Genesys X

by B. J. Graf

  I stood and stared at Shin. “I just want to talk to Lee.”

  “You can’t till you’re cleared,” he said. “And since the coroner’s ruling doesn’t support your theory, Lieutenant Rodriguez is not gonna sign off on the overtime for me. I’m not going against policy, Eddie. Rules are rules.”

  “If I pass my psych eval, I’ll be back on active tomorrow. All I’m asking is that you take your time on the paperwork till I’ve had a chance to talk to this guy.”

  Shin tapped his knuckles on the car’s hood. “Come on, buy me dinner. I’m starving.” He stored his bogu at the dojo. I stashed my bag of kendo armor and practice swords in the trunk of my car. Together we walked up Corinth and over to Sawtelle to grab a beer and some food at an izakaya tucked away there.

  The light from the pulsing Kirin sign over the bar stained Shin’s face red. A sweet sad J-pop song played softly in the background. Over a Kirin beer and a bowl of well-salted edamame at the bar, we started in on the file again.

  Shin popped an edamame into his mouth. “What do we know about this guy?”

  I read Shin’s casual “we” as a hopeful sign and told him about the sixty-three year old microbiologist. “I only had time to google him. I’ll run in-depth background on Lee later.”

  “Why wait?” Shin’s glove phone came out while we waited for our food. He logged onto police biodata and checked out Lee’s criminal history. “No priors, nada.”

  “Born Lee Gyeong-su in South Korea,” I said, looking over his shoulder. “Some sixty-three years ago. Got his doctorate in genetics and microbiology at UC Berkeley at the age of twenty-four.”

  “A rising star like you, Eddie,” Shin teased, switching back to the biodata page. “The university hired him before the ink on his diploma dried.”

  “Looks like he didn’t stick around for long,” I said. “Took a job in the private sector in two thousand and eight.”

  “Maybe he didn’t have a choice.”

  Nestled amongst an impressive list of publications were a couple of weblinks to newsstories from Science Today and The Lancet dating back to the early two thousands. Shin had pulled up one of the articles. Dr. Lee had been shelved in two thousand eleven for juicing the results on some experiments involving somatic cell nuclear transfer.

  “I remember reading something about that,” Shin said. “There was a little scandal in the Korean papers.”

  “Didn’t stop him for long though. Looks like he found a soft landing.”

  There was a two-year gap in Lee’s publications, during which time he seemed to have dropped out of sight, only to reappear a few years later working on stem cell research in the private sector this time.

  “He must be good,” Shin agreed. “He rode out the news cycle.”

  A sizeable list of publications followed, most of them on Alzheimer’s and Alz-X, and a bunch of links to related websites.

  “What’s his family like?” Shin said.

  Biodata showed Lee had married anesthesiologist Merideth Kim in 2022. They had one son, Raymond, aged nineteen, currently a junior studying engineering at Cal Tech. The family resided in Pacific Palisades.

  “Sweet,” I said. “What’s he look like?”

  Shin pulled up Lee’s DMV portrait from 2030 and more recent photos of the scientist at a conference held late in 2039. Lee had an oblong face with a serious expression framed by black hair that fell just shy of his collar. He was a lean guy of medium height who could have passed for a man in his late 40’s.

  “Geez, grandpa looks better than I do,” Shin said, glancing at Lee’s photo, and patting his own paunch. “You think the stripper was his first side dish?”

  “At sixty-three?” I shook my head. “Maybe she was just the first to try and pin him with a kid.”

  “The blood spot,” Shin said, nodding. He dipped another edamame pod in citron soy sauce and popped it in his mouth, tossing the empty casing on a cocktail napkin. “If he bought the scam, he’d see the price tag for twelve more years of private school and another half-million Cal Tech education coming straight for his wallet.”

  I could see Shin’s resistance starting to crumble. The father of two college aged Miyaguchis, and one daughter still in middle-school, Shin had the overtime hours to show for it.

  “I wonder what his wife thinks about all this,” I said. “If she knows.”

  “Speaking of wives.” Shin glanced at his glove phone.

  During his four-day shift Shin bunked in the L.A.P.D. group barracks – bare bones sleeping pods with communal showers set up downtown at the Nokia P.D.. There were similar arrangements for the nurses, firefighters, paramedics and teachers who worked where they couldn’t afford to live. At the end of his shift Shin took the bullet train home to his family.

  It was late. We logged off and powered down, then I drove Shin to Union Station in my ten-year-old Porsche. We walked to the platform and waited. The sonic boom sounded from the east, herald of the bullet train exiting the last tunnel before arrival. The slowing train still moved so fast it pushed a reluctant bubble of air out of the mountain with a giant’s roar. Gliding into the station, the train hovered, poised over the elevated silver track like a hummingbird. Any second it would shoot off towards the northeast at a speed that would top 310 mph.

  The train, originally planned to run all the way to San Francisco, dead-ended about twenty-five miles north of Bakersfield when the money ran out. There was a short run of dead end track up north too. Shin lived outside Bakersfield with his family. The suburb had affordable housing, whole neighborhoods of marked down houses, abandoned in the last downturn of the housing market.

  “I’m off three days, Eddie,” Shin said as he hopped on the train along with the other passengers. “I’ll keep the case open till then.”

  I nodded, looking down at my shoes. If I was wrong, no harm done. If I was right, well, every day a homicide goes unsolved makes it less likely it will be. So no time to lose. I looked up. Then Shin was gone, speeding off towards his family, and I was alone in the crowd.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  After I dropped Shin off at Union Station, I took my time driving home to Venice. Jo worked late, and I didn’t want to rush back to an empty house.

  Once darkness blankets the city, the same drive I made twelve hours earlier feels different. Freeways hum at a lower frequency, but time moves faster. Home in forty-five minutes, I pulled into the garage behind the house and walked through the door linking the garage to the yard. The pale moon, veiled in cloud, floated across the night sky like a bride on her wedding day.

  An answering light glowed from the bedroom on the second floor. Jo must have beaten me home after all. I was feeling optimistic, but that moon decided me.

  Letting myself into the house, I fished the ring out of my gun safe in the pantry and pulled a bottle of champagne out of the fridge on my way to the bedroom. Jo was dozing upright in bed, a book on her lap and German opera playing in the background. Standing in the doorway, I made a face at the opera, but admired Jo. Asleep in a silk teddy with one of my old shirts draped round her, she looked more beautiful than ever. I wanted to wrap her in my arms and stay here forever.

  The shirt had slipped off Jo’s right shoulder. Leaning down, I rubbed the cold champagne bottle on her bare skin. Jo stirred, sleepily. I bent to kiss her.

  “Mmm,” she said.

  I spotted a tiny red dot marring Jo’s forehead. I kissed the dot too. “A mosquito bit you,” I said lightly. “Dr. Mosquito and the nano-bocoll?”

  Nano-bocoll was the new combo of botox and collagen delivered via nanotechnology to the skin. It repaired any dermal damage. Ads for the drug were plastered all over the city.

  I should have kept my mouth shut. Jo never talked about her age, but she was sensitive about it.

  “Just a little injectible,” she said, two red spots appearing on her cheeks.

  “You don’t need it.” I backpaddled as fast as I could. “You’re flawless.”

  I handed Jo a
glass and filled it with the champagne. Gesturing at her book I asked. “What are you reading?”

  “The future of intellectual property law. Interested?”

  “Only in you. I came to take you dancing. But we need real music.”

  “Are you dissing Senta’s ballad from the Flying Dutchman?” Jo teased as I pulled her up to her feet, turned off the opera and flipped on the radio option. “I’ll have you know that’s Joan Sutherland singing. One of the greatest sopranos of the twentieth century.”

  “Just broadening your horizons,” I said.

  Palomino Fire was playing a hypnotic love song.

  Jo let me dip her in time with the music.

  Champagne glasses in hand, we slow danced in the half light of the reading lamp and the reflected moonlight off the canal.

  “Here’s to your future, Madame Partner.” I breathed in the scent of her hair and felt my eyelids close halfway and a broad grin spread across my face.

  “To our future.”

  “I like the sound of that.” I spun her around and dipped her again.

  “Craig said you had a good day.” Jo squeezed my shoulder.

  The boxed ring in my pocket suddenly felt heavier. Regroup.

  “Way better than expected,” I said. “And the night’s young.”

  We spilled a little golden juice of the grape. Jo laughed. “If this is going to be a thrill ride, I’d better put down the glass.”

  “Think of it as christening new ventures.” I nibbled Jo’s neck. Her skin smelled faintly of vanilla and jasmine. I twirled her again. “You know in all the time we’ve been together we’ve never seriously talked about the future. Our future.”

  “The relationship talk?” She smiled. Then Jo’s face got more serious. “I never felt the need. Things just felt right with you from the beginning.”

  I nodded. “Ditto. Ever since I met you, I can’t see myself with anybody else.” I took a deep breath but kept it light. “I’ll even get down on my knees if you want.”

  Jo kept dancing, but one blonde eyebrow arched. “That is tempting,” she said, “but rein it in cowboy. I just made partner. We don’t want too much change all at once, do we?”

  “Don’t we?”

  Still in my arms Jo leaned her head back and stared at me.

  “Are you serious, Eddie?”

  I slipped the little velvet box out of my pocket and opened it.

  She took a sip of the wine. “I don’t know what to say. It’s a huge step.”

  I felt hesitation in her every muscle. “A step you don’t want to take?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Didn’t say, or didn’t mean?” I felt my face redden. Had I misread her feelings? I was beginning to be sorry I’d brought up the whole idea tonight. The song changed, but we marked time, not looking at each other.

  “Neither,” Jo said, breaking away and refilling her glass. “Eddie, there’s nothing I want more. Nothing. It’s just... This is so hard to talk about.” She fingered the tiny white scars on her left wrist reflexively.

  I’d stopped dancing too. “Just say it.” My jaw clenched and I steeled myself for the words I didn’t want to hear – words like –‘I’ve met somebody.’

  She took a deep breath and continued. “You know I’m older than you.”

  “So?”

  “Well, you want children, don’t you?”

  “You don’t?”

  “No, I mean, yes. I do.” Jo bit her lip. “But if we didn’t have kids - would you be okay?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I never told you,” she said, “but I had a – miscarriage. A long time ago.”

  I blinked, and stared at her worried expression, relief starting to trickle through me. Then other emotions started to rush in like a second wave that sneaks up on you. Here was a part of Jo’s life I knew nothing about – a part of life before I’d even entered the picture. “Jesus. Who was the father?”

  “It was a long time ago, Eddie.” She took another sip from her glass.

  Jo sighed and walked over to the window, looking out over the canal, her back to me. “You’re not the only one with an asshole relative.” Jo plucked earnestly at her brow with her long fingers.

  I let her talk, watching Jo’s back and the reflection of her face in the picture window opposite. I moved close behind her.

  “When I found out I was pregnant, I panicked.” Again her fingers grazed those telltale scars. “The miscarriage was a lucky break really.”

  I was standing right behind her now, close enough that I could feel the heat from her skin. “What a bastard,” I said, wrapping my arms around her.

  “Really, it’s nothing” she continued. “I only brought it up now because you mentioned children.”

  Cutting your wrists wasn’t nothing.

  “And these?” I kissed the scars on her wrists.

  “A cry for help,” she said. “I got it. Ancient history.”

  I hugged her tighter, and the tension melted away. We started to dance once more.

  “Lots of women have miscarriages and still have kids,” I said as gently as I could. “We could try.”

  “I’ve been trying, Eddie,” Jo said.

  I stared at her.

  “I should have told you that too.” “You see I was fourteen when it happened,” Jo said. “The miscarriage. There were complications I won’t bore you with. And I did some things later – to pay for college. Long story short, I might not be able to have kids.”

  “Fourteen?” I was reeling. In my head this guy who’d hurt Jo was a dead man, but I stuffed down the anger and let Jo talk.

  “I was afraid to tell you, but when you asked me to marry you, I had to.” She took the ring in its little box and held it out to me. “I’m not saying it’s impossible, but if we never had kids, would you be okay with that? I’d…” she paused again. “I’d understand if you wouldn’t.”

  I heard the courage it took to ask in her voice, and the fear tucked behind it. The truth was I hadn’t thought much about kids. I wasn’t even sure how good I’d be as a Dad. I didn’t exactly have the best role model. But I guess I’d assumed Jo would want them at some point, and that was okay with me. And if we didn’t?

  “Yes,” I said. I left the ring in her hand.

  “You say that now, but you’re only twenty-nine.”

  “In cop years,” I said lightly, “that’s close to fifty.”

  Her playful smiled returned. She cocked her head to the side, regarding me. “And when you’re forty? What then?”

  I took her chin in my hand and looked straight into her eyes. “Live for today, Jo. I could be dead by forty.”

  She flinched, but I didn’t let go.

  “Don’t even joke about that.” Jo lightly pressed two fingers to my lips. “

  I wasn’t. “I’m all in,” I said. “Don’t you know that yet? Sure, kids would be nice, but I want ‘em with you. I don’t see that changing.”

  “Still,” she said. “You should take a while and really think about it.”

  “I know what I want.” I wrapped her fingers around the box. “I can wait for you. Just don’t lose the ring.”

  Jo smiled and took a deep breath. We danced for a couple minutes without speaking.

  “Do you wonder if life was easier when people didn’t have so many choices?” Jo said.

  “No.” I kissed her neck. “They had problems too. Just different problems. Shit doesn’t just happen. We make it happen, or we don’t stop it from happening.”

  Jo nodded. Her smile turned mischievious. “What do you say we make something happen right now?”

  I grinned and pulled her back into a fast spin. We lost our balance and fell on the bed, laughing.

  “Bottoms up,” I said.

  Jo dimmed the light. The cool green reflection of our moving bodies appeared in the window opposite, and then I was too busy to see anything clearly. All questions about the past and the future and the dead girl with the d
erma ad could wait till tomorrow.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The next morning sunrise was a thin strip of apricot stretched along the horizon - like Jo’s silk lingerie still lying at the foot of the bed. Jo left for the gym before six.

  I jumped out of bed and padded around the kitchen making coffee with a smile on my face until a glance at my calendar reminded me of my psych eval with Dr. Tyler Reese Sears. A quick map-quest showed he had an office on Sunset Boulevard. I’d already weathered the physical exam and eight hours of diversity training plus simulations. The sooner I cleared the next hoop, the sooner I got back on active duty. My appointment was for four-forty-five.

  *

  I walked into his waiting room at four-thirty. The door to Sears’ office opened at five-fifteen. Maybe the wait was part of the test. His walls with their framed diplomas from CSUN and UCLA were pale lemon.

  “Come on in, Detective.” The balding middle-aged man of average height jumped to his feet from behind his desk and held out his hand. His voice flowed with the slower music of Virginia or one of the Carolinas as he gestured to the well-worn leather club chair opposite his desk.

  “You must be present to win.” I pointed to the wooden sign mounted on the wall next to the diplomas as I took the proffered seat. “Your mantra?” I recognized it as a sign from an Indian casino and wondered if Sears took a flutter now and then.

  “Words to live by,” Sears said. “Along with ‘know thyself’.” The psychologist looked soft and frayed as an old stuffed toy, but his eyes were youthful and alert. There were a few more preliminaries as he sat back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. Then he launched into it.

  “I have the results from your tests,” Sears said. “You’re in excellent physical health, detective, and you handled yourself well on the simulator. Blood tests were negative for drugs and alcohol. But…” he brought the palms of his hands together in a prayer-like gesture, fingers touching lips.

  I waited.

  Sears’ hands rotated, fingertips pointing at me now. The prayer-like gesture became a gun about to fire. “Your cortisol and testosterone levels are unusually elevated and you scored .085 on the depression and PTSD inventories.”