Implacable Alpha Page 6

  Cat crossed her arms. “Normally, it is. Usually, it responds to a benzodiazepine protocol. That’s part of the psychotropic cocktail we’re using. In addition to his usual mirtazapine, I started with an intramuscular two milligram lorazepam injection. Usually that works within hours.”

  “Hey, we been at this for weeks.”

  Cat squinted. Fingered her chin. “That’s why I’ve been trying to tailor a different drug cocktail. We’re missing something.”

  “Like what?” ET wondered.

  “Anxiety plays a role in acute catatonia. In this case, it was when Agents Hanson Childs and that cholo Jaime Chenwith physically assaulted Falcon. That was the psychotic break that left Falcon catatonic.” Cat walked over to the image of Falcon’s brain. “We know that catatonia affects these areas. This is the orbitofrontal which plays a role. And here, the prefrontal region is also involved along with the parietal and motor cortical regions.”

  With a flick of her fingers, Cat pulled up a sagittal section of the brain. “But when it comes to Falcon, I think the key might lie here. This is the amygdala. It’s the flight-or-fight part of the brain, and it’s buffered and balanced by this structure over here that’s called the hippocampus. That’s what I’m going to try next.”

  “Why not just up his meds?” ET asked.

  “Dangerous,” Seymore told him. “Catatonia, especially long-term acute retarded, which is what Falcon presents with, can be exacerbated. Made what we call ‘malignant,’ which could throw Falcon into fits that would literally burn up his body. Kill him. We’re walking a delicate balance with his meds as it is.”

  ET stepped over, took Falcon’s free hand. “Hey, you hear me? Falcon, my man, it’s ET. Need you back, bro. Ain’t got no one to keep me talking good. You don’t come back, I gonna quit readin’ them Shakespeare plays. Den wachuu gonna do, huh?”

  Cat lifted an eyebrow at the retreat to street slang. ET was doing it on purpose, of course, hoping it would get a rise out of Falcon. When she looked up, it was to see the love in ET’s eyes. That was the thing about ET; he might have come up the hard way, a poor black kid from a broken home in a trashed Detroit neighborhood. He’d never known his father’s name. Could have been any of a parade of men who passed through his mother’s life. ET had muled drugs, stolen, run rackets and scams, but down in his heart he was one of the most caring people she’d ever known.

  ET sighed, letting go of Falcon’s hand. “Figured, if anything, that’d bring him back. Falcon always loved to give me shit about the way I talked. I can hear him now, ‘Language, Edwin, language.’ ”

  “He always wanted more for you,” Seymore told him.

  Cat pinched the bridge of her nose, as if it would make her think better. “The mirtazapine isn’t working anymore. This new stuff I’m trying? Without clinical trials, it makes me nervous.”

  “Why’s that?” ET asked.

  “Brains are complicated. All the years of research, the studies, and we still don’t know why antipsychotics have the effect they do. We’re affecting brain chemistry, but it’s with a blanket effect. Soak the bloodstream with a serotonin inhibitor, an antihistamine, or something to stimulate dopamine. Then stand back and watch and wait to see what happens.”

  “And your new stuff—that’s supposed to shut off the fountain?”

  “That’s the plan.” Cat took a deep breath. “In the meantime, we stand back, watch, and wait.” She frowned her concern. “But, ET, there’s also another factor to consider. Part of it is up to Falcon. He’s in there. Hearing us. Feeling everything. We may be able to treat the symptoms. But it’s still up to him. Down there, deep inside, he may decide that it’s just too painful out here. Too confusing and frightening.”

  On his bed, Falcon’s eyes flickered behind their lids, his expression slack.

  10

  Childs

  CID Special Agent Hanson Childs had that feeling of complete and total panic as he finally stepped up to the bank teller’s window and produced the printout of his online banking account. For once, he was totally and completely grateful for Susan’s anal habit of printing out his balance at the end of the month.

  “Hey, babe,” she’d always told him, “like, what if the bank gets hacked? You know, all their accounts get voided? Sent to China or something.”

  He’d always laughed at that. Figured that Susan was just using it as an excuse to keep an eye on his finances to ensure he wasn’t fooling around. And sure, it wasn’t like his job didn’t have him on the road, working weird hours. As a field agent for the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division, he went when, where, and for however long they sent him. Susan was just high maintenance that way. She’d been cheated on too many times in the past.

  Okay, she was high maintenance in other ways, too. Maybe that was another reason she kept an eye on his bank account. She wanted to be sure that he was spending every spare cent on her. The staff in the CID office in DC liked to call her his “future trophy wife.” And she was gorgeous, all five-foot four inches of her, with sun-kissed blonde hair that fell to her butt, and the kind of body that . . .

  “Can I help you?” the teller asked.

  Hanson reached into his jacket pocket to produce his last month’s printout. “Yeah, I got a problem. This is my account number. And here’s last month’s balance. Something’s wrong. I’ve got an automatic deduction for my rent, car payment, insurance, credit cards. You know, I just pull it up and click? The program deducts it automatically? First week of the month, right? So I get into town, figure I’m going to pay my bills, and I’ve got nothing. Zero. That just can’t be. I get paid on the first. Automatic deposit from the Department of Defense. Not to mention that I should have had a couple thousand still in the account before the deposit.”

  She took his printed statement, turned to her terminal, and typed in his account. Checked the account number and frowned at the screen. “Mr. Childs, I’m sorry, but you transferred the entire balance of your account to a bank in the Cayman Islands three days ago.”

  “I . . . what?”

  “According to our records, you—”

  “I never! Hey, I’m telling you, I was in New Mexico, and I didn’t make any such transfer.”

  She studied him, pursed her lips, and said, “Maybe you’d better go see Mr. Halverstem. If this is a security breach or a hack, he can explain it.”

  Twenty minutes later, sitting in a cushy chair in Halverstem’s overly air-conditioned office, Childs was told, “I’m sorry, sir. But if you didn’t make that transfer, it was done with your pin, your thumbprint, and each of the three security questions was answered correctly. We’ll report this to law enforcement, of course, but the bank has no liability in this matter. I’m sorry.”

  “But I have bills! And you people—”

  “I’m sorry!” Halverstem leaned forward. “You’re a military cop, right?”

  “Army CID.”

  “Then you know how these things work.”

  Hanson was fully aware of how he looked when he was enraged. His pale complexion—accented by light-blue eyes and white-blond hair—turned a beet red. Not to mention his habit of puffing out his cheeks. As he stepped out into the bank’s parking garage, people were looking at him askance. All he wanted to do was break things.

  Somebody’s going to pay!

  “If it’s the last thing I do . . .” He stopped, the words draining away.

  The space where he’d left his baby-blue, high-performance Mustang was empty.

  Hanson looked around, double-checked. Yes. Level 2, Row A, third space. He’d left the Mustang right there. A hasty check of his pocket assured him that he hadn’t left the fob in the console. He thumbed the alert button, straining to hear the car’s alarm system. Nothing. Just the sound of a distant Harley with loud pipes.

  “What the hell?” He sprinted down to Level 1, found no Mustang. Th
en charged up to the roof, trotting along the rows of parked cars. No baby-blue Mustang!

  Pulling his cell phone, he dialed 911, got the operator. Explained that his car was stolen, that it was a baby-blue Ford Mustang, not even a year old. That it had custom wheels and the high-performance package. He gave her the tag number.

  Took fifteen minutes for a patrol car to arrive. The cop—a sympathetic Latina in her early twenties named Lopez—listened to Hanson’s story, checked his CID ID, and started to take his information. She had just input the Mustang’s VIN from his insurance card when her tablet chimed.

  “The bank has cameras,” he told her, pointing. “They’ll have whoever took my car recorded on the security feed. We can—”

  “Sorry, Agent Childs,” Officer Lopez told him as she studied the readout on her tablet. “The VIN just cleared the system.” She glanced at him, something hidden in her dark gaze. “Your car wasn’t stolen. It’s been repossessed.”

  Hanson gaped. “That’s nuts. Repossessed? By who?”

  “Hey, you don’t make your payments, they take the car back.”

  “But I made the damn payments! Deducted right out of my . . .” He swiveled his head, staring at the glass doors that led into the bank. The bank that told him his account had been drained.

  “But that just happened,” he whispered. “Takes months before they’d repossess the car.”

  Lopez slipped her tablet into her belt. “Sorry, sir. When it comes to your car, you gotta take that up with whoever gave you the loan.”

  She turned back to her cruiser. “Baby-blue Mustang, custom wheels. Sounds like a nice ride. That’s gotta hurt.”

  “Hey! I’m being scammed here!”

  As she opened her door, she gave him a knowing squint. “CID, huh? You’re in law enforcement. Figure it out.”

  Hanson stood there, fuming, trying to understand what had happened. Who would have done this to him, and why?

  And then he remembered the cluster fuck in Santa Fe, how he and Jaime Chenwith had made the bust of their careers—only to have their asses handed to them at the moment of their greatest triumph. That arrogant two-star general, the escaped lunatics, and the endless nondisclosure forms he and Jaime had had to sign.

  That had bothered him right down to his bones. The whole thing. Swept under the rug in the name of national security. Trouble was, he’d signed the damned forms. Hell, he’d run down and arrested people who’d ignored the warnings on nondisclosures they’d signed regarding national security.

  But why would the government turn on him? He had kept his mouth shut. Welded. Never even hinted what he’d been doing in Colorado, let alone that he’d had anything to do with the mess at Aspen, Grantham Barracks, or Santa Fe.

  With a sigh, he lifted his cell phone. Punched in Susan’s number. Went straight to voice mail. “Hey, babe. I’m at the bank. I need you to come pick me up. You wouldn’t believe the day I’m having.”

  That’s when he realized that somewhere in the middle of the call, his phone had gone dead.

  11

  ET

  Edwin Tyler Jones wasn’t sure he liked all the changes to Ward Six, but the fact that they now had metal silverware and hard-plastic plates in the cafeteria was a definite improvement. Back in the old days, when the ward was full of people like Bubbles Meyer and some of the really psycho nutcases, all they got were paper plates, soft squishy forks, and knives that wouldn’t spread warm butter without bending double. Making the transition hadn’t been easy. It had taken Chief Raven going to the Skipper with the argument that if Team Psi was entrusted with firearms, billion-dollar helicopters, and the rest of the tactical gear, surely they could manage real plates and stainless-steel eating utensils.

  That was the thing about Grantham: Sometimes old habits died hard.

  ET was contemplating this as he cheerfully chopped his green beans into mouth-sized lengths with the still-not-very-sharp-but-at-least-unbendable dinner knife from the serving line.

  He gave Catalina Talavera a wink as she carried her tray toward him. Seating herself, she studied her plate, and said, “I really miss being on the outside. For those few weeks I got used to food with taste.”

  ET swallowed down a bite of green beans. “And this is the good cook. Remember the one we had before Chief Raven bitched to the Skipper?” He grinned at her. “But, yeah, I coulda got used to eating at the St. Regis up in Aspen. Never had food like that in my whole life. When I’s a kid? What it tasted like didn’t matter. Just hope they was enough to keep the belly pains away. And you can forget a full stomach. Never had one of those till I run off with the Brothers. And then it was McDonald’s, which I thought was the finest food in all the world.”

  She gave him that dark-eyed look, the one that tried to see all the way down into the bottom of him. “That worries me sometimes. Like, I don’t know who you really are, ET. Sometimes I don’t know if you do, either.”

  Once he’d have “played ’er with the shit” as the Brothers would have said. That was always the safe way, the accepted way. On the street, especially with the Brothers, it was all about “puttin’ on the tough.” Gotta be what’s expected of you. Only time to act soft with a woman was as a scam to get something from her.

  But his time in Grantham had changed him. As if living for two years as a patient in a mental hospital wouldn’t. First, it was being surrounded by some of the cases who flat-out told the truth no matter how blunt and pain-causing it might be. Second, was the Skipper and the therapists who had forced him to deal with himself. Third, was Falcon, the dissociative schizophrenic who had seen past the tough to become ET’s friend.

  Explain that back on the mean streets? The Brothers would have thought it was a joke, and then they’d have broken his neck and tossed his skinny black ass into the nearest dumpster to be compacted with the rest of the garbage.

  He smiled at that. Glanced at Cat. “I been a lot of things. Falcon said I was a lizard. Some kinda animal that changed colors depending on the background.”

  “A chameleon?”

  “That’s it. That’s how a child stays alive where I grew up. Times I had to disappear, ’cause to be seen, that was a sure way to get jacked. Probably why I turned to that computer they give me. No one pays attention to a kid if he’s over in the corner clicking keys on a computer. He gets noticed? He gets picked for sex, or beating, or doing other people’s trash. Wasn’t till they figured out I had talent that they paid me any mind. Meant I had to change my spots, take on a different me. So I became a computer whiz. Had to learn the talk, how to make the machine work. Get stuff done. And when I told them if I could go take classes, get better at it, they made sure I went.”

  “Yeah, for crime.”

  “Cat, you gotta understand, I could do what they wanted with a computer . . . or with a gun. Which one’s safer for me and everyone else? What matters was getting so good that I was valuable. Being valuable meant I was guarded, got things I wanted, like a clean place to sleep, locks on my doors, no rats running around all night long.” He paused. “Kids that don’t have value? They get told, ‘Be my bitch’ ‘Go rob that store’ ‘Beat that guy up’ ‘Steal that jewelry.’ They got no choice. Just do it. And if they get caught, ain’t no sweat for the Brothers when they go down. There’s always another kid.”

  “Never thought of it that way.”

  “People don’t. Taught me early on that the only way I was gonna stay alive was to be smarter than everybody else.”

  “But Edwin Tyler Jones isn’t even your real name. You made it up.”

  “Had to if I was gonna enlist.” He paused. Remembering. Turned his attention back to her. “I love you, Cat. Saying that, I’m never telling you who that kid in Detroit was. What his name was. He’s gone. Vanished in the past. You ask who I am? I’m Edwin Tyler Jones, and I’m someone wholly different from that kid.”

  “You sure about t
hat? People are the sum total of their experiences, and there are parts of personality and behavior that become hardwired. This chameleon you claim to be? How do I know that’s not just now, and you’ll change again?”

  He lifted her hand where it lay on the table, pointed to the scars on her wrists. “You still the pissed-off outraged spoiled little brat who cut her wrists on the Capitol steps ’cause her research was used to wipe out a whole village?”

  She glanced away, pursed her lips, and shook her head.

  ET chased the last of his Salisbury steak across his plate with what remained of his bread and sopped up the juice. Swallowing it down, he told her, “Stuff we go through, it changes people. Can’t undo what you done in the past. That just is. What you can do, assuming you’re not crazy like some of these people in Grantham, is learn what you done wrong and make yourself do better.”

  Her level stare was back, as if firmed up by something inside. “Heard you were on the computers all morning. Simond said you were gleeful about ‘sticking it to the bastard.’ ”

  ET speared the last of the Salisbury steak, chewed, and swallowed. “How’s Falcon today?”

  “No change.” She arched a delicate eyebrow. “So, who are you ‘sticking it to’?”

  “Remember what they did to Falcon that day? How he looked in the hallway in Santa Fe? How they manhandled him, kept shouting in his face? Anyone with a single ounce of pity in their souls woulda known he was in trouble. And it ain’t like we all wasn’t telling them. The skipper, the chief, all of us. Them agents, they took him in that room and terrified him. You heard the slap.”

  “I could have killed them.”

  “Now, that’s my Cat.” He gave her another wink. “That old horseshit stuff about revenge is a dish better served cold? Maybe those two agents, Childs and Chenwith? Maybe they figure they walked, what with the NDAs they signed and all. What they did to Falcon wasn’t just uncalled for, it was cruel. They’re the kind of guys who’d have laughed while they turned on the gas at Auschwitz.”