The Devil's Elixir (12 page)

T
he pickup was, well, awkward.

Tess’s plane landed pretty much on time, and I was there waiting for her after leaving Alex with Jules, who turned out to have the gentlest of manners with him, no doubt aided by a smile that should be designated as a global warming hazard, and spending most of the morning at SDPD’s shiny headquarters on Broadway, going through their mug shot database and working with a police sketch artist to come up some visual cues to put out there. Tess was one of the first off the plane, walking briskly and trailing a small roll-on, and although she looked like a summer breeze on legs in her light linen dress and with her bouncy hair, it only took our eyes to meet for me to see the tense undercurrent that was bubbling underneath.

We hugged and kissed quite perfunctorily, like a couple whose marriage had passed its sell-by date. We limited ourselves to some superficial chit-chat about Nevada and the flight as we made our way out of the terminal, where I got hit by a combo of the furnace-blast midday heat and the memory punch of, yet again, treading the same sidewalk Michelle had died on less than twenty-four hours earlier.

It was all still too raw for me. I’m pretty sure Tess caught the look on my face as I glanced at the pavement, but she didn’t ask about it and just stayed with me as I led her to the parking lot. The bureau had arranged a loaner for me to drive around in, a Buick LaCrosse that, if you could overlook its unfortunate name with its oh-so-idiosyncratic capital
C
, was a pretty decent car.

I was stowing Tess’s bag into its trunk when I felt her hand on my arm.

“I’m really sorry for your loss, Sean.”

Her hand slid up my arm and guided me around to face her. I pulled her close and kissed her, a sudden, deep, starved kiss that just as quickly felt a bit weird to me. I found myself pulling away gently and hugged her instead, avoiding her eyes and cradling her head against my shoulder. We stood there like that for a long moment, without saying anything, then I finally said, “I’m really glad you’re here.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” she half-smiled.

I gave her another kiss, still too brief, and we were on our way.

She asked me about Alex, about how he was doing. The kid was in bad shape. He’d spent the night next to Jules, waking up intermittently with night terrors every couple of hours, one of which had caused him to wet himself. Much as I was desperate to be with him and help him through this, I could still see his discomfort every time I tried to get close to him, and I’d decided to pull back and let Jules comfort him as best she could.

The Hilton was easy to get to, perched conveniently at the crossroads of the Cabrillo and Mission Valley freeways. We walked past families with excited kids running around with SeaWorld caps and T-shirts and small huddles of conventioneers trying to look like they were happy to be there and made our way to the one-bedroom top-floor suite and the additional connecting bedroom that Villaverde’s people had booked us into.

Alex was huddled in front of the TV in the living room, with Jules sitting next to him and being as attentive as ever. I wasn’t sure how Alex would take to Tess—yet another new face butting into his life at a time when the only one he wanted to see was his mother’s, but it all went down better than I expected. For her, anyway. Me, I was still on his boogeyman list.

Tess spotted it instantly.

After a moment, she turned to me and, out of Alex’s earshot, whispered, “He really does seem scared of you.”

I nodded ruefully. “I told you. It’s really frustrating. I don’t know how to get him past it.”

She reached out for my forearm. “He just needs time. You were there when she died. He associates you with what happened to her.”

“Yeah, but this is something else . . . it started before.”

Tess’s face scrunched up with confusion, then she turned to look at Alex.

“Why don’t we get him out of this room? Take him out somewhere nice, give him something to smile about.” She didn’t wait for an answer and went up to Alex. She kneeled down so her face was level with his.

“How about that, Alex?” she asked him. “Would you like to go out and get some pizza or something? What’s your favorite food? Anywhere you like, just say the word.”

It didn’t take long for Alex to succumb to her charms, and she coaxed the first quasi-smile I’d seen out of him when she said the Cheesecake Factory was her favorite, too. I watched from a distance as they debated the relative awesomeness of Key lime versus Oreo, but then the glowing kindling in my stomach got snuffed out when Alex asked the killer question he’d asked so many times before.

“What about my mama? Is she going to come with us?”

Tess glanced at me, then turned to Alex, reached out and held his hand, and said, “No, sweetheart, I’m afraid your mommy won’t be coming with us.”

“Why not?” Alex asked. “Where is she?”

Tess hesitated, then I saw her take in a deep breath and she said the words. “She’s in heaven, sweetheart.”

I felt my chest wall cave in.

 

The three of us ended up taking Alex to SeaWorld after that heart-wrenching chat, and throughout it all, Tess was nothing less than remarkable. She’d even managed to get him to eat something, which was more than Jules or I had managed. Alex was still clearly wary of me, avoiding eye contact and using Tess as a buffer between me and him. I decided the best I could do was to give him some space and let Tess keep on working her magic. We had a whole life ahead of us to work things out.

We got back to the hotel at about six, and Tess went off to try to put Alex to bed. Our setup was a one-bedroom suite, which had a separate living room, and an additional bedroom connecting to it. I went down to the bar and got myself a beer. I was feeling real antsy. A whole day had passed and I’d done nothing to try to get to the bottom of what happened to Michelle beyond streaming through a few hundred cold, troubled, or just plain vacant stares. I wasn’t used to being this passive, and it was killing me. Problem was, it was now Sunday evening, and I was kind of helpless, waiting for Villaverde to come back with news from the tech guys or from the homicide detectives who were investigating the shootings. I was also aware of the need to make sure Alex was being looked after, and having Tess around had certainly helped make him feel better.

Still, I needed to do something. But I was drawing a blank at what I actually could do.

I was debating whether or not to order another beer when Tess showed up and slid onto the stool next to mine.

“You come here often?” she asked, a tired smile struggling to break out.

I managed a brief smile back. “My girlfriend’s in our room. We’ll have to use yours.”

She raised an eyebrow and said, “You know what? That line came to you way too easily.” Her eyes lingered on me for a mock-scrutinizing couple of seconds, then she turned to the barman and used her fingers to indicate we needed two more bottles.

“Is he asleep?”

Tess nodded. “Jules is with him. She’s great, by the way. A real find. You were lucky to have her here.”

I shrugged and stared away into nothing. “Yeah, it’s been a lucky weekend all around.”

She moved in closer and ran her hand through the hair at the back of my head. “You okay, baby?”

I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. I stayed silent for a moment, just staring at the monster collection of bottles behind the bar. “It’s weird,” I finally said. “I haven’t thought about her for years. I mean, literally. And then she calls up and . . .” I turned to face Tess. “She’s gone, and I have a son. Just like that.”

“I know,” she just said, the strokes of her hand tightening somewhat. “It’s horrible, what happened to her. It’s beyond horrible. And yet . . . you have a beautiful baby boy, Sean.”

I heard a crack in her voice and saw her eyes glisten. She blinked away a tear, and I couldn’t help but reach out, right there at the bar, and pull her close, and kiss her. We stayed like that for a long moment, then I just kept her right up against me, feeling her breathing against my ear and the flutter of her eyelashes against my cheek.

“You gonna be okay with that?” I mumbled.

“More than okay, baby,” she whispered back. “More than okay.”

We stayed like that for a few minutes, just breathing each other in and finding our compasses again, then I gave her another kiss and edged back. I raised my bottle in a silent toast. Tess met my eye and, softly, clinked her bottle against mine. We each took a long swig.

“I spoke to Stacey this morning. You remember Stacey Ross?”

The name rang a bell, then it came back to me. Stacey was a psychiatrist who specialized in treating kids. The two of them had become friends when Stacey was treating Tess’s daughter, Kim, after they had both got caught up in the bloodbath at the Met the night we first met. Kim was nine at the time, and Stacey had really helped her work through the emotional fallout from that night.

“She gave me a few pointers. For Alex.”

“What’d she say?”

“She said he’ll go through the five stages, same as an adult would. You know . . . denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. But she also said boys and girls deal with these things differently. He’s likely to be more locked in than a girl would be in his situation. And it might set back his maturity a bit. That’s what we’ll need to help him with. Talking things out and not keeping it all in. But we’ll get him through this,” she insisted, a film of moisture making her eyes glisten again. “We’ll get him through. And she’s there if we need her.”

I nodded as she took another swig, and I could tell that this was hard on her. We’d talked about her fears in the past, about how the thought of something bad happening to her and leaving Kim behind terrified her—it was a major factor in her turning to writing her novels and trying to leave the call of the wild behind.

“What else did she say, in terms of right now?”

“Well, he’ll cry a lot, obviously. He’ll be prone to waking at odd hours and he’ll sleep intermittently. Maybe some bedwetting. Beyond that, she said we shouldn’t lie, which is why I talked to him about heaven. He needs to believe that she’s happy, that she’s fine, even if she can’t be here with him. She also said we needed to give him as much continuity as possible. I imagine going back to Michelle’s house is off-limits for him.”

I nodded.

“And it wouldn’t be great for him anyway, without her there. But he needs some favorite things around him, wherever he is. Transitional objects, she called them. Toys, maybe his pillow or his blanket. His favorite drinking cup. That kind of thing. Maybe even Michelle’s nightgown or something that smells of her. Would that be okay with you? I could ask Alex about what he’s missing and go there tomorrow and get them for him.”

Michelle’s house was still a crime scene, and I wasn’t too thrilled about having Tess go there, but I could see the need for it. “Sure. I’ll take you there tomorrow.”

“Great. Also, do you know if any of Michelle’s close relatives are around, people Alex was comfortable around? Her mom maybe, or a sister?”

I told Tess the little I knew about Michelle’s family, and said I’d find out what I could in the morning. She drew in again and kissed me, then kept her hand cupped on my cheek. “We’re going to help him get happy again, Sean. I promise you that.”

I gave her a small nod and a smile, and she squeezed my arm before heading back up to check on Alex. I stayed there alone, nursing another beer and spiraling back into my darkest thoughts, until my cell rang.

It was the cavalry.

Not only that, but Villaverde sounded upbeat.

He asked about Alex, but there was nothing much to say on that front. I knew it would be a while before I’d ever be able to answer that question with a cheerful and casual, “He’s fine.” Then he got to the reason for his call.

“Ballistics came back with a match for the nine-mil Michelle took off the shooters. You remember that armed double-kidnap up at that research center near Santa Barbara, about six months ago?”

My mind flashed to vague snippets from the news footage. “Some kind of medical facility, right?”

“That’s the one. The Schultes Institute. Anyway, we got a match. Your shooter was one of the crew that did the hit.”

This was solid.

I remembered that, apart from the missing scientists, people had died that day. “Was the match from a kill shot?”

“Yep,” Villaverde confirmed. “A security guard. It also matches the slug from Michelle’s boyfriend.”

I got a small uplift from the fact that Michelle had, most likely by her account, not just taken out the guy who’d shot Tom, but that he’d also killed before. It wasn’t going to bring her back, but right now, I was happy to grab any satisfaction I could get hold of, no matter how small.

“But that one’s still unsolved, right?” I asked.