Bloodline rj-11

by F. Paul Wilson

  "We might have another baby, Gia."

  She hugged him tighter. "We might. But it still won't matter."

  "I don't get it."

  "I don't either. Before the accident I thought it was so important. Now… it's not. Maybe it was the coma that did it. Maybe it's the dreams I had when I was so near death."

  "Dreams? You never mentioned dreams."

  "That's because I don't remember them. I remember having dreamed, but not about what. I don't know whether it was the brain trauma or the dreams or the combination of the two, but the world seems different. The future seems… shorter. Does that make any sense?"

  The words chilled Jack. He'd heard something like it before. Someone who supposedly could see the future revealed that he could not see next summer, or anything past it—next spring ended in a wall of darkness.

  Gia had been pushed to the threshold of death. While she'd teetered on the edge, had she looked across and seen what was coming? And had that vision mercifully been blotted out, leaving her with only a vague sense of impending doom?

  What was going to happen next spring? It sounded like the end of the world.

  And if indeed it turned out to be the end of the world, then Jack's becoming a citizen…

  … wouldn't matter.

  He squeezed her close.

  "You, me, and Vicky—we matter, Gi. We matter."

  WEDNESDAY

  1

  Dawn came out of the bathroom after her morning retch. Nothing had come up and the nausea didn't seem so bad this time. Maybe it was easing off. But she was like totally exhausted. She could so fall right back into bed this minute, but her mouth was parched.

  As she passed through the bedroom, she glanced at Jerry, still asleep. She stopped short and stared.

  Ohmygod, his nose! What happened to—?

  Then she remembered. How could she forget that beating he got? His nose looked awful. Worse than last night. At least she thought so. Last night was a little fuzzy, almost as if she'd been drinking. But no chance of that with Jerry around.

  She went downstairs and flipped on the TV on her way to the kitchen. She gulped Diet Pepsi straight from the bottle, then carried it back to the living room. She sipped more as she watched some news story about a "suspicious" suicide in Forest Hills. The woman's identity was being withheld until next of kin were notified. The suicide was deemed "suspicious" because of the phone call that had tipped off the police.

  A strange feeling swept over Dawn as she listened. For some reason she thought of her mother.

  Mom? No way. She so wasn't the suicide type.

  Yeah, she'd been acting totally strange lately, but she'd never…

  A wave of nausea rippled through her stomach—a different sort of nausea. She went cold.

  Mom?

  She hunted for her phone, found it on the kitchen counter—didn't remem-ber leaving it there, but whatever. She speed dialed her home. She wasn't going to speak to her, just hear her voice and hang up.

  One ring… two…

  Come on, pick up—

  A man's voice came on after the third ring.

  "Pickering residence. Who's calling, please?"

  Dawn's voice locked and her heart froze. Her mouth moved but made no sound.

  "Hello?"

  "Is… is Mrs. Pickering there?"

  "Who's calling, please?"

  "I-I'm her daughter."

  "You're Dawn Pickering?"

  "Yes." She felt her knees softening. "I-I-I want to speak to my mother."

  "We've been trying to get hold of you since last night. I'm afraid I have some bad news."

  Dawn dropped the phone and began to scream.

  2

  "Your suspicion was spot on," Levy said as he made a sandwich out of his side orders of toast and hash browns. "That cola was loaded with flunitrazepam."

  "Never heard of it."

  "Its brand name—it's not legal in the U.S.—is Rohypnol."

  "Ah." Jack nodded. It made sense now. "Roofies."

  "Is that the street name? It's also a date-rape drug. With the amount she had in her, that woman could have been gang raped and never remembered a thing."

  At least she'd still be alive, Jack thought.

  "How do you know how much she had in her?"

  Levy took a huge bite and spoke around it. "I don't. But the assay calculated a concentration of zero-point-zero-three milligrams per cc. That comes out to about one milligram per ounce. If she'd had a typical serving of eight to twelve ounces…" He shook his head. "You could do just about anything to her."

  "Including slit her wrists?""

  "Obviously."

  Right. Obviously.

  Jack clasped his hands in his lap to keep from smashing his coffee cup into Levy's face.

  "You son of a bitch."

  The second half of Levy's potato sandwich stopped halfway to his mouth.

  "What?"

  "You lied to me about the alibi. You never had any idea where Bolton was when Gerhard was killed."

  "Okay, th-that's true. But I was under orders. I had no choice."

  Should have followed his gut when it told him Bolton had done Gerhard. But no, Levy's lie had let him feel it was just safe enough to leave Bolton on the street a little longer.

  Shit.

  Jack leaned forward. "A good woman, a concerned and loving mother is dead, murdered by someone you were supposed to lock away until the sun went out. She's dead because you helped slap a fresh coat of paint on that human Dumpster and put him back on the street. Now here you sit, stuffing your face with as much concern as if one of your lab rats died."

  Levy leaned away from him. "I—I had to alibi him. I have a family, a life, an identity. I'm more vulnerable than you."

  Maybe, maybe not.

  Jack stuffed his blooming rage back into its cage, took three deep breaths, then…

  "Will they pick up Rohypnol on a routine drug screen?"

  Levy blinked and looked confused by the change of subject. "I… don't… know. I'd expect it to send up flags in the benzodiazepine category, which is a part of just about every screen, but I couldn't guarantee it. It would depend on what sort of blood sample they were able to obtain. Urine would be the best, since the drug's excreted by the kidney. Of course, if they don't have any blood or urine to work with, they could always try her CSF."

  "Which is?"

  "Cerebrospinal fluid. It's the liquid that bathes the brain and spinal cord. I don't know if that would work, but it's worth a try."

  Jack would make a call and suggest that to the ME as soon as he left Levy. That decided, he had another concern.

  "What haven't you told me about what this agency and the DoD are really up to with this oDNA?"

  "I've told you—"

  "Yeah, yeah, you've told me a lot, not all of it true. You say if you can con-trol the trigger gene you can turn them all into Alan Alda. But there's got to be another agenda. I mean, it's not the Department of Public Health and Safety we're working with here. What are they really going to do? Create oDNA-loaded soldiers and control their trigger genes so they're all milquetoasts during peacetime, then stop treatment and let the dogs out during combat?"

  Levy dropped his sandwich. "Wh-where did you hear that?"

  Jack stared at him. He looked bloodless.

  "I just pulled it out of the air. You're not telling me—?"

  "Of course not, of course not. I… I just thought… I mean, I was just wondering where you might have heard something so far-fetched and ridiculous." He pushed his plate away. He seemed to have lost his appetite. "The, um, crime scene. You were there. Any sign that he left evidence?"

  Levy apparently wanted a change of subject. Jack let it go. If it were true, he could do nothing about it. And with the way this so-called therapy was working, the plan would never get off the ground.

  "Not that I could tell. What about the Pepsi bottle? Any prints?"

  "I'll hear today."

  "And if his are on i
t, will that be cause enough for your people to haul him in?"

  "If it were up to me, absolutely. But it will be Julia's call, and I can almost guarantee she won't. She'll say it's just an indication to up the dosage."

  Jack clasped his hands tighter.

  "From where I sit, Vecca's as bad as Bolton. She pointed him in Gerhard's direction, didn't she? Why? To test the suppresser therapy?" Levy's expression told him he'd hit a nerve. "That was it, wasn't it. Rattle his cage and see what he'd do. Did the same to me. Maybe she should be on this therapy. Anyone ever test her for oDNA?"

  Levy shook his head. "I wouldn't know. I wouldn't be surprised if she had none."

  Jack lowered his voice. "She's a killer, damn it! She might as well have slit Christy's wrists and held Gerhard's head under water herself."

  "Oh, she could never do that. She's not violent—and that's the hallmark of oDNA-influenced behavior. But I do believe she's a sociopath—a scientific sociopath. She sees life as a series of well-coordinated chemical reactions. And death is merely the cessation of those reactions."

  "That doesn't make her less responsible. She fingered me, and so Bolton thought he had to stop me. When he couldn't do that by his usual direct means—killing me—he did it indirectly by killing the person who'd hired me. I'm laying that right on Vecca's doorstep."

  "What are you working up to here? I hope you're not thinking of doing anything so foolish as taking reprisals on Julia. You could get us both in a lot of hot water."

  "Hot water? Two people are dead. Gerhard might not have been the most savory character, but he didn't deserve what happened to him. And Christy… I liked Christy."

  "Please don't do anything rash."

  "Me?" Jack said. "Rash? Never."

  "So you'll stay away from Julia?"

  "Won't harm a hair on her head."

  But he couldn't speak for Jeremy Bolton.

  3

  That guy, that detective, that Robertson… had to be him.

  Jeremy fumed in silence as he comforted a sobbing Dawn in the police station. The two of them were seated at the desk of a detective named Cullen—homicide of all things—who'd just explained the circumstances of her mother's death. Balding, overweight, sweating, Cullen was obviously uncomfortable as he described how they'd found her, and the wounds that had killed her.

  "B-but the news said something about 'suspicious,'" Dawn said. "What does that mean?"

  "It means the circumstances are unusual enough to warrant an investigation. We received a call informing us of your mother's death. That's certainly unusual in a suicide. And the caller told us to run drug and tox screens on her."

  The fuck! How could he know?

  Jeremy felt a scream of rage building… wanted to start smashing things… but forced himself to remain calm and cool.

  "But what does that mean?" Dawn said.

  "It means we have two possibilities." He ticked them off on his fingers. "Someone found your mother after she committed suicide, wrongly suspected foul play, but didn't want to get involved; or someone found her dead, rightly suspected foul play, but didn't want to get involved. The second possibility means that someone killed your mother and made it look like suicide."

  "But who…?"

  "That's what we'd like to know. The caller used a pay-as-you-go cell phone, so the call is untraceable."

  Jeremy could tell him who owned that phone. Robertson… that fuck Robertson must have paid a visit to Moonglow soon after Jeremy left, found her dead, and made the call. A simple suicide had now become a possible murder. And if they checked her blood as suggested…

  Jeremy said, "If she was killed—I can't imagine a soul in the world who would want Mrs. Pickering dead, but let's just say she was—how do you know it wasn't the killer himself who called?"

  "That would be even more unusual, but nothing's impossible." He squinted at Jeremy and then pointed at his own nose. "Have an accident, Mister"—he checked his notes—"Bethlehem?"

  "Tripped on the stairs yesterday. Racked up my knee too."

  Cullen's expression said nothing. He turned to Dawn.

  "Did your mother seem depressed recently?"

  Jeremy jumped in before Dawn could reply. "She was very unhappy that Dawn had moved in with me." He looked at her and squeezed her hand. "I don't think I'm talkin out of school when I say she's been actin real strange ever since we became involved. Without gettin into particulars, she seemed to become downright unglued when she learned Dawn was pregnant."

  Cullen made some notes and said, "Unglued how?"

  Jeremy cut Dawn off again. "She never threatened suicide, if that's what you mean. At least not to me. How about you, darlin?"

  Looking dazed, Dawn shook her head. "No, never. She did hire a detective, though."

  Shit-shit-shit! Never should have let her speak.

  "Right," Jeremy quickly added. "We don't know who she hired and we don't know why—I asked but she wouldn't tell us."

  Cullen was nodding. "We'll look into that."

  Jeremy wanted to shift the subject away from the detective before Dawn said anything about her mother's accusations against him.

  "You say the caller mentioned drug and tox screens. Has anything come up?"

  "No results back yet." Cullen looked at him. "Why do you ask?"

  "Well, it's just that—"

  Cullen's phone rang. He answered it, muttered and grunted a few times, then said, "I'll be damned. Keep me posted."

  He hung up and looked at Dawn.

  "Looks like our mystery caller is back again. He called downstairs and said we should check your mother for Rohypnol."

  Jeremy almost jumped out of his seat. How the hell—?

  When Moonglow came up positive for roofies and the word got out, Dirty Danny was sure to hear about it. He'd put two and two together in no time.

  Looked like Danny was going to need an accident.

  Shit!

  This was getting more complicated by the minute.

  "What's that?" Dawn said.

  "An illegal downer. Was your mother into downers?"

  Dawn glared at him. "My mother wasn't into anything. She was like totally antidrug."

  "Yes," Jeremy said. "I'd be very surprised if you found anything. The only thing Mrs. Pickering seemed hooked on was caffeine."

  Cullen shook his head and sighed. "Okay. In the meantime, for the record: Where were you two last night?"

  Jeremy had known this was coming—family members, especially those like Dawn in line to inherit, were always prime suspects—but he put on a shocked look.

  "You can't think Dawn would have anything to do with this terrible thing!"

  Cullen didn't react. "As I said, for the record."

  "We were home," Dawn said. "Jerry was hurting from his, um, fall, so we went to bed early. When I got up this morning…"

  She broke down again. Jeremy put a comforting arm around her quaking shoulders.

  "She heard a news story about a suspicious suicide in town. And since her mother had been actin weird, she gave her a call, just to check on her, and, well, you know the rest." He gave Cullen a pleading look. "Can I take her home now?"

  "Sure. I have your contact numbers. Miss Pickering, I'll keep you updated on developments."

  Still sobbing, Dawn nodded.

  Jeremy struggled out of the chair—the knee hurt worse today than yesterday. The good news was that he didn't look like a guy who'd be sneaking around faking someone's suicide.

  But knee or no knee, he had to do something about Dirty Danny. And then he'd have to track down Robertson. He wanted Robertson for a lot of reasons. Payback topped the list, but he also wanted to know where he got his information. Especially how he knew about the roofies.

  4

  "You don't need a man of my not inconsiderable talents for something like this," Russell Tuit said as he positioned the paper on the glass. "You could teach yourself in less than an hour."

  He'd adopted a put-upon look, but Jack knew he go
t off on anything with a whiff of scam or illegality. He'd done some soft time for bank hacking and one of the conditions of his parole was a ten-year ban from the Internet. Russ had found ways around it—like helping the guy next door set up a wi-fi network in his apartment last month and making sure the signal was strong enough to penetrate the wall they shared—but he swore his hacking days were over. He did not want to go back inside.

  "But I don't have one of those thingamajigs, Russ."

  "This thingamajig is called a scanner."

  Jack knew that, but he liked to pull Russ's chain.

  "Right. Don't have a scannamajig. Don't even have a printer."

  He shook his head. "How anyone can have a computer and not a printer is beyond me. I mean, what if you need to print out something like Mapquest directions?"

  Russ was not the stereotypical mouse potato—no taped glasses or pocket protector—but he tended to get so wrapped up in his keyboarding that he'd forget to bathe. The fact that he lived over a Second Avenue Tex-Mex restaurant was sometimes a good thing.

  "Not much of a traveler, Russ. And if I need directions to anywhere I can write them down."

  "I suppose I'd be crazy to ask if you've got Photoshop."

  "Certifiable. I mean, I've heard of it—a lady friend of mine who's into art has been using it—but I can't see myself ever buying it."

  Gia had started toying with computer art before the accident. She probably could have done this for him but he didn't want her involved. The less she knew the better.

  Russ smiled, showing yellow teeth. "Buying software… what a concept. 1 guess you do need me, Jack."

  He closed the cover and moved to one of the three computers in the room. A few key taps and a glow began to move along the scanner's edge. A barrage of taps and then Russ motioned Jack toward the monitor.

  "Okay. There it is. What do you want to do with it?"

  Leaning over him he realized that Russ had been procrastinating in regard to his next shower. No biggie. Couldn't hold a candle to a rakosh.