The Cure

by Douglas E. Richards

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Steve Fuller. I’m with a company called Advanced Science Applications.”

  “How did you get my cell phone number?”

  “Sorry to intrude on your privacy, Miss Palmer. I tried you at home, but your roommate mentioned you had left for a visit to San Diego. She thought I might be able to catch you on your cell.”

  Erin turned the key slightly, just enough to get power to the car, and lowered the windows. “What can I do for you?”

  “We’re a very well-funded private company involved in a lot of cutting-edge, next-generation science. Your research in psychopathy has recently come to our attention. We also understand you’re close to finishing your doctorate. We’d love the chance to persuade you to come work with us when you have.”

  They must have seen the Wall Street Journal piece, thought Erin. But if so, they would immediately come to the same conclusion that everyone did after considering a psychopath early warning device. Well, everyone but her, that is. That it was a device society would never sanction.

  But a cure—that might be more interesting to industry. Did they suspect her secret activities over the past two years? She shook her head. She was being silly now. The incident with Drake had her jumping at shadows.

  “Thanks for the interest,” she said. “But industry really isn’t my thing. And there’s no way you’d have any interest in me if you really understood my work.”

  “I understand how you might think that. But I believe I can convince you otherwise. You’d have unlimited funding. No need to write grants, no need to worry about campus politics. And your compensation would be higher than I’m guessing you could imagine.”

  “Why would you possibly be willing to spend so much money on my research?”

  “I’ll explain that to you as well. If you could just meet with me at our facilities for a few hours, I can answer all of your questions. And I’d be very surprised if I couldn’t persuade you to join us.”

  “When did you have in mind?”

  “Actually, since you’re in San Diego already, I was thinking we could take advantage of that. That’s why I was eager to call you before you returned to Tucson. Do you have any free time tomorrow?”

  Erin frowned. She had decided to take a single day to relax at the beach with a friend—the first time in years—and suddenly everyone wanted to schedule critically important meetings for that exact day. “I’m afraid not,” she replied.

  “What about Wednesday at noon? I’m prepared to be very flexible.”

  Erin considered. She had no idea what this was, but for some reason her intuition was warning her she needed to find out. Something didn’t add up here. It was a strange coincidence that this mystery company was located in San Diego, but if she didn’t clear this up it would gnaw at her. She would wonder what they knew, who they were, and why they had interest in her. As if she didn’t already have enough gnawing at her as it was.

  If she agreed, she’d have to extend her stay and text Drake that they’d have to move their meeting back a day. Two enigmas vying for the same time spot on Wednesday. What else could possibly be thrown at her today? She paused for several seconds and considered what to do.

  Screw Drake, she decided finally. He had deceived her royally for over two years, so it would serve him right to have to wait an extra day for the information he so desperately wanted. Provided he could even convince her there had been a purpose to his deception.

  “Wednesday at noon will work,” she said.

  “Fantastic!” said the caller. “If you can tell me where you’ll be on Wednesday morning, I’ll have a car pick you up and take you to the San Diego heliport. The one we fly out of.”

  “Heliport?” said Erin. “You aren’t located in San Diego?”

  “Very close—at least as the crow flies. We’re just outside of Palm Springs. An easy helicopter ride, but with all the twists and turns through the mountains, it’s a longer drive than it should be. And I don’t want to inconvenience you any more than I have to. But I’ll have a helicopter fueled up and ready to go, and we’ll get you here in no time. I promise to get you back before dinner.”

  This was a new wrinkle, and once again she wasn’t sure she liked it. “Could you hold on a minute?” she asked.

  “Sure,” said the man named Steve Fuller.

  Erin quickly Googled “Advanced Science Applications” on her cell phone. The Web site was very slick, and there was even a recruiting page that made specific mention of the company’s fleet of five helicopters intended to shuttle their employees to Stanford, UCLA, Silicon Valley, and the numerous other high-tech centers in California an employee might want to visit.

  “Sorry about that,” she said into the phone a few minutes later. “I’ll tell you what. If you send directions to the heliport to my phone, and the time you want me, I’ll get there myself. No need to send a car. And understand that I only packed casual clothes. I wasn’t expecting to be interviewed.”

  “Sounds great. And casual is fine. We already know we want you. This is more of you interviewing us. And I appreciate your flexibility to meet with us on such short notice.”

  Erin waited while Fuller sent directions, confirmed that she had received them, and then ended the call.

  She threw her head back against the headrest and rolled her eyes. She was going from one fishy situation to another. Was it surreal, alternate reality day? She didn’t trust this situation as far as she could throw it.

  If this Steve Fuller did know about her activities, she would be at his mercy. She had broken the law. She was in this up to her neck. Three men had died. To make matters even worse, one of the deaths had occurred immediately after she had administered one of the test treatments in the trailer, and she had deliberately covered it up with a fake story about being attacked, and by roughing up a man who was already dead. Yes, all three men were convicted killers, but she would still be sent to prison for years, maybe decades. And not as a researcher either.

  It was unlikely that Fuller knew. But he was awfully eager to talk to her. And she was a nobody. There was no way he would be giving her the VIP recruiting treatment on the basis of a pie-in-the-sky remark about working toward a remote psychopathy detector quoted in the Wall Street Journal.

  She continued to search the Internet for more intel on Advanced Science Applications but came up completely empty. Other than their Web site, she didn’t get a single hit. For a company with this high of a profile, this was astonishing. And highly troubling.

  She next searched for Steve Fuller, who had to be pretty high up in the company to be able to send cars and schedule helicopters. He had a common name, but searching the name in combination with the company name, science in general, and business, didn’t get her anywhere either.

  Things just kept on getting stranger. And Erin Palmer couldn’t help but feel more unsettled than she had in a long, long time.

  12

  ERIN FORCED HERSELF to put both Drake and Steve Fuller out of her mind later that night and Tuesday while she was with her friend, although she wasn’t entirely successful. The good news was that she wasn’t entirely unsuccessful either, and managed to get reacquainted with the concept of actually having fun for long stretches at a time. She told Courtney that Hugh Raborn had been out of town, after all, and her friend was very supportive and genuinely disappointed for her.

  If only her friend had known the truth. On the other hand, it wasn’t as though Erin knew the truth either, she realized.

  Erin had traded texts with Drake and he had agreed to change their meeting to one thirty on Thursday, at the same meeting place, although the tone of his texts didn’t fully conceal the fury she knew he was feeling at a further delay. She could only imagine how pissed off he really was. She had also changed her flight to a day later as well as her rental car.

  Now all that was left to do was learn why this mysterious company had taken such an interest in her, and take a ride in a luxury helicopter.

>   The heliport used by Advanced Science Applications was in one of the most isolated spots in all of San Diego County. San Diego was a tropical paradise with a perfect climate, at least along the coast. But venture even ten miles inland and it could warm up quickly, with temperatures often climbing from ten to thirty degrees over this distance, and with brown, rather than green becoming the dominant color of the landscape. Home prices and population tended to fall the farther inland one traveled going east, and the closer to the Mexican border one traveled going south. The heliport was located a full fifteen miles east of the coast and only a few miles north of Mexico, so it was very rocky and very sparsely populated.

  Erin had used Google Maps to do a virtual recon of the area. She wasn’t about to get inside a helicopter with this strange caller when neither he, nor his company, had left much of an Internet footprint, and when he was far more interested in her than he had any right to be. Beyond that she wasn’t sure why this situation had rattled her so much, but she wasn’t going to enter the helicopter until she had satisfied herself that she wasn’t walking into an ambush, although why her instincts were screaming to her this might be the case wasn’t entirely clear. But she had learned to trust her instincts.

  She laughed out loud as she thought about this further. She had trusted her instincts when it had come to Hugh Raborn, now a mystery man named Drake, and how had that worked out for her? The recent track record of her intuition was pretty miserable, she had to admit. Even so, she wasn’t quite ready to abandon her gut feelings just yet.

  Erin pulled into the lot of a small Episcopal church, which probably attracted a significant fraction of the sparse citizenry of the area on Sundays and other occasions but which was now deserted. It was surrounded by a few palm trees that looked more dead than alive. If not for the sign, the white, eight-foot-tall wooden cross sticking up from the roof, and a concrete parking lot, the structure could easily have been mistaken for a very large, very boring house.

  She parked her car so that only the front of it peeked out from behind the building, lowered her window, and pulled out a pair of high-powered binoculars she had bought along with a GPS tracking device—and one additional item. One even pricier than the binoculars. Thank God for credit cards. At her pathetic income, it would take her a year to pay off these spy gadgets.

  She got her bearings and searched for the heliport with her binoculars. She found it, as expected, about two hundred and forty yards distant. There was only one helicopter sitting there, and even through binoculars as powerful as a small telescope, it looked like a radio-controlled toy, parked in the center of a light gray concrete slab the size of a basketball court, surrounded by a gate and fence. Inside the fence, along with the copter, was what looked like a maintenance shed and a small, self-serve gas pump, dispensing whatever kind of fuel helicopters used. Several cars were parked inside as well, in an area clearly designated for such use.

  Based on its relative size compared to the cars, the helicopter was on the large side, probably able to seat eight or more passengers, and was an absolute beauty, exuding corporate opulence. But it didn’t have the company’s name painted on it, which Erin considered yet another red flag.

  She made out a man sitting in the cockpit, the size of a figurine, who was almost certainly the pilot making preparations for imminent liftoff—they were expecting her at any minute. Two men were standing next to each other near the helicopter, dressed casually, who gave the clear impression, despite their diminutive appearance through the binoculars, that they could easily get jobs protecting the president, and both appeared to be scouring the road leading to the heliport for signs of her.

  Erin removed the parabolic listening device from its leather case and assembled it by snapping together six separate panels. Fully assembled it was about the size and shape of an oversized umbrella without the spokes, with a thick black microphone in the center and a short, grooved, gun-grip handle. The parabolic dish was fairly light, about the weight of three equivalently sized umbrellas, but it came with a tripod, which she hurriedly set up. She adjusted the dish/tripod assembly until it was pointed directly at the heliport.

  Fortunately, the chopper blades were still. Had they not been, they would have drowned out all conversation in the area. It took Erin three or four minutes to adjust the three-band equalizer on the listening device to bring up the frequencies and tones she wanted, but sure enough, just as advertised, she suddenly could hear the conversation over two hundred yards distant in her headphones as though it were taking place next to her. She felt a twinge of guilt listening in like this, but if this operation was legitimate and their intentions pure, no harm would be done. And if their intentions were not pure …

  The two men made small talk for another few minutes. She watched through the binoculars as the taller man—four inches high instead of three—checked his watch. “She’s late,” he said.

  The other man didn’t respond.

  “Well, it’s not like there’s any danger of her being delayed by traffic around here,” explained the taller man.

  “Maybe she’s in the john,” said the other. “And we’re not in that much of a hurry anyway. Although I am curious to see if she’s as hot as advertised.”

  “This is a helicopter, Adam, not a singles bar,” said the taller man, more in amusement than reprimand. “I brought it up because I’m wondering if she got cold feet. Fuller said he was surprised she agreed to fly out on such short notice without doing more checking. Or asking him more questions.”

  “And he used the Advanced Science Applications routine?” said the shorter of the two.

  “Right,” said the other man.

  “Did he actually use his real name with her?”

  “He did. Which surprised the hell out of me. That’s getting rare for him.”

  The other man said nothing. Perhaps he shrugged, but Erin couldn’t make it out at this distance.

  Just great, she thought miserably. Fuller rarely used his real name. And the corporate identity must be fake, since one of the men had said it was just part of a routine.

  Why was truth suddenly such a precious commodity? Was she wearing a sign around her neck that said Lie to Me? She had begun to feel paranoid and ridiculous pointing a fricking satellite dish at these men, but not anymore.

  Erin saw movement out of the corner of her eye and jumped so high she nearly hit her head on the ceiling of the car. Two men, both athletic looking and clean-cut, were standing by the door with grim expressions on their faces.

  She had been so intent on listening to the conversation hundreds of yards away, and the headphones had been so effective at blocking out local sound, she hadn’t even heard their car pull up and park on the other side of the church. They had left the doors open so as not to risk the slightest sound alerting her to their presence.

  She took off her headphones as one of the men reached in through the fully open window, removed the keys from the ignition, and slipped them into his pocket. Sitting in a cramped position inside a car was as poor a defensive position as one could get—or offensive position, for that matter. Before she did anything else her instincts—which had now redeemed themselves after their failure with Raborn—told her she needed to change this. She threw open the door, slid out of the car, and rose to a standing position in one smooth motion.

  The two men backed a few steps away as she did. They both ran their eyes up and down her body, no doubt looking for signs of a weapon.

  “Well this is unfortunate,” said one of the men, gesturing to the tripod and parabolic dish. “And unexpected. You need to come with us.”

  “Who are you?”

  “We’re with the people you’re going to meet.”

  “Give me back my keys!” she demanded.

  “You do realize that actively intercepting private conversations is illegal,” pointed out the man who had done all of the talking, while his partner continued to stand quietly beside him.

  Erin didn’t reply. She had no idea
if this was true or not. It might well be, but she guessed that even if it was a crime, it was almost surely just a misdemeanor.

  “Come with us, and we’ll, ah … escort you … to your helicopter.”

  Who were these men, and how had they found her? Erin didn’t believe in coincidence—not for something like this. Which meant they had been tracking her somehow. When they realized she had stopped for an extended period, they must have decided to break cover and check things out. If they had been physically following her, she would have seen them on the largely deserted roads she had taken to get here, and they would have arrived sooner. They had probably tracked her cell phone.

  Erin shook her head in disgust. “Tracking people via their cell phones,” she said, “without their permission, is against the law too.”

  The look of surprise in both men’s eyes told her that her hunch had been right, although their expressions returned to impassive almost immediately. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said their spokesman pleasantly. “But we should go. We don’t want to be too late.”

  “Thanks,” she said with an insincere smile, “but I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll pass on this meeting, after all. Please send my apologies to, ah … Steve Fuller.”

  “I’m afraid we’ve gone beyond that now. The problem is that we have no idea just what it is you managed to overhear. So now you don’t have a choice. You are coming with us.”

  “No,” she said calmly but defiantly. “I’m afraid I’m not. I’ll take my keys now,” she added.

  The years she had spent learning multiple martial arts, the many hundreds of hours she had spent training and competing and winning tournaments when she was a teen, had been in preparation for exactly this moment. She had never been forced to use her training in an actual physical confrontation, but she had been physically and mentally prepared to do so for countless years. She had vowed never to be helpless, or freeze up, or even hesitate. Never again.

  As a soft, helpless child she had looked into the eyes of pure evil, of utter ruthlessness and utter lack of mercy, and these two men could not intimidate her now. They clearly had no idea just who it was they were dealing with. In the looks-can-be-deceiving department, she would take grand prize.