Fun with Character Deaths: Heroin as Poison

I have several character deaths that I'm working on the details for (I hadn't originally intended this WIP to be a murder mystery, but it seems to be moving in that direction, at least one subplot is) and the first involves poison.

I need to kill off a 150 pound, eighteen-year-old, 5'4" Hispanic girl in such a way that the other characters think she's OD'ed, but actually she's been poisoned. I need something that will register as heroin at the hospital, and if possible it should be something that can be drunk/dissolved in liquid. (My murderer put it in her drink.) Also, I'd love to get some detail on the symptoms of an overdose in the moments before it kills her.

Thanks in advance!

Okay, choral hydrate looks good, with the symptoms and simiarities, except it doesn't seem to be lethal on its own.

Looking up variations on morphine and methadone now. . .

And actually if it's possible to take heroin orally, I could just leave it at that.

My only other question is how much time it would take to work itself through her system.

^^Oooh, I like that one! Does "circulatory depression" mean that her fingers might go numb/tingly at the onset of symptons? Because I've kinda got my heart set on that, if I can work it in.

(And good LORD people are crazy!)

Hm. Okay, great info, but I think the symptoms associated with heroin are better suited to this particular scene. I'm liking that fentanyl idea, though, since it's similar except much stronger.

Also, my murderer isn't exactly a criminal master mind--her death is actually an accident. He meant to kill someone else, and she just grabbed the wrong drink. So, I guess the rest of my characters should figure out pretty quickly that she's not a user, but the folks at the hospital aren't convinced. If that makes more sense.

@waylander: Ah--so that's out then. Good to know.

@ColoradoGuy: So, if I go with fentanyl, could I have him spread it around the rim of her glass, rather than in the actual liquid? Would that work?

@BigWords: Eh, don't think so. But I appreciate you looking.

Okay, let me give y'all a little more detail on the situation here:

My characters are all in the midst of a celebration. I haven't decided exactly what, yet--they've just had some kind of victory over the antagonist, and decide to grab some beers for a toast. My murderer (who is also a mole, secretly working for the antagonist--let's call him M) is the only one of them legally old enough to buy alcohol, so he springs for the drinks, contaminating one of the plastic cups while the others hang out and talk in another room.

The intended victim--let's call him A--is, unbeknownst to M, allergic to barley* and can't have beer, legally or otherwise, so one of the other characters--call her V--offers to drink his, too. M doesn't see this exchange, having gone back to the kitchen to grab more drinks, because he's only got the two hands after all.

So, a few euphoric, oblivious minutes later, the gang departs to go . . . somewhere, I haven't quite decided that either. (I'm thinking movie, or rock show--one of those. Doesn't matter much yet.) And then V starts crashing. Everyone is in shock, "What the hell just happened? What's wrong with her?!" etc, etc, including M because he was expecting A to crash, not V, and they rush her to the hospital.

At said hospital, V flatlines, and the diagnosis is a drug overdose--which drug depends on what I decide on ultimately as my weapon of choice. All her friends say that's impossible, she wasn't an addict, we would have known, but the folks at the hospital give them some spiel about how addicts are really good at lying and hiding what they're up to, etc, etc, we're sorry for your loss, and then they have to leave.

However, another of my characters (we'll call him R, for Rehab) is a former addict, and isn't buying that story. And that's when they start digging into the murder mystery part of my plot--someone must have drugged her.

If any of that makes any difference.

*Barley, or whatever it is that people can be allergic to in beer, because I had a friend in college who had that problem.

Hm, I guess it doesn't have to be beer, apart from the allergy thing--I need some way for my intended victim to not be able to drink it, and have her take it instead. Although I could just make him straight-edge or something....

I don't know what arsenic tastes like, but if you're right, something licorice-tinged might work. How fast does arsenic work? It doesn't have to be mere minutes, like half an hour could work. She could crash en route to wherever they wind up going.