“Few do.”
“What kind of testing?” Rolich asked.
“IRAX11,” Stanforth said.
The CEO’s eyes widened. “That . . . that was terminated.”
Stanforth stared hard at Erdman. “How would Jacobson know about SharDhara?”
“You tell me.” Erdman shook his head. “Never heard of the place until now. I knew IRAX11’d been field-tested, but never when or where. I’d always believed Jacobson was the one who helped you guys pick the location, tabulate results, and so on.”
“You believed erroneously. Dr. Chatterjee performed that duty for us.”
“He’s dead.”
“Quite.” Stanforth nodded. “I’ll assume that he somehow told Jacobson before his demise.”
“So what?” Rolich said. “So Jacobson knows where IRAX11 was tested. How much more damage could he possibly do? Go to the press?”
“How much more damage, Doctor?” Stanforth asked Erdman alone. His voice remained calm, but his eyes showed something else entirely. “I will not ask again.”
“We’re missing three canisters,” Erdman said.
“Of IRAX11?” Rolich grabbed the desk for support. “Missing? You mean you didn’t . . .”
“We discovered this three days ago.” Erdman stared at something far past and away from the room. He looked like a man prepared to die. “In the confusion of the escape. The murders! The cleanup. We’d checked, but . . . These were test batches, canisters from deep storage. I can presume Jacobson took them. We believed . . . I don’t know what. That there’d been a mistake or . . . We, I concede, should have apprised you more promptly.” He looked straight at Stanforth.
The colonel reached for something below the table, and Rolich visibly flinched. From beneath the table, Stanforth brought out a short tubular canister. It looked like a can of tear gas or a beer can.
“Is that . . . ?” Rolich retreated back from the table as if Stanforth had placed a cobra there.
“Shall we open it and find out?” Stanforth put his fingers on the top.
Erdman leaned toward it. “Where did you find that?” he asked.
“Three targets were eliminated in Jersey yesterday. Dennis, David, and another boy. One of Jacobson’s secret adoptees, we assume. I’ve brought you all three bodies for testing. When we received the letter this morning, we made a closer examination of the cleanup, and there it was.”
“IRAX11?” Rolich reclaimed his seat, looked between them, confused. “They had this? Out in the world?”
Stanforth nodded. “Most likely with instructions to open it on July fourth at some public event. Agreed?”
“San Francisco,” Erdman murmured. “It’s where The Zodiac killer operated. . . .”
“Yup,” Stanforth agreed. “The Babysitter in Detroit. There was a Freeway Phantom in D.C. and a Phantom Killer in Texas. Could be either, but we assume it’s D.C. Gotta be a dozen major public celebrations planned, and the symbolism alone would have been tantalizing. Three canisters, three cities.”
“Astonishing. How many . . . ,” the CEO stuttered, “I mean, how many people could he . . .”
“Ten thousand,” Erdman said.
“Each canister,” Stanforth added.
Rolich shook his head. “Astonishing,” he said again. “I mean, guys, if we don’t—”
Before the man could finish his thought, Stanforth shot him.
DSTI’s chief executive flipped backward with the force of the discharge, his body and chair upended in an instant. Blood and brain had sprayed across the wall behind. The sound still reverberated throughout the room, and a single leg now extended from beneath the table, the pant leg wilted down to reveal a dark tartan sock; the leg’s shoe apparently vanished alongside the gunshot.
“I told you: If you lied to me again, I’d kill both of you,” Stanforth said as he laid his pistol atop the table. Erdman had stood during the shooting. The two henchmen with Stanforth hadn’t even exchanged glances. “In this case, it seems, you’d not revealed the entire truth. A technicality that warranted, you’d agree, a reduced punishment. Next time, there’ll be only you.”
“How will you—” The geneticist stared in horror at the pant leg.
“Not your concern,” replied Stanforth. “Hiking accident, maybe. Fell. Sit down, Doctor.”
Erdman did as he was told. “There’s no antidote,” he said, one eye still on the extended leg. “July fourth is three weeks away.”
“We stay the course. Keep fixing snags as they come along. Castillo’s already found three clones, including one of the original six, and the second nurse. He has a strong lead on half a dozen more. In just forty-eight hours, our other solution has eliminated four more.” Stanforth grabbed the canister, shook it slightly for emphasis. “We’re missing two canisters now. Three weeks could be enough time to clean this up. From what the Ohio kid—Albaum, was it?—said, we suspect several are still traveling together. Heading west. Hitting houses along the way that have Jacobson’s other private clones.”
“And if not?” Erdman asked.
“Twenty thousand Americans tear themselves and their neighbors into small bloody pieces,” Stanforth said. “And you’ll be killed in the subsequent cover-up, which blames Al-Qaeda sleeper cells for contaminating the water supplies.”
“Understood.”
He most assuredly did. It was three days since Albaum, the Ed Gein clone, had been brought in. The first Castillo’d found. The boy’d arrived in the morning for a handful of various blood and DNA tests and a brief psychological exam. Diagnosis made. Prescription given. Done. Little Edward “Leatherface” Albaum was peaceful and drooling by the middle of that same afternoon. Utterly comatose. No more stories of killer clones or boys dressed as clowns from this kid. Stanforth had apparently taken care of the boy’s dead family, with other hired “parents” even now also being disposed of. More “hiking accidents,” no doubt. The price of admission, Erdman figured. Progress always comes with an invoice. With Jacobson, and now Rolich, out of the way, just maybe he could make peace with Stanforth. Prove he was on the same page, and always had been. “Understood,” he said again, more to himself this time.
“You seem to be taking this all rather well, Doctor. Good. Always fancied you a practical man.”
“Pragmatism and science have always gone hand in hand, Stanforth. The dreamers and bleeding hearts can stick to poetry and paint. You remember what Oppenheimer said when they first tested the atomic bomb.”
“Sure . . . sure. He cited the, ah, Bhagavad Gita, right? ‘I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ ”
Erdman nodded. “Apocryphal. What we tell classrooms and the History Channel to make ourselves feel better. Want to know what he really said, according to half a dozen witnesses?”
Stanforth smiled. “What?”
“ ‘It worked.’ ”
NEED TO KNOW
JUNE 10, FRIDAY—OLNEY, IL
They rested in an east Illinois motel. It was afternoon. Castillo lay on his back in his bed, fully dressed, staring up at the ceiling.
“What’s wrong?” Jeff asked from across the room.
Castillo sat up, passed over his phone to the other bed. “They sent me this a couple minutes ago. What do you think?”
Jeff reached out to take the phone and looked at the image. “My father?”
“They think so. His handwriting.” Castillo nodded. “They found it yesterday.”
“Where?”
“Outside Indianapolis. This mean anything to you?”
His thumb flicked across the touch screen. “What the fuck?!” Jeff looked away from the phone. “Oh my God, Castillo . . .”
“Give me—” Castillo lunged up.
“I already saw it,” Jeff said, handing the phone back. “You didn’t think I know how to scroll back? Who is she?”
“Some woman. The card was next to her when they found her.”
“I can see that. What’s it mean?”
“They don�
��t know.” He watched the boy absorb the quantifiable evidence that his father was a murderer. “You OK?”
“Yeah.”
It was a lie. Castillo figured it best to keep the conversation elsewhere. “The three names on the card there are serial killers from specific cities.”
“Clones?”
“Can’t be, apparently. Because no one knows who those three guys really were.”
“You still believe in ‘can’t be’? I’m not sure there’s such a thing.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Castillo shook his head. “My bosses figure it’s some kind of clue that something’s going to happen in San Francisco and Detroit and Washington on July fourth. Henry did say they were headed west. Makes sense.”
“SharDhara.”
“That’s what it says.”
“But no one really knows what happened there.”
“We know something happened there. A test of some kind. Some kinda biotoxin.”
“That’s going to happen here?”
“Who knows.” Castillo thought a moment. “I know I don’t like the way my boss sounded. He couldn’t give a shit about Henry or these other two. Your leads on Salem. Sherwood Forest. Didn’t care. It was about the guys heading west. ‘Grave’ was the word he used. Wouldn’t tell me anything beyond that.”
“You didn’t tell him you know about SharDhara.”
“Nope. When I asked him about it, he said it was outside my ‘need to know’ anyhow, but to keep an eye out for any references to it moving forward. Said the only thing I needed to know now was that it was a grave threat and to keep my eye out for a canister of some kind. So I didn’t feel obligated to tell him anything about what Ox told us.”
“Wow.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That pisses you off, doesn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“That they wouldn’t tell you what SharDhara is.”
Castillo rubbed his head. “Maybe. But it shouldn’t. I’ve spent fifteen years on a need-to-know basis. Goes with the job. And maybe they don’t know much more than we do right now. Regardless, if . . . If your father’s note or anything we’ve learned about SharDhara is any true indication, and these guys have a canister of some terrible biotoxin . . .”
“So are we still going west, then?”
“Like I said, he had no real interest in Salem or Sherwood Forest. Especially when I told him those two kids were either already freed or dead. He said they’d be taking care of it. Ordered me west to San Francisco. Those are the guys I was hired to bring in.” Castillo lay back down and closed his eyes. “Anything on that card make sense to you?”
“What’s the twenty-first-century thing?” Jeff asked.
“Nothing,” Castillo replied.
“It’s something.”
“Something to do with Jack the Ripper.”
“Oh.”
Castillo yawned, a long groan that turned into a half-formed thought: “Gotta nail these little fucking monsters. . . .” He regretted the words even as they passed his lips. Looked at Jeff. “Hey, look . . .”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jeff said.
“Not the Sizemore kid,” Castillo said. “Not you. The other six guys.”
“Sure.”
“You know what, fuck it. Here’s the thing. Sorry if it ‘offends’ you somehow, but it is what it is. I’ve tracked down some real bad guys over the years. Men who’ve killed a lot of people. But I always knew what I was dealing with. I got it. The religious fanaticism. Or greed. Or power. Duty. Whatever it happened to be, I understood it. These guys were sadistic and terrible and damned, but there was a reason to be those things.”
“But not these guys.”
“No,” Castillo admitted. “Not Henry. Or Ted. Or some little fuck dressed up like a clown. And I’m talking these kids and their original selves. They kill for fun. Period. They fucking kill because it’s fun. And I just can’t accept, I won’t . . .” He could hardly breathe. The air in the room was suddenly warm and thick. “Physiological, biological . . . old or new. Nature, nurture. I don’t give a shit anymore. They’re . . . they’ve become only monsters to me. And, despite what your new pal Ox might think, I’m too old to believe in monsters.”
“You’ve killed people,” Jeff said. “Are you a monster?”
“War’s different.”
“You think I’m a monster.”
“Didn’t say that.”
“That I’m just some clone. Evil incarnate.”
“Jeff . . . I didn’t—”
“My father told me they’d taken one of Dahmer’s cells and retrained it to become, like, an egg cell. Then they fertilized that egg with another one of Dahmer’s cells. Never been done before, he said. I am one hundred percent him. I am Jeffrey Dahmer.”
“In genes only. I guess that’s how it works. Right? So what? So, you’ll be tall and blond and probably need LASIK. And? Good for you. I wish I was tall and blond. So you’re maybe genetically prone to being an alcoholic, so what? Go to AA meetings and keep away from alcohol. So you’re genetically prone to, what, being gay? Good. You’re not being raised in the seventies. Fall in love with whoever you want and live happily ever after.”
“And the murder? The death? The corpses?”
Castillo looked away. “I never said . . . I’m not saying you’re like Henry.”
“Castillo.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to . . . to hurt people. I don’t ever even think about hurting people. I don’t care whose blood is running in my veins. That’s why my father did this, you know. I understand that now. He wanted to explain the terrible thoughts in his own head. He wanted to prove it was all in his blood, that he didn’t have a choice. So he took the most terrible person ever and raised him like a normal boy to see what would happen. To prove that the genes, the blood, that nature would win. But I never even think about . . . I’m not some disgusting monster.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” The words were a soft plea. “Do you really?”
Castillo looked at the boy. But he didn’t reply.
“Well, don’t feel too bad,” Jeff said. He turned away. “To tell the truth, I’m not totally sure either.”
They both lay in the silence for a long time.
Then Jeff said, “I want to find my dad.”
“So do I.”
“I mean now.” Castillo could hear Jeff moving off the bed, and he opened his eyes to look over. “I want to find him now.”
“Unless he’s in San Francisco, can’t do it. Not yet. You OK? You look kinda . . .”
“I’m fine. When?”
“After. You’re shivering.”
“I’m a little cold, is all. After what? July fourth? That’s bullshit. We can start now.”
Castillo stared hard at the boy. “ ‘Bullshit’? Get your quilt. Jesus.”
“I’m fine.” Even as he said it, Jeff’s face had scrunched in agony. Castillo could almost feel the shiver scrabble up his own spine.
“Sorry, kid,” he said. “I’ve been ordered to San Francisco. Go yourself if you want.”
“You’d let me?”
“Yup.”
“But I need your help.”
“Then we’ll look after San Francisco.”
“Can we start now?”
“Haven’t we already? We’ve been fighting through two hundred pages of notes. What more do you want us to do?”
“We need books.”
“What kind of books?”
“Books about Jack the Ripper. And I want you to use your FBI database thing to pull up any unsolved murders of women in the last five years. Women who’ve . . . who’ve been cut open. Like that teacher at DSTI. Like the woman in Indiana where they found the card.”
Castillo looked at the boy, who’d freed the motel quilt and blanket from underneath and wrapped them around his shoulders so that only his small head pushed out.
His face the same as the monster from Castil
lo’s dreams. I bite.
But, also, not at all.
Castillo sighed. “Tomorrow,” he said.
FAMILIAR, ALMOST
JUNE 10, FRIDAY—OLNEY, IL
A flash of light and noise. When the darkness returned, the thing in the doorway had already vanished back into the night with it.
Castillo fired two more times to make sure.
He’d rolled behind Jeff’s bed as he’d shot, chasing away that last clutch of sleep, ignoring his confusion and shock of the door bursting open to put three bullets into his anonymous target. Whatever the hell it was. He’d worked Special Ops for ten years, on missions from Angola to Syria, and had never once fired at an unidentified target. Until now.
This guy had simply felt like something he was supposed to shoot.
And familiar, almost.
The last two bullets had a moment ago chased after the retreating form as the door frame splintered out into the night. It’d moved so damn fast. Castillo steadied the gun over Jeff’s still form beneath his arms. Tried to figure out if the kid was dead. Hadn’t Jeff screamed?
Someone had screamed, a terrible sound. Castillo allowed that it might have been himself, and he focused even harder on waking completely. Had he simply shot the boy by mistake? Or on purpose? The dreams. Such horrible dreams. Had he imagined the whole thing? Nope. Castillo reached out with his free hand and felt the kid’s skinny leg. “Hey, kid.” He shook him. “Jeff . . .”
“I’m good! I—”
“Quiet,” Castillo snapped, and clambered over the foot of the bed toward the doorway. He kept low to the curtained window, clinging to the same darkness to which his enemy had recently retreated. “Get behind the bed.”
He stole a glance out the door into the parking lot. Light from the La Quinta sign above cast a yellow sheen over the empty sidewalk and every car in the lot. The whole world looked jaundiced and diseased.
Castillo cursed. When exactly did I become the prey?
A fence rattled in the distance and Castillo gave chase.
“Stay put,” he shouted back into the room.
His bare feet slapped loudly against the walkway as he sprinted toward the chain-link fence. Something ripped into his heel. He could see where the top of the fence still trembled, as if someone had climbed over a moment before. He quickly scanned the cracked doorway he passed, and then the ashen face behind a barely drawn curtain in the next room. No threat, only curious tourists alarmed by the clamor. Too afraid, too smart, to come out and do anything about it. The police would arrive soon, he knew.
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