"What the..."
She did it again and again and then slapped the dashboard as if the car was a disobedient child. Checking her watch, she realized she didn't have time to wait for AAA. Now, she was happy she had a police escort.
She got out of her car and opened the passengers' door of his vehicle.
"My car won't start. You have to get me back to the office," she said. "I have patients lined up to the street."
She slipped in and he put his transmission into reverse and backed out without saying a word. She thought he took off rather quickly, too.
"It's all right. We have a little time," she said.
"Oh, I know," he replied. He turned and looked at her. "We have lots of time now."
Her heart seemed to fold up inside her chest the moment she saw the cleft chin.
He practically tore the man's bathroom apart, throwing things behind him -- pill bottles, cough syrup, deodorants -- until he found what he thought he could use. He hated being a scavenger, but he hated being on the run even more. He would need everything and anything to keep himself strong, protected. Searching the closets he found some sweaters he could wear. On the floor of one closet, he discovered a coffee can stuffed with twenties and fifties, too. Every time he passed through the living room, he paused to thank the corpse.
"Very thoughtful of you to keep cash on hand," he told it. Pictures of what must have been the owner's family were in an album on a shelf of a side table in the living room. Curious, he flipped through it.
"Your parents weren't much better looking," he told the corpse. "Looks like you were an only child, huh? Lucky for the world. It limited the ugly." He laughed at his own cleverness and then, for a moment or two, he considered how much in common he had with this dead man. They were both loners. He actually felt sorry for him, for the motel owner had none of the power he had. He was trapped in this life. What sort of a legacy was this for his parents to have left him?
"Inconsiderate bastards!"
He hated them and began tearing their pictures out of the album and scattering the pieces over the living room floor. The rage took him over for a while and then, suddenly, the sound of a bell froze him. He listened and the bell sounded once more.
"What is that?" he asked the corpse.
Then he rose and peered through the door at the motel office lobby. He saw a tall, dark-haired woman with a far shorter, elderly lady standing there. The woman had short hair and a comely face, with just a light shade of lipstick to give it any brightness. She wore what he thought was a much too heavy dark brown coat. The old lady looked a bit distressed.
He gazed at the corpse as if he expected it would be resurrected at the sound of that bell and go and do its duty. Then, he moved out to the motel lobby slowly.
"Oh, hi," the woman said. She smiled. Her teeth were the best part of her face, he thought, very white, very straight.
"Hi."
"We need a room. We started out a little too early this morning and I'm afraid we got a bit lost. My mother is tired. We need to just have a good day's rest before continuing."
"Where are you going?" he asked. He was really curious about it.
"Oh, we're heading for Raleigh, North Carolina. My mother's older sister is very sick and I promised to take her to see her. I had some vacation due me and took it," she added.
The speed and ease with which she revealed personal information impressed him. First, it was nice to have personal information, and second, it was nice to see someone so trusting, so expecting of compassion and sympathy.
"Sure," he said moving with more enthusiasm now. He looked at the old lady.
"You need to rest, Mom," he said as if he had known her all his life. She didn't smile. She was one of those elderly people who resented people who became too personal too quickly. He could see that, but he ignored it. He turned the sign-in book around and the young woman opened her purse.
"How much is a room?" she asked.
"Thirty-eight fifty," he replied.
She nodded and opened a wallet to take out four tens, which she counted carefully.
"Mom hates credit cards," she whispered. "She thinks it makes people spend way above their means. Is cash all right?"
"Oh, absolutely," he said. "Just sign in and I'll give you the keys to..." He looked at the board of keys and saw the room next to his. "Unit 12. Next to the very end. It will be quiet there for you."
"Oh thank you," she said. "We need to get some rest before we go for some dinner. Are there good places nearby?"
"Oh, absolutely," he said. "When you're ready, just let me know and I'll point you in the right direction."
"Thank you very much."
He turned the book around and saw she had written Erna Walker. Her address was in Rochester, New York.
"What time did you two start out, Erna?" he asked.
"A little before four in the morning. I guess we were a bit too enthusiastic, but this is the longest trip I've taken in a car, and certainly the longest for my mother," she said.
"Well I'm sure you two will get some rest. Do you need help with your luggage?" he asked.
"Oh no. Thank you," she said taking the key.
The old lady had been looking around and he could see she wasn't pleased with the lobby. The walls were too dull and the baseboard was dirty. The floor needed a good vacuuming and washing and the windows needed washing, too. She smirked at him, showing her disapproval.
Old people can be so critical, he thought. They expect everyone to be just like they are.
He watched them return to their car and then drive down to the room. Erna took two small suitcases out of the trunk of her car and then opened the door of the unit. She entered and her mother followed very tentatively. He expected them to come charging out, the old lady complaining about cobwebs or something, but they didn't.
"That's good," he muttered. And then, suddenly, he had an epiphany, an incredibly explosive and wonderful revelation.
That woman was choice. She had a virginal aura about her. Everything in her was fresh and high quality. He could mine her, draw everything he needed, and she had come to him!
In fact, he thought, gazing around, this is what I was thinking of, the fish bowl, my feeding ground. They'll come here. I'll have something in every room. I'll never be without.
He rubbed his hands together. He no longer wanted to jog. The struggle with the motel owner had taken too much of his energy. That troubled him for a few moments. He wasn't usually this tired this fast after something physical. But he rejected all negative and troubling thoughts in light of the good luck he had somehow stumbled upon here. I'll grow very strong and then, when I'm ready, I'll go on.
And on.
And on, forever....
He returned to the living room to thank the corpse.
In a real sense, he should thank all the corpses that trailed behind him. It amused him.
I'll send thank-you cards to cemeteries, he thought, and laughing, felt more like his old self.
Whoever and whatever that was.
SEVENTEEN
"I need your help," he began. "Don't panic. Please." During the few moments that had passed between her realizing who he was and the moment he began to speak, a parade of deficiency diseases and illnesses marched through her mind. The three young women she had seen degenerate right before her eyes were sharing the Grand Marshal position, waving their dead hands in warning.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"You knew I wasn't really a state detective when I met you at the hospital the other day, right? I sensed that, but I was hoping you would be cooperative anyway.
"I'm not picking on you, Doctor. I had to visit you after the first death to be certain I was on the right track, that the M.O. fit, and I had to see just how much you really knew and understood.
"I'm sorry about frightening you before, and I'm sorry about your fiance, but I don't have much time to waste, and now that the rather good rendition of his face and mine is on the front p
age of the newspaper and undoubtedly being broadcast periodically on television stations, there is even more urgency. He'll become more dangerous, more like a cornered rat.
"He's very smart, very intelligent, and he will find a way to avoid detection. He will go on and he will, as I fear he has already, find new victims at a geometric level of activity. He's obviously growing more desperate. Something is happening to him. He might die or he might kill at a rate that will create panic in the streets... literally," he concluded and turned down a side road that degenerated into a gravel one.
He stopped the car and turned off the engine.
"Where is the policeman who was with me?" she asked.
"He's in the trunk," he replied. "Don't worry. He's still alive, only sedated." She reached back, behind herself to fumble for the door knob.
"Don't," he said quickly realizing what she was doing. "Where are you going to run to anyway? And don't you think I could catch you? Settle down, Dr. Barnard. You are a very intelligent young woman, my best hope so far. I need to know what you do know, what that second victim told you before she expired. I need to know his whereabouts or anything that might lead me to him. I need to find him before anyone else does and I need to destroy him before anyone discovers what he is," he continued.
"What are you telling me?" Terri asked realizing what he had said about the picture on the front pages of the newspaper. "That he's your twin brother?"
"Not in the traditional sense, no," he replied. "And I'm not a schizophrenic. I assure you. He is a separate entity. I'll tell you what I can, if you tell me everything you know about him. I'm sure he's said something I can use. He's very arrogant. He would not hesitate to tell one of his victims things about himself so he most probably revealed important information to the woman you began to examine.
"He has anticipated my every move so far and is always a step or two ahead of me. Part of his brilliance, you see. He possesses qualities we cannot fathom."
"How do you know so much about him?" she asked. She had found the door knob, but she was drawn to remain both out of curiosity and fear he was right --
she would not be able to get away.
"I created him," he replied. "I'm Dr. Garret Stanley. I work for a research corporation that is hidden within layers and layers of legal detours, so sophisticated even the CIA would have trouble getting to the heart of it." He smiled. "There's that arrogance showing, I'm afraid. He shares my best and worst qualities."
She narrowed her eyes.
"Are you telling me... are you saying, he's a clone of you?"
"Precisely," he replied. He put up his hands. "I know, I know. Cloning human beings has been outlawed by our government, but believe me, there are people in our government who are not only aware of my work, they find ways to support it."
"How do I know you are not simply a madman, a schizophrenic?"
"If I were, I would have killed you by now," he said, "especially if you consider how quickly he's accumulating new victims."
"Why is he doing that?"
"What can you tell me, Doctor?" he asked instead of replying.
"I wasn't lying to you. That young woman I examined, Kristin Martin, was unable to speak intelligibly. She went into cardiac arrest almost immediately. She mouthed something that sounded like he, and that's it."
"He?"
"I think she was trying to tell me her situation wasn't caused by any allergy or the like. He... whoever he is... caused it, but how, why?" she asked. He looked pensive.
"Maybe she was trying to tell me her grandmother was in danger. The tourist house they owned burned down and she died in the fire. That's all I can tell you. That's it."
His face grew gray with disappointment, but she also recognized a fury in those penetrating eyes. Despite what he was telling her, was he really a schizophrenic? He looks capable of violent rage, she thought.
"The FBI is here," she said, making it sound like a warning.
"I would expect so. They were in Pennsylvania, too. There were only two killings in the whole state, so you see what I mean. He's already killed three here in this New York county and by now, I fear a fourth and maybe even a fifth. Whoever dies after today might very well be on your conscience, Doctor."
"They might have his fingerprints on a glass," she warned. "Which, if you're telling me the truth, would be your fingerprints too," she said, still hoping to make him back off.
He smiled.
"Fingerprints from what? The bar at that tavern? Well? Are you saying the bartender didn't wash the glasses before she left for the night? Well?" She sucked in her breath. Of course he would know about the story in the papers.
"You were there already?"
"No. Forensic evidence is a waste of time. Forget about that. What else were you told about the events at the tavern?"
"Nothing. I'm not part of a police team. I'm just..." He shook his head.
"Doctor, you're wasting precious time. There is a significant witness you're protecting." He smiled. "This drawing in the paper wasn't done only from your description of me in the office. I know he spent significant time with that bartender and I know her name, Darlene Stone. She knows more than she has told the police at this point. I'm sure of that. They're incompetent, especially when it comes to something like this. Only I can find him." She was afraid to say another word. Stall him, she thought.
"I don't understand how he causes deaths through vitamin deficiencies," she said. And then she added, "I don't trust you, trust what you're telling me." He looked away, took a deep breath, and looked back at her.
"Okay," he said, "this is what happened." Despite how drawn she was to what he was saying, as he spoke it occurred to her that if he was telling the truth, if he was this research scientist and if he did indeed work for a powerful, clandestine corporation, she would now be in a different sort of danger, but one perhaps just as potentially fatal.
"I'm sure you know that toward the end of the twentieth century, there were basically three types of cloning: embryo cloning in which one or more cells are removed from a fertilized embryo and encouraged to develop into one or more duplicate embryos; adult DNA cloning, cell nuclear replacement producing a duplicate of an existing animal; and therapeutic cloning in which the stem cells are removed from the embryo with the intent of producing tissue or a whole organ for transplant.
"My work centers around adult DNA cloning, but the production of an identical twin without the use of sperm, although successful, had one drawback: time. It took too much time before the twin would develop into a mature adult, capable of utilizing all the talents and knowledge of its host. By the time it reached that capacity, what it knew could not only be obsolete, but what is more important, not further developed, not benefiting from that time, understand? I mean, reproducing Einstein at the point when he made his important discoveries, but having that reproduction spend years to get to that point, makes no sense. What I have been working on is speeding up the growth, accelerating the development of the duplicate.
"Of course, none of this is perfected and in the process of my experimentation, I did succeed in creating a duplication of myself and bring its development to approximately my age in a matter of months, but an unusual disorder developed almost immediately: my second self, as I like to refer to him, was unable to store most necessary vitamins and minerals. They are passed through his digestive tract and not broken down and carried by the blood, and so I had to put him on an intense vitamin and mineral therapy program to keep him alive while I tried to determine what exactly was malformed.
"One of our assistants basically screwed up and missed a treatment and that was, unfortunately, when we discovered a second unusual disorder, a true threat to others. My research partner was killed. Like a bee drawing pollen from a flower, my second self appears to have the ability to draw what he needs at the moment from another human source, mine it, so to speak, vacuum the blood. I'm not absolutely sure of how he processes the material, but it bypasses the digestive breakdown some
how and provides what he needs. In a true sense of the word, I have inadvertently created a monstrous parasite, but a parasite, however, that also possesses a high degree of intelligence, charm, wit, in short, moi, yours truly. That's why I know he's arrogant," Garret Stanley said. Terri continued to stare at him.
"Don't tell me you are one of those who have some religious objection to human cloning, one who believes there will be no soul in the new individual if he or she is created without the use of sperm?" Garret asked with some disdain.
"No, I'm not, but what I am is one of those who believes in strict observance of research guidelines to prevent exactly what you've done," she replied.
"If we followed the guidelines, as you call them, we wouldn't be doing this at all and the human race would lose a golden opportunity to end disease and aging. As far as our puritanical and fundamentalist religious influences go, all they have done is permitted groups in other countries to move ahead of us. Including the Raelians. You have heard of them, I assume?"
Terri shook her head.
"They are a religious sect that believes, among other things, that human beings were created in laboratories by extraterrestrials, and that the resurrection of Jesus was a cloning procedure. You would be shocked to know who belongs to the sect and how much money they have already invested in their research. Recently, I saw a list of women, surrogate mothers, who have paid close to a half million dollars to be part of their experiments.
"No, Dr. Barnard, I am not some mad scientist running amok, but they are out there who are mad and they are working. I am, in fact, our best hope to seize the initiative and capture the patents and processes which will one day recreate the world, vastly improve on the current model, so to speak, for in my world, you will see no human misery, no starvation, and every beautiful thing, every wonderful talent will be truly immortalized, so don't try to make me feel in the least bit guilty about all this."
"Is that what you will tell the parents of Paige Thorndyke, the families of Kristin Martin and Paula Gilbert, not to mention all the others he's destroyed on his way here?"
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