Authors: Gary Braver

ELIXIR (16 page)

BOOK: ELIXIR

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Unfortunately, the driveway had not been plowed, so they had to trudge through deep snow to reach the house.

Once inside, Chris turned up the heat and made a blazing fire in the fieldstone hearth. The old television still got good reception from a station in Vermont. They found some wine and canned food, and Wendy settled by the fire under a blanket. Meanwhile, Chris set up a makeshift crib for Adam in a bureau drawer. He changed and fed him and had just put him down when he heard Wendy scream in the other room.

In reflex, he pulled the gun and bolted into the living room, half expecting to see somebody coming through the window. Instead, Wendy was sitting straight up, her hands pressed to her mouth, eyes fixed on the television screen and huge with horror.

“It blew up. Eastern flight 219. It blew up!”

The news anchor was describing the explosion: “ … had been on route from Boston to San Juan when it went down about 120 miles off the coast of Savannah, Georgia.

“Although there were no witnesses, the plane disappeared from radar at about 10:20 this morning. Wreckage and bodies had been strewn over a large area, indicating to authorities that the plane had exploded before crashing.

“Initial speculation is that the aircraft was hit by lightning. A large coastal storm continues to hamper search-and-rescue operations. So far, there have been no reports of survivors … .”

To the right of the announcer was a map of the mid-Atlantic coast with a star in the water indicating the site of the crash. Suddenly the map shot was replaced by another still photo.

“Those poor people,” Wendy said. “If it weren’t for us—” Suddenly she gasped.

On the screen was a picture of Chris.

“Killed in the explosion was Dr. Christopher Bacon, his wife Wendy, and their young child.

“Just hours ago, Boston police issued a warrant for his arrest in the death of a coworker, Betsy Watkins, whose body was found yesterday in a pool at a local YMCA. According to authorities, police had questioned Bacon earlier in the day and released him. But following a medical examiner’s report issued later, it was concluded that Watkins had been struck on the head with a heavy object before drowning. Physical evidence was found linking Bacon to the murder scene … .”

The caption across the bottom of the screen read: MURDER SUSPECT DIES IN AIR CRASH.

Wendy said something and the announcer carried on with the story, but Chris just stared into the flickering glare of the screen, thinking what a brutal new shape the universe had taken.

JANUARY 30

“
Y
ou didn’t say you were going to blow up the plane,” Quentin said. “You killed 136 innocent people. You were supposed to do it on the island—just him, nice and simple. Like with Betsy.”

“It was Antoine’s idea.” Vince said. “He calls the shots.”

“That guy’s an animal.”

“You might want to keep that opinion to yourself.”

Quentin was at a pay phone outside a gas station on Route 2 in Concord about three miles from his house. It was Sunday morning, and after a few calls back and forth, he had connected with Vince Lucas at another pay phone someplace on Long Island. It was how they communicated without worry of taps.

“Innocent people die every day,” Vince explained. “It had to look like an accident, so nobody asks a lot of questions. If he showed up with a bullet in him, the authorities would be looking for a third party and two unsolved murders from the same company in the space of a week. Which means they’d be wondering if it was an inside job and thinking about you. This way, there are no loose ends.”

Quentin hadn’t thought about that, but Vince was right.

According to the news, the water was nearly a mile deep with little surface wreckage to determine the cause. The lead theory was a lightning strike. As one commentator had said, commercial jets were built to fly through storms, but a direct hit by a couple million volts could do it. Of course, all it took was three volts from two double-A batteries, a timer, and two pounds of Simtec plastic explosives in the cargo hold below the central fuel tank. And two baggage handlers working for Antoine.

“Now you and your people can move ahead with the stuff, all nice and clean,” Vince said.

“Yeah, nice and clean. You took out all the Elixir, too.”

“What’s that?”

“He had it with him. All of it, including the science notebooks.”

“What are you telling me, Quentin?”

“I’m telling you that Chris Bacon cleaned us out. He took every goddamn drop of Elixir, and every goddamn page of notes on how to produce the stuff. The son-of-a-bitch was skipping the country with the whole show. He probably had made connections in San Juan to South America or Europe, wherever. They were on the plane with him. His wife, his kid, and Elixir.”

“How do you know it’s not all back at his house?”

“It’s the first place I got the police to check.”

The silence was cut by the hush of the open line. That and the clicking of Quentin’s heart in his ear.

“You mean you don’t have the formulas to make the stuff?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Don’t you remember how to do it? All those scientists you got, and nobody knows how to do what they’ve been doing for a fucking year?”

“Vince, it’s not exactly a recipe for baking bread. There are hundreds of complicated steps and procedures. He must have planned it for weeks. Jesus! Do you believe it? We set him up for Betsy, meanwhile he robs us blind.”

“What about backup copies of the notebooks?”

“He took those too.”

More silence as Vince absorbed the implications. “And where exactly were those backup copies?”

“In the fireproof locker I showed you.”

“Two sets of notebooks containing the formulas for endless youth just fifty feet from each other?”

“More like a eighty or a hundred feet,” he muttered, and suddenly he felt a hole open up. “Besides, those are reinforced steel fireproof lockers. I mean, they were perfectly safe. You could torch the place and they’d be fine.”

But Vince found no solace in that. Fireproofing was not the problem. “What about off-site copies?”

“Off-site copies?” The hole opened wider and Quentin slipped to his waist.

“Copies in safety deposit boxes in banks or your home safe. Second
backups in case the place blows up, or some asshole decides to clean you out?”

“Well, not really. It’s not company policy … . I mean, we never had a need to, you know. Nobody ever steals project notebooks. Our people are very, you know … trustworthy …” He trailed off, wishing he had a place to land, wishing he could edit out the last thirty seconds of the conversation. Wishing he had never said anything about the missing notebooks.

“Didn’t you once tell me that he didn’t like the idea of marketing the stuff on the side?”

“I guess I did.”

“Didn’t you once say you were worried he might try to take the patent and run off on his own?”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t really serious. I mean, he wasn’t really the type. Didn’t have the balls for a heist, and all … .”

Silence.

“Vince, look I’m sorry. Tell Antoine we’ll pay everybody back their deposits. That’s no problem. They’ll get their money back. Please tell him everybody will get what they’re owed.”

“Money’s not the issue.”

“What is?”

“Longevity.”

“Sure, of course. I know, I’ve lost that too, believe me. Jesus, the son-of-a-bitch. But, you know … what can I say?”

“Nothing,” Vince said. “Not a fucking thing.”

And he clicked off, leaving Quentin standing there in a raw winter wind as cold as eternity.

If Jenny caught the evening news, she would be hysterical. So Wendy drove to a pay phone on highway 87 outside of Lake Placid to avoid leaving records at the cottage. Chris would have gone, but his face might be recognized. He was already thinking like a fugitive.

With the snow it would be two hours before Wendy returned. Meanwhile, Chris removed the trunk containing the Elixir to a small chamber in the cellar where Wendy’s parents had stored wine. The room was locked and well insulated. The thermometer read 20 degrees, which was fine, since Elixir could be kept frozen indefinitely without decomposition. The two-liter container he left in the refrigerator upstairs because freezing would split the container. The rest was kept in two hundred-and-twelve ampules
fixed with rubber septums for injection needles. Because tabulone was highly active in low concentrations, Chris estimated that he had enough Elixir to keep a single rhesus monkey stable for two thousand years.

A little after two, Wendy returned wrung out. She had reached Jenny.

“What did you tell her?” Chris asked.

“That the police reports were wrong, that you were framed for Betsy’s murder.”

“How did she take it?”

“How do you think she took it? She was shocked, confused, and horrified,” Wendy explained.

“Does she know we’re here?”

“Yes.” Wendy was so weary that she leaned against the fireplace mantel to keep from slipping to the floor. Her face was colorless with defeat. “I told her we took off when you suspected a plot to get you too.” Her voice sounded like a flat recording. “When she finally calmed down she offered to help us.”

Chris nodded, thinking how Jenny might be able to do that. “Did you tell her why?” he asked cautiously.

“No, I did not tell her about Elixir.” Even her exhaustion could not mask the sarcasm in her voice.

“You did the right thing,” Chris said, knowing how hollow that sounded. She didn’t care a damn about keeping the stuff secret.

Wendy pushed away from the wall. She wanted to go to bed. “So, what are we going to do?” She asked. “They found your snorkle stuff in the locker room.”

“That was planted. It was a setup. I was halfway to Providence at the time.”

“And what evidence?”

Chris took her by the shoulders. “Jesus, Wendy, you don’t think I killed her, do you?”

For a split second, she appeared to struggle with her answer. “No, but the police do.”

“I can’t document where I was until later in the day.” He had driven straight to Providence and breakfasted on complimentary donuts and coffee in the hotel lobby, then settled in a corner of the deserted bar to look over the seminar material undisturbed. He had spoken to no one, and left no receipts. He had no evidence; nobody could place him there that early.

“Then you have no alibi. It’s your word against theirs.”

He took a deep, shaky breath. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and pulled
her to him. Wendy lay limply against his chest. It was like cuddling somebody who had died.

For a long moment Chris held his wife, thinking that this might be the first time in seventeen years that Wendy had ever regretted her marriage to him.

Over the next three days, the crash slipped from lead story. When the weather cleared the NTSB dispatched helicopters and a coast guard vessel to search for bodies and debris.

The mood in the cottage varied from abrasive silence to panic. On some level Wendy blamed Chris for the upheaval of their lives, irrational as she knew that was. Because she had opposed Elixir from the beginning, the latest twist only served as proof that the project was a curse. For seven years Chris had chased Nature to her hiding place, and now they were stuck in these godforsaken woods, exiled from their old lives and the ordinary world. And it had happened at the peak of renewed joy for her. But she resolved that, no matter what, they would fight this, for she would not bring up her baby in hiding.

Chris spent the next few days listing lawyers’ names from telephone directories and doing chores. He chopped and split wood. There was an old chainsaw in the cellar, but he feared the noise would draw attention.

Wendy, meanwhile, did the food shopping at a supermarket in Lake Placid. She wore a ski cap and sunglasses even though nobody would know her. But it struck her how even the most mundane chore was fraught with anxiety that somebody would look into her face and recognize an accessory to murder.

She paid for everything in cash which Chris had withdrawn from accounts before they left—over $17,000. They had been listed as dead, so Wendy began to think of herself as nonexistent—a woman with no credit cards, checks, social security number. Or name. It was almost funny. She was a blank of herself.

Luckily, there was plenty of clothing at the cottage. And the utilities had been paid through June by a trust fund, again untraceable. The propane tank was over half full. They could survive for several weeks if need be, though Chris promised to contact a lawyer by week’s end, then turn themselves over to the police.

But that wouldn’t happen. Thursday night after Adam was down, they watched the evening news. The lead story was the crash of Eastern flight 219 once again. But this time it was not Chris’s photo on the screen but a family portrait, and not theirs.

“ … Relatives of the Foleys claimed that they were hoping to fly to Puerto Rico on standby. Authorities now believe that Thomas and Karen Foley had purchased their airline tickets for themselves and their young daughter, Tara, from Christopher Bacon.”

The Foley family photo was replaced by that of Chris.

“According to authorities, security cameras captured Bacon talking to Foley and his wife … .” In jerky black-and-white Chris could be seen huddled with the Foleys, then disappearing into the crowd.

“Meanwhile, friends and relatives have not heard from the Foleys. Nor is there any trace of them in Puerto Rico, leaving investigators to conclude that they were aboard flight 219 to San Juan, and the Bacons were not.

“In a bizarre twist to the story, an all-points bulletin has been issued for Christopher Bacon and his author wife in the death of Betsy Watkins and now the more serious charge of sabotage. According to the NTSB, preliminary analyses of debris show evidence more consistent with a bomb than lightning. Quoting an unnamed spokesman from Darby Pharmaceuticals, the FBI said that Bacon not only had the expertise to construct such a bomb but had apparently stolen the necessary chemicals … .”

“Quentin!” Chris shouted. “He set us up.”

Wendy let out a cry of despair. On the screen was a photo of Wendy and Chris from a Darby Christmas party two years ago.

“As for the whereabouts of the Bacons, police are not saying much about leads. However, the FBI has entered the case placing the Bacons on the Ten Most Wanted List …”

“My God,” Chris said. “How much worse can it get?”

FEBRUARY 5
THE WHITE HOUSE

Ross Darby leaned toward the president. “Ron, he didn’t do it. He wasn’t the type.”

“That’s not what they’re telling me at the Bureau. They’re saying he planted a bomb to fake his own death.”

Ross and the president were sitting alone in the Oval Office on facing sofas. Of all the visits he had made here over the years, this was the first time Ross did not feel the august thrill of history.

“I know what they’re saying, but I also know this guy. I hired him. He’s a dedicated scientist, not a mass murderer.”

“Well, then, who did it?”

Ross felt a prickly sensation in the back of his neck. “I don’t know.”

“Well, they’ve got the best people looking for him.”

BOOK: ELIXIR

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