Lew Stevens was late to work that morning, and because of it he nearly missed what would prove to be a highly consequential phone call.
Normally Lew was in at 0700 sharp, a half hour before the medical offices opened. This morning, though, he’d spent some time meeting off-site with a junior pilot who was having anxiety issues and wanted to avoid a recorded visit to medical.
This was a delicate matter. Visits to the staff psychologist were supposed to be a disclosure item for the squadron’s flight surgeon, but any psychological issue could be viewed as cause to temporarily suspend one’s UP status for flight. A career killer. Lew understood this, which was why he didn’t mind spending a quiet hour with someone out of the office—and off the books—when such situations arose.
He was still thinking about the young man’s disquiet when he heard his phone ringing through his office door. He hurriedly keyed in the four-digit code, let himself in, set his tall Americano down, and picked up the phone on the fourth ring. “Stevens.”
“Lew? Van Ness here,” said the voice.
“Dan! Thanks for getting back to me.” He did the quick calculation: 0830 there meant it would be 5:30 p.m. on the West Coast. He was surprised Van Ness was still in his office.
“Well, you almost missed me. Heading out in a few minutes. For good, in fact.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Hey. Put in my twenty, figured I’d get out and go into private practice while I still have a few marbles rolling around. So, not to be rude, but may I cut to the chase? Got your man’s enlistment records in front of me.”
“Fantastic,” said Lew.
“Don’t get too excited,” the voice replied. “I’ll give you what I have, but there’s not a lot and what there is isn’t great. No family background. Finn X, listed as an orphan on his sign-up papers, no extant contact info for foster homes. Kid had been on his own for a few years, in and out of trouble on the Southern California docks. Worked as crew on a few dive boats, in between stints on the streets.”
“Tough life for a teenager.”
“Tough.” Van Ness snorted. “That’s one way to put it. Street life in those neighborhoods? In those days? Jesus Van Christ. Picking your way through a 3D chessboard of drug kingpins, Chinese mafia, and bent cops. Most of the kids he hung with would’ve ended up in jail, chronic rehab, or the morgue.”
“But not him.”
“Not him. He managed to stay straight and vertical.” He paused.
“But?” said Lew.
He heard the other man sigh. “There’s something fractured about the guy, Lew. Jesus, I’d love to run an fMRI on that brain.”
“Fractured, how?”
“He’ll go into these lulls where he seems zoned out, almost comatose, like there’s nothing going on inside. Only the feeling you get is it’s really the opposite, right? Like everything’s going on in there. Tick, tick, tick. Part of what made him such a phenomenal operator.”
Lew thought for a moment. “Weren’t you on the board that made recommendations on DEVGRU candidates during that time?”
“Sure was.”
“So you recommended him?”
“Sure didn’t. I recommended in the strongest terms that he be flushed. I don’t know what unit he ended up in, where he is or what he’s doing now, but I can tell you this: it ain’t good. The guy is damaged, Lew.”
Lew nodded to himself. “Any ideas on what’s behind that?” he asked.
“Unfortunately, that’s all I got. You might want to talk to Harry Holbrook, the shrink up at Great Lakes who would’ve been on staff when he went through basic.”
He gave Lew the man’s name and number.
After hanging up with Van Ness, Lew tried the Illinois number, asked for Harry Holbrook, and learned that the man was off on a late-summer fishing trip. Lew left a brief message and his callback number, and hung up.
Lew Stevens spent a good deal of his time inside other people’s heads, which could be a strange place to explore, even terrifying at times. But Lew enjoyed the adventure of charting the shadowy territories, puzzling out explanations for the inexplicable. Identifying the monsters that lurked under people’s beds.
And right now what interested him most was whatever monster lurked behind the puzzle of Finn.
The guy is damaged, Lew.
Just how damaged?