by J. D. Robb
“We were one to them. One of us would live in the house, mother to our children, wife to our husband. One would live in Italy, in the Tuscan countryside. The villa’s large, the estate beautiful. As is the château in France where one of us would live. Every year, on the day of our becoming, we would be switched. And the other of us would be given a year with our children. We thought we had no choice.”
Tears glimmered now in three pairs of eyes. “We did what we were told to do. Always, always. One year of every three to be who we were made to be. Two years to wait. Because we were what Will wanted, and what the father deemed he could have. He made us to love, and we loved. But if we can love, we can hate.”
“Where’s Deena?”
“We don’t know. We contacted her when we agreed to cooperate with you. We told her what we intended, what had to be done, and that she should disappear again. She’s good at it.”
“The school has a second generation.”
“Of many. Not us. This was what Will requested of his father. But we know there are more of our cells preserved somewhere. In case.”
“Some have been sold.”
“Placement. He called it placement, yes. Made-to-order generated a great deal of money. It required a great deal of money to continue the project.”
“Were all the . . . the base for the project . . . all from the wars?” Eve asked.
“Children, some adults who were mortally injured. Other doctors, scientists, technicians, LCs, teachers.”
“All female.”
“That we know of.”
“Did you ever ask to leave? The school?”
“To go where, and to what? We were taught and trained and tested every day, all of our lives. We were given a purpose. Every minute was regimented and monitored. Even what was called our free time. We’re imprinted to be, to do, to know, to act, to think.”
“If so, how do you kill that which made you?”
“Because we were imprinted to love our children. We would have lived as they’d wanted us to live, if they’d left our children alone. Do you want a sacrifice, Lieutenant Dallas? Choose any one of us, and that one will confess to it all.”
They linked hands again. “That one will go to prison for the rest of our lives, if the other two are free to go, to take the children away where they’ll never be touched or observed. Where they’ll never have to be stared at, pointed out. Be objects of fear or fascination. Aren’t you afraid of us, of what we are?”
“No.” Eve got to her feet. “And I’m not looking for sacrifices, either. We’re breaking from interview at this time. Please remain here. Peabody, with me.”
She went through the door, secured it, then went straight into the observation area. Reo was already on the ’link, having an avid conversation in undertones.
“They’d know Deena Flavia’s location,” Whitney said.
“Yes, sir. They know where she is, or how to find her. Certainly they have contact information. I can separate them again, go at them individually. With the confession on record, I can get a warrant to have them tested, find out which, if any, is pregnant. If so, that one would be the most vulnerable. Peabody could soft-pedal with them, one on one. She’s good at it. Next hit is to push on locations for the labs specifically used for the project, where they’ve put whatever data they’ve already taken, and who, if anyone, is on Deena’s termination list. They’re not done. They haven’t accomplished everything they were after, and they’re oriented to succeed.”
She glanced at Mira for confirmation.
“I agree. At this point they’re giving you what they want you to have. They want your help in shutting this down, and your sympathy. They want you to know why they did what they did, and why they’re willing to sacrifice themselves for it. You won’t break them.”
Eve lifted her eyebrows. “Want to put money on it?”
“It has nothing to do with your interview skills. They are the same person. Their life experiences are so minutely different it barely registers. They were created to be the same, then trained and given a routine that ensured they would be the same.”
“One hand held the knife.”
“You’re being literal,” Mira said impatiently. “In a very real sense, that one hand belonged to all of them.”
“They can all be charged,” Tibble pointed out. “Conspiracy to murder. First degree.”
“Never get to trial.” Reo shut her ’link. “My boss and I are in agreement on this. With what we just heard in there, what we know, we’d never get this to stick. Any defense would whoop our asses long before we got to a murder trail. Frankly, I’d like to defend them myself. Not only a slam dunk, but I’d be rich and famous by the end of it.”
“So they walk?” Eve demanded.
“You try to charge them, the media’s going to chew it bloody. Human rights groups are going to get in on it, and in five short minutes, we’ll have the newly formed Clone Rights organizations. You get them to lead you to Deena, that’s chummy, Dallas. I’d like to hear her story. And maybe, if there’s only one of her, we manage to cut some deal. But with these?”
She gestured toward the glass, and the three women at the table. “You’ve got enforced imprisonment, brainwashing, diminished capacity, child endangerment. And if I were going to bat for them, pure old self-defense. I’d make it work, too. There’s no way to win this.”
“Three people are dead.”
“Three people,” Reo reminded her, “who conspired to break international laws, and who broke said laws for decades. Who, if you’re getting the truth in there, created life, then terminated those lives if they didn’t meet certain standards. Who created that which killed them. They’re smart.”
She walked closer to the glass. “Did you hear what they said? ‘We were imprinted to be, do, feel,’ and so on. That’s a strong, impenetrable line of defense. Because they were created and engineered and imprinted. They acted as they’d been programmed to react. They defended their children against what many will see as a nightmare.”
“Get what you can out of them,” Tibble ordered. “Get Deena Flavia, get locations. Get details.”
“And then?” Eve asked.
“House arrest. We’ll keep them under wraps until we get this closed down. They wear bracelets. Guards—droids—twenty-four/seven. We’re going to have to pass this up, Jack.”
“Yes, sir, we are.”
“Get details,” Tibble repeated. “We’re going to verify every one of them, cross every T. Twenty-four hours, max, and we’re passing this ball. Let’s make sure it doesn’t bounce up and smash into our faces.”
“I’ve got to head in, start strategizing what we do when and if we do it.” Reo picked up her briefcase. “You get anything I can use, I need to know. Day or night.”
“I’ll show you all out.” Roarke stepped to the door.
“I need to speak with the lieutenant.” Mira stayed where she was. “Privately, if you don’t mind.”
“Peabody, go in. Give them each a bathroom break, offer them food, drink. Then pick one. Take her out and start working her. Soft sell.”
When she was alone with Mira, Eve walked to the large coffeepot Roarke must have put on a table. She poured a cup.
“I’m not going to apologize for my comments and reactions of earlier today,” Mira began.
“Fine. Me, neither. If that’s it—”
“Sometimes you seem so hard it’s difficult to believe anything gets through. I know that’s not true, and still . . . If Wilfred and his son did the things they—she—claims, it’s reprehensible.”
“Look through the glass. See them? I think that goes a long way toward corroboration of the statements given.”
“I know what I see.” Her voice trembled a little, then strengthened. “That he used children—not consenting, informed adult volunteers, but innocents, minors, the injured, the dying. Whatever his motives, whatever his goals, that alone condemns him. It’s difficult, Eve, to condemn someone you considered a h
ero.”
“We’ve been around that lap already.”
“Damn it, have some respect.”
“For who? Him? Forget it. For you, okay, fine. I do, which is why you’re pissing me off. You got any dregs of respect left for him, then—”
“I don’t. What he did was against every code. Maybe, maybe I could forgive what he started to do, out of grief. But he didn’t stop. He perpetuated it. He played God with lives, not just in the creating of them, but in the manipulation of them. Of her, and all the rest. He gave her to his son as if she were a prize.”
“That’s right, he did.”
“His grandchildren.” Mira pressed her lips together. “He would have used his own grandchildren.”
“And himself.”
Mira let out a long, unsteady breath. “Yes. I wondered if you’d realized that yet.”
“A man has the power to create life, why bow to mortality? He’s got cells preserved somewhere, with orders to activate on his death. Or he’s already got a younger version of himself working somewhere.”
“If so, you have to find him. Stop him.”
“She’s already thought of that.” Eve gestured toward the glass. “She and Deena. And they’ve got a big jump on me. She’d like the trial.”
Eve moved to the glass, studied the two women still in the meeting room. “Yeah, if the kids were away, protected, she’d fucking love to face trial, and spill all this out. She’d spend her life in prison without batting an eye to make sure what was done is in the open. She knows she’ll never spend a day in a cage, but she’d do it if she had to.”
“You admire her.”
“I give her an A for balls. I admire balls. He put her in a mold, and imprint or no, she broke it. She broke him.”
She knew what it took to kill your jailer. Your father. “You should go home. You’re going to have to spend time with them tomorrow if we’re going to cross all Tibble’s T’s. It’s too late to start that tonight.”
“All right.” Mira started for the door, paused. “I’m entitled to some degree of upset,” she said. “To my irrational outbursts earlier, to anger and hurt feelings.”
“I’m entitled to expect you to be perfect, because that’s how I see you. So if you go around acting flawed and human like the rest of us lower beings, it’s going to throw me off.”
“That’s so completely unfair. And touching. Do you know there’s no one in this world who can annoy me so much as you, other than Dennis and my own children?”
Eve slid her hands into her pockets. “I guess that’s supposed to be touching, too, but it sounds like a slap.”
A smile whispered around Mira’s lips. “That’s a mother’s trick, and one of my favorites. Good night, Eve.”
Eve stood at the glass, watched the two women. They nibbled on what looked to her like a grilled chicken salad, sipped water.
They spoke little, then only about the innocuous. The food, the weather, the house. Eve continued to study them when the door opened and Roarke stepped in.
“Does having a conversation with your clone constitute talking to yourself?”
“One of the many questions and satirical remarks that will be made if and when this becomes public knowledge.” He moved to her, behind her, laid his hands on her shoulders. And found exactly the spot where the worst of the tension knotted.
“Relax a bit, Lieutenant.”
“Gotta stay up. I’m giving it about ten more minutes, then we’ll juggle them around again.”
“I take it you and Mira have made up.”
“I don’t know what we did. I guess we’re down to irritated rather than supremely pissed.”
“Progress. Did you discuss the fact that Reo told you what you’d hoped to hear?”
She let out a sigh. “No. I guess she was irritated enough that one got by her.” She glanced over her shoulder, met his eyes. “Not you, though.”
“I’m not irritated with you, which is approaching a term record, I believe. You don’t want them punished. Charged and tried and judged.”
“No. I don’t want them punished. Not my call, but it’s not what I want. It’s not justice to lock them up. They’ve been locked up all their lives. It has to stop. What’s being done, what they’re doing.”
He leaned over, kissed the top of her head.
“They’ve got a place to go already. Got a place to run already set up. Deena would have that nailed down. I could probably find it, sooner or later.”
“Given enough time, I imagine so.” Now he stroked her hair. “Is that what you want?”
“No.” She reached back to take his hand. “Once they get sprung, I don’t want to know where they are. Then I don’t have to lie about it. I’ve got to get back to this.”
He turned her, kissed her. “Let me know if you need me.”
She worked them. Took them as a group, separated them. She tag-teamed them with Peabody. She let them sit alone, then hit them once more.
She was going by the book, right down the line. No one studying the record of the interview could claim it wasn’t thorough or correct.
They never demanded a lawyer, not even when she fit them with homing bracelets. When she took them back to the Icove residence in the early hours of the morning, they showed considerable fatigue, but that same unruffled calm.
“Peabody, wait for the droids, will you? Get that set up.” She left her partner in the foyer, moved the three women into the living area.
“You’re not permitted to leave the premises. If you attempt to do so, your bracelets will send out a signal, and you’ll be picked up and—due to the violation—brought into Central holding. Believe me, you’ll be more comfortable here.”
“How long do we have to stay?”
“Until such time as you’re released from this restriction by the NYPSD or another authority.” She glanced back to make certain Peabody was out of earshot, and still kept her voice low. “The record’s off. Tell me where Deena is. If she kills again, it’s not going to help anyone. You want this stopped, and I can help stop it. You want this public, and I’ve got a line on that.”
“Your superiors, and any government authority that gets involved, won’t want this public.”
“I’m telling you I’ve got a line on it, but you’re squeezing me. They’ll block me out. They’ll block me and my team and the department out. They’ll scoop you up like hamsters, you and anyone else like you they can find, and put you in a fucking habitrail so they can study you. You’ll be back to where you started.”
“Why would you care what happens to us? We’ve killed.”
So had she, Eve thought. To save herself, to escape the life someone else planned for her. To live her own.
“And you could’ve gotten out of this without taking lives. You could’ve gotten your kids and poofed. But you chose this way.”
“It wasn’t revenge.” The one who spoke closed those strange and lovely lavender eyes. “It was liberty. For us, for our children, for all the others.”
“They would never have stopped. They’d have made us again, replicated the children.”
“I know. It’s not my job to say whether or not you were justified, and I’m already going outside the lines. If you won’t give me Deena, find a way to contact her. Tell her to stop, tell her to run. You’re going to get most of what you’re after. You’ve got my word.”
“What of all the others, the students, the babies?”
Eve’s eyes went flat and blank. “I can’t save them all. Neither can you. But you can save more if you tell me where she is. If you tell me where the Icoves have their base of operations.”
“We don’t know. But . . .” The one who spoke looked at her twins, waited for their nod. “We’ll find a way to contact her, and do what we can.”
“You don’t have much time,” Eve told them, and left them alone.
Outside, the air was cold on her face, her hands. It made her think of winter, the long, dark months coming.
“I’
ll drive you home.”
Peabody’s tired face brightened. “Really? All the way downtown?”
“I need to think anyway.”
“Think all you want.” Peabody climbed into the car. “Gotta get ahold of my parents in the morning. Let them know we’ll be delayed if we make it out there at all.”
“When were you going?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.” Peabody yawned, enormously. “Maybe beat the most insane of the holiday shuttle traffic.”
“Go.”
“Go where?”
“Go as planned.”
Peabody stopped rubbing her exhausted eyes to blink. “Dallas, I can’t just take off to go eat pie at this point of the investigation.”
“I’m telling you that you can.” Traffic was blissfully light. She avoided Broadway and its endless party, and drove through the canyons of her city nearly as alone as a lunar tech on the far side of the moon. “You’ve got plans, you’re entitled to keep them. I’m stalling this,” she said when Peabody opened her mouth again.
Peabody shut it, smiled smugly. “Yeah, I know. Just wanted you to say it. How much time you figure we can buy?”
“Not that much. But my partner’s off with her face in the family pie. I got Roarke’s relations zeroing in on us. People start scattering with turkey on the brain, they’re harder to get in touch with, get balls rolling.”
“Most federal offices are closed tomorrow, and through to Monday. Tibble knew that.”
“Yeah. So maybe it slows things another few hours, maybe another day if God is good. He wants the same thing, so he’ll make noises, but he’ll stall, too.”
“What about the school, the kids, the staff?”
“I’m still thinking.”
“I asked Avril, well one of them, what they were going to do about the kids. How they were going to explain that there were three mommies. She said they’d be told they were sisters who’d found each other after a long separation. They don’t want them to know, not about them. Not about what their father was doing. They’re going to go under, Dallas, first opportunity.”