“What sort of a monster would do this?” she wailed, looking up at Riggio. Her face was moist with tears. “Who would do this to my sweet Juju?”
Riggio had no idea, but found it unsettling. That afternoon he helped her bury the beloved pet in the back yard, and built a wooden cross, with the dog’s name on it. Mrs. Monroe lamented that there would never be another dog like Juju, and said she didn’t want another one. Riggio felt very sorry for her, and vowed to help her in any way he could.
His landlady had become his friend. She was too nice to have something like that happen to her. A cruel neighbor who didn’t like dogs must have done it. Or, maybe Juju had growled at someone and bared his teeth, just as he’d done to Riggio—with a far more deadly response than hurling a book at it.
CHAPTER 8
The crippled FBI agent’s lower body was surrounded by the orange glow of her exosuit. She was accompanied by two plain-clothed Denver homicide detectives, one a black man with a shaved head, and the other a tall, very officious woman.
As the three of them made their way down the hallway of a mansion that had been converted into a sorority house, young women watched from the open doorways of their rooms, whispering among themselves. Many of the girls looked afraid, and Jantz didn’t blame them. A grisly murder had been committed here last week, and the perpetrator had not yet been caught.
The killer had been having a tryst with Mrs. Latrice Baldwin, an ex-model. Their sexual liaison had occurred at an unchaperoned and unsanctioned sorority party, in one of the upstairs rooms. Mrs. Baldwin, who had graduated from college fourteen years before, had maintained contact with her sorority, and one Saturday in May she arranged for the use of a bedroom in the house. It had been unheard of for such a request to be made, or granted, but she’d had considerable influence in social circles, and had pulled strings. Those who noticed her enter the room with her date described him as a handsome blond man, around thirty, with a muscular physique.
The layout of the sorority house was such that the bedroom they occupied was at the rear on the fifth floor, which was the top level. There was only one way out of the building—down the central stairway and across the main floor where the main group of partygoers were. According to life-safety laws, the building should have had fire exits on each end, but it did not, and this was one of the side issues of the murder investigation. Jantz was surprised that the authorities had not shut the building down, but that was not her concern.
At first the killing had been considered a local police matter—until the FBI noticed the strange and obscure DNA from the crime scene in the national crime data base, and contacted the Denver Police. Prior to her visit, Jantz had not provided the detectives with all the information she knew; they didn’t need it. This was a federal matter beyond their jurisdiction, a murder arising out of one of an old FBI case that had never been closed.
The female officer, Detective Angie Montero, opened an evidence security lock, swung a door open and said, “This scene is exactly as we found it, except the body and murder weapon have been removed.”
Sheets and blankets were in disarray, and soaked in dark, dried blood. Montero pointed a hand-held device into the room, and a 3-dimensional VR image of the body appeared on the bed, in the same supine posture in which it had been found. The face was filled with terror, the eyes staring at the ceiling. She was nude, and a white-handled knife was stuck in the center of her chest.
Jantz had her own hand-held device. She activated it, casting a pale blue illumination around the room, sweeping the light over the walls, the furnishings, the door handles, filling the room with light.
Recognizing what it was, Montero said with some irritation, “We’ve already scanned for fingerprints. We got the DNA from the perp’s semen, but there are no prints other than those of the victim and the women who lived and worked in the house. We checked and re-checked.”
A VR screen popped up in front of Jantz’s eyes, and she said, “Then what the hell is this?” She pointed at the clear, enlarged image of an unidentified fingerprint, designated as such by a yellow color in the readout.
“What the—Where did you find that?”
“On the backside of one of the bed posts. There’s either something wrong with your equipment, or something wrong with your people.” Jantz transmitted the image to the FBI laboratories in Quantico, Virginia. Moments later they sent back the results: there were seven matches with earlier crime scenes. Eight dead women.
She took a long, deep breath. This was important, the second big breakthrough since the crippling attack on her.
The detectives looked at her, waiting to hear what she had learned.
“The print matches seven other murder cases,” Jantz said. “All attractive women. One in Atlanta, others in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Fort Lauderdale, and San Francisco. Two others were found near highways or in the woods. It seems that we have a serial killer.”
“No name with the prints?” the black officer, Detective O’Lara, asked.
“None. From your DNA sample we know the killer is a male. In an odd coincidence, or for some unknown scientific reason, fingerprints from the other seven crime scenes didn’t have enough nucleated cells for DNA testing, so we didn’t know if the killer was male or female, and had no knowledge of the connection to one of our own cases until we received word from you.”
“So we aided your investigation,” Detective Montero said. She had a sheepish expression on her face, was obviously embarrassed at the oversight.
Jantz smiled grimly. “It makes me wonder how many local police errors there are in other jurisdictions, like the mistake you made. Maybe we’re looking at more than eight connected murders.”
Montero didn’t respond.
“We’re taking over this case,” Jantz said. “I’m directing you to turn all your files over to us. Our agents will pick up the physical evidence, along with the originals of everything you’ve already scanned and sent in—and anything else you haven’t sent to us yet.”
The detective glowered. “We sent it all to you.”
“We’ll see about that, won’t we?”
The cop nodded, in resignation. Both of them knew there was nothing the Denver Police could do. The feds had priority; she couldn’t contest the multi-state case that was opening up.
Agent Jantz had not given the Denver Police the name of Dr. Kato Yordanius or any information about him, the scientist who had been conducting illegal laboratory experiments on human beings and human cellular material, and had fled when his lab was raided—the man who was responsible for her crippling injuries.
After the FBI lab raid, Yordanius had sent the agency a letter apologizing for what happened to Jantz, saying he’d never intended for anyone to be hurt, and insisting his experiments had been altruistic, with the goal of developing a more perfect, non-violent human being. There had been no return address on the letter, no way of tracing it. No fingerprints, saliva or other evidentiary residue.
Even if Yordanius’s claim had been true, he’d been tampering with human genetics, performing illegal experiments, going far beyond any accepted societal norms. It was one thing to experiment with human cells and genes with the goal of curing disease or developing beneficial drugs; it was quite another to have the audacity to play God, to think that a lab scientist could do a better job in the creation of mankind than the Lord Almighty had done himself.
Troubled thoughts whirled through Jantz’s mind. She wondered what sort of monster the notorious scientist might have created in his laboratories—albeit unintentionally—and if there were more of them on the loose. One grown fetus, demented from the witch’s brew of experiments, was bad enough, but more....
CHAPTER 9
Zack Lamour always went through the same exercise regimen before showering and going to bed, doing pushups, leg lifts, pull-ups, and crunches on the carpeted floor of his home on the outskirts of Seattle, a loft with an apartment and an art studio. He was primarily a professional watercolor artist, ma
de his living by displaying his paintings in local galleries.
He also painted with oil, and had received his highest individual commissions from oil paintings on large canvases. Even so, he preferred watercolors, for the softness and subtleties of the colors he could achieve in that medium, and for the serenity of the scenes and faces these colors enabled him to paint. Gallery owners said he was equally talented in oils, but he had his own preferences, and after all he was the artist, and needed to feel the inspiration for each project he undertook.
Most of all, Meredith had told him often that his watercolors were superior, and it was her opinion that carried the most weight with him, not the comments of gallery owners. It seemed that every important decision he’d made since the divorce, every important thought he’d experienced, had involved her, remembering their times together.
This evening he was overdoing the exercises, in an attempt to make himself so tired so that he would not be kept awake by new thoughts that had been troubling him. Finally, when he was spent from exertion, he lay on his back breathing hard.
Disturbing thoughts kept scrabbling their way back into his brain.
It seemed incongruous to him that a double-tragedy could sharpen his art, actually improving the quality of his work. The death of his son Travis and the divorce from Meredith should not have energized his career. Still, it had happened. Money was beginning to come in. He was not wealthy yet, but gallery operators were asking for his work, and customers were beginning to pay more for each piece. Zack’s career was on the rise, and in a month he was scheduled to go on his first nationwide tour, making public appearances in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Washington, DC. His manager called it the turning point of his career. But he could not fully enjoy it.
He sat up, still breathing hard. The studio smelled of paints and thinners, but he was almost immune to them. Such odors didn’t bother him, not even when he slept next to his easels and paints, on a bed set up by one of the windows. On those occasions when he needed a little air, he could easily open a window. They were old-style windows that tilted outward on upper hinges, with ornate metal rods at the bottom that could be swung out to prop the windows open.
The only rational explanation Zack could think of for his sudden and unexpected success was that his work had improved because it was therapeutic for him, a way of escaping the cruel horrors of life. But he was feeling guilty about the increasing recognition, wondering if it was the result of a bargain for his soul that he’d made with the devil.
He climbed into bed, fluffed his goose down pillow the way he liked it and snapped his fingers to shut off the lamp. His head sank into the pillow.
Travis died because Zack took a shortcut through a dangerous neighborhood, and their car was hit by an errant shot, coming from one of the tenement buildings. Meredith had always been right about it being his fault, yet he’d never admitted it to her. This only increased his feeling of guilt.
He slipped into troubled sleep, but it didn’t last long....
In the darkness Zack swung his feet out of bed onto the floor. He snapped on the lamp and rubbed his eyes, recalling clearly what he’d been dreaming about. A face, a beautiful child’s face.
Moments later he found himself in the storage room adjacent to his art studio. He pulled framed canvases out of the way, some of them illustrating backpacking and rock-climbing trips he’d taken with Meredith, to the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges. He had also gone on occasional trips with Detective Nolan Hagel of the Seattle Police Department, a friend from the military, when they served in the Army Special Forces.
Other paintings depicted events from his military background, when he served in the South China Sea. In one of the pictures he was showing Meredith how to use a .45 automatic. He knew how to defend himself, and had taught her to do so as well. She was a good shot, considering her limited amount of practice. They’d been scheduled to go to a practice range the same day their son was killed.
When the bullet hit the boy in the neck and he was grievously injured, Zack had his own handgun in his hand, and was brandishing it at bystanders, warning them to stay away, while Meredith screamed for someone to send medical help. But it was too late; their son had died instantly. Neither one of them had seen who did the shooting.
Now Zack took less care than he should in moving the paintings out of the way, and tossed them to one side, in a disordered heap. The piece he sought should be here somewhere, or had he discarded it? Could he have painted over it? He hoped not, and struggled to remember as he dug through the canvases, some of which were completed paintings and many of which were not. He had tried to put it out of his mind.
His heart ratcheted in his chest.
Finally, behind other paintings in a shadowy corner he saw a medium-sized canvas wrapped in black plastic. Feverishly he ripped away the covering and beheld the watercolor painting of his former wife Meredith and their four year old son Travis, the mother kneeling beside the son. They seemed to be staring directly at him, with matching hazel eyes.
The canvas was unfinished. Intending to surprise his wife with it, he had been working on it at the time of the tragedy. The drawing task had been completed, but color had been only partially applied. The face of the boy was a pencil drawing, and without the ebony coloration that he had not yet applied he looked more Caucasian than black.
With tears streaming down his face, Zack placed the painting on his easel and prepared paints and brushes, so that when he got up in the morning he could begin right away. He could no longer leave this important work uncompleted.
He knew he could not share his feelings, his terrible turmoil, with anyone but Meredith—but they could never be together again. Too much had happened between them.
CHAPTER 10
On Sunday, Meredith ran a number of errands that had been piling up—to a shoemaker for the repair of her leatherol watchband, to a sporting goods store for jogging shoes that were on hold, and to an office supply store to return a malfunctioning wi-fi recording device. And to a pet food store.
Arriving at the two-story urban townhouse where she lived by herself, she popped leftover pasta into the laswave. She put it on a tray and took it, along with salad and a small container of yogurt, to her study over the garage. On the tray, she also had small bowls of cat food and milk.
A tiny, scruffy cat followed her. Meredith had found the animal as a kitten, trembling and cold, under a bush a year ago. Not much larger than her hand at the time, the poor creature had been near death. Meredith had named it Blue Girl because of the blue-gray cast to her fur, and had brought her back to life by nursing her with baby bottles, then giving her baby food, and (in the last couple of months) cat food.
Her study, a large, cheerful room, featured pitched ceilings, pendant lights, and skylights that could be opened by voice-activation to let in fresh air. It had a cozy worldnet screen on one side, with a tattered beanbag pillow chair. Her desk, an old oak roll-top, stood in the center of the room with a VR computer on it and a printer on a side table. Etchpads and books were scattered on the desk and floor.
She cleared the desk and placed the tray on it, then leaned down and placed the bowls on the floor. Blue Girl watched her, purring. Meredith petted it. The fur had never been smooth, and seemed to be full of cowlicks. The veterinarian said there was nothing he could do about that, but he was pleased with the general health of the animal, and praised Meredith for rescuing it.
Now Meredith located a folder containing the crystalloy printout of an in-progress story. Entitled DEATHWEAVE, it was her uncompleted novelette, the murder mystery set in Victorian England. The protagonist was a female servant in one of the most magnificent castles in the realm, a young, headstrong woman who was outspoken about women’s rights, receiving criticism for her views and losing a previous position for speaking up at the wrong time, to the wrong person.
In DEATHWEAVE, she was wrongly accused of murdering the patriarch of the wealthy family that o
wned the property. Meredith’s story wasn’t very far along, only a couple of scenes beyond the outline stage. She needed to develop her characters more if she was ever going to make them convincing for her readers, causing them to come alive on the pages.
She’d only had a handful of short stories published so far, all historical romances. He was the one who encouraged her to write in the first place, saying she had talent, basing that on complaint letters she had written to various companies. While Travis was alive, Meredith had begun to write stories and sell them. But since his tragic death and the divorce, she’d done very little.
It was only in the past month that she’d resumed creative writing—and each time she sat here in her study she recalled the life she and Zack had planned for themselves—both would be artistic and would encourage one another, he with his painting and she with her writing. It was one of the many things they had in common, and it had seemed a possibility for awhile, until everything fell apart when Travis was shot and killed.
Even with these bad memories, Meredith enjoyed writing. It challenged her and gave her satisfaction, and gave her something to look forward to.
Looking over the edge of the desk she saw Blue Girl eating the food. The cat was her only companion now, and was always nearby when she worked.
Touching the screen to open the computer file, Meredith stepped on a floor switch to activate full-sensory virtual reality. Soft light enveloped her, and she found herself inside the kitchen of the castle she had been writing about, the opening scene of her story, in color. The interior walls were stone gray, hung with gleaming copper pans and utensils. The mouth-watering aromas of roast beef and garlic assailed her, and she heard background conversation coming from the castle’s main dining room.
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