The Devil's Elixir

drug at the right time can spread like the plague. Three, since Navarro would be the only one supplying it, he could make it as addictive as he wants. Which would be a disaster since we’re talking about a heavy-duty hallucinogen.”

“Why?”

“Most human brains,” I explained, “are not wired to deal with the effects of a hard-core hallucinogen. They’re just not. The brain can deal with the effects of weed or coke or heroin, but a hard-core hallucinogen is very different. It runs a serious risk of destroying a big chunk of the psychological fabric of its users. That’s why these drugs have always been seen culturally, in pagan religions and such, as something that is by the few and for the few, meaning it’s meant to be taken only after a proper initiation. It’s part of a ritual, a ceremony, a rite of passage . . . you do it once in a lifetime, maybe when you come of age, when you enter adulthood, when you reach a certain milestone of maturity—or when you’re in bad shape and you need to be healed. The only people who are allowed to do it regularly are the shamans and the medicine men, and there’s a reason for that. They can take it on a regular basis because they’re trained to deal with its effects, their whole lives are devoted to coping with the ramifications of what you see and what you experience when you’re tripping. Biologically and, more importantly, psychologically, the average person is just not equipped and not trained to deal with something this intense, and from a social point of view there isn’t time for the average user to do that. There’s a real risk that if a drug like this were to become mainstream—based on what we know about it—it could cause a lot of problems. People using a pill like that wouldn’t be able to function. They could easily develop long-term depression and mental instability and suffer breakdowns. Psychiatric wards would have to deal with an onslaught of hundreds of thousands of patients. Look at how devastating and debilitating meth is, how it takes over lives and turns healthy, successful people who had everything going for them into zombies—and we’re only seeing the beginning of it.

“This could be much worse,” I added. “Meth and crack, as bad as they are for you—they don’t rewire your brain. They get you high, you’ll get addicted to them, and they’ll ruin your body, but when you’re not tripping, your brain’s essentially back to what it was even if everything around it is falling apart. Hard-core hallucinogens work differently. These drugs can—and will—rewire your brain. Someone who takes stuff like what McKinnon was talking about runs a real risk of coming out of it as a different person with potentially different moral views, a different psychological take on the world, a completely different perception of the world that you live in, how you relate to it . . .”

Tess looked confused. “What, like ayahuasca? ’Cause that’s a hard-core hallucinogen, right? But I remember reading about people who’d suffered from depression all their lives who went deep into the Amazon and spent, like, a week there with shamans taking it and coming out of it saying it had cured them.”

“Yes, but they did that within a ceremonial setting with an expert healer by their side. And they took it to get healed. The problem with stories like that is that you read them and you think these drugs are an easy cure to all our problems. You’d be thinking ayahuasca is a magic bullet for depression and iboga should be given to all heroin addicts to help get them off it. But the thing about these hallucinogens is that it’s as much about you as it is about the drug. It’s about what state of mind you’re in when you take it, what you’re hoping to get out of it, about having the right physiology—and the right guidance. That’s crucial. The guidance, the ritualized, sacred framework with others around you and shamans looking over you and guiding you through your trip. If this becomes a street drug, the average junkie or suburban teen tripping on this in some squat or in a basement den or in some loud, strobe-lit nightclub isn’t going to have any of that. Where’s the guidance going to come from? Where’s the highly experienced healer who’s going to help them interpret all the repressed stuff they might see as they see it and tell them they’re not going insane and help them understand what their psyche is telling them?”

“Okay, but if it’s going to give such a bad trip and be that dangerous, it’ll put people off taking it, won’t it? It doesn’t sound like something that’s going to be popular in nightclubs.”

I shook my head with a slight scoff. “Drug user psychology has very little to do with common sense. You know that. People seek out what’s dangerous. Like with heroin. Every once in a while, a new batch that causes a lot of overdoses hits the street. And guess what? That’s the brand everyone then wants. They pay more for it. They seek it out. Hearing that people died from it only makes it more popular. Same with AIDS and needles, or the krokodil heroin substitute that’s raging through in Moscow these days. People who have an appetite for this stuff don’t react rationally, by definition. They’re looking for the strongest thrill they can get their hands on. They’ll love the dark side of it—more intense than a 3-D horror movie. And if it’s as easy as popping a pill . . .”

Tess let out a weary, ponderous sigh. “Okay, so . . . what now?”

“You and Alex will need to stay here for a while. I’m sorry. I also think you ought to call your mom and Hazel and give them some idea of what’s going on so they can keep an eye out for anything suspicious.”

Her face tightened with alarm. “You don’t think—”

I cut her off, knowing she didn’t want to say it. “No, I doubt they’re in any danger. But I’d rather make sure we cover all the bases. I’ve got the local sheriff keeping an eye on the ranch already. Discreetly.”

“You sure?”

I reached out and put my hand on her arm. “They’re safe, Tess. I’ve made sure of that.”

Her expression sank into gloom. “Okay, I’ll . . . I’ll call them tomorrow. But . . . whoever’s after this . . . they think you’ve got it, right?”

Her look clearly telegraphed what she was worried about.

“It’s what I do, Tess. And I’ve had a lot of practice.” I gave her a half-smile. “We now know what they’re after. They want it, we have it. Which means we’re in the driver’s seat. And we can use that to try and force a mistake out of them.”

I needed to boost her confidence, though I wasn’t sure I bought it myself. We still didn’t know who we were dealing with. I found myself thinking again about McKinnon’s own words, the ones that had started it all.

It’ll make meth seem as boring as aspirin.

The words that sealed his fate.

And many others’, since.

One way or another, I needed to put an end to their poisonous sting.

And I knew that, to do that, I’d have to draw them out. Using the one thing I knew they wanted.

Me.

48

Hank Corliss parked his car in the single garage of his house, climbed up three small steps, and went through the narrow doorway that led to his quiet, empty home.

Like he did every night.

He set down his attache case on the couch and plodded across to the kitchen, where he got a clean tumbler out of a cabinet. He filled it using the fridge’s ice maker, then retrieved a bottle of Scotch from another cabinet and filled the glass slowly, his weary eyes staring through the ice cubes as they cracked and popped and settled in. He carried the glass into the living room, set himself on the couch, and flicked on the TV. He didn’t change the channel. He didn’t adjust the volume. He just looked dead ahead as the random images unfurled on the screen and raised the glass for that first sip, rolling it around his mouth, feeling the burn tickle his throat, letting the golden potion work its magic.

Like he did every night.

Only tonight, things were a little different.

Tonight, there was a glint of hope breaking through the desolate numbness in his mind.

Hope that the beast who’d wrecked his life might finally be made to pay for the horrors he’d caused.

It wasn’t likely. It wasn’t probable. But it was possible. And right now, that was worth something. It was a hell of a lot more than he’d had in years.

His thoughts coasted back to that time, five years earlier, when he was running the DEA field office in Mexico