Chapter 23: Case 3 - The Detective Work
Cameron drives because I'm already mentally cataloging what we might find.
Professor Hayes's office. A physicist who's been self-medicating for cognitive decline. What would a brilliant, desperate man do when he felt his mind slipping away?
Research. Experiment. Try everything.
The physics building smells like old books and ambition. Third floor, corner office, nameplate that reads "Dr. Martin Hayes, Ph.D." in brass letters dulled by years of passing hands.
Cameron picks the lock with a bobby pin and what looks like practiced ease.
"Immunology teaches lock-picking?"
"Med school teaches desperation. I needed into the cadaver lab after hours once." She pushes the door open. "Never ask questions you don't want answered."
Fair enough.
The office is exactly what I expected: controlled chaos masquerading as academic brilliance.
Papers everywhere—journal articles, handwritten equations, student assignments marked in red ink. Books stacked on every surface, some opened to specific pages, others serving as platforms for coffee mugs in various states of abandonment. The whiteboard is covered in quantum mechanics formulas that might be profound or might be the mathematical equivalent of word salad.
But it's the desk I focus on.
"I'll check the bookshelves," Cameron says. "You take the desk."
I nod, already pulling open drawers.
First drawer: Standard office supplies. Pens, stapler, sticky notes covered in reminders that get progressively more basic. "Department meeting Tuesday 3pm." "Call Linda back." "Remember to eat lunch."
Memory aids. He knew he was declining.
Second drawer: Personal items. Photos of Linda, younger and smiling. Award certificates for teaching excellence. A framed newspaper clipping about some research breakthrough from ten years ago.
Third drawer: The motherlode.
Vitamin bottles. Not a few—dozens. Crammed into the drawer like contraband, labels facing every direction, some opened, some still sealed.
I pull them out one by one, lining them up on the desk.
Ginkgo biloba, 240mg daily. "Supports memory and cognitive function."
B-complex, mega-dose. "Enhances mental clarity."
Fish oil, pharmaceutical grade. "Omega-3 for brain health."
Alpha-lipoic acid. "Neuroprotective antioxidant."
Phosphatidylserine. "Improves memory in aging adults."
And then I find it.
Copper glycinate chelate. 500mg per capsule. Bottle says "take one daily." The bottle is nearly empty.
I check the date. Purchased thirteen months ago. Sixty-capsule bottle, maybe ten left.
Fifty capsules. Fifty days of 500mg copper. That's insane.
"Chase? Find something?"
I hold up the copper bottle. "Found the problem."
Cameron crosses the office, reads the label. "That's—that's way over the recommended daily intake. Copper toxicity?"
"Recommended intake is 0.9 milligrams for adults. This is over five hundred times that." I pull out my phone, photograph each bottle, document the arrangement. "If he's been taking this for a year—"
"Copper accumulates. Liver damage, neurological symptoms, cognitive impairment." Cameron's already pulling up medical databases. "Symptoms mirror neurodegenerative disease almost perfectly."
I keep searching. Find a dietary log tucked under a stack of papers—handwritten entries showing restricted eating, probably trying to lose weight. Photos on his desk show he was heavier six months ago, maybe forty pounds more.
Weight loss timeline matches symptom onset.
"He started the supplements, restricted his diet, began losing weight." I photograph the log. "Cognitive symptoms appeared around the same time. He probably attributed them to stress, aging, kept taking more supplements thinking they'd help."
"Poisoning himself trying to prevent the exact thing he was causing." Cameron's voice is quiet, sad. "How do we tell him that?"
"With the evidence and the hope that it's fixable." I find more bottles—herbal supplements from Chinese medicine sites, nootropics from questionable vendors, things labeled in languages I don't fully understand. "He was desperate. Trying anything that claimed to help memory."
"This is—" Cameron picks up a bottle of something called "Brain Boost Extreme." "This isn't even FDA approved. The ingredients list is terrifying."
"Desperation makes people take risks they wouldn't normally consider." I bag the copper supplements, the most suspicious bottles, the dietary log. "We need these analyzed. Confirm the copper levels in his blood match what he's been taking."
I'm about to close the drawer when I notice something else—tucked in the back, a small notebook. I pull it out, flip through pages.
Research notes. Not physics—medical research. Studies about Alzheimer's prevention, cognitive enhancement, neuroplasticity. He's been studying this for over a year, highlighting sections, making notes in margins.
"Trial this?" next to a study about high-dose B vitamins.
"Copper supports neural function—why not used more?" next to an article about trace minerals.
"Must try everything. Cannot end like Dad."
That last note hits different. The desperation, the fear, the determination to avoid his father's fate.
And instead, he created his own nightmare through good intentions and bad information.
"Cameron." I show her the notebook. "He wasn't just taking supplements randomly. He was researching, trying to be scientific about it. He just didn't have the medical background to know he was poisoning himself."
She reads the notes, her expression shifting from judgment to sympathy. "He was trying to save himself."
"And we're going to actually do it." I pocket the notebook along with the supplements. "Let's get back. House needs to see this."
The drive back is faster, charged with the energy of a potential breakthrough.
Cameron keeps glancing at the evidence bag between us. "How did you know to look for supplements?"
Because systematic environmental investigation is what deduction powers do best. Because I'm trained to notice patterns and this pattern screamed 'self-medication gone wrong.'
"Academic environments breed self-experimentation. High-stress, high-performance expectations, aging professors terrified of losing the one thing that defines them—their minds." I take the exit toward the hospital. "Plus, his office was chaos. That level of disorganization from a physicist suggests executive function decline, which fits both Alzheimer's and toxicity. But Alzheimer's patients don't usually have the insight to try preventive measures. He was aware enough to research and supplement, which suggested something more acute."
"That's—" Cameron pauses. "That's really good reasoning."
"It's just logic."
"No. House uses intuition. You use systematic analysis." She's studying me again, that look that means she's trying to figure something out. "Where did you learn to think like this?"
From being a transmigrator who consumed mystery shows and then got supernatural detective abilities. From building a mind palace and training deduction skills in a desperate attempt to survive in this world.
"Medical school teaches you to gather data before diagnosing. I just apply it to environments instead of just patients." I pull into the PPTH parking lot. "Houses, offices, personal spaces—they're all part of the patient history. You just have to know what to look for."
"And you do. Know what to look for." It's not quite a question, but there's curiosity underneath.
"I pay attention." I grab the evidence bag. "Come on. House is going to love this."
The conference room is exactly as we left it—whiteboard full of differentials, test results scattered across the table, House leaning back in his chair with his feet up.
"Took you long enough," he says without looking up from his Game Boy. "Find anything or just enjoy the campus scenery?"
I dump the evidence bag on the table. Vitamin bottles cascade out, copper supplement rolling to a stop in front of House's feet.
He looks down. Picks up the copper bottle. Reads the label.
"Five hundred milligrams." His eyebrows rise. "That's not a supplement. That's a poisoning protocol."
"Exactly." I spread out the other bottles, the dietary log, the research notebook. "He's been taking this for over a year. Along with a dozen other supplements, restricted diet, significant weight loss. Timeline matches his symptom onset perfectly."
Foreman picks up the notebook, flips through it. "He was researching Alzheimer's prevention. Trying to avoid his father's fate."
"Instead created his own fate through copper toxicity." Cameron arranges the bottles by date. "Progressive neurological damage from metal accumulation."
House is already pulling up lab protocols on the computer. "Serum copper, ceruloplasmin, liver function, 24-hour urine copper excretion. If this is Wilson's disease we need genetic—"
"It's not Wilson's." I point to the professor's age in his chart. "Wrong demographic. Wilson's presents in teens to thirties, not fifties. This is acquired toxicity from supplementation."
"Could be late-presenting Wilson's."
"Could be. But Occam's Razor says the guy taking five hundred times the recommended copper dose for a year is poisoning himself through supplementation, not genetic disorder." I meet House's eyes. "Test for both, but I'll bet on acquired toxicity."
House stares at me for a long moment. Then: "How'd you know to look for supplements?"
Here it comes. The question I knew was coming.
"Environmental investigation protocol. Academic high-stress, cognitive decline fear, disorganized office suggesting executive dysfunction but preserved enough insight for preventive measures. Supplements are common in aging populations worried about cognition. I checked his desk, found the evidence."
"You checked his desk and found fifty different bottles in under twenty minutes."
"I'm thorough."
"You're something." House tosses the copper bottle back on the table. "Run the labs. Confirm the toxicity. If Chase is right, we treat with chelation therapy and the professor gets his mind back. If Chase is wrong, we're back to neurodegenerative disease and palliative care."
"I'm right," I say quietly.
House grins. "Confidence. I like it. Also makes it more fun when you're wrong."
But I'm not wrong. I can feel it. The pattern fits too perfectly—the timeline, the symptoms, the desperate self-medication.
This is copper toxicity. And it's treatable.
Foreman heads to the lab to personally oversee the testing. Cameron starts preparing chelation therapy protocols, just in case. House goes back to his Game Boy, but I catch him watching me in his peripheral vision.
He's adding this to his file. Another data point in the "Chase is unusual" investigation.
I document everything in the patient chart, building the case for acquired copper toxicity with the same systematic precision I used searching the office.
And I ignore the headache building behind my eyes—the lie detection's been active all day, triggered by every small deception from patients, nurses, administrators passing in the halls.
The price of the power. Always the price.
But if that price buys Professor Hayes his mind back, it's worth paying.
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