The Devil's Elixir ts-3

by Raymond Khoury

  One of the junior agents pushed a few keys on the laptop facing them, then spun it around to face Villaverde, who shared the details.

  “Social Security has him in Los Angeles. Works at a private rehab clinic up in Montecito Heights. Sleeps there, too, by the looks of it. His work address and residential address are the same.”

  Call it instinct, call it fifteen years on the job, but I knew this was our man. Pennebaker walks out of prison a changed man, but almost certainly still bitter about the past. Feels more like a soldier than anything else, but has seen and heard too much ever to go back to active service. Needs to leave his recent past behind because those years were notable for some serious criminal activity. We knew that Walker and Pennebaker had a reputation for getting the job done. Why else would someone want to hire them years after they last worked together? That kind of reputation works both ways. It all fit. The only way to know for sure was to meet him. Any kind of contact before then risked putting him back on the missing list.

  I turned to Villaverde. “We need to get up to LA.”

  “This time of day, you’ll need to go by air.”

  He had seemingly crunched the facts the same way I had.

  He picked up a phone and told the other end that he needed a chopper.

  Twenty minutes later, we were airborne in an LAPD JetRanger on the way to have a chat with a man I hoped would turn out to be our own guru.

  37

  Tess hated waiting.

  She was impatient from minute one, as her mom never failed to remind her, often adding that it was a small miracle that Tess had had the decency to stick around inside of her for the full nine months and not kicked and screamed her way out prematurely.

  She was back at the hotel, with Jules and Alex. They’d gone downstairs for a light lunch, and they were now back in their rooms. Jules was on a conference call with her office while Tess was on the couch with Alex, reading Tikki Tikki Tembo with him. It was one of his favorites, one he’d asked her to bring back from the house. It was also a book she remembered reading to Kim years ago, but even with that added emotional kick, its charm and its amusing tongue-twisters still weren’t enough to drag Tess’s mind off the drawing or calm her bubbling impatience.

  Then her phone rang.

  She picked it up, saw a number she didn’t recognize, and her pulse vaulted. She never answered a call that fast.

  It was Holly Fowden, Alex’s teacher.

  Tess thanked her for getting in touch as she sprang off the bed and slipped into her bedroom, closing the door behind her. She then explained who she was and what had happened. Fowden also hadn’t heard about Michelle’s death, and her voice broke as she struggled to find the right words to say. Tess helped her by moving the conversation along and told her about what had prompted her visit to the school and her chat with the principal.

  “Alex’s mom did come to see me,” Fowden told her. “She showed me that drawing.”

  “Why?”

  “She didn’t explain much. She just said Alex seemed to be troubled by something and wanted to know how he was in class.”

  “And how was he?”

  “Normal. Happy. I didn’t notice anything wrong with him.”

  “But she did?”

  “Well . . . yes.” She sounded a bit uncomfortable discussing it with Tess, but carried on. “She said he hadn’t been sleeping well and having nightmares . . . She also said he’d been saying things she didn’t understand, things she was surprised he knew. She seemed confused by it all and wanted to know if I’d talked about them in class.”

  “Like what?”

  “Names of places. Cities and towns in South America. And animals like boas and piranhas, I remember her saying.”

  “And you hadn’t taught them that?”

  “No.”

  Tess wasn’t sure why this was surprising to Michelle. He could have easily picked those things up while watching television.

  “Did he say anything like that to you?”

  “After she mentioned them, I noticed that some of his drawings had a different feel than what other kids would normally draw, but again, nothing too out of the ordinary. But there was one thing he did say that surprised me. I didn’t really think much of it until after his mom called.”

  Tess felt a spark of anticipation. “What was it?”

  “We were out in the park and I had the kids draw some of the flowers that were there. And Alex drew this white flower that was really gorgeous. But when I asked him which one he was drawing, he said it wasn’t one of the ones in the park. And then he said something else. He said, ‘They say it fixes your heart, but actually it kills people.’ ”

  Tess wondered what kind of TV shows he’d been watching. “A flower that kills people?”

  “I know, weird, right? But when I asked him what he meant, he didn’t want to say. It’s odd, though, ’cause lately, he’s been more articulate and seems to have a richer vocabulary than his classmates. But on that occasion, he didn’t want to say more.”

  “So how did you leave it?”

  “I told his mom I’d let her know if he said or did anything unusual or if he seemed at all unhappy about anything. I saw her when she dropped him off a couple of times. She said she was taking him to see a specialist but didn’t really go into detail.”

  “What, like a shrink?”

  “Yes. A child psychologist. Privately. She didn’t want to involve the school in it. She didn’t want Alex to be labeled in any way. You know how it is.”

  Tess was familiar with that kind of pressure. “Do you know who she took him to see?”

  “No.”

  “Did she say anything about him?”

  Fowden thought about it, then said, “No, I’m sorry. I got the feeling she was kicking herself for even mentioning it to me.”

  Tess had to get more. “Was it a man or a woman?”

  Fowden paused, then said, “A man. Yeah, I’m pretty sure she referred to him as ‘he.’ ”

  Tess thanked her, got her number, and ended the call.

  She didn’t have much. A first name that may or may not relate to a local shrink.

  Tess left her room and saw that Jules had ended her call and was now playing with Alex. She hesitated to interrupt them, then picked up her iPad, went back to her room, fired up Safari, and started trawling the online listings for psychologists in the San Diego area named Dean.

  38

  We landed at Hooper Heliport at five thirty, took the elevator down to the street, and got straight into a Bureau Suburban that was waiting for us. Our destination was only five miles out. As we drove north toward the hills, the agent riding shotgun briefed us on the clinic.

  “The place was founded about twenty years ago by Ursula Marshall, on an endowment. It’s got twenty beds. Day center caters to another ten. The patients don’t pay a dime, and the waiting list runs over two hundred. Ursula’s daughter was a runaway. Died of an overdose at nineteen. Ursula’s dad owned a big slice of Washington State at one point, and Ursula was an only child. This is one of the things she used her inheritance for.”

  I asked, “And Frye is there full-time?”

  “He runs the place, apparently. Does a bit of everything, including counseling. The place tends to cater to ex-military personnel.”

  “Love the soldier, hate the war,” Munro said, with more than a hint of sarcasm.

  He obviously hadn’t changed his stance since the last time we worked together, his stance being that the war isn’t over till every single enemy combatant is dead, whether it’s the wars in the Gulf, the War on Terror, or the War on Drugs. At this point, as long as he didn’t rile Pennebaker, I didn’t really care what he thought.

  We left Griffin Avenue and climbed deeper into the Monterey Hills. The views were breathtaking, the houses few and far between. If you wanted somewhere secluded but still within reach of a city, the area was perfect. The last place recovering addicts needed to be was in the middle of downtown with all the treacherou
s distractions and lethal delights on offer.

  The clinic was a sprawling three-floor building, hacienda style. A handful of palm trees edged the property on two sides, and a steeply sloping lawn ran down to the road. We climbed out of the Suburban and walked up to the main entrance. The door was open. We stepped into an atrium that was dominated by several tall indoor cacti. To the left was a common room filled with armchairs and sofas. To the right was a huge open-plan kitchen with a mess-style table dead center and running the room’s entire length. At the rear was a wide wooden staircase.

  A young woman dressed in a T-shirt and faded jeans and sporting a long blonde ponytail walked down the stairs toward us.

  “Hi. Can I help you?” She tucked her bangs behind her left ear. I bet the soldiers melted when she did that.

  “We’re looking for Matthew Frye.”

  She turned back up the stairs and called out.

  “Matt? There’s some people here to speak to you.”

  She turned back to face us and I immediately recognized the glint in her eye. She and Matthew were an item.

  “This about Donaldson?” she asked.

  “No, why?”

  She waived it aside with a shrug. “One of our patients. He’s suing the army for compensation. Lost an arm in Afghanistan, got addicted to painkillers, but they didn’t cut it, so he switched to heroin. Failed a mandatory drug test and was fired. Didn’t work for three years. He’s been here three months, been clean for six weeks.”

  This story certainly wasn’t going to change Pennebaker’s mind about anything. If Frye was indeed Pennebaker. But they do say that in time you tend to find yourself where your environment echoes your beliefs.

  Our conversation was halted by a tall, wiry man descending the stairs.

  “You guys from the Military Review Board?” he scoffed. “Not surprised you’re not in uniform. Probably never seen a day’s action in your lives.”

  He came to a stop in front of us. He looked surprisingly like the photo of Frye. But it was definitely Pennebaker.

  Munro couldn’t let his dig go by unchallenged. “We’ve seen action. Plenty of it. Just not in BDUs.”

  Pennebaker cast a more analytical eye across the pair of us. I could see him revising his opinion, deciding whether he could take both of us if he were so inclined.

  Munro took a couple of steps toward the door in case Pennebaker decided to charge for the exit.

  The agent who had driven us out there would already be covering the rear. And the local FBI car was parked a couple of hundred yards down the street.

  For a moment, Pennebaker rocked back onto the balls of both feet and tensed his limbs—the instinctive reaction of a soldier—then he relaxed his entire body and cocked his head to one side.

  “You know who I am. Good for you.”

  I walked toward the common room and sat down, and gestured for Pennebaker to join me. “Come on. Sit. We need to talk. It’s about the club.”

  He took a deep, annoyed breath, then followed suit and grabbed a chair facing me. Munro joined us but stayed on his feet.

  “I’ve got nothing to say about that. I’m out. Been out for years. End of story.”

  There was no guilt or paranoia or rage on display. His words were calm and assured. Whatever path Pennebaker was on had turned potentially self-destructive feelings into confidence and what appeared to be a strong sense of self-worth.

  “In fact, why should I talk to you guys at all?”

  I thought of mentioning that the last time I looked, identity fraud was a criminal offense and we could make his life miserable because of it. Instead, I took out my phone and showed him a photo of his mutilated ex-brother-in-arms.

  “I don’t think Walker’s gonna mind you talking to us.”

  Pennebaker gazed at it, unblinking. His stomach had got stronger, too.

  “In fact, given what they did to him,” I added, “I’m pretty sure he’d want you to talk to us.”

  39

  Lina Dawetta came through for Perrini, as he knew she would. wiz She told him that the target was using a new Verizon iPhone, which had helped. Her contact at that carrier was über-efficient, highly pliable, and far from insensitive to the appeal of a small batch of crisp hundred-dollar bills and the charms of her dark Sicilian skin. Also helpful was the fact that Chaykin had her GPS location service switched on. Most people did, without realizing it. In Chaykin’s case, it showed, as Perrini had suspected, that she was currently in San Diego.

  Perrini chuckled to himself as he wondered if there had been any domestic fireworks following her undoubted discovery that her boyfriend had a kid he didn’t know about.

  Ah, the wicked web we weave.

  “I just emailed you the tracking app,” Lina told him. “Your client’s Android-based, right?”

  “Correct,” he told her. “You done good, darling. I’ll be in touch.”

  He hung up, checked his email to see that he’d received what she sent him, then he dialed Octavio Guerra’s number.

  An hour later, Tess still hadn’t found any Deans in her online search.

  She quit her browser and tossed her iPad onto the bed, then sat up. The day was wasting away, and she wasn’t getting anywhere.

  Her thoughts turned to Alex, and she felt they could all use a change of scenery. Balboa Park, with its open spaces and its museums, was a short hop away. The zoo had been great in terms of keeping him occupied and giving him a distraction from the reality checks that, she knew, were hounding him at all hours. There were plenty of other attractions there to provide him with more of that.

  She peered into the adjacent room, where her suggestion was greeted with enthusiasm by both Alex and Jules.

  A few minutes later, they were all in Jules’s car and on their way there.

  Twenty miles north of their position, the black Chevy Tahoe emerged from the gates of a beachfront villa and breezed down the quiet residential street, headed for the freeway.

  In it were three well-groomed, casually dressed men in combinations of chinos or cargo pants, sports shirts or polos, and Timberlands or Merrells. They also all sported sunglasses that masked the resolve in their eyes and light Windbreakers that hid the silenced handguns in their upside-down underarm holsters.

  One of them, the one riding shotgun, had his eyes trained on the Android-powered HTC phone that he held in his hand.

  He’d just downloaded a custom app that had been emailed to him, one that worked off the phone’s embedded Google Maps feature. The phone’s browser was open on a live map of San Diego, and the map had two live markers blinking on it: a standard one that used the phone’s built-in GPS function to display its current position, and a second marker—a white, blinking one that the app had overlaid onto the map.

  The marker, they’d been told, was accurate to within ten feet of the target’s true position.

  The three men were about to put that claim to the test.

  40

  Pennebaker waved away the duty nurse—who was wearing a look of genuine concern now that she knew we were there to talk to her boyfriend—and handed me back my phone. He closed his eyes and took a breath, clearly still of two minds about whether he wanted to go back to the part of his life that Walker’s death evoked. After a moment he opened his eyes again and looked straight at me.

  “What happened?”

  I told him about how we found Walker and the Eagles. How the two bikers had tailed me. How they kidnapped scientists from the Schultes Institute. And how Torres had been taken, most likely by whoever killed Walker.

  When I was done, he said nothing for a long moment. Then a look of righteous anger took hold of his face and his calm demeanor evaporated in an instant.

  “You don’t care about what happened to them. No one gives a shit about any of us. You fight an unwinnable war and kill innocent civilians for your country, then you come home and people are either terrified of you or they hate you for what you were ordered to do.”

  I shot Munro a
look. He kept his mouth shut, though I could tell it was a struggle. Last thing we needed was a pissing contest. However vehement Pennebaker turned, it was crucial I kept things even. We couldn’t afford to alienate him any further or risk him clamming up completely.

  “It can’t have been easy. Adjusting to civilian life after Iraq.”

  He ignored me and plowed on, his tone growing more bitter with each sentence.

  “We had to rely on each other. But we couldn’t do that either, because the pain and the violence ran so deep we just didn’t know how to leave it behind. If anything, putting together the Eagles just magnified it. Turned it inward. Each one of us ended up fighting himself. And losing. And you want to drag me back to all that? Drag me back to the shit that killed Marty and almost got me killed? Screw you.”

  He sat there, with a look of total defiance in his eyes. The kind that could be backed up by physical force if required. In that moment, I saw how Pennebaker and Walker had become the go-to guys when they worked together. The pairing of Walker’s blunt force with Pennebaker’s more coherent rage must have been a formidable combination.

  “But you got out, and by the looks of things”—I couldn’t resist turning my head back to the space that Pennebaker’s girlfriend had recently vacated—“you’re doing okay, right? Look, we have no interest in messing with what you’ve built here.”

  “But we will if we have to,” chipped in Munro, having designated himself bad cop whether I liked it or not.

  “We need to catch these bastards; that’s all we care about,” I countered. “Whoever they are, they’re out of control. And you know what that’s like. You know how destructive that can be.”

  Pennebaker’s eyes narrowed as he studied me for a moment, but said nothing.

  I held up my phone to him. “You like having these guys running around out there? Killing others? Maybe someone else’s kid brother?”

  I caught a twitch in his expression as my words dug in, and waited for them to settle in deeper. After a couple of seconds, he let out a rueful breath and his shoulders sagged, then his expression softened a touch.