And why was Harrison so eager to invest into it?"
"Lafayette said so himself, he wants to cure PTSD. Could be that he thinks a combination of these drugs will offer temporary reprieve. But the problem is the long-term damage far outweighs the short-term relief."
"Not if you're the guy ready to jump off a bridge…Esposito said so himself.", Castle continued eagerly, "These guys are on the verge of suicide, they're tired, they've given up. Can you imagine what they would do for some short-term reprieve? I don't think any of them worry about heart attacks or…or renal failure at the time."
"It brings us back to Harrison though.", Ryan argued from the back where he was leaning against the barren tile wall, "For all we know, Harrison didn't have PTSD, didn't lose anybody to PTSD lately. What was it that made him so hot about the topic that he blew away 12k to support Lafayette?"
"Think of the money that could be made if you could identify the right mixture of drugs to cure PTSD for good. He might have looked at it as an investment opportunity. As a matter of fact, he may have been entirely unaware of Lafayette's real-life experiments.", Beckett guessed, causing the young detective to shrug.
"But somebody is trying to destroy everything related to this…experiment now starting with the investors and the subjects themselves."
"You mean, like a certain doctor who is trying to cover his tracks?", she said, adding yet another piece to the complex puzzle that invariably tied Lafayette to every single aspect of this case.
"And yet he keeps providing airtight alibis. So, somebody is doing it for him."
Unable to disguise his frustration, Ryan scoffed, pounding his elbow against the wall he was leaning on.
"I feel like we're still missing a part of this story here…", Castle brought up, his brows furrowed, "Like, how does a guy who loathes giving out pills turns to using them for his experiment? I looked at his books and he is knee deep into these alternate methods, the ehm…the massage and the hypnosis and stuff. Heck, apparently, he beat PTSD right out of Esposito. So, with all these different avenues at his disposal, why would he resort to handing out pills? It makes no sense to me."
Nodding at the valid point the writer had made, Beckett bit her lip for a second, then checked her wristwatch.
"We still have some time. Castle, let's head over to the Men's Shelter, see if they can tell us a little bit more about Anderson here. Ryan, check into his medical files, see if there is anything that could have made him stand out from the others, a reason why Lafayette would choose him as a lab rat. And call me if…"
She couldn't get herself to finish the sentence, not after the heated exchange with Espo. Thankfully, Ryan seemed to have read her mind and nodded understandingly, before leaving the morgue behind.
Beckett was about to follow along when Lanie cleared her throat, the ME's dark eyes scanning her worriedly.
"So what's really going on with Javi? You guys are never this secretive."
"I don't know.", she replied with a weary sigh, nervously reaching for the car keys in her coat pocket, "I really don't know, Lanie."
