Earthbound : A gripping crime thriller full of twists and supernatural suspense by Fynn Perry (popular romance novels TXT) 📗

ideal donors because of their young age,” Hamilton muttered, as he wrote on his pad. “And your orderly involved in the harvesting confirmed this, I mean about the brain-death and organs?” the journalist asked.

“Yes,” Jennifer offered, remembering to keep the account of her fictional character in line with what John had told her. “He overheard one of the nurses confirm that all the donors were brain-dead and that earlier they’d shown signs of a violent struggle with the club bouncers.”

“Severe head trauma, most commonly from a car accident, can cause brain-death.” Hamilton interrupted. “I remember writing a story about such an incident a few years ago. However, I never came across it happening from a beating. Theoretically, it could occur, but only as a freak occurrence. I can’t imagine anyone being trained to be able to cause it.” He paused while typing again on his laptop. “The other cause is a specific type of stroke, but that doesn’t match with the young age of the donors.”

Jennifer continued after waiting patiently for Hamilton to finish his thought process. “There’s still more to this story. I found news articles of isolated cases where men and women of a similar age to the donors, showing the same symptoms, had been discovered unconscious near the clubs and were taken to the hospital. Some of them eventually recovered after about five days but only because their families could afford premium healthcare and had decided to keep them on life-support equipment despite doctors advising that there was no point. In all cases they had taken ‘Spider’s Bite’ pills bought at the clubs.”

“So, you think that the symptoms of brain-death were only temporary?”

“I can’t be sure, but it looks that way.”

“And they all took El Gordito’s pill?”

Jennifer confirmed.

“That would suggest that the symptoms were somehow chemically induced. There’s something familiar about this scenario of a pill inducing symptoms of brain-death . . . I can’t quite put my finger on it.” He paused, and they could all see the wheels turning in Hamilton’s mind. “Wait… Yes, there was a case in Turkey,” he said as he typed something on his keyboard. “Here it is!” He pointed to his screen. “A drug called Tiroflen, used to treat heroin addiction, is a central nervous system depressant and muscle relaxant, which can, in high doses, rapidly penetrate the blood-brain barrier and drastically slow the central nervous system to a near standstill, giving rise to symptoms similar to those associated with brain-death. However, once the drug is eliminated from the body, consciousness returns with no lingering harmful effects. A woman accidentally overdosed on it and had all the signs of brain-death. This woman recovered after five days—just before the machines keeping her body alive were about to be switched off!”

Hamilton paused for a moment. “But the majority of people taking Spider’s Bite are not getting these symptoms, right?”

Jennifer nodded. “I only found a handful of brain-death cases online.”

“So, in theory, Tiroflen or something like it, in the right dosage to trigger symptoms of brain-death could have been introduced into some of the pills destined for El Gordito’s clubs. That would explain why only people who had been to one of his clubs got symptoms of brain-death.”

“And why, if his ingredient works exactly the same as Tiroflen, those people who were kept on life support eventually recovered like the woman in Turkey.”

“That would mean that the donors taken for organ harvesting were, technically, still alive when the doctors started cutting them open,” Hamilton concluded.

The thought made them all shudder.

“And the violent behavior . . . could this drug Tiroflen cause that?”

“No, but El Gordito could have additionally added a hallucinogenic drug to cause that sort of behavior.”

Jennifer now had the perfect opportunity to inform Hamilton of the existence of the rogue pills John had heard about from the conversation between his host at the time, the guard, and the bioscientist at the secret laboratory in New Jersey. She told the journalist that her source had supposedly heard about an early batch of brewed heroin not making the grade and being cut with some other drugs to shift it.

Hamilton’s eyes lit up. “This story will blow the entire city apart!” he enthused. “But not without proof or actual witness accounts,” he cautioned, looking at Jennifer.

“We can’t give you either, Paul. You’ll have to get your own,” David responded.

“OK. Leave it with me to do my own research. Go home for now. I will be in touch,” Hamilton said reassuringly, unable to fully conceal his delight.

His subsequent farewell was just as brief as his greeting when they had arrived an hour and half earlier. A few minutes later Jennifer and David were outside in the warm evening air trying to hail a cab from the busy street that ran in front of Hamilton’s apartment building.

John joined them just as a cab pulled up to take Jennifer and her father home. He had hung back in the journalist’s apartment to see if Hamilton would call and warn someone of Jennifer’s and her father’s interest in El Gordito’s business. But Hamilton had behaved perfectly naturally, hadn’t called anyone and had busied himself with going through his notes, laying to rest any suspicion John might have had about the man.

Paul Hamilton received a text at 8:32 a.m. the next morning as he passed through the subway exit and joined the flowing, turbulent masses of white collars, blue collars and early-riser tourists hemmed in by the skyscrapers and slow-moving traffic on Broad Street.

The text was from his editor, Charles Lawrence. It read:

My office when you get in.

Passing his favorite coffee shop, the journalist figured he couldn’t afford the time to queue for his regular latte to go. He would already be late getting into the office, which he could see looming up ahead of him on the fifth and sixth floors of the stout, twenty-story, brown-brick-clad building on New York Plaza. As he approached, the reflection of the sun traced a path across one of the bands of