The Devil's Elixir

by Raymond Khoury

  I stood by the large window as Villaverde made his call and stared out in silence, seething with rage. The sun was long gone, and darkness was now firmly in control, gloomy and oppressive. The streetlamps in the almost empty parking lot were low and subdued, and there was no moon or stars in the sky that I could see, no beacon, no light at the end of the harrowing tunnel that this day had turned into. It was as if nature itself was conspiring to accentuate my sense of loss.

  “I don’t get it,” I fumed. “She said they weren’t after a kill. She said one of the shooters had her in his sights back at the house, but didn’t take the shot.”

  “Maybe one of them screwed up,” Villaverde offered as he hung up. “You said it yourself, bullets were flying all over the place.” He hesitated, his expression uncertain, then added, “Maybe the one that got her was meant for you.”

  My stomach flooded with acid. It was something I’d been wondering about, along with second-guessing everything I’d done, every decision I’d made from the moment Michelle had called.

  “Yeah, that’s a great feeling right there,” I grumbled. I tried to shake away the anger and the remorse and focus on what had to be done. “Okay, so what have we got to go on besides her phone? CCTV footage from the hotel, ballistics from the hotel and from the house . . . what else? Fingerprints? Blood from the shooters?”

  Villaverde nodded. “We’ve got lots of DNA to work with, from the house and from the mess you left behind in the parking lot. I don’t know what the score is on the camera footage, but forensics are running what they got through NCIC.”

  “What about neighbors?”

  “Homicide’s had people out there since her nine-one-one call, but I can’t see much coming out of that. What are they going to get? The van’s plates?”

  I remembered seeing the shooters’ van in the hotel’s parking lot, but in the heat of the moment, my eyes hadn’t registered its plate. It was irrelevant, anyway. Stolen, rented with a fake ID—either usually did the trick.

  “I need you to go downtown and look at some faces,” Villaverde said, referring to the monster database of mug shots on tap. Not something I was relishing.

  I nodded grudgingly, wondering about who these guys were and going over what I’d seen, what their faces and their moves told me. They were tough and committed, and they moved well together, like they’d had a lot of practice doing it. It made me wonder what else we’d find out when we finally did track them down.

  “They’ve got two guys down, either seriously hurt or more probably dead,” I said.

  “They’re not about to roll them to any ER,” Villaverde replied. “Best case, we’ll find their bodies dumped somewhere sometime soon, but I’m not holding my breath. More likely they’ll end up as worm food in one of the canyons or out in the desert.”

  Which is what I would have done, if I were them. The thing is, you’ve still got to cover all possible angles, in case the bastards who killed Michelle and whoever was calling the shots for them slipped up—which, luckily for us, they sometimes did.

  “They lost two guys in one morning. You know of many crews that can take that kind of damage without blinking?” Before Villaverde could answer, I added, “We need to reach out to the DEA.”

  “Why?”

  “Michelle couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to come after her. The only thing she could think of was that maybe it was some kind of blowback from her years on the job. We need to ask them about that.”

  Villaverde’s face contorted, like this was news to him. “I know the ASAC who runs their local office. I’ll give him a call.” He thought about it for a moment, then asked, “Was she based back east with you?”

  I shook my head. “No. Mexico City.”

  “Mexico? Is that where you were posted, too?”

  “No, I was Chicago.”

  “So how’d you guys hook up?”

  “I was down there as part of a multi-agency task force. We were chasing down a new outfit that was cooking up some seriously pure crank that was hitting the street. I’d been backtracking the trail through some Latin Kings gangbangers they were supplying.”

  “Operation Sidewinder?” Villaverde asked.

  “Right. Anyway, Meesh was already there, working out of the DEA’s main digs at the embassy, hitting the kingpins where it hurt most—in their wallets. It didn’t take long for our paths to cross.”

  “Okay. Who was the country attaché when she was down there? That’s who we need to talk to.”

  I frowned in agreement. “Hank Corliss.”

  Villaverde winced. He clearly knew the name. “Corliss. Jesus.”

  I nodded. “Is he still DEA?”

  He shrugged. “Hell, yeah. After what he went through, what else would he be doing, you know what I’m saying?” He paused, as if out of respect for the man, then said, “He’s top dog in LA. Runs the SoCal task force.” The name had evidently conjured up some questions in his mind, and his brow knotted. “You think what happened to him could be tied to all this?”

  The thought had bounced around in my mind, but it was hard to give it too much credence. It was close to five years later now—a long time for anyone to wait before unleashing a second wave of savagery.

  “After all this time? With Michelle off the force for years? Doesn’t sound right to me. Besides, she wasn’t part of our task force; she was working a different caseload, undercover. But we do need to talk to him.” I paused for a moment, then added, “Better the request come from you. Corliss and I—we’re not exactly on each other’s Christmas cards list.” I was being generous.

  Villaverde blew out a mild chortle. “Noted.”

  He went silent for a long second, like he was weighing what he was about to say.

  “Look,” he finally said, “this is all good, and maybe something’ll pan out from talking to them, but . . . we can handle this, okay? You’ve got something else to think about right now.”

  I looked a question at him.

  Villaverde turned and thumbed a finger in the direction of the glass wall that stood between his office and his secretary’s desk. “The kid.”

  I looked through the partition. Alex had calmed down and was just sitting there quietly on a black leather couch, staring at the carpet. Two women were now seated next to him. One was Villaverde’s über-efficient personal assistant, Carla, to whom I’d initially entrusted him. They’d been joined by a younger, dark-haired agent in a white shirt and a charcoal skirt suit by the name of Julie Lowery. Their attention was totally focused on him as they were chatting with him, trying to comfort him as he half-heartedly picked his way through a box of nuggets and some fries. Villaverde had already asked for a child psychologist to be brought in to help us out, a woman who’d worked with the bureau before, but they’d only been able to get through to her voicemail and were waiting to hear back.

  “Does he have any family he can stay with? He’s going to need some serious TLC,” Villaverde added. “You need to think about that.”

  He was right, of course. I was so focused on wanting to get my hands on the sons of bitches who had gunned down Michelle that I wasn’t thinking clearly about the other victim they’d left in their wake.

  “I know.”

  “So what are you going to do with him?”

  I wasn’t sure why he was asking. “He’s my son. What do you think? He’ll live with us.”

  “Well, that’s great. But you’re going to have some paperwork to deal with. You’ll probably need to run some blood work to establish paternity. It’s a process.” He paused, like he was already playing it out in his mind, then asked, “You know of any next of kin who might contest it? Are Michelle’s parents around? These things can get messy.”

  She’d said there was no one close by when I’d asked her on the phone. I thought back to what I knew about her family. We were only together for a couple of months, and, intense as those months were, peripheral details like that had faded away.

  “I’m not sure. No brot
hers or sisters that I know of. I think her dad’s out of the picture, and her mom wasn’t doing too well back when we were seeing each other, Alzheimer’s I think, but . . . I’m not sure.”

  “Okay, we can look into that.” Villaverde’s expression softened up. “Look, all I’m saying is, you’ve got your hands full with this kid. You need to get the red tape sorted out and take him home, get to know him and start laying the groundwork for his new life. And that’s not going to be easy. Not after everything he’s been through today. I mean, he just watched his mom die, for Chrissake. That’s gonna be tough to come back from. You’ve got a mammoth task facing you, my friend. And that’s what you need to focus on right now. The rest of it, we can handle.”

  I wasn’t with him. My mind was still locked in a replay loop, and I was watching Michelle buckle over as she dived into the car and hearing the sound of her grunt when the bullet hit her.

  I just said, “I want these guys.”

  “Hey, I do, too. I already spoke to the head of SDPD’s criminal intel unit. It’s priority one for all of us, believe me. But there’s nothing you can add to the mix. This isn’t New York. It’s not your beat. You’d just be a drag on our resources.” He blew out a lungful of air, pushed off the edge of the desk, and joined me by the glass wall. “Look, Michelle’s dead. Her boyfriend’s dead. Whether the shooters were out to grab her or not, it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over. These scumbags, they’re gonna crawl back into whatever cesspool they came from. And we’ll just have to keep on working the leads until we find them. Go. Be with your son. Take him home. Let us deal with this.”

  I balled my fists and felt my jaw tighten as his words sank in. Alex. Alex was now my priority, and, much as I hate to admit it, there wasn’t much I’d be able to add to the investigation. Not out here. Not as an outsider with no local insights and no real contacts to work. I’d only be a burden to them.

  The fact that it was true didn’t make it any less toxic.

  I glanced at my watch. It was just after ten—way past any four-year-old’s bedtime. I needed to get Alex out of here and into a warmer, more comforting environment, get him to bed, let him get some rest. I’d always heard that kids were incredibly resilient, and Alex was going to need to draw on a full life’s quota of resilience if he was going to get through this. I was going to have to learn some new tricks real quick, too, starting with the fact that I needed to figure out what I was going to tell him, how and when I was going to break the grim new reality to him. I was totally unprepared for this. I knew I’d need help and need it soon, and it didn’t look like the child psychologist was going to be around before morning.

  “I should get him out of here,” I said.

  “We’ll get a couple of rooms set up for you at the Hilton. We use it a lot,” Villaverde offered. “Might be a good idea for Jules to tag along and help put him to bed and get him settled,” he added, indicating the brunette agent with a nod.

  “Sure.” I nodded somewhat absentmindedly, knowing that the help I really needed would have to come from elsewhere, but more thinking that I had an important call to make, one I could no longer avoid.

  I checked my watch again and, for a split second, considered the time difference between California and Arizona before remembering that the Grand Canyon state didn’t observe daylight saving time and was therefore also on Pacific Daylight Time, same as San Diego.

  Which meant it wasn’t too late to make that call.

  “Give me a few minutes,” I told Villaverde as I stepped out of his office and reached for my phone.

  10

  COCHISE COUNTY, ARIZONA

  Tess couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  At first, she’d been elated to get Reilly’s call. It was never easy when he was out on a live assignment, not knowing where he was or how much danger he was really in. And at those times, his name showing up on her caller ID never failed to make her heart soar. She’d felt the same anxiety tonight, not knowing why he was out in San Diego, not knowing what level of threat required his immediate presence, and she was about to call him when his call lit up her screen. She’d felt the same visceral uplift at hearing his voice, the same surge of relief and joy—only this time, the surge proved short-lived.

  She knew he was doing his best to massage her feelings and, to his credit, the words he used were carefully chosen and sensitively delivered, but it was still one hell of a bombshell, and despite all his efforts, she couldn’t help feeling torn and pulled in all directions and dragged through a wringer of sadness, heartache, sympathy, melancholy, pain, and, yes, much as she hated the feeling—a touch of jealousy.

  By the end of it, she felt dazed, emotionally pummeled, and physically exhausted, and her heart broke into even smaller pieces at the thought that however low she was feeling, the man she loved was surely feeling far worse.

  And at the top of that whole tower of heartache, of course, was a young mother who’d just lost the rest of her life and a four-year-old boy who’d just watched his mother die.

  There was really only one thing she could think of saying.

  “I’ll fly out in the morning,” she told Reilly, her tone even and subdued and not really leaving any room for debate.

  He didn’t argue either.

  “You all right?” Villaverde asked me as I stepped back into his office.

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling an unfamiliar, cold hollowness inside. I glanced out the glass partition at Alex and said, “Let’s get the kid out of here. But after we get him tucked into bed, I need to do something.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Michelle’s place,” I told Villaverde. “I want to see it.”

  11

  The street outside Michelle’s house was comatose-quiet, the tranquil residential neighborhood even more so that night, like it had clammed up from shock. A solitary police cruiser was parked out front and yellow crime tape was strung out around her property, the lone, faint echoes of the bloodstorm that had struck earlier that day.

  The only ones on the outside, that is.

  Inside, the echoes were much louder.

  A large, congealed puddle of blood was the first thing that greeted Villaverde and me as we walked in. A messy streak broke off from it and arced sideways, away from the doorway. I visualized how it must have happened, when Michelle’s boyfriend’s body was shoved sideways by the shooters as they rushed out of the house with their wounded, or dying, buddy. Another trail of blood—the wounded shooter’s, presumably—snaked deep into the house and disappeared into a dark hallway, accompanied by the bloody boot prints of at least two others.

  I advanced into the hallway, trying to avoid the red stains on the ground. The place was littered with crime scene debris—black fingerprint dust, discarded index cards, rubber gloves, and empty tape dispensers. I’ve always been struck by how quickly death takes hold and imposes itself on whatever territory it’s invaded, how quickly it can suck the life and light out of a victim’s home and make it seem like they’ve been gone for years. This was no different, and the brutal finality of it was all the more striking given how close I had once been to Michelle.

  I followed the macabre trail deeper into the house and down a narrow corridor. At the end of it, where it opened up into the kitchen, was another bloody mess, this one all over the floor and the walls. A frenzy of images rocked me, ones my mind was throwing up based on what Michelle had described. I pictured her plunging the kitchen knife into the shooter’s neck, matching it with the red spurts lining the walls. I imagined the shooter collapsing to the floor, by the big puddle of blood, then being hustled back out of the house, almost if not already dead, his feet dragging behind him like twin paintbrushes and leaving a snaking red trail.

  I stepped into the kitchen. It was relatively undisturbed. I could see the ghost of Michelle going around it, going about her Saturday morning routine. I noticed the dishwasher, open and with its trays out and still half-full, but what drew my eye was the fridge.

  I move
d closer to it.

  Every square inch of its door was covered with photographs, drawings, and other personal mementos, like a montage of her life. I couldn’t stop my eyes from feasting on them, and as I did, I felt my lungs shrivel. It was a shrine to happier days, a testament to a woman and her son and the abundance of good times they’d shared—good times I’d not been a part of, good times Alex would never enjoy again with his mother.

  I lingered there as the images took root inside me, pictures of Alex from when he was a baby, of him and Michelle in parks and swimming pools and at the beach, all of them lit up by big smiles and laughing faces. My throat tightened as I took in Alex’s drawings, crude and colorful creations of stick people and trees and fish and misshapen letters, enchanting expressions of an innocence that the boy was unlikely to enjoy ever again. Throughout it all, my mind was vaulting ahead, dropping me into those scenes like a digital special effect and taunting me with endless what-could-have-beens.

  “Seems like she had a nice life.”

  Villaverde’s words broke through my reverie.

  I gave him a slow nod. “Yeah.”

  Villaverde stepped closer and took in the mementos on the fridge in silence. After a moment, he said, “Forensics have been over everything, so if you want to take something . . .”

  I looked at him. He shrugged. I turned back to the fridge, took another long look at it, then peeled off a photo of Michelle and Alex posing next to a sandcastle on some beach.

  “Let’s check out the rest of the house,” I told Villaverde as I slipped the pic into my breast pocket.

  The rest was more or less undisturbed. Framed photos of Michelle and Alex kept calling out to me as I went through the living room and the master bedroom, but apart from accentuating the cold feeling in my gut, nothing in either room seemed out of place or looked to be of use to the investigation. Alex’s bedroom was more of a challenge—I knew it would help him to have some of his favorite things with him, but I didn’t know where to start or what to choose, and that only made me feel worse. It was cluttered with all kinds of toys, books, and clothes, and its walls were a colorful mosaic of cartoon posters and more of Alex’s drawings. I thought that a good place to start would be to bring back the cartoon-covered bedsheets with me, as well as the three plush animals that were scattered on them. I pulled them all off the bed and rolled them into a ball, and I also grabbed some clothes from his closet.