The Lucifer Genome: A Conspiracy Thriller

by Glen Craney

  Bolted next to the buzzing box of high-voltage death was his target: a police camera hidden to catch speeders and red-light violators. Sucking in a deep breath, he pulled a small screwdriver from his backpack. This close to the transformer, he’d be Colonel Sanders Extra Crispy in ten seconds if the camera hadn’t been properly grounded. He closed his eyes and fingered the camera’s casing, bracing for a heart-stopping jolt, and …

  Nothing.

  Releasing a breath, he quickly unscrewed the box covering the camera. He lifted it off and read the specs on the label plate below the lens: A megapixel robotic webcam. Pan/tilt/zoom controls with presets. Heater and fan with windshield wiper. This baby was state of the art. Failsafe backup with one hundred gigabytes of archiving—he grinned again—on the camera’s hard drive.

  He had never read words so sweet. The plate indicated that all the video was forwarded to the main capture station every twenty-four hours.

  Beat the cam clock by twenty-seven minutes. Booyah!

  He detached the cable that ran to the satellite transmitter, momentarily interrupting the connection to the monitoring center, and then pulled a custom-fitted cable from his backpack to hot-wire it to the camera’s hard drive. He inserted the other end of the cable, rigged with a USB connector, to his iPhone. He opened the video-conversion app on the phone and looked for a new input source.

  Bingo! We have target lock.

  Now all he had to do was download a few gigabytes of file footage. Should take him, oh, ten minutes, if the iPod didn’t burn up first. If he’d only had one of these badass flash drives, like the one that the Mossad agent Isserle had likely used to transmit all that data from Marly’s computer, no telling what—

  “Hey, pal!”

  Cas blinked behind the glaze of his cheap sunglasses. Why was the dusk sky all of a sudden pulsing with the colors of the rainbow?

  “Get down here!”

  He looked at the street below and saw a police cruiser, its Mars bar flashing, parked right under him. Damn it. Sure enough, one of Dallas’s finest in blue stood at the base of the pole.

  The cop aimed his service revolver up at him, finding the point between his ass and his package. “Did you hear me, chief?”

  Cas stole a glance at his iPod screen. Come on, baybee. Just two more minutes.

  “Lemme guess!” the cop hollered up. “You either escaped from Millwood, or they dumped you out here!”

  Cas counted it one small blessing that Marly wasn’t there now. She’d probably sign the commitment order to send him to a Dallas psychiatric ward. He glanced at his iPhone’s screen again—the download was almost finished. Desperate to buy a few more seconds, he yelled at the cop, “Pancakes!”

  The cop squinted in confusion. “Huh? What’s that you—?”

  “Maple syrup!”

  The cop shook his head and slipped his pistol back into its holster. “Come on, buddy, let’s climb on down. We’ll get you back to the hospital and find you some pancakes. If those greedy sonsabitches won’t take you in, we can always get you to a shelter.”

  Still gripping the telephone pole with his legs, Cas disconnected the iPod from the camera, making sure the cop couldn’t see what he was doing. He slipped the mobile device into the front of his underwear. He took off his backpack and slung it over the fence into an adjacent lot littered with old car parts. He shouted, “Ough’oh!”

  The cop’s jaw dropped. “Now, what’d you do that for?”

  “New one! I want a new one!”

  The cop rolled his eyes. This time, he motioned more forcefully for Cas to return to Earth. “Damn right you’ll get a new one, friendo. I’m not going over there to get that one.”

  Cas slowly clambered down, careful not to bang the iPhone. Reaching the ground, he offered his hands to be cuffed.

  The cop laughed. “You’ve been watching too much late-night tube.”

  “Book’em, Dano!” Cas raised his thumb and pointed his index finger as if shooting at a bunch of bad guys. “Book’em! Book’em! Book’em!”

  The cop led the babbling Cas into the backseat of the patrol cruiser. Closing the door, the cop glanced over to his partner in the passenger seat. “Looks like it’s gonna be one of those nights.”

  His partner grimaced. “You just had to make one more circuit before we took our break, din’t’cha? Now we won’t get dinner for another hour.”

  “Hey, whaddya want me to do?” the first cop asked. “Leave the guy sitting on that pole like a pigeon taking a shit? Next thing we know, the papers are running a story about some psych-ward escapee falling on his head while playing tightrope walker on the phone wires. And we get our asses chewed.”

  “Yeah, I suppose,” his partner said. “Whaddya gonna do?”

  The cops talked on as if he wasn’t there, so Cas slipped the iPod out of his crotch and held the device below the meshed screen, out of their view. He checked the volume: Good, it had remained off. He tapped open the video-replay app to open it.

  The cop driving looked at the rearview mirror. “What’s your name, buddy?”

  Cas hid the iPod from view behind the front seat. “Hilbert. What’s yours?”

  “Officer Hank.”

  Hank’s partner was chortling.

  “What’s got you so jolly?” Hank asked him.

  The cop riding shotgun said, “They shoulda used the name ‘Hilbert’ instead of ‘Forrest’ in the movie. Hilbert Gump. Has a better ring to it.” He did his best Tom Hanks imitation. “Stupid is as stupid does.” He thought a moment. “Or is it, stupid does as stupid is?”

  Hank joined in on the Gump-quotes hit parade. “Momma always told me, life is like a box of bullets.”

  While the two uniformed buffoons continued amusing themselves as they drove, Cas rewound the video he had downloaded from the street camera. He watched the metered time frame speed back the minutes and seconds, praying that he had waited long enough on the pole to reach the point—2:45 p.m. yesterday—when those goons in the Beemers had accosted him and Marly. He blew a sigh of relief when the number hit the target.

  He stopped the video and zoomed in on the freeze-framed image.

  There they were … the two black sedans parked at the curb under a light pole when he and Marly were on the roof. The rear bumper of one of the BMWs was facing the camera. He pushed the zoom to the limit, until the resolution of the pixels started breaking up. The Texas license plate came into rough focus. He could just make out the letters and numbers: BA2 A849.

  “Hey, Hilbert!” Officer Hank shouted over his shoulder. “You aren’t gonna throw up on my seat, are you?”

  “Wee-wee!” Cas wailed, hiding the iPhone behind his back.

  They turned and glared at him through the security mesh. “What’d you say?”

  Cas shook and fidgeted, imitating a two-year-old about to do what two-year-olds do best. “Gotta pee!” he cried. “Gotta pee baaaad, Officer Friendly!”

  Hank’s partner flung his head backwards. “Ah, for the love of Jesus, Joseph, and Jerry Jones!”

  Hank wheeled a hairpin turn and pulled into to a burger joint.

  “Oh, c’mon, Hank, no!” his partner protested. “Let’s just get him to the damn shelter, and he can pee his freakin’ brains out there. You can’t be serious—”

  “I’m not taking any chances,” Hank said. “You remember that old fart we picked up outside that Irving bowling alley last month? I had to steam-clean the damn floorboards after the mess he made. I still can’t get the stink out of my nostrils.”

  “You had that one coming. Taking that corner at eighty like that.”

  Hank parked and popped open the lock on the back door. “Go in there and do your thing, Hilbert. And wash your hands when you’re done.”

  “Yessir. Wash my hands. Wash my hands of crime. I’ll come clean. Get it?” Cas cackled like a maniac. “Get it?”

  As he leapt out and waddled into the Whataburger holding his crotch, the two officers sat back and scoped the parking lot for
potential trouble.

  Hank’s partner looked up at a giant burger on a sign and smacked his lips. “One of those jalapeño half-pounders sounds damn tasty right about now.”

  “Uh, no,” Hank said. “I’m not punishing my gut with another one of those depth charges. Tonight, I’ll be going for my usual. Club sandwich on white toast with cottage cheese. Denny’s doesn’t cut corners with the cottage cheese.”

  “Yeah? Since when did you become such an expert on cottage cheese?”

  “My uncle used to run a deli downtown. He told me stories about expired cottage cheese that made me think about becoming one of those vegafarians. He saw three customers taken to the ER for food poisoning.” Hank’s stomach growled. “Dammit, what’s taking him so long?” He rubbed his gurgling belly. “My ulcer is firing up again. If I don’t get some cottage cheese in my gut soon, I’m gonna start refluxing like a Galveston gusher. Wouldja just go get him.”

  “You go get him. You’re the one that wanted to bring him along.”

  Hank cursed under his breath and kicked his door open. He walked into the burger joint and found no customers inside. He tipped his cap to the manager. “Slow night, huh?”

  The manager straightened to attention. “We do most of our business between five and eight.”

  “Good to know. Say, did you happen to see a stupid-looking guy walk in here couple minutes ago? Hard to miss. Pink sweats, sunglasses.”

  The manager nodded and pointed to the restroom.

  Hank sauntered over and pounded on the door. “Hilbert! Time’s up!” When he got no answer, he tried the knob. Damn door was locked. “Hilbert! Get outta there! Now!”

  The manager brought the key. Hank unlocked the door and threw it open, itching get his hands on this Hilbert character. The windowless bathroom was empty. Hank glanced up at the ceiling. The covering over the ventilator shaft had been removed with a screwdriver.

  Where did that human monkey get hold of a tool kit?

  Hank’s impatient partner arrived on the scene. “What the hell is—” He looked at Hank, stunned by the dimwitted prisoner’s vanishing act.

  Behind them, the bathroom door slammed shut.

  Hank tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. He turned to the manager. “I’m going to ask a question I probably don’t want to hear the answer to. … Do you use one of those rubber wedges to keep this door open while you’re cleaning the bathroom?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  All three men looked down at the baseboards, realizing together that the door had been wedged shut from the outside.

  Hank held his churning stomach. “I’m guessing you’re the only one holding down the fort at this hour.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hank put a hand on the manager’s shoulder. “Right. Now, I’m going to ask you another question that I probably don’t want to hear the answer to. … Do you serve cottage cheese?”

  The manager hesitated. “Yes, sir. But I wouldn’t eat it.”

  WHILE THE TWO OFFICERS REMAINED locked in the restroom, Cas slithered around behind Hank’s police cruiser and crawled into the driver’s seat. He searched the hump and found the daily briefing log. Scanning the assignment locations, he located the name of the dispatcher on duty. He picked up the radio transmitter and punched the button, then crooned, “Heather, darling. It must be my lucky day.”

  The dispatcher replied over the speaker: “Hank? Is that you?”

  “All two hundred and ten pounds of prime Texas beef.”

  “You sound different.”

  Cas coughed and lowered his voice to improve his imitation of the digestion-challenged cop. “Nasty cold, just crept up on me like a blue Norther. I guess that’s what I get for going turkey huntin’ naked the other night.”

  “How’s your stomach doing?”

  “Fair to middlin’. … Say, hon, can you run a plate for me?” He powered up his iPhone and opened the saved image of the BMW sedan caught on tape by the surveillance camera. “Bravo Alpha Two, Alpha Eight Four Niner”

  Seconds later, the answer came across the scratchy speaker: “Registered to a limited liability corporation named Lightgiver Technologies.”

  Hadn’t that property manager back at the industrial park—the poor bastard Marly almost popped—said he rented that abandoned lab office to a biotech company with Light-something in its name? Close enough for government work, considering he had no other leads.

  He dropped back into his Hank role and twanged, “Old dawg like me can’t keep up with all the new tricks over there in that hi-tech wonderland. Do we still have access to the Secretary of State’s database for corporate directors?”

  “C’mon, Hank, that’s child’s play. Let me run it through.” Seconds later, she said, “The LLC was registered by a Seth Cohanim over in Llano County.”

  “That helps,” Cas said, though the name meant nothing to him.

  “What’s the deal out there, Hank?”

  “Suspicious BMW near the airport.”

  After another second’s hesitation, the dispatcher asked, “What are you doing clear over there? That’s a little out of your pen tonight, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve been tailing the suspect for a while. Erratic driver.” Cas poked his tongue around his mouth, as if stuffing some chew into his cheek. “Say, Heather,” he moaned, his words sounding like mashed potatoes in a blender. “I’ve been way too easy on you here. Let’s see if we can get you to do some serious lifting.” He smiled to himself through her confused silence. “We interface with Homeland Security these days, correct?”

  “You’re pulling my leg now, Hank. You know we are. But the Feds get a little pissed when we make an inquiry.”

  “Then let’s make those stuffed suits in Washington earn their pay tonight, whaddayasay? Drop Mr. Cohanim’s name into the hopper and see if he’s earned any demerits from Uncle Sam.” He unleashed a tremendous belch. “Maybe it’s that enchilada I had for lunch, but my gut’s telling me we might have a border runner here.”

  “You’re a pig, Hank. Always have been.”

  Cas could almost hear her tamp down a smile.

  “Hang tight, give me a sec,” she said.

  Waiting for the results, Cas peered over the cruiser’s dashboard. Through the burger joint’s large front window, he saw the door to the restroom shaking furiously. Hank and his partner were inside, trying to free the wedge that he had hammered into the doorjamb. He expected them any minute now to start shooting their way out like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

  At last, the dispatcher came back on. “Looks like your instincts were half-right. Seth Cohanim has a federal record, all right.”

  “Transporting illegals from Mexico, si?”

  “No, selling tainted beef. He’s been cited ten times by the USDA.”

  Cas lurched up, hitting his head on the roof. “Selling … huh? How’s that?”

  “Here’s something else that may interest you. Mr. Cohanim boarded a flight at Dallas International about an hour ago. He must’ve left his car there, been in some big fat hurry.”

  “That, or maybe he was just running late for a flight.”

  Shots rang out from inside the restaurant. Cas could see the cops tossing the splintered door out into the dining area. He watched them rushing toward the door.

  “Were those gunshots?” the dispatcher asked.

  Cas ducked behind the dashboard. “Just a backfire there, hon. I gotta get Maintenance on this damn muffler.” He sighed. “Heather, real quick, does HSA give the destination of the flight this Cohanim character is on?”

  “Riyadh … Any idea where that is? Somewhere in Mexico?”

  No answer.

  Long pause, then the dispatcher tried again. “Hank? Hello? Do you copy? Can you read me? You still there?”

  Another pause followed, this one shorter.

  “Yeah, this is Hank.”

  “This Riyadh place,” the dispatcher asked. “It’s near, what? Juarez, Sinaloa?”

  “
What the hell are you talking about?” The real Hank, now back in his cruiser, yelled into his transmitter, “Who’s on this goddamn open line?”

  The speaker nearly exploded from the volume spike. “Who do you think it? It’s Heather! Use that kind of language on an open dispatch line one more time, Benson, and I swear to god I’ll write up a harassment complaint faster than you can order a brisket and sides, and then I’ll have your cajones deep-fried at Pepe’s for happy hour.”

  The real Hank, grimacing from another shooting burn in his stomach, clicked off the transmitter. He got out of the cruiser, slammed the door, and walked slump-shouldered to the speaker in the drive-through lane. He pressed the button on the order box.

  “Welcome to Whataburger,” the manager said. “If this is your first time here, may we recommend our new Down Home Crockett Cobb Salad with our real Texas bacon bits and fat-free cottage cheese.”

  “It’s me! Look out your damn window!”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Sorry. May I take your order?”

  “Give me one of those jalapeno cheeseburgers. And supersize it with some jumbo fries.”

  “Would you like to try our new red-hot Lonestar barbecue sauce, sir?”

  Hank loosened his belt in preparation for the colonic Apocalypse. “Yeah, why not. Put enough of that Hill Country tar on those jalapeños to down a ten-point buck.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Upper West Side, Manhattan

  MARLY BOLTED UP ON HER bed from a nightmare. Clutching her flower-print sheets, she looked around the room in a sleep-fogged daze and slowly realized, to her great relief, that she was not trapped in some smoke-filled Middle Eastern opium den, but safe in her own apartment. The alarm clock said she had slept more than twenty hours, so why was she still so exhausted?

  She resolved not to think about the lost week of work. Fortunately, most of the time she had frittered away—thanks to the demented antics of the surfing poster boy for America’s Most Wanted—had been office appointments only. Those were easy enough to reschedule, but the semester’s end was approaching, and Thanksgiving break was just a few weeks away.