The Immortal Gene

by Jonas Saul

  “I’m a medical examiner. That’s how I met Megan’s family. I work with the police all the time.”

  From the corner of his eye, Edwin saw the three girls headed for the front door. Tracy giggled. Then Erica bolted outside, followed by Lindsay. Tracy followed her sisters a moment later.

  Shit. I have to watch my daughters. The sun has gone down.

  “Oh wow, that is so interesting. Medical examiner.” Chris looked over his shoulder and turned back to Edwin, leaning in conspiratorially. “There’s two empty chairs out on the front lawn. I’ve always wanted to talk to a medical examiner.” He said the last two words in that heavy Aussie accent, then grabbed Edwin’s arm and pulled him toward the front. “C’mon, mate. Talk to me. I’m bored at this party. Need to get out and hear about all the dead bodies you have to deal with.”

  Edwin allowed himself to be pulled forward. His daughters had slipped out the front door so that was exactly where he wanted to go. He had another two hours to kill before people began to leave so talking to Chris would help pass the time.

  Outside, the daughters were running around on the vast front lawn, playing some version of London Bridge is Falling Down.

  Edwin angled his lawn chair to face Chris, but also to keep an eye on his daughters.

  “What do you want to know about dead bodies?” Edwin asked in an eerie voice, a fake smile pasted to his lips.

  “First, tell me about autopsies. What’s that like, cutting into dead flesh?”

  “It’s a job. You get used to it over time.”

  “What’s that like, though?”

  “The room I work in smells of Pine-Sol and bleach and overripe camembert.”

  “Ewww.” Chris leaned back in his chair, miming a reaction as if he could smell the autopsy room at that very moment.

  Edwin nodded. “That’s better than smelling the bodies, let me tell you.”

  Megan’s three daughters ran in circles until Tracy fell and the other two descended to the lawn in a fit of giggles.

  Chris agreed as if he had intimate knowledge of what Edwin was talking about.

  “Go on,” Chris pleaded, eyes widened by either the alcohol he’d drank or genuine interest. “Tell me details. Gruesome ones.”

  Edwin glanced once more at the girls and thought about coming back up here tomorrow to collect their bodies from the crime scene. It will be fun to open them up, see what was inside. A child autopsy was always difficult for his colleagues, but not for him.

  Wally taught him well.

  “When a body sits for any length of time, did you know the skin mottles where the blood has settled?”

  Chris jerked his beer bottle in his mouth, drank back a large gulp, then refocused on Edwin with a nod.

  In his peripheral vision, Edwin watched his daughters. Soon they would go to bed and before anyone knew what hit them, those three lovely girls would be on his autopsy table.

  “The exact time of death is very difficult to determine,” Edwin continued. “It’s practically unknowable. But investigators need the time of death to be as accurate as possible. It can mean the difference between a conviction or an acquittal.”

  “Interesting. The average person doesn’t think about this stuff.” Chris leaned in and lowered his voice. “What’s it like, you know, the bodies? Tell me about the kind of bodies you work on, the state they’re in.” He leaned back. “I mean, if you don’t mind.”

  The daughters still played. To waste time like this, while watching the girls, was magical. It had to be a coincidence that Chris wanted to talk in this exact spot where Edwin could watch the girls. It was supposed to be this way. If that’s what they called fate, then so be it. Because if it wasn’t supposed to be this way, Edwin Gavin—AKA Jeffrey Harris—would’ve been arrested or killed years ago.

  “I wear glasses. A Tyvek suit.”

  Chris nodded enthusiastically.

  “I start with the head. It’s the most sterile part of the body, far from areas that are streaming with bugs and filled with gases. Autopsy technicians determine the interval between a person’s last breath and the discovery of the body by three ways. Temperature, what we call algor mortis. Stiffness, known as rigor mortis. And the settling of the blood, livor mortis.”

  “Who knows all this stuff?” Chris said. “Fascinating. Must’ve taken a lot of school.”

  The girls ran to the other side of the lawn. Edwin kept a sharp eye on them but didn’t want to stop talking to Chris Manks. It felt good to be appreciated for all the work he did, all his education. Without that he wouldn’t be the man he was, the man he’d always wanted to be.

  “Did you know that bacteria infiltrate the liver within twenty hours of death and spread to the heart, among other organs, in less than fifty-eight hours?”

  Chris was shaking his head, his eyes losing focus.

  “Because we know this, microbes function as timekeepers to establish time of death. We all have two biological clocks. Death only stops one of them.”

  Chris’s eyes swam in their sockets. How he hadn’t detected how drunk Mr. Manks was earlier, he didn’t know.

  “Are you okay, Chris?”

  The man across from him nodded, his balance wavering. However drunk Chris might be, discussing dead body dissection probably wasn’t helping.

  “Come on,” Edwin said. “You need to go inside for another drink. But water this time. And lots of it.”

  He helped Chris to his feet. Once inside the front door, he aimed Chris toward the kitchen and went back out front. He needed to keep an eye on his kids. They meant everything to him.

  His father had taken women for his selfish needs. Not Edwin, though. Edwin took whole families. And it wasn’t about satiating a personal need. This was love in its finest hour.

  On the front lawn again, he searched the grounds, but the young girls were gone. All three daughters had vanished. His fatherly duties were lacking and would need a refresher. How could he let them get away like that?

  He tossed his half-empty beer bottle into the bushes by the front door and strode toward the driveway and the recessed garage to his right. A man and a woman passed him on the walkway. They said something to him, but he ignored their bullshit. He had kids missing. Kids who needed their father.

  At the corner, he stopped so abruptly that he had to take another step for balance.

  Tracy, Lindsay, and Erica were getting into a van out on the road and Megan was there, letting them leave.

  She can’t do that!

  “Megan,” he called and started after her. “Wait.”

  Megan turned to him as the van’s side door slid shut.

  “Don’t let them leave,” Edwin pleaded.

  From twenty yards away, he saw her frown.

  The van pulled away, all three girls in the window, waving at their mother. Megan turned to the van and waved back, slipping something into her pocket.

  Edwin reached her when the van was already too far to get back. He would make Megan call the driver, return his kids. This had gone too far. They were his family. The Gathering was supposed to happen tonight. How could she let this get so unraveled?

  “What have you done?” he asked, his tone harder than he intended.

  “Excuse me,” Megan took a step back. Even in the streetlight’s dim glow, Megan’s face had reddened. She looked outraged. “What are you talking about?” She lowered her head, her gaze steady. “Jeffrey, how much have you had to drink?”

  The rage at what she had done settled to his core. She had potentially just thwarted the entire Gathering. If not for her, he would have his daughters and autopsy them too, but not now. He was too angry to get them back.

  “Call the driver,” he ordered, his jaw clenched. “Bring my girls back to me. Right. Now.”

  Megan stepped back, her hands coming up. “I think you need to leave, Jeffrey.” She snuck a glance at the house.

  “Bring them back!” he shouted.

  Coming undone had never been something one should enjoy
, but with anger came power and right now with Megan easing away from him, afraid, he lost all his cool.

  He stepped up to her and threw a punch. Megan’s head snapped sideways with the blow. She emitted a small cry of pain, but it was silenced with the next punch.

  Megan fell to the pavement before she had a chance to know what hit her. A sickening crack denoted the skull taking a bad bump on the ground. Megan’s eyes fluttered, then stopped moving.

  Two people were still on the lawn, talking, drinking.

  He had planned to wait until the party had died down, but he couldn’t do that now. Megan had fucked everything up. The daughters were gone to who knew where and his new wife was unconscious. He couldn’t let her wake up. Not until she was in the safe room in his basement. Then he’d wake her with a beating of Biblical proportions—Old Testament shit—and bring her to an inch of her life.

  She would learn to serve her husband.

  He wrenched her up off the ground, leaned in to her stomach, then hefted her weight onto his shoulder. The road was somewhat sheltered from the house by a row of trees and cars, with the streetlights spaced out enough that as long as no one drove by in the next minute, he’d make it to his car unseen.

  If anyone did see them, Megan had simply drunk too much.

  The two people on the front lawn laughed about something and entered the house.

  Perfect timing.

  The front of the house had been deserted. He trudged up the road, Megan’s weight an easy chore. Three cars away, two cars.

  When Edwin was one vehicle away from his car, Terry, Megan’s old husband, stepped out on the front porch, scanning the yard and the driveway.

  “Megan?” Terry called. “You coming back in, baby? We’re starting a fucked up Canadian version of charades before the fireworks at midnight.” He waited a moment, then stepped off the porch and walked toward the garage. “Megan? Come on.”

  Edwin popped the trunk with his key fob and dropped Megan inside. She stirred, moaning something before Edwin closed the lid.

  He slipped behind the wheel and started the car.

  There was no way he could stay now. The police would arrive. Cars might even be checked.

  That meant no daughters. That meant no blood eagle. Terry would live.

  Edwin glanced at the bag of tools in the passenger seat footwell and felt another surge of rage. In that brief moment, he wanted to kill her, decapitate her, pop her eyes out and piss in her skull. But he wouldn’t.

  Megan was his new play toy and with his knowledge and experience with the human body, he would be able to keep her alive for as long as he wanted while he slowly drove her mad as penance for what she did tonight.

  He turned on the car and eased out onto the road, headlights off.

  A thump came from the back.

  Megan was awake.

  He needed to get clear of this area. Stop somewhere. Knock her back out. If she alerted anyone he would have to kill them, too, and this situation would quickly devolve.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have switched course. His MO should have stayed the same. He was the Blood Eagle Killer, after all. Why hadn’t he stuck to that method?

  As he idled past the driveway, the lights off, he glanced to the right.

  Terry Radcliffe was walking up the driveway, concern written all over his face.

  Their eyes met briefly with the little light afforded them.

  Then Edwin was gone, easing past the driveway.

  Terry shouted something.

  A thunk banged the back of the rear seats in the car.

  Edwin hit the gas.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Ten kilometers from Megan’s house, Edwin found a darkened side road. He turned up it and parked on the shoulder far enough away from the highway to remain unseen. Feeling the tang of panic in his chest, he exited the car so fast he stumbled and caught himself before falling flat on his face.

  He got two steps toward the trunk before he stopped and listened. Someone was talking. Were they in the trees or down the road? Could there be a house nearby?

  The voice came again.

  It was Megan. She was talking to someone.

  Blood pressure pounded his inner ear as he fumbled with the keys to the trunk. When he got it open, the trunk’s interior light gave her away. She hadn’t been able to hide her cell phone fast enough and simply gave up.

  “Jeffrey,” Megan said his name in a non-threatening, soft tone. “Please. What are you doing? Where are we going? Jeffrey Harris, I’d like to know what we’re doing here. Where are we?”

  Using his name. Asking for the location. All while the person on the other end of her cell phone listened in.

  How could his new wife betray him so horribly? He should have stuck to the original routine. There would be no cell phone, no Terry Radcliffe looking for Megan and no way Terry would’ve seen Edwin driving away from their property.

  He stuck his hand out for the cell phone, controlling his breath, controlling his anger.

  Megan glanced at his hand, then back to his face, the dim light inside the trunk giving her a blanched look. After a moment, she shook her head.

  He made a fist, pulled it back, and dropped it like a hammer’s business end across Megan’s cheek. Her head bounced off the tire iron nestled in the corner of the trunk, then settled, her eyes fluttering again. Blood seeped from where the jab had split her cheek. She moaned and reached for her face in a daze, rubbing the back of her head with her other hand. Maybe the tire iron had smacked the spot where she’d hit her head on the pavement.

  Edwin retrieved the cell phone and raised it to his ear. At first, there was only breathing.

  Then, “Megan,” the teary-sounding voice of the former husband whispered in Edwin’s ear. “What’s he doing now? Are there any indications of where you might be? Megan, help me,” he pleaded. “I need to find you.”

  Edwin cleared his throat. “You will never find her,” he growled. “She’s mine and she’s dead to you.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Terry screamed. “I’ll kill you if you lay a hand on her.”

  “Here. Listen.”

  Edwin lowered the phone. Megan had regained some of her composure. She looked up at him.

  “Megan, your former husband wants to hear from you.”

  Then he punched her in the cheek and jaw repeatedly, earning grunts and groans of pain until she passed out. His hand bloody now, the cell phone emitting shrieks of anger, Edwin brought the phone to his mouth and whispered, “She’s dead to you.”

  He switched off the phone, silencing the wail. He shoved Megan’s bloodied head aside and withdrew the tire iron. He set the phone on the road by his feet and with one swift stroke, smashed it into pieces. He hit it again to make sure, then kicked the pieces off the road and into the foliage by the shoulder.

  “That doesn’t bode well for you, eh mate?”

  Edwin pivoted so fast, he had to grab for the trunk to keep his balance. Without processing where the voice came from, he slammed the trunk closed and scanned the darkness behind the car.

  “Easy does it,” the Australian voice said.

  Chris Manks from the party? Could he have followed him here? No way, Chris had been too drunk.

  “Who’s there?” Edwin asked.

  Car wheels, crunching gravel, eased closer near the front of the car. When Edwin turned, the silhouette of a large SUV stopped at his bumper. He ducked as if his car would offer him shelter from whoever was coming for him.

  More gravel crunched behind him. Another SUV crept closer from the highway side. It stopped two feet from him, the thick bumper level with his thighs. Neither SUV had used their headlights and no one got out.

  “Who’s there?” he called.

  “Stranded on the side of the road. Looks like you need help.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Car trouble?” the voice called.

  “Felt sick. Thought I’d throw up. Fine now.”

  Edwin edged along the
side of his car. He needed to get back inside, drive away and figure out how to deal with Terry Radcliffe. Terry had seen Edwin leave. Megan would’ve told him that Jeffrey Harris had kidnapped her. The same Jeffrey Harris who was a medical examiner in Toronto and had worked on her mother’s death.

  Terry knew enough to have Edwin picked up and arrested by the morning. Which meant he didn’t have time to deal with whoever was blocking him in.

  With an arm resting on the roof and the other on the open door frame, he stared at the silhouette in front of him.

  “Hey,” he called out. “You wanna move your vehicle so I can get by.”

  “We want to help you, Edwin.”

  He turned at the voice directly behind him. They knew his name? How could they know his name?

  “Sounds like you know me, but I still don’t know who I’m talking to. It’s too dark out here to see faces.” His anger rose along with his frustration.

  The SUV’s headlights turned on, blinding him at first. Three men in dark suits, two in overcoats, stood in a triangle formation by the SUV. In the black, inky darkness, he hadn’t seen any of them exit their vehicle.

  Chris Manks sat behind the wheel, his white teeth shining as he smiled at Edwin, a cell phone pasted to his ear.

  “So what’s this?” Edwin asked. “You’re going to arrest me?”

  The man not wearing the overcoat stepped closer.

  “No, Edwin, we’re not here to arrest you. We’re here to help you.”

  “Help me? How?”

  “Terry Radcliffe.”

  “Terry?” He had to be dreaming. What could this guy be talking about?

  “Chris is on the phone with him right now. Directing him to this location.”

  The pit in Edwin’s stomach grew to a lead ball, then dropped to his bowels.

  “And how will that help me?” he asked.

  “We know you, Edwin. We’re okay with it. We have other fish to fry, as they say.”

  If anyone knew Edwin, they wouldn’t be having this conversation with him, let alone helping him achieve his goals.

  “I don’t believe you.”