The Devil's Elixir (9 page)

Softly, I reached out and pulled up her shirt, looking for the wound. There was a dark crevasse just under her left breast, and thick blood was seeping out of it. I put my hand on it and applied some pressure, trying to stem the bleeding, anticipating the pain I’d be causing Michelle, and sure enough, she flinched hard as my hand pressed harder. I moved my other hand up to her face, giving her pale, clammy cheek a caress, unsure about whether or not she could even feel it. As I did, my eyes drifted off her face and down to find Alex, who was tucked in under her arm, his face down, his eyes shut tight. He was shivering wildly.

“Hey,” I said, softly. I reached over, then hesitated and pulled my hand back before it settled on the boy’s head. “It’s gonna be okay,” I told him in that annoying, desperate way that we sprout out these platitudes. “She’s gonna be fine.”

Alex didn’t look up. Instead, he remained still for a moment, still coiled up tight and trembling, then he gave me a minuscule nod before going back to his shell-like seclusion.

I felt my heart stall as Michelle’s warm blood kept seeping through my fingers—then I heard a faint siren growing in the distance.

“They’re here, Meesh, you hear that? The ambulance is here.”

Her eyelids flickered half open, allowing her eyes to connect with mine momentarily. Her face scrunched up as she tried to say something, but she couldn’t manage it and just coughed up some more blood.

I leaned in closer. “Don’t talk, sweetie. Just hang in there, we’ll have you in the ambulance in no time.”

She seemed insistent and tried again, but the words shriveled up in her throat.

“What is it, baby?” I asked as I heard the siren’s shriek grow louder, almost with us now.

Her eyes widened briefly, like it was the result of some superhuman effort, and she met my gaze again, even though it seemed to be taking a huge toll on her. “Alex,” she wheezed. “Keep . . . keep him . . . safe.”

“Of course. Hey, I’m not going anywhere,” I said, managing some feeble attempt at a reassuring smile, stroking her cheek while keeping my other hand pressed down on the entry wound. “We’re both right here with you,” I told her as I glimpsed the ambulance pulling up behind us.

Within seconds, the paramedics were in the car, checking her out. My gut twisted as I read the look on their faces when they first saw how pale and weak she was and when they saw the amount of blood that she’d lost. With more and more curious onlookers congregating around the car, I helped them lift her out of it and onto a stretcher, keeping Alex close and hanging onto his hand before doing my best to shield Michelle from his view as the paramedics tended to her on the curb.

The sound bites coming from them weren’t reassuring.

“She’s got massive internal bleeding,” one of them finally told me while struggling to set up a second intravenous line into her arm. “I can’t tell what’s been hit, but we can’t do anything about it here. She needs surgery.”

Just then, some sensors started beeping wildly and the other paramedic blurted, “She’s crashing.” The first paramedic sprang to action and they both went frantic, hands and mouths moving at lightning speed as one of them started on the CPR while the other looked into her mouth to secure an airway for intubation. I stood back and watched in numb silence as they worked on her, feeling my whole body seize up every time she convulsed under the paramedic’s compresses, holding Alex tight against me, making sure the kid couldn’t see what was going on, hoping against hope that they’d be able to save her, but somehow knowing it wasn’t going to work out, feeling impotent and helpless at not being able to step in and make things right and bring her back to her vibrant, mesmeric self, feeling a surge of fury converging in my temples and making them feel like they were going to erupt, then the beeping stopped and the flatline took over and the lead paramedic turned to me with a tenebrous look and a small shake of the head that reached deep into my very core and shredded everything in its path.

“H
ow the hell did they find her?”

We were back at the ranch, the ranch in this case being the FBI’s San Diego field office, a squat, glass-and-concrete three-story structure a couple of miles east of Montgomery Field. Villaverde and I were in his top-floor office. Besides everything that had happened, I’d spent ages briefing a couple of homicide detectives on what had gone down and describing the shooters as best as I could, and right now, I was tired and angry as hell, and my head felt all heavy and clogged up, like someone had pumped molasses into my skull.

“Maybe they followed her from the house,” Villaverde speculated, leaning against the edge of his desk. He was tall and lean and with the clear olive skin and the combed-back onyx-black hair, a walking, talking ad for the bureau. I imagined the suits loved him, and to be fair, from what I’d seen so far, he was a straight-shooting, efficient guy.

“She said she wasn’t followed,” I fired back, more testily than I should have. “Michelle was good. She would have spotted a tail. Especially after what happened. She was looking out for one.”

“What about her phone?”

“She killed the battery after calling me.”

“Maybe she called someone else from the hotel?”

My head snapped left and right. “No way. Michelle was a pro. She wouldn’t take that risk, not after what she’d been through.”

Villaverde shrugged. “Well, we’ll know soon enough. If she did call anyone, it’ll show up on her room’s phone records.”

Another possibility was clawing away at me.

“How many hotels and motels do you think there are out there, by the airport?”

“I don’t know. Not that many. Why? You think that’s how they found her? Trawling them?”

“When she called me from the mall, Michelle said she’d find somewhere to hole up by the airport. If they hacked her phone and were in on that call . . . they’d be looking for a woman and a kid with no luggage and no credit card. Maybe they got lucky.”

“Well if that’s what happened, and depending on how they did it, there might a cloning trail on her phone.” He picked up his desk phone and punched in a couple of buttons. “I’ll get the lab to check it out.”

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.