The Devil's Elixir

by Raymond Khoury

  She studied me dubiously, like she wasn’t sure if I was being serious or just a doof. I wasn’t kidding. Either way, she said, “Actually, a vast majority of the cases he’s studied, something like seventy percent, seem to involve previous lives that didn’t end naturally, meaning they died either in a car crash or by getting shot or murdered or in some other kind of violent end. And his theory is that the shock of those deaths might somehow disrupt things and cause those souls to retain more memories than they normally would.” She paused, gauging me again. “I don’t know what to believe, but . . . you’ve got to admit, it’s pretty compelling evidence.”

  “But not proof,” I pointed out. Then I nodded. “Yeah, it’s— surprising. And a bit troubling. But what about Alex? What did he say about him?”

  Tess looked uneasy. “I don’t know. I only spoke to his secretary.”

  “And?”

  “He’s away. She doesn’t know where he is.” Tess’s face tightened, and I could see she wasn’t comfortable with what she was about to say. “I think he’s your missing scientist, Sean. The guy in the basement of the bikers’ clubhouse. The contact lens?”

  That took me completely by surprise—and I was now seriously interested. “What makes you think that?”

  “About ten days ago, he called her and said he had to go away. Didn’t say where, didn’t say for how long. He’s not picking up his cell. He’s never done that before.” She paused, letting out a rueful breath, then added, “He also wears contacts.”

  Him and countless others. “What else?”

  She hesitated.

  “Tess, come on. The fact that you’re sure Stephenson didn’t slip off to Vegas on a bender means there’s more. Tell me.”

  She was having trouble keeping her eyes on me, and I noticed she was also shivering. I suddenly flashed to something Karen Walker had said when we interviewed her. That the bikers’ last kidnapping was in the San Francisco area.

  Stephenson was at Berkeley.

  I felt a chill crawl down the back of my neck as Tess edged closer.

  “I don’t think they were after you, Sean,” she said. “I think they were after Alex all along. That’s why they’re still after us. And that’s why they took Stephenson.”

  “Why?” I asked, feeling my core tighten up. “Why would they want Alex?”

  She met my gaze, and a shadow crossed her face. “Because they think he’s the reincarnation of McKinnon. Because it looks like your son could well be the reincarnation of the man you killed.”

  59

  Villaverde awoke in a large, airy room.

  He looked around and saw that he was in some kind of gym. An expensive, in-house one. In front of him, an elliptical trainer, a rowing machine, and a Power Plate were lined up facing a floor-to-ceiling glass wall. Beyond, he could see the sea shimmering in the moonlight, and realized he was in a beachfront villa. Which would have been great if he didn’t have his wrists and ankles duct-taped to a set of steel wall-mounted gym bars.

  He was also naked above the waist.

  He closed his eyes and tried to remember what had happened, how it had happened. They’d drugged him, he knew that much.

  El Brujo.

  The loco prick had grabbed him from his home. Which wasn’t easy. FBI personnel’s home addresses are well protected. That information isn’t easy to get hold of—not easy at all. Then he thought back to the rest of his day, and it all made sense. The mall in Mission Valley. Dumping Torres there, with a gun, all of which seemed pointless and random. It was all misdirection. They must have followed him from there, although he was always—by instinct—careful about that. Then he realized they must have tagged his SUV. Of course. Someone must have sneaked up on it and stuck a tracker to it. They didn’t even need a tracker. They could have just taped a live cell phone to his SUV and tracked that.

  But why him?

  Reilly.

  They were after Reilly. They’d hoped to put a tracker on his car, but they couldn’t since he and Villaverde had both arrived together in Villaverde’s SUV.

  And that, he realized, had signed his death sentence. There was no doubt in his mind about that.

  And at that moment, not having children—or even a girlfriend—made complete and utter sense to him.

  He tried tugging at the tape, but it was solid. His arms were stretched out horizontally, his legs spread into a V—he was like a fly caught on sticky tape.

  Something else, too. His head felt heavy. Heavy, and—slow. Like his reflexes were dulled.

  He heard footsteps at the door, and twisted his neck to see who it was. The door to the gym opened, and a man stepped in. He was smartly dressed in a black open-necked shirt and some expensive-looking gray slacks. He wore dark leather loafers without socks, and his slick black hair was gelled back.

  He had a fat, short, curved knife in his hand.

  And as he positioned himself in front of Villaverde, the agent met the man’s eyes and felt an odd shiver. They were studying him with an inscrutable intensity, the kind of eyes that were laser-focused but aware of everything around them, the kind of eyes that could casually dismiss anything they surveyed without the hint of emotion.

  And in that glance, he spotted the tiniest of acknowledgements, as if to say, “Yes, it is me.” And Villaverde knew, for certain, that it was Navarro.

  “Don’t think you’re going to—”

  “Ssshh,” the man stilled him with two rigid fingers in front of his mouth. Then he raised his knife and, slowly, slid it across the surface of Villaverde’s bare chest without pushing it in too deeply and opened up a vivid, red, circular gash across his entire torso.

  Villaverde refused to scream. He wouldn’t give the pinche madre the satisfaction. Navarro studied him dispassionately, then he slashed his chest again, and again, making horizontal and vertical slits that criss-crossed the circle in a symmetrical pattern. Then the man finally stepped back, admired his handiwork, took out a cloth from his pocket and began to wipe clean his blade.

  Villaverde felt like he was going to black out from the pain. He was trying not to look at his lacerated chest, but couldn’t help himself. His torso was a bloody, fleshy mess of cuts. He was bleeding profusely, his blood drenching his pants and dripping off his toes and onto the polished wood floor of the gym. None of the cuts, however, appeared to have hit an artery or an organ.

  He didn’t understand why he was being tortured before Navarro had even bothered to ask him what he wanted to know. He had always wondered how he’d react in a situation like this. He knew he wouldn’t tell them anything, no matter how much pain he felt. He was going to die anyway, there was no way around that. But he had several choices regarding how he spent his last moments alive. He was in too much pain to get angry, and he felt it was pointless to vent by screaming abuse. But he still had to say something. Honor demanded it.

  “Whatever you’re after, you do know you’re going to end up like all the others, right? Sooner or later, if we don’t get you, one of your fellow narcos will and you’ll be dog food like everyone else.”

  Navarro tilted his head to one side and gave Villaverde a thin smile. Then he removed a small leather pouch from his pocket and loosened the lace that held it closed. He held the pouch aloft, almost reverently, and whispered a few words in a language that Villaverde didn’t understand. Then Navarro’s eyes gazed directly into his own.

  “Clear your mind, and enjoy.”

  He dipped a hand into the pouch, then pulled it out. His cupped palm was now full of a fine gray dust that looked something like human ash. He took a step forward, so he was up close to his prisoner, reached out, and—with his eyes locked on Villaverde’s—he massaged the dust into the open wounds on Villaverde’s chest. The powder burned—badly—but Navarro didn’t flinch, even though Villaverde was screaming so loudly it felt like he was going to burst his own eardrums.

  Then, just as suddenly as he’d started, he stopped. He turned and stepped away, grabbing a towel from a stand on th
e way and wiping his hands as he stood by the glass wall and stared out at the sea.

  Villaverde felt the pain subside, then, very quickly, his pulse started to race. He thought of Torres and realized that in a few minutes he wouldn’t be in control of his own mind.

  After a few minutes, Navarro returned to face him and stood absolutely still, staring at him while muttering some more incomprehensible words.

  And then he felt it. Much sooner than he had expected.

  His temperature rose. Sweat broke out across his face. Stomach acid boiled in his abdomen and shot up into his mouth, making him retch and almost choke. He shut his eyes, only to see strange, primordial shapes glide across his vision. He opened his eyes again, but the weird forms were still there, swimming across his vision of Navarro and the gym behind him.

  He closed his eyes again, trying to block out the confusion. Blinding colors took over, then suddenly, they disappeared, like someone had hit a switch in the back of his eyes. The blackness was intense, complete—a darkness he’d never encountered. He opened his eyes, suddenly terrified that he’d gone blind, and the creatures appeared. Horrible, hissing reptiles and snakes. Deformed, human-like shapes, snarling through fanged teeth, strafing him from all corners. And behind them, black walls, closing in, tightening against him like a giant vise.

  He started to scream and shut his eyes, trying to block out the horror. He forced himself to think of something else, something calming, and thought of the last time he’d gone surfing at Black’s Beach. He tried to focus on the waves rolling in from the submarine trench half a mile off the coast. On the raw ocean swells marching toward the shore, one after the other, before releasing their energy in big hollow peaks. He tried to remember the smell of the sea, the sound of the seagulls shrieking overhead, the feeling of the sheer power of the waves as he paddled out to join the lineup.

  For a brief moment, it worked. He felt a blissful calmness as his turn came up. He jumped up onto his board. Bent his knees. Centered his weight. But something was rushing toward him. Not the beach. Not the ocean. Something else. Something from deep inside of him. He felt it slam into him with a force greater than the biggest wave he’d ever ridden. It knocked all the air from him. He couldn’t breathe and was gasping for air. It seemed as though all his organs were jammed up against his heart—and then it burst out of the cuts on his chest.

  A three-headed snake, thick as a boa and black and slimy, emerging from a field of flames, curling out, coming out of him and spinning on itself before it drew level with his face and snarled at him, its wide jaws filled with rows of fangs.

  Villaverde could see flames jutting out of the cuts on his chest, he could smell his own skin burning and feel it sizzling and melting from the scorching heat. He knew he would be incinerated completely within seconds, and as he screamed and tried to turn away from the monster facing him, it followed his head around and moved right in so it was breathing into his sweat-drenched face and asked him, with an echoey hiss, “Where are they?”

  60

  My son is the reincarnation of the man I killed.

  At least, that’s what I thought Tess had just said. My head was still spinning from it, and I felt like I was the one having an out-of-body experience.

  It was absurd, and all I could muster was, “What are you talking about?”

  “The things Alex was remembering. Animals and scenes from rainforests.” She pulled out Alex’s drawings and showed them to me again. “These tribes, these settings. That’s right from McKinnon’s past. He spent his life in those places.” She was getting breathless, her words spilling out more intensely. “These plants. They’re medicinal plants. And this drawing here”—she pointed to the one of the man walking on orange, fiery ground—“that’s fire walking. McKinnon’s done it; I read it in a bio of his. Then there’s that other flower Alex drew, the one his teacher told me about. He told me it was supposed to cure heart problems, but that it turned out to be harmful. McKinnon was the one who found it. I looked it up. He was working for a big pharmaceutical company at the time. They were funding his research and footing his bills down there. And he found this plant that showed a lot of promise as a cholesterol inhibitor. But then the tests went bad and he fell out with his bosses ’cause they’d built it up into this medical marvel and they didn’t want their share options to implode. That’s why he bailed on the big pharmas and struck out on his own. Alex told me about this. Not in full detail, but he gave me enough to want to look into it. All the pieces fit.”

  “Come on, Tess. Look at the drawings,” I countered. “It’s not like they’re photographic evidence. They’re pretty vague, maybe you’re reading stuff into them because it fits . . . and they could be things he saw on TV or in some issue of National Geographic. And that cholesterol story? Maybe he heard about it on the news or heard someone talking about it.”

  “Maybe . . . but he remembers you, Sean. This drawing?” She handed me the one that showed Alex with someone facing him, and looked at me squarely as she tapped her finger against the dark figure. “He said this was you. He says you shot him.” She tapped the center of her forehead. “Right here. He told me the whole story. Just like you told me. In detail.”

  She hesitated, and paused as I stared at the drawing again, giving it a proper look this time. And it was uncanny. Although it was a kid’s drawing, I saw something in it. A raw truth, an emotion that brought that night cannoning back into my mind’s eye. It was deeply unsettling to imagine that Alex had actually drawn me there, in the lab, but looking at it now with different eyes, it suddenly didn’t seem impossible.

  And yet, it had to be.

  “He knew, Sean,” she continued. “About the woman. About her kid. About the guy who was with you, how he shot them.”

  And that hit me like a sledgehammer. “What?”

  “He told me about it. How they died. How angry he got, how he ran . . . He told me about the laptop and the journal, about Father Eusebio. He knew about it. He knew everything.” Her eyes were glistening with moisture now. “How could he possibly know that, Sean? How could a four-year-old who wasn’t even born back then know any of these things?”

  I didn’t have an answer for her.

  I was having trouble coming to grips with the basic notion, let alone the details. I tried to step back, to go back to the beginning and track forward, to try to make sense of the sheer absurdity of what Tess had just hit me with. I racked my brain looking for another explanation, pulling her theory apart, but I kept butting up against one thing, one certainty that I couldn’t bat away. Alex didn’t get it from Michelle. I’d never told her how McKinnon had died, let alone what Munro had done. And it wasn’t written up in any report either. Corliss had made sure of that.

  I looked at Tess, feeling my own soul going into a tailspin. “It can’t be . . .”

  “How else could he know, Sean? How?”

  And just like a moment earlier, I didn’t have an answer for her. But I now understood. I understood what this was all about.

  “Navarro’s not after me,” I said, my voice hardening with anger. “He’s after Alex. Because he thinks Alex is the reincarnation of McKinnon. Because he wants the formula. Because he thinks Alex might remember it.”

  “Exactly,” Tess concurred. “Alex is the target. Has been all along.”

  It fit.

  It goddamn fit.

  And if this was true, then for some weird, sick, karmic mind-fuck of a reason, whoever chose how these things happen decided he’d drop-kick the soul of the man I executed into the body of my own son.

  Forget intelligent design.

  This was perverse, sadistic design.

  I slid down to the ground and leaned back against the lone tree, feeling as isolated as it was. I still wasn’t sure I believed it. It was too insane, too surreal. It needed a major leap of faith, and I wasn’t there yet. But I couldn’t dismiss it out of hand either. Not with everything Tess had dug up. And if it were true . . . The thought of Alex seeing his
murderer every time he looked at me, his own father, was too horrific to imagine. I went back to looking for ways to sink Tess’s conclusion, fast, to rip it apart and shred it into nanoparticles so it would never come up again.

  I couldn’t.

  I felt like my head was about to explode, like an astronaut in deep space whose helmet had cracked open. And I wish I was in space, where, if you believe the movie posters, no one can hear you scream. I’d have really belted one out. But I couldn’t. Not here. Not in front of Tess, not with Alex and Jules and the other agent close by. So I just slunk back, leaned my head back, and shut my eyes.

  Tess slid down and sat next to me.

  After a moment, I asked her, “You really think it’s possible?”

  She took a long second, then said, “I don’t know what to believe. And—honestly?—I’m torn. I’m torn between wanting it to be real and hoping it isn’t.” She reached out and put her hand on my arm and leaned in closer. “I don’t want it to be real for your sake. For Alex’s sake. It would be so . . . cruel. And unfair. And part of me is kicking myself for even having looked into it. But if it is real . . . we can’t run away from it. It’s better if we face it and deal with it and fix things so Alex and you can have the kind of father-and-son relationship you both so deserve.”

  She stared up at the night sky. I followed her gaze upward. It seemed more vast and endless to me than ever.

  “And if it is real . . . Jesus. It changes everything. If this life isn’t the end, if there’s a chance that we come back . . . That’s a whole other conversation and one I’m not sure we need to have right now.”

  I nodded, more to myself than to her. All of that could wait. “I need to make sure Alex is safe,” I told her. “For good. If that’s what Navarro believes, then Alex isn’t going to be safe until that bastard is put away. That’s what I need to take care of first. After that . . . we’ll deal with the rest.”

  I had to find Navarro. But once I did, I needed to shut him up, permanently. I didn’t want any of this to ever come to light—it would haunt, if you’ll forgive the pun, Alex for years to come and would make his life very difficult. I also didn’t want Navarro blabbing about this from some prison cell and inspiring a whole new wave of narcos to come chasing after my son like he was their golden goose.