The Jezebel Remedy (43 page)

“I appreciate your coming,” she told him.

“No problem.” He grinned. “Nice tooth.”

“How long will it take you?” she asked.

“Good long stretch. Three hours, maybe four. I'll let everything cure and finish it early of a morning. I can spend the night in my truck and keep a lookout for you.”

“No, please, I booked a separate room for you. I'd feel awful if you stayed all night in your truck.”

“Like I said, I'll be in the truck. I wouldn't want somethin' happenin' to you, not on my watch, and I figure this is at least a little risky. Some favor that'd be, me lettin' you wind up in a bad spot.”

“Thank you.” Lisa was watching the car beside them, checking her surroundings, on alert for any kind of tail or surveillance. “Please, Lloyd, this stays between us. That's important. Not even Joe can know.”

“What the hey, Mrs. Stone. Yeah. You done told me once. That's all the remindin' I need. I'm with the program.”

“Sorry.”

“Happy to help. You and your old man damn well done me good. I'd probably still be inkin' cons and learnin' gang tats if it wasn't for you. I owe you guys. You was court-appointed too. Most times, people in my situation get a lick and a promise. I ain't so much as smoked a joint since. Married to a fine lady. Bought me a house. My tattoo shop is keepin' me fed. I started a little seamless-gutter business on the side. I learnt my damn lesson.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Not many people woulda give me a hundred bucks, either. Did you know that? I was broke as a joke. Mr. Stone was fearful I'd wind up in another mistake, and he handed me the cash last time I was in your office. October ninth, 2007. Day I walked free. Yep. Took me damn near three months, but I repaid it.” Burnette held up the arm closest to Lisa. The date was tattooed on his biceps in elaborate script, an eagle perched on the
O
in October.

“Has it been four years?” Lisa said quietly.

“We're gettin' old,” Burnette said. They passed a church and a convenience store made entirely of field rock. “Joe still pussyfootin' 'round on his little scooter?” He grinned.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Damn, ma'am, that needs correctin'.”

That night, after Burnette finished painting her and returned to his truck, Lisa couldn't sleep, but she didn't dare take a pill, not even a partial Ativan, was determined to be alert and focused for the DNA session. She stretched out on the hotel bed, wearing a tank top and pajama bottoms, underneath a coarse sheet, her iPod playing Donna the Buffalo songs, a dingy hotel mug full of hot tea on the floor beside her, and she leafed through an old photo album she'd brought along to keep her company, pictures of Joe and her from law school, Joe and puppy Brownie posing in front of a Christmas tree, a Mardi Gras party
at Chatmoss Country Club, and several pages of Joe as a child, her favorite shot an off-center, black-and-white snap of him, knee-high to his grandpa, the two of them standing on a rural stoop, a screen door behind them, a wrought-iron
S
dead in the heart of the door, the 1960s, Joe the boy beaming, pointing joyously at a bag of rock salt and an honest-to-goodness ice-cream churn.

She called Joe and told him she was in Manassas at her hotel with nothing unusual to report. She mentioned the sweet photo of him, he and his grandfather getting ready to make ice cream, and told him he was adorable when he was a lad. She loved him; she told him that, too.

She dozed for a couple hours at most, woke when it was barely dawn and started the in-room coffee, jittery as she'd ever been in her life, and as she was reaching into the minifridge for creamer, she registered her cartooned arm and the crazy black and chartreuse nails she'd painted, her own arm foreign, a changeling limb. She checked her watch. “Please, Derek,” she said aloud. “Come on.” According to their schedule, he was supposed to have called before now, last night at the absolute latest.

Hansen had assured her he was smarter than Garrison's flunkies and that his call to her BlackBerry would be secure. He'd doctored the software in his own cell, and even if Benecorp somehow managed to penetrate his “moats and catapults,” he promised her the crooks would be listening to gibberish. “We'll be long gone, and they'll still be campaigning in Eberron, lost and bewildered,” he boasted.

Her phone rang at 7:15, but it was Robert Williams letting her know that Judge Klein's law clerk had heard—yesterday—from a woman claiming to be Lettie VanSandt, though even the caller's gender was up in the air, because whoever it was had used a voice modulator and sounded, according to the judge's mordant explanation, “like Satan in the fourth installment of a horror movie franchise, when all the original actors are gone and the budget's kaput.”

“He seemed entirely skeptical,” Williams said. “He also wasn't happy that a witness in a high-stakes suit had contacted his office, even just to confirm the time.”

“At least she's still on schedule,” Lisa said. “Thank heavens. But how the heck would she have a voice modulator? And why? That's weird. And suspicious.”

“Not really. You can download the software onto your phone for free. My grandkids love it.”

“That still doesn't explain
why
.”

“Are we a hundred percent committed to this, Lisa?” he asked. “Is Joe positive it was her on the phone?”

“He is. And now she's contacted the judge, so we're as good as can be expected. We'll see how the day goes and hope for the best.”

“My instincts tell me this'll end badly for us. I'm worried that Benecorp might've staged this and had a plant call so you'd seem devious and unreliable when your absurd tale falls apart.”

“Hell, Robert, we're already so far behind, why would they bother?”

“Garrison's a schemer—we've certainly learned that much. At any rate, this stinks to high heaven. And assuming the state somehow botched the autopsy and the DNA match, and assuming she's still alive, she's such a blatant lunatic we can't count on her. She might think the Purple Whore has broken the last seal, or ever how all that unfolds, and disappear off the charts again. I'd say the odds of her acting rationally aren't in our favor.”

“We're far too invested now,” Lisa said. “No other choices left. She's alive and, yeah, she's crazy, but our best and only chance is getting her spit on a lab slide. Simple as that.” Lisa glanced at her coffee. “No hard feelings,” she said. “I understand completely if you want to withdraw, Robert. We don't want to drag you down with us if Lettie doesn't show.”

He made a sound that was equal parts sigh and snort. “I bought the round-trip ticket. I'm planning on taking the whole ride, regardless of where it goes. Anyway, Klein will rain on you guys more than he will on me. I'm only the mouthpiece.”

“I'm trying to be optimistic,” Lisa said.

“If that changes, call me first, you hear?” Williams said. “Oh—also learned yesterday that Benecorp's expert determined the handwriting on Joe's letter isn't Lettie's. Just so you'll know.”

“Handwriting experts are a dime a dozen and easy to buy,” she said.
“Especially if you're Benecorp. Nothing new there. Doesn't mean a thing to me. Joe said it looked genuine to him. I saw her, and Joe talked to her, so their hired-gun flunky can say whatever the hell he wants.”

She microwaved her coffee, and added more creamer, and lit a cigarette in the bathroom and switched on the wheezing exhaust fan to suck away the smoke, and then her phone rang again and the ID showed 800 in the area code, the word
SEARS
beneath the string of numbers.

“Hello?” she said tentatively, dropping the cigarette in the john.

“Mrs. Stone?”

“Yes.”

“This is Overbyte.”

“Overbyte? Is it safe to talk?”

“No worries—we're completely Bat-phoned and secure.”

“How do I know it's really you?” Lisa asked.

“Esquivel, fried chicken, cabbage and mayo. Poplin suits. Nifty socks. You wore a peacock pin to the diner in Fieldale, different-colored stones in the tail. Satisfied?”

“How much are we paying you?” she asked.

“Four-oh-one. As in hundred per hour. Five now. I don't see why we couldn't just meet face-to-face like we did before.”

“I have my reasons,” she said. “The face part might be a bit tricky.”

“Whatever,” he said. “You're the ringmaster.”

“Okay. So are you done?” she asked. “Please tell me you are.”

“Done,” Hansen answered.

“And?”

“Well, I have the classic good-news, bad-news report.”

“Oh, damn, Derek, we're out of time. You were supposed to call last night.”

“Hold your pee, okay? Quit freaking. I have the prize. Plus lagniappe I really didn't need to discover.”

“Bad news first,” she said. “How bad?” she added without waiting for him to respond. She searched the room for her purse, spotted it on the bathroom counter next to the sink.

“The bad news is that Hamburglar was caught. Not caught caught, but they know they've been hacked. There'll be digital footprints. To
translate it for your purposes, imagine a couple of tower guards were shooting at me as I fled in my Aston Martin.”

“But you know what the Wound Velvet does?” she asked. She grabbed her pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights from the purse, shook one from the opening, lit it, inhaled. She tossed the pack on the counter.

“I do,” Hansen said emphatically. “But I have to hand it to Garrison, or whoever designed their system, it's a superior mousetrap. Of course I was rushed and in a hurry, thanks to your deadline. I'm embarrassed to have set off the damn alarms. It's clichéd, but I was to the ‘cut the blue wire or cut the red wire' point and was tired as hell and running out of time, so I guessed, and the fifty percent probability didn't trend my way. Another week—or three days even—and I would've been invisible.”

“Well, it's not the end of the world, as long as we have the disease. What does it cure?”

“If they can trace it to me, it might be the end of
my
world,” Hansen complained. “This would be what you people call a criminal act. Let's not forget about the hired help when, crappy possibility number one, Benecorp's ninjas come hunting me with Tasers and garrotes or, crappy possibility number two, the feds show up at my apartment and the local news does the money shot of some mesomorph with a badge palming my head so I don't bang the Crown Vic's roof.”

“Oh, okay, right, I see your problem,” she said. “Sorry.”

“I'm extremely well hidden, and I don't think they can pin me down, but these people aren't stupid. I used proxy on top of proxy and worked from an Internet café—two different locations, actually—so I
should
be safe, but you never know. Or they might suspect me because I'm on your payroll.”

“We'll do whatever we can,” Lisa promised.

“Which is basically nothing,” he replied.

“Well, we can help you legally. Or hook you up with the best lawyers in the business. We'd certainly pay any attorney's fees.”

“So you'll never believe what the VV 108 does.” Hansen emphasized the last word.

“I'm waiting,” she said.

“The project's called Werewolf. Want to guess?”

“No. Cut it out, please, Derek. Just tell me.”

“Before Drew Carey dazzles you with the hot tub showcase, here's the bonus news. I found Miss VanSandt's dogs and cats. Well, I didn't actually locate them, since your big-hearted nemesis Seth Garrison killed them all. Every single animal.”

“What? Why?”

“According to the file memo, Garrison at first thought the pets might have a genetic trait or something unique or some blood characteristic that was essential to the formula. He's a methodical bastard. Early on, they hit a few bumps replicating the Wound Velvet. They took soil, plants, tree bark, you name it. Canned soup, frozen meat, water from every spigot.”

“How cruel,” Lisa said. “And how typical.”

“The guy who came for the animals is basically Garrison's security goon. Not his top muscle, but sort of a lieutenant. They debated just swooping in and rolling it Entebbe style and rounding up the critters, but decided they might not be able to corral them all and were afraid a neighbor or your local busybody might interfere or notify the cops, so they sent their hoodlum in a fake uniform and prepped Neal with the cover story. Once they learned there was no connection or value, Don—whose real name is Donnie Antonelli—shot the animals. Or as they put it, ‘euthanized them with a sidearm.' A loose thread clipped for Benecorp. They dumped the remains in a landfill.”

“We knew from the drop Beverly was crooked,” Lisa said.

“I've been as busy as Ryan Seacrest on this. So come on, humor me. One guess. Garrison named it himself. Werewolf. Think.”

Burnette finished touching up his tattoos before eight, and he shook Lisa's hand and wished her all the luck in the world. She noticed he was wearing a silver skull ring above his wedding band and that his thumbnail was mangled. “You be careful, you hear?” he warned her. “I'd say to send my regards to ol' Joe Stone, but I understand we ain't operatin' like that. Nope, I ain't seen you in years.”

“We're in your debt, Lloyd,” she told him.

M.J. arrived fifteen minutes later, behind the wheel of a rented Kia,
and Lisa walked out and got in the car almost before it stopped moving. The Danville airport was a twenty-minute drive from the hotel. The flight to the Warrenton-Fauquier Airport in M.J.'s plane would burn an hour, longer than usual at 18,000 feet rather than 30,000, the ride at low altitude so there'd be no need for a flight plan, the airport selected because it was a few miles outside of Washington's Air Defense Identification Zone. Then they'd catch a taxi for part of the drive to the lab, and there'd be no record of the trip, no communication with a control tower, no formalities or paperwork. When Lisa looked across the small interior at her, M.J. was dressed for the part, wearing a trench coat, a man's fedora and black sunglasses.