David knew this same man had once murdered six people with a .44 revolver. Blinded another. Paralyzed an eighteen-year-old girl. For a year, on and off, he’d simply walked the streets of New York shooting total strangers.
David Berkowitz. The .44-Caliber Killer. The SON OF SAM.
And SAM, whoever the hell that was, had apparently been quite fertile.
Because David was another son. And cell for cell and genome for genome, the man he’d been made from now sat directly across from him. Just forty years older. As if it wasn’t a thick acrylic window separating them, but some kinda freaky mirror.
David knew this because it was in the file Dr. Jacobson had given him. From the same DSTI files he knew he fought depression and had some anger issues, but nothing a few meds and maybe a little counseling couldn’t keep in check. And when the other guys were going nuts that first night, the night Jacobson finally lost his friggin’ mind and set them all loose, he’d honestly just kept out of their damn way.
Sure, he’d helped skin Dylan after the kid was dead—thought he was dead, he’d told himself every day after—but that was only so the others would think he was doing something. Maybe give him a break. He’d seen what Ted and Jeff were doing to the other DSTI kids who weren’t playing the game. So, yeah, he went along with it. But, all in, he was still cool. He wanted no part in the murder stuff. Or, didn’t think he did. He’d shaken those other guys as quickly as he could. Was ecstatic when Jacobson had split the two groups up. Even promised he and Dennis would find all the kids on Jacobson’s list. Others like him. Kids born to kill. Would have promised anything to get away from Ted and Henry and Jeff.
Not that Dennis and Andrei were much better . . .
“I know you?” the man on the other side of the freaky mirror asked. His voice sounded funny coming through the small vent at the bottom of the glass. Like a shitty cellphone even though they were sitting a foot apart.
“Sorta,” David replied.
“Sorta? You look real familiar. What’s your name, kid?”
“David.”
“No kidding. Two peas in a pod, how about that?”
“Yup.”
“So who are you, and to what do I owe this visit? They told me you had some kinda letter to get in or something.”
“Um, Dr. Jacobson thought . . .”
“Ah, I see. Good old Gregory Jacobson. Haven’t heard from him in years. You his kid or something?”
“Sorta.”
“Again with the sortas. And he ‘sorta’ set this up?”
“Yes. I . . . I needed to talk with you. He gave me that letter to get in. Said that was OK and made some phone calls, I guess.”
“You guess. Well, you got about ten minutes, kid. What ya want to talk about?”
“Do you feel bad about killing those people?”
“You’re one of those beat-around-the-bush kinda guys, huh?”
“Do you?”
The man crossed his hands. He smiled, but it wasn’t a nice smile this time. “Every damn day,” he said. “You writing a school report or something?”
“I’m just . . . trying to figure things out. I have . . .”
“You have what?”
“Strange stuff in my head, you know. Kinda confused nowadays.”
“Yeah? Is that what this is about? You must be one of those kids he works with down at that school. Yeah, sure. Strange stuff in your head. I used to talk to the dog, you know. Thought he was possessed by a demon and he told me to kill people. ‘Strange’ like that?”
“Something like that.”
“Really? Shit. Sorry, kid.” The man freed a pair of glasses from his shirt and fixed them to his nose. “You talk to your parents about this?”
“Mom’s dead. Dad’s . . . well . . .”
“Old man’s a shit, huh?”
“Sorta.” David smiled when he said it.
The man chuckled behind the glass. “You got friends?”
“Not really. They . . .” He thought of Dennis and Andrei sitting out in the car in the prison parking lot, waiting for him. Andrei, whom he’d picked up just days before, per Dr. Jacobson’s orders. The one he’d freed. The one who’d killed that homeless dude last night. Kept hitting him with the hammer even after . . . “They’re kinda bad.”
“I hear you, man. I had the same, growing up. You know. Adopted, shitty dad, immoral friends, the whole nine yards . . .”
“I know.”
The man studied him for a moment before speaking again. “Yeah? You seem to know a lot. You know Jesus Christ?”
“Not really.”
“No?” The older David leaned forward. “ ‘For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ You read the Bible?”
“No.”
“Start. You’re not alone, brother. God’s servants are always facing the trials of this corrupt world. Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Paul . . . we each endure tremendous suffering and temptation at the hands of the great enemy. Satan and all the evil spirits who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls.”
“Satan.”
“Got lots of names.”
“Cain.”
The man smiled big again. “ ‘And God said, What hast thou done, Cain? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.’ Sure . . . but it’s not just murder, kid. All, and I do mean all, have sinned and come short of the glory of God. We’re born with sin, each of us. And the price for that sin is death.”
“Death . . .”
“But, David, the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. We can turn away from sin and choose His greater Light. Always wish I’d learned this sooner.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Baby, I was once an iniquitous man addicted to pornography, a devil worshipper who studied Satanism, a slayer of Life who wandered the streets at night hunting pretty girls to execute. The Son of Sam.”
“And now?”
“Son of Hope. ‘With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’ ”
“If you could go back—”
“Can’t.” The man shook his head. “Can’t, can’t, can’t. . . . But I . . . no. I’d surely find another way.”
“Really?”
The man studied him again. Tilted his head as if recognizing something for the first time, but unwilling to accept it. “David . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Nothing,” the older man said quietly. “It was nice, ahhh, meeting you. Good luck.”
“You, too,” David said.
CREDENTIALS
JUNE 07, TUESDAY—SINKING SPRING, OH
The address led to the home of Frederic and Wendy Albaum and their eleven-year-old adopted son, a few miles outside of town, halfway between an abandoned auto-parts store and the local cemetery. The two-lane country highway was called Pickerington Run by the locals, but the signs Castillo had followed read Route 28. The last car had passed more than fifteen minutes ago. A long dirt driveway ran up to the shadowed three-story farmhouse. It was night when Castillo and Jeff finally arrived, the darkness adding to the town’s overall temper of barrenness and isolation.
He liked it. It reminded him of home. The trailer back in Thorough, New Mexico, shaded and lost at the foot of the Featherhold Mountains, the nearest neighbor an acre or more away on either side. And it reminded him of northern Iraq or parts of Pakistan: tranquil, boundless. Like, he imagined, walking alone through Eden. The whole world laid out by God as boundless scenery for solely one man. Castillo had paced off the perimeter of the house twice. Television light blushed through a second-floor side window, steady blooms of silver and blue against the closed curtain. The rest of the house appeared empty. Lifeless. There were three cars in the driveway, each with Ohio plates. Nothing out of the ordinary.
He knocked at the front door. Nada. Rapped again harder. Glanced in both directions at the outlying neighbors. Nothing there either. No sounds within. Castillo was actual
ly fine with that. All the possible scenarios he’d run through in case someone answered the door sounded absurd. Excuse me, Mrs. Albaum, I was hoping you could answer a couple questions about your son’s genetic makeup. Or Hi, Eddie. Curious. Ever jack off in the graveyard down the street? Honestly, the real openings he’d come up with didn’t sound much better.
He tried the door. Locked. Bolted, too. Castillo examined the front windows, chanced a peek inside. Nothing either. Thought about calling it a day. He’d simply head right back up the road into town and the Motel 6 where he’d stowed the kid. Get some sleep. Double-check some things with Stanforth. Follow up on Albert McCarty, the missing Delaware kid. Maybe visit the Albaums the next morning when . . .
But there was the giant snake, the effigy site, fifteen minutes away. And the Albaums. Who, upon further searching, had two sons registered in the local school system: Austin (age 17) and Edward (age 12).
And Jacobson’s enigmatic notes were filled with data on a boy called Ed.
Jacobson, or DSTI, or whoever, could have doctored up the boy’s birth records and whatnot easily enough. Something that would take less than thirty seconds and no more than a thousand dollars, if that, depending on how far up the operation went.
This had to be right.
Castillo backed away from the porch and followed the side of the house, keeping to the night’s shadows. Several blowflies were fluttering in the back door’s window.
This door was also locked but proved a cinch to crack. Castillo opened a gap.
The smell inside was immediate, faint, and too familiar.
Death.
Castillo drew his pistol.
• • •
On his bed, Jeff had laid out four sheets from the dozens Castillo had printed for him to study while he went out to check on the house.
The last names, if they were right about Albaum, were easy enough: Richardson, Sizemore, Howell, and Gilronan. But the stupid pictures were nothing but a big bunch of maybes. Jeff scanned Castillo’s “Murder Map,” searching for any town that made sense. But there were thousands. Castillo had told him to focus mostly along Route 50. Still, it was hundreds of possibilities. “Hundreds is better than thousands,” Castillo had said when he’d left.
Five hours ago! Jeff eyed the room’s small digital clock again. Castillo’d said he’d probably be gone awhile, but five hours? Had he found the boy? The clone? Had something bad happened? He refocused on the printouts. He’d made his own lists and notes next to each name and symbol, his blocky lettering right next to his fake father’s scribbles. Beside Rich Ardson (was it a heart or a bow and arrow?), he’d written down everything from Bowmansville, PA, to Points, West Virginia, and Athens, Ohio. Then there was Hunter. Or Sherwood Forest? Or Center Point? Or maybe even Loveland? It was maddening. The bird could easily be Birdsville, Maryland, or the Baltimore Ravens, or Birdseye, Indiana. Maybe Odon, Indiana, because he had two ravens as messengers. But then Jeff crossed it out because Odin was spelled wrong. The other two symbols: something about a moon, and a bug with a hat? No clue. None.
And besides, even if he could figure it out: Then what?
More of the clones would be found.
For the first time he stopped to think: But then what? What happens to them?
And me?
He brushed the printouts aside and eyed Castillo’s other files. Castillo had left them in a pile on the chair on Jeff’s side of the room. Almost like Castillo wanted Jeff to take a look. More and more, Jeff was starting to believe that everything Castillo did was part of some kind of test or plan. That there was a reason behind all of it. Jeff stood over the desk. His fingers ran over the same folder again. JD658726h56-54, it read on top. He’d already peeked inside. Jeffrey Dahmer/5. The one Castillo was after. Jeff had already flipped the folder open twice before. Enough to see the name. To see pictures of the boy he would soon become. Or was. Whatever else was within, he didn’t know.
Didn’t want to. And, at the same time, wanted to.
His eyes traced Castillo’s book instead. Castillo kept it in his duffel bag, and Jeff had seen him reading it late at night when Castillo thought he was sleeping. Jeff riffled through its pages, curious. The Grace of the Witch. The Beggar at the Manor. He knew of The Odyssey, the Greek guy trying to get home and Lotus people and all of that, but he hadn’t ever read it. Castillo had made little notes throughout in the book’s margins. Underlined and bracketed stuff, too. A lot of the pages dog-eared. Jeff read one of the underscored passages:
I am a man of much grief, but it is not fit that I should sit in another’s house mourning and wailing. It is wrong to grieve forever without ceasing.
Then flipped to another, one Castillo had put a star next to:
Since it is not possible to elude the will of Jove or make it vain, let this man go alone over the barren sea.
Jeff wasn’t sure what it meant, but he inspected some of the other marked passages.
To me, O stranger, thou appearest now a different man from what thou wast before, thou hast other garments, and thy complexion is no longer the same. Thou art certainly one of the gods who possess the whole of heaven.
Jeff closed Castillo’s book, swung his eyes and hand to the folder again.
JD658726h56-54
He propped it open some. The first page was numbers and a picture. The numbers made no sense. The picture was . . . The picture was what he would look like if he was cool. Cool? He cleared space on the small desk and opened up the folder.
There were a lot of numbers. The next page. More numbers. Asymmetry scores, MMPI fmab, MAOA, karyotype levels. And so on. It meant nothing to Jeff. His heart weighed a thousand pounds. His hand was shaking. What would the next page reveal? He’d expected everything spelled out. Black and white.
THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED ABOUT JEFF.
THIS IS HOW MUCH OF A KILLER JEFF REALLY IS.
THIS IS WHAT JEFF SAID ABOUT WANTING TO MURDER AND EAT PEOPLE.
There was none of that. Only more numbers. A person reverted to nothing more than a bunch of charts and graphs. No different, really, than a high school science class lab trying to figure out the pH levels of Ivory soap or the density of tomato juice. No more than Mendel and his stupid peas. He turned the pages over one after another. Nothing.
Until the second-to-last page. There, a few notes someone had typed. His father? Another one of the smiling shrinks at DSTI? Maybe it was Mrs. Jamieson. She was one of the smiliest shrinks they had up there. And apparently dead now.
need for stimulation/prone to boredom, lack of realistic long-term goals
propensities to risk-taking behavior—promiscuous sexual behavior? deprecating attitude toward the opposite sex—likely homosexual, lack of interest in bonding,
conning/manipulative, inclinations of excessive boasting
Ritualistic behavior/OCD? how much alcohol introduced? killed cat with bb gun. buried?
That was all. Then another page of numbers. Jeff turned back to the notes and looked for anything else to compare, or contrast, Jeffrey Dahmer/5 and himself, Jeffrey Dahmer/82. It did not say if the other Jeff had musical talent. But he only played bass and not particularly well. Maybe it meant nothing. Or everything. Jeff wondered if HE had any real long-term goals. Promiscuous sexual behavior? Stupid. He hadn’t even kissed a girl yet. Or any guy either, for God’s sake! He wondered if tapping his knee all the time was OCD. Or making sure his books were lined up in certain ways on the shelf. Or that he would never ever use the last bit of milk left in the jug but would pour it out into the sink. Did that count? He’d never killed an animal. But he’d found a snake once and picked it up with a stick. Did that count? He and the kid in this folder were genetically, physically, the exact same person. Beyond the blue eyes and blond hair, what else linked him to the original killer?
“Asshole,” he cursed his father—their father—in the empty room.
He closed the folder, stuffed the whole thing down to the bottom of Castillo’s pile.
Jeff crossed the room and retrieved his scattered notes from the floor and end of the bed. The last clue had led them straight to Serpent Mound and, probably, a clone in Ohio. He’d seen it almost immediately once he’d really thought about it. His dad had taken him there. He could remember walking up the high steel observation deck to look down upon the ancient burial mound. Of all the little pictures to draw, why that? Had his father known his adopted son would recognize it?
And Jeff thought, Serpent Mound was on purpose. For me to figure out.
And Jeff thought, Maybe they all are.
And Jeff thought, Why?
Something to ask later. If he ever got a chance.
• • •
The clone was named Edward Albaum.
Like the others, he’d been manufactured at DSTI. He was eleven years old. His family had been murdered. When Castillo found him, the boy was watching television.
There was a folder of information in the kitchen. Notes left behind by the others for Edward to study when he was ready. From the files, Castillo now knew that the Albaum boy’s DNA had come from the brain tissue samples of Ed Gein. The name wasn’t too familiar to most people, which was kind of surprising. Maybe because the name was so simple and ordinary; hard to remember. The actual guy, however, was far from simple or ordinary. Ed Gein’s acts became the true-life inspiration of such horror-movie legends as Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Norman Bates in Psycho, and Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs—three of the most famous horror movies ever made. Period. All from one guy. How was that for monster credentials?
But Castillo knew that the movies didn’t even share the whole truth. That the truth was too horrible, even for horror movies. Women dangling from meat hooks and necklaces strung with body parts. Skulls in the kitchen stained with vegetable soup and pudding. Suits of skin stitched from half a dozen bodies he’d dug out of a nearby graveyard. Reupholstered furniture of human skin, hearts in a pot in the kitchen, organs in the icebox . . . all the rest.
All the rest. Castillo was already tired of looking up the historical specifics. They always netted out to the same with these men, anyway. Mutilation. Necrophilia. Rape. Torture.
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