Panacea (23 page)

Tlalli handed back the photo. “The bad men … they have same picture.”

That struck her like a blow.

“The same? With both people?”

Tlalli nodded.

But the papers had published only the half with Chaim. How—? Oh, hell. When 536 hacked her computer they must have found the original scan. Dear God, the photo had helped lead them straight to Mulac … and now Mulac was dead. A wave of guilt swept over her. She hadn't sent that photo to the papers, but still …

She shook it off. She could play the blame game later.

“Do you know the man?” she said, pointing to Chaim.

“We all tell the men that we don't know.”

“But you do?” When Tlalli hesitated, Laura said, “You know you can trust me. I've been here before and never hurt anyone.”

After a long pause, Tlalli said, “Chet.”

Okay. Right. Chaim's nickname.

Tlalli added, “But Mulac say, he doesn't know him, even though they say Chet is dead. Is that true? Chet is dead?”

“It's true, I'm afraid,” Laura said. “Why was Mulac trying to protect a dead man?”

She touched the woman in the photo. “Because Chet is with Ix'chel here.”

Now they were getting somewhere.

“And who is Ix'chel?”

“Mulac's sister.”

Now she understood why Mulac had denied knowing Chaim in the photo—because if he knew Chaim, they'd expect him to know the woman as well.

Laura looked around. “Where is she?”

“She works in the city.”

“Chetumal? Has anyone told her?”

“Atl went to tell her. He will bring her back when he finds her.”

“Finds her?”

Tlalli shrugged. “We do not know where she lives.”

“But she comes back from time to time?”

“Many times. She helped her brother with his medicines.”

When Laura relayed all this to Rick, he said, “Well, if she helped her brother, we should probably wait around for her.” He cocked his head and looked at her. “You don't look too sure about that.”

She rubbed her moist, shaky palms against her upper arms. She wasn't easily rattled—medical examiner work had toughened her—but this had left her deeply shaken.

“I'm not sure of anything right now.”

“Yeah, things got ugly real quick, didn't they. Look, this is your gig, so it's your call. You want to quit, we get right back in the Jeep and haul ass back to the airport.”

Laura clenched her jaw. He'd said
quit
. She hated that word. Why'd he have to say
quit
?

“You think we're in danger here?”

“We'd only be a target if we knew something 536 doesn't know. Since that's not the case, I'd say we're safe.”

That was small comfort, but …

“But that could change after we talk to Ix'chel,” she said. “We might learn something they want to know.”

“You let me worry about security. That's why I'm here. Your job is the panacea.” He spread his hands. “Stay or back to the States?”

Oh, hell.

“Stay.”

“Fine. Gonna take a walk through the village and check out the perimeter. Just to get familiar. Why don't you make more friends with the locals. Maybe someone knows something useful.”

“I'm going to check in at home first.”

She accompanied him as far as the Jeep, then watched him stroll off.

There he goes, she thought, leaving a trail of cast-off verbs and pronouns in his wake.

She sat in the Jeep and turned on its satellite phone. First, call home.

“All's well?”
Steven said after she'd had a little talk with Marissa.
“You find your healer?”

“Yes.”

How much to tell him? Couldn't say he was murdered and set on fire, maybe burned alive. He'd freak.

“Any help?”

“Unfortunately he looks like a dead end.”

Oh, my God! Did I just say that? I didn't mean—

“Oh, hell. Too bad. What next?”

“Trying to figure that out. I want to talk to his sister. She's supposed to show up later. Maybe she knows something helpful.”

Finally—a string of completely true sentences.

The call ended with Steven's usual exhortations to stay safe and her usual assurances that she would. She wished she could feel just half as sure as she sounded.

Next she called her voice mail. One message:

“Hey, Doc, it's Phil. I know you say this guy saved you from a mugging and all, but the more we dig into him, the shakier his story looks. Turns out he wasn't a SEAL at all—in fact he was never even
in
the Navy. In case you didn't know, you've got to join the Navy to be a Navy SEAL. That's the bad news. But listen, lots of guys try to make themselves look more interesting by, shall we say, enhancing their past. The good news is, it looks like he's an ex-cop from Sausalito—that's the other side of the Golden Gate from San Francisco. He was in the Marine Patrol out there. Nowhere near as glamorous as being a SEAL, but hey, it puts him on the right side of the law. Joined young and took an early retirement. No black marks against him. I'm trying to see what he's been up to since he quit but that takes a little longer. Get back to you soon as.”

Laura shook her head as she exited her voice mail. Okay. Rick was lying about the SEAL thing. She didn't like being lied to, but it wasn't a malicious lie, and he wasn't lying to hide anything. Like Phil said: enhancing his background. Maybe that helped his business. But she was surprised Stahlman hadn't scoped that out before hiring him.

So instead of an ex-SEAL she was being shepherded around by an ex-cop. Not so bad, she guessed. He'd handled that Glock like he was very comfortable and familiar with it. And Rick's deviations from the truth weren't the problem; 536 was the problem. She hoped Rick was right about them being gone.

She saw him approaching from down the road and stepped out to meet him.

“Well?”

He shook his head. “No sign of anybody who shouldn't be here. But I got to thinking.” He reached out a hand. “Can I see your bag a minute?”

She hesitated, then handed it to him. He promptly upended it, spilling its contents on the hood of the Jeep.

“Hey!”

“Don't you think it strange that 536 reached our destination ahead of us?” He began pawing through the empty bag, one hand inside, the other outside, squeezing the leather. “And just happened to be looking for the same
curandero
? That means either Stahlman or his guy James is tipping them off—unlikely—or they've been listening in. I realized you're never without this bag, so—ah!”

“What?”

He held up a black button. “You were bugged. That 536 mugger wasn't just after your phone. He planted this.”

Laura couldn't hide her shock. “That's spy movie stuff.”

“Not anymore. You can buy these gizmos online. Don't have much range so I doubt they've been able to listen in since we took off from JFK. But if they are…” He cocked his arm and hurled it into the jungle. “Let 'em listen to the crickets now. Or whatever passes for a cricket in these parts.”

Laura was about to respond but stopped at the sound of a revving engine behind her.

A battered, topless Jeep Cherokee appeared, racing toward them. Rick's hand snaked inside his jacket as he grabbed her upper arm and gently but firmly pulled her behind their own Jeep. The Cherokee didn't even slow, however. Laura saw a young Mayan woman with a tear-streaked face in the passenger seat.

“Ix'chel,” she said.

“Sure?”

“Ninety percent. I recognize her from the photo with Chaim. Of course she'd been smiling then.”

They followed the Cherokee on foot as it raced through the village. It finally slowed to a halt near the crowd of villagers clustered about Mulac's remains. The young woman leaped out and ran. She didn't have to push her way through; the villagers parted for her. Laura saw her drop to her knees beside the corpse before she was closed from view.

Her wails of grief were wrenching to hear.

“Yep,” Rick said, eyes and voice flat. “Guess you're right. But I don't think we'll be getting too much out of her tonight.”

Poor girl, she thought.

Laura wasn't sure she even wanted to talk to Ix'chel now. Bad enough to lose your brother, but in such a horrible way.

“We can spend the night in Chetumal and come back in the morning,” Rick said. “Or…”

“Or what?”

“Or stay here.”

“Really? It looks like rain and, in case you hadn't noticed along the way, we didn't pass any motels.”

“Got the Jeep.”

The Jeep? Was he kidding?

Then she thought about it. They were outsiders here. If they spent the night on the outskirts of the village, they might seem less so. Maybe Ix'chel would be more willing to open up to her.

“We'll be safe?”

He patted the spot where he kept the Glock. “Oh, yeah.”

“How will we work it?”

“You can have the backseat. Looks fairly comfortable.”

Yeah. She could handle that. She wasn't quite as flexible as her younger self, but she'd slept in less hospitable spots during her bioprospecting days. The problem was sharing the car with Rick. Not that he gave off a lechy vibe—he didn't—but his weird worldview made her a little uneasy with him. Just how stable was he?

“Fine for me. But even if you could fit up front, I don't see you draping yourself across that center console.”

“I can doze off anywhere, anytime, in any position. Sleeping on a semi-reclined cushioned car seat is a piece of cake.”

“Really?” Laura had to say it. “Something you learned in your SEAL training?”

He nodded without looking at her. “Yep.”

Liar.

 

4

Brother Miguel called after sunset.

“We're going to spend the night near the village,”
he said.

“Why?” Nelson's grip tightened on the phone. “Have you found something?”

“No. But it looks like the Fanning woman and her bodyguard or whatever he is are staying, so I figure we better do the same.”

“Do you think she's on to something?”

“Not yet, but it looks like some relative of the
curandero
showed up.”

“The girl in the photo?”

“We couldn't get close enough to make an ID, even with the binocs. And then the sun went down and so an ID is out of the question until morning. Looks like your gal and her guard dog have called it a night.”

“This ‘guard dog' … do you expect any problems with him tomorrow?”

“He found the bug, so we can't listen in. But mostly he looks like a
zurramato
.”

Nelson hated when people threw in foreign slang.

“Which means?”

“He's a dumbass.”

Nelson thought of the missing and silent Simon. “Do not underestimate him.”

“I don't underestimate anyone. He did a reconnoiter, as he should, but he's out of his element down here. Maybe he's good in a city, but out in the wild, in the jungle? Passed within twenty feet of where me and Jorge were perched. Not a clue we were there, watching his every move.”

“Well, watch
her
every move tomorrow.”

He had very much wanted Fanning out of the picture. But with nowhere to go from here, he found himself in the ironic position of rooting for her, hoping she'd stumble onto something that would turn a cold trail warm.

 

5

The rain came not too long after sunset and lasted maybe an hour. Rick had settled the doc into the Jeep before it began. With the doors locked and the windows open less than an inch, it became stuffy, but not unbearable. He'd harbored a faint hope the doc would fall asleep, but no such luck. Still, he couldn't let that stop him. Work to do.

As soon as the rain let up, he checked to make sure his Glock, his knife, and his flashlight were all where they were supposed to be, then opened the front passenger door.

“Where are you going?” she said from the backseat.

“Gonna take a little walk.”

“I can't sleep either. I'll come with—”

“Uh-uh.” The last thing he wanted. “Gonna do one last patrol before I settle down for the night.”

“You're leaving me alone?”

Scared? he thought. No shame in that.

She'd just seen the charred remains of a man who was tortured and murdered for what he knew—or
might
know. Smart to be scared.

“Won't be far. Stay here with the doors locked. Anybody bothers you, or looks like they're even
thinking
of bothering you, lean on the horn. I'll be here in a flash.”

“Okay. But don't be long.”

“Back ASAP.”

Just as soon as he conducted a little business with a couple of guys hiding in the jungle.

As he speed-walked down the road—really nothing more than two ruts flanking a line of weeds—sticking to the center so he wouldn't splash, he thought about the change in the doc's attitude toward him. He'd expected some hostility—after all, she hadn't wanted him along—but that seemed to have morphed into suspicion. Why? She learn something she shouldn't?

His name, for instance? Wasn't using the one he'd been born with, but “Rick” was close enough for it to
seem
like his. Nah. His real name was buried too deep for her or anyone else to ferret out. Had to be something else. He was wrapped in so many layers … had one of them slipped?

Worry about that later. Concentrate on the bad guys now.

He knew where they'd set up watch. He'd been studying the sides of the road as the doc had driven them toward the village. Sunlight had flashed off a field glass lens on the way in, and again when he'd done his walk-around. That walk-around had also revealed a place at the edge of the road where the underbrush had been crushed and then reset upright to hide the damage. Fixed up well enough for the casual passerby, but not for anyone looking for a spot where someone might have driven off the road.