The Genesis Code

by John Case

  ‘But pretty soon, when the embryo grows to eight or sixteen cells, the cells begin to differentiate. Which is to say that, somehow, they begin to take on specific roles; they become brain cells, liver cells, nerve cells, and so on. Even though each of them has the same DNA, they activate or “express” different genes – and the genes they express determine the enzymes they produce, and that, in turn, determines the kinds of cells that they become.

  ‘So it’s an interesting conundrum: since they contain the same genetic information, one would think they’d have the same genetic capabilities. But they don’t. An early embryonic cell is totipotent: it can generate an entire organism – a person, a cat, a giraffe – from a single cell. But a nerve cell can only make another nerve cell. How come?’ Torgoff looked at Lassiter.

  ‘You don’t expect me to answer that, do you?’

  ‘No. But that’s what Baresi was working on: the differentiation process, and the mechanisms that control it. Which put him about thirty years ahead of the curve.’ Torgoff took a deep breath, exhaled, and looked around. ‘Why don’t we get some coffee?’

  ‘Good idea,’ Lassiter said.

  ‘There’s a place on the corner.’ Torgoff glanced at the Rubik’s cube, thought for a moment, and twisted it three times in rapid succession. When he laid it down on the desk, it was perfectly aligned. Together, the two of them got to their feet. Torgoff pulled a scarf from the coatrack in the corner and wound it around his neck. Then he hunched into a battered pea coat and settled a watch cap on his head. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  The air outside was freezing, and as they walked single file on a path through the snow, Torgoff continued his lecture.

  ‘You follow the O.J. trial?’

  ‘No,’ Lassiter replied. ‘Did it get much coverage?’

  The professor laughed. ‘Remember how hard they worked to muddy up the uniqueness of the DNA prints? Using statistics?’ Torgoff affected an aggressive, pontifical voice: ‘“So you can’t say this DNA belongs to Nicole Brown Simpson, isn’t that right? You can only say that there’s a statistical probability that it belongs to Nicole Brown Simpson, isn’t that right? Yes or no.” “Yes, that’s true, but, uh – we’d actually have to go to eight billion samples before we’d find another like it. And there aren’t that many people on earth, so –”’ Torgoff stuck his hand in the air. ‘“Objection, your honor, witness is not answering the question. I asked if it was possible to state definitively that this DNA sample belongs to Nicole Brown Simpson. Yes or no?”’ ‘“But, but –”’ ‘“Yes or no, sweetcakes. Yes or no.”’

  The coffeehouse was a long and narrow room behind a plate-glass window, white with steam. An Italian flag was draped across a wall of exposed brick, and the air was heavy with the aroma of freshly ground espresso. Torgoff and Lassiter took a table near the window and ordered lattes. Nearby, three young men sat at three different tables reading three different books. It occurred to Lassiter that all of them looked like Raskolnikov.

  ‘So,’ Torgoff continued, ‘we got DNA. And the DNA we got? It’s identical in every single cell of our body. Which is why a bit of semen, a drop of blood, a hank of hair, a patch of skin – any of them can be used to identify an individual by comparing it with a blood sample from the same person. Each cell, no matter what kind, contains the individual’s DNA – and that DNA is unique, from one person to another.’

  The coffee arrived, and Lassiter watched in amazement as Torgoff stirred about four tablespoons of sugar into his cup.

  ‘Basically, the DNA in a differentiated cell “tells” the genes that this particular cell is going to be hair: so it can forget about traits like eye color, blood type, and so on. Think of the DNA as a piano with a hundred thousand keys, and each of the keys is a genetic trait. In a differentiated cell, most of the keys are covered. They’re off. They don’t work. But even so, a lot of the keys are still operational: with hair, you’ve got curliness, pigmentation, thickness – like that. But that’s it. Everything else is off. And once it’s off, it’s off for good.’

  ‘Forever?’

  ‘As far as anyone knows. Once the DNA expresses a particular gene, there’s no going back. A nerve cell is a nerve cell. It can’t become a blood cell. It can’t become a brain cell.’

  ‘So how does that work?’ Lassiter asked. He was becoming interested in the subject, though he didn’t see how it could possibly relate to his sister’s murder or the deaths in Italy. ‘How does a cell decide what it’s going to be?’

  ‘I don’t know. No one does. That’s what Baresi was trying to find out – thirty or forty years ago.’

  ‘And did he?’

  Torgoff shrugged. ‘Not that I know of. Not that anyone knows of.’ He paused, and then went on. ‘The problem is: he stopped publishing. At some point he stopped submitting articles for peer review – though how long he continued working in the field is uncertain. It may have been months. It could have been years. The last I heard, he was in Germany, or some such place, studying –’

  ‘Theology,’ Lassiter said.

  ‘That’s right!’ Torgoff looked at him. ‘That’s right. You knew that. Well . . .’ Torgoff glanced at his watch and frowned. ‘I’ve got to pick up my son. . . . Look,’ he said, ‘biology is the hottest science in the world right now. And the hottest area in biology just happens to be what Baresi was working on, way back when.’

  ‘Differentiation?’

  ‘Exactly. He was studying the totipotent cells in frog embryos. Judging from the last papers that he published, he was dividing the embryos at the four- and eight-celled stage, using what must have been some very primitive equipment. And then he was culturing the divided embryos to see if he could develop identical organisms.’

  ‘He was cloning frogs?’

  ‘No. He was “twinning” frogs.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’ Lassiter asked.

  ‘Well, even identical twins get their genetic material from two sources: Mom and Dad. Clones get it from one: Mom or Dad. So if you wanted to create a clone, you’d have to remove the genetic material from the mother’s egg –’

  ‘The nucleus –’

  ‘– and replace it with the nucleus from a totipotent cell. A cell that’s in the earliest stage of embryonic growth. Then you’d have a clone, with all of the genetic information coming from a single source.’

  ‘And they can do that?’

  ‘Yeah. They’ve done it with sheep at the Roslin Institute. In Edinburgh.’

  Lassiter thought about it. ‘And if they can do it with sheep, they can do it with people, right?’

  Torgoff shrugged. ‘Theoretically.’

  ‘I mean, if they wanted to, they could clone me.’

  ‘No,’ the scientist said. ‘They couldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because all of your cells are differentiated. The last time you had a totipotent cell in your body, you were smaller than a freckle. What we could do, though – theoretically – is clone a child of yours. But only if we got to him in the earliest embryonic stage. When he was a cluster of totipotent cells. Four. Eight. Sixteen, max.’

  ‘And that’s possible?’

  Torgoff raised his eyes to the ceiling and rocked from side to side. ‘Maybe. Somewhere. They could probably do it at Roslin, but if they did, they’d go to jail.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s illegal to clone people in the British Isles – not that it’s come up much. But getting back to Baresi: we’ve come to take a lot of this for granted. Today, embryos are created all the time in fertility clinics. Back in the late fifties and sixties, it was a different matter. What we in science call “way out.” I mean, if you think of the technical innovations that Baresi had to make, just to deal with the nuts and bolts – what’s the matter?’

  Lassiter shook his head. ‘It’s just that . . . you know how Baresi ended up, don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘the last I heard he was writing about religion.’

  �
��Yeah, well . . . the beat goes on. He abandoned religion and enrolled in medical school – this was when he was, I don’t know, fifty years old or something. Specialized in gynecology and obstetrics. Wound up running a fertility clinic.’

  Torgoff raised his eyebrows and sipped his latte. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘he certainly had a lot of experience making embryos. He was probably pretty successful.’

  ‘Yeah, I think he was.’

  Torgoff sighed. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘it’s sad.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because he was a terrific research scientist, and if you look at what he was doing, and what he was after . . . it seems a waste.’

  ‘What do you mean,’ Lassiter asked, ‘“what he was after”?’

  ‘Well, the whole point of the differentiation studies was to find a way to reverse the process – to restore the totipotency of differentiated cells.’

  ‘Why? What good would that do?’

  ‘What good would it do?’ Torgoff said. ‘It’s the Holy Grail.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Because if you could do that . . .’ Torgoff frowned. ‘The mind boggles,’ he said. ‘It would be worth . . . trillions. And the money would be the least of it. If you could reverse differentiation, you’d change the world forever.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because . . . then we could clone you. And anyone else. Hell, you could dig up Beethoven, Custer, and Elvis and have them for children. Or your own mother. Or you could grow replacement parts, cannibalizing the clones whenever you needed a new lung, a liver, a heart. You can imagine the ethical issues, and the social ones: What happens to adoption when people can order copies of themselves – or anyone else – by mail? And when you combine cloning with recombinant DNA technology, it’s easy to imagine clones that aren’t quite human – fungible look-alikes, useful as cannon fodder, gladiators, or slaves. Instead of organic farms, organ farms. Disposable people.’

  Lassiter scoffed. ‘I think you’re out there, Doc.’

  Torgoff laughed and shook his head. ‘But I’m not. All you’d need is a nucleated cell with the DNA intact – a little bit of blood, a follicle of hair, a piece of flesh. Almost anything would do. Once the differentiation was reversed and the cell’s totipotency restored, you could use it to generate a whole new organism. All we’d have to do is insert the nucleus in an egg whose own nucleus had been removed. And then we’d culture it. Nifty, huh?’

  Lassiter thought about it. ‘What do you mean, you’d “culture it”?’

  ‘Well, if it was a person, we’d treat it as an oocyte procedure.’ Lassiter blinked at the word, and Torgoff started to explain. ‘That’s when we –’

  ‘I know what it is,’ Lassiter said. ‘My sister had one.’

  ‘Oh,’ Torgoff replied. ‘Well . . . then you know about it.’ He looked at his watch again, and scraped back in his chair. ‘I really gotta go,’ he said. ‘There’s a twelve-year-old kid and hockey tickets involved.’

  ‘Just gimme a second,’ Lassiter asked. ‘If Baresi had done this . . . I mean, if he’d found a way to reverse the differentiation of cells – we’d have heard about it, right?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Torgoff said, getting to his feet. ‘That would be as big as . . . what? The invention of the wheel? You’d have heard about it, all right. Unless . . .’

  ‘What?’

  Torgoff tightened his scarf and drew the pea coat’s collar close around his neck. Then he pulled his watch cap down over the top of his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Unless he had doubts. Maybe he scared himself. I mean, he did get religion, didn’t he?’

  As he rode back to the Marriott on the subway, Lassiter didn’t know what to think. Baresi saw God in a molecule and turned to the study of theology? Maybe. But what did that have to do with Umbra Domini and a string of murders from Tokyo to Washington?

  As the train rattled along Lassiter became increasingly impatient with himself. Why should he assume that Baresi’s passions for science and religion were important to the case? Because the priest said so?

  Yes.

  But obviously, the key to it all was the clinic, Lassiter thought, not science, and not religion. The fertility clinic. That’s what held the victims together – that’s what they had in common. And now that he thought of it, why was he chasing phantoms when he might have been interviewing women who’d actually been at the clinic? He had the names and addresses. They were the ones whose visits had lasted about a week, rather than thirty-two days. None of them had had the oocyte procedure, and none of them – so far as he knew – was dead. There were at least a hundred of these women, and he hadn’t talked to a single one.

  But Freddy and Riordan had. And what they’d learned could be summarized in a single sentence: Ain’t life grand? It was clear to Riordan, clear to Freddy, and clear to him, that none of these women were in danger. Even so . . .

  He bent over, ran his hand through his hair and groaned. It must have been a loud groan, loud enough so that when he looked up, the man across the way was giving him a hard, but weary, stare. Lassiter could read his mind: This is all I need, another fucking psycho.

  And then Lassiter had another thought, a thought that jolted him so hard that his body twitched involuntarily and he sat up: What if Baresi had actually done it? What if he’d used the fertility clinic to clone . . .

  That’s where it all broke down. To clone what? Or whom? Lassiter growled with frustration, and the man across from him got up with a curse and moved toward the end of the car.

  But what if he did? Then what? Lassiter asked himself. What happened then? Did Baresi have a change of heart? Did he have the children murdered?

  The answer came back instantly: This is insane. And anyway, the boys at the clinic couldn’t be clones. They didn’t look alike. Brandon didn’t look like Jesse, and neither of them looked like any of the other children he’d seen in photographs. Not Martin Henderson. Not Jiri Reiner’s boy. They were all different.

  So clones were out, Lassiter thought, unless . . .

  Unless what? Unless they were clones of a group.

  But which group? The College of Cardinals? A.C. Milan?

  I don’t think so, Lassiter told himself.

  It was ridiculous. Even if Baresi had been able to do something like that, why would he? It wasn’t as if the children were part of an experiment. The women came to the clinic, got pregnant, and went home. It was all very ordinary, and as far as Lassiter could tell, Baresi had never even asked for a picture of the kids, much less followed their progress. It was a fairly simple medical procedure, and that was that.

  Except it wasn’t.

  Because all of the patients had been killed.

  35

  IT DIDN’T GET this cold in Washington.

  Sitting in a rented Taurus outside the DMV in Portland, Maine, Lassiter held his hands in front of the car’s heating ducts and second-guessed himself. He shouldn’t have used his credit card at Hertz. He should have paid cash. Except they wouldn’t take cash, and so he didn’t really have a choice. And what did it matter, anyway? So long as he paid for his gas with cash, the car could be anywhere.

  Despite the stream of hot air that blew across his hands, his fingers were still frozen after scraping the frost from the windshield, using the sports section of the Portland Press-Herald. I’m not equipped for this, Lassiter thought. This is the kind of cold, the kind of industrial cold, that you found in Minnesota or Saskatchewan. A leather jacket just doesn’t cut it, and neither do these very expensive gloves from Bergdorf Goodman. I need electric mittens, he told himself. And a space suit.

  The dashboard clock read 8:56. Four minutes until it opens, Lassiter thought. And then: I should have gone to Sunday River, and showed her picture to everyone who worked there. The people who rented condos, the technicians who sharpened skis, the instructors and day-care minders. But . . . what good would that have done? A zillion people came and went every weekend at Sunday River. The picture was two y
ears old, and besides, it wasn’t as if she was at the resort. It wasn’t as if she was skiing. She was outside McDonald’s, with the mountain in the background, off in the distance.

  But it was the mountain. It was Sunday River. There were tourist brochures at the Ramada, and he’d compared the mountain in the photo with the one in the brochures, and they were obviously one and the same. Which meant that she was in Maine, or at least that she had been in Maine. Two years ago.

  Lassiter snapped on the radio and watched as a pear-shaped woman emerged from the DMV, carrying two flags. Skirting the ice in the parking lot, she went to the flagpole and unceremoniously hoisted the Stars and Stripes. The Maine state flag, which consisted mostly of a pine tree, followed a few seconds later. Then the woman retraced her steps through the parking lot, hurrying back inside.

  A voice on the radio announced that it was six degrees – ‘and getting wahm-ah!’

  At nine A.M., precisely, the woman unlocked the doors to the DMV and a dozen engines died. One by one, early birds in Thinsulate parkas clambered out of their cars and headed toward the building. Lassiter followed suit, and soon afterwards found himself in front of a window marked INFORMATION SERVICES.

  It had always seemed to him that the police – and only the police – should be able to trace a license plate. But that was a very old-fashioned idea, formulated in an age when privacy was still possible – because people were thought to own the facts about themselves. In the Information Age, time wasn’t money – data was. And so Maine was in the demographics business, which is to say that somewhere along the line it had joined the other states in selling information to anyone who would pay.

  As Lassiter well knew, there were companies that retailed specialized lists, tailored to the customer’s needs. If someone wanted a compendium of childless home owners whose household income exceeded $100,000 and who lived in a particular zip code, the information could be assembled in an instant. And if the customer wanted that same list refined to white males with a history of late payments, that, too, could be done.

  Maine’s Department of Motor Vehicles was just as capable of tailoring its lists. Thanks to the computer, the service was available at any branch. And so, when he filled out a form requesting the names and birthdates of the registered owners of Volkswagen vans, model years 1965–75, the chirpy clerk had a single question: