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kick more—Bradsher or Brody.
    Brother Bradsher, dressed in the same sack-cut suit he’d worn in the recording, nodded. “Just … keeled over. I don’t think I was here ten minutes when he said, ‘Good-bye,’ and he was gone. Just like Hanrahan.”
    He turned on Bradsher. “What did you say to set him off?”
    â€œNothing. I swear. I didn’t even get a chance to set up the camera. But he knew we were coming.”
    â€œHe told you that? How—?”
    â€œNo.” He pointed to the side of one of the growing trays. “Look.”
    Nelson stepped around and stared in shock. Someone had written a number in black Magic Marker on the unfinished wood.
    536
    â€œBut how could he know?”
    Bradsher shrugged. “Maybe he saw what happened to Hanrahan’s house and guessed.”
    Uncle Jim had studied these panaceans. He’d said they were like the old communist cells—independent functioning units, minimal knowledge of each other, connected by third parties. Maybe that was changing.
    â€œPerhaps. But I still don’t understand why he died so quickly. You sure you didn’t—?”
    Bradsher held up a pair of glass test tubes. “Maybe it was because I came up with these.”
    Nelson felt his knees wobble. “You’ve found some?”
    â€œI peeked in before I entered and saw him with his arm behind the refrigerator. So that was the first place I looked.”
    Finally … finally!
    Thrilled, he cupped his shaking hands before him to receive the vials. Each was three-quarters filled with a cloudy fluid. He had it … he finally had the panacea.
    â€œWhat are we going to do with them?”
    â€œI’m going to use them to prove to someone high up that we’re not crazy. And once we convince him the panacea is real, we’ll have all the resources we need to track it to its source.”
    Bradsher gestured around. “And what about all this?”
    â€œSame as with Hanrahan.”
    With a curt nod, Bradsher hurried out. Nelson wandered over to Brody’s cooling corpse. The NSA phone-and-text surveillance had found a number of “miracle cure” hits connected with a Moriches physical therapy facility. Chaim “Chet” Brody had been easy to trace. The backgrounding had made a good case for his being the panacean connected with the cures, and the trays of plants confirmed it. But Nelson needed to see the final piece of the puzzle.
    He pulled a knife from his pocket and unfolded it as he knelt beside the corpse. He grabbed the back of Brody’s long-sleeve T-shirt and slit it top to bottom, then spread the edges.

    Well, well, well … another of those strange tattoos. The final confirmation.
    Bradsher returned with a red metal can.
    â€œYou know the protocol,” Nelson said.
    The fumes that filled the air as Bradsher began sloshing the accelerant onto the plants bumped the intensity of Nelson’s headache from four to six. He headed for the door. Outside in the twilight, he seated himself behind the wheel of his car and dug into the pocket of his suit jacket—the same herringbone he’d worn to the meeting with Pickens—for the bottle of Advil he’d taken to carrying everywhere.
    As with last night—or rather, early this morning—no trace of the plants would remain, and the panacean himself would defy identification for a while. Not indefinitely, but it would take time to determine that he belonged to no gang and was not connected to any drug traffickers. As the local yokels scratched their baffled heads, Nelson would be well on his way to tying up the panacea and its makers once and for all.
    Less than a minute later the trailer burst into flame with a loud woomp! Nelson saw Brother Bradsher hurrying across the yard, silhouetted against the flames. They’d faked the incendiary booby trap on the video he’d shown Pickens. No need for a repeat