The Devil's Elixir (27 page)

Villaverde immediately grasped what I was suggesting. “So Pennebaker walks out of prison and somehow assumes the ID of a missing soldier?”

“Yeah. And most likely one with no living relatives. I get the impression that the new Pennebaker wouldn’t have wanted to hurt a soldier’s family, but would have no qualms about deceiving the government.”

“I’ll get my guys straight onto it. You coming back here?”

I said we’d head straight up to Aero Drive.

 

By the time we got back to his office, Villaverde was sitting at the main meeting room table with two other agents, going through army service records. I joined the party while Munro found an empty desk and put in a call to Corliss.

He told me he’d made contact with the USACIDC—the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command—at MCB Quantico and requested the service histories that we needed. With both the FBI and the DEA pressing for access—and adding into the mix that both San Diego PD and the SDSO wouldn’t back off until they found whoever killed Deputy Fugate—he hadn’t had to face any jurisdictional stare-downs.

There were seventeen soldiers who fit our profile. All of them had been listed MIA at some point over the past ten years, but only five of them had returned to the fold in one way or another in the last two, which was our window for Pennebaker. Of the other twelve, nine had been confirmed dead and three were still listed as missing.

We were trying to find someone born between 1970 and 1985 who looked enough like Pennebaker for him to assume his identity. There was one name that stood out. Marine Sergeant Matthew Frye. Born 1982. Listed as missing in 2003. Came back on the grid in 2009. Missed three psych evaluation appointments but had finally been discharged at the beginning of 2010. He still had his tags and had been identified by a sister, who was his only living relative. Placed side by side, Frye and Pennebaker could have been brothers, notwithstanding their choice of optional mustache.

“Where’s Frye now?”

One of the junior agents pushed a few keys on the laptop facing them, then spun it around to face Villaverde, who shared the details.

“Social Security has him in Los Angeles. Works at a private rehab clinic up in Montecito Heights. Sleeps there, too, by the looks of it. His work address and residential address are the same.”

Call it instinct, call it fifteen years on the job, but I knew this was our man. Pennebaker walks out of prison a changed man, but almost certainly still bitter about the past. Feels more like a soldier than anything else, but has seen and heard too much ever to go back to active service. Needs to leave his recent past behind because those years were notable for some serious criminal activity. We knew that Walker and Pennebaker had a reputation for getting the job done. Why else would someone want to hire them years after they last worked together? That kind of reputation works both ways. It all fit. The only way to know for sure was to meet him. Any kind of contact before then risked putting him back on the missing list.

I turned to Villaverde. “We need to get up to LA.”

“This time of day, you’ll need to go by air.”

He had seemingly crunched the facts the same way I had.

He picked up a phone and told the other end that he needed a chopper.

Twenty minutes later, we were airborne in an LAPD JetRanger on the way to have a chat with a man I hoped would turn out to be our own guru.

T
ess hated waiting.

She was impatient from minute one, as her mom never failed to remind her, often adding that it was a small miracle that Tess had had the decency to stick around inside of her for the full nine months and not kicked and screamed her way out prematurely.

She was back at the hotel, with Jules and Alex. They’d gone downstairs for a light lunch, and they were now back in their rooms. Jules was on a conference call with her office while Tess was on the couch with Alex, reading
Tikki Tikki Tembo
with him. It was one of his favorites, one he’d asked her to bring back from the house. It was also a book she remembered reading to Kim years ago, but even with that added emotional kick, its charm and its amusing tongue-twisters still weren’t enough to drag Tess’s mind off the drawing or calm her bubbling impatience.

Then her phone rang.

She picked it up, saw a number she didn’t recognize, and her pulse vaulted. She never answered a call that fast.

It was Holly Fowden, Alex’s teacher.

Tess thanked her for getting in touch as she sprang off the bed and slipped into her bedroom, closing the door behind her. She then explained who she was and what had happened. Fowden also hadn’t heard about Michelle’s death, and her voice broke as she struggled to find the right words to say. Tess helped her by moving the conversation along and told her about what had prompted her visit to the school and her chat with the principal.

“Alex’s mom did come to see me,” Fowden told her. “She showed me that drawing.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t explain much. She just said Alex seemed to be troubled by something and wanted to know how he was in class.”

“And how was he?”

“Normal. Happy. I didn’t notice anything wrong with him.”

“But she did?”

“Well . . . yes.” She sounded a bit uncomfortable discussing it with Tess, but carried on. “She said he hadn’t been sleeping well and having nightmares . . . She also said he’d been saying things she didn’t understand, things she was surprised he knew. She seemed confused by it all and wanted to know if I’d talked about them in class.”

“Like what?”

“Names of places. Cities and towns in South America. And animals like boas and piranhas, I remember her saying.”

“And you hadn’t taught them that?”

“No.”

Tess wasn’t sure why this was surprising to Michelle. He could have easily picked those things up while watching television.

“Did he say anything like that to you?”

“After she mentioned them, I noticed that some of his drawings had a different feel than what other kids would normally draw, but again, nothing too out of the ordinary. But there was one thing he did say that surprised me. I didn’t really think much of it until after his mom called.”

Tess felt a spark of anticipation. “What was it?”

“We were out in the park and I had the kids draw some of the flowers that were there. And Alex drew this white flower that was really gorgeous. But when I asked him which one he was drawing, he said it wasn’t one of the ones in the park. And then he said something else. He said, ‘They say it fixes your heart, but actually it kills people.’ ”

Tess wondered what kind of TV shows he’d been watching. “A flower that kills people?”

“I know, weird, right? But when I asked him what he meant, he didn’t want to say. It’s odd, though, ’cause lately, he’s been more articulate and seems to have a richer vocabulary than his classmates. But on that occasion, he didn’t want to say more.”

“So how did you leave it?”

“I told his mom I’d let her know if he said or did anything unusual or if he seemed at all unhappy about anything. I saw her when she dropped him off a couple of times. She said she was taking him to see a specialist but didn’t really go into detail.”

“What, like a shrink?”

“Yes. A child psychologist. Privately. She didn’t want to involve the school in it. She didn’t want Alex to be labeled in any way. You know how it is.”

Tess was familiar with that kind of pressure. “Do you know who she took him to see?”

“No.”

“Did she say anything about him?”

Fowden thought about it, then said, “No, I’m sorry. I got the feeling she was kicking herself for even mentioning it to me.”

Tess had to get more. “Was it a man or a woman?”

Fowden paused, then said, “A man. Yeah, I’m pretty sure she referred to him as ‘he.’ ”

Tess thanked her, got her number, and ended the call.

She didn’t have much. A first name that may or may not relate to a local shrink.

Tess left her room and saw that Jules had ended her call and was now playing with Alex. She hesitated to interrupt them, then picked up her iPad, went back to her room, fired up Safari, and started trawling the online listings for psychologists in the San Diego area named Dean.

W
e landed at Hooper Heliport at five thirty, took the elevator down to the street, and got straight into a Bureau Suburban that was waiting for us. Our destination was only five miles out. As we drove north toward the hills, the agent riding shotgun briefed us on the clinic.

“The place was founded about twenty years ago by Ursula Marshall, on an endowment. It’s got twenty beds. Day center caters to another ten. The patients don’t pay a dime, and the waiting list runs over two hundred. Ursula’s daughter was a runaway. Died of an overdose at nineteen. Ursula’s dad owned a big slice of Washington State at one point, and Ursula was an only child. This is one of the things she used her inheritance for.”

I asked, “And Frye is there full-time?”

“He runs the place, apparently. Does a bit of everything, including counseling. The place tends to cater to ex-military personnel.”

“Love the soldier, hate the war,” Munro said, with more than a hint of sarcasm.

He obviously hadn’t changed his stance since the last time we worked together, his stance being that the war isn’t over till every single enemy combatant is dead, whether it’s the wars in the Gulf, the War on Terror, or the War on Drugs. At this point, as long as he didn’t rile Pennebaker, I didn’t really care what he thought.

We left Griffin Avenue and climbed deeper into the Monterey Hills. The views were breathtaking, the houses few and far between. If you wanted somewhere secluded but still within reach of a city, the area was perfect. The last place recovering addicts needed to be was in the middle of downtown with all the treacherous distractions and lethal delights on offer.

The clinic was a sprawling three-floor building, hacienda style. A handful of palm trees edged the property on two sides, and a steeply sloping lawn ran down to the road. We climbed out of the Suburban and walked up to the main entrance. The door was open. We stepped into an atrium that was dominated by several tall indoor cacti. To the left was a common room filled with armchairs and sofas. To the right was a huge open-plan kitchen with a mess-style table dead center and running the room’s entire length. At the rear was a wide wooden staircase.

A young woman dressed in a T-shirt and faded jeans and sporting a long blonde ponytail walked down the stairs toward us.

“Hi. Can I help you?” She tucked her bangs behind her left ear. I bet the soldiers melted when she did that.

“We’re looking for Matthew Frye.”

She turned back up the stairs and called out.

“Matt? There’s some people here to speak to you.”

She turned back to face us and I immediately recognized the glint in her eye. She and Matthew were an item.

“This about Donaldson?” she asked.

“No, why?”

She waived it aside with a shrug. “One of our patients. He’s suing the army for compensation. Lost an arm in Afghanistan, got addicted to painkillers, but they didn’t cut it, so he switched to heroin. Failed a mandatory drug test and was fired. Didn’t work for three years. He’s been here three months, been clean for six weeks.”

This story certainly wasn’t going to change Pennebaker’s mind about anything. If Frye was indeed Pennebaker. But they do say that in time you tend to find yourself where your environment echoes your beliefs.

Our conversation was halted by a tall, wiry man descending the stairs.

“You guys from the Military Review Board?” he scoffed. “Not surprised you’re not in uniform. Probably never seen a day’s action in your lives.”

He came to a stop in front of us. He looked surprisingly like the photo of Frye. But it was definitely Pennebaker.