Fear

FIFTY

They reached Tustin, in Orange County, late Saturday night.

Celeste could see Miles was shaken. She thought he was nervous about trusting Victor Gamby not to call the authorities on them.

‘This is a bad idea,’ Miles told Celeste. ‘You’ve never met this guy face to face.’

‘I know him,’ she said. ‘I trust Victor.’

‘You know him through e-mails, for God’s sake.’

‘Victor has done more to help PTSD patients through his blog than anyone else I know.’

‘He would be entirely in his right mind if he called the police.’

‘None of us are in our right minds,’ Celeste said. ‘Wait.’ She walked up to the doorway of the modest house in a quiet stretch of Tustin. The jacaranda trees were heavy with bloom and the breeze knocked purple blossoms settling on her head as she walked up to the front door.

Nathan said, ‘I still have a job to do. Getting Frost for the soldiers.’

Miles put a hand on Nathan’s shoulder. ‘You do this my way, Nathan. Dodd stuck you in an illegal medical testing program, he took advantage of your disease and your guilt, and he’s dead and you don’t owe him a thing.’

‘I’m going to find Frost.’ Nathan’s voice was unsteady.

‘Nathan,’ Miles said, ‘we’ll discuss it later.’

Miles saw the door opened by a fortyish man in a wheelchair. Celeste spoke to him and then the man opened his arms – one of them a prosthetic – and Celeste leaned down to him and embraced him.

They talked for ten minutes, Celeste kneeling by his wheelchair. The man listened intently; he never interrupted Celeste. Then he gestured at the car, a welcoming wave.

Miles and Nathan walked toward them. Groote hung back near the Navigator.

‘Miles, Nathan, this is Victor Gamby,’ Celeste said. ‘Victor, Nathan Ruiz, Miles Kendrick. Back there is Dennis Groote. He’s, um, shy.’

He shook hands with both of them and said, ‘You boys c’mon in and we’ll talk.’ He motored the wheelchair around – Miles saw that his legs were missing as well, the pants legs tidily tucked in under stumps – and they followed him inside. Groote brought up the rear, glancing around as though the house were a trap.

‘Thanks for your hospitality, Mr. Gamby,’ Miles said.

‘You’re welcome. Nathan, forgive me, but Celeste says you dislike mirrors.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Nathan said. He hung back, staying close to Celeste.

Victor said, ‘Freddy! Company!’

A young man, in his early thirties, came in from the back. Wearing wraparound sunglasses, walking with a cane. Blind. Scar tissue inched out along the edge of the sunglasses.

‘You fought in Iraq’, Nathan, that right?’ Victor said.

‘Yeah.’

‘So did Freddy. Blinded by an IED outside Tikrit.’

Freddy said hi as they all shook his hand.

‘Freddy, Nathan doesn’t care for mirrors, which makes no sense because he’s about ten times handsomer than I am. Would you go around, hang sheets on the mirrors that Nathan might see?’

‘That’s okay,’ Nathan said. ‘I can control myself.’

‘No reason to be embarrassed.’

‘If I’d known that,’ Groote whispered to him, ‘damn, I wouldn’t have used the screwdriver.’

‘Shut the hell up,’ Nathan said quietly, ‘and stay away from me.’

Miles stepped between them.

‘Then when you’re done with the mirrors, Freddy, if you’d make sandwiches for our guests?’ Victor said.

‘Sure, but the only bread we got is rye.’ Freddy had a surfer boy’s easy accent.

‘That’ll do, I’m sure. Thank you so much.’ Victor waited for Freddy to leave the room, put an unafraid gaze on Miles. ‘Celeste’s told me the basics of the trouble you all are in.’

‘I appreciate your willingness to help us,’ Miles said. ‘I know you run a popular Web site for people with posttraumatic stress disorder…’

‘And you want to know if you can trust me with your secrets.’

‘Well…’

‘It’s all right, Miles. I’ve had my site for a couple of years now. A million hits a month. I do database consulting work for the government, I’m an independent contractor. Don’t worry, I’m not a fed. I’m not calling the cops on you all, because Celeste says you’re after a medicine that could help every traumatized patient in the world. Including me, including Freddy.’

‘Is he, um, your boyfriend?’ Nathan asked.

Victor shook his head. ‘No. I find me a lost lamb, let ’em stay till they’re on their feet. Always a PTSDer. Like you, like me. I got my legs and arm blown off on 9/11.’

‘Victor was at the Pentagon,’ Celeste said quietly.

‘Before Freddy I had a young lady staying with me, saw her brother and her fiance gunned down in a gang war in Compton. Before that another soldier from Iraq. Before that a young father who lost his parents and his children, drowning before his eyes, in Hurricane Katrina. Never a shortage of pain in this world. I help ’em get back on their feet best they can and then I send ’em out to help another soul.’

‘You need to help us with eyes wide open. Celeste killed a man in self-defense but we didn’t report it. I’m hiding from the witness protection program. Groote helped us flee the scene of a multiple homicide in Yosemite.’ Victor gave Groote a brief but appraising stare, and Miles wondered exactly how much Celeste had told him about the man. ‘People want us dead. And the government, at least a slice of it no one acknowledges, is involved in a major cover-up over medical research.’

Victor Gamby pointed at his eyes. ‘Wide open. Start talking.’

Miles told him the entire story, from his morning meeting with Allison and Sorenson, to arriving on Victor’s doorstep. Victor didn’t interrupt. Freddy stumbled through the room and noisily assembled sandwiches and salad in the kitchen. Celeste stood to go help the blind soldier and Victor grabbed her arm. ‘Freddy’s got to cope. Let him be. Kindest thing in the world for him.’ Celeste sat back down and Miles finished their account.

Victor frowned. ‘First of all. This medicine. Frost. You understand there’s ongoing research in this area – how to minimize the impact of PTSD.’

‘I don’t know much about it.’

‘I keep up with every PTSD research angle being pursued. Most shrinks don’t have the resources to deal with traumatic memory. Dose us with antidepressant meds and pray for mercy. Because PTSD’s a bitch to treat, with a smorgasbord of symptoms, and onset that varies widely after the initial trauma. Rumor has it the Chinese government experimented with beta blockers and memory diminishment, on political prisoners, back in the early nineties and got nowhere. There are highly regarded teams doing legitimate research at Harvard and at UC-Irvine. But if Frost can diminish traumatic memory long after the event takes place, then Frost is much, much further along.’

‘First to market,’ Miles said.

‘It meant millions to Quantrill,’ Groote said, ‘if we’re looking at cold, hard cash.’

Victor nodded. ‘Profits in the billions, if the research is already completed.’

‘So the buyers at this auction Sorenson’s staging will be very serious,’ Celeste said.

‘People will risk a lot for profits that big. Nice how they want to help us, isn’t it?’ Victor gave a low, soft laugh.

‘If Sorenson is ex-Pentagon,’ Miles said, ‘can your connections give us info on him, or where Dodd might have hidden Groote’s daughter?’

‘You understand that the news is saying the Bridalveil shootings was the work of a deranged ex-soldier. Lost his mind. Nobody in the government’s going to own up to your dead friend.’ Victor cleared his throat.

Celeste said, ‘So someone’s already covering up for Dodd and the Pentagon.’

Victor shrugged. ‘I’ll see what I can find, but I make no promises. I’m not a hacker. I’m not doing anything illegal to help you. I can trade on connections, on favors – it’s the grease in Washington – but I may get every door slammed in my face. I’m not a government employee – my power base is dependent on my contractor connections and my fame in advocacy for PTSD patients. So I may get nowhere.’

‘My daughter-’

‘I’ll do everything I can,’ Victor said. ‘But I have to tell you, Dennis, that if I were Dodd, I would have gotten Amanda out of the country on a government flight. To a safe house in Mexico, or in the Caribbean. But off American soil. Finding her will not be easy.’

‘Understood,’ Miles said. ‘Thank you, Victor.’

‘We don’t have a dinner bell, but the quiet tells me that Freddy’s got dinner ready. Let’s eat. Then I’ll start working the phone and the computers and see if I hit any lucky numbers.’