For a moment they milled about the room, trying to ignore the ubiquitous hospital odors and the piles of dated magazines, and the twenty-four hour newsfeed on the screen at the end of the room. Carly stared out into the smog, trying to get a glimpse of the cityscape through the haze. Sully succumbed to an ancient sporting magazine, while Hernandez idly played with the buttons on a vending machine.
Hernandez broke the silence first, “What about you Carly? What's next for you?”
Ever since he knew Diane was going to make it, Carly had been asking himself the same question. Yet his response to his swarthy friend had the air of uncertainty as if born in spontaneity, “I think I'll hang out here for another few days. Mooch a few beers off of 'Ol Dead-Eye' Sully there. The Feds will probably want to interview me, so I'll stay for that, after all those black suits are such entertaining folks. Besides I want to keep an eye on Diane for a few more days, and make sure she's stable before I head back to Colorado. She's going to need a lot of emotional support initially, and that's what I do for a living or at least used to before you all turned me back into a cop.”
“After that, classes start up in another couple of weeks so I'll have to get ready for the new semester. There's a dean back there that I think I'll serve a little crow to, since he made a point of frying some up for me after my first interview here in L.A. Plus, I'm anxious to talk to my old partner in Denver. The whole issue of Dr. Hasan and Brother Damien hasn't been brought to a close. He'll want me as a material witness to the shooting, as well as help conjure up some more lies for this whole story. The legal nightmares of it all might take forever to resolve if that's at all possible. If anyone ever catches Merriwhether, California will have a fight to keep him from a court date in Colorado.”
Carly paused and let his thinking happen out loud, “Perhaps I'll do a little more research into what happened to Carter and the impact Dombrowski had on him, then maybe I'll start that book the ADA suggested. Sort of a sequel to the last one. Only this time, there's a happy ending.... I hope. What about you two.”
Sully grinned, “Well I've got a cold case of beer in the refrigerator to start things off with, then I'm like you, talk with the Feds, keep close to the Inspector and see what happens. I'm thinking that I want to make a run out towards Rosemead and check out that group home where Jonathan worked. I'd be interested in seeing what all goes on there, if you catch my drift.”
Hernandez was stifling another giggling fit, as he looked over at Sully. “Sorry,” he laughed, “when you called him 'Ol Dead Eye, I got a flash back to all those damn shotgun blasts. Anyway, I've got some vacation time coming, so once the Feds get through with me, I'm going as far away as I can. Do a little fishing, a little swimming, and a lot of forgetting. This has been too crazy for me.”
With a sigh and a mock salute, Carly headed out of the waiting room. As he turned the corner to Diane's room, he wondered where in the next few months, he and she would find time for themselves. She needed a counselor first, a friend second, and a lover a distant third. He'd give it time, after all if worst came to worst, living in L.A. might not be so terrible.
Epilogue
Lena leaned her head back, rivulets of sweat trickled slowly between her breasts as the thick fingers pinched at her nipples. Her thick moist lips parted as she let out a low guttural...ring? Slowly she brought her head forward, her dark hair cascading across her shoulders. She smiled warmly at Harcourt as his hands clumsily grabbed at her shoulders pulling her atop him. Again she let out a low, animalistic...ring?
“Damn it,” Harcourt yelled. Lena seemed alarmed, but slowly she began to fade from his view. At first Harcourt concentrated on her, not wanting her to go. He eyed her breasts, until all that remained in his field of vision were those breasts, pendulous and firm, alone before his eyes. Then like an erotic Cheshire cat, the breasts disappeared.
The phone rang again.
Harcourt snatched it from the desk, angered by the interruption. Hell he hadn't even had a chance to do anything. The thought crossed his mind, that the call was probably that damn lab assistant doing this on purpose. Before the phone reached his mouth, he barked out, a gruff, “What!”
“It's me,” the voice snapped in a firm monotone.
Harcourt straightened in his chair, pulling the VR plug from his jack. “Sorry sir, I was busy.”
“Doing what? Fucking one of those VR programs again, you perverted asshole?” Not waiting for Harcourt's ad hoc confession, the caller continued, “We've got to move again. Shut the whole thing down and move it.”
“Not again. We're just getting up to full speed here from the last time we had to move.”
“It doesn't matter damn it. We about to get national publicity, of the worst kind. Probably international publicity. They found Jonathan. Oona talked,” Merriwhether admitted angrily.
“What happened?” Harcourt asked, fixing his clothes as if his employer could see him.
“What happened? Your goddamn sex programming is what happened. That cretin was just too damned horny and it’s your fault. If you had programmed him to the code none of this would have happened. Your damn free-lancing perversion has screwed it all up.”
Defensive, Harcourt was at first afraid. Merriwhether never cursed, never used guttural slang unless he was irate.
As the tirade continued, Harcourt felt like a cornered rat, blamed into defensiveness he raised his voice in response, “Don't try and blame it one me. That goon was a killer, through and through. Not even your precious Proma could erase that. I told you to go with someone with a lower profile, someone less dangerous. No matter how we programmed him, Dombrowski couldn't change. Not someone so disturbed, so deeply disturbed like him.”
Merriwhether countered in a venomous tone, “He wouldn't have gone off if you hadn't had him tramping through the bars looking for hookers. Once he was set off, Petr killed Jonathan, but not Jonathan's appetites. The very appetites and desires you programmed into him. It was so easy for him to put the past and present together, he had no choice. Had he not been so lustily attracted to harlots and whores, we might have been able to reel him in before he remembered Denver.”
“What set him off?”
“The night he got picked up for drunk driving, he was raped in jail.”
“So that's what happened,” Harcourt mused with idle professional curiosity. “I knew it would take some type of acute trauma to overcome all the months of programming and the drug regimen. So the beast got buggered. I'll be damned.”
Bringing his charge back to the present situation, Merriwhether snapped, “You most assuredly will be, if you don't do as I tell you. Close down all the programming banks. Take all the originals, make a back up and then erase the system. Make it perfectly clean, I don't want some federal data bank detective finding any shadow files on the system. I don't want any traces of operating date or place, nothing is to be on the system when you leave. Understand? Take your stuff too. I don't want anybody sniffing around later and finding a single shred of evidence as to what we were doing. An extraction team will be there within the hour to move the equipment.”
“What about the subject? What do I do with him?”
“Don't worry, I've got a recovery team from Langley coming down in an hour or so. They'll take him away. I've arranged some clinic space at a private sanitarium in Montana. I want you to go there too.”
“Montana, it's so damn cold. Can I continue with my own research there?”
Frustrated and beleaguered by his subordinate's petty wishes but recognizing the need he had for Harcourt's special skills and loyalty, Merriwhether sighed, “Yes, you can do your damn little programming there. But I want to know a whole lot more about it. Understand? I want some checks and balances.
“Does that mean you're going to be there more?”
“Not necessarily. I've got some work to do on the 'replicant' project. That's going to take most of my time. I managed to get into L.A. and collect some tissue samples. It might be interesting to
see what we can do with it.”
“Jonathan?”
“Don't worry about it. You've got your hands full with your own little beast.”
“No doubt about that. Wouldn't they just die if they knew who we had.”
“They would if he ever gets away, like the last one. Now hang up and get busy. By morning the place better be empty.”
Harcourt looked out across the lab into the subject chamber. The gel-suited figure lay silently bathed in the fluorescent lighting. Casting a glance at the monitors as he hung up the phone, he couldn't help but laugh out loud.
The hand was moving again.
There was nothing like a mid-afternoon quickie to get a guy going.
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