“Good.”
“This got me thinking. One case of paperwork filed late is one thing, but two? So, I looked up both of these people in a different database.”
Kate was beyond intrigued. “And?”
Luke cocked his head. “Both Thorpe Pledger and Owen Westbrook are rotting in a high-security prison as we speak.”
Kate sat immobile for a minute or so, her mouth agape with incredulity. “You mean we have someone serving time, possibly based on DNA evidence, and the same DNA belongs to dead guys? Fuck!”
“Yeah. Double fuck,” Luke said, nodding his head.
A few more minutes passed in complete silence, the two of them staring at each other, exchanging confused looks.
Kate was still wrapping her head around what Luke had said when he reached down to open the bottom drawer of his desk. He pulled out a bottle of whiskey and a tumbler then poured himself about an ounce, downed it, then refilled the glass before offering it to Kate.
“Shit!” She tossed it back then asked, “My uncle?”
“That’s what I thought about, as well. His DNA could be in the pile of samples we’ve got to analyze.”
“Can you get to it?”
“I really want to, but my team can’t take two days off from the priority tasks to finish going through your samples. The DNA analysis doesn’t take long, but running the results against all of the databases does,” he said. Then, he added, “Delaying hot cases would get me in deep trouble.”
Kate leaned forward and took hold of his wrist. “But this is huge. Do you realize what we’ve stumbled upon? Those samples… We’re talking about… clones. Human freaking clones!”
“Or a freak coincidence in the number of identical twins who don’t know they have twins out there,” Luke added.
“Hold on,” Kate said, fumbling through her purse to find her wallet. She dug out Wang’s business card and hurriedly dialed the detective’s number. When Kate heard the ringtone, she tapped the speaker icon on her phone.
“Detective Wang?” Kate asked, to be sure.
“Speaking”
“It’s Officer Kate Murphy. I’m in the DNA lab with O’Brien. He’s found two matches. I think you need to come in to hear the results in person.”
Wang let out a sigh. “It’s 6 p.m. I’m off duty right now.”
“I get that,” Kate said. “But it’s freaking unbelievable. It’s huge! We’ll have to call in the FBI on this.”
“What? Hold your horses, Murphy. Fine. I’ll be there in about forty minutes,” Wang said before hanging up.
Kate glanced at Luke as they waited impatiently. Luke called the security desk to let the guard know he was expecting another visitor, then they each drank another whiskey in silence before he returned the bottle to its drawer. They had time to finish off the pizza before Wang knocked on the glass door.
Luke unlocked the lab and led her to his office to join Kate.
“This better be good,” Wang said when she met Kate’s eyes.
Luke filled her in, and then, probably out of disbelief, Wang asked him to log out of his computer so she could log into her account and access other databases.
With Wang’s fingers flying across the keyboard—and Luke and Kate lurking over her shoulder—Wang pulled up the case file for Thorpe Pledger. “What the...”
She repeated the process and pulled up a picture of Owen Westbrook. She turned around, her face paler than usual. “I’ve seen the dead bodies. These are the same people… other than a few scars on our corpses and a missing heartbeat.” Her eyebrows hovered close to her hairline. “How? Did they escape from prison?”
Wang checked their police records and then Googled each victim’s name, but came back empty. No recent escapes, as far as Google and the databases she could access were concerned. These people were alive and secured behind bars.
She called Detective Fuller, who rushed into the lab thirty minutes later.
Kate couldn’t believe that a quiet discussion between two people over pizza had somehow turned into a police frenzy. They even had to leave Luke’s desk and move to the main lab area to accommodate the growing crowd, which ultimately saw the arrival of the district commander himself.
“Okay,” Capt. Cranston started. “We’ve got a situation here, and I don’t want it to turn into a circus.”
Everybody quieted down and waited for him to continue.
“First, O’Brien, I want your team to prioritize the other samples first thing in the morning. I don’t want them double-checked, I want the information triple-fucking-checked. And, Fuller,” the district commander said, turning to him, “I want your men to request faxed copies of the actual police files from these other states. I also want confirmation that the folks with the matching DNA are still in prison. Call each penitentiary and confirm it. I want it written down and dated.”
“Yes, sir,” Fuller said. Luke nodded, as well.
“Then, check with birth records,” the district commander continued. “Don’t want to risk identical twin issues. Confirm that every fucking ‘I’ is dotted and every ‘T’ crossed on this one. This is huge, but I don’t want our department to become the laughing stock of the force. If we’re going to report that fucking human cloning is happening, I want it bullet-proofed. I’ll call the judge and make sure we can expedite whatever warrant you need to help you prove this. Fuck.” He moved his right hand back through his thinning gray hair.
All ears were on the district commander, but Kate could feel the disbelief in the room. Capt. Cranston was the only one voicing it aloud at that very second, but they all seemed to agree.
“Once confirmed, this will get pulled out of our hands real fast,” he said. “This goes well beyond our scope. Fuller, as soon as we’ve got three confirmed cases, call me. I’ll have to report it to the FBI.” He let out a long sigh and checked the clock before continuing. “Great job, everyone. Go home. It’s past ten. Sleep on it. Maybe you’ll come up with another theory that would be more believable. I know I’ll be racking my brain tonight before we get into crazy overtime with this. We’ll have a shitload on our plate tomorrow.”
As the other detectives left, Kate overheard the district commander ask Fuller, “So, how did this come to be?”
“Your Wallflower, sir,” he said as he looked at Kate. Their eyes met, and Kate returned to Luke’s office to fetch her purse.
“Wow,” Luke said.
Kate nodded at him, her heartbeat nearly triple its usual rate. “Yeah. I can’t believe this. I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”
“Hold on,” Luke said to her. “I’ll lock up as soon as they leave and then we’ll walk around for a bit. Maybe some fresh air will help.”
Within a few minutes, everyone was gone, leaving Luke and Kate alone for the first time in four hours.
After exiting the building, they walked around the nearly empty parking lot in silence for the first five minutes.
“Do you think innocent people died?” she asked. “I mean, some states still have the death penalty. Do you think innocent people got executed for crimes they didn’t commit?”
Luke’s eyes darkened at the thought. “Katie, you can’t think about that. If, and only if that happened, there’s nothing that can be done.”
A few more minutes elapsed before Luke continued.
“There’s no way this human cloning thing has been going on for years. Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1996, I think? That’s almost twenty years ago, and she was the only one that survived out of two hundred twenty-eight cloned sheep attempts. Whoever went to the extreme of successfully cloning humans had to do it after that.”
“But that clone is more than twenty years old. How do you explain that?” Kate asked.
Luke shook his head, his eyes wide. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense to me. His age simply doesn’t add up, at least not based on what the rest of the scientific population has been up to. Last year, China made the news with their mass application of pig-cloning technolo
gy with a reported success rate of around seventy or eighty percent. And that’s with pigs, not humans! I’m sure whoever’s managed to clone humans has wasted precious years in trial and error, and their success rate probably isn’t that high. It’s very unlikely that someone would have been accused and executed already.”
Luke always had a way of making her feel better. And he knew so much about so many topics. She smiled at him, and he grabbed her hand before squeezing it lightly.
After circling the building and parking lot a few times, they stopped by Kate’s Subaru. Luke’s car was just a few spots away.
“Want to come home with me?” she asked.
He cocked his head and put his hands in his pockets. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
“Not this again, Luko,” she said with a long sigh. “I promise nothing will happen. I just want to be held and hugged.”
“Fine, I’ll follow you home in my car, but I’ll have to leave early tomorrow, so I can go home and change.”
“Deal.”
Luke set his alarm for 5 a.m., and they spooned; Kate wearing her yoga pajamas and Luke in his underwear. Kate’s mind kept spinning with what ifs...
For the first time in a few months, there was a glimmer of hope: maybe she could free Kenny if his DNA matched one of the corpses’. With this thought, and with Luke’s quiet rhythmic breathing behind her, she finally fell asleep.
She woke up a few hours later to a strange sound. She opened her eyes and saw Luke’s phone buzzing on the nightstand, next to her clock that read 5:00 a.m.
Where is he?
She turned around: the other side of the bed was empty but still warm.
A few seconds later, Luke walked back into her bedroom, still in his underwear. He looked good in the morning, with his hair a mess and without his glasses. He had muscular legs, with well-formed calves. Those strong arms, and that chest...
Hmmm. Must be hitting the gym a few times a week.
“Up already?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said before hitting the snooze icon on his phone and sitting down on the bed. “I don’t know how my head does it, but I always get up just before the alarm goes off. Sorry, I forgot to turn it off. I had to use the bathroom.”
Kate smiled again. “Thank you for your company last night. I needed it.”
“No problem, but I should get going now,” he said.
“Stay for just a minute longer. One more hug,” she said, but he was walking away already. “Pleeease?”
“Oh, all right, Katie. Just a minute.”
She was happy with him next to her. Comfortable. At peace with the world in this very instance. She closed her eyes and fell back to sleep, imagining what she’d like to do to him. The alarm sounded again on Luke’s phone and reminded her to put aside her lust, at least for now.
He chuckled as he turned off his alarm once more. “Okay, really gotta go now.”
“Fine.”
She removed her arm from around him, and he got up before putting on his clothes, and returning to his geeky look.
“Have you ever considered contact lenses?” she asked.
“Nah. Don’t really like putting fingers in my eyes.”
“You look sexy without glasses.”
His cheeks reddened, and he fumbled to put his right foot into his pants leg while maintaining his balance. Kate kept her giggle silent; she’d already embarrassed him enough, so she got out of bed.
“Do you want me to make you coffee for the road?” she offered.
“Would you?”
“Sure, give me a couple of minutes.”
She walked downstairs, inserted a pod in the machine, added water, and placed her regular cup underneath it while she opened her cupboard to find a travel mug.
Luke joined her in the kitchen a minute later, with his hair neatly slicked back to his geeky style.
“Do you take sugar, milk?”
“Just black.”
She poured the coffee into the travel mug, screwed the top, and then handed it to him. “Here you go, Luko.”
“Thanks.”
“And this,” she said before getting up on her toes and jumbling his hair. “Much better like that.”
Luke shook his head and grinned at her. “What is it with women? Men don’t want to be changed.”
“But this looks really good on you.”
He went toward the mirror near the entrance door to see. “Really?”
“Really. I dare you to keep it like that at work today and see what reactions you get.”
“Dare me? If I do it, will you hang out with me on Saturday?” he asked with a smile.
Kate thought for a second. “I have a visit booked with Kenny at Cedar Junction in the morning.”
“That’s fine. You can hang out with me in the afternoon and evening.”
“Sure, that should work,” she said as she nodded.
“Deal. See ya!”
And just like that, he left, like they used to do when they were kids.
No hugs, no kisses, just, “See ya.”
They had made many dares as kids. Come to think of it, most, if not all, of the things she’d dared him to do dealt with frogs, crabs, and fish. Maybe that was how he found his passion for biology.
Who knows? she thought before heading to the shower.
What a day this was going to be.
Chapter Eighteen
July 29, 2015
Kate Murphy
Roxbury Police Station, Boston
Kate hadn’t had a chance to clean and iron her uniform the night before—human cloning had pushed aside her regular laundry schedule—so she showed up at the station wearing capri pants and a plain white shirt. She was heading to the locker room, ready to put on the spare uniform she kept there when she saw a note in her pigeonhole:
Murphy,
Go see Capt. Cranston ASAP.
Sgt. Anderson
She hesitated for a second. Should she get dressed first? ASAP coming from the district commander probably meant now. No time to change.
Kate anxiously walked up to the third floor and greeted Susan.
“Hi, love. Just knock and let yourself in,” she said. “He’s expecting you.”
“Thanks, Susan.”
As soon as she entered his office, he barked out, “Murphy, sit down.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, trying to discern the expression on his tired face.
“I didn’t sleep much last night,” he began. “I still can’t believe what your rogue investigation uncovered.”
Kate had no idea where he was going with this, but the little voice in her head told her she was in trouble.
He slanted his eyes at her. “I get upset when people waste precious time and resources to pursue their own personal quests. I had given you permission to follow-up on your own time, and look into your uncle’s case, but you started a much bigger process, involving other people, and their time.”
Shit, I am in trouble.
Kate swallowed hard and kept quiet to avoid making things worse.
“However, as much as I despise Fuller for his attitude most days, I gotta admit his investigative gut is right far more often than it’s wrong. And both you and Fuller had the right feeling on this. I spoke to Sgt. Anderson this morning, and I’m pulling you off patrol until further notice. The detectives could certainly use another man on this, at least until we have to hand it over to the Feds. Since you’re already up to speed, even more than I am, you make the most sense. That way we can keep things tight and quiet for as long as possible. Understood?”
Wow. I get a chance to play in the big league?
She did her best to keep a poker face, but her lips moved into a smile. “Yes, sir.”
“But don’t get your hopes up, this is only a temporary thing. It’s only a matter of days before you resume your patrolling duties.”
Fair enough, but at least I’ll have a chance to prove myself.
“Understood,” Kate said, butterflie
s in her stomach.
“Go and report to Fuller. He knows already, and he’s expecting you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Kate left the district commander’s office with a lighter heart and a grin like a Cheshire cat. She was going to work toward freeing her uncle. Well, not directly, but her efforts could have an impact on his life. Hopefully.
First, she had to report to Fuller, though.
Fun times ahead.
Kate walked to Fuller’s office and saw a sticky note on his door:
Wallflower,
Conference room three
Fuller was already addressing everyone when she walked into the room.
“Okay, team. We’ve got birth records to trace, prison records to confirm, DNA samples to review, and if we can, we need to try to figure out how the fuck these people were cloned. Maybe we’ve all got a doppelgänger out there roaming the streets, committing crimes, and soiling our identity. This is going to be a nightmare. Capt. Cranston’s already arranged for warrants to be issued. Anything that requires one, we’ve got a guy waiting to issue it for us, at least for Massachusetts, and other people are working on Texas and California as we speak.”
He turned around to point to the pictures that Wang finished pinning on the board behind him.
“Wang, fill us in on the two matches the lab has already found.”
She turned to face everyone. “As we all heard yesterday, the bodies of these two John Does were found in our jurisdiction, but could not be identified at the time. On the left, we have Thorpe Pledger’s doppelgänger, and here we have the real Thorpe Pledger, who looks a tad younger. DOB March 27, 1972. Currently incarcerated at Victorville high-security Penitentiary in California, serving a life-sentence for murder. And on the right, we have Owen Westbrook’s doppelgänger and Owen Westbrook himself, who looks older. DOB April 7, 1968. Also incarcerated, but at Beaumont Penitentiary in Texas. Found guilty of first-degree murder.”
The room was abuzz with the incredible information.
The Last Hope Page 14