Cuffed by James Murray Read Free Book Online Page A

all night.

    Fortunately, the overnight shift is
always dead, but I never say that. Not in front of the customers
anyway. It’s bad karma, what with all the robberies and shootings
in the news. But it’s quiet most of the time. Even though the
drugstore is located in the heart of San Antonio’s medical center,
with seven hospitals within a two-mile radius, there’s little store
traffic during the wee hours of the morning.

    A quick set of instructions to Jeremy,
my clerk and the only other employee in the store, kept him busy
in-between helping the occasional customer.
     
    I heard a strange noise,
like metal clanging, and realized that rain was pelting the
roof. Maybe it’s hail. It’s going to be an
easy night.

    I pulled out the research paper I had
been working on for the last week and continued my analysis of
recent cardiac drug studies. My goal was to develop a noteworthy
comparison solely to impress my clinical professors.

    When I began to formulate a
particularly witty conclusion, I heard the door chime. I looked up
robotically. The pharmacy is situated at the rear of the store and
elevated about a foot above the retail space. I usually looked up
when the door chimed since I had a panoramic view of the entire
store and anyone entering it.

    This customer was a twenty-something
white male. He was dressed in oversized jeans about to fall to his
knees and a hoodie. Walking in, he pulled the hood down, retrieved
a baseball cap from his back pocket and put it on
backwards.

    He rubbed his face with jittery hands
and I got suspicious. I realized I was profiling him and almost
turned my attention back to my research paper. A funny feeling in
my gut, however, made me decided to keep an eye on the man a little
longer.

    He looked around, spotted
the prescription counter and shuffled toward me. He looked down
every aisle before approaching the pharmacy. Acid churned in my
stomach and inched up my esophagus like an expanding bubble. This is it, I
thought. I’m about to be
robbed.

    The man circled the store
twice before walking up to the counter. He grimaced slightly as he
stood there. I looked at his hands for a possible gun or a note
demanding the store’s cash—or worse yet, all the narcotics. His
hands were empty but they were shaking. A
meth head, I decided.

    Shifting from one foot to the other, he
grinned. I saw a few empty spaces where teeth should have been. I
hesitated for as long as I dared, squared my shoulders and walked
toward him. I positioned myself behind the cash register, the only
barrier in sight.

    He handed me a piece of paper. “I’m in
a lot of pain. Can you rush this?”

    I looked at the form. It was a special
triplicate prescription, the kind doctors use only for strong
narcotics. The order was for Percocet tablets, a popular
pain-reliever containing oxycodone. I frowned and looked at him. He
frowned also, stepped back and asked, “What?”

    Words failed me. I shrugged my
shoulders and said nothing. Looking at the paper again, I
recognized the physician’s signature. I’d seen it often enough on
other late night prescriptions. I exhaled audibly, decided to
ignore the incongruity of a street dude presenting a legitimate
narcotic prescription and said, “No problem. It’s an unusual order
from an ER physician. I’ll see if I have it in stock.”

    While I walked to the narcotic safe, I
studied the paper and stopped dead in my tracks. The prescription
had been altered. An obvious number one had been added in front of
the original quantity of twenty. The change to one hundred and
twenty tablets was subtle but the ink was not quite a
match.

    I was holding a
forgery! Now what?

    Verify, popped into my mind. Before I did anything else, I had to
confirm that the doctor had not sloppily changed the original
quantity. I walked to the other end of my workspace, as far from
the register as possible, and called the emergency room. The doctor
confirmed that only twenty tablets had been