Indigo Man

by M. J. Carlson

  INDIGO MAN

  a novel

  by

  M.J. Carlson

  Copyright 2014 M.J. Carlson

  Edited by Jennifer Zebel

  Kindle Edition

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  If you would like to share this book with another person please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  So there.

  CHAPTER 1

  With a deep restlessness, Zachary Marshall stared out the narrow window at the waning November 2047 afternoon. Lengthening shadows sliced through the twenty-foot wide swath of oak, laurel, and palmetto separating his testing lab from the upscale health food store next door. The way the Florida sunlight scattered off the dense tangle of silvery gray branches and emerald leaves usually lifted his spirits.

  Not today.

  He brushed a fingertip over the diamond ring where it hung under his shirt on the small chain. Six months, today. Kathy had been right. He was wasting his life in the lab, and time was passing him by. She was really gone and he’d been a—

  “Dr. Marshall. In here.” The female voice and rap of knuckles on his desk snapped him from his thoughts with a start.

  “Sorry.” He spun around and grinned before he caught himself. “Sorry, Special Agent. What can I do for you?”

  On the other side of his desk, Special Agent Sara Goode straightened to her full height. At an inch short Zach’s six feet and wrapped in a standard Secret Service black business suit, the white coiled wire snaking from her left ear under her jacket lapel added a surrealistic edge to her already formidable image. She crossed her arms over her chest and peered down at him with eyes as devoid of emotion as her suit, diamond bright and just as hard. The faint whiff of vanilla floating on the air between them did little to offset her somber demeanor.

  “Any news on the sample I dropped off last week, Doctor?”

  He cleared his throat and let the smile drop. “Uh, yes, ma’am. We received another bottle of the enzyme reagent in this morning’s shipment. I should have the final results for you tomorrow.”

  She nodded once, her expression unchanged. “Thank you. I need it ASAP.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. He hesitated a heartbeat before deciding it was worth a try, and gave her a half-smile. “I may have preliminary results later tonight. I could buy you a drink to make up for the wait. I’d be glad to tag you.” He hoped he looked more confident than he felt. “As soon as I have something for you, I mean.” He held his breath, his heart pounding in his ears, hoping for a crack in the stone facade he’d been chipping at for almost a week.

  She cocked her head to the side, the fluorescent light from overhead shimmered over her tight, upswept curls of tan and gold hair. Her brown eyes were unreadable as she stared at him.

  “How about if I just drop by tomorrow at noon?” Her voice was even and flat, but the faintest hint of a smile touched the corners of her lips as if to punctuate the question.

  His breath stuck in his throat. His gaze hung on the curled ends of her mouth.

  “Anything you like.” He swallowed and mentally crossed his fingers. “We could have lunch.”

  She raised an eyebrow, uncrossed her arms, placed her palms flat on his desk, and leaned in close. Tiny speckles of gold colored her amber irises. Her smile broadened just perceptibly, and when she spoke, her breath caressed his cheek. “Lunch?”

  “Your eyes have gold flecks in them.” It was out before he could stop himself, “It’s an unusual interaction between the OCA2 and HRC2 genes on chromosome fifteen. They’re beautiful.” Heat rose in his cheeks as her eyes went wide. “I, um, I mean, I’ve never actually seen the phenotype before. I… I’ll have your report for you, tomorrow, Special Agent.” His gaze dropped to his desk.

  A rustle of cloth accompanied her movement as she straightened and smoothed her suit coat. He lifted his eyes to her.

  Her expression softened. Even in the harsh overhead light, her porcelain-smooth skin made her look five years younger than the twenty-five he guessed her age to be. “Dr. Marshall. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were trying to ask me out.” She clasped her hands behind her, separating her jacket’s lapels and exposing the ruffled front of her crisp white blouse in ways Zach tried without success to ignore. She leaned forward over his desk again. Her smile broadened, reaching all the way to her eyes. “Ever played with handcuffs?” Her eyes glittered as she spoke. Her low, throaty whisper made his heart race.

  “No.” The heat in his cheeks intensified, moved to his ears. His mouth went dry.

  “How about water-boarding?”

  He stiffened. Not exactly the direction he’d been hoping to take the conversation, he retreated in his chair and shook his head, dumbly.

  “Get me my report, Dr. Marshall,” she said, in the same, sultry voice. “Or I’ll make you wish for a Turkish prison.” She shot him a wink. Without another word, she reached into an inside pocket of her jacket, pulled a business card out, and snapped it on the desk. She straightened, turned, and strode toward the door in the same crisp gait she’d used each time she’d come to the lab.

  Her flat heels clicked on the tile floor. And she flowed like poetry under her suit.

  He watched her, spellbound.

  At the door to the lobby, she reached for the doorknob, turned it, and shot a quick glance over her shoulder at him. “We’ll speak again. Tomorrow, Dr. Marshall. Please?”

  She smiled, stepped through the open door, and was gone.

  He inhaled, dropped his gaze to the file his computer’s holographic display projected in front of him, and blew out a quick breath through pursed lips as the door closed. He slid his keyboard toward him. “Smooth move, Zach. Bet that impressed her,” he mumbled to himself.

  “Wow. How she could resist a come-on like that?” The comment came from Zach’s best friend and business partner, Lazlo Thomas. Laz sat at his workstation across the room.

  Zach winced and snapped a quick “bite me” over his shoulder at Laz.

  “Hey,” Laz chuckled over his shoulder at Zach. “There’s an original line. Why dontcha try that on her next time? I’d pay money to see her pistol whip you at your own desk.” Laz twisted around on his wheeled office chair. The grin on his dark-skinned face almost glowed. “Christ, Ze, I know you have to take the occasional shot before you can get back in the saddle, but the Secret Service? She carries a gun, for God’s sake.”

  Zach matched his smile. “At least I’d be safe.”

  “You’d be dead. She’d pull your wings off like you were a fly.”

  “Yeah,” Zach grinned, “talk about a buzz.”

  Laz chuckled. “Yeah, great buzz. Wonderful. Crumple you up like used tissue and toss you into the wastebasket without breaking a sweat. Tell me you haven’t been yanking her back here every day for a week, trying to talk to her, hoping for a date or some such adolescent crap.”

  Zach folded his hands behind his head, trying to appear nonchalant. “You know what they say, dating a Secret Service Agent is like riding a super-bike…” He hesitated a beat. “The best you can hope is when you fall off, it won’t hurt too bad.”

  Laz cocked his head to the side. “Don’t you mean ‘dating an aerobics instruc
tor?’”

  “Dating a Secret Service Agent is like dating an aerobics instructor?”

  “No. Yes.” Laz shook his head. “Can we please go back to her pistol whipping you at your desk? I was enjoying the mental picture.”

  Zach’s grin widened. “It might be worth getting thrown off in a bruised and bloody heap.”

  They stared at each other in silence for long moment. “And I’d be jealous as hell.” As their shared laughter died away, Laz wiped his eyes.

  “Thanks, I needed that.”

  Laz stretched his arms over his head. “That’s not what you need.” His voice took on a serious tone. “You need a pinch of excitement in your sad, miserable life.”

  “Not yet.”

  He crossed a leg over his knee and leaned back in his chair. “Ze, I’m your partner and your friend. I’m your best friend.” He hesitated. “Hell, I’m your only friend. Go get a life. You’re here all the time. You haven’t taken a day off in over a year.”

  “Yes I did. I took off…” Zach’s voice trailed away as he thought of the ring under his shirt. “Maybe you’re right.”

  Laz glanced at his watch. “Bet your lily-white ass I’m right.” He stretched. “Go home, man. Get some rest. Uncle Sam will wait. Hell, you developed the test, you have the patent. Where else’re they going to go? If you want, we can meet for a drink. There’s this place on the beach called Uncle Chuckle’s.” He leaned further back in his chair and crossed his feet on his desk as if to accentuate the feeling of relaxation. His wide grin underscored the move. “I’ve been wanting to go check the place out. Come with me, we’ll buy each other a drink and meet some cunningly formed females. It’ll be like college after finals.”

  “Not tonight. I’ve got to get this sample run and the report done.”

  “Speaking of enzyme reagents, don’t we have that one in stock? Why did you need to order more?”

  The heat rose in his cheeks again. “I, um, kinda poured it down the drain. I—”

  “You did what?” Shock splashed onto Laz’s face. His feet slid off his desk and onto the floor with a thud. “You know how much those chemicals cost? Hell yes, you do. You do the ordering. Why—?” he stopped in mid sentence. “No. God. Never mind. You could’ve just told her we were out. Jeez, you didn’t have to actually pour it down the drain.”

  “Didn’t want to start a relationship with a lie.”

  Laz shook his head, understanding brought a sparkle to his eyes. “Next time you decide to pour a thousand dollars’ worth of chemicals into the toilet, don’t tell me.” He chuckled. “Lie to me, instead. I promise it won’t hurt my feelings. Listen buddy, I’m out of here. Don’t work too late.” He stood and shrugged off his white lab coat, draping it over the back of his chair.

  “I won’t, Mom,” Zach replied.

  As Laz walked past, he tapped Zach’s outstretched fist with his. “See you tomorrow. Or tonight if it’s not too late. We can do beach blanket bingo at Uncle Chuckle’s.”

  “Good night, Laz.”

  “Tomorrow,” Laz chirped, as he headed to the front of the building. After the door closed behind Laz, Zach checked the wrist unit of his Personal Communications and Organization Device and scowled. The ‘low battery’ symbol blinked in the upper right corner. He placed the small receiver/microphone in his ear, touched the electrostatic button and said, “Suspend Net function.” He could charge it later in the car. No one ever called him anyway. He switched his PCOD back to display the time.

  “Another half-hour before the guard rounds back on this building.” Sharing the security with the businesses on either side made for a reduced rate. Besides, Zach found the quiet of the evenings calming, a good time to think. As often as not, the guard, who was a retired Clearwater detective, found Zach at his computer, finishing up some bit of work or other. Zach enjoyed the chance to say hello to the man. “There’s no hurry,” he said, stood, and stretched.

  He ambled to the refrigerator, opened the door, and grabbed a tube of Coke from the shelf. A twist of the base released the stored compressed carbon dioxide gas into the liquid to carbonate and further cool it as he returned to his workstation.

  With his feet propped his on his desk, he opened a browser while droplets of condensation formed on the tube of Coke. He ran the latest news feeds on the holographic projection floating over his desk, wondering what excitement he’d missed during the day. The lead article was about the continued flooding on the Indian subcontinent. As he scrolled through the headlines, one caught his eye. His blood pressure skyrocketed.

  “Stiles.” The name formed a sneer on Zach’s lips. He brought up the story. Congressman Martin Stiles stood in front of a backdrop of the White House. “Jesus, how staged can you get?” Zach’s teeth clenched as he clicked the video clip.

  “Congressman,” a female voice said from off-camera. “Any comment on the deaths at the Post Office today?”

  Stiles’s manner was solemn, and, Zach mused, very preacherly in his dark purple tie and charcoal suit. He’d allowed a touch of silver to accentuate his temples. “Yes, Alicia, I would. It’s deplorable when we’ve sunk so low as a nation, civil servants aren’t safe in their own places of employment.”

  “Hang on, Marty,” Zach said. “Stop feed. Open new tab.” He followed the link and read the story Stiles referred to. A postal worker had shown up at work on his day off and stabbed his wife and another coworker as the two sorted letters. The article intimated they’d been having an affair for over a year.

  He clicked back to Stiles and continued the clip. “In the fifty years since we decoded the human genome,” the congressman continued. “Our scientists should have found a gene responsible for violence like this.” Stiles resumed in the same sermonizing style. “They tell us, ‘we don’t know enough,’ or ‘we haven’t been able to isolate a gene for violence,’ or when pressed, they simply reply with no comment.”

  Zach groaned. The former leader of the People’s Reformed Urban Baptist Church of Clearwater had no-commented his way out of state and federal indictments for misappropriation of funds, income tax evasion, and multiple scandals involving young female parishioners. After Stiles had slipped loose of all the charges, he’d won a seat in congress, where his pulpit-refined oratory skills brought him terabits of bandwidth.

  “It’s not enough you got away with the other stuff,” he said to Stiles’s image staring out at him from where it floated above his desk. “Now you want a job where you can screw with lots of people’s lives,” Zach said. “Continue feed.”

  On the screen, Stiles shook his head again. “Well, this humble servant of the people of this great land has had enough of these scientists’ evasions.” Zach winced at the accent on the word. “Our tax money pays for genetic research, and it’s time we demand answers to our questions. Once they identify a gene for violence, we can make the information publicly available to protect our children and our loved ones. We can and should keep this senseless violence from spilling over into our peaceful, law-abiding society, as it did today.” Stiles pointed a finger at the camera, an obvious gesture from his ministerial days. “When I’m elected, we will have a safer society.” The feed ended with Stiles’s narrow-eyed smile. It reminded Zach of a snake staring at a mouse.

  “When, not if? What arrogance.” Zach stared at the screen as a thought occurred to him. “Let’s see, glib with superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self-worth, cunning and manipulative, and a pathological liar. Takes care of the interpersonal side.” He held up four fingers and went on. “Emotionally shallow, lack of empathy, failure to accept responsibility for his own actions, parasitic lifestyle, irresponsibility, and promiscuity.” He was up to ten. “Criminal versatility?” He blew out a breath and stared at the holograph of Stiles’s grinning face. “You prone to boredom, Marty? How about impulsivity, poor behavior controls or a history of juvenile delinquency?” Zach clinched his fists, as if to tighten his hold on the past. “Either you’re the perfect politician, or we’re in mor
e trouble than we realize—probably both.”

  He stood and rubbed a hand over his closed eyes, trying to get his frustration under control. “Guy’s a boil on humanity’s backside.” He shook his head. “He’s the real terrorist. Him and people like him.”

  He shook off his frustration and stepped to the counter where two dozen different samples were running, testing for different genetic markers for various clients. The sample Agent Goode brought in last week from the Secret Service sat apart from the others, running the prepared DNA sample. Zach leaned in, resting on his crossed forearms. Several dark bands were forming on the semi-solid gel strip in its enzyme-treated electrophoresis bath. His eyes widened at the location of one band in particular.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, eyeing the light blue gel matrix in the tray of solution. “That’s not supposed to be there. He reached to his right, grabbed a ruler, and held it over the sample. After he measured the distance to the dark band, he grabbed the reference book from its spot on the shelf. With it opened to the chapter he and Laz had coauthored, he checked the color photos and tables in the back. He leafed through until he found the one he was searching for. “Uh oh. Somebody’s screwed.”

  He tugged his link out of his pocket and spoke into it “Contacts. Special Agent Goode. Connect.” After the voicemail picked up, he continued, “This is Dr. Marshall, from GenTest. The confirmation test on the sample you dropped off is going to be positive for several loci, including the psychopathy gene. The test is still running though. I’ll have to wait till tomorrow for the final result, but I wanted to inform you as soon as I had something. Maybe we could, um, talk when you come in tomorrow.”

  With the call disconnected, he rolled the tension out of his neck. Then he snapped photos for documentation and carried the digital camera back to his workstation. Dropping into his chair, he uploaded the images to the numbered folder and opened the correct form letter from the menu options. He shook his head as he typed. Someone was going to have a very unhappy tomorrow.