“I wouldn’t have done that,” Linda said.
“You wouldn’t have, but plenty of other papers would have,” Mike Ingleford said. “Steve Becker might not have been important in himself, but he was part of the movie and it happened here when the movie was filming, and all the rest of them were probably somewhere in the vicinity when the rape happened. It would have been absolutely lovely.”
“Wouldn’t you like to see Steve Becker convicted of something?” Clara said. “I would. I’d like to see any of them convicted of something.”
“Everybody would,” Mike Ingleford said, “but I don’t think much would come of it. Not on a first conviction, assuming you even got one. Rape isn’t an easy crime to prosecute, and it’s harder when the alleged rapist is young and white instead of some scruffy old guy with a sex-offender record. Still, it’s worthwhile in this case to remember that the only time we’ve ever seen the drug before is when Lucy showed up after being with Steve Becker, because here we are.”
“I thought one of you told me that Steve Becker wasn’t still on the island,” Gregor said.
“He’s not,” Mike Ingleford said, “but the rest of them are. And they all hang out together.”
Gregor looked up at the ceiling. It was a modern ceiling, and clean. It was as if the Oscartown Hospital kept itself always at the ready in case any patients decided to visit it, but they almost never did.
“So,” Gregor said, glancing at Bram Winder, who had gone over to the window to lean against the sill. “Let me get this straight. This photographer, this Jack—”
“Bullard,” Linda Beecham said.
“Bullard,” Gregor repeated. “What is he? Young? Old? Experienced or not?”
“He can’t be all of thirty,” Linda said. “He grew up here, I should know, but I get a little hazy about ages. He’s only been out of college a couple of years. This is his first job.”
“All right,” Gregor said. “Young. In good shape? Fat and ungainly?”
“In good shape,” Mike Ingleford said. “Very athletic, in a lot of ways.”
“Good,” Gregor said. “So that means that it’s unlikely that anybody could have attacked him without his fighting back.”
“Well, unless he’d been drugged to the gills,” Mike Ingleford said, “which he was. Is, really. We got as much of it out of him as we could, but he’s going to have to sleep the rest of it off, and there’s a lot of the rest of it.”
“What did he take it with?” Gregor asked.
Mike Ingleford looked nonplussed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re not really equipped to do that kind of analysis. I feel like an absolute idiot, because we could have been, but—”
“The Department of Homeland Security was handing out money like candy after 9/11,” Clara Walsh said. “One of the things they were handing out money for was updating crime labs and crime-analysis facilities. We got offered some money, but—”
“But we thought it was stupid,” Linda said, “and it was. This isn’t a terrorist attack. There aren’t going to be any terrorists on Margaret’s Harbor. Not unless one of the summer people has a son who decides to convert to Islam and go fight with al Qaeda, which is the sort of stupid thing those people do. What’s Special K?”
“Ketamine hydrochloride,” Mike Ingleford said. “It’s one of the drugs sometimes called date rape drugs.”
“But it doesn’t usually knock you out, does it?” Gregor asked. “I thought it was a dissociative drug. It makes the user floaty, and compliant, and not aware of pain.”
“Yeah,” Mike Ingleford said. “They use it as anesthesia for some things, both for humans and for some of the larger animals in a veterinary practice. But Special K will knock you out if you’ve had enough of it.”
“It will also kill you if you’ve had enough of it,” Gregor said.
“I know,” Mike Ingleford said. “In higher doses, it has a tendency to induce coma. It doesn’t seem to have this time, and if it’s any consolation, which I don’t suppose it is, I don’t think whoever gave it to Jack Bullard meant to kill him. If he had, he would have killed him. I think it was just a case of double dosing to make sure the job got done right.”
“And what job was that?” Gregor asked.
“The destruction of Jack’s hand,” Mike Ingleford said. “His right hand, by the way, the one he actually needs. Somebody went at it—”