Zoner (drug)

Zoner (Illegal drug) – A frequently mentioned drug similar to marijuana in the In Death series, beginning in Holiday in Death, when Eve “caught a drift in the air of very old onions and the shadow of an illegal usually consumed by smoking” at Donnie Ray Michael's apartment: “He's been pumping Zoner, probably as a bedtime soother. You can just smell it.” Peabody claimed to just smell sweat and onions, but Michaels looked sheepish when Eve mentioned the Zoner. After his murder, Eve described him as, “The boy who'd loved his mother and had blown sax. Lived like a pig and a smile like an angel. Puffed a little Zoner but never missed a gig.”

Conspiracy in Death

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• Snooks had “a small, almost pitiful stash of illegals. One thin, hand-rolled joint of Zoner, a couple of pink capsules that were probably Jags, and a small, filthy bag of white powder [Eve] assumed after a sniff was Grin laced with a whiff of Zeus.”
• Gimp, whose crib was near Snooks's until moving it across the street after his murder, said he traded some Zoner with Snooks for a pretty picture of a tree.
• Ellen Bowers used Calm-It before the periodic personality tests “some department asshole ordered her to take,” along with some Zoner mixed in for a nice soothing cocktail. She mentioned needing higher doses just lately in Conspiracy in Death, but thought she was still in control (she was not).
• Outside a corner building in Chicago that called itself Hotel South Side, a lanky man with icy eyes offered prime Zeus, Ecstacy, Zoner - mix or match, which Eve declined.

Loyalty in Death

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• Pokey was a low-level Zoner dealer.

Witness in Death

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• Areena Mansfield's drug of choice before sobriety was an Ecstasy/Zoner combination.
• Michael Proctor's apartment building smelled of “must, urine gone stale, and the sweet scent of old Zoner.”
• When Mira commented on Eve's driving: “Well, that was exciting,” Peabody told her, “Take my word, Dr. Mira, that was a leisurely drive around the park.” Eve asked, “Something wrong with my driving?” Peabody replied under her breath, “Not that a case of Zoner wouldn't cure.”

Betrayal in Death

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• Mollie Newman had traces of Exotica and Zoner in her system; the theory was that Sylvester Yost drugged her with Zoner and let her live while he killed Justice Werner -- she was an innocent bystander, while Werner was the target.

Seduction in Death

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• Lucias Dunwood “took out a cigarette he'd laced with just a whiff of Zoner.” He “drew in smoke, then expelled it in a lazy stream... The Zoner, as always, was doing the job” and “Kevin reached over to take a hit from the laced cigarette.”
• Lucias “prepared them both a little cocktail. Unblended scotch with a dash of Zoner” as they discussed increasing the stakes to double booking, adding daytime kills.

Reunion in Death

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• During Feeney and Eve's visit to Dockport Rehabilitation Center after Julianna Dunne's release, they witnessed a drug deal, but when Feeney asked Eve if she wanted to report it to Warden Miller, she told him, “Nope. Residents' business ventures and recreational activities are his problem. And if I have to listen to him lecture much longer, I may go hit up that con for a little Zoner myself.”

Purity in Death

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• Louis K. Cogburn was a small-time illegals dealer who primarily hawked Zoner and Jazz; he cut the Zoner with dried grass scored from city parks, and the Jazz with baking powder he bought in warehouse-sized bins. His target clientele were middle-class kids between the ages of ten and twelve in the three school districts closest to his Lower East Side apartment. Officer Proctor called him a “small-time Illegals rat, went after schoolkids. Gave them samples of Zoner and Jazz to lure them in,” but admitted he'd never shown violent tendencies before killing Ralph Wooster and injuring Suzanne Cohen, confirming Suzanne's statement that Ralph and Louie were more likely to have a couple of brews or smoke a little Zoner than yell at each other.
• Chadwick Fitzhugh, another of the Purity Seekers' targets, was a “known pedophile. Trolled the clubs, surfed the chat rooms. He liked them between fourteen and sixteen. Pattern was to buy them alcohol, Zoner, whatever worked, lure them up here, with the promise of more.”

Portrait in Death

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• Diego Feliciano allegedly sold Zoner and Push to students and teachers. His alibi for the time of Rachel Howard's murder was “some blonde chica who wanted a bang. We were wasted, okay? Scored a little Zoner, dipped a little Erotica. Went to her place.”
• Eve would “have pegged Hastings as the type for a taste of a little recreational Zoner, but his place was clean.”

Imitation in Death

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• When Leo Fortney's social secretary told Eve and Peabody he was too busy to see them, Eve told Peabody to “call for an Illegals sweep. I believe I smell Zoner.” Once the blonde is scared into getting Fortnoy, “Eve took another testing sniff of air. 'You know, Peabody, I don't think that's Zoner after all.' 'I think you're right, Lieutenant. I think it's gardenia. She must be dim if she thinks you can call for a sweep that way.'”
• Thomas Breen had a bust for illegals - Zoner - when he was twenty-one. “College smoke, nothing surprising.”
• A witness to an earlier London Ripper-style murder of a “junked up LC who slipped through the tox screenings.” There was a witness who “saw the vic head off with a guy dressed in a black cape and a fancy hat. Since the witness was trashed on Zoner, the investigator didn't put much faith in his statement.”
• To prepare for his Enrico Marsonini-style murder of Katie Mitchell, Niles Renquist “drank a brandy and smoked a thin cigar laced with just a whiff of Zoner... He took a slow drag of the cigar, letting the Zoner calm him before one of his rages could take over.”

Remember When

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• Tina Cobb lived in a post-Urban War box that edged the Bowery, and Eve “ignored the unmistakable aroma of Zoner.”
• “Technically, (Chad Dix's) rehabilitation forbade alcohol. But hell, a martini wasn't Zoner or poppers, for God's sake.”

Divided in Death

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• Deena Hornbock had “no criminal except a suspended for recreational Zoner when she was eighteen.”
• Carter Bissel “likes his rum and his Zoner, and you run a place like this (Waves), you can get 'em,” according to his business partner, Diesel Moore, in Jamaica.
• Joseph Powell had “toked a little Zoner along with his [cheese-flavored soy] chips. [Eve] could see the remnants of paper and ash in the dish shaped like a stupendously endowed naked woman on the table beside the bed. Another break for the killer. He'd been zoned out, music pounding in his head, and couldn't have weighed more than one-thirty. It was unlikely he'd even felt the jolt from the laser pressed to his carotid artery.”

Visions in Death

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• Lucas Grande thought Eve and Peabody were visiting him about his musician friend rather than with the notification of his girlfriend's death: “If Bird got busted for Zoner again, it's got nothing to do with me. We do sessions together. We're not joined at the damn hip.”
• When Eve went to interview Randall Beam about the murders, “there was the faintest whiff of something in the air that could get Randall a little visit from Illegals, but she'd let it pass unless she had to squeeze him.” She did, telling him, “if you make me ask again I'm going to be a lot more interested in the Zoner I smell.”

Survivor in Death

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• Grant Swisher had a record for possession of Zoner when he was nineteen. Jenny Dyson told Eve and Peabody “Grant used to joke about his wild college days, and how he'd once been arrested for possession of some Zoner. How it scared him enough to straighten him out.”
• Hildy, who lived with her great-great-aunt, Mrs. Grentz, on the same street as the Swishers, was on the roof smoking Zoner the night the Swishers, Inga Snood, and Linnie Dyson were murdered, and saw the murderers: “Sometimes I go up there to, you know, smoke a little Zoner. I can't do that in here. If Mrs. Grentz was to come down - and she does sometimes - and smell it -- she's got a nose like a bloodhound -- she'd wig. So if I'm in the mood for a toke, not like every night or anything...” Eve told her, “We're not Illegals, and we're not concerned if you had a little recreational Zoner.” Hildy said the Zoner made her sleepy, but she noticed the men, and the fact that they didn't make any noise when they were walking.

Origin in Death

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• When Eve arrived at the Down and Dirty Club to meet with Nadine on the downlow about the Icoves, “she stepped into the blast of noise, of smells that included stale brew, Zoner - and a variety of illegals that could be smoked or otherwise ingested - fresh sex, sweat, and other bodily fluids she didn't choose to identify.”

Innocent in Death

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• Zoner isn't capitalized in Innocent in Death.
• When Eve asked Lissette Foster if Craig used illegals, she admitted they did a little zoner in college. Her boss, Elizabeth Blackburn, said, “Who didn't?” and Lissette told Eve not recently: “He could be dismissed for any illegals use. Plus, he really feels strongly about setting examples for his students.”
• Dallas found a bag of poppers and three joints of zoner in the lockers at Sarah Child Academy, and decided to pass along the student information to Detective Sherry in Illegals, whom Peabody called “Scary Sherry.”

Creation in Death

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• When Ariel Greenfeld reflected on herself, she thought, “She was a baker, that's all. She liked to cook and create cakes and cookies and pastries that made people smile. She was a good person, wasn't she? She couldn't remember ever hurting anyone. Maybe she'd toked a little Zoner in her teens, and that was wrong. Technically. But she hadn't caused anyone any harm.”

Eternity in Death

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• One of Dorian Vadim's alibis was obviously using; Trueheart commented, “I saw plenty of zoners and chemi-heads when I did sidewalk sleeper detail. She was zoned to the eyeballs.”

Strangers in Death

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• Zoner isn't capitalized in Strangers in Death.
• As Eve was standing over Thomas A. Anders's body, she mused about the case she'd caught and closed the previous night - the homicide of a twenty-year-old woman who'd been throttled, beaten, then chucked out the window of her nine-story, rent-by-the-week flop, which smelled of stale sex, stale zoner, and really bad Chinese food.

Salvation in Death

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• Zoner isn't capitalized in Salvation in Death.
• When Marc Tuluz talked about the priest who wasn't Miguel Flores, he said “I feel... it's like when I was in college and did too much zoner. I feel fuzzy-headed and a little sick.”

Ritual in Death

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• Jackson Pike had been doped with Erotica, Rabbit, Zoner, Jive, and Lucy.

Kindred in Death

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• Deena MacMasters was drugged with a mickey (barbiturates) in her cherry fizzy. It included Slider, liquid form, with a small kick of powdered Zoner. The Slider and Zoner combo (called Wig) would give the user freaky dreams. “You feel woozy for a minute, you feel off, but with the Zoner to kick it, mellow, too. You just slide out, slide under.”
• During Eve and Roarke's visit to Columbia University to interview Darian Powders, Eve smelled “very old pizza and very fresh Zoner. Peace Day signs lay scattered among snoring bodies and bottles of brew, which were probably as illegal as the Zoner.”

Indulgence in Death

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• Zoner isn't capitalized in Indulgence in Death.
• Foster Urich had a minor bust for zoner at age twenty.
• When Patrice Delaughter told Eve about the night her husband hired Ava Crampton to join them in bed, Patrice said, “I remember drinking buckets of champagne, smoking some zoner, doing what I thought was Exotica. Then it all went a little mad. A lot mad. It turned frantic and mean. I had no control, no boundaries. And I have very little memory of the rest of the night, into the next day. He gave me Whore and a chaser of Rabbit. My husband did that to me.”

Treachery in Death

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• Zoner isn't capitalized in Treachery in Death.
• Renee Oberman told Eve Rickie “Juicy” Keener was still dealing, “mostly zoner and low-grade at that.” Eve described one of Keener's neighbors as having “the blissed-out smile and glassy eyes of the seriously stoned. Eve could smell the zoner smoke -- hell, she could see it hanging in the air.”

New York to Dallas

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• Zoner isn't capitalized in New York to Dallas.
• When Tray Schuster described how he and Julie Kopeski felt when they woke up after Isaac McQueen drugged them in their apartment (his old apartment), he said, “I felt off, strung out, like we'd partied hard the night before. But we didn't. I swear. Julie doesn't even toke zoner.”
• Eve “ignored the smell of stale zoner in the skinny entryway, and the far skinnier elevator” in the building where Deb Bracken lived.
• When Burt Civet was picked up, they “got him cold with his pockets lined with baggies of poppers, Zing, zoner, and what all. Collared him within a block of a youth center, which adds weight.”
• 'Sarajo Whitehead''s neighbors, Becky Robbins, told Eve she recognized the signs of her illegals use: “Her eyes, the jittery moves. I know I smelled zoner on her, more than once. When we got into it about the kids [making noise after school], I said she oughta take a little more of whatever she was popping or smoking so she'd pass out and wouldn't hear them.” The next day every one of her husband's tires was slashed.

Celebrity in Death

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• Zoner isn't capitalized in Celebrity in Death.
• K.T. Harris's tox screen showed a “blood alcohol level point-three-two” and “considerable traces of zoner.” Since there were six butts on the roof, and herbals in her bag, it was presumed that she had zoner mixed in with the herbals, which was later confirmed, at a fifty/fifty mix.
• Harris had been trying to blackmail many others, including Julian Cross, who had an incident in his past with two unbeknownst-to-him underage women: “I'd just landed the lead in Forgiven. It was mega, a career-maker, so a bunch of us were celebrating. We'd partied pretty hard all night. Drinking, illegals. I don't do them anymore, but I did. Maybe a little zoner or Hype, something was always right there, like party favors. Women, too. Just there.”
• The safe in Harris's hotel room suite contained cash, plastic, jewelry, a notebook, a dime bag of zoner, an envelope of photos, and a small lockbox.
• Eve found a small bag of zoner tucked into the toe of a boot in Harris's studio trailer. Roarke came in and “lifted his eyebrows at the vodka bottle, the bag of zoner, and the box of herbals Eve suspected was laced with the illegal. 'Are we having a party?' 'It's looking like the late and largely unlamented spent a lot of time at least partially drunk or stoned.'”
• K.T.'s brother, Brice Van Horn, talked about their life after their mother left their father, and after their father was released from jail: “She got into trouble at school, stole things, got drunk whenever she could, started smoking zoner, and whatever else she could get.”
• The speculation was that the smoke from Harris's zoner-laced herbals prompted the killer to open the pool dome, and he hadn't realized the mechanism was faulty and didn't close all the way when he left. Joel Steinburger, who was known to have a strong aversion to smoke, was the primary suspect, with his guilt further cemented when he told Nadine, “the fact is, if [Harris] hadn't gone up to indulge in the filthy habit of smoking, she might still be alive.” When Nadine told him, “They do say even the herbals are bad for our health,” he replied, “Worse yet when it's one after the other mixed in with sense-dulling illegals like zoner. The combination reeks.” Since the zoner wasn't a matter of record, that added more weight to his guilt. Eve confronted him about that in interview, “You just had to bitch to Nadine ... about the stench zoner added to Harris's herbals. When that was one of those little details we kept back. You got cocky.”

Delusion in Death

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• Devon Lester had some Zoner busts in his late teens, early twenties.
• On the way to Shelby Carstein's apartment, Eve didn't bother addressing an illegals deal on the corner, telling Roarke, “busting up a Zoner push isn't my top priority.”

Thankless in Death

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• Zoner isn't capitalized in Thankless in Death.
• Detective Carmichael filled Eve in on a killer she and Detective Santiago were interviewing: “Bag of scum's claiming the junkie fell, and he's claiming the reason he ran like a freaking gazelle when we tracked him is how he was late for an appointment. And how all the bags of Funk and zoner we spotted -- and managed to even scoop up a few before bystanders swarmed -- weren't his.”
• After Jerald Reinhold killed Lori Nuccio, coming in his pants, he thought, “like a fat joint of zoner, killing gave him the serious munchies.”

Concealed in Death

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• Zoner isn't capitalized in Concealed in Death.
• Shelby Ann Stubacker scored Seraphim Brigham zoner when they were students at The Sanctuary, trading a beaded bracelet for it.
• Lemont Frester told Eve he'd never heard of any of the staff at The Sanctuary hitting on the kids, “and I'd have given up my cache of zoner if Ms. Glenbrook had crooked her finger in my direction.”
• Eve theorized that the killer may have put “a little something in the zoner or whatever he gives them. Just a little something extra. Then they're compliant. Not unconscious, what's the point in that? Where's the thrill in that? But just stoned, limp, stupid.”
• Mikki Wendall's mother caught her “coming in stoned, middle of the night, still has a twist of zoner on her.” She pushed her pregnant mother down the stairs, left her, and just kept going. She was one of the girls whose remains were found at the future site of An Dídean.
• When Baxter came into the Higher Power Cleansing Center for Youths with a warrant, he commented, “The building's full of kids pretending to be bored the cops are tossing the place. I bet a princely amount of zoner's flowing into the sewer from here right about now.” As it turned out, “the most interesting thing we found was a single smashed joint of zoner inside an air vent that looked like it had been there for months. Maybe years.”

Festive in Death

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• When Eve asked Sima Murtagh about the tea Trey Ziegler used, she said, “He bought it loose, and it came in little bags. First time I thought they were illegals, maybe Zoner or something -- and I was really surprised because he's so careful about what goes into his body, you know? But he said they were specialty herba;s, just a nice little perk for clients before a massage or after a workout.” They were actually low-dose date-rape drugs he used on clients so they would initiate sex with him.

Devoted in Death

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• When Eve and Mira were discussing the torture done on Dorian Kuper, Mira said, “no mutilation of the genitals. It doesn't feel personal.” One of the cops on the elevator with them said, “Somebody takes a torch to my balls, I'm taking it personal.” Mira told him, “Burns heal, Officer, given the time. Personal would be slicing them up or off.” Eve added, “Acid. I caught one once where the girlfriend got pissed, and when the guy was crashed on Zoner, poured acid on his balls.”
• When Eve visited Tina R. Denton to interview her, she “could smell the Zoner, could see its effects in the just-going-glassy look of her pale and narrow blue eyes.” When Earnestina told her, “This is harassment,” Eve told her to “file a complaint. Then I won't feel obliged to ignore the illegals I can smell -- along with the faint haze of Zoner smoke that's not yet dissipated.”
• Jayla Campbell had smelled Zoner at least once in the apartment Darryl Roy James and Ella-Loo Parsens were using for their torture chamber.

Wonderment in Death

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• Peabody likened her metabolism to “a slug on Zoner” (and Eve's to running like a rabbit)

Echoes in Death

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• The not very bright Ollie Quint told Eve he only went by Lorenzo's party to hook up with Marletta. “Maybe I figured there maybe would be Zoner and shit there. But I didn't have any. I got a good job, and you could get bounced. Plus, my ma'd skin me.”

Dark in Death

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• Yola Bloomfield was proud to tell Eve and Peabody she hadn't “had so much as a puff of Zoner for four months.”
• Loxie Flash, on the other hand, “lit up a joint of Zoner and poured a glass from the bottle of top-shelf vodka she'd stolen at a party” before ignoring Eve's multiple warnings and heading out to Screw U to die: “Loxie took another pull of Zoner, drew deep as she considered... she thought of the cold, the ice, the effort of pulling herself away from Zoner, vodka, and porn, getting herself dressed and sexed -- mega-style, since her ex turned up. A lot of work... she answered Janis's text: B there in an hour. Save me a party favor.”
• Flash's tox screen showed “vodka, a whiff of vermouth, pomegranate juice, and a lethal twist of cyanide. That's in addition to the Buzz, Erotica, Zoner, and the champagne cocktail -- champagne, bitters, sugar substitute, and a splash of grenadine -- already in her system.”

Leverage in Death

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• Jordan Banks “ sat on the wide ledge of an apricot-colored jet tub big enough for four friends, fired up a joint of Erotica-laced Zoner he'd taken as a party favor, and contemplated” how to get extra money for the information he'd given on the Quantum Air-EconoLift buyout/merger. Banks's tox screen showed he'd been flying high on wine, Erotica, and Zoner when he'd wandered like an idiot into Central Park at three in the morning (before being killed).

Connections in Death

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• Slice's flop at Bangers HQ had “Zoner smoke, with a chaser of Erotica” hanging in the air “like dreamy fog.” When Slice asked Eve if she had her hard-ass on that night, she told him, “It's always on. Is she (Dinnie Duff) worth a raid? There's enough Zoner hanging in the air for me to haul every one of you in.”
• Wet Dreams, the strip club Slice sent Eve to, claiming Duff was working there, boasted “glazed looks [from the clientele that] might have come from ingesting the Zoner smoke hazing the room.”
• Eve mused that Slice wasn't an addict, but “likely sucked down some Zoner now and again, downed his share of brews, but he showed no signs of abusing his own products.”
• Duff's toxicology “came back positive for Zoner and Funk,” although there was no sign she had been a habitual user of Funk.
• Barry “Fist” Aimes's room “stank of stale Zoner from the minute butts of same littering a small plate; of sweaty, who-needs-a-shower male; and of the remnants of a days-old burrito.” Eve thought of his mother standing “on her feet most of the day dealing with customers, then dragging herself home after a day at the mall” while “her son was fat-assing and farting in his filthy room smoking Zoner or out killing people.”
• During the walk-through at Bangers HQ, Roarke noted “the smell of unwashed bodies and clothing, stale sex, [and] the Zoner smoke that had penetrated the walls over the tears.”

Golden in Death

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• A sweep of the warehouse where Lucas “Loco” Sanchez created the poison used in the golden eggs sent to spouses of Theresa A. Gold Academy staff included “a game system, ... bottles of high-end booze, a jar of Zoner, [and] a bowl holding a variety of pills.”

Abandoned in Death

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• Anna Hobe's building super's eyes told Eve “he'd recently enjoyed some Zoner, the smoke from which still clung to his clothes like a sickly-sweet body spray.” When he started giving Eve and Peabody grief about entry into Hobe's apartment, she told him, “you can let us in, or you can make us get a warrant. If you choose the second option, I'll get a second one for your place... because... you were stupid enough to come up here still stinking of Zoner smoke.”
• The woman in the building who noticed Anna's abductor the night Hobe was taken was sitting on the windowsill smoking an herbal because “we're not supposed to smoke in the building -- as if the Zoner freak super would notice.”

Encore in Death

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• Brant Fitzhugh's bedside drawer held “a single joint of what a sniff told her was Zoner, meticulously rolled and unused, and a couple of sex toys.”
• Eliza Lane's stalker, Ethan Crommell, “had shaggy brown hair, and the eyes of a puppy who might decide to take a quick bite at any moment. At thirty-eight, he had the look of a Zoner-head college student. Scruffy, soft, vaguely pretty.”
• His building smelled like “old piss, more recent Zoner smoke, and somebody's takeout that had gone bad at least a day before.”

Payback in Death

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• Zoner is once again used as a lever, this time to enter Steven Oglebee's apartment to interview him: “If you want to contact [your lawyer] now, we'll wait. Since we wouldn't want to waste the taxpayers' time, we'll get that warrant while we do. Which will now include a search of the premises, since the distinctive smell of Zoner's emanating from your apartment. Or we can come in and have a conversation.” Although Oglebee replied, “Shit. You think I'm worried about getting busted for Zoner? For my personal use?” Eve told him, “Since you've been busted, twice, for possession with intent to distribute, yeah, you might want to be a little worried about a third bust.” He said, “Neither bust stuck,” but Eve assured him, “Bet I can make this one stick.”

Random in Death

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• Eve dreamed about the hallway of her state school: “She could smell it: sweat, cheap cologne that couldn't cover the sweat, hints of -- forbidden-- gum and candy. Whiffs of the even more forbidden Zoner wafting from the bathrooms along with the faint aroma of piss.” Eve had been saving money “from the stingy monthly stipend -- the money most of the others blew on snacks or smuggled-in Zoner -- and she'd go to New York. Into the Academy.”

Passions in Death

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• One of Greg Barney's teammates was suspended from high school and the team when someone reported he had a couple Zoner joints in his locker. Since he was going hard after Barney's team captain position, Barney not only squealed on him, but found a way to pin the blame on a kid who was a member of the Clean Teens Club, spreading the story that he saw the other kid heading into the vice principal's office right before the teammate was called down and suspended. When Zoner guy jumped him, Barney saw the fight and smirked.

Other mentions.

Not to be confused with Zoner, a potent alcoholic beverage offered at the Blue Squirrel in Betrayal in Death.

References: