Frank winced as he glanced at the time. “Agent Carrington, this is Frank O’Reilly over at Ash Springs. I’m sorry, I should have waited to call you tomorrow. I wasn’t thinking.” Megan stirred next to him, but didn’t wake.

“It’s okay, Mr. O’Reilly. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I figured you should know a couple things. First, someone broke into my house today and stole the medical device I got from the VA to treat my cancer.”

“The box with the spout?” Carrington suddenly sounded wide awake.

“That’s right. And it reminded me of something else I had forgotten about. A while back, one of our pregnant heifers got sick, and I wasn’t sure if she’d have to be put down. So I let her have some of my medicine—it was basically water—figuring what could it hurt? She did get better, though I don’t know if the medicine had anything to do with it. And I don’t know if that had anything to do with what happened later. But I’m thinking… I don’t know. The medicine worked, but there’s something suspicious about that clinical trial and all, and now the VA’s box was stolen, so… I guess I just thought you should know. I’m sorry I didn’t remember any of this earlier.”

“Mr. O’Reilly, thank you so much for sharing this information. One question: After the break-in today, did the police come and take prints?”

“Yes, sir. They did.”

“Okay, I’ll get in touch with them. Thank you again, Mr. O’Reilly. It’s helpful.”

Frank hung up, turned off the light, and lay his head back on the pillow.

Megan rolled over and draped her arm across his chest. “Was that Kathy?”

“No, honey. Go back to sleep.”

Frank wrapped his arms around his wife and closed his eyes, hoping to forget everything for just a few hours.

Chapter Twenty-One

“You’re telling me there’s cocaine in that sludge?” Juan said, waving the analyst’s report. “And urea? There’s piss in it?”

John Hendrickson, the FBI analyst assigned to help him on this, nodded. “I ran both gas chromatography tests as well as an infrared spectroscopy analysis on that stuff you sent me. The test results both agreed on the overall chemical makeup of that stuff. It’s a concoction that would probably give folks nightmares.”

Sitting on a tall metal stool, Juan leaned his back against the lab bench and skimmed the rest of the report. “So, it looks like you detected the key components of beer and animal urine, both acidic ingredients, yet the overall pH is still neutral?”

Hendrickson nodded as he flipped through his own copy of the report. “Turn to page twelve. You’ll see there’s a bunch of organic compounds that offset the acidity.”