Panacea (22 page)

“Then why are we driving through a Mayan jungle?”

Okay, now she was on more comfortable ground—her turf.

“Because this is how science works. Stahlman says it exists, I say it doesn't and tell him to prove his position. He says I can find it here and is willing to make it very much worth my while to look for it. I've come to investigate and prove him wrong.”

“But you've seen cures you can't explain.”

“True. But I have limited data on those ‘cures' and so I'm here to expand my knowledge base.”

“That doesn't change the fact that you're looking for something you say cannot exist.”

“No, I'm looking for something that may be real but is being passed off as something that cannot exist—a medical breakthrough being passed off as a cure-all. Big difference. That unknown something might not have the unlimited scope of a panacea, but might well have limited properties that could prove to be a boon for some field of medicine.”

She realized she was back to a form of bioprospecting.

He said, “But what if a true panacea does exist?”

“It can't.”

“Go with me. What if it does? Would you use it?”

“Of course. To cure the incurable is a doctor's dream come true.”

“Well,
a healer's
dream, anyway.” His eyes were virtually sparking now. “Know the third part of the Chinese curse?”

“No. But I'm sure I'm about to learn.”

“‘May you find what you are looking for.'”

“Really?”

“Really. Sounds good but has an ominous ring.”

It certainly did. Enough to send a chill through her. In fiction, finding your heart's desire never turned out well. Probably worked the same in real life.

“I don't see how a panacea could be something bad,” she said.

“Even if it's from outside?”

“
Outside?
What's that supposed to mean?”

“A true panacea would upset the order of things. Think about it. We're talking about breaking the laws of biology and even physics. That's why you keep saying it's impossible. So if it
does
exist, it can't be from here. Has to be from somewhere else.”

“You're getting all fantasy and science fictiony again.”

“Not fantasy or fiction of any kind if it's real. Something like that, something that breaks all the rules, has to have been introduced from somewhere else—from
outside
. And for what purpose? Just to see how the playthings deal with it? Or is there an agenda … one we can't comprehend?”

Something in his tone struck her. On the surface it sounded like proselytizing, but she detected something else. A note of … what? Desperation? Almost as if he was trying to convince himself as well as her.

“What do you know—or
think
you know?”

He shook his head. “Know?
Don't
know, that's the problem. But I've seen…”

“Seen what?”

“Nothing. I'm going to shut up now.”

“Come on. You can't cut off with a statement like that.”

“Hey, look,” he said, craning his head to look up through the windshield. “A helicopter. We should have rented ourselves one of those.”

“Don't try to change the subject.”

“Forget it,” he said, leaning back. “Just funning with you.”

She didn't believe him, not for a nanosecond. But she'd seen the walls go up and the shades come down. She wasn't going to get any more.

“‘Funning,' eh? Like your ‘vast, cool and unsympathetic' intellects?”

“Exactly. Although you're the intellect here. I'm just the muscle.”

Laura wondered about that. She'd already caught him in one lie. How many others hid beneath that blunt exterior?

“You do realize that mental institutions are full of people with ideas like the ones we just discussed, don't you?”

He nodded. “And that's a shame, isn't it. Because if you say you can't eat pork because the creator of the universe told you not to, fine. If you say there's a part of you no one can see that's immortal and will be reincarnated in a new body after you die, cool. If you say the earth was created in six days back in four thousand four BC, some school boards even consider making that part of the curriculum. If you—”

“Okay, you've made your point.”

“I rest my case.”

What a strange man he was turning out to be. A lot deeper—and a whole lot weirder—than she'd imagined. Obviously he'd given this trip and its purpose a whole lot of thought, but from such an unusual angle.

Something in his past—something he'd experienced or thought he'd seen—had skewed his take on reality. That made her a little uneasy. She preferred a travel companion thoroughly grounded in the real world to someone who thought humanity was the plaything of “intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic.”

But she was stuck with him.

 

3

After a bumpy ride through the jungle, Laura finally found her way to the village.

“Gotta tell you,” Rick said as they pulled up to the outskirts, “this isn't at all what I expected.”

A cluster of huts lay ahead, stippled with afternoon sunlight, yet he was looking out the rear window.

“How so?”

“When you think Mayans, you think stone—or at least I do. Stone houses, stone temples, stone walls. These may have thatch roofs, but they've got solid walls and look like, well, houses.”

“They may not have central AC, but the twentieth century has had its influence.”

“But not the twenty-first?”

“Not yet.”

He looked around through the rear window again.

“That's like the fourth or fifth time you've done that. What are you looking for back there?”

He shrugged. “Just wondering if we were followed.”

“We've had the road—or maybe I should say ‘path'—all to ourselves.”

“If you say so.” He gestured to the village. “Where is everyone, by the way?”

The village looked pretty much the same as the last time she had been here, except it had been bustling with life then.

“I don't know.” Laura reached for the door handle. “Let's go take a—”

“Hang on,” he said, gripping her forearm. “Give me a minute.”

He pulled out a couple of his zip ties and began looping them around his belt near his right hip.

“What are you doing?”

“Forgot to send a holster down. Bear with me. Be done in a sec or two.”

When he finished fiddling with the ties, he fished the pistol from the glove compartment and chambered a round.

“You really think that's necessary?”

“Hope not. Hate to find out it is and not have a round in the chamber.”

Okay, that made sense.

Slipping the pistol through the zip ties, he covered it with the flap of his safari jacket and got out of the car. The heat and humidity enveloped Laura and clung like Saran Wrap as she stepped out on her side. They met by the front bumper.

“How's it look?” he said, smoothing the jacket. “No telltale bulge?”

She noticed a slight bulge, but she was looking for it.

“That's amazing. All with zip ties.”

“Thousand and one uses, I tell you.” He looked around. “So here are the houses. Where are the people?”

“Let's go find out.”

They walked through the silent village without spotting a soul. Something was wrong. Laura felt it along the back of her neck.

On the far side, in a small clearing to the west, they found what appeared to be the entire population standing in a circle around something hanging from a branch of one of the larger ceibas.

Laura stopped in her tracks. “Is that…?”

Rick's hand went inside his jacket but he kept walking.

“Yeah.” His head was swiveling like a turret as he made a full turn while remaining on the move. “Human. And three guesses who.”

Laura felt her heart's tempo pick up as adrenaline began to flow. She'd expected that 536—whoever they were—would be involved, but not … this.

She forced her feet forward. She didn't need three guesses, or even one. The body hung by its neck and was charred black. Just like the body she'd posted on Wednesday. Rick had been concerned about being followed. Apparently the 536 sect had arrived first and had their way with Mulac.

When the villagers spotted Rick approaching they cowered. A couple even started to run.

“Do not be afraid!” Laura called in the Yucatec dialect. “We mean no harm!”

Rick held his hands up, empty palms out for all to see.

The crowd parted for them and they stopped before the blackened corpse, swaying in the gentle breeze. The flies were making themselves at home. Close up she could see that he'd been strung up with wire.

“There a reason no one cut him down?” Rick said.

Laura hadn't even thought of that. She felt as if she were in a bad dream.

She put the question to the villagers. After some hesitation, one woman said in Yucatec, “A tall man and a short man come and they do this.”

Laura gave her a closer look. She thought she knew her from a previous visit—the most outgoing of the customarily reclusive villagers. She looked much older now. What was her name?

“I know you. Tlalli, right? Remember me? I came to talk to Mulac years ago.”

“Yes. I knew you right away. You look the same.”

She thought, Oh, after marriage, a baby, and divorce, I doubt that, but … she meant the blue eyes, of course.

“You said two men did this?”

“Yes. They told us we had to leave Mulac there for three days. They said if we cut him down before that they would burn the village and we would all end as Mulac.”

Her gut crawled. Oh, God. This was getting worse by the minute. She scanned the tree line and the brush. Were they still around? Suddenly she was glad for Rick and his big Glock.

When she translated, Rick walked over to the ceiba and used his knife to unknot the wire. Then he eased the body to the ground. It came to rest facedown.

Forcing herself forward, Laura squatted next to Mulac and tried to shift her mind into professional gear—become a medical examiner rather than a shocked and frightened traveler.

She'd met him only once, but even if she'd known him well, IDing him would have been difficult. It hadn't been a smooth meeting. Mulac had been very secretive, inhospitable, even hostile to her presence. He'd ignored most of her questions and had refused to show her any of his medicines.

His remains weren't as badly burned as Hanrahan's. On Mulac's back she still could trace the outline of a familiar tattoo. She couldn't tell if he'd been tortured before he died, or if he'd been alive when set ablaze.

She looked at Tlalli for an answer. “Did they…?” She didn't know the word for torture. “Did they hurt Mulac before they killed him?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding vigorously. “Hurt him bad. Then they hurt Itzel.”

“Who's Itzel?”

Tlalli called to someone and another woman brought a little girl forward. She had a bloody cloth wound around her right hand. The other woman—her mother?—began to unwrap it.

I don't think I want to see this, Laura thought.

The bandage fell away to reveal four bloody fingertips. Laura gasped when she realized the fingernails had been ripped off.

She glanced at Rick. His face had gone white.

He turned away. “Cover that,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Now.”

Laura motioned to the woman to take the child away.

Rick's reaction surprised her, because previously he hadn't seemed to react to anything. Mulac's charred, hanging corpse hadn't fazed him. But the child's mutilated fingers … the sight of blood?

Maybe he was human after all.

“It's okay,” she said when the child was gone.

Rick turned around. His color had improved but his eyes, if anything, were flatter and deader than ever.

“Tortured him and that didn't work,” he said, his voice low and vibrating with rage, “so they tortured a little girl to get him to talk.” He looked at the villagers. “Someone said a tall man and a short man came. Ask which one hurt the little girl.”

She did and Tlalli answered.

“The short one,” Laura translated.

Rick only nodded.

“What are you thinking?” she said.

“Nothing.” He took a deep breath and nodded toward Mulac. “Is this guy—
was
this guy a panacean like Stahlman suspected?”

Laura nodded. “He has the tattoo.”

A number of the villagers started babbling at once, terrified, some wailing.

“What's their problem?”

Laura listened and caught the gist of their concerns.

“You cut Mulac down and they're worried the men will burn the village as they promised.”

“Well, I'm not about to string him up again. And you can tell them to bury him or whatever they do with their dead. The men who did this won't be back.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“They left his body hanging here for one reason: you. To let you know they've got the lead in this and you might as well give up and go home.”

“Well, that's about all that's left to do, isn't it?”

Home … it sounded so good. Stahlman could keep his money. She'd expected a certain amount of risk, but not torture and murder.

Rick looked around at the villagers. “Somebody's got to know something. Anyone hear what Mulac told the 536ers? And do you see that girl who was in the photo with Brody?”

Laura didn't see her. She asked Tlalli what Mulac told his killers before he died but she said no one had heard anything but his screams. But when Laura pulled out the photo and showed it around, the villagers shut down.

“What's wrong?” Laura said.