Outwitting Trolls Read Online Free PDF

minutes. Then the three of them went into Ken’s room, too.
    My coffee cup was nearly empty when Horowitz came out of the room. “Coyne,” he said, crooking his finger at me, “you want to come with me?”
    I got up and followed him into the hotel room. He stopped in the little foyer just inside the door and turned to me. “I suppose you and your client have contaminated everything with your fingerprints and whatnot.”
    I shrugged. “Probably. Sorry.”
    â€œWell, put your hands in your pockets. Let’s try to keep the damage to a minimum.” He turned and continued into the room.
    I followed him. Three young men and one woman wearing Massachusetts State Police windbreakers were conferring outside the bathroom. The ME appeared to be examining Ken’s body. His assistant was taking flash photographs.
    Horowitz went over to a closet. He opened the door and shined his flashlight inside. “C’mere, Coyne,” he said. “Take a look at this.”
    I moved up beside him and looked into the closet. It was empty except for a red-and-black gym bag on the floor in the corner. Horowitz knelt down beside the bag, and I stood right behind him and looked over his shoulder.
    The gym bag was unzipped. He pulled open the top and pointed his flashlight at the contents. It was full of small glass bottles. They were about the size that cough medicine comes in. Ten or twelve ounces, I guessed. “This bag was here,” Horowitz said. “Just like this, except it was zipped up. I’m wondering if your dead buddy here might’ve said something about this when you saw him last night.”
    I shook my head. “What is it?”
    He reached into the bag with his latex-gloved hand, took out one of the bottles, and showed it to me. It contained a clear liquid. KETASET was the word on the label. Obviously a brand name.
    â€œKetaset,” I said. “What is this stuff?”
    â€œBrand of ketamine,” said Horowitz. “Common anesthetic used in animal surgery.”
    I shrugged. “Ken Nichols was a veterinarian who probably performed a lot of animal surgeries, and here he is, at a convention of veterinarians.”
    Horowitz smiled bleakly. “Ketamine is also a Schedule III drug that’s sold illegally and abused by humans. It’s a psychedelic. What we call a dissociative. Commonly used for date-rape purposes.”
    â€œDate rape,” I said.
    â€œAmong other things,” he said. “Dances, concerts, parties. Wherever boys and girls gather. It loosens you up, helps you groove on the music. Diminishes anxiety and stimulates your libido. It can give you a psychedelic, out-of-body experience, a trip to what they call K-land, which you’ll probably forget when you come down. They call it K, or Special K, or Ket. A bad trip can be pretty awful, I’m told. Then, as they say, it lands you in the K-hole. Special K was fairly popular back in the nineties.”
    I shrugged. “Never heard of it.”
    â€œWell, you ain’t a cop,” he said. “Ketamine fell out of favor for a while, but lately it’s been making a comeback. What they do is, they dry this liquid in a microwave and sell the powder in little plastic bags. The users, they either snort it or dissolve it and inject it.”
    â€œAnd Ken, being a vet, had access to this stuff,” I said.
    â€œAnd Ken,” said Horowitz, mocking my tone, “having access to this stuff, might also have been using it. Or selling it. We’vebeen seeing an increase in the number of break-ins at animal clinics and vets’ offices in the past year or so. Ketamine is one of the things they’re looking for. It’s a fun drug again.”
    It occurred to me that Ken Nichols, expecting Sharon to show up in his hotel room, might’ve had a logical reason to want to give his libido a boost. “Will it show up in the ME’s tox