Page 53 of The Dog in the Alley

But Mays was shaking his head, a frown drawn over his features. “We couldn’t ID it,” he admitted. “It’s a beta blocker all right, but the chemical signature doesn’t match any known prescription compounds.” Which meant we had someone brewing up some new beta blocking drug for reasons that I couldn’t imagine were any fucking good at all.

“Would there be a market for selling that on the street?” I asked.

Mays shook his head. “Not that I can tell. You wouldn’t get high from something like this—and it wouldn’t mellow you out, either. Just make you tired and dizzy. And regulate your blood pressure, but I don’t feel like that’s a big black market draw. That, and it could possibly cause short-term memory loss.”

Taavi whined.

We both looked at him.

“Fuck,” I muttered. “Taavi, you think you have memory loss?”

Chuff.

“You worked out a way to talk to him?” Mays asked, putting two and two together.

“It was that or be completely clueless,” I pointed out.

“Fair,” Mays conceded.

I tapped the file folder against my lips. “Also explains why our dead shifters aren’t terribly forthcoming. If they can’t remember shit because they were drugged, that explains so much about their fear and inability to give me any more than they already have.”

Mays’s blue eyes were wide. “That’s bad, Detective Hart,” he said.

“No shit, Sherlock. Do you know anybody who can counteract it?”

Mays scowled again. “No. But it shouldn’t still be in his system. That’s the extra weird part.”

“Why extra weird?”

“Because he’d bedeadif he had enough for it to still be there at these levels eight days later, assuming they gave it to him the day you found him. It’d have made his blood pressure drop so far it would have collapsed his arteries. So hehasto still be taking it somehow,” Mays explained.

“He’s not, I promise,” I told him. “I’d have fucking noticed if the dog in my house was self-medicating.”

Taavi whined.

“Wait… What did you call him? Before?” Mays asked, although it took me a second to realize I’d used Taavi’s real name a few sentences ago.

“Taavi. We—uh, I managed to figure out who he is.” I didn’t want to drag Raj into this without talking to him first. If it came to it, I’d apologize to Mays, again, later.

“Oh. Well, that’s good! Do you have family we can call?” He directed the question at Taavi, who growled softly.

“That would be a no,” I translated. “Believe me, I checked. No known next of kin in any database, state or federal.”

Taavi let out a half-growl, half-whine.

“I also asked,” I said, for Mays’s benefit. “He said there wasn’t anyone.”

Mays gave me a glum look. Because we both knew, of course, that not having anyone he wanted me to contact didn’t necessarily mean that therewasn’tanyone. Just that there wasn’t anyone he wanted me to tell where he was. Asking about that was far more complicated than we could wrangle with our yes-no-something-else communication system, and it wasn’t any of my goddamn business, anyway.

I was fully aware that sometimes a missing person wanted to stay missing, although I honestly didn’t get that sense from Taavi. Maybe I was wrong—wouldn’t be the first time—but what I got from both him and the fact that he’d been clear across the country on a construction job was that he really was pretty much in this alone.

Which had to fuckingsuck.

I’m a loner type—no shit—but even I have people I can call in a pinch. My folks would get on a plane in a hot second if I needed them to, as would Elliot, even though they’re like five states away. And I’m pretty sure Ward would be there if I needed him to—we’ve seen some shit together, and I’ve held his hand in some fucked up situations. Doc, too. I’m not a social butterfly, but I have people.

I really got the sense that Taavi didn’t have people.

And now I felt like shit all over again.

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