Gary Braver - Elixir

Roger repeated them as Laura jotted them down.

He then thanked the president.

When he hung up, Brett slapped him a fiver. "Awesome, Dad. Friggin' awesome."

He looked to Laura for a response. Her face had softened. "That was smart," she said and squeezed his hand. "I just pray it works."

Me too, he thought.

As they drove on, Roger played the tape he had made.

When he got to his request for a ban on the substance, he thought he heard something hiding in the hedges just behind the president's pledge-a shadowy speculation that Roger recalled had once danced for him many years ago.

Eric Brown was thinking about bed when the fax came through from the Indianapolis field office. It was the Medical Examiner's report on Abigail Kaminsky. He made a copy for Zazzaro, and they read it over another pot of coffee.

It was seventeen pages long and thick with medical lingo, but he absorbed the essentials-and they made his skin stipple.

She was small like a child, dressed as a child, but looked like an aged woman.

After pages discussing discrepancies between photographs of the child at the scene and her condition, the report concluded that the victim was physically and mentally retarded, and, thus, had been treated as a young child by her parents. As for the condition of her corpse, medical examiners drew a blank. Abigail Kaminsky Phoenix had died three hours after being shot through the chest, but in that time she had experienced an anomalous mutation of genetic material that resulted in hyper-accelerated senescence. "Causes, unknown. Pathology, unknown."

For a long moment Brown stared at the concluding paragraph.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Walter Olafsson," Zazzaro said.

"Yeah."

You didn't need to be a Nobel laureate to connect the three cases. Jennifer Whitehead Kaminsky Phoenix was the sister-in-law of the man who invented Elixir; Walter Olafsson was the man who first reported him; and Dexter Quinn once served as his assistant at Darby Pharms years back.

"But why give it to a kid?"

"Beats me."

So far they had seen photos of four individuals on Elixir-the three who died had turned into genetic monsters. The other had rejuvenated.

"This is bad shit," Brown said. "Very bad shit."

Brown could not get his eyes off the autopsy photos of the Kaminsky girl. "Christ, she looks like one of those Egyptian mummies in a Little Bo Peep dress."

They arrived at Black Eagle Lake around six that night.

Roger did not head directly to the cottage but for the dirt access road across the lake to a sheltered spot in the trees.

He didn't think the authorities could trace the property to them. Twelve years ago, Roger had purchased the place under an alias and took over paying the taxes by cashier's checks. Unless Jenny had leaked, there was no way the feds could know. Nonetheless, he insisted they watched for signs of a stakeout.

The weather was cold, and this far north there was snow on the ground and more in the forecast.

They waited until sunset, watching the cabin through field glasses. An elderly couple, probably renters from one of the other waterfront places, was fishing from a boat on the lake. But that was the only movement. No planes or helicopters. No SWAT team vehicles.

Night fell, and the only lights came from a summer place half a mile down shore. Otherwise, the lake was an opaque black.

When they decided it was safe, they drove to the cabin. Roger wore his pistol in his belt.

The place was dark and lifeless. They had not been back in nearly a decade. In the headlights it looked the same, but for some missing shingles. Still sitting in the front yard was the old fountain Laura's father had put in when she and Jenny were kids. It had once been electrified so that water poured out of a vase held aloft on the shoulders of a naked boy. The figure was long gone, and the pool was a shabby basin full of rotted leaves and icy water.

As he pulled the car up, Roger felt like ghosts of their own past returning. In thirteen years they had come full circle.

The key still worked, though the door needed to be shouldered open.

The inside looked untouched from the last time they were here. No signs of a break-in. No vandalism. Nothing out of place. Just cobwebs, dust, and damp frigid air that smelled of neglect. For a second Roger ticked off a fantasy of restoring the place to its original cozy charm and living out their days here. But that wouldn't happen.

The good news was that the electricity and water still worked. The bad news was that the refrigerator did not. That meant he would need to find a cold safe place for the ampules.

While Brett and Laura unpacked their clothes, Roger found one. Then he fired up the furnace to give them heat and hot water for three long showers.

Laura brought Brett to her old bedroom. It was musty, but neat. Laura had packed fresh linens, and while Brett took a shower she and Roger made the beds.

When they were through, she collapsed against his chest. "Almost over," he said.

"Thank God."

He kissed her and held her in his arms for a long time.

Laura showered and got ready for bed while Roger lay down with Brett. It was a ritual that went all the way back to his first big-boy bed. In the early days, they would read to him and chat before he dozed off to sleep.

Roger lay down next to his son and wondered how many more nights they had left.

"Remember what my favorite book was?"

"I sure do, I read it often enough. Jack and the Beanstalk."

They had bought him a large hardbound edition, intricately illustrated. The pictures that fascinated Brett the most were of the giant chasing Jack, and the last page showing Jack walking hand in hand with his mother toward a castle, the golden egg-laying goose waddling beside them.

"What happened to Jack's father?"

"Maybe the giant got to him for stealing his treasure."

"But Jack got him back in the end. Must be kind of neat to have a goose like that. I'd have him lay eggs forever."

There was a moment's silence and he heard Brett sniffling.

"You all right?"

"Yeah. I'm fine." After more silence Brett cleared his throat. "The one thing I didn't like about that story is that Jack's father never made it back."

"It's just a story."

Brett reached over and touched the tube around Roger's neck. "What's going to happen, Dad?"

"We're going to turn ourselves in tomorrow. And they'll use the Elixir for cancer research."

"I mean about us. How can we keep going?"

Roger leaned over and kissed Brett on the forehead. He could smell the lavender shampoo in his hair. "Love is how we go on, not youth potions."

A few moments passed in silence. "Brett, if something happened to me, do you think you'd be okay?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, if they put me away for a while…"

"How long?"

"I don't know, probably not long. But if we end up with a dope for a lawyer and I got, say, five years, do you think you could take care of yourself and Mom?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Just what I figured."

Brett said nothing.

"I love you, big guy."

"I love you too."

Long into the dark silence Roger held his son's hand until Brett fell asleep.

When he got up, he checked on Laura in their bedroom.

The light from the hall spilled onto her sleeping figure alone in the bed. She was wearing his old Legion T-shirt from when he coached Brett's Little League team a few years ago.

For a protracted moment he watched her sleep. He wished she were still awake. He wished he could hold her one more time.

He wished he could turn back the clock to that night thirteen years ago when in a fit of fear and self-pity he stumbled down to the cellar and shot himself up.